5 MPH... Believe It!!!

This happened today. One of my pet peeves, when people fail to use their turn signals. When this fool started hitting his brakes, I said, "Hmmm, I wonder what's going to happen here..." but then they let off, and I thought for a moment I had been faked out, but no!!! In retrospect, they should not have let off!!! These exits are marked a 5 MPH, and if you aren't a master of cornering with decent tires, you best believe it!!!

Of course, I was driving Scruffy, and had to come to a full stop unexpectedly, so I was glad to not have another incident of rhinoplasty!!! I know the dash cam has audio recording, and it doesn't have any way to turn it off, but apparently it's not working. As I rolled past afterwards, I called out "Genius!!!"

The Wayback Machine

I've kinda been on a roll of late with me blogging. I'm going to try and keep it going!!! I've got a lot of things I could go on about, but for now I'm taking this fork. Something I've wanted to do for a while. All the cars I've owned!!!

I did one post, back in 2009, about the first car I ever purchased, and just today I went back and added web-sourced pictures and another paragraph. Way previous to that, I'd done a tiny little post of my first actual car. Much more could be said there.

Anyway, fast forward a few years from the Dinosaur, and here's the first car I ever owned that would have had two names on the title!!! Would have, mind you, as we were never actually able to get it titled in our name. We bought it for $750 without first having the owner smog check it. I have been wary of doing so ever since, but still haven't let that stop me!!! I'm usually too antsy to jump on a "deal". Took it to a smog check center, and it had three places in the exhaust system that had leaks. Can't smog it if you can't detect anything at the end of the pipe!!! 1975, if I remember the year correctly. Seems to me it had the rear edge of one of the fenders crinkled, as though the door had met it at some point.

Anyway, this was back when we were poor. Probably 1989 or 1990 is when this all went down, and we'd saved up to buy something. I don't remember ever having to use one car between us, so I'm thinking this was while we were using the Gremlin. If you're poor, my advice to you is to stop being poor, it sucks. My wife had ridden in someone's Celica once, and liked it, so the hunt was on to see if we could find one in the price range we could afford. One of my friends growing up had a later fastback, and spun it on the freeway into the guard rail, totaling it. He'd sold the engine from it to someone he knew that had a coupe of the same color as his, swap included, and I helped him swap it. Actually, we both swung the engines (and transmissions) from the one to the other, and he flaked, so I ended up finishing everything off. I believe the girl we were doing it for ended up paying me some amount more than I was expecting, likely stiffing him for the rest of the cost. His was manual and the recipient was automatic. If you've driven an econobox of this vintage with an automatic, you'll likely agree that manual transmissions are the best option. ANyway, I was impressed with some of the innovation of those clever Japanese.

Ours was similar to these web sourced pictures I found, in that it was a red coupe. I preferred the fastback style, in most generations of the Celica, but apparently there were none to be had in our price range. Also, ours had a strange vinyl top, not the decent looking full top black pictured in the first shot, but tan, and only covering the rear half, landau style, and it looked like the color had been refreshed by spray painting. I seem to recall it wasn't fastened to the roof especially well, and would billow up at highway speed. My plan, if I'd ever gotten to it, was to strip off the vinyl, sand down the rust that was likely hiding under it (primary reason I don't like vinyl tops) and getting some black wrinkle finish paint to spray on the area.

Inside, the fun continued with a headliner hanging down. Not long after we got it, I made up an aluminum plate about 2 inches larger than the dome light all the way around, and used that to hold it up a little better. Seems to me it had some strangeness with the electrical system, and I'm pretty sure the air conditioning didn't work.

