I'm in the process of test driving a bunch of cars in an attempt to find what I want to get next. So far I haven't found anything I'm particularly in love with just yet. I feel like I'm forgetting some interesting cars, but in general I just haven't been too happy with most of the newer cars.

My requirements:
Not FWD
Manual, of course
300hp at a minimum
At least somewhat reliable
Preferably made in the last 10 years
Preferably uncommon (I have a thing for rare(ish) cars)
This will be my main daily driver so nothing completely crazy
If it's RWD, it needs to have a LSD.
Sticking to cars under $30k for now and nothing new, regardless of price

Having said that here is what I have driven so far:

Keep in mind all of these reviews are in comparison to my current daily driver, an Evo IX, and that these are all relatively short test drives and just my initial impressions.

2012 Subaru WRX STi

This one was kind of a let down for me having driven the older STi's before. They have really tamed it down from what it used to be. The old ones were much more raw and exciting to drive. This one feels more like an average family car than it does a sporty car to me. The suspension is fairly soft and it feels like it has a ton of body roll. The power delivery is very smooth and in stock form, it is not particularly exciting or fast. Having said that, all of the extra interior space is nice and the interior quality overall is certainly a big step up from my car. It is also something that is a little more mature looking overall than my current car or the older STi's.

2004 Corvette Z06

Let me start off by saying, I love the motor in this car. It has a lot of torque and it really has a lot of high end power. Not to mention it is one of the best, if not THE best, sounding V8 ever made. It has the growly SBC v8-ness while simultaneously being high pitched and exotic sounding. My main complaint with this car is the driving position. I'm somewhat tall, around 6' 1, and it felt like the roof of the car was blocking half of my vision. I didn't see a way to lower the seat, but maybe there is.

The suspension felt great, yet was very smooth and much more livable day to day than the bilstein setup on my car. The seats and overall interior quality wasn't quite up to the quality I expected out of a car that cost around 55k new. You also really get a feel for how big that hood is when you're actually setting in the car. Overall, it was definitely a fun car to drive, but I'm not sure I could live with the seating position on a day to day basis.

2010 Nissan 370z Nismo

My first impression of this car is that it looks much much better in person. The nismo body kit really doesn't do much for me in pictures. The front still is a little weird looking in real life, but the rest of it looks great. The wheels also look much larger and more aggressive in real life. I think pictures just distort this cars size for some reason.

The Nismo package comes with stiffer suspension, slightly more power (350 bhp), all the features of the sport package, and the body kit. I don't think you can get the touring package features on the nismo edition, but either way, the one I test drove didn't have them. This means no leather, no upgraded stereo etc. I wasn't much of a fan of the cloth material Nissan uses on these seats. It felt pretty cheap. The lower-tier stereo system also left a lot to be desired. I've heard the higher-tier one is much better though. Otherwise, the interior quality was the nicest of the 3 cars I've test driven so far.

Again, I was happy with the suspension on this car. It was much smoother than mine, but it didn't feel like there was too much body roll. The 3.7 v6 is about what you expect. It has a 7500 rpm redline and all of the power is past 5k rpms. It has plenty of torque in the lower rpms for what it is as well. However, the way this car makes power just isn't all that exciting. I feel like it would make a fun daily driver, but it needs something to make it exciting to drive. Maybe some light mods would fix that, maybe they wouldn't.

One thing to note is that with the nismo spoiler, you may as well not have a back window. You can barely see anything out of it as is, and with the spoiler, you've got a few inches of visibility out of the whole window. Considering that, I think I would rather have the normal 370z with the sport and touring packages. This way you get the nicer interior with most of the sporty features of the nismo including that automatic rev-match when you downshift.






Feel free to ask me anything about features I may have forgot to cover.

Some of the other cars I plan to test drive soonish are:

2011+ Mustang GT
E46 M3
Evo X
C6 Corvette

I will continue adding reviews as I drive them. Let me know if you all have any other suggestions of cars to look at.

