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Oct 21, 2017 2:10:31 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Oct 21, 2017 2:10:31 GMT -5
Who's got one? What do you have? Any modifications, stories or crashes to share? I'll start us off... Although I actually don't have a picture to hand :\
I've got a 2002 Toyota Celica VVTi. It's pre-facelift, which I think makes the front look cooler, but the rear lights look very dated. 140bhp when new, which it's probably still got most of, I think I've got a pretty cool first car, particularly for just under £1500 last year.
However, that price isn't particularly indicative of how expensive it's becoming. Routine maintenance has lead to replacing all 5 (including the spare) tyres, the clutch, all 4 brakes and the headlight assemblies. I got some modern "angel eye" ones, because there wasn't much to save by going for a stock replacement. Plus I think the LED "brow" and halos look pretty cool, whilst the lack of bumps smooths out the front of the car. It's got a few expensive things that want fixing, primarily due to age, but it's been reliable for a year now!
I have had a crash in it, sadly, although it didn't involve anybody else. A car pass blowing across a dashboard towards an open window probably should just be left, in the future. Nothing stopping one just parking the car and picking it up... Whilst catching a wheel on a curb around 15-20mph at a bad angle wasn't much good for the car. Nor was the immediate redirect into a lamppost that the flattened tyre treated me to before I could stop! Still, aside from a wheel bearing which I've learnt needs replacing whilst driving, it's all been repaired well enough. Just a pointless waste of money for a piece of laminated paper :\
So, what have we got?
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Oct 21, 2017 2:37:42 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Oct 21, 2017 2:37:42 GMT -5
I got a 2014 Toyota Camry in Parisian Night Pearl(which is a fancy name for dark blue). Good car, no complaints at all. Really I think that once you go above a certain level with cars, you're basically paying more money for the privilege of having a status symbol or a chick magnet. For me, the Camry is all I'll ever need. It's fast enough to easily go ten miles over the speed limit anywhere in America, it gets pretty good gas mileage, it's safe, it looks nice, it lasts a long time, and it's reasonably cheap to maintain/repair. It gets my ass from point A to point B real well.
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40oz
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Oct 21, 2017 7:57:05 GMT -5
Post by 40oz on Oct 21, 2017 7:57:05 GMT -5
I have a 2009 Ford Focus. I had to get some expensive work done to it but it's currently in tip top shape so I like it.
Ford = American car brand Focus = D2 MAP04, author: McGee Nickname: American McGee
As much as I like my car, I fucking hate driving in the town I live in. The town was built in the 1800's and used to have a lot of industry and warehouses on the east side, and residential living and recreational places on the west side. King of Prussia Mall (The #1 largest shopping mall in the US) opened up in the 1970's less than 5 miles away and basically killed the economy here. It was probably awesome in the 1920's when people were still riding horse and buggies. It was designed to be very walkable so people could either walk or take public trolleys to work, but there are no jobs here, the trolley tracks have been paved over, and there is nothing to do here. So it has basically become this major thruway for people trying to get to their jobs in King of Prussia. This causes two problems
1. A shit ton of traffic 2. Traffic lights and stop signs every 100ft 3. Constant roadwork on these shitty 19th century roads
Geographically my town is in a great location because its equidistant from my home town, major highways, and the big cities. But it's an absolutely abysmal place to drive in. It's stop and go traffic constantly and takes 30 minutes to get to places that are only 10 miles away.
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Oct 21, 2017 8:16:03 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Oct 21, 2017 8:16:03 GMT -5
I'm surprised Americans even get sold the Focus - we consider it an average car here, but I got the impression that in America it'd be treated more like a "City car", which is two models smaller here.
I did look at getting a Focus, but it being a hatchback actually made it considerably more expensive to insure than a coupé, presumably due to stereotypical demographics. My rental experiences tell me I want a (brand) new car, but the guy who bought a car from the first Need For Speed Underground really wants a Subaru Impreza WRX STi next... Which will either require a massive wage increase to afford, or a mid-2000s model. As cool as the 22B model is, that's even older than my current car, so I'd fear maintenance costs too much.
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Oct 21, 2017 8:21:00 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Oct 21, 2017 8:21:00 GMT -5
I don't drive and I don't own a car myself, however seeing as though my level 3 IMI diploma finally arrived, I am a fully qualified motor vehicle mechanic.
I'm not that big into cars but the enjoyment and satisfaction from fixing, tuning and diagnostics procedures preformed on vehicles warms my cold heart.
