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I read this earlier today and thought it was a pretty excellent summation of driving in the DC area. I've thought about this more and more lately as I'm wanting but currently without another fun car - I remember how hard it was to have an enjoyable drive in this area when I had the Miata, and I'm starting to think I'd feel the same way in any non-appliance car you're supposed to have fun with.

So now that we have some alumni around here with some nice street cars - Evan's Lotus, G's Cayman, etc, what say you? Are you able to get a grin as you deal with everything mentioned in that article or are you resigned to dodging potholes and sitting in traffic, with the occasional weekend trip out to the country to keep you sane?

There is a ton of car culture around here, but to me it's still a wonder people are able to enjoy the hobby in this area with literally everything stacked against them. Maybe I'm just jaded and this goes for most metro areas? Discuss.

Some guys posted these pics, among others, on TacomaWorld saying he thought this truck was badass. Even someone knowing nothing about suspensions would get a sick feeling in their stomach looking at this.





Talk about sketchy mounts, ZERO groun clearance, questionable travel, and just overall weakness.

FYI, Tacoma's are NOT multi-link from stock. This is a hack job.

I think it'd be beneficial to have a field for our real names under our avatar. Where our post count, titles, and such are.

Not everyone's username reflects their real name. I know it's not a big deal for anyone that isn't a new member, but every little bit helps when trying to get people to know each other.

Edit: I'm dumb as a butt. Can someone move this to the suggestions section so my pedantry will be in the right place?

Edit 2: Thank you

I guarantee that grabbed a bunch of your attention right away. I noticed on the cruise that a lot of you were wanting photos. Unfortunately that wasn't possible because you couldn't drive next to me (legally). I was thinking on the next warm day we could take 33E so that it stays 2 lanes and I can snap a bunch of photos of different peoples cars. Maybe Taylor could drive and I be in the back. No mountain driving or anything just some nice rolling shots of your car and if we find a cool spot you can hard park it. Would this interest anyone?

Hey everyone, Taylor from MM had been talking about some of your meets and cruises and what not over at Tacomaworld.com and he said that I should join up on the forum...so here I am haha. Anyways I'm a Junior Econ major here at JMU. I drive an 05 Toyota Tacoma 5 lug. My truck is pretty bare bones other than a new headunit and powered sub and some other things here and there. I'm really here to just chill and check out some sweet cars. Maybe lend a hand and learn anything I can if you guys ever do some work on your cars.

my truck has gone through a few stages, here is the best pic i have right now back from high school, its got a chrome grill and stock wheels back on it now. no performance mods or anything (i would definitely take a donation of a URD supercharger kit haha :mrgreen: )



this is what i usually try to use my truck for though (thats not me in the pic btw)

See link to thread in the Campus Events section....

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Alright guys, this is all preliminary stuff. But I figured I'd get all of you grumpy alumni's opinion on this as well. As of now here are some things (nothing set in stone)

Attendance: 100 cars, 250 people
Price: This year I wanted to try something new. Instead of the normal 5 member, 10 nonmember. I want to do donations required upon signing up. Anywhere from $1-$1,000,000. This way we aren't excluding people who don't/can't pay the $10 dollars and then people who can don't mind making a hefty donation. So there may be a handful of people who donate a few buck but then there is also a handful of people who are willing to donate 50-100 bucks as their "entry fee". And of course we will have open donation box on site for attendees.
Lot: Convo
Charity: Bipolar Aware (for anyone who wants to know why I can explain but it's a long story)
Music: DJ White Mike (famous local DJ I guess)

Events:
- Cornhole tournament
- judging classes: Import, Domestic, Classic, 4x4, motorcycle, MAYBE racecar?
- Chinese Raffles: Steven Toyota is donating and helping out a ton. A lot of oil change, alignments, car details, inspections,
He also is willing to donate either 200-300 straight to the event or on something else to raffle. If we were to get something else what would something that everyone could use?
- He also has a 13 ft smoker that we can use to cook on. So that will probably take care of food a lot more quickly.
- What other events do you guys think would be fun/ not over the top?
- Prizes: instead of trophies, Steven Toyota offered their HUGE photo studio for pictures of the car. After the event i'll head over there with him (I'm choosing to shoot so we don't have to pay for a photographer and he doesn't have to pay his overitme) and we can get studio shots of the winner's of each class car. He will then print off their favorite one and give the rest on a disc
- Preregistration: possibility, then give preregistration people a goodie bag from things that sponsors have given us.

Sponsors: Steven Toyota, this list will continue as we reach out more and more people. If you can think of companies please let us know we have a list of about 30 at the moment.

Vendors (we automatically get 10% from anyone who sells at our event)
- Working on these at the moment, we'll see who all we get out and how relevant they are
- Dyno?

Also I'm working on the poster right now, does anyone have any of the past .psd files? Or if you are interested I have plenty of pictures of a lot of different cars and would gladly throw them to you if you can do it faster than me (I'm sure some of you can)

Hey all! This is a very open-ended and vague question, 95% chance I won't get an answer from this, but it couldn't hurt to try.

For about a week now, on cold starts, my truck will tick for probably 2-3 seconds. If I cut it off and cut it back on, it won't tick. At least it hasn't yet.

Here's a video of it like 10 minutes ago in the R1 parking lot. I can't tell where it's coming from because the only time I ever start my truck, I'm alone in the parking lot, so I have to be in the driver seat. Should I even be worried?

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All the pulleys and the fan seem tight as far as I can tell. Engine is the 5vz-fe. Has anyone experienced something like this? It'd be nice for it be something super simple before I delve into it.

Edit: No codes yet. If I throw one, my ultragauge will tell me the code and I'll post it.

I have a snowshoe pass that is good for 3 days, doesn't have to be consecutive and is transferrable. I paid $105 for it but I am going to be buying the new season pass so I dont need this anymore.

$80 obo for MM

Here's my blog post about my Phillip Island track day:

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Other random notes;

-There were more than a few rare/cool bikes out there. A RC30, 2-stroke 250's, a Benelli Tornado...
-Phillip Island management is way more anal than any of our tracks
-There were a SHIT TON of flies. I think there was some sort of seasonal plague in Melbourne and the surrounding areas
-Phillip Island has a popultion of Little Blue Penguins, which are a pretty big tourist attraction. They have burrows up to several hundred meters inland and you can do a tour to come see the adults when they come in from the ocean at night. There are also wallabies that live on the island.

-How many utes do you see?



After doing this I'm thinking that I might want to do more flyaway track days, albeit at tracks a lot closer than Australia. When I think about it, I've only ever driven/ridden on East Coast tracks, I'd like to at least do places like Laguna and Miller some day.