maddyfish

Cars have there own forums. Let them make use of them.

iansmash

ugh, internet is such serious business.


Believe it or not, but some people out there are multifaceted and are interested in more things than just SS/FG bikes. That said, some of us on here who are into other things would like to see who else is. I don't see an issue there...

cc700

want a ****ing cookie? if anything that only makes you more ignorant and hurts your credibility when approaching the issue of cars v. bikes.

as for no real purpose... do you have any idea the economy and fossil fuels being spent manufacturing and distributing fixed gear parts in addition to regular bike parts? where's the purpose in having a pink top tube protector or gold anodized nitto drops? you need to seriously rethink this whole idea about things having no purpose. if you abstract that enough, we should just kill all humans because so much of what we do has "no real purpose."

really dude i used to like you but after this thing with Flo and now cars, i don't know where you're coming from.

peabodypride

if you take flo seriously, there is something wrong with you. if you are going to argue that there is a substantial per-bike environmental cost, it is logical that transportation and manufacture of one car would be far greater. I am not saying cars are evil, I am saying that purposely driving around in a low-mileage car _for fun_ is exponentially more harmful to the environment and increases the eco-effect of manufacturing and transit than a colored TT pad or gold drops (neither of which I have ever owned). By portraying the image as racing low-mileage cars as a "fun thing to do" we are not improving the public image that internal combustion engines are _not efficient technology_ and _harmful_. WE know it is not great for the earth, or for any of the trite political reasons, but there is a great population in America that cannot think for itself and requires advertising and "what other people think is cool" to sustain. That is, the more kids "tune up" cars for no utilitarian purpose, the more market there is in a system that is blatantly polluting our earth for no overall good of mankind.

Do I think trucks and big brown vans (albeit with newer engines) and people actually using vehicles for some utilitarian purpose are bad? not at all. Using the argument that people can race around low-mileage, gas-consuming cars with the same environmental consciousness as someone toying with gold Nittos is bunk. The "race for a hobby" idea was okay in the 60s but with today's ecological and political climate every baby step helps.

If you want to pilot fast moving vehicles and are environmentally conscious, go race hobby-class RCs.

91MF

think again. my 'hobby car' goes 16 days between fill-ups --averaging around 850-1000kms per tank.
im positive you have no dependents. how should i take my pregnant wife to a doctors appointment or my son to the pediatrician in the middle of winter? or how should i get $130 in groceries home?
smarten up maing.

peabodypride

If you read the Car-Free forum these arguments come up every day. Of course a car is more manageable for your lifestyle. And by the way there was an exact "pregnant wife" post in the Car-Free: she actually had no problem going to the hospital right up until pregnancy by bike [of course the plural of "anecdote" is not "data"]. Again you are pointing out a _utilitarian_ use of a vehicle. I am strictly talking about kids taking cars to the track as a hobby.

I am not trying to force car-free on anyone. For my foreseeable lifestyle (European-style grocery-shop-multiple-times-per-week, no kids and certainly no wife, semi-urban environment) I have no problem car-free but I am not so dull to realize even moving 15 miles further away from Philadelphia would put me in a landscape where car is king.

Overall my simple argument is that most of America is "monkey see, monkey do." If homeboy sees another kid tuning his combustion engine car and racing it for a hobby (not professionally, not with any significant lifestyle-sustaining monetary gain), this is only fueling the market for fast, non-environmental cars in a cloudy climate that desperately needs to move away from car culture when cars are not needed.

jimisnowhere

Surprisingly if you baby the throttle, those muscle and tuner cars get pretty good mileage. They have been tuned to create more power, meaning burn fuel more efficiently as well as faster. My friend Mike can make his 65 Chrysler cab get 25 mpg city. Or he can open up the six pack and roast a gallon in a 1/4 mile. If you drive sports cars hard on the streets, your wasteful and a selfish, dangerous ****** bag.

peabodypride

Interesting perspective. I am interested in hearing some more scientific ideas about how racers can actually achieve some moderation in performance to gas. I still find a flaw in the idea of guzzling gas without some non-intrinsic purpose that has a societal benefit, and I agree with what cc said in the subaru thread about people cutting off catalytic converters (you can make mad money doing that btw!).

as an aside, I changed my avatar to another well-known but perhaps less annoying female we all love, mainly due to the realization people hate flo so seriously!

Netdewt

I like my car. It's a sipper, I get over 30mpg avg consistently. I have to have a car because of where I live right now. Trying to move, but it's not cheap to live in the city. This made me sad:

And why do people have to use the phrase "pure sex". It's dumb.

donnamb 

Generally speaking, we move car-related threads to Foo. On the other hand, we've tried to be flexible with at least allowing a few off-topic threads on this forum.