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40oz
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Oct 21, 2017 12:23:16 GMT -5
Post by 40oz on Oct 21, 2017 12:23:16 GMT -5
Damn i have a guilty pleasure for Subaru WRXs too, the first time I saw one on a dirt track it became my dream car. But considering I hardly do any driving outside my bumper to bumper commute, I cant justify owning one. It would feel like owning a cheetah but keeping it couped up in a cage its whole life. It just doesnt feel right. Dirt Track Drifting
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Oct 21, 2017 12:57:08 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Oct 21, 2017 12:57:08 GMT -5
What happened to 40oz's car that was stolen or something? Was it ever found or did you have to get a new one?
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40oz
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Oct 21, 2017 14:35:27 GMT -5
Post by 40oz on Oct 21, 2017 14:35:27 GMT -5
That's a crazy story. I was really embarrassed about all that at the time but I'll talk about it now.
Ok at my house, there is me, mrs. 40oz, and my dog Penny. At the time I had a job working at a gas station convenience store where I made breakfast sandwiches from 5:00am to 1:00pm. It was early one warm summer morning. My alarm on my phones goes off at 3:30am to wake me up. Penny springs up from her bed, begins sprinting laps around my bedroom. She's thrilled because this her time every morning where I take her for a walk first thing after I get out of bed before I shower and leave for work. My eyelids won't open, and I'm barely alive. I shut off the alarm and fall out of my bedside. Mrs. 40oz lays asleep on the other side. Penny treats every morning like it's christmas. She's licking my face, dancing in place, cant wait to go outside.
The sun hasn't risen, and it won't for at least another hour and a half. It's pitch dark outside. I put on some sweatpants and a shirt, go down the stairs into my living room, the living room is a mess. The wife and I watched the second season of Lost all night, we ate our dinner on the couches and left the dishes behind. Blankets, tv remote, an ipad, throw pillows, drinking glasses, all aloof, hanging off the couch, on the ottoman, on the coffee table on the floor, etc. The pots and pans from last nights dinner lay cold on the stove, with knives and cutting boards and the keys to my Blue Dodge Durango are lying on the counter next to it.
I get Penny's leash from her toy basket. Penny is so thrilled, she can't hold still. I tell her to sit, but even with her butt on the carpet, her front arms are running in place and you can see the anticipation in her eyes. I click the leash to her collar and she shifts into turbo-mode, barrelling right for the front door. I unlock the door and we exit the house shutting the door behind me.
We walk up and down both ends of the block, past my Durango which is parked across the street next to the fire hydrant. We circle around the back parking lot. My legs are moving but my top half is still asleep. Penny is fervently sniffing and tugging the leash in the direction of everything she smells like she's on too much adderall. It's quiet, there's no activity outside at this time of night except for chirping of crickets and some early morning birds. We eventually return home 30 minutes later. I'm too tired to shower so I just put on some deodorant, my work uniform, and I lay on the bed upstairs on top of the sheets to rest my eyes for 15 minutes. The alarm on my phone goes off once more, it's now 4:35, and it's time to leave for work. I go down to the kitchen. My eyes look to the counter, the kitchen table, the dining room table, and I check the pockets on my pants. No keys. I'm running out of places to look, so I wake up my wife to ask if she knows where they are. She doesn't know.
I look out the window, the blue dodge durango is FUCKING GONE.
Someone was in my fucking house at 3:30 in the goddamn morning! They were in my house while my wife was home ALONE. I'm usually good about locking the doors at night before going to bed, but I would never have guessed a stranger would gamble getting in and out of my house in that perfect frame of 30 minutes between 3:30 - 4:00am!!!
I called the police, then I called my work to tell them I'm not going to be able to come in due to an emergency. It's now 5:30, the sun is creeping up over the horizon and the sky is a reddish purple. The officer arrives in his squad car, and I'm on the front porch to describe the situation. The officer doesn't seem to be shocked. He asks why I didn't lock my doors. He then asks if I have any family or friends who have driven the car before. I don't have an open car relationship with anyone I know. My car is my car. He insists that there has to be someone who has used the car before. I said I bought the car off of my dad, and the officer instructs me to call my dad and ask him about. Quite embarrassingly, I call my dad to wake him up at 5:45 in the morning, asking if he for any particular reason, found his way all the way to my house, entered my house without asking, took the keys to my car and drove off with it without letting me know. You can probably guess how shocked he was that I even tried to interrogate him about something like that.
The officer still seems dubious about this and he implores that 75% of reported car thefts are misunderstandings between people who share a car. He insists that I think hard and make a list of anyone who might need to use my car for any reason. My wife then steps out on the front porch and coldly says "the fucking ipad is gone." The officer adds it to the police report. The officer says I'll notify the nearby townships and we'll be on the look out.
