A few things to know before stealing my 914 (2022)
hagerty.com
hagerty.com
The synchros in the transmission were worn down to almost nothing, shifting truly was a dark art, like closing one’s eyes and feeling their way through a drawer of silverware.
Otherwise in better condition but I guess I had twenty years less wear on it!
(my current car dream is to find another 914 and do an electric conversion… not a car where it behooves one to keep the original anything)
The 914 cornered like it had talons with which to grip the road. You could be going up curvy roads like Las Flores Canyon in Malibu, cornering at a speed where any other car would let go, crank the wheel over, and the 914 would just happily go exactly where you pointed it.
It wasn't nearly as fast as the Boxster that replaced it, but it felt faster. That rattling acceleration off the line, especially being so low to the ground, that smell of hot oil, the sound of the engine right behind you ... I miss that car.
Yeah, it was in the shop a lot. So was the Boxster. The difference was, of course, that you'd buy your replacement parts from the VW parts catalog rather than the Porsche parts catalog and save yourself 600-800%. I still remember getting a replacement VW window crank for $2 when the Porsche dealer quoted me $75.
I got old and "responsible." I eventually ditched the Boxster for a reliable, truck-like Subaru. And I now live in a city where transit and bike infrastructure is great - I don't even own a car. I don't miss it much. But there's one day a year, when the weather reminds me of that first springtime ride up Angeles Crest Highway in the 914 with the top down, and then I'll admit to some small regret.
My curvy roads were the canyons from Salt Lake City to Park City and up Wasatch mountains to the ski resorts.
Same here, but ones with the wheel on the right side are even harder to find. :-(
Well... I guess that, for a conversion job, I won't need a working engine, or transmission.
The neat thing about an electric motor vs an ICE, that you pointed out, is the torque curve is linear so no need for a transmission.
For 4-wheelers, I really want to see electric conversion kits get more popular, specifically ones where the electric motor mounts to the transmission spot - either transverse and have attachment points for two half shafts or conventional where it points to the rear. Then we can use the engine bay as a additional storage, assuming we put the batteries where the gas tank is. I really want to do this conversion with a older, rear-engine VW bug. I hate ripping out original parts but I can find so many shells now where they’ve taken the engine out.
“A few things to know before stealing my laptop and/or using my editor config.”
Now that you are logged in, a few things to note:
* The mouse buttons do not work. Pinch the touchpad to click.
* The keyboard layout is a mixture of the US English, Japanese, and Teletype 33 keyboards. By the way, its key labels are German.
* If you need a modifier key, try sequentially going through tab, caps, control, alt, super. Maybe you will find it.
* The only text editor on the computer is nvi. No, that's not `nvim'.
* Firefox works, but has scripting disabled, routes everything through Tor and clears cookies on exit. Also, each new tab is opened in a separate temporary container that routes through a different Tor circuit. As an alternative, we have w3m too.
* There is no file browser, just bash in xterm.
Enjoy your new computer!
Get used to doing that multiple times a day, or it may be time to setup USB debugging and try and add some info to the bug report at...
To be fair, I haven't spent much time in the last year messing with any of that. I do miss the days when I could shut the lid on my old Thinkpad, it'd sleep, and I'd open it a day later to an i3lock screen, and it would have only drained a percentage point.
Half the Keys have no labels, unless it's the one with the clear caps, which has no labels at all.
Right shift is mapped to Escape (for vim, of course)
There is no Caps-lock, only Control.
Nobody messes with my stuff. :)
This last weekend I pulled out my 12 year old Thinkpad running custom qtile window manager to transfer old DV movies to mp4s. Sadly my muscle memory was mostly gone and I had to revert to gnome... (Hanging my head in shame.)
My girlfriend simply calls my computer "broken".
One time my brother was in my study and I needed to shut down my computer. After bashing on the keyboard for ten seconds or so he commented "THAT is how you shut down your computer?!" It honestly hadn't even occurred to me it might seem weird from the outside.
I wouldn't have it any other way, though. Sure it's nice if a machine "just works", but machines don't just work. They are layers upon layers of complexity and if I have to understand them then I might as well interact with those layers directly.
My primary reason for not using Linux for my desktop is that when I connect a bluetooth device, headphones, a monitor, a keyboard or a mouse, when I want to run a GPU intensive application, or when I need to connect to a VPN and have my DNS requests correctly routed through the VPN it just works on Windows or MacOS.
I don't have the time or energy to work out those issues in a community supported environment where half the time the community support treats you like a half-witted imbecile for needing support and where the environment itself uses a CLI tool that my wife or kids can't use to manage the settings.
Ease of Use, Dev Tooling, or Cheap. Pick two. Linux is consistently harder to use. With WSL-2 I've found windows eases the dev tooling pain that existed a few years ago. A Mac is not cheap.
> Sure it's nice if a machine "just works", but machines don't just work.
I want Linux to be great as a desktop, but I’ve given up. I use Windows (with WSL2 for a Linux dev environment) because it is not my experience that “machines don’t just work.” It’s just that _Linux_ doesn’t ;)
MacOS doesn't work by design. It's by far the worst choice there is.
Having spent multiple years on all three I promise you that my experience does not bear out your assertion. And to point it out: I am more than capable of making Linux do most of the things I want it to (tar flags be damned) I just prefer the UX on MacOS or windows
This is exactly why I love to use my Linux machine. When I have a thought, I simply command it to the computer in written language and it immediately obeys.