I'll keep this updated as we purge the garage of the billions of duplications. I dont actually mind duplications, but when you have 4 of something... you can trim it down a little. I WILL NOT BREAK UP SETS...

This thread will be continuously updated until the garage is 100% set up... STAY TUNED!



Husky Standard Stubby Wrench Set: $4
9/16, 1/2, 7/16, 5/16

Husky Metric Wrench Set: - SOLD PENDING FUNDS
16mm, 15mm, 14mm, 13mm, 12mm, 11mm, 10mm, 8mm

Motion Pro Metric Selectable Ratcheting Wrench Set: - SOLD PENDING FUNDS
19mm, 17mm, 15mm, 13mm, 11mm

Mech Power Metric "easy action" Wrench Set: $5
15mm, 14mm, 13mm, 12mm, 11mm

Loose Wrenches: $1/each
(3) 9/16, 9/16-1/2 Box End Combo, 3/8, 9/16-1/2 Open End Combo, 3/8-7/16 Open End Combo, 12mm, 10mm-12mm Open End Combo, 12mm-14mm Open End Combo

Proto Tools Socket Holder: $2

V8 Tools Wrench Roll: $2

Firstly I apologize for my lack of forum. It's finally working for me again from my comp, Jake and I had to sort out some things. I've tried my best to make it to a couple snowy VIR events and G-Force. I'll be setting out on a cross country road trip from VA going south to ATL and then going across the SOUTH route to LA. Planning to venture into the depths of Mississippi, N'awlins, Dallas, a road that's practically on the TexMex border and a couple other places. We're heading out this Thursday in my friend's 2nd gen focus and I'm not quite sure what to expect. We plan on taking our time on the trip and "making the most of it". So any advice or prior learnings any of you have had I'd greatly appreciate. Who knows.. if I score a job in LA I might do this again but take a different route (probably more northern). We plan on hitting up a bunch of skateparks and hopefully some good live music but besides that have a pretty open mind to how to enjoy the deep south without getting eaten by a gator.

Was pulling out of CVS on Cantrell about 630 tonight. Took a left at the light and sounded AMAZING!

So I started this thread originally about a year ago, but looks like it got lost in the forum hiccup (or my search skills are very n00b-ish)
The tile thread in the lounge got me thinking of it, so I copy and pasted it all from another forum and here it is, risen from the ashes of shitty opensource database and phpBB induced death.

Old posts will be quoted in the first post, and I have some new updates that Ill add in subsequent posts like normal. For some reason the quotes blocks arent working but whatever

elgorey;5795869 Wrote:So, my garage, circa about 2 weeks ago.





For shame, for shame.

no car guy should have a garage in this condition


So, walking out into my garage and seeing that, combined with thinking about a future Factory Five project, combined with a really friggin good sale at Sears on garage stuff got me motivated to make my garage suck less.

Further analysis would give light to the following requirements

-Flooring
-Paint
-Wall Bike Mounts
-new outlets
-more lights
-workbench
-cabinets
-shelving
-misc storage and organization
-in ceiling speakers
-better/more air reels and electric reels

not necessarily in that order

stay tuned

elgorey;5795898 Wrote:Step 1: Flooring.
What flooring to use? The previous owner of my house took leftover interior wall paint and painted the garage floor with it. ( :finger: ) This would make epoxy or VCT a bigger pain in the ass than they are already since it would require the work stripping the old paint off. So that leaves me with floating tile as my best option.
Racedeck is a pretty good floating tile, but its a little rich for my blood so I went down a notch on their product line and picked up some motofloor on sale

Flooring is a pain of a job, since as seen in the above pic, I have a LOT of crap in the garage, and its all got to come out. So I took advantage of my motivation and decided to tackle it this weekend.
Spent thursday and friday evening and most of the day saturday boxing up most everything and making it easy to move around. Since everything has to be back in the garage by nightfall the whole thing has to be done in one day.

in progress


once its out, its pushbroom, pushbroom, pushbroom some more. then vacuum (shhhh dont tell the wife using nice house vacuum in garage) and finally a little water and mop/push it out.

