Frugal auto transportation: theories?

>> My traditional view of frugal auto transportation has been to have two
>> beaters: (a small car I use most of the time and a larger vehicle for
>> hauling larger cargoes and for backup). I've given up on my small car (a
>> 1984 Chrysler Laser with 265,000 miles and am considering what I should
>> buy next (I got the Laser about 6 years ago when it had 145,000 miles on
>> it). So taken everything into consideration (initial cost, repair costs,
>> insurance/license costs, gas costs...) what do you recommend as the type
>> (age, mileage, foreign vs domestic...) of vehicle to purchase?

Some sort of hatchback, a model where there is quite a few in your local
junkyard so you have a source of cheap parts.


--

Charles
The significant problems we face cannot be solved
at the same level of thinking we were at when we
created them. Albert Einstein

Some ****wit clown claiming to be
Nate Nagel > wrote in message
...
just the puerile **** thats always pouring from the back of it.

Try harder, child. You might actually manage to wow someone, sometime.

Fat chance.

On Sun, 9 Jan 2005, Nate Nagel wrote:

> > Guess which silly little posturing ****wit child has just made a VERY
> > spectacular fool of itself yet again ?

> Ummm. Let me think.
> (scratches head)
> "Rod Speed" or whatever your real name is.
> What did I win?
> Now run along, Rod, the adults would like to talk.

Rod: "Pass the damn potatoes!"

Ned, Maude, Todd: *gasp!*

Ned: That's it, young man! No Bible stories for _you_ tonight!

Rod: *snif* *sniffle* *sob* WAAAAAAH!

Maude: Neddy, don't you think you were a little harsh on him?

Ned: Well, Maude, you knew I had a temper when you married me...

On Sat, 8 Jan 2005 07:06:24 +1100, "Rod Speed" >
wrote:

>> In order to get the car to handle at all, the front
>> tires HAD to be adjusted to 18 psi, and the rear
>> tires at 32 psi, or the car was all over the road.
>
>Yet another complete pack of lies.

Found a complete user manual from a 1966 Super Beatle scanned at this
website: http://www.geocities.com/veedub1967/

It says that the tire pressure should be 17psi front, 28psi rear (with
3 to 5 occupants)

When I was an auto mechanic, I made the mistake of rotating a VW Bug's
tires per the customer request, and forgot to adjust the pressures.
The customer was right back within minutes (enough time to drive about
a mile) asking me to make the pressure adjustment as the car was "all
over the road." His words, not mine.

However, I also owned a Bug at one time and can verify from personal
experience that the bug was extremely squirrelly if you rotated the
tires and did not change the pressures per the manual.

You can perhaps argue with me about my and my former customer's
descriptions of VW handling, but you can go right to the website and
verify the manual's recommended pressures, I'm not making it up.

Corky Scott

Corky Scott wrote:
> On Sat, 8 Jan 2005 07:06:24 +1100, "Rod Speed" >
> wrote:
>
>
>>>In order to get the car to handle at all, the front
>>>tires HAD to be adjusted to 18 psi, and the rear
>>>tires at 32 psi, or the car was all over the road.
>>
>>Yet another complete pack of lies.
>
>
> Found a complete user manual from a 1966 Super Beatle scanned at this
> website: http://www.geocities.com/veedub1967/
>
> It says that the tire pressure should be 17psi front, 28psi rear (with
> 3 to 5 occupants)
>
> When I was an auto mechanic, I made the mistake of rotating a VW Bug's
> tires per the customer request, and forgot to adjust the pressures.
> The customer was right back within minutes (enough time to drive about
> a mile) asking me to make the pressure adjustment as the car was "all
> over the road." His words, not mine.
>
> However, I also owned a Bug at one time and can verify from personal
> experience that the bug was extremely squirrelly if you rotated the
> tires and did not change the pressures per the manual.
>
> You can perhaps argue with me about my and my former customer's
> descriptions of VW handling, but you can go right to the website and
> verify the manual's recommended pressures, I'm not making it up.
>
> Corky Scott
>
>
Confronted with data from the source that refutes his inane one liner
little Rod will now claim that you did not address the issue.

Corky Scott wrote:
> Found a complete user manual from a 1966 Super Beatle scanned at this
> website: http://www.geocities.com/veedub1967/
That is a regular beetle, supers were 1971 and up.

> It says that the tire pressure should be 17psi front, 28psi rear
(with
> 3 to 5 occupants)
It looks more like 26 to me, with a note to add 3psi for highway
driving. Also, the numbers for 1-2 passengers are probably more
useful. However, the original number guessed was basically correct.
Not surprising that a RWD car with a heavy weight balance towards the
rear would recommend higher pressure for the back tires (not
surprisingly Porsche 911s of that era have basically the same pressure
specs).

> When I was an auto mechanic, I made the mistake of rotating a VW
Bug's
> tires per the customer request, and forgot to adjust the pressures.
If it was a swing axle bug (1949-1968 for US, all years elsewhere) you
made a mistake in rotating the wheels in the first place.

> a mile) asking me to make the pressure adjustment as the car was "all
Definitely would be a problem with swing axle bugs, but even on ones
where you do rotate the tires being off by 50% or more on pressure
would pose a problem.

regards,
Andy

On 10 Jan 2005 12:04:49 -0800, "Andy Crabtree"
> wrote:

>> When I was an auto mechanic, I made the mistake of rotating a VW
>Bug's
>> tires per the customer request, and forgot to adjust the pressures.
>If it was a swing axle bug (1949-1968 for US, all years elsewhere) you
>made a mistake in rotating the wheels in the first place.