I don't have to figure out where Johnny Ive hid the toggle switch in an attempt to make things more minimal. In fact, I don't have to figure out where anything is hidden at all because everything is right there at my fingertips. I shutdown the computer by saying "shutdown". I lock it by saying "lock". I open firefox by simply typing "firefox". It's a simple system, but I love it.
yet I typically run weird systems(xmonad, arch) and they're infinitely more reliable after the initial couple hours of setup than my windows install.
My thinkpad with a 7 year old Antergos install and i3wm "just works", but without a hint of irony. Literally the only issue with the laptop happens equally in windows and linux, and that's the USB ports going to sleep and never waking up until reboot.
The big thing about playing around deeper in the system, is you can fix it relatively easy. It's like a 90s honda civic where you can step into the engine bay vs doing any kind of maintenance on a modern audi or bmw. Sure you can see the guts but if a bolt loosens on both, which one would you rather have to fix?
Good luck with this thing.
(also the parent post was edited by now and the linux references I was refering to removed)
Please link one, I want to buy it.
Sitting idle, I get an estimate of ~12 hours of battery left right now (starting with 80%). This is why I don’t worry about hibernate; idle power consumption is low enough on modern hardware.
When I actually start working, it depends on what I’m doing; actively using wifi seems to bring me down to more like 5 hours remaining. I’m sure I could burn through the battery by cranking up the CPU, but the, it isn’t like Windows will somehow make the CPU consume less power in C0.
I just set up hibernate; since I don’t care about hibernate, I didn’t set up my swap partition large enough. Using a swapfile instead is slightly trickier but still pretty trivial. The steps listed here worked fine: https://askubuntu.com/a/1367244
A few things to know before stealing my 914 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30878489 - April 2022 (417 comments)
He also painted his radio brown like the interior of the truck. It was so ugly nobody ever stole the one thing that had any value in the truck.
Disclaimer: Back when we were mechanics (and before we became technicians) I earned a living working on these, but I seldom had the opportunity (?) to work on one this old.
They were interesting beasts - actually more Porsche then the later 924. Except for the /6 which had a real Porsche engine, the engine was the flat four adapted from the Type 2 (bus) and Type 4. Suspension, transmission, electrics and so on were all Porsche. (For better or worse.) The 924 had a lot of parts that would have been comfortable on a Rabbit/Golf.
I can understand a shop not wanting to touch them because you'll likely lose money tracking down issues as opposed to plugging in a scan tool, but for a hobbyist it's really not that hard.
A small correction on point of fact: On all the 4s the entirety of the drivetrain was VW, down to the CV joints and lug bolts. You can see this in photos, with 4s having a four-bolt pattern. 914/6s OTOH had five bolts, as on the contemporaneous Porsche 911s.
There was a further wrinkle with some six-bangers being badged as "914/6" and others as "916" -- but I was regrettably never in the market for either of those, so have forgotten details.
You're probably right about the half shafts. However if I search for parts, all of the ones I can find show a 6 bolt CV joint for the 914.
I was referring to the wheel bolts.
But the overall point that the 914 was a mix of VW and Porsche bits is absolutely correct and in fact some pretty significant parts such as the engine were VW. I suppose that goes back to the first Porsche which was derived from a VW.
You would be forced to fix the car, or sell it to someone who will fix it, or remove the plates and deregister it, or scrap it. If you don’t do anything the police will remove the plates.
I would advice fixing the car or selling it to someone who will fix it because it has some value.
https://www.vegvesen.no/en/vehicles/own-and-maintain/eu-mand...
https://www.vegvesen.no/en/vehicles/own-and-maintain/eu-mand...
A lot of states in the US also require safety inspections (including North Carolina where the author teaches) but often make exceptions for antique cars.
[0] https://www.vegvesen.no/en/vehicles/own-and-maintain/eu-mand...
> are in virtually original design
> Devices/equipment that are important for safety must function satisfactorily
> Must only be used - on special occasions such as motor history gatherings and races - otherwise occasionally when the use does not cause undue danger or inconvenience to other traffic.
So I would fix the brakes.
https://lovdata.no/forskrift/1994-10-04-918/§1-9 (translated with DeepL)
> I would advice fixing the car or selling it to someone who will fix it because it has some value.
Your comments were quite confident when you weren't actually familiar with the basics of the topic. Most countries have relaxed road worthiness tests or complete exemptions for classic cars, and I think this stands to reason.
I doubt the exception extends to having non-functional brakes. The exception is from things like inspections and compliance with modern standards, but you still have a duty to maintain your vehicle to its original level of safety.
Plenty of new vehicles are a danger to others, and quite possibly far more so than an old 914. The driver of a 914 is probably going to be pretty careful about damaging it and will drive it prudently as a result, it also weighs (much) less than a modern vehicle and as a consequence will do less damage. Lack of built in safety and mid engine (so no engine between you and your partner in a collision, coupled with a nice hammer behind you that will use the other car in that accident you're in as the anvil and you as the workpiece) will be yet another reason why an owner will be careful about the situations they put themselves in. They'll likely do fewer km per year in than they would in a modern car.
As a cyclist I'd rather encounter someone in their classic 914 than the local lawn service jockey in his Dodge RAM flooring it at every corner.
Same with motorcycles (also doesn't need regular inspections in Norway) - the riders generally have a very good reason to keep them safe for their own wellbeing.
In my state, vehicles registered as antiques are not required to have the annual safety inspection performed, and it is the owner's responsibility to keep the vehicle in safe operating condition, which is never checked by anyone.
