Frosty

Are your window regulators shot? In some cases there are repair kits and such that are available to refurbish them?

As always, I learn a new tidbit every time you post something like this Last Indian. I admit that I've never understood the allure of diesels in modern passenger cars. Car companies have offered them, extolled their respective virtues on them, and still the American car buying public (at least) remains wary. Europe has more openly embraced them, mainly for economic reasons (e.g. diesel fuel has been cheaper than petrol unlike this country).

So did you take the car out?

I am sure the diesel scandal is part of it, since I think it extended into Europe too. I could be wrong on that but I thought the EU was investigating VW for possible EU emissions violations. However, given how high the price of petrol, gas or diesel, is in Europe, I think it may come down (in part) to fuel costs as well. Ultimately it comes down to a lack of consumer demand for diesels - for whatever reasons. Gas and gas hybrids (according to the article) are on the rise.

Sounds like an awesome show. Please be sure to share lots of photos with us. If I wanted to go to the show that badly, I would have no qualms about breaking Lucy out of her winter slumber and driving her (o' so carefully) to the show. Or if the weather was truly that bad in my neck of the woods I'd borrow a buddy's truck and trailer.

Parent company VW made the diesel engines for Porsche, VW, Audi, Scania, Skoda.....what does that tell you?

Sweet! Thanks for sharing !

Hmmm....interesting. Does Porsche's decision to stop offering diesel engines portend the end of diesels and turbo diesels in passenger cars in this country and/or North America? I clearly see advantages of diesels in medium and heavy duty trucks. However, like the Oldsmobile diesel bogeyman before it in the late 70s and early 80s, will Americans stop buying diesels completely in favor or gas or gas/electric hybrids? https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1115325_porsche-kills-off-its-diesels-because-customers-no-longer-want-them

In that case, as you can see from my write up above, I'm all for it. I'm sure others will pipe up with their opinions as well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah....

That's great progress Last Indian. Now you are just bragging mister flip flop!

Let me ask a clarification question. Are you talking about HEI (as in the coil-in-cap style distributors from the mid-70s onward) or are you interesting in breaker-less/point-less distributors were you don't ever worry about installing points and a condenser ever again but appears to be stock distributor? I run the latter in Lucy. I have a stock Pontiac distributor that runs a Petronix II pointless solid-state conversion kit. I run a stock vacuum advance. It's an easy installation but it is easier to install with the distributor out of the engine but it can be done with the distributor still in the engine too. I also run a light spring and weight package to get the mechanical advance out as soon as possible. A spring kit runs around $7-9, a Petronix solid state conversion kit runs around $65-100 from Summit Racing. An HEI distributor will require you replacing the stock distributor with an HEI one. A cheap Summit Racing brand HEI distributor will run around $167 (or more for a brand name) - plus shipping. Also with an HEI distributor you have to re-gap your plugs from .035 to .040. I will say that I am happy with my Pertronix. Mind you, I don't go racing in it but I still do quite a bit of lead foot / spirited driving on the highway and it doesn't disappoint. I am sure my other FP colleagues will weigh in with their opinions.

Joe - didja get the replacement fender yet? I figure you should get it today or tomorrow.

That's Michigan weather for ya'. Wait 5 minutes and it will change. Once the rain moves off, it will cool back down and we will have a "wintery mix" on Friday, and more rain on Saturday and Sunday. Still it beats shoveling it. We've had somewhere between 1.5 - 2.5 inches of rain already. That equates to approximately 13 inches of snow per inch of rain according to Google. So somewhere between 20-33 inches of snow we've avoided shoveling. However we now have flood warning and watches up for our local rivers and creeks. In addition to the rain fall, we had close to 2 feet of snow melt this past week. At least the rain is washing the six pounds of road salt off Black Beauty.

I stopped to visit Indyman Joe today. I found him working on his oldest daughter's 2010 Vibe. Seems she played Dances with Deer with it (GE would be proud). Joe was dismantling the damaged left front sheet metal. He got some expected help from Remy...a.k.a. Remington, his black lab puppy. it almost looks like Remy wants to to play so badly that she is playing with Joe's face!

Sure. Try to collect. I'm bet he can afford way better lawyers than you can.

It must be nice to have that much cash that you can really afford these kind of eccentricities. http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43063379

I still do - in a way....just got watch the used car market at this point and snatch one up on the cheap(er). Actually I'd rather have the G8 GXP instead. Good luck finding one of them cheap. True enough but a lot of writers like to blame the Aztek for Pontiac's fall, which I think is total horse hockey. A single vehicle, albeit ugly, was not the death knell for an entire division. There was a lot of collective mismanagement to screw up Pontiac over the last several decades. Okay I will stop whining (for now).

I am inclined to agree with Last Indian on the Chevy SS. The thing about the Chevy SS is that it was suppose to be the heir apparent to the Pontiac G8 (or so some Chevy execs would like me to believe anyway). Once again, virtually no TV or magazine advertising for the car to the general public to say that it even existed beyond making it Chevy's Sprint/Monster Cup car representative for NASCAR. So there was no real awareness of the real car to anyone there. No TV exposure. Finally it was an over priced performance luxury car. It had a $48k starting price. Stupid pricing. Unforgivable marketing. Still it was a badass car that no one bought because it didn't exist in the public's eye. Not to mention GM shut down it's entire Australian manufacturing operations (e.g Holden). GM has to get out of the mode of assuming that all performance / luxury cars sell themselves with no marketing dollars. Granted Corvette and Camaro do well with little real marketing dollars because they get so much exposure in the automotive performance magazines and social media outlets. However, price and the lack of awareness can kill just about anything. Hard to imagine a car with an LS3 6.2L and six-speed automatic would not be a blast to drive and own. Still if no one knows you exist, you can't sell 'em. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Did I mention stupid?

The only car on the list that I will miss is the Dodge Viper. Only reason being as it was a good halo car for Chrysler. It's hard for me to shake the image of a V-10 Viper motor. A lot of people thought it might seriously rival the Corvette (it did and it didn't - enough said there). The rest are going off to automotive Valhalla for good reasons.

Agreed.

I am always willing to learn my friend. I've seen Gene Winfield chop a different car every year at the Detroit Autorama for the last 5 years at least. One year its a '49 Mercury, a '63 Starliner, a '52 F-1, etc. Each chop is different and brings its own unique set of challenges to complete it and make it look right. What amazes me is that he and his crew of local high school/local tech school teachers and students start and complete the chop in one weekend! So I do appreciate all the little things it takes to get it done right.

This is an interesting idea for automotive restorers if the concept proves truly viable. Certainly replicating plastic and some metal parts is doable. Electrical and moving parts are more difficult or problematic. Still if the part is no longer in production - anywhere in the world, this could be the next best thing, and relatively economical depending on the size of the part and assuming the CAD data needed to produce the part already exists. https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1115295_3d-printing-allows-porsche-to-create-obscure-parts-for-classic-cars

I can't wait for your next update. You have made some great inspiration statements too. At first I was worried by your thread's title. I was afraid that GuitarsExtreme was bragging about another roadkill he got with his 20008 Challenger. He has literally put "kill" stickers on that car he's hit so many critters - including 5 deer. The folks at Petty's Garage in Level Cross, NC call it the Deer Slayer.

If we can win the proxy votes or win over the board of directors, I am so there gents.