Sorry for the lack of updates. I’m not dead. Far from it. Just trying to get everything done while dealing with my day job and my leg.
Come back next week and I’ll have all sorts of stuff for you read. I promise. In the meantime, let’s see what Bark and I managed to get published this week.
At R&T, I wrote a rant about the miserable ubiquity of the inline-four. For TTAC, I asked the readers about an odd Taurus and told them about a lousy Camaro.
Brother Bark is waiting for R&T to publish his article on the EXR Spec Series racer, but if you’re hungry for all the Bark you can get he does have a brief cameo at the very, very of The Smoking Tire’s One Take Video from Las Vegas. And if you like the idea of watching Bark and Matt Farah take on a racetrack… then perhaps is not too early to announce that the three of us might be running an enduro race together somewhere in the desert come March. Watch this space!
Hallelujah! Fallujah! Gesundheit!
You’re lucky you aren’t a real race car driver, they put them down when they break their legs (which I was afraid had happened to you). Barbaro won the Indy 500 and they still put a bullet in his head because he sprained a hoof coming down the final straightaway.
Damn, that Camaro sounds like it could cause depression.
More than once in the past few weeks, I’ve wished to be put down. Down and out of my misery!
4-banger counterpoint: The lovely engine in my lovely 2000 GS-R. The even lovelier Integra Type-R engine. The S2000’s engine, both in 2.0 and 2.2 versions. The S14. And so on.
Also, the 3.0L balance-shafted 4-cylinder in the 968, if only because it was a batshit crazy thing for Porsche to do to build one that large that didn’t sound like a tractor. (And also since it hints that there could have been a 6-liter 928). A perfect example of path dependency in action.
I don’t think 4-cylinder engines are inherently bad, because good ones can be quite good, it’s that they’re made to be inherently indifferent. Most of them are the default lumps for the lowest specs, so you see a lot of meh ones. It’s cheap and gets the job done and you forget about it so why spend a ton of time and money making it memorable? Like you, the people who care, are going to buy the more interesting 6, or 8, or whatever.
Fun fact, the 928 V8s can be bored and strokes into some 7liter + monsters. They had bigger bore spacing than the LT5 in the ZR1 corvette.
Man I fuggin hate 4 cylinders. I used to make a long commute in an Oldsmobile aurora. I had to drive my sisters 4cyl 626 once, once. The din and NVH immediately penetrated my brain and once I noticed it, I could no longer ignore it. Pure torture. After I decided to not put anymore money into the 455k mile aurora, I bought a 2000 XJR. Both lovely small discplacement V8 engines that pull you down the interstate like a magic carpet.
Keep plodding along Jack ;
The pain will never go away but we’ll be right here reading your thoughts about driving various pieces of crap with ever increasing pain .
Welcome to ‘ middle age ‘ Blue Collar Guy =8-^ .
-Nate
The only 2 four cylinders worth having are the Ford 8N tractor and the Ford Ranger. I would like a straight 6 in an old truck one day, but I’ve given up on any new straight 6.