The cars could be more safe, but we’re all mechanics by necessity. Failure also reminds us that these are all human made systems. Each can fail. Each can be fixed. In some ways being aware of the systems that make a car go (and stop) and being aware of the failure modes makes the classic car drivers more safe than their counterparts in driving appliances.
That's wildly irresponsible of you. How will you look yourself in the eye if you cause an accident like that? If you can't afford to keep a car maintained you can't afford it, period.
But in reality it'll look a lot more innocent than that, and I am sure that OP does it carefully enough.
You just gotta make sure the brakes work and that you don't do any silly things. Doing test rides and listening for sounds etc is key to figuring out what's wrong and what to improve next.
Air mass sensor failure can often be determined by unplugging the thing completely, O2 sensor failure could be the cause of your problem but if it only starts to fail at very high revs I'd check the fuel system first to make sure that there is enough flow.
Those can get clogged up pretty badly, especially in vehicles that have been standing for a while with ethanol based fuel in them, it takes forever before that gunk clears out without some work, if at all.
If it really is the O2 sensor (of which you usually have two) then I'd suspect the pre-cat one first, it runs in a much hotter environment and is more critical to the engine working properly.
Another option is the crank sensor, they may not give enough signal at a high number of revs so you start to miss if enough pulses fail (one or two in an otherwise consistent signal isn't going to cause the PLL to lose lock but if it is more erratic then it will and then revs would drop back to a regime where the sensor is still working reliably).
Good luck fixing that.
I assume under the speedgoose monarchy the rates would be prohibitively expensive.
Even if it's a 130 year old Benz Victoria:
https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/niedersachsen/braunschweig_ha...
Also, Norway should consider dropping mandatory passenger vehicle inspections as mechanical malfunctions are a tiny percentage of accident causes (and might be lower than officially reported by police) and it has been shown that they do nothing to increase actual on-the-road safety:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=...
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...
https://www.theamericanconsumer.org/2019/06/do-mandatory-veh...
And the test also checks the pollution or reduces the annoyances to other drivers (such as too high headlights, broken light indicators, smelly vehicles,…).
Am I alone in twitching at this fallacy?
These have constant-mesh gearboxes. You're grinding castellated faces AKA dogs/dog-teeth/dog-clutches [0], not the gear teeth.
If you're going to write something in such a condescending smarty-pants tone, at least be freaking accurate.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constant_mesh_gearbox#Dog_clut...
In high school, my friends and I managed to resuscitate a 914 that had been stowed away in a garage for over a decade. We towed it to the top of a hill with a pickup truck and attempted a clutch start after we'd picked up some speed. None of us (especially me in the driver's seat) expected this to work, but amazingly it fired right up. One of my friends managed to jog alongside and jump into the car as I tried to keep it puttering along, and we ripped a few laps around the neighborhood. Soonafter, we stopped the engine and were never able to get it started again. Thanks for bringing up this memory. Cool article.
It’s a joke, fellas! Lighten up.
In both cases though the presenting personality is key as they have interesting knowledge that they share in an engaging way; it might be childish but their excitement is infectious.
With that said, I'm trying to understand why this article isn't met with a response like "it is extremely unethical to operate a vehicle in this condition. The drastically increased cognitive load, poor stopping performance, and lack of modern safety features makes this vehicle a lot more likely to hurt strangers when you hit them"
I never understood old car culture, let alone old and broken car culture displayed here. Surely a vehicle operator would have reduced response time with the increased cognitive load to any divergent situation and be placing other's lives at risk by not having their equipment maintained to an expected performance standard.
Not to mention the lack of braking, and lack of things like crumple zones etc, plus feeling light headed from engine fumes and poor ventilation.
I understand being into old technology, I've been involved in restoring old tape machines and vinyl cutting lathes, broadcast audio consoles etc, but I don't understand ignoring the fact that you are exposing unconsenting members of the public to an increased risk of injury or death because of your interest in old technology. I don't understand accepting the freedom of that choice when it exposes unconsenting others to more risk just for your own personal interest.
I can't help but harshly judge the author for their reckless decisions because the car isn't restricted to a closed course and can severely impact others lives simply because they enjoy the thrill of it.
...
> With that said, I'm trying to understand why this article isn't met with a response like "it is extremely unethical to operate a vehicle in this condition..."
Because it's not bragging or boasting. I don't even think it's meant to be taken literally. Especially seeing that the author is an engineer and professor. It's like a car guy pastiche of folk tale/tall tale. Just like I wouldn't respond to a story of Paul Bunyan to criticize him for eating 50 pancakes a minute I don't feel the need to point out that this car sounds unsafe.
It just ain’t that simple. Maybe when I’m 70 and shouldn’t be driving a lot of these assists that are in cars nowadays will help me. But I was driving my aunt’s car recently and it thought it saw someone in the lane I was going to merge to and literally jerked the steering wheel back to stop me from hitting nothing. I almost got in a wreck because that stupid fucking car thought it knew more than me. I now drive a 98 Nissan Frontier 5-speed and couldn’t be happier with it. When and if it breaks down, I’m buying a 94-2008 Nissan Frontier 5-speed, a 94-2000 Ford Ranger with a 5-speed or a 76-85 square body with (hopefully) a 5-speed.