We were highly unsatisfied with this exchange, and the two of us were both pale as ice. The thought that someone trespassed into our property and left with my car and an ipad was really paralyzing. The both of us sat in the living room questiong ourselves on how this could have possibly happened. Did I see anyone? Was anyone awake? Could one of my neighbors have done it? Why me? Aren't there wealthier people on this block? Why not the nicer neighborhood one block over? How could it have been done so perfectly? How did I not notice my car was gone when I arrived home? Was this all planned? Has someone been watching me for days?
When your house has been burglarized, you start having paranoid thoughts. You check your jewelry boxes, your closets for your electronics, coin jars, anything someone might want. Whenever you can't find something you immediately think stolen before misplaced. Where the fuck is the iced tea I left in the fridge? Why are there 5 cookies in this box instead of 6? I was patting my pockets constantly to check that my wallet and phone hadn't been slipped into the person's sticky fingers. The final straw of the whole situation was that I kind of, in an ironic sort of way, wish I had tidied the house up a bit before I had unexpected guests. Maybe the car would still be here if the keys were in the drawer in the desk where they belong.
I was having trouble sleeping, trouble leaving the house without triple checking every door and window of my house to make sure they were locked shut. You spend every hour of every day, for weeks, thinking you're being stalked. You start suspecting everyone and anyone in your daily life. If they can get in once they may try and get in again. I tried shaking up my schedule, waking up at different times of the day, or cutting my early morning dog walks short so i can arrive home sooner than normal. I still had to go to work at the same time every day, and it haunted me to think that if I were home right now I might catch this guy in the act. My wife checked her "find my ipad" app on her phone hourly, but it doesn't return any results when the ipad is turned off.
About a week later the police called me to tell me they've recovered a Dodge Durango that matches the description. It was illegally parked a few miles away and has been impounded. I took a trip over to the lot to see the car. I met with a detective who collected evidence from the vehicle. I recognized the license plate number. The front bumper was dinged, the suspension was fucked, there was a big dent on top of the hood, and the windshield was kicked in. Inside the vehicle, ciggarette butts and ashes were all over the front and back cupholders and seats. The steering wheel had dorito fingers all over it and there were empty bags of chips on the passenger side. The contents inside the Durango suggested there was more than one person in the car, since there was cigarrette ashes in the back cupholders. It was all very disgusting. The Durango seemed contaminated. I didn't even want it back. But the impound lot had daily fees of course, so I had it towed to a shop for repairs. My car insurance covered all the expenses, fortunately.
A day later my wifes app went off and we were able to get the GPS coordinates for the ipad and home in on the relative address of where the ipad is located. We immediately informed the police. It took the police some time to get the search warrant, and once it was obtained they searched the house closest to the coordinates we gave the police, and the ipad couldn't be found. Two days later we received a call saying that a woman had returned the ipad to our local police station, presumably the burglars parent.
Over the course of a few months the investigation started to unfold. The driver of the vehicle had been found and arrested. A young kid, 14 years old. The same kid had also broke into another home on the same street. He didn't work alone, he had three other friends, who have now all been identified and brought into custody. Each person involved with the burglarly and theft of my car has been tried so far except for one. The last kids trial is sometime in november. Its been a very slow moving case that happened two years ago. I'm kind of over it now at this point. I've received some compensation for the damages, but we got the ipad back and our insurance covered the damages to the car, so there wasn't a whole lot to compensate us for. But we got something. I don't remember exactly what the sentence was for the kids, but I remember being told they were too young to be tried as adults, so they will be in juvenile hall until they are 21, then they will have a second hearing that will determine if they can go on parole if they have to do more time in actual jail.
I have since detailed the Durango and sold it to a couple a bit older than me that had a newborn baby. I didn't drive it myself because it just didnt feel like my car anymore. It was a pretty crazy series of events and I have made it a force of habit to lock every door in my house anytime the doors are closed.
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Oct 21, 2017 18:25:16 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Oct 21, 2017 18:25:16 GMT -5
Wow, damn. I don't know what to say. It really sucks just how unlucky you got with that time frame and the kids choosing to target exactly your house. Very crazy and random. Nobody deserves to go through such traumatic experiences. I have to say it was quite entertaining to read though, hehe (but obviously totally disheartening at the same time).
I wonder... I kind of feel like if something similar happened to me, perhaps I would be interested in talking to these kids and maybe trying to understand what made them do such things. Or maybe I wouldn't even be able to talk to them rationally due to the rage. Did you get to see them at all?
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Oct 22, 2017 0:25:22 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Oct 22, 2017 0:25:22 GMT -5
Well, after our move overseas we know have a GMC Acadia
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