I posted a thread on vwvortex the other day, in the regional NorCal forum, asking if anyone knows of any motor-swap cars that have passed smog testing at the State Referee station. I'm within inches of passing my car, after a year of changing and fixing things to comply, and I'm excited to finally get my CA plates. And I wanted to know how rare it ( Read more... )

So I get to Oakland a little early for my smog test, so I can plug in the computer to make sure I don't have any trouble codes, and make sure readiness is set. I've got one trouble code (instant fail) and two of the readiness codes have been set to "fail" (you're only allowed one failed readiness code ( Read more... )

I commute on an old BMW motorcycle, vintage 1985. This is the bike that my sister, my brother and I gave to my dad to celebrate his retirement. When he died, my brother and sister felt pretty strongly that it should go to me, and I've tried to give it the sort of love it needs. Ride it as much as my dad would want to ( Read more... )

There was a shiny new Infiniti G35 Coupe overturned on La Honda road this past Saturday. The type of road that has 30-40 turns in a span of a mile. Nicely-dressed young asian kid standing with his teeny-bopper asian girlfriend, standing there impotently while the emergency services directed traffic around the wreckage. On the barely-more-than-1.5- ( Read more... )

Seriously. You've seen it a million times. Some lady driving by, holding her phone four inches from her face while she tries in vain to maneuver her SUV through traffic. As if somehow having her call on speakerphone is actually helping anyone ( Read more... )

So I'm driving down 880 from Oakland at night (go there in your mind), and I overtake a bright orange Integra with a whale-tail, fast bumpers, fiberglass ground effects that are broken at all four corners, and a paint job that looks like it was applied with a roller. And I'm wondering...why would you go to such effort and expense to draw attention ( Read more... )