Do I really care about the old car? No. Do I just not want all of the new garbage? Yes. If they remade my truck EXACTLY as it is but with a better, newer engine, better, newer airbags, more durable modern suspension, etc, and sold it for 60k I would take out a loan fucking right this instant. But modern cars fucking suck. They’re all shitty and people have been disillusioned into thinking a giant 3000lb hunk of metal made in 2023 hitting someone going fast is going to hurt the someone more than a giant 3000lb hunk of metal made in 1973 going fast is severely disillusioned about what makes a 3000lb hunk of fast moving metal dangerous.
That's the thing with crash resistance progress - two cars colliding into what would have been a fatal crash in 1973 have pretty good chances of everyone leaving alive with barely more than a concussion trauma.
That depends on the design as well. A flat "sports"/sedan style car just levers a pedestrian with the hood - the legs will be broken, yes, but in most cases the pedestrian survives. A SUV or particularly American "truck" style cars in contrast just smashes the pedestrian's whole body to a pulp - see e.g. [1] for a visual.
On top of that, modern cars have a ton of automated systems doing stuff like pedestrian detection visually indicating pedestrians and bicyclists in the dead spot(s) and automated brake assistants, not to mention ABS/ESP assisting the driver in emergency braking to not lose control. An old car does not have these features and thus has a higher chance of the driver injuring others on the road.
> and a sedan getting plowed into by a truck, modern and huge, or old and huge, is still just getting plowed into by a truck.
A modern car/SUV absorbs a significant portion of the crash energy in its own body, additionally so does the other vehicle. An old car does not.
[1] https://smartgrowthamerica.org/bigger-vehicles-are-directly-...
Relevant - Mercedes missed out on a $250k G Wagen sale because they build so much electronic crap into the new models that I personally cannot stand (like you!). I don't need a distracting touch screen or Alexa built into my car, thanks.
These driver assist tools they interfere with your steering evidently aren’t as flawless. And anyway, in general the “steering” task will be primarily in human hands for the foreseeable future, mixing ownership of the task seems like a bad move.
I don’t think all changes that put the car in charge of more of the driving process are bad. They just need to be careful about what they transfer over, the car needs to take the whole task and do it perfectly.
You are, furthermore, required by law to signal lane changes, regardless of if you happen to notice other cars around you or not, at least in every state in the US.
Edit: rereading you comment, you claim to have nearly hit another car when it pulled the wheel, so it sure sounds like you weren't actually correct that there wasn't anyone else around. Please consider that automobiles are heavy machinery, you take on a great deal of responsibility when you get behind the wheel, and that safety code have been written in blood.
If you aren’t near any other cars, like no other cars in sight, you cannot get in trouble for not signaling if a cop is sitting off the roadway and wants to pull you over for it. Nearly every state has a clause like this.
Maybe. I would think it more plausible that a vehicle that requires the operator to actively engage in its operation would, well, keep the operator engaged, and therefore their overall reaction time would likely be faster than a typical driver.
> and be placing other's lives at risk by not having their equipment maintained to an expected performance standard.
> Not to mention the lack of braking, and lack of things like crumple zones etc, plus feeling light headed from engine fumes and poor ventilation.
I'd bet that all of that adds up to less endangering of others than the mass and size of today's popular vehicles.
> I don't understand ignoring the fact that you are exposing unconsenting members of the public to an increased risk of injury or death because of your interest in old technology. I don't understand accepting the freedom of that choice when it exposes unconsenting others to more risk just for your own personal interest.
I take it you don't understand the legality of driving cars on the public road at all then? In fairness neither do I, but if you figure that one out then this one will likely follow.
> I can't help but harshly judge the author for their reckless decisions because the car isn't restricted to a closed course and can severely impact others lives simply because they enjoy the thrill of it.
Fun is the one thing that justifies everything else we do. While I agree that it's bad to endanger other people, IMO fun is a much better reason than simple carelessness or keeping up with the joneses.
This is one of the best arguments for stick shifts: even if the extra layer of control may take extra effort, the thought process of having to shift, feather the clutch, think about what gear you should be in, rev match, engine break, etc makes you a better driver
I can carry a full technical conversation while I heel-toe to rev-match the downshift into second at 60mph so the engine braking bleeds enough speed that as I throw it through the corner into town and lose a bit more momentum I hit the city street at exactly 30mph and can shift back up to third and tap the cruise control and coast to wherever I'm going. I'm not going to test it, but I'm pretty sure I could do it drunk and with one hand.
In my truck (automatic), when I'm climbing up to the Eisenhour tunnel, I want it to stay in 4th gear and I'll just give it more throttle, but it won't do that, it thinks it's smarter than me and downshifts to 3rd and I need to hear the engine scream all the way up the mountain. I always try to find the sweet spot for throttle input to keep it from down shifting which means that I'm running about 5mph slower than traffic, and that's annoying.
Since my only inputs are throttle and brake, I'm always trying to find the combination of those to put the transmission in the gear that I want it in rather than just sliding the stick and putting it in the right gear.
Once or twice I got into situation where I was very tired and was almost getting sleepy, this would never happened with manual shifting and the need to be more engaged with vehicle. Also, for 98% of the situations, 1 hand on steering wheel is enough so you can handle stick, and the rest of situations you should be able to anticipate if you are a seasoned sane driver.
Another data point - once I had to take my wife's car for 1500km drive to take it back home. It was old Toyota without any cruise control, not ideal for such long drives on European highways full of speed radars. It was the only time in my life when I could drive this run through whole night alone with basically only stopping to refill, buy vignettes or go to toilet (5pm-8am drive). Normally on this road, I get too sleepy around 3-4am and my eyes literally start to close even if mind still can go further, and I have to sleep a bit. Was way too pumped from all sensory input. But I am sure I don't want to repeat this.