Mechanically, it had the manual transmission, and if I recall, a leaky clutch master cylinder. I seem to recall at some point filling the reservoir and opening the slave cylinder to do a "gravity bleed". Another time I was heading to my parent's house, and it stalled on the off ramp. I don't think I even opened up the cool forward-flip hood, just took off the mile or so to my parent's house. No one was home there, so I went to Sean's and we took his '68 Mustang with similar red paint and vinyl top, as well as his toolbox, to see if we can figure out what was up. Upon opening the hood, I quickly discovered the hot wire to the coil had broken off, so it was a fairly easy fix. Sean, meanwhile, found the sprinklers along the off ramp had a little plastic sign that said, "WARNING: These premises irrigated with reclaimed waste water", so he removed one and hung it by the sink in his bathroom!!! I remember some wonkiness with the windows, them not quite rolling up all the way. Pretty sure at one point one of the regulators gave out and I opened up the door panel and fashioned a 1x2" piece of wood to hold it in the closed position. I remember in the short time we had it, it rained quite a bit. It had 5-slot mag wheels, the same as my first car had, so we had two cars with the same style rims at the time. I think it had some kind of aftermarket stereo, but don't remember for sure.

It was a fun car, front engine rear drive with a fairly tight suspension, and of course that stick shift!!! Go-kart handling, and while it probably wasn't especially quick, it sure felt like it was.

I can't remember how long we had it, long enough that I remember it pretty well and fondly, but in my head I can't imagine it was more than six months. Certainly a car I kinda wished I still had. If you are able to find any of them anymore, they are either complete junk or are ridiculously priced, or both. So, here's how it ended...

We were living in North Long Beach at the time. As is the case, you end up finding short cuts to get home. Ours was to cut through the residential area before where we lived, avoiding a left turn light, then an uncontrolled left across a busy street. There were a couple of cross streets with a stop sign going crosswise to the one we'd be on, but they had deep rain gutters on either side going our way. Hence, a lot of people going our way would come to practically a stop, but we had no such respect for our suspensions, just slow enough to not bottom out. Since most people going our way would be going very slow, a lot of people rolled the stop signs. You can probably see where this is going. One afternoon I come home to my wife talking on the phone to the insurance company. Hmmm, that doesn't sound good... I look out the window into the parking lot, and see the front end basically flat. She gets off the phone and breaks down crying, and for a while I can't understand what she's saying. Come to find out, pretty much exactly what you'd guess from the intro to this paragraph!!! Some guy in a full size van rolled through the stop sign, never suspecting my wife, and she cleanly T-bones him!!! His insurance ends up paying us off to the tune of $1400 or so, if I recall, and we get to retain the hulk of the poor Celica. The cool looking front end was closed up in the middle of the grille, with the hood bent down and the bumper bent up. Since we were having trouble getting it smogged, we were more than happy with the payoff!!! I remember getting a replacement fender from half price day at the pick your part, but don't remember if that was before or after the wreck. Know I never put it on. I also remember pulling the bumper mounts and straightening 'em, but not ever getting it back together. Couldn't find a replacement hood. I'm pretty sure the radiator was leaking afterwards, but somehow I got it to my parent's house and had it in their side yard for a while. Don't remember for how long, but after the wreck I was finally able to get a salvage slip in our name, after clearing up some strangeness with the previous owner's actual name. Ended up selling it off, maybe for $100, maybe for $200, but not before I took the rims off for our next car (bought, of course, with the insurance payoff money!!!) That is, possibly, a story for another day. I've already got the images for it from the 'web!!!

Down With the Other Half!!!

Last Friday I finished off the lowering job on the back end of Scruffy. It was considerably easier and more straightforward than the front!!!

Of course, it was just springs and struts on this portion, no suspension components other than those. I'm quite pleased with the way it sits!!! Even with the bald tires, it still seems to corner quite well, too!!! Scraped the exhaust on two speed bumps and a driveway so far.

I think I'd better start carrying around some blocks, it's almost impossible to get a jack under it now!!! In addition to the passenger rear tire, the driver's side front tire has been losing air, so I stuck the one remaining steelie on the front for now.

The end of the tailpipe had been tweaked where it was pointing right at the rear tire in the center of the tread. I managed to get it bent to where it's way forward of it.

