StandardShift.com

Jaguar finally figured out how to make an interior. Good for them, but too bad that car hasn't come out yet. To be fair, the XF's is pretty sweet too, what with the rotating vents and all: http://pricinginsider.carsdirect.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/2009_jaguar_xf_interior.jpg Wouldn't call it o...

While we're on the topic of huge gauges: http://i50.tinypic.com/53ju6w.jpg Kidding, kidding... out of the car, the interior of the MINI is probably my least favourite bit of the car (the toggle switches are cool, as are the retro/chrome bits, but the speedometer's just a bit too big, making it look ...

They're different animals than winter tires... different purpose. Sometimes they close roads in the interior to anything but vehicles carrying chains (and sometimes even the local mountains do that too). Mostly for ice or very packed, icy snow. Studded tires aren't legal nor practical for most peopl...

Shifting at 2500 RPM vs. 2000 RPM isn't going to make an appreciable difference on your fuel economy. In the Rabbit it definitely does. That's definitely car-specific. I wonder if it's to do with engine size? In the 4-5 cars I've been able to spend decent time in (e.g., enough to get through 1-2 fu...

Shifting at 2500 RPM vs. 2000 RPM isn't going to make an appreciable difference on your fuel economy. Where your fuel savings come from is watching ahead to anticipate lights and traffic. Keep a greater following distance so you don't have to brake and accelerate when the car in front does. Anticipa...

We have vanity plates (well here in BC we do) but they charge a fee for them, and IMO they look worse than regular plates. http://www.icbc.com/cs/BlobServer?blobcol=urldata&blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobkey=id&blobwhere=1233967804561&blobheader=image%2Fjpeg Now we also have Olympics plate...

Photoshop. Though the numbers part of my plate is correct. Leedeth, if you have a good ICBC guy, you can usually tell them the kind of numbers you're looking for and they can try to find something close. Like cell numbers. I asked him to find an 888 plate, he let me pick from like BHW 888, 888 JXJ, ...

Your MINI, meet my MINI. :lol: Very similar specification to yours, but no automatic climate control, no sport seats, but plus chrome line exterior, rear fog, and 16" alloys. http://www.sfu.ca/~mjp16/misc/oliver_skids.jpg I love the Oxygen Blue colour. Like the MINI's design, it's slightly retr...

Haha they can't ticket us in BC anymore--the court decided that UBC was not legally allowed to ticket people on university lands.

So instead, SFU gives two "free" warnings... then, if you persist, they clamp your car and charge you $250 to remove the clamp. It's been pretty effective.

we had this at Georgia Tech when i went there. it only applied to first semester students, and it wasn't that you couldn't have a car, but that you could not get a parking permit. there were some pay parking lots on campus i believe, and several privately run pay garages that were quite close to ca...

Oui. Most of the time I use 2nd gear around 1000 RPM for crawling around the parking lot. Sometimes I'll clutch out and then clutch back in in 2nd, if I feel like I'm going to stall but want to slow down (but not stop). The clutch wear is minimal because the wheel speed and engine speed aren't that ...

Basically, from sensors at the truck's wheels, it can detect fluctuations in speed between individual wheels. When it recognizes an oscillation (trailer sway), it can brake wheels individually on each side (I believe it uses the front left and front right) to cancel the oscillation. You can't do thi...

The tough part about braking the trailer is that the trailer's wheels aren't equipped with myriad of sensors (brake, rotational, etc.) that the tow vehicle's wheels are equipped with. Plus the computer isn't calibrated to the trailer's brakes. And the trailer would have to have the ability to brake ...

Active sway control? How does that work? Or are you talking about manually activating the trailer brakes with the button on the brake controller? Active sway control is pretty impressive, actually. It can brake individual wheels on the towing vehicle to counteract and correct trailer sway/oscillati...

+1 to everything that's been said. I eventually learned to use the shifter in the way described above intuitively--gripping it like a ball and manhandling it into the desired gate is quite difficult in comparison. The gate springs are there for a purpose! Though I will say my spring for the 5/6 gate...