Fifty150

Funny how you don't see guys wearing MC colors riding on the back of a girl's Grom.

You are correct. Body work can often cost more than mechanical work. $10,000 thrown in the right direction, with proper windage, can almost replace everything you need under the hood. You can probably get a whole new engine, transmission, and everything to go along with it. That is a lot less expensive than $30,000 for a new car. But do you spend $10,000, on a car that is only worth $2,000?

Try calling this guy. He may be able to help. https://www.vmpperformance.com/aboutus.asp

I am jealous. That is such a cool Grom. Can you take me for a ride? 5150 Yes and no. You would need proprietary software, in most cases, to tune the engine. Companies like SCT make handheld tuners for more popular Ford Mustang, F-150, et cetera. But I don't think anything is over the counter for Transit Connect. Custom tune writers are not in the business of adding HP & torque to a minivan.

My dad taught me the same thing about cars. Value depreciates daily. Interest adds debt daily. If I only have $2,000, then it's a $2,000 car that I will buy. If all that buys is a 14 year old Hyundai, then I will drive it for a year, save what I would have spent on payments. My next car will be a $4,000 car that might last 3 years. The math can work that way. $500 monthly car payments adds up to $30,000 in 5 years. The real problem is when you have that money in your hand, you might not want to spend it all at once on a new car. You may decide that you could live with driving another used car, and do something else with that money. My ex wanted to spend it on a wedding. She is now my ex. There are options. Insurance auctions for salvage title cars. Little old ladies that are not allowed to drive anymore. Maybe someone else with a stroke of bad luck, and you can take over payments. As a kid, I rode a motorcycle because it was cheaper. In today's world, $2,000 will buy a very good used 2 wheeler. Leaps and bounds beyond a $2,000 car.

You didn't consider a little more luxury, like a Honda or Toyota van, for driving kids around?

Just win a lottery jackpot. People do it all the time. Just nobody I know. Not me, because I can't afford to buy a ticket. But it could be you. We have all been there. You have a car that you don't want to lose, but you are throwing more money at it than it is actually worth. Now you're in the hole. You will never get out of it, what you're putting into it. It's like a bad relationship. You don't want to let it go, but can't afford to hold onto it. Your car can be fixed. Today's modern vehicles, almost everything can be diagnosed and corrected. The right technician, with proper diagnostic equipment, could pinpoint all of the car's issues. And as you already know, most of the time, it's just changing parts. Every part on the car can be changed for a new one. But at what cost? You just put a over a thousand into this car. I don't even want to think about how many thousands you have put into it over the years. I've done the same myself. I put over $10,000 (little by little, over many years) into an old rust bucket Jeep, until I figured out that I could have spent that money on a new car. Like you, a thousand here, five hundred there, and 10 years later, it added up. Your car's KBB value may only be in the $2,000 - $4,000 range. It may be time to figure out what your budget allows for car payments, and to talk to a lender about financing. The math is not in favor of putting more money into the car.

Let's say that you bought that GM about 10 years ago, and you bought that Ranger 10 years before that........technology has changed a lot in 20 years. The last time that I owned anything 4 cylinders was back when little 4 cylinder engines had no power......70's, 80's, 90's vintage 4 cylinder cars were terribly underpowered in comparison to today's technology. Think bac to that 1st Mustang, with a 2.8L inline 6, and 105 HP. All depends on what your fatties weigh, and how fat your soccer mom is. I've had different sized people in the van, and haven't had any problems yet. But none of my passengers weighed over 250 lbs. If you have a load of 7, 300 pounders, then that adds up to 2,100 pounds.

