Re: General discussion chat It was a completely retarded program (as a lot of U.S. programs are) The biggest issue with it was the waste, people were scraping perfectly good vehicles. Yes some of the cars traded in were warn out pieces of junk, but many were just fine and could have driven for many more miles. Another thing was after the cars were traded in the engines had to be blown or destroyed at the dealership, what a waste of an engine that could be reused! Also once the car arrived at the scrap yard, the salvage companies could only "part out" certain parts and pieces of the car (not all of the cars potentially valuable parts could be re-sold just some pre specified parts), and they had only a couple of months to do so. Because of the time restrictions and the huge amount of vehicles entering salvage yards (for a local salvage yard near me 100's of CFC cars were being dropped off there every week during the height of the program), many salvage companies didn't have enough time to part out even what they were allowed, so many cars were crushed without a single part removed. This was a huge loss for the salvage companies (who lost the opportunity to make $ from the parts) and for the people who still own similar cars who might need parts for their car. Another huge problem was the negative impact on the environment. It was supposed to help the environment because people were trading in "gas guzzlers" for "green" cars, but the truth is it was very negative. Thank god SEMA was there to prevent too much further stupidity. One of the rules they were able to add was that no vehicle built before 1979 (or 76 I can't remember) was eligible for the program, saving vintage cars from being crushed. And I believe they were the ones who made it so that scrap yards could take a few parts from the car to sell. If congress had their way none or almost no parts could be removed and resold by scrap yards. Yea, I hope we never see anything like this again. So much stupidity
Re: General discussion chat Yeah, cash for clunkers was very stupid. Didn't the UK have something similar? Anyway, I got my D430 today I'm loving it so far. I've already torn it apart to replace the thermal pads with Arctic MX-2 and copper shims. It's the highest end one you can get, a very powerful 1.33GHz Core 2 Duo and a mighty 2GB RAM. (It has 1GB of onboard RAM which is nice but for some reason the motherboard doesn't support more than 2GB so when I tried putting a 2GB stick in it wouldn't boot at all.) It's in really good condition and the battery it came with is also good. (Standard 6 cell or whatever.) Only problem is that the 9 cell battery my dad got from work seems to be a dud. It has the 5 orange flashes and 1 green flash on the battery LED. It says charging but it's staying at 0%. When I had my old D600 I had a battery that did the same thing except it worked just fine otherwise. EDIT: The battery has just been lying around completely dead for like 2 years so I stuck it in the freezer and we'll see if that helps. (Wrapped it in cling wrap because we have no paper bags.)
Re: General discussion chat Yeah I saw a video on youtube where some dumbass traded in a 91 Crown vic Ltd with just under 5,000 miles on it. No scratches, dents, it was pretty much in new condition. Crushed. There were so many good, working, running vehicles that people would have loved to own in there. I saw a box body Suburban in the background on one of the lots in a video. Now that really really pissed me off. No matter how much money someone offers you, you don't crush an old, running, burb. It's just a rule of life. And the fact that any vehicle older than 2000 (or whatever the year is) that gets under 18 mpg is considered a "clunker" pisses me off in itself.
Re: General discussion chat Oh yea, I don't even want to think about all the nice cars that were crushed, I saw nice looking Mercedes' (although they deserved to be crushed ) Lexus', Cadillac's, big trucks, a cool Bronco, Mustangs (although most were crappy V6's I did see some 5.0's) a bunch of cool 80's and early 90's junk like a Feiro and a cool custom van, along with many cars that could have provided reliable transportation for the poor or anyone. On Youtube I say a Maserati, C4 Corvette, a beautiful Fox body 5.0 Mustang, a few Camaro's/Trans Am's and other stuff that shouldn't be crushed. Or at very least should have been parted out.
Re: General discussion chat There should have been a mileage rule. Nothing under 150,000 or something like that, so you don't get idiots crushing perfectly good cars with tons of life left in them. This whole thing is just a car enthusiast's nightmare. Also, I guess this means my dad's 95 F-150 is a clunker. Even though it's an xlt with 78,00 miles on it, 4 wheel drive, completely rust free and in wonderful condition. I'm glad he has an ounce of sense and didn't trade it in.