One other thing, it had this flexy plastic air dam under the front. I have a feeling it wouldn't last long at this altitude. It's gone!!!

On the way home, it was running strange. Idling high, around 2,000 to 3,000 RPM. Way back when we were still shopping for Jade, I'd replaced the idle control valve because it had been stalling. Now it's gone the other way. I'm not sure it might be because it hasn't gotten much driving since I put it in, and the computer hasn't quite adjusted to it yet. I popped the hood that evening, and pushed on the connector a little, and it came down to where it should be. Maybe just dirty contacts??? Hopefully this coming Friday I'll get the alignment done and start driving it a bit more!!!

And So It Begins

That tenuous transitional step between concept and reality, to actually stop just thinking about something and start doing something. I suppose the real first step was finding Jade (thus far the name my wife has decided on for her new ride, as good a name as any, I suppose. She is SO happy with her, you'd think I bought her a new Cadillac!!!) so I can get to modding on Scruffy. The next, and and finally getting some actual skin in the game, step occurred on this last Friday. New tires are a very soon necessity for her (Scruffy), and prior to doing that, I'd wanted to locate the next set of rims, to keep from having to pay to get the tires moved around. Currently she's rolling on the alloys that came on 3, which are also the exact same style as jade has. All that works out, because one of them on Scruffy was said to have been bent, and feels like it at certain speeds. A couple on each also have some curb damage, so between them there's likely a good set.

SO, I had the idea to find some steelies I could moon-cap and maybe do in the contrast color, whatever that turns out to be. I slightly rued having sent the originals of Scruffy's west with Baby, but in the interest of saving alloys, it was necessary. Also, it looks like the profile of Saturn steelies isn't well suited to having a center cap hub cap. Lots of cars have the same bolt pattern, so it shouldn't be too difficult to find a junkyard set that would work, and over Thanksgiving weekend, my dad and I were thinking of heading over for their sale day. That never happened, I worked Black Friday for the double time and a half, as well as my normal Saturday shift, and it was far too busy to get that in.

Another thing I'd been looking at was some manufacturers are now making larger rims of steel. First noticed this on the lady friends' Scion, which has hub caps on 16" wheels. I was going to jam her up and see if she'd be interested in trading for some factory Saturn alloys that would have a lower cost to put tires on, but alas, it's the newer model with 5 lugs. As is my custom, I kept looking around to see what people might be selling, and came upon these!!! Not what I had in mind, but a good looking style that will go fairly well with the primer black aesthetic I have in mind, and are also larger diameter. Currently they have 205-40R-17's on them, which are shorter but wider than what I've got, but by just a tad each way. Nets about 3/8" of drop. There's probably a year's worth of tread left on them, but I'm planning on going with 35's eventually, which will be even smaller than what I've got, as well as surprisingly affordable!!! That will get a total drop of about 3/4", plus the around 1 1/2" that dropped springs get. Of course, that's a ways out still, and will give me plenty of time to decide if I like it fine with what I've already got. Speaking of affordable, the guy only wanted $200 for the whole set, which of course is almost less than just getting 4 tires mounted!!! No curb rash whatsoever. Ironically, they were off the earlier model Scion with the same bolt pattern as Saturns.

So now it's time to start getting other things in order. The wear patterns on the current tires suggest that things aren't right with the alignment, and I know the tie rod ends are shot. At 190,000, likely that's not all!!! If I'm going to be putting in dropped springs, she'll be needing an alignment anyway, and may as well refresh everything before that happens. Of course, while I'd be putting on new springs, new struts are only logical. I have ordered both the springs and struts thus far, and will soon be ordering tie rod ends and ball joints. May also get some polyurethane bushings to tighten everything up even more!!! I'd already planned on going with rebuilds on all the brake cylinders while I'm in the course of refitting and new hoses, as well as probably new rotors and pads up front, since I'll have to give everything that will show through the new rims a coat of paint. Oh yeah, also I ordered the necessary lug nuts to fit on such a rim.