Window tint laws are different in every state. And all tint laws are in the interest of officer safety, or operator safety. The only thing that is illegal in every state would be 100% tint of the entire windshield. I have "limo tint", which is legal in California. My rearview mirror does not see anything on the road. It's only useful for checking to see what the kids are doing in the back. I'm used to driving trucks, so using the side mirrors correctly is essential......problem being that the Transit Connect does not have truck mirrors. A backup camera made all the difference in the world. I didn't install the camera until I tinted the windows and realized that I couldn't see a thing. Not a real issue anymore, since all new cars will come with backup cameras. Cargo shifting and breaking auto glass is common. So common, that a lot of commercial vehicles have some sort of screen or cage to protect the glass & keep your cargo from flying onto the freeway. So common that there are vehicle specific screens that you can buy. https://www.americanvan.com/ford-transit-connect-g2-wire-window-screens.html Home/ Shop By Vehicle/ Ford Transit Connect/ 2014 & Newer Ford Transit Connect Window Screens MORE VIEWS 2014 & Newer Ford Transit Connect Window Screens Write a review These custom fit window screens are available for the rear hinged and side sliding door windows on the 2014 Ford Transit Connect. Passenger and Driver side screens can be purchased individually or as a set of 2. Constructed of a heavy-duty 7 gauge wire frame and a 9 gauge welded wire screen grid with an attractive gray powder coat finish. The Window Screens for the side sliding doors (WGR-3120) are for the Long Wheelbase Van only See Full Description Below Model Description Shipping Weight Price Qty WGR-1818-G2 2014 & Newer Transit Connect, Rear Swing Doors - SET OF 2 7 lbs $69.90 WGR-3120-G2 2014 & Newer Transit Connect, Long Wheelbase, Side Sliding Doors - SET OF 2 10 lbs $89.90 WGR-1818TPN-G2 Window Screen, 2014 Transit Connect - Rear Passenger Side Swing 4 lbs $34.95 WGR-1818TDN-G2 Window Screen, 2014 Transit Connect - Rear Driver Side Swing 4 lbs $34.95 WGR-3120TPN-G2 Window Screen, 2014 Transit Connect - Passenger Side Sliding - Long Wheelbase Only 7 lbs $44.95 WGR-3120TDN-G2 Window Screen, 2014 Transit Connect - Driver's Side Sliding - Long Wheelbase Only 7 lbs $44.95 WGR-4518TRL-G2 Window Screen, 2014 & Newer Transit Connect - Rear Lift-Up Door 8 lbs $59.90

If you know what you are doing when you crash it.

In today's world, pickup trucks have turned into "Mall Cruisers". Half of the trucks sold never haul, tow, or go off road......sort of like all the SUV type vehicles that never leave the pavement, or for that matter, even go into the snow. People are buying trucks to line the bed with speakers, and show off shiny rims. It used to be that you could buy the "basic" trim level for basic work. No luxury. It simply runs. A truck that you could work with, and not worry about messing up the leather seats, or getting mud on the floor mats. It's the luxury trim trucks that are driving up prices, to a point that now you can't even buy a stick shift, and soon, even the stripped down work package trucks will no longer be available. Weird how some trucks were only sold as 4 door, crew cab, short bed "cars". Honda Ridgeline. Chevy Avalanche. Ford Sport Trac.

LNG is interesting also. In my area, I don't see LNG. We have CNG. Even though both use "natural gas", the technologies are different. Kind of like Beta Max vs VHS. Both of those will not survive side by side. Although both may be left behind when something better comes along.......same way the marketplace abandoned 12" laser disc was DVD took over the market. Almost like me, still owning 8 tracks, when even CD sales have all but disappeared in favor of downloading MP3.

You would think that on an issue like that, where it is apparent that the malfunction was not caused by the customer, any reputable dealer would assist with deferring your payment and/or provide a loaner.

Exactly. The amount of pollution to the environment from producing and delivering those kilowatts of electricity to the end user's electric car, is greater than the tail pipe emission that the car is saving. We need to produce and deliver electricity in a cleaner fashion, before we operate cars with it. Not to mention the environmental footprint of producing and disposing of the battery cells for those cars. I'm not a scientist. I don't have exact figures. But if one Tesla has a battery cell which is equal to about 12 of my regular car batteries, then 1 Tesla, in 8 or 10 years, will add just as much battery waste product to a landfill as my lifetime of driving. If I only drove Tesla, then I would pollute the environment with 10 times as many batteries in the landfill. And what about the pollution from producing all of those batteries in a Tesla? Here in The U.S.A., the oil companies have lobbyist who convince our politicians to enact legislation in their favor. That is why we do not have alternative fuel options available to the public. Oil companies do not want to lose money. Alternative fuel stations could be everywhere, if crooked politicians stop taking dirty money from lobbying groups. CNG technology is already developed and available, is cleaner, has an equivalent amount of energy per gallon as gasoline so you don't lose performance or mileage, is a lot less expensive, and the infrastructure is already there to deliver the gas via gas lines from your utility. Just like with solar panels, the US government could offer subsidies, tax incentives, and tax rebates to convert every car on the road to CNG., and for homeowners to install their own fueling apparatus. The technology is already available with conversion kits. Legislation could be passed to force auto manufacturers to sell every car as CNG, and require car owners to convert existing cars within a reasonable time limit (perhaps 10 years), with an exemption for cars that are pre-OBDII. If in 10 years, your 96 Saturn is still running, you'll either convert it or get rid of it. Since natural gas comes from gas lines which are already in place, you won't have to deliver it in tankers. We won't buy gas from Saudi Arabia. No more "cost per barrel" impacting the economy, or Saudi Arabia flooding the market at below market rates. The retail equipment and safety standards are already approved. CNG could be sold by almost anyone willing to buy a compressor and they won't need a huge underground tank. More availability means increased competition in the marketplace, which translates to lower retail pricing. Convenience stores, grocery stores, auto parts stores, department stores........Amazon.com could sell it to you, and you could fuel up at Whole Foods with your Prime Membership. Automakers can complain about increased production cost, and fear that the clean cars won't sell. But those are baseless arguments. U.S. citizens get a tax rebate for buying electric cars and hybrid cars, in order to offset the additional expense. Tesla buyers get a $7,500 federal tax credit, in California there is a $2,500 tax rebate, and in New Jersey they don't pay sales tax. You don't see Toyota complaining about how the Prius is hurting their company's profitability. Chevy is selling a lot of Volts. And even though the Nissan Leaf is junk, people are still buying it. CNG is also a finite resource. But it is a huge step to getting away from petroleum products. With a step in that direction, perhaps we can then look towards developing a synthetic fuel. If you allow your imagination to run wild, why can't a synthetic fuel be developed? Why must we use a natural resource?

