I'm not sure why everyone is hating on the Luce so much. I personally couldn't give a shit about the car, because it's not like I will ever be able to buy one.
I guess the hate is justified do it being the least ferrari-like car that ferrari could make. As well as the fact that it was designed by an Apple designer and may as well be charged from the bottom (iykyk)
So my fuel pump just died, the one I installed last year, in that it was pumping so much gas into the crankcase that the pcv was picking up all the vapor and making it run stupid rich. At first i though the rings had just died but the plugs weren't oily (just extremely fouled) and the onset of the poor running was far too quick to be anything like major mechanical failure (ie; parked up in the arvo, running just fine, started the next morning just fine, got to the mailbox and that was it sort quick failure). Then i checked the oil it had about a two litres of fuel in it, really wish I didn't drive 20 miles with that oil but i had to, amazing it kept oil pressure at all considering how water like it was. Oh well at least the insides are gonna super clean So then I reinstalled the old pump (sans gasket, just rtv) because that one worked albeit weakly, lo and behold, instead of pumping petrol into the sump, it pumps petrol straight through the body, between the cast lower half and the stamped upper half And now i cant get one for nearly two weeks. Yay, no wheels!
Brought home my new baby last night; French Blue 1974 TR6. So now I have a pair of 2 door stick shift RWD sports cars and a 40 year old boat with way too much motor... I'm smart
Well, I've just sold my reliable-well sorted-known to me daily driver the trusty R129 Mercedes. It was a fun and great car, but it was a bit of a downsizing from my previous car a XJ Jag. Left some room to be desired (no pun intended). I got to make some profit off it too, even after recently sinking 1500 dollars on parts alone to replace some major front suspension bits. It was all worth it in the end, and now I have space for a new to me and hopefully great car soon™
1 of 7 amc eagle turbo diesel. Last one left Got to see it a few days ago Same trim bodystyle and year as my eagle Sat outside for a while but owner plans to restore it once he finds an oil pump All the online photos and articles about this car are pretty outdated
I think i might be stupid. Ive been wondering why my 89 buick started running shittier and shitter over time ive been chasing what i though was a ignition system/spark issue twhen i think it very could be just the gas. i checked spark on every cylinder i have strong good spark on every cylinder. The rough running getting worse, directly correlated with me slowly diluting the gas more and more with 85 octane fuel the past few weeks/month because i was to cheap to buy 89 midgrade as it crossed over 5.2 cents a gallon. Not to mention its been 100+ degrees which makes preignition even worse. The car calls for 87 minimum it had 91 in it when i bought it and ive been diluting it with 85 every time i filled up, and the more i diluted it the worse it started to run over time. Now it's completely 85 octane in the tank and it runs like complete poop. I really think my next weekend when I dilute it with some 91 octane it will run like butter. Maybe it wont but im curious In my head i was thinking its a low horsepower low compression engine it should run fine on pisswater fuel right? Maybe not. --- Post updated --- The ram hemi i drive to work has also started being down on power and has been getting an abysmal 9 miles a gallon. I also switched from mid grade 87-89(depending on what the gat station i was at offered) to running 85 in it as well when gas went up im pretty sure running 85 is the reason its unhappy aswell. Man i never ran anything but mid grade or premium my whole life till this gas crisis hit i think in my attempt to save money i actually ended up spending more.
Bought a new car, I now daily drive a 2002 CLK55 AMG. It needs some love and TLC but it drives strong and deserves to be brought back around to showroom condition. I've already done all 16 plugs, wires, and replaced all coils. Next I want to do a transmission service and maybe replace the conductor plate due to no previous history of being done
I almost bought an S600 a couple years ago but turned it down because it was showing signs of expensive transmission problems (and by signs I mean it ran mostly fine but one single shift was so hard I thought I'd run over something). It was only $7500 but sadly I think there was a reason for that.
As the nerfed version of Leno's Law finally gets signed in California, I'm torn between "Wow, that's barely even a start" and "Wow, SAN actually did something useful for once?" My usual opinion on California - "Wow, I'm glad I don't live there and I hope I never have to" - remains unchanged, however.