This morning I took the original picture from when we'd first got her where I'd tinted the rear windows and put it back in Paint Shop Pro. First I removed the rear doors, then made the panels continuous from front to back. Came out better than the first attempt!!!

Hmmm, while I have Paint Shop Pro going, how about seeing how she'd look with a bit of a drop??? With them old hub caps, no less!!! Got that done, and did the scroll back and forth between the files, and was amused by the jumping effect of the drop I'd performed... a GIF is in order!!!

After that, I messed with the shadow to make it look proper, then black and whited it to simulate primer, as well as mirroring it to make it look different than the other shots.

Hey, you may ask, what about your idea to gull wing her??? Still knocking around in me melon, it is, but thought I'd share the sketch lady friend did before I did mine, back on the reunion lunch day. There you have it, folks, the first rendering of a Saturn Gull Wing Wagon!!! Upon completion, it was noted that it looked a bit like a space alien!!!

Collect All Three!!!

So, Scruffy is getting a bit long in the tooth. Over 190,000 miles now she has. She still runs good... kind of. In the last couple weeks she had a low idle issue on and off, happened once while I was driving her, and then started again about a week back, more on than off. What's more, the transmission has been acting up a bit. Not a whole lot, but for the last few months losing a bit of fluid, and when that happens, she starts not upshifting. All it takes is a bit more transmission fluid, and she's good to go again. I was able to give the filter almost a quarter turn a bit ago, and it really hasn't had that problem since. Of all the Saturns we've had, this is the only one I've had this issue with, and several times!!! More troubling is sometimes shifting into reverse, it'll not go, then finally do a slam into gear. I've seen this symptom before, and I suspect a bad solenoid, which is fairly easy to do, but at the same time rather involved. Oh yeah, the tires are at the end of their lives, too.

So for quite a while I've been keeping an eye out. Mostly the criteria was automatic, power windows and door locks, and low miles at a decent price. A couple months back I'd seen an ad for a fairly low mile wagon that looked good in the pictures. Ended up not looking nearly as good in person, and I messaged that back to the seller and left without even taking it for a spin. Not long after I saw another wagon with similar low miles. Ad didn't specify if it had power windows and locks, so I'd messaged them and asked, to which they replied yes, come and have a look. I moved money around until I had it in hand, then went out to take a look, planning on jumping on it if it ran and looked as good as the pictures. Got there, and what do you know, no power windows and door locks!!! What, do you think I'm not going to notice that??? Don't waste my time.

Kept an eye out, and one I kept seeing recently was priced on the high end of my range, $2,500, with 90,000 miles. Looked fairly clean in the pictures, and had the bonus of a sunroof. The distinction I'd never heard of was that he had it listed as a "Glenview Edition". Last Friday my curiosity got the best of me, and we went out and looked at it. The mechanical and interior were fairly flawless, and the body wasn't especially bad, but had all the bumpers scraped, a tweak in the lower part of the driver's door down to the metal frame, and a wrinkle on the front of the hood. While we test drove it, he told us of one time he'd come out and found footprints over the top, and on the sunroof!!! After the test drive, I noticed a small dent on the back of the roof that fit the tale. Indeed, it had "Glenview Edition" pinstriped on the side, and was fairly loaded, even having ABS and traction control, but with steel wheels instead of the alloys I would have expected. There was one more about an hour's drive away I wanted to look at with 100,000 miles but only asking $1,750. We headed out, but Friday traffic was too much, and we went home instead, and I replaced the idle control valve that seems to have been causing the low idle problem on Scruffy.

When I'd gotten in touch with the second one on Friday letting them know I wouldn't make it that day, I asked if I could come by Saturday after work. They weren't going to be there, so I'd been planning on going Sunday. As is my custom, I kept looking, and Saturday night I saw an ad down in the farther away section. The price of $1,800 caught my eye, and the miles of 75,000 sweetened the deal. A scan through the pictures showed something that put it into the extraordinary category, white faced gauges!!! The only other ad I'd seen these in was a Red Hot edition coupe that I was never able to get in touch with the seller of. A closer look at the picture showed the Homecoming Commemorative Edition script on the tachometer.