all clear- ready for racedeck



no 'in progress' shots of the racedeck because holy damn does it go in fast.

all done




all done with my old workbench



I went with a 4x4 tile checkerboard pattern over 1x1 because
1. It looks better
2. It comes 4x4 already attached
3. Its so much faster
4. See 1.

then I spent the next 3 hours cluttering it back up moving all my crap back in there (depressing)

Some impressions of racedeck.
1. Its looks soooo damn good. Pics look nice and all, but when its *your* garage and it used to look like complete ass it really puts a smile on your face at the difference.
2. Some guys complain about a "clack clack" sound while walking. For this reason I contemplating using an underlayment or switching to VCT altogether. I have to report that Some Guys must be whiny little women, because there is no clack clack. there is a subtle muted hollow plastic sound - the tiles are open to allow circulation, but its not bad at all.
3. No problems with installation, I thought I might have to cut 2 entire rows, but some creative moving around of the floor means that I will only have to cut 5 tiles total (which I still need to do, anyone got a mitre saw I can borrow?)
4. Its easy to broom out. I had concerns that the raised diamonds would impede pushing dirt out with a broom.
5. I can play chess with real people in my garage.

Time will be the true test of course, my concerns going forward are dirt getting down in the tiles. There is a bigger seam between the tiles than I had thought there would be thats going to catch some dirt down in it.
white tiles are of course not ideal for showing wear and stains, but racedeck sells some great tile cleaner that is as easy as mopping it on.

elgorey;5796391 Wrote:hrm, I figured garage = tools, but anyway.

matt: you are a prophet! paint was done next and Im just getting around to writing it up. btw, love the black and titanium tiles.


Progress Update

Step 2 : Paint.
painting is kind of boring so TL;DR: painting sucks and is more expensive than you think. Walls are shiny white now.

Its funny how improving one part of something makes you realize how the rest of it looks awful. I hadnt planned on painting the walls (and if I had, I would have done it before putting in the floor), but as seen here

it really pops out how awful the walls look.

no biggie, I thought, Ill slap a coat of paint down and all will be right in the world of evans garage. 2 or 3 gallons, $60, bam done.
now Ive only owned my house for 4 years and it came freshly painted, so Ive never done any real wall painting before. Surely a coat of paint is sufficient at making the walls white? everyone who has done any painting is saying "Lulz n000b" right now.
As recommended by garage guys on the internets, I went with a exterior semi gloss white. exterior paint should handle the temp differences in the garage better, and semi gloss wipes and cleans better and is also brighter.

prep.
I didnt do a ton of prep, because its a garage, and the drywall is actually in pretty good shape to begin with. with the exception of the near wall which looks like this

that picture doesnt even show all the grease and water stains on the wall. pretty rough shape.

one of the previous owners nailed some boards to the wall. not really sure what the purpose was, there are some pegs sticking out but they arent big enough to be shelves. the top one was relatively easy to get off with this

(which is awesome and everyone should have one)
but the bottom one (already off in the above pic), the nails were in recessed drilled holes about a half inch. let that sink in. i dont even know how you get a hammer in a recessed hole. lots of swearing, prying, and damaging of drywall and it came off.
I did prep this wall, covered the holes and large dents. should have done a skim coat but didnt have time for it to fully dry and after all, its a garage not a dining room.


So on to paint, started on the far wall and did in fact decide to do it right and start off with primer before color. went with some super cheap PVA drywall primer (theyre all the same right?), and as it turns out it might as well have been watered down milk and did absolutely nothing. After laying a coat of color down, it was clear it would take at least 2 coats. which ended up being 3 coats. my budget just went in the crapper.