The usual cause is hitting gas instead of brake, followed by disorientation (expected = braking, result = acceleration, usually strong acceleration). Humans, especially elderly, can't reorient quickly enough. With a manual, you're depressing the clutch as well, so the mismatch is much lesser.
For maximum fun, don't use the clutch at all except to start moving.
While I believe you are right on average, an attentive driver not fighting their vehicle is going to have better reaction times than an attentive driver who does.
But to support your point further, reaction times for each of us on the road differ depending on the circumstances (personal, vehicle, road and traffic). Safe driving is when we are attentive enough to react to common "failures" in traffic and avoid any catastrophe.
"Common" as in there is no fast enough reaction time when someone decides to eg. head-on you at the last second in regular traffic conditions as you are passing them in the other direction on a two-way street. Or someone jumping in front of you at exactly the moment you are passing by (even driving at 20 mph is enough to kill a pedestrian jumping in front of a moving car, even with the driver breaking as quickly as possible). It's useful to remember that we are all participating in traffic (and life) together, and we rely on general sanity of each participant to avoid disasters.
True, but "just pay more attention" is no more actionable than "just drive better". AIUI e.g. aeroplanes have deliberately cut down parts of the automation because it ends up doing more harm than good.
someone once told me: "i'm a safer driver when drunk because then i driver slower and pay more attention."
what i meant to say is that i don't believe a need to overcome distractions makes you a more attentive driver. in my opinion it's better to have less (car operating complexity) to worry about, because then you can - or at least could - focus on the road better(and i have driven manually shifting cars all my life with very few exceptions).
Whether you could matters a lot less than whether you would. As an extreme, your logic would suggest that the "dead man's switch" used on trains would make them less safe.
> and i have driven manually shifting cars all my life with very few exceptions
So if you yourself do the thing you're claiming is less safe, do you actually believe what you're claiming?
as i didn't take part in a controlled experiment i wont claim that, though.
The things you do for fun almost certainly has an externality as well.
I feel that, these days, it isalmost fashionable to be anticar to a ludicrous degree.
About 45k people died in car accidents in the US in 2022, which if treated as it’s own category outside of accidents would be just outside the top 10 in causes of death. 2x more death than firearms.
Lots of things have externalities, very few things have as severe externalities as cars.
Said differently, go to a sporting event of 30k people. Statistically, five of them will die in a car accident this year (45k/300mn =0.015% or about 1 in 6500).
Edit: I guess it’s not fashionable to cite statistics on here. I get it, the drivers won the debate a long time ago, but at least articulate why your disagreement with words.
> Lots of things have externalities, very few things have as severe externalities as cars.
> Said differently, go to a sporting event of 30k people. Statistically, five of them will die in a car accident this year (45k/300mn =0.015% or about 1 in 6500).
> Edit: I guess it’s not fashionable to cite statistics on here. I get it, the drivers won the debate a long time ago, but at least articulate why your disagreement with words.
You're being downvoted because you are attempting to mislead with statistics.
The numbers for 2017 (prior to the pandemic, which skews the numbers) are from https://www.healthline.com/health/leading-causes-of-death#he.... They don't separate out vehicle accidents, so I'll use your 45k number.
1. The leading cause of deaths is heart disease, more common amongst people who smoke (very few) and obese people (very many) = 635k people, or about 14x more people die due to heart disease than motor vehicle accidents.
2. Accidental deaths = 161k. IOW, you're 3.5x more likely to die from a non-vehicle accident than from a vehicle accident.
You know which type of deaths match the numbers for auto accidents? Suicides!
All-in-all, that 45k number you give is almost statistical noise: vehicles account for a mere 1.8% of deaths in the US.
How?[0]
Your implication is that 100% of deaths are preventable and the 2% of those deaths that are car accidents are therefore unimportant? It's inherently misleading to look at deaths as a % vs. absolute figures (since we all die eventually).
People have to die from disease, it's the human condition. People do not have to die in car accidents (or suicides, we should prevent those too, but that's not really a hobby/activity).
The other way in which equating heart disease death with car accident death (or suicide death!) is extremely misleading is that the heart disease victim age chart does not look like this [1] even remotely. People lose a lot of years of life to car crashes.
[0]https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/traffic-crash-death-est....
[1] https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatalit...
Of course, copying these countries will take time, especially because half the problem is the terrible drivers education and lax enforcement which precludes quite a few measures.
Things that could be done right now are:
* designing roads to calm traffic (bends and such): highly effective at reducing pedestrian/cyclist accidents
* building proper separated bike paths
* mandatory inspections in all states. a non-negligible % of accidents are caused by defective vehicles
* mandating and actually enforcing minimum following distance on highways
* banning modifications like steel plate grills (basically a human-crushing ram)
* scrapping the entire tax and regulation scheme that lead to the size wars in trucks and SUVs
Then there are things like replacing more STOP signs with YIELD, roundabouts, giving bike paths green lights together with turning traffic (requires drivers to look in their blindspot and yield) and lane discipline. Those broadly reduce frustration and fatigue which helps people stay calm.
We live in an interesting time where it's an instinct to say 'Sure 45k people die each year from this, but how does that benchmark?'
Even if Germany had a 40x higher/lower rate than the US, why does it matter when people are still needlessly dying?