These came with most of the options, and as the Red and White Hot coupes feature, blacked out badges. The interior has leather on the outer edges of the seats and cloth on the center portion, which given the propensity of G.M. leather to crack out, seems like a distinct advantage!!!

Also featured on the Homecoming Commemorative Edition was a pearl Mint Green paint. The paint has seen better days, having quite a bit of clear coat delamination on the hood, trunk, rear wing (also included in the package), and door surrounds. The seller hadn't done the current smog check on it, but I was reasonably confident that it would pass with no issue. It did, with almost undetectable amounts of NOX. I offered $1,600 on account of the lack smog check, and they agreed. Less than a minute later, they said they'd take an additional $100 off for the smog!!! Told my wife, "See, I can't spend more on your car than I did on mine!!!"

I'm seriously considering looking into getting a repaint on her, and there's a myriad of little things that could use fixed. Hadn't realized she has a salvage title, but with those low miles and niceish condition not a big deal. Being 18 years old, I don't think we'd ever get that much as a payout from anyone's insurance anyway, and hope to never find out. I'd like to get the back windows tinted, and a 512 Labs exhaust made up for it, but my wife kind of is enjoying the quietness of it right now. I'm thinking maybe just hack off the last muffler and straight pipe it out the back and see how that goes, or maybe put another resonator out back.

In the meantime, now I've got a wagon to play with!!! I've of course had the idea to sedan delivery her since we got her, and now I've also got the outlandish idea of doing gull wing doors!!! Before I get going on that, new tires are in order, and I've been kind of looking around for some 16" steelies I could wrap in low profile rubber, and I'd probably do a refresh on all the struts and tie rod ends as well as getting those lowering springs. Now all I need is a lot of time to do so.

Once again, The younger boy is pretty excited about it, showing off all the special features to his friends. My wife is thrilled with her new ride, and once again I was able to tell her "Merry Christmas!!!"

Tribute

As usual, I've got a bunch I could go on about. This takes precedence.

At the end of last month, I came home from my Saturday shift to a message from a friend I'd grown up with to give him a call. I hadn't heard from him in a while, and returned the call. He tells me that our friend Sean had recently died, and there's a celebration of life the next day. It's a couple hours drive north of me, in the high desert. It was a pleasant drive, but I was stuck with my thoughts. It had been years since I'd seen him.

I arrived a few minutes in, and there was a large crowd. A good portion are in wheelchairs. His second wife has a daughter with spina bifida, and he had taken his fabrication skills in the direction of making custom wheelchairs.

Back when we were kids, we were always making things with Lego bricks, then we transitioned to modifying our bikes, then our cars. He'd bought a sidehack for his bike, which someone welded on. I liked the way it looked, as well as the change in the handling dynamics of the bike. I got a little torch set for my birthday that year, which was supposed to be able to do light duty welding. It sucked it's little oxygen cylinder dry before I was able to complete half the braze of the head tube on my own sidehack. My father was able to borrow an arc welder. If the first was undersize, the second was way oversize!!! I burned many a hole through thin tubing, but got good at filling them back in and making giant booger welds that almost always held. My parents have a couple of pictures in photo collages in their house of these creations. One year Sean and Steve (the guy who'd told me of his passing) found an IRS letterhead envelope and paper and dropped it in our mailbox on April 1st, addressed to the fictitious company Crazy Bikes Inc. that I had mailed out to companies with. They put the message "April Fools!!! Look for your sidehack!!!", with the intention of playing the funny trick on me off taking the wheels and leaving it up on blocks. Joke was on them, though, it didn't have any wheels on it at that time!!! Well, with that plan foiled, they improvised and set it up on the diving board on a chair with a life preserver around the handlebars and a foam ring around the seat, and that's one of the pictures. Another shot is a 16" kids bike I'd modified into a chopper... by cutting the front forks and welding in six foot long fence posts!!! It was terribly unstable, and required training wheels to ride at all. That's another picture on the wall, me attempting to ride it while Sean looks on from beside.