Whether it was or was not a mistake, for whatever reason, it's what
the shop ticket said to do. My memory is that in a bug, the fronts
wore at a disproportionally slower rate than the rears, hence the need
to rotate them periodically.

Corky Scott

Corky Scott > wrote in
message ...
> Rod Speed > wrote

>>> In order to get the car to handle at all, the front
>>> tires HAD to be adjusted to 18 psi, and the rear
>>> tires at 32 psi, or the car was all over the road.

>> Yet another complete pack of lies.

> Found a complete user manual from a 1966 Super Beatle
> scanned at this website: http://www.geocities.com/veedub1967/

> It says that the tire pressure should be 17psi
> front, 28psi rear (with 3 to 5 occupants)

And doesnt say a word about the car being guaranteed
to be all over the road if those pressures arent used, liar.

> When I was an auto mechanic, I made the mistake of rotating a
> VW Bug's tires per the customer request, and forgot to adjust the
> pressures. The customer was right back within minutes (enough
> time to drive about a mile) asking me to make the pressure
> adjustment as the car was "all over the road." His words, not mine.

You're actually stupid enough to take what ONE customer
obviously exaggerated as gospel about all tire pressures
other than the ones you listed ? YOUR problem.

Even someone as stupid as you should be able to find
plenty of examples of particular bug owners who prefer
different tire pressures than the ones you made that stupid
pig ignorant claim about, on the web. They clearly dont
agree that their bug is 'all over the road' with the pressures
they prefer or that even more stupid 'handle at all' claim.

> However, I also owned a Bug at one time and can verify from
> personal experience that the bug was extremely squirrelly if you
> rotated the tires and did not change the pressures per the manual.

Separate issue entirely to that stupid pig ignorant claim at the top.

> You can perhaps argue with me about my and my former customer's
> descriptions of VW handling, but you can go right to the website and
> verify the manual's recommended pressures, I'm not making it up.

You were clearly lying about that stupid 'all over the road' and
'handle at all' claims if the pressures you listed arent used.

Keep desperately digging, you'll be out in china any day now.

On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 07:20:57 +1100, "Rod Speed" >
wrote:

>You were clearly lying about that stupid 'all over the road' and
>'handle at all' claims if the pressures you listed arent used.
>
>Keep desperately digging, you'll be out in china any day now.

Wow.

I'm not the one digging, but I sure know enough not to get into a
****ing contest with a skunk.

For the rest of the group, this is a lot like the old axiom: Never try
to wrestle with a pig in the mud. After a while you get to understand
the pig actually likes it.

The best way to deal with someone like Mr. Speed is to ignor any and
all comments from him. Takes a lot of fortitude to avoid playing
"gotcha last" and there are always newbies dropping in who don't know
about the situation, but it's the only way.

Corky Scott

Ripped from bugshop.org. Same info would apply to all the older
Porsches and the Corvair I think, as well as any car with swing axle
suspension (I can't think of any others though). Tires definitely wear
faster in the rear, but it is the type of wear that can lead to
handling problems when rotating. Undoubtedly some problems reported
from doing rotations on swing axle bugs were exacerbated by not
adjusting the tire pressure as well.

regards,
Andy

Rotating the tires

This is easy. If you have a swingaxle Beetle ('68 and older) DON'T DO
IT!. The geometry and tire travel of the front suspension vs. the rear
on a swingaxle Beetle is completely different, therefore the "wear
patterns" on the tires is different. See, vertical travel in a
suspension usually is not perfectly vertical. In the front, as the
wheels travel up and down, they also move front to back slightly, as
they follow the arc determined by the trailing arm as a radius. This
movement has little effect an tire wear but my be significant in the
way your car handles.

It's that swingaxle rear suspension that is weird, and particularly
harsh on tires. Here, as the tires travel up and down, they must follow
an arc defined by the swingaxles as a radius AND remain perpendicular
to the axles at all times. This creates 2 undesirable effects for the
tires. First, the tires are seldom perfectly perpendicular to the road.
You may have seen those "lowered" swingaxle bugs at the shows with the
tires "squatting out" at the bottom. I once carried 660 lbs of powdered
lime in the back of my '68, it was lowered for that trip and it rode
like a Cadillac. Anyway, the second effect is that as the wheels move
through this arc (as viewed from the front or rear of the car) when
traveling up and down, they must move in and out a little too (farther
and closer to the tranny). Tires weren't meant to go that way.

These differences in suspension geometry's create drastically different
wear patterns on the front and rear tires, and also drastically
different tread life. Yes, tread life is the REASON you rotate tires,
but I (an many others more qualified than me) firmly believe that
rotating tires front to rear on swingaxle Beetles creates DANGEROUS
handling while the tires (wear pattern) desperately try to re-adjust to
the new wheel travel. When I swapped the same (brand and size) tires
front to rear I could feel it when I drove the car.

For swingaxle Beetles, just keep the backs on the back and the fronts
on the front, and expect to replace the rear tires about 2.5 times as
often as the front. The IRS rear suspension ('69 and later in the U.S.)
did alleviate the problem with perpendicularity with the road surface,
and the lateral position of the wheel is fixed. I have never owned an
IRS Beetle, and I know that some manuals recommend rotating tires on
these cars (some recommend it on the swingaxle Beetles too- bad!), so I
have to decline making any recommendation about those cars. Seek
qualified advice.