That leads me to the heart of your comment. Sure you could institute some kind of dystopian dictatorship that makes sure nobody dies of the causes we deem preventable now. But it would be a cure that kills the patient (free society).
So, there are always trade offs. What I was saying is that looking at other countries and what they've done you can see the trade offs in advance and decide if they're worth it.
>So, there are always trade offs. What I was saying is that looking at other countries and what they've done you can see the trade offs in advance and decide if they're worth it.
I'm struggling to follow your point here. Your argument is any country should only try things other countries have already tried?
Doesn't that get us into a loop of sorts? How did those countries get to the better/worse point without doing things on their own?
The US death rate is 1.04% per year. So in that sporting event example, statistically 313 of them will die within a year's time.
Also if the sporting event was today then only around 2.5 people would die in a car accident "this year" as currently we are already in July ;)
Anyway that is my bunch of nonsense statistics :)
Yeah but only some of those deaths are randomly distributed across the population and not correlated with age. Car accidents being a major example of that (unless there's a bunch of 70+ year olds at Yankees games that I'm not seeing).
I'm willing to hand-wave over a lot of this stuff as otherwise it gets way too overcome with pedantry which likely doesn't matter...
I can’t help but judge you harshly for actually thinking the author is careening down a street at any speed with the windows up “light headed on fumes”.
> Norman Garrett was the Concept Engineer for the original Miata back in
> his days at Mazda’s Southern California Design Studio.
This article does a terrific job of conveying that adventure.
Take your complaints about licensing unsafe vehicles to the state - far more unsafe vehicles are licensed to owners who are ignorant of the vehicle's condition than to those who are aware.
I’ve driven brand new cars, and this exact same car. It is quite easy for one’s attention to wander in a “perfect” car.
An old car requires one to pay attention to their driving.
imo it’s all been downhill since the advent of power steering.
Nobody has these replies when it comes to older computers, electronics or software. I mean the equivalent in more usual HN posts is how to exit vim or do anything in emacs, but people get super excited about it even though the software is as old and complicated to use as this car is.
Let people have and enjoy things.
Because they’re not putting others in danger when used?
I grew up in a family of car enthusiasts and basically I lost interest in driving them once kids arrived. I still love the machinery and Donald Healy’s 100-4 is my all time favorite vehicle and designer.
The rawness of early development and the intuitive bonds of the machine is very similar to 8 bit computing. The whole thing is Knowable.
My 78 year old uncle still races 49 MG TC he took a 50 year break after High school. He loves old car problems.
Ack! You call yourself a British car fan and you misspell Healey? May Lucas, the Prince of Darkness, haunt you. ;)
As for the pride aspect, it's cool to be able to understand how a vehicle works from top to bottom. You can't do that with modern cars. You certainly can't use your knowledge to coax a modern car into working in the same way. The author truly owns and is the master of his vehicle. Could you say the same for any of your machines?
But it's also about taking something that once had good value but is now old and decrepit and deciding to live with it as it is for what's left of it. The challenge is not fixing it but rather changing ones perception, expectations and behaviours around it, making it a proxy for the real world and also for your own body which will let you down eventually. You could call it a form of stoicism?
It's about a car but it could be about a blender or software with which you have a love/hate relationship and yet decided to keep using as a test of your own emotional, physical and mental resilience.
Some people haul them to tracks for vintage racing.
And then yes, some people drive them.
Yep, I bought a '72 Triumph GT6 a while ago and drove it just enough to get it the few miles home. That thing really was a death trap and made this 914 look brand new. This was about five years ago, and it's still not back on the road. I'm working on it as I can put money into it and enjoying every moment.
> And then yes, some people drive them.
For fun, I drive my '86 Porsche 951. I put about six months of work into that, and it is reliable and drives beautifully.
Maybe you have point, but its not quite sharp enough, because condition is but part of the problem. You see here in the UK we something called MOT tests which vehicles have to pass every year once a vehicle reaches its 3rd or 4th year.
A minimum standard of braking force has to be achieved by each wheel, irrespective of road conditions or whether the vehicle has ABS to avoid it skidding, increasing the odds of an out of control crash. Sure the minimum braking force is a blunt instrument, but its a starting point before we get into the finer peculiarities of how to stop a vehicle in different situations, like on ice, something I understand Canada has plenty off!
So are you telling me, that all the combined wit and intellect of the Canadian govt and people results in a failure to have a mandated annual road worthiness tests for the vehicles on their road?
And then when you go on about the lack of crumple zones, braking performance and fume emissions, maybe you have a point here, but then we only have to look at the logging equipment to fell the Canadian forests are hardly helping the greenhouse gas problem of the planet.
Crumple zones, do Canadians wrap their buildings and street furniture with pillows to ensure they have crumple zones for cyclists, or is this just stealth victimisation of someone who cant afford the more popular 911 let alone retromod it like a million dollar 964 Singer Porsche?
I dont understand accepting the freedom of the choice of people like you when it exposes unconsenting others to more half baked ideas and illegitimate govts for their own dislike of an internet article.
I will still commend you on your dadaism, but sadly I fear I might just be able to out dada even more prominent adherents to the movement like salvador dali himself or the majority of the LLM AI's on display today.
I only checked one historic vehicle insurance provider, but it's also a condition for insurance.
Sorry for the oddly specific and somewhat sexist example, but I got clipped twice on a bike by such a vehicle.
How did you establish it was a "mom" (as opposed to an aunt or someone taking care of someone's kids), that she was texting with "her friends" or even texting at all, and what the topic of her texting was (if it even was texting)?