The dream is still there. Imagine if "wireless power" were indeed possible. Why you could put a phone, right on top of a charging pad, and charge it without plugging your phone in. https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/best-wireless-phone-chargers/ Now if we could only charge our electric car batteries in a wireless fashion....l.maybe even as we're driving, by driving over a freeway which also acts as a charger for all the cars driving on it. No way that could ever happen. Just leave it to the Chinese to develop a solar panel to harness electricity directly on the road surface.

Nuclear energy may provide an alternative to fossil fuel. Battery technology needs improvement. The biggest setback for electric cars is range and recharge time. A long range trip is nearly impossible if you drive an electric vehicle for only a couple of hours, only to require 6, 8, or more hours of charging, for another couple of hours of driving. And in an urban environment, apartment dwellers don't have charge options. I park on the street. No way for me to setup a charge station in my garage - because I don't have a garage. The idea is there. The science isn't. A solar panel does not convert enough electricity needed to charge a car efficiently. Electricity can be the future of automobiles, if we could develop the technology for quick battery change or charge. Hydrogen fuel cell, LPG and CNG systems have not caught on due to lack of refueling options. You run out of fuel, too bad. No way to find more. Nobody carries it. I am in a liberal metropolitan area, with environmental tree huggers, and there is only 1 retail E-85 vendor. Biodiesel is sold by a hippy cooperative that you have to pay to join, and pay monthly dues, to access the pumps. The local utility vendor has 1 CNG pump. No way to refuel hydrogen or LPG.

Evens hybrids, like a Prius, can be equipped with a small diesel to use biodiesel. A lot of options. Special Interest lobbying is holding back advancement. Unless funding is allocated for further research and development, we will not be able to take the next step into a more efficient or cleaner future. Or someone in another country will develop the technology. China is already testing the use of solar panels on freeways. That being said, I have a gas guzzling pickup truck.

E85 could turn into a farm subsidy. The government could pay the farmers to grow sugar cane or corn. The government is already subsidizing the manufacturing and distribution of E85, so that retailers can sell it for about $1 less. All cars can run on E85 and there are conversion kits on the market. If manufacturers want to, every car could be sold as flex fuel. by way of government dollars, every gas station could have an E85 pump. Every car could be sold with a diesel engine and all pumps could dispense biodiesel. The politics and money are what is keeping us from getting away from gasoline and diesel. No. I don't think E85 And biodiesel are the solution. It is symbolic of how technology and science is restrained by politics. Big oil does not want anything to take our dollars from buying gas and diesel. So they will pay off politicians at every level to protect their revenue stream. Government could pay for a lot with our tax dollars. The money is there. But it becomes a matter of prioritizing politics. And I don't want to point out where they could cut spending to increase spending in other areas. Because we all have different ideology.

The mounting hardware will be the same, but in a different location. It won't be ideal, but you can still make it work. All depends on how much of the van you are willing to take apart and swap. Perhaps removing all the seats, the flooring, and the anchor points. Don't know that I would want to do so much work, but it can be done.

The City & County of San Francisco also has a fleet of Transit Connects. Just not for police use. Dept of Health, Public Works, Park & Rec Rangers, Child Protective Services, and most city agencies. The cops have a few new Transit 150 vans for personnel transport; when you need to deploy dozens of cops to a protest or riot. SFPD is still using the Econolines for prisoner transport, and that won't change any time soon, since they are still driving Crown Victorias and F-Series pickup trucks from 1997. Down in the basement of The Hall of Justice, I saw a couple of cars leftover from the 70's, that still had the light blue paint job.