When we started in with cars, his dad bought him a '61 Ranchero. I had the old family car '76 Maverick. We lowered 'em. We shaved the door handles. We converted them from column shift to floor shift. He chopped about 6" out of the top of his, and added in an offset snorkel hood scoop, to line up with the intake of the 144 cubic inch six. I cut a targa top in mine. He never did find someone to cut down the windshield glass, so it never really got roadworthy again. Of course, sound system upgrades were made. That's where Sean really got his start, doing stereo and alarm installations for people. It helped both of us that my mom was working for Pioneer Electronics. Of course, this was around the time when mini trucks were getting big, and he started a groundbreaking and ground scraping suspension shop. I had stopped by one of these and he was showing me a truck he was putting an air suspension on, one of the first to do that. Come to find out, he was inducted into the Mini Truck Hall of Fame. I would link to it, but it appears they've let their domain lapse. Anyway, he was quite the fabricator, and it was pretty amazing how his stuff would come out. I would also fabricate things, but our approaches were different. I would meticulously plan things out in detail ahead of time, then start in, and usually the results would be not be to my satisfaction, and I'd end up coming back weeks or months later and dialing it in better. He took more of a banzai approach, diving right in, and more often than not coming up with a nice finished product in short order.

He was a daredevil. I remember the time he broke his collarbone doing a bunny hop on his bike over a planter at the college where we were always riding our bikes, and jamming over to the nearby fire station to get him help. At another visit to one of his shops, he shows me a picture of a flying Subaru, which he told me he'd recently bought and taken it out to see what it could do. The guy who'd taken the picture was at the celebration, and related the story.

Just a couple weeks prior to finding out, my younger son was saying he's probably the most sensitive person to spicy food. I told him no, I knew someone more so. Sean used to order pizzas with no tomato sauce because he couldn't handle it. Another guy spoke at the celebration with the same story.

Here's a shot of his daughter in her custom chair. There were so many cool chairs there, I kinda wanted to take shots of them all, but didn't feel comfortable asking all these people to get pictures. Fortunately, there's a lot of images at the website of his company. Come to find out, he'd done the one 2 Chainz used when he broke his leg. I was able to see and talk to his parents, and meet his widow. I overheard her telling someone she wants to keep the company going, I hope she's able to find a fabricator that's up to the task.

Funny how there's a few parallels in our lives. We both have versions of our first cars, we both sport mustache and goatees (although his went quite a bit more wild than mine has) and we both have red haired wives.

His death keeps hitting me in different ways. To exacerbate the situation, I've had a couple more deaths since then, and that Vegas business went down on the night of the celebration.

