Science Abuse

I've got an 11th finger, doubles as a piton.

There could still be rats in there, Mitch.

It was a bit harsh, but I can understand that from some one who worked there. You felt you needed to be on the defense, completely understandable. In all there's realy no lack of fault on anywones part. Sure, were got reemed on simple work, but some one had to sign for it, no one was held at gunpoint. The moral of the story is, some one buy this truck.

Nevermind all these drag racing haters, you've chosen well, keep those heavy ass motors out of them. Stiffen it up with a cage or subframes, and make sure theres some form of LSD. You can boost the little motors to 200-300 hp, but no real point to that in autocross.

Holy crap, I remeber danger mouse!

Must be part of their going out of buisness sale promotion.

I find myself strangly attracted to that, despite retro being lazy. If it weighs less then 3500lbs, has IRS and decent mechanical grip, I may even want one.

Fun cars, nice lil toy. But be warned, Miatas without cages, harnesses, and R compounds are for homos.

I can only imagine what this is doing to you. You've got whatever I can give.

not bad for a piston car.

Was posted on a climbing forum, taken by a climber some distance up a wall. http://casa.colorado.edu/~danforth/rat_pro.jpg

Exactly right, Mike. If you were to have your belts done at Scotts, $X pays for the belts, the labor to install them, electricity light and heat the small shop for 10 or so hours a day, a scoop of coffee, and a couple toilet flushes a day. At a dealership, like Nissan North, the $184 pays for the belts, the Tech's pay and benifits, the cost to heat or both buildings 24/7, the cost of countless ads in countless publications, The costof leave 2 dozen million candle parking lot lighs on all night, and the property cost and taxes for 3 acres on 23. Thus dealers always charge more. They may not keep too much, but they damn sure bring it in. What they keep is based on what they spend. They charged $185 for a $50 job because they wanted a full page in the Dispatch instead of a half page? Shucks thanks.

$184 is a car payment + extra toward the principle, can the same be said for the Z06? Besides, everyone knows the dealerships employees dont make near the money that the dealership charges for their services. some of us dont have the fucking time to stare at an engine and trouble shoot. I practicaly had to plan a week ahead to get a damn oil change done, scheduled it around laundry day, multi taksed. It was far simpler to have it checked out on her way home from work while I watched the boy. If I'd known it was a belt, I damn sure would have done it myself. But thats why I had her take it to some one who workes on Nissans all day, every day, the tech did damn good work. I was honnestly expecting some thing much worse, more of an internal pump problem that I wasn't going to be able to do shit about in an appartment parking lot. That's why I didn't put it off until we could get it down to Kirks. I was very pleased that it was just a belt, but pissed that she'd ok'd the work without calling, and even more pissed at what was charged for the simple job. You dont even need to remove the fan to get these belts on. When she said "oh I just had them do it, the truck's done", I was releived, simple problem, theres no way that cost more then $50+ parts, I didn't even ask what they charged, I did tell her to bring the belts home, out of curiosity. My jaw hit the floor when I saw the bill and the belts. I was pissed even more when I went and looked at the belts on the VG33E. The tensioners are easily acessable, and everything but the lower belt can be done from the top without removing anything. Needless to say I'm done messing around, no one takes cars anywhere for anything w/o me. To the posts saying dealerships dont make alot of money. Yes, they do, fuck yes they do. Tom, you dont, and the techs sure as hell dont. Example; Per the bill she was in 1:10 and out at 2:45, roughly an hour and a half. $40 to diagnose, $75 labor, Free car wash. Minus the car wash and time waiting, in and out of the bay, etc etc, you can figure that the tech spent about 45 mins actualy working on the car, for which the dealership charged $115 plus parts. Now, if you can show me that the Tech made more then about 15% of that, I'll drop it right now and give you a dollar, at least some hard worker got something from this. Chances are the tech made about $10-$15 max to swap those belts, depending on his rate. The service writer probably made more selling the work then the tech made doing it. The two carbon based life forms responceble for making that $115 for Nissan North probably made a combined $50 off of it, if you include whatever benifits they have, and the cost of heat and water if they flush the toilet twice a day. You're paying for the dealership, not the parts and service. I had a similar experience with Discount Tire Co. I wend in there to have some 245/40/17s mounted and balanced, and they wanted $95 labor for a 1/2 hour job! the wheels and tires were in my truck. Berto worked there at the time, and was the one that was going to be doing the work, and he sure as hell wasn't making $95 an hour, he would have made about $4 for his time. I took them less then 2 miles away to an SCCA guy with mounting and balancing equipment on his back porch, $5 each and they've been smooth up to 150mph. When Elena killed her engine, the service writer at Germain Nissan was extremely good to me, especialy the part where he didn't laugh in my face when E dropped the "oil? I never had it changed" bombshell. He worked with me over a period of a couple days shopping engines and getting the price down. Managed to find a 30k engine for about $2000. Labor was still going to be almost $4000. Through Ebay and Kirks auto I found a $1900 engine, 19k miles and a year younger, and Scott would do the job for $1500. I called the guy at Germain and asked what he could do. "We just cant touch that". Even if he'd wanted to, there's no way the dealership manager would let him keep his job if he sold the job that cheep. You think Germain would have given their tech anywhere close to 25% of that $4g to swap that motor? Hell no. If dealerships paid techs half of what they charged for their work, they'd all retire at 45, and the dealerships couldn't afford to run silly TV ads. Dealerships have the advantage of promoting power. New car owners instantly associate their cars well being with daddy dealership, and dont bother looking elsewhere. They pay a premium, Elena paid a premium, because they knew that joe public will pay it because they dont know any better. Kudos to the tech's though, I've never had a problem with a job poorly done. Hell I was so worried about have to fork out for a new power steering pump that I didn't even check the tension of the belts. It's not just the customers that get ripped off, its the employees themselves. Comparing the experiences I've had at dealers to the ones I've had at small shops, I'll take the small shops. I'll save the dealerships for purchassing cars and warrauntee work. I've had nothing but good service from the few times I've bought at dealerships....but I have been dicked around over warauntee work.

Cables and towers man, cables and towers. 8)

When I was 16 I made money by investing in a freinds acid dealing buisness venture.....you should probably get a job. Warehouse and light production > * $10/hr and simple/easy work. You can do 2nd shift and get 40hrs a week. $400 gross is alot of money at 16, if I remeber correctly. The service industry blows.

http://thewoodomain.net/files/11/daciarly.jpg

I interupted Blitzkreig Pop for that?

887 sq ft all electric 70-75 all day long, Baby climate $65/mo

I'm not bitching about having new belts, theres obviously no problem with having new belt. I bitched about being charged $184 for something that didn't need done. A few spins of the tensioner bolts would have fixed it. We dont all have Z06 budgets, and losing an extra $184 on the heels of the holiday spending season is actualy significant to some of us. Thats alot of Similac...actualy, no, its only about 8 cans.

the hell happened to thewoodomain? my pics are gone

I have an idea. how can we get this to fit in a car?: http://www.sanghioxygen.net/images/products/no2plant.jpg

Back to the origional question, Thunderbird SC blocks are different, too. This has come up time and time again on the TCCoA boards, guys with V6s wanting SC top ends. But, you need the whole motor and operating systems. IMHO you're better off with a bolt on vortec or simple T04 install.

Go http://thewoodomain.net/files/11/stalinrly.jpg keep them coming

Wow, that sounds slow...good thinkin'!

Just happened to be what I was listening to;