Maybe it was a girl borrowing her brother's (who is a dad: I am assuming you noticed child seats or kids) car looking at the weather forecast at her phone driving recklessly?
Yeah, I get annoyed at people using their phones while driving (both when they drive recklessly and when they drive too slow making everyone around them nervous). So you should too. Moms running errands should not be the target of your anger :)
All the quirks eventually become part of your muscle memory for driving that car. At first while you're figuring out the quirks maybe it takes your mind off of traffic a bit.
After a while though, you know that you have to hesitate and wiggle the gear lever just so to get 2nd, and do it without thought.
Conpare it to using vi or emacs. At first it's a lot of thought to just move the cursor around. With practice, it's fluid and second nature.
> Not to mention the lack of braking, and lack of things like crumple
> zones etc, plus feeling light headed from engine fumes and poor ventilation.
Car culture will be a problem for as long as cities are built for them and people feel the need to regularly morph into car-persons (plus a couple of generations after), because a car is literally part of its driver.
Good public transport and getting rid of private cars in the midst of us will help, but it will be a slow road to get there, especially in countries that place premium on freedom of movement (they don’t want to be beholden to government-run public transit in case government goes rogue).
Meanwhile cities will continue to intersperse walkable areas with private vehicle accessible roads. Proximity of private cars to people means people are always in danger, and the desire to show off, like others show off nice attire or haircut and geeks show off custom mechanical keyboards (as well as to satisfy own childhood examples, if parents drive) by driving expensive or weird cars sadly increases bad outcomes (because such cars are generally fast, large, or broken).
That all said, the guide to stealing Porsche 914 was an entertaining read.
Just saying: of all the brands in the US the one that has the least average accident by brand ownership is... Porsche.
At this point, seen the sheer car hate all around, I don't drive a Porsche because I care about what other people think. I drive a Porsche because I don't give a fuck what they think (and I know they wrongly think it's a car creating lots of accidents, when it's actually the brand driven by the safest drivers out there).
On the other hand, I know for a fact that there is so much more noise specifically from showoff cars (and motorcycles, but mostly cars). Not all showoff cars do it, but almost all cars that do it are showoff cars. Not sure about their brands, because I just hear the noise which you can’t really escape from. As someone sound-sensitive, this caused me countless anxiety waves, which I reckon is consequential for health.
Also, I have seen many examples where drivers of more expensive cars force pedestrians (and other drivers) to yield, bending rules in ambiguous situations, but I am not prepared to say whether I have perceptual bias on this (and in which direction).
Honestly, I don't think cars are going anywhere. Granted, I understand your sentiment if we're talking about the city.
I live in a rural area, in Europe. Its mountainous, and generally only a 4x4 works when going somewhere close to the rivers. Even more so for people with olive trees or vineyards doing agricultural work. And that's ok, but these people also need to be able to go back to the city/town, where they live.
Hell, I need to use a donkey to get to some places :)
I've bought many an abused old car, including a 951 a couple years ago that had many similar issues. So I know what he's talking about. That doesn't mean I didn't fix the car and have it running smoothly now.
In my own foolishness, I will say something sincere to your insincerity. Risk-aversion varies wildly among people, and everything you choose to do exposes unconsenting members of the public to risks that could have been avoided. For example, getting in an 8000-lb NPC mobile that is designed to numb you from the outside world with 25” touchscreen infotainment centers might (in some ways) be more hazardous to the health of pedestrians and other vehicles that a 2000-lb car that was designed, engineered, and is now driven for the sole purpose of engagement between driver, machine, and road.
And with respect to the matter of maintenance, the only cars of vintage that are in perfect condition are those that are never driven. These machines are incredibly complex, and as they age, they take on many problems that have varying degrees of seriousness, any owner that can afford to will take reasonable steps to bring the car into a drivable state, but there are many quirks, odds, and ends of operation that the machine will exhibit that are either too mysterious at present or too expensive to fix, and so the operator does exactly what any rational person faced with using a legacy system that is complex and undocumented, they make an attempt at patching the problem imperfectly and dealing with some technical debt in the future instead of rewriting from scratch today.
I hate when people make selfish and reckless decisions that can severely impact the lives of others without their consent. It's unfair and should not be allowed, and I think they should be judged harshly for it.
I always try to maintain an open mind however, so stating that I don't understand the appeal of making such decisions isn't some game I'm playing. I legitimately don't understand the appeal and am open to hearing arguments for those decisions.
List specifically what you think the driver of this car does with this car that is more dangerous than a typical driver distracted by a cell phone, or even an Uber driver staring at the app instead of the road.
Your false premise is that the author is doing anything at all here that is more dangerous than “drive a modern SUV in a normal way”.
Think about people who ride motorcycles, or small single-engine airplanes, or skydive. These are risky hobbies, and there usually isn't a practical reason for doing them. If something goes wrong, yes, passersby can potentially be harmed. Should we judge them harshly for these hobbies?
He probably knows a thing or two about car safety and risk. All the issues he described are around starting the thin and parking.. It probably drives safely.
After all, percentage wise, sports cars kill fewer people than any other category of car, so this reckless decision is a lot less reckless than you think it is.