Got some better primer for the rest of the garage, zinsser 123 as recommended by the internets, and that stuff was pretty spectacular. went on thick and white (no jokes!), and easly covered the grease stains.

yadda yadda, on with the paint, youve all seen people paint so no pics. bought a big 18" roller and recruited my dad to help. a full weekend and the walls looked darn good. ended up with 1 coat of primer, 2 coats of color. probably could have got away with 1 coat of color due to how awesome that primer is, but I had already bought a 5 gallon bucket of paint so might as well use it.

that busted wall from above turned out like this


i think you can use your imagination for the other walls. about $300 later they are white and shiny :p

next up: a little bit of electrical work before getting to the fun stuff

elgorey;5796812 Wrote:not done for the day!
a small update: electrical (part 1)

so all the outlets and switches in the garage looked something like this when i bought the house.

(plus an equally nasty coverplate)
or this



i mean wtf is that?

so a little bit of this


and they all look like this

and this


electrical isnt done though, need to put in a new outlet close to the floor for the compressor, and some new switched ceiling outlets for more lights, and eventually ceiling speakers with a terminal plate

elgorey;5798369 Wrote:another update. still catching up.

next up is cabinets and shelving on the far side (car side) of the garage.
I hate having things on the ground next to a car so that leaves elevated shelving or cabinets. Cabinets seem 'safer' to me next to a car since nothing can accidentally fall off. although in reality anything falling off is user error anyway. (not like we ever get earthquakes here right?) but cabinets look pimpy, so cabinets it is.

First up is to install geartrack rails



kind of apain in the dick to install by myself. they have to be a certain height to clear car doors but not too high, must be level, start and end on a stud, plus the rails have to be exactly 18" apart for the cabinet brackets to fit, and Im a perfectionist.

did i mention im doing this by myself.

once the rails are up, installing the cabinets isnt too hard. 1 fold out workstation and 1 30" cabinet


the one on the left is a fold-out workstation, and its why I went with the gladiator system.

its a cabinet/ shelf while folded, and when you need some workspace, its folds out and has a nice stainless steel worktop


Im always looking for more workspace so it was an easy sell for me

elgorey;5798370 Wrote:shelving.

In this garage redo im all about using all the space in the most efficient way possible, and that empty space in the corner between shelving units and my workbench has been slackin off doing nothing for far too long.

so i come across a corner shelf unit at sears custom made for underperforming corners such as mine. its a little spendy, and the reviews vary between "the instructions are horrible and this shelf is all but impossible to put together" to "THIS IS THE DEVILS SHELF DO NOT BUY IT" but i say LOL n00bs! and order it up.

the reviews, as they often are, were 100% right.

it was the most awful engineered peice of furniture I have ever encountered (and I regularly buy from ikea so thats saying something)

the instructions were basically just a picture of a guy pointing at you and laughing. actually i would have preferred that, because at least then i would have known before unpacking it completely that it should be either returned to sears or cast into the fiery pits of hell back to its original owner.

it doesnt just bolt together, it uses these odd clips to hold peices together with a bolt to tighten the clip. since the instructions are worthless, you start putting it together, get about halfway done, then you realize the clips are upside down, or in the wrong holes, or some such **** so you tear the whole thing down and start over. repeat about 4 times until its probably put together correctly. maybe.

then after all that you still have to "square" it, as its pretty wobbly at this stage of completion. But remember the part about the clips? you can tighten the everloving crap out of the clip but they are still just clamp. so i got it close enough, and gently put it in the corner. please dont blow too hard on my shelf. its a shame because i havent found any other good alternatives to corner shelving (maybe i didnt look hard enough)

all in all it took over 8 hours to get it put together, and hopefully it has not brought any demons into my house.


nevermind the clutter, its a work in progress!

ive had those rubbermaid shelves for years, they are great, cheap,and will be staying.

up next is the rear wall cabinets and workspace

elgorey;5856607 Wrote:Lots of work but Im slackin off with the updates!

Back wall. where most of the work gets done

Next up on the work list was redoing the back wall, which consisted of a new workbench, cabinets, shelving, tool hooks, and a couple new outlets.
as a refersher, it used to look like this. awful

First thing is to plan it out


In go the geartrack and up goes the first cabinet


(and yes, perfectionist again)


Track and cabinets up, and you can see the new gladiator workbench and tool cabinet

elgorey;5856610 Wrote:added a couple outlets. 1 up top for a music streamer/player and amp, 1 below for air compressor and bench mount power strip



Accessorized with hooks, gladiator shelf, wire baskets, bins, etc

Still messy of course, organizing is the last step.

