My old Porsche 944 has been on the fritz lately, so I've been ridesharing with a friend. Normally we leave the office around 6pm, and the commute takes around half an hour. Leaving any earlier is such a waste as it takes twice as long, the majority of the time spent parked on an interstate breathing in fumes. With two of us we can take advantage of the HOV lane, but still at that hour it is so utterly ineffective. And I'm not interested in lending any additional support to big oil with countless...

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We're painfully aware of the environment these days, with melting ice sheets and migrating species. Perhaps we can make enough lifestyle changes before end up with too many dying species. Topping just about everyone's list of changes to make is with transportation. Ten years ago GM was forced to prepare to sell zero emission vehicles in California, so they designed the EV1. Apparently they were surprised to find that people really wanted electric cars. Badly. Those that drove the EV1 were hooked....

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A couple of weeks ago I tested fuel economy in my Volvo over a 5 mile stretch of freeway without, then with an ounce of acetone added to 10 gallons of gas. I found an immediate 6.5% drop in mileage between those first two tests. Then after 300 more miles I tested on the same tank of acetone-laden gasoline using the same conditions, and found I got an added 4.2% to mileage. I was intrigued. Now I've been through 15 more gallons, and haven't added any more acetone. I did two runs tonight to check where...

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We'd all like to get better mileage, some just for the pocketbook, and others for the environment as well. Where I live in Phoenix the ground-level ozone is atrocious, and I'd love to have any other option than burning a gallon and a half of gasoline a day to get to work and back. So what to do? Mass-transit doesn't have mass appeal due to how infrequent the service is. And it's often tough to keep consistent when ridesharing. So lots of us drive solo to the office. Well, there are still a few things...

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(This was actually meant to be a comment to Alex's post. Surprisingly trying to submit my very simple response below didn't work!!! I tried everything I could think of, removing the dollar signs and other punctuation, etc. Makes me wonder how many legitimate comments I miss out on in my posts.) With that, here's Alex's words: Unless you don't like science (defined here as knowledge derived through observation and experimentation) and would prefer to live in the Dark Ages, it should be clear that...

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With all the hype about the high definition disc war, many people are inclined to believe that these two formats are both brand-new on the market and both sides are scrambling to try to get their product ready for release. Not completely true. There's an important factor that has not been brought up in the media. Sony has already been selling Blu-Ray technology in their professional camcorders for over a year! Only 8000 are in the field now, but they've gotten very positive feedback from that discerning...

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This is a follow-up to my previous post about putting an A604 transmission into limp mode. Back then I thought for sure there was a clutch problem or some kind of serious mechanical failure going on. Back when I made this video I mentioned that I thought it was the torque converter (which it actually wasn't). Listen to how it grinds away! This whole issue ended up being solved simply by cleaning the contacts for the solenoid connector! It's shown here with its cover off. Inside the connector's receptacle...

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Recently needed to work on a friend's 12 year old minivan that for some reason still runs. It's ugly, gets crappy mileage, and has 180,000 miles on it, but still went from point A to point B. That is until last week when putting it in Reverse to back out of the driveway, it started lunging and making grinding sounds! With it in Park or Neutral, no issue. But immediately upon putting it in Drive or Reverse, it either killed the engine entirely due to extra load, or a little motion started, coupled...

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