Owners of older cars work hard or spend a great deal of money to maintain their vehicles in good operating condition, but the machines have quirks, some of which are impossible or not worth solving. That does not make them unsafe. That does not make them oblivious endangerers of the unconsenting co-users of the roadway. You have one notion of what it means to be a safe driver, others have different ones. Should people be allowed to drive 5000lb luxury barges, an unregulated and unpermissioned doubling of the amount of force at play in any collision that has been forced upon pedestrians and cyclists and drivers by motorists’ unquenchable thirst for increasingly sedate, massive, and insulated driving experiences, where visibility is almost 0, and drivers are completely dependent on the onboard sensors and warning lights to indicate to them whether or not switching lanes will end someone else’s life
"I like my hobby because X, Y, and Z. It poses no danger to anyone".
Seems a bit rude to accuse OP of concealing anything. The owner of the Porsche is proud of the shoddy state of his vehicle, and this rubs him the wrong way. It's not hard to see why.
Car culture forces us into daily contact with folks who are also proud of their vehicles, and their blinding lights, their lifted suspension, protruding rims, tinted windows, overpowered engines, etc. I am reminded of this vehicle [0] and its owner. Running "beaters" is one facet of that same culture.
It's a very public hobby, which puts the public at real risk. That makes it fair game for criticism.
[0] https://www.motor1.com/news/597254/1300-hp-mercury-comet-bra...
"Nothing's happened yet" is not how safety works.
Being a recognized expert in the field, he might understand how safety works.
Specifically referencing 914', they are incredibly fun to drive. The mid engine places the weight between all 4 wheels in a way that it handles like magic. There is always the dream of this car returning to it's glory. This guys is facetiously admitting it's just a dream.
Anyway, no, I don't think everyone should be required to drive a huge SUV with either a notoriously fragile transmission or a gas guzzling V8 motor. To say nothing of the unreliable sensors in the engine bay.
How hard to fix the gearbox and retrofit a choke too?
leave it in gear and it might not roll turn wheels so it wedges against the curb.
The rest can be done with footwork a d sensitivity. My uncle always wanted the emergency brake working for when the brakes would fail.
That was driving until the mid to late 70’s.
Same way we stop crawling as soon as we learn how to actually walk.
I also don't use heel-toe - don't know what I'd use that for. I only heard about it on the internet several years ago.
Next oil change, throw in an extra drop and tell the car I said hi!
Do you know how motorcycles solve this problem? Don't do it! Just don't get into that situation. How do you do a hill start? You don't. If you're really forced, you can try, it'll be difficult but often it's just easier to avoid the situation.
- Uphill starts are easy compared to a manual car as you operate the rear brake and accelerator using different parts of the body
- Stopping facing down a slope requires the use of the brakes and a supporting foot, same as a bicycle
- Getting off a bike facing down a slope typically is done by leaving it in gear which keeps the back wheel locked
- OP is correct that some forethought is required on very steep or highly cambered surfaces when leaving a bike to ensure it is stable on the side stand
I never use the parking break for hill starts and I've been driving manuals since I got my license in the 1989. Not that I particularly want to but whenever I'm looking for a car that's all I can seem to find in my price range.
Back in the day I used to have to parallel park my old Bug on a hill and the parking brake didn't even work -- it's just something you get good at after a few times.
Though... my current car does have a "hill assist" mode that automatically applies the brake on hills to help out which is kind of nice.
Where I believe you are missing a critical point is in assuming that the overall situation with a modern and “safe” vehicle is better. You’ve got entertainment systems, touch screens, driver aids (reducing the need for concentration), quite possibly child-sourced distractions (even when they are not screaming, they can be plenty distracting).
Now add to that the weight of a modern vehicle and the owner’s relative lack of concern/awareness/love for it, and to assume that someone driving around in a somewhat ragged antique is necessarily the bigger hazard could… potentially be open to debate.
It's amusing that the car is lacking in security features, but that doesn't make it easy to steal. It's funny that it's hard enough to drive that a previous thief gave up and (essentially) gave it back.
The biggest hint is in a caption: "I’ll make sure the drivetrain is in the car, by the way." He's obviously working on the car to try to make it better, and there's no way he's actually going to put the drivetrain back in the car just in case someone wants to try stealing it.
I lived in Toronto for 14 years, sold the car I arrived with after two years, and bought a car a couple years before the pandemic after we moved into a less central, but still urban, neighbourhood. Neither car had dedicated parking, we had a street parking permit which meant I could usually park within a block of home.
I did know people with cars, but I knew a lot more people without.
The main reason we bought a car in 2018 was that Car2Go, which offered one-way car share trips in Smart cars, pulled out of the city.
On the other hand, if you live in the suburbs, you virtually have to have a car. The 401 at rush hour is filled with people coming in and out of the city core.
And, if you read his bio you'd see that this guy is not a mere car guy, but in the pantheon of car guys. When he takes it for a spin around the block he's doing what any mechanic does when diagnosing cars - driving it to see why the car doesnt: steer well, stop well, move well, etc.
I think that says enough, the article is quite obviously a humor piece aimed at car people. It's not weird or strange that you didn't get it.
As others have said, manual transmissions tend to make for safer drivers.
The trick is to be an idiot teenager.
I would rather not, but they don’t allow me that choice, and they will also fight to the last man and beyond 4C warming for their „right“ to endanger me and my kin, as well as accelerate the rapid destruction of the only known habitat.
I thought car thiefs were going for kias and camrys.
> The last guy who stole my 914 used this very spot and it was rather convenient for all concerned parties.
Couldn't do stuff like this otherwise https://rove.me/to/england/london-to-brighton-veteran-car-ru...
And you wouldn't take your oldtimer to any random mechanic, you'd take it to a specialist.