The other side with the old workbench (will be replaced in phase 2)
Added a shelf, and some hooks for power tools.


if you were wondering why the 2 cabinets are not centered or symmetrical (Im kind of OCD for symmetry) this is why

have to leave room for the stairs

elgorey;5856611 Wrote:A closer shot of the new workbench and tool drawer

The wood on the workbench is unfortunately pretty soft.
I had this ikea drawer liner laying around and as it turns out is a great topper for the workbench. Its pretty tough, not spongy and flimsy like most drawer liner, give some nice traction to the work surface too

next time Im at Ikea Im going to check to see if they have a wider version.

storage and hooks

and the other side


this is a rough cut, Im sure I will reconfigure things as my needs change.

next up - the bike wall

elgorey;5858925 Wrote:The bike wall.

Cars and bikes make up the 2 largest landowners in my garage, so to keep from getting a pedal into a car door or a chainring tattoo on my hood, My garage is segregated into a bike side, and a car side.
Separate car and bike drinking fountains, no bikes at the lunch counter, bikes at the back of the bus, its a 1960s civil rights tragedy.

This is how it looked before (notice the bronze bike about to get a firehose opened and the dogs set on him)


so after ripping those nasty boards off

and painting,

its time to get to work.

First up is storage.

The metal wall shelving that was supposed to go over my metal workbench turned out to be too deep, so I put it in next to the door instead. Its only half height now, so next time Im at ikea Ill grab longer uprights and a couple extra shelves to finish it down to the floor.


I have to say Im pretty impressed with the metal ikea shelving. it isnt cheap like most ikea stuff (although cheaper than comparable products)
but its sturdy, very configurable, and it looks great.


next up is another one of the fold out workstations that I put in on the car side. A bike workstand will go in right next to it, so its perfect to be able to have some workspace available when im wrenching on bikes

elgorey;5858927 Wrote:The biggest problem to solve, is how to store the bikes in a minimal of space, while still remaining accessible.
A friend had good luck hanging them vertically, so that was my plan. There was just barely enough space to get the bike in under the garage door rails.

I own 6 bikes now, but there is a good chance Ill be thinning out the quiver in the near future, so I didnt want to have wasted space with unused mounts.
The plan would be 4 permanent bike mounts, with flex space on geartrack for 2 more mounts. (or shelving, or hook storage if I dont have a bike there)


2 12x5' pine boards make up the top section to attach the wheel mounts to. Sanded to give a nice finish.


Sasha is helping!


Priming. Bottom board made of thin plywood. this board is just to keep the bottom tire from scuffing up the wall.



As I mentioned before, Im no experienced painter and I learned (after priming and painting the top board of course) that the water based vinyl wall paint I used for the board was not ideal for a contact surface that needed some durability. After messing with some polycrilic I decided to start over and do it right so I sanded, reprimed and painted with a high gloss oil based enamel. And yeah, oil based paint sucks to clean up!




After spending some time with a grinder to modify the hooks so that they take bigger volume mountain bike tires (nothing can "just work" can it?), here are the hooks mounted and a couple bikes hung


Hooks are staggered 12" and hung 17" apart. Could have gone 15 or 16 apart to compact it a little bit and save some space, but this will make it easier to get the bikes in and out.

elgorey;5858929 Wrote:Wheel mounts. To store unused bike wheels, I mounted hooks to boards in the unused space right above the fold out workstation. In keeping with the flexible theme, there is geartrack right under it, so I can easily mount hooks if Im not hanging any wheels at the time.
2 hooks are for wheels only (no tires) and 2 hooks are for wheels with high volume mtb tires.




just the hooks and mounts installed



bikes mounted, using 1 of 2 flex mounts

as luck would have it, the crafstman brand track system hooks work great on gladiator geartrack. which is good because their bike mount is much much better.

zoom out view of everything


next up: lighting, overhead storage, and ceiling speakers if the temperature ever falls below 100.