What do you guys want me to do?

paramount

Actually, considering how much cars contribute to global warming (and sprawl), which is destroying the planet, I think you could make a pretty compelling argument that cars are in fact evil. Or at least that they bring out the worst in human behavior. Anyway, I would rather people didn't write about their cars on a bike forum.

https://www.edf.org/article.cfm?ContentID=5300

donnamb 

I'm very taken with this poem by Charles Bukowski. I'm not completely anti-car, but I do believe those of us who do drive could be more mindful of what it can do to the human psyche.

peabodypride

This thread should be left here because many of the car-free threads have the perspective of older commuters and road cyclists. It is interesting to hear what the younger group thinks.

donnamb 

I'll leave it for now. If we start getting reports or if I get enough requests to move it by PM, we might end up moving it.

Srsly, it is off-topic, so don't be suffering in silence, folks. We don't know if there is a problem unless we hear feedback.

Wotan

I don't like the car threads but at least I can ignore 'em. If people talked about cars I liked instead of pocket-rocket, hot 4, drift cars and the like I might be a little more interested... Might be, but probably not.

Anyway, the car threads can be ignored, but it's when people derail a bike thread by talking about cars (usually prompted by a 'hot' car in the background or the car-related user name of a poster) it annoys the heck out of me! Use the PMs or start a new thread. Or go and talk about your Nismo at the frat house.

P.S. Goes double for the gun talk, which thankfully seems to have died out a little recently.

jdms mvp

there are bike threads on car forums, so i don't see why not. i bet less than 1% of this board relies soley on their bike for transportation...

cc700

that was a joke.

the paramore chick is beat too though

as for there are two ways of doing so:

1. lightweight cars that use lightweight materials like a miata or a lotus elise, or to an extreme cars that are all carbon fiber or not really cars like the Ariel Atom.

2. engines that don't have to use much gas, be it through
-turbocharging or forced induction
-shutting off cylinders like the new corvettes do so they essentially turn into 4cyl at speed until you put the foot down
-just plain old high tech stuff like direct injection and high compression, though that usually requires higher octane fuel which is more expensive to produce.

a turbocharged engine will use a lot more gas and get a lot of power under boost, but by driving with a light foot and low in the rev range it won't produce any boost and will be pretty economical. subarus use big engines, so they're not a good example, but the powerful ones are turbocharged so they make lots of power but will still get pretty good gas milage if you drive with small amounts of throttle at low revs.

also a combination of those things like a turbocharged civic or something nicer like the supercharged lotus exige...

technology can increase the efficiency of an engine and a vehicle... the problem is that people don't want smaller vehicles that require higher octane fuel and they don't want to give up performance... so cars have gained mass and power at a steady rate but fuel economy has basically stayed the same and actually worsened in the aggregate scope since 1988.

if people were willing to drive smaller cars slower with less safety equipment, cars could be much lighter and we'd have 60, 70, or 100mpg NONhybrid cars.

i don't think people will go for that so i want people to figure out a way to make electric plug ins that are cheaper than regular cars. and people are working on it it's just that we have to change the whole economy and infrastructure first.






sorry for the continued discussion in this auxillary thread, and thanks peabody for trying to keep stuff in one thread... but your question here was interesting and i felt like responding.


as for moving this or other threads to foo... the whole point of these threads is so people can see who has both ss/fg and cars. i know it's off topic, but moving them will ruin the only interesting thing about them, which is how people's tastes line up cross-hobby.

solbrothers

exactry.

cars for work, bikes for play.

J A Holman

Move out of the suburbs?

Be a man?

Get a job where you earn enough to call a cab?

So many great answers to questions that are all the same question. No worries mate, I blame your lifestyle not you, we both know you can't change, lack the stones, life's too easy.

jdms mvp

i don't think any here is going to feel SOOOOOO strongly about bikes to move away from the suburbs or make MORE money so they can call cabs everywhere.... it's not that serious brah.

ZiP0082

i'm not so sure...

Jabba Degrassi

I feel so strongly about bikes that I'd sooner buy a car than give even one arsehole cabby anything more than a hearty "**** YOU!"

91MF

haha you have to be kidding.

my lifestyle? ya mortgage plus taking care of a wife and kid is so pathetic.

ZiP0082

be a man, 91MF!

iansmash

this was possibly the most blindly ignorant thing said in this thread...