I found a bag of old Gorilla lugs, 12mm x 1.25 (20 total) I used to use on my old WRX. I guess they're spline style? I dunno I don't remember the terminology now. They are blue (look really good with the Suby blue) with some scuffs and stuff on the paint from being removed. They still look awesome from a few feet away but you could always get them repainted or powdercoated if the scrapes bother you. Comes with the key needed to remove them. I have no idea what these sell for, so give me a reasonable MM shipped price and they are yours.

I've read a few articles recently that say that Lotus' owner, Proton, wants to expand the brand and compete with the likes of Ferrari, Porsche, and Aston Martin. Just today Autoblog had a little blurb about how Lotus wants to hire Bob Lutz and some BMW guy with a sex offender last name (Tom Purves) as consultants.

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So what is it that Lotus actually needs? What products do they need to offer? What does their marketing need to look like?

For me, I hope that Lotus stays true its core of creating light performance cars. By doing that, they will remain unique among manufacturers. As far as their product offerings I'm thinking they need to choose a target in the market and make that the focus of their brand. Bring back the Espirit and aim it squarely at either the 458 or the 911 turbo or GT3. Spend your marketing budget on beating Ferrari and Porsche in GT racing in order to reestablish the marque as a serious competitor.

After that, develop an Elise/Exige successor and, maybe fill out the lineup with a front-engined GT. Source engines from whoever it makes sense to. If it were me I'd put a Honda K-series in the Exige and maybe give the bigger cars Corvette power. If Lotus can build its own engine then they should develop a flat-crank V8, preferably naturally aspirated. Maybe get Cosworth to help design it.

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AST is a very well known suspension company. This probably is not a "nova paying" job from the sounds of it, but officially working for AST means great possibility for moving up and working in an international company.


Edit: PS my company High Performance Technologies Inc. is looking for engineers, business managers etc for some government contracting jobs if anyone is looking please let me know. This includes experienced as well as recent college grads.

I just changed oil in the bike for the first time. How much should it take? I put 3 quarts in, but i can't seem to find a definitive answer on the interwebs. 1999 gsxr 750.

3quarts seem about right, anyway?

So I entered a Twitter contest last week and won an iPad. No... I'm not giving it away, but I entered the contest because I was researching for an iPad/Twitter contest of my own.

I'm interning with AOL this summer - yes, they still exist - and the AOL Jobs team is giving away an iPad 3G+WiFi (16GB) through Twitter. Some of you are fanboi-enough that I figured I'd post the link.

It's easy and not a scam, because I say so. If you win, I will personally call and congratulate you. We can even meet in person instead of me mailing the thing, provided you live up in NoVA somewhere.

All's you have to do is follow @AOLJobs on Twitter, and retweet a short little message. You can even RT more than once (once a day) to up your odds of winning. Full details are found here.

Well, I know a few of you are on Twitter, so get to it :wink:

Finally I bought a car...and made it out alive and with a little extra cash to spare.
ANYWAY
I know close to nothing about cars and how to make them all saavy and such so I need some assistance in how to make my vehicle autocross and girl friendly. ...that is to say I am not about to put a freakin hawaiian lei on the mirror (cough-GOODSPEED-cough)!!

SPECS:
2003 Jetta GLI
VR6-speed
power windows/locks/etc.
sunroof
fm/am/cd player
new tires
miles (I can't afford any less) -109,000 :/
?

So I've posted this on ls1tech with little success...figure I'll pick your guys' brains for any info/suggestions you might have.

I've got a 96 lt1 trans am w/ 105k miles on it. It smokes at idle after being warmed up. It does not smoke on start up and does not smoke while driving. The smoke looks like coolant (there's definitely excessive moisture in it). However it smokes like bad valve seals sans the smoking on start up..and it's more a white-ish smoke. Here's where it gets interesting - the motor uses oil whether through the many small leaks I'm tired of chasing or possibly through bad rings? It does not use coolant and both the coolant and oil look good.

One thing I should note is I would notice, during the winter at JMU, there would be a white/yellow buildup in the oil fill tube. The car does not run hot and there are no SES codes. I had a mechanic look at it (literally made his judgement after seeing the car idle for <30 seconds) over a year ago and he said it was bad rings (motor still has good compression...at least according to the gauge).


I'm going to pull the plugs tomorrow and see how they look...that being said I know the car runs rich due to a poor mail-order tune. Honestly, I'm lost here....I want to sell the car and move on to something European.

I am looking for some software that can convert iTunes formatted music to something I can use in Windows programs (Movie Maker), be able to add voice overs to music and videos, and create my own tracks out of portions of mulitple songs. Not mixing really, just tie together multiple songs. I found this suite of products and started experimenting last night with the audio editor. It was fairly easy to create a loop and get my voice in the track. The suite is offered as a subscription $39 annual, $59 lifetime. Seems like a good deal, I don't know that I would ever be able to outperform their capabilities.

http://www.avs4you.com/

What got me on this is a training program I am doing has run / walk intervals. I found a series of podcasts that have a voice over to tell you when to run / walk so you don't have to stare at your watch and keep track of the number of intervals or whatever. The music he uses is...tolerable. I want to do my own and unlike a playlist I'd like to mix up the music with portions of songs and essentially create one 30-45 minute track with voice overs to guide myself. Kind of like a podcast without all the URLing and RSSing.

Anybody else do this stuff? What do you use?

As usual, NASA July VIR. I will be headed down Friday afternoon. The Friday night dinners I always miss so lets set up a time in advance so I can actually see some of the current students for more than 2 minutes. There will be tons of interesting cars at this event due to the UTCC being on Friday, cant wait. I will be working.

Anyone have a 37/64 drill bit I could borrow? I will pay postage both ways obviously. Needed ASAP, thanks!