dave4270

No, that would be a union violation. "Kenna, brah" is an institution. And I can't believe I just read "Chalmatians" on HN. Full disclosure, I went to Holy Cross when it was still in the Ninth Ward. Chalmatian has been part of my vocabulary since the 80's. I'm sure every big city has its neighborhoods with individual cultures, but our heavily mixed population combined with insular land masses tend to create very distinct niches that all have the common thread of "The City that Care Forgot".

New Orleans drops mic... I'm from River Ridge in the Jefferson Parish suburbs ( within the city area ) and if I meet a stranger somewhere else in the country they, after one or two sentences, usually think I'm from New York. But slipping into one of the many dialects we have here is never far away, depending on who you are conversing with. Only locals will understand, but my wife used to tell me that after 2 sentences my dad and I would start talking like we were "from Kenner" and she couldn't follow the conversation. To non-locals, Kenner is directly next to River Ridge.

I was only thinking about bikes, but I lift/downshift in my BRZ all the time. I guess there is much less fear of being mangled by a cel phone user when I'm in the car. Looks like I will be ordering 4 of these.

This is something I want for all of my street bikes. I roll off the throttle a fair bit before grabbing the brakes on my Ruckus and way earlier on my modified Metropolitan. Always watching the mirrors while doing so. And my 1966 Sears ( made by Gilera ) only has a brake light switch on the rear brake pedal. I'm so conditioned to use the front brakes on a motorcycle that I often forget to tap the rear brake to signal other drivers. I'll be ordering 3 myself if they ship to the US, or getting my buddy in the UK to snag them for me.

As a race buddy of mine often says, one can teach a complete college semester on the math of drag racing. From the engineering of the vehicles to the tuning to the weather calculations. And then there is what we call "bracket racing". Staggered starts based on your own prediction of elapsed time that you cannot run faster than or you will "break out" and the other vehicle wins. A favorite t-shirt in the pits says, "Not everyone can do math at 150MPH".

We have no plans to ever sell the two cars we have. I highly recommend copies if you can find them. My wife has a 2007 4Runner. 150K on the odo and all I've ever needed to change was an alternator and brakes. If you do your own work, nothing on the planet is better for a mechanic than a Toyota. Ours is also the V8 (unicorn-ish) but I don't recommend that unless you need to tow something significant. Mine is a 2014 Subaru BRZ with three pedals. IMHO, it's the best car ever made. Like a shifter kart with airbags.

Suspension parts may be a bit much, but I've had good success with smaller parts for my race bike. Like brackets for a CO2 regulator that would have been difficult in metal due to angles necessitated by the curve of the fender. http://www.daves-speedshop.com/CO2brackets.php Making my own velocity stacks for the throttle bodies allowed me to add mounts for a sensor and the airbox tray. http://www.daves-speedshop.com/graphics/FT550/sparkPro2.jpg I couldn't make those out of metal without a full CNC mill.

Funny that you should mention racecars. I learned all of this in a drag racing class. I won the class from NHRA and was expecting it to be all about driving the 8 second, 160+ MPH dragster. That was some part of it, but more time was spent on how your eyes and brain work. I was the guinea pig to show the class that there is no such thing as peripheral vision. All you have is peripheral "awareness" at your disposal. "Vision" requires looking directly at something.

Those of us who ride motorcycles, learn to watch people's heads and eyes ( sometimes in their mirrors ) and know that if you do not make eye contact, you are invisible to the others on the road.

Your last sentence sums it all up. Unfortunately it describes the majority of drivers I encounter on the road. At least in New Orleans, it seems that driving is about the 4th thing people do at the wheel of a car. Texting, eating, and dancing all rank higher on an average day. And all those people assume they will "see" things off to the side in time...

Meanwhile, I'm looking for pupils.