Anyone have experience with flooring like this? Have an opinion or suggestion?
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I painted the garage floor with concrete/garage floor paint, but after 8 months of having my car in the garage, the tires and water have started peeling the paint off the floor. So I want to get the gridded "free-flow" tiles ^^^ up there ^^^ to allow it to drain if I pull into the garage wet.

So I went home this weekend and arrived shortly before a really bad storm. Weather reports were warning of large hail. hock: We have a 4 car-carport but of course, my car is the black sheep 5th car ...so this is what we came up with to protect my 'maro. An old mattress, a tarp, a camping pad, and blankets. This is how to hail-proof your car...redneck style. :lol:

[img][/img]

What’s going on MM’ers,

I’m Chris Lacey and I’m running for secretary of MM. I drive a black mustang and joined the club late last year. This past semester I have really tried to help MM in any way I could. I’ve worked closely with Dan, Jon, and Tyler to give a helping hand when they’ve needed it. Next year I plan on really getting the word around JMU that we exist and that we are the most fun and simply the best club here. The best way to start that would be to get the club members to actually become closer friends rather than people they see from time to time. This means more social gatherings such as cruises, Klines meet ups, airstrip meets, dinners, Topgear nights and on-campus lunches. Maybe try to incorporate late night town cruises with stopping at various places around H’burg for some photo shoots! We also need to have get togethers on some Friday/Saturday nights to have fun like most JMU students do on Friday/Saturday nights.. And there is always a need for club members to be more comfortable around one another.

Now for getting JMU students to know we exist part… This could be something as simple as getting some members to hang out in the commons on campus and handing out flyers or posting on cars you notice around campus. I have done this for the car show this past year(which was AMAZING) and got positive feedback with people wanting to show up and join. Also this is just an idea, but possibly convincing JMU to let us park on campus for one week day. Somewhere outside of ISAT or get some bikes parked out in the commons. I mean let’s be honest, if you’re walking out of class and there’s a 240 built for drifting, you’re going to wonder what’s happening and how you could be a part of it. The main part I believe is to advertise to the student body during the weeks, since weekend days are unpredictable on campus. We have to work for 15 minutes at a time in-between everyone’s classes to be most effective with getting the word out.

I have really gotten to know Dan, Tyler and Jon over the past semester especially. The work that they have put into this club this past year is insane and has really jumpstarted the club back to life. This is a club I am proud to be a part of. I will work for this club’s exec’s, members and alumni with whatever needs to be done. Lastly I just want to thank Dan, Jon, Tyler and Chris for making the club what it is today. They have done an amazing job, and I hope I can help keep MM moving in the right direction!

Let me know if you have any questions!

A great idea on crowdsourcing the search for the Boston Marathon bomber.

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I can see this becoming a large part of the future of crime investigation.

So here is the deal. I just typed up a multi-paragrpaph explanation of what is going on with all these VP candidates and my plans for next year. When I posted it, the shit tastic internet that graces Copper Beech hiccuped and I lost it all. That means I'm not typing it all up again.

I'm planning to stay on as VP. I do not want to take on the role of the president because I may not be able to make it to every event as the president should. I have a commitment to VBD which may get a lot more serious in the near future. I want to be able to give both venues my attention when needed and which is why I decided not to run for president. I also have an out of state girlfriend which takes me home on some weekends. I'll be able to make it to most events, but some I will not.

As far as things I plan to do, just keep doing what we did this year. I want to work more in the background and let the younger guys run the show. I plan to help keep them on track as far as scheduling and helping them out with planning the autox, car show, regular club events, and apparel orders.

Dan and I have talked and we are most likely going to run a 5 person team with Garrett, Chris, Sam, Abbie, and myself. Titles and all that will be worked out, but we plan to share the work equally. That's how Dan, Tyler, and I did it this year and I think it worked out pretty well.

Ask away.