So, a couple weeks before, I was looking at the hardtop versions of the Saturn SCs, and was thinking that without the sunroof, it would be an interesting candidate to make into a true gullwing door car, none of this lame attaching the hinge to the top of the door frame, but cutting to the center of the roof and hinging it in the middle. Hmmm.... might work out good, with some reinforcement along the spine and those lightweight plastic door skins. Meanwhile... I've been keeping an eye out for a replacement for Scruffy. She keeps on ticking, but is now pushing 190K miles, and if you let it go, that ticking will be the engine running low on oil!!! I've got the replacement body panels for her, but kind of want to sand down the roof where the clear coat is in terrible condition, and shoot it with white spray paint. I've got the idea to 3-tone her, with a white roof, gloss black on the window rails and A pillar, and similar to the factory green from the greenhouse down. I think it'd look nice. Ran the idea past my dad, who has more car painting experience than most, and he comes up with, "Nahhh... primer black!!!" Now, I know my wife wouldn't care much for it, BUT!!! My younger boy is closing in on 16 and showing more interest in getting his license than the older had at his age. Find a suitable replacement for my wife (all the power doodads, and maybe find her something with a sunroof this time, too!!! Oh, and looks pretty) and yank the engine out of Scruffy and do the build I've been dreaming of in it (.040" overbore to 2.0, early crank with later rods, some work on the exhaust ports, and a stud kit is probably all, but that should be enough for improvements and longevity). That primer black sounds like the scheme it could use, but I'm picturing a few other tweaks... Steelies painted red (or orange) with moon hub caps, probably get some lowering springs, maybe some matching red or orange pin stripes, and of course, the realization of making her into a sedan delivery as I envisioned when we first got her!!! Probably seal in the back doors, so some coupe seats that flip forward would be in order. Now, while I'm going crazy with the mods, why not gullwing doors on a phantom sedan delivery??? Don't think I haven't been thinking about it, even to the point of having preliminary ideas on how to reinforce the body and roof and engineer the roof hinges. Of course, by the time I do any or all of these tweaks, I think it'll be mine and the boy would have to settle for 3.

Told one of the car guys at work about it, how I'd thought of it before I'd heard, and now I kinda have to.

You know, as a tribute.

In My Rearview

I was driving into work one morning last week when this incident took place. It was pretty entertaining to me, and put me in a good mood.

I'll preface this tale a little by saying that I've been trying to keep my speed at 65 or less for the last couple of weeks. It's not always easy to do, but I stay to the right so as not to obstruct traffic. I'm endeavoring to bump up my mileage by doing this, coefficient of drag increasing inversely with increased speeds and all that. Of course, with the warmer weather these days, I've been driving with the sunroof and/or the windows open, likely giving Baby the aerodynamics of a whiffle ball.

This particular morning, I was coming up to the interchange to the last freeway I take. I usually keep a good eye on traffic around me, and am usually aware of who is where, and often know what other drivers are going to do before they do it. I had been driving along with no one behind me for quite a distance, but the next time I looked up, probably around 1/8 mile before the ramp, there's what is billed as a German luxury performance car right on my rear bumper!!! Literally, mere feet from me, a distance better situated to parallel parking than cruising at 65. I maintain my speed, up until the long road of the transition leading to the curve. This section curves ever so slightly to the right, then leads into a 270 degree right turning clover leaf ramp. I let her coast down to around just under 50 coming into that stretch coming into the corner, and my shadow sticks right on my tail.

This has gotten on my nerves a bit, so as I'm starting into the clover leaf, I say, "Follow this, killer", and ever so gently start easing on the throttle. A German luxury performance car should be able to do some cornering, right??? I keep easing on the juice all the way through the corner, never coming close to the limits of adhesion, or even eliciting a squeal from the tires. I come out onto the freeway already exceeding my self imposed limit by ten MPH, and my new found friend is nowhere to be seen!!! I lay off and get the speed back down, and it must have been a quarter mile later before I saw him coming out of the curve!!! Ha!!!

That alone would have been good enough for me, but in the remaining quarter mile before my exit, he gets right back on my ass!!! Dude, I'd be embarrassed. He exits behind me. The street I exit onto has three lanes each way, and I end up taking a left, so if it's clear, I will move over to the left lane. It was, so I did, after checking my area and signaling. This guy does the same, except he never signals. Guys like him almost never do. Half a block later, he cuts back into the middle lane. Come on, you sit higher up than I do, and I can see from down here you ain't getting anywhere any quicker over there!!! Sure enough, a block later he gets back behind me!!! After that, he gets in a left turn lane. It has a signal for the turn, and he starts laying on his horn the second the light changes. Whenever someone around me starts honking, I almost always do so myself. I did. I think he should have left fifteen minutes earlier!!!

By the way, the picture on this post is a modification from a much earlier post, "Headlights in the Mirror", in case you thought it looked familiar!!!