I typed "Embarcadero Freeway used to be". Weird how the algorithm works to correct what you typed. There used to be a very short freeway, with 2 exits, and both exits went to Chinatown. Local politicians thought it wise to spend billions of dollars to tear down a freeway, which cost billions of dollars to build. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that there is a lot of corruption and graft behind those kinds of actions. About as crooked and corrupt as The City of Mountain View passing a law to ban businesses from opening a company cafeteria to give their employees free lunch. https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Mountain-View-s-unusual-rule-for-Facebook-No-13096100.php Mountain View’s unusual rule for Facebook: No free food Wendy Lee and Roland Li July 23, 2018 Updated: July 23, 2018 5 a.m. 1 of 10 Steve Rasmussen (right), owner of Milk Pail Market, greets a customer. Rasmussen’s shop is near Facebook’s future office. Photo: Jessica Christian / The Chronicle 2 of 10 WeWork is managing Facebook’s facility and is considering a public food hall on the first floor. Photo: Jessica Christian / The Chronicle 3 of 10 A shopper walks past the front entrance of Milk Pail Market. The market’s owner hopes that a Mountain View rule forbidding free corporate cafes will benefit local businesses. Photo: Jessica Christian / The Chronicle 4 of 10 Mountain View, after seeing the effect of corporate cafes on businesses in the North Bayshore area around Googleplex, is moving to restrict free meals for employees. 10 of 10 Zendesk does not offer catered or cooked meals, encouraging its San Francisco employees to go out to nearby restaurants instead. Photo: Nathaniel Y. Downes / The Chronicle 2015 When Facebook moves into its new offices in Mountain View this fall, a signature Silicon Valley perk will be missing — there won’t be a corporate cafeteria with free food for about 2,000 employees. In an unusual move, the city barred companies from fully subsidizing meals inside the offices, which are part of the Village at San Antonio Center project, in an effort to promote nearby retailers. The project-specific requirement passed in 2014, attracting little notice because the offices were years away from opening. It came in response to local restaurants that said Google, the city’s biggest employer, was hurting their businesses by providing free meals, according to John McAlister, a Mountain View councilman.

Without getting political, my recollection is that E85 fuel was something that the prior administration pushed for. The President (prior to the current administration) was focused on reduced emissions pollution. The biggest hurdle to cleaner alternative fuel was distribution. During those 8 years, vehicle manufacturers were given incentives to produce flex fuel and alternative fuel vehicles. Now we have a few fueling stations selling natural gas, propane, bio-diesel, and E85. From personal experience, the Econoline I use at work is regularly fueled with E85. The mileage is horrible, but since it is subsidized to be sold at a lower cost, the cost per mile is almost the same. When the smog test required a tailpipe test, the printout showed that the tailpipe had zero or close to zero in every category tested. The first time that happened, the smog tech was baffled that a V8 with over 100,000 could have near zero emissions, and he threatened to report us to the government for tampering with the smog control equipment. With bio-diesel in our fleet of old medium duty trucks, we noticed that there wasn't any more black smoke coming out of the tailpipe. Some guys said that the throttle became more responsive. Yes. It works. Tailpipe emissions are reduced. But at what cost? The environmental footprint of producing E85, Bio-Diesel, and Hybrid & Electrical vehicles is huge! Electric cars get electricity from the power grid. How is that power produced, and distributed to the final end user? Isn't most power produced with fossil fuel, and what about the environmental impact of the kilowatts consumed by your plug-in electric car? What is the efficiency in cost per mile - when your utility bill goes up as you save at the pump? Electric vehicle batteries are equal to how many passenger car batteries? A Prius electric car battery can last 10 years or 300,000 miles. The electric car battery is the equivalent of 10 or 12 car batteries, give or take. What is the environmental impact of producing and disposing of those electric car batteries? E-85 and Biodiesel are both financially subsidized so that the fuels can be sold at a competitive price. Nobody would pay the true cost of these fuels. It cost more to make a fuel substitute, than what the actually fuel is worth. The production and transportation of these fuels damages the environment more than the tailpipe emission of using gas & diesel; especially when you factor in the genetically modified corn and how that impacts the world food supply. It's kind of like recycling. You get a penny for a soda can. But what does it cost to send out a diesel truck to pick up the recycling, transport it to a plant, and then burn fossil fuel to power the machinery which melts down the metal for reuse? We may as throw six pack rings into the ocean to kill the seagulls.

I am always upset when people like immigrants are taken advantage of.....and always by members of their own community. Latino flea market car dealer at the cheating Mexicans. Russian car broker dealing from a cafe. Chinese restaurant paying cash, at below minimum wage with no overtime. Check cashing stores in inner city neighborhoods. CarMax is different. If you are savvy enough to buy a car online, you should know about finance options.

Jackson Square. Next to Chinatown. Where the old Embarcadero Free at used to be. Right across the street from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

I know a lot of guys who believe in Lucas Oil. I don't know if it is scientifically proven. With no science what-so-ever, I remember when guys put nail polish remover into their gas tanks too. http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/mythbusters-database/products-for-better-gas-mileage/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a5959/gas-saving-gadgets-hall-of-shame/ Then you have people who make youtube videos, and people watch those videos. here is a guy mixing a a 50/50 batch of nail polish remover and Marvel Mystery Oil.