Recent Comments:
Chrysler kills rebadge of Dodge Journey to work on small car {Autoblog}
May 13th 2008 3:24PM The interior may have a ton of storage spaces, but the materials and design are worse than the Caliber - which is at the bottom of it's class already.
Your tax dollars at work: Border guards hold up traffic to check out Challenger {Autoblog}
May 11th 2008 8:04PM With Detroit's casinos booming, it's now only drunk college kids headed to the casino.
Your tax dollars at work: Border guards hold up traffic to check out Challenger {Autoblog}
May 11th 2008 4:46PM The border guards at the Ambassador, Blue Water and D-W Tunnel are the most incompetant I've ever come across, by far. Once I was held up for an hour by a Russian woman who barely spoke English for failure to produce a receipt for a 32" Sony TV (in my backseat) I had gotten as a Christmas present.
VW Rabbit gets a carrot from Consumer Reports {Autoblog}
May 11th 2008 3:54PM I've driven a couple of Versas for rental cars and they are absolute crap. I'd actually take a Cobalt over one. They're fun around town (good steering), but the engine is pitiful and the ergonomics absolutely brutal.
The bigger question is why they didn't include the newly redesigned Honda Fit.
GM quits renting, buys headquarters for $626 million {Autoblog}
May 9th 2008 7:13PM In a manner of speaking yes, but you probably don't know what it is. GMU is for GM employees only for continuous learning.
http://www.gm.com/corporate/careers/life_at_gm.jsp?p=gmu
GMI (General Motors Institute, now Kettering University) was the GM owned private university in Flint until 1982 when it became a separate entity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettering_University
Pontiac El Cami-"NO" {Autoblog}
May 8th 2008 1:39PM Negative, Bonneville has a very well deserved stigma for being a soft boulevard cruiser for older gentlemen who aren't smart enough to buy or can't afford better cars. The rocket propelled cow on roller skates GXP was a bad idea from the beginning, but done in typical 90's GM fashion.
Inside Line pits Challenger against Challenger in Vanishing Point-inspired road trip {Autoblog}
May 7th 2008 12:12AM Yes, because a Ram has more to do with a Challenger comparison than a Tundra.
Get over it.
You know you've pushed your car too hard when... {Autoblog}
May 6th 2008 11:26AM This is why I will never buy a $40,000 econobox.
Chrysler to guarantee gas at $2.99 a gallon! For three years! {Autoblog}
May 5th 2008 7:14PM So it's a $3000 savings assuming 18MPG, all 36k miles and $4.49 gas. Not nearly enough to force me to drive a Chrysler product.
More cars than ever require premium fuel {Autoblog}
Apr 17th 2008 6:52PM Mike, I'm an automotive engineer, not some idiot off the street...variable resonance manifolds won't do anything if the PCM doesn't also advance the timing. Creating good swirl and turbulence in the cylinder is essential and Honda does it very well with the VTEC system by limiting intake valve opening (or leaving one closed in VTEC-E), but its relation to fuel octane is pretty much nill. Especially given that the octane number is basically the fuel's resistance to combustion - this is why high compression cars need the higher octane. The swirl/turbulence of the air really is pretty independant of the octane number. Granted if you have poor swirl you won't get a homegenous mixture and will perhaps require higher octane fuel for that, but that probably isn't relevant to any newer engine.
But you are right in that the 6MT engine is slightly different, and I always wonder why Honda didn't specify the premium fuel and get SAE certification on the additional 15 or whatever horsepower.
The first 2-3 tanks I used premium I felt absolutely no difference. It took about 4 or 5 tanks to notice a significant difference - and it is not a physchological difference, I was about ready to give up the 93 octane experiment after initially worse fuel economy and not much difference in driveability.
However I do applaud your knowledge of the engine :-)