Re: General discussion chat Where I live (in sweden) rust is a pretty big problem compared to many other places. As long as a rusted out chassis gets all its good parts stripped, it's fine to crush it IMO. But it's wasteful to crush a car WITH all its parts for sure. On another note, sweden has quite strong regulations on cars. A rust hole in the undercarriage is enough to take a car out of traffic. Heck, even such a silly thing as uneven parking brake application is enough to take a car out of traffic even if the normal brakes tests fine. As long as ONE of the e-braked wheels don't grab hard enough you can't pass inspections. If the ABS don't work, your car is taken out of traffic.. Even though many cars don't even have ABS, apparently no one can drive a car with non working ABS. And the biggest political party is supposed to be social liberals. From what I've heard in murica (at least some states), you just get an emissions test and hit the road. That's proper liberalism.
Re: General discussion chat Actually in most states we don't even have smog testing. Here in Tennessee we have no vehicle inspection whatsoever. As long as you're registered and insured (and street legal of course) you can drive what you want. Well there's probably something, but in my 14 years I've never seen or heard of anyone getting their vehicles inspected. Well maybe if you want to make a car eligeable to be registered because it wasn't previously, or something, you have to get inspected. That's basic stuff like headlights, turn signals, that stuff, But if you buy a truck new, like I said, if you stay registered and insured you can drive it until the wheels fall off. I may be wrong idk
Re: General discussion chat In sweden, once every year you have to take it in for inspections. They basically lift up the car, hit any rust with a hammer to see if it goes trough, do a bunch of shock and shake tests on the suspension. test the brakes and handbrake, check the headlight image and all the indicators and brake lights, check for any engine lights etc, check the emissions, test all the seat belts and then they take it for a spin around the building turning side to side. Some of the inspectors are cool and some are hitler. Some will fail you for tinted lights, coilovers (lowness) and other mods. And it costs around 40 dollars to have your car inspected even though it's compulsory.
Re: General discussion chat Yeah that kinda stuff is a big load of bullshit. I couldn't sit there and watch some assholes fuck with my car. This is why I like the south. We don't have any of that stuff. I have a feeling we will in not very long, but nothing like that.
Re: General discussion chat Heh. In Canada once a vehicle is registered, we have no inspections and only annual emission for cars older than 6 years old. However, the police will pull you over for a broken taillight or a noisy exhaust.
Re: General discussion chat That sucks I remember in the late 90's very early 00's are state required smog testing. It was a nightmare! You just sit in a huge line with your car idling waiting to go inside the building (I guess one of the reasons they no longer do smog testing there is because the pollution created by the testing process itself ). After wasting a chunk of your afternoon It's finally time for your car to get tested. They just drove your car on a set of rollers, and "drove" it for 1min or so and then did an inspection of the exhaust and intake system. I guess they eventually fingered out that all this was a huge wast of time, gas and money and since smaller, more fuel efficient and cleaner burning cars became more common in the 2000's they finally stopped in or around 1999 If i'm remembering correctly. I still see a lot of vintage cars driving around with the old HISTORICAL VEHICLE SMOG EXEMPT licence plates since older cars didn't have to get tested. Thankfully In the states we have an organization called the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA). Which basically keeps the governments hands off of Vintage, Performance, Project, and custom made vehicles. SEMA has been able to create laws that help protect and promote automotive hobby friendly legislation, and oppose, what they consider, unfair laws. They also host one heck of a trade show every year in Las Vegas As Potato said you can basically build your own car from scratch or from components and get it licensed as long as it just has the usual things like headlights. Also in some states if you build a replica of a car, say i build a replica of a 63 Corvette and you can actually license it as a 1963 historical vehicle (not a 2014 custom/low volume manufactured vehicle) thats cool.
Re: General discussion chat Anyone tried Micro Car Racing? It was created by the one and only Dummiesman. Very good game http://microracing.tk/
Re: General discussion chat At one point douchebag would lead to a disambiguation page with thomas edison on it
Re: General discussion chat lol, dat wiki article also, i'm pretty sure that the definition of cash for clunkers is Evil
