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All cars are inherently unsafe. If people would drive as if they knew that... we'd all be inherently safer.

You can throw away "the book" for a car with 300k miles on it. It's depreciated to zero. It has surpassed anybody's expectations of it by 2x. It's worth what YOU are willing to pay for it and not a...

It should only affect the warranty if something directly related to it fails.

Like, if the welds on the rear axle failed, and they thought it was because the rear swaybar created stresses there....

We broke the Fummins.

This.

He's the guy I was talking about above, thanks for looking him up! Pretty sure he used a Megasquirt for his engine control.

Your best bet would probably be to get a factory ECU and engine wiring harness. (and ETACS if required) Try to get it running with all of the OE systems.

Studying the systems and wiring in the...

You want it "to run", "to run well", or "to run normally"?

The basics for the engine to run would be the ECU and all fundamentally required inputs and outputs. Off the top of my head (I'm surely...

You want to "sell" a kid a $15,000 brand new car for $3000? Yeah, that'll teach him.

Wanting to help your kid with transportation is noble. But, I'm with the post above.

Kid destroys his car in an at-fault crash that could have killed somebody... you don't hand him the keys to a...

I moved it, so I could fit a Miata behind it!
20256

Just noticed that my local Credit Union is offering 1.89% on 36-month new or used car loans "with discounts". That usually means you must have excellent credit, and be set up for automatic payments....

I believe that. When we built the Festiva "race car" (the dreaded FASTIVA autocross car), we welded a piece of flat steel across the bottom of the beam axle to make it a box. It worked GREAT! But,...

I with you, everything is a compromise. I guess my point was that if you can't handle the ride being a little firmer... the answer isn't to lower the car with soft springs. The answer is to NOT lower...

There are things I don't do. Like: Work on transmissions.

If I look at a diagram long enough, I can understand how a double clutch system works. But, it's not something I've committed to memory....

Springs have to be stiffer if you're lowering the car. If you don't make the springs stiffer, you risk bottoming out the suspension. There's math involved, but basically:

Imagine you've got 6" of...

I'm just gonna leave this here:
http://www.rentoncoilspring.com/whyti.html

Wheel balance and/or bent wheels. I've had two Mirages in my driveway. Both had bent steel wheels. They're a bit fragile.

Without going metric, we typically use thousandths or ten-thousandths of an inch for precision values under 1/8". It all goes neatly decimal at that point.

Like, if you're going to have your...

You might want to watch those videos about how the CVT works, and particularly have a look at the belt itself.

In short, the belt works by "pushing" rather than pulling the driven pulley. You...

Oh, geez.

I'm gonna bet that if you place it that high, you'll end up grabbing the stick in the middle a lot of the time. But, you'll still get the "look" that you're after, and you can always grab the knob...

Yep, just like with a weighted shift knob, you have to be cognizant of the fact that you can apply a lot more force to the shifter without realizing it. "Don't force it."

That extra length is also...

I didn't find the Mirage any more difficult to work on than any other "basic" FWD car. Not sure why you'd expect it to be easier to do a clutch job vs. anything else. Clutch jobs are always rather...

Today's 3pm check:

The car has been resting for about 24 hours. It was really cloudy yesterday, but sunny today.

When I left it yesterday, voltage was 12.5. Today it was at 12.9.

After a...