Wow, the transmissions in those are typically bullet proof too. For the longest time Mercedes had to stick with/use the 722.6, 5G-Tronic automatic because of its ability to handle the sheer strength and torque the V12 made. The S600 also naturally has issues with the ABC hydraulic suspension, and if you start getting misfire codes each coil pack is aprox. 1500 dollars and with 24 spark plugs maintenance bills can stack up easily beyond the cars value.
Yeah, the air suspension was sinking overnight too. Still rose back to full height once you started driving but between that and the transmission issue (I looked it up and hard shifts were said to be a sign of an impending $15,000 failure), it sounded like a whole lot of fixing that I knew I'd have neither the time nor the inclination to do on a daily driver. Especially once the dealer let slip the whole story: it was a consignment and the owner had already permitted two price drops because he "wanted it out of his shop". So the previous owner was way better equipped than me to take care of a car like that, and he still threw up his hands and told a sketchy used car lot to make it someone else's problem even if that meant selling for pennies on the dollar. Add in some "minor" body paint & body damage (it looked like one side had been dragged across the corner of a building) and some off-brand alloy wheels that looked like they could have been winter wheels but had normal all-seasons on them instead, and that thing was starting to look a lot like garbage wrapped in gold. I still want one someday, but preferably in better condition.
Geez yeah thats a buy here pay here special for sure. Unless its being sold on facebook marketplace by a old guy (most likely orig owner) for relatively cheap with service history, or from a local main dealer who just took it in on trade with a good PPI, these S600s are a hard buy. And most as you've just mentioned have storied history's between previous bank repossessions, shady owners, bad dealings, etc. I almost found a V12 that I was actually going to buy before my CLK55 but it had a massive oil leak that required removal of the front sub frame to gain access to, not worth the hassle as a daily driver.
Interesting to contemplate some of the cars and engines that could have been great, except they came along right at/after the end of the "tuner era" when manufacturers were already de-funning their cars, minimum-displacement-maximum-stroke factory turbo engines were already there or at least very close, and the tuning scene was already shifting back to dead-set "metas". The Toyota 2GR belongs in this category along with cars like the Lexus IS350 that carried it, and I'd argue the Chrysler Pentastar goes in that category as well. The Pentastar, if you didn't realize, is an absolute rev monster by modern standards. 3.6L versions tend to make peak power around 6400RPM, even in the Ram Promaster, and the 3.2L version in the Jeep Cherokee (otherwise a terrible car) peaks at 6850, which might as well be Takumi's 11000RPM Formula Atlantic engine when you factor in stupid modern regulations. A sports car with a manual transmission and that engine would have been absolutely sweet despite being a Chrysler product, but as far as I know they never even considered one. A factory-turbo Pentastar would have been sweet too, and was apparently considered, but was never built. It was only ever used in NA + automatic form, either in large vehicles like the Ram and Charger that had more-powerful engines available, or in boring midsize/large FWDs like the Dodge Journey and Chrysler 200 that no enthusiast is ever going to care about unless they get stuck with one, all very heavy and thus poorly matched to an NA high rev engine. As a result, aftermarket support barely exists and it took years for anyone to even bother cracking the ECU encryption. As usual, if you have a pre-emissions car or one of a few specific modern cars, all you need is a credit card to make literally as much horsepower as you want, if you have a few other specific cars you probably won't be winning drag races but you can at least have some fun, and if you have anything else, you have to either follow the right people on social media so you can buy small-batch craft parts and ancient New Old Stock or become a mechanic + fabricator + hacker and learn to do literally everything yourself. (And if you're going to be driving this car on the street, both of those options are likely to be expensive or impossible in most of the world at this point) Just as an example, I have a friend who drives and '05 or '06 Mustang GT. It wasn't running right and couldn't go over 5500RPM because the stock ECU didn't like airflow mods. It's taken him over a year to even start getting it tuned because most tuners won't even touch a 4.6 3V anymore. Sad times all around.
