In clouds of black diesel smoke, some controversy | When enthusiasts don’t play well with locals

ShinnyGroove (Forum Supporter) said:

In my life I've worked closely with steel workers, surgeons, bricklayers, lawyers, mail sorters, engineers, machinists, chemists, janitors, academics, and yes- soldiers.  The ratio of good/moral/honest/smart people to cheats/liars/dummies has been about the same for all of them.  I don't think any one profession or vocation can lay claim to being all good people or all bad people.  And even though I never served, I do agree that military service is a great avenue for some of these rudderless ships to get their act together and learn how to be an adult.

  I have to agree with your assessment of the military.  No it's not perfect.  They have the Brig for a reason and there is always a few who fail to follow the rules and guidance given to them.  
     However I went in a boy and became a man in a short time.  While I'm far from perfect I am grateful   for the Navy teaching me respect and maturity. I'm now 73 and refer to people as Ma'am or Sir almost without regard their age. 

As for whether humans are getting dumber, I believe the answer is no - they just have more opportunities to upload their stupidity to a wider audience. There have been plenty of historical examples of extreme stupidity around when nobody had video equipment to film it. My my can't-remember-how-many-greats grandfather, for example, died along with several of his kids trying to collect a reward for moving a barrel of nitroglycerin that had been sitting for years. They succeeded in relocating the barrel, but at much higher speeds and in more directions than intended.

People aren't getting dumber, we just gave them all megaphones and a global audience via the internet.

MadScientistMatt said:

Mr_Asa said:

The article said:

Squats began in Central Florida, Muhlbauer says, with “kids who go deer dogging in the woods”—using dogs to chase down deer. “They get way back in the swamp and they need all the traction they can get, so they raise the front, lower the rear. The concept moved from the woods onto the road and to the custom truck world.”

My fat hairy FloridaMan ass it did.  I know many folks that deer hunt that way and all that is is a good way to get stuck.

Edit: Also, every single word Muhlbauer says in this thing sounds self-serving.  I don't get it

I don't see how this setup would help with traction in a swap or otherwise. The explanation I'd heard was that some low buck 2WD tractor pull trucks had more lift on the front than the back because they would run very large rear tires and they were trying to look like they had a pulling truck on road tires, although most example pictures of 2WD pull trucks suggest that isn't the case.

Nonfunctional mod fads can be pretty tough to account for.

Having owned a couple of Toyota pickups, I always assumed the Carolina Squat came about because it's really easy to lift the front torsion bar suspension but you have to swap out parts to lift the rear. Maybe you just yank out the rear springs instead. I de-squatted one of my pickups shortly after buying it by putting an impact gun on the torsion bar bolts, took about 2 minutes. That was before the look had a name.

Keith Tanner said:

MadScientistMatt said:

Mr_Asa said:

The article said:

Squats began in Central Florida, Muhlbauer says, with “kids who go deer dogging in the woods”—using dogs to chase down deer. “They get way back in the swamp and they need all the traction they can get, so they raise the front, lower the rear. The concept moved from the woods onto the road and to the custom truck world.”

My fat hairy FloridaMan ass it did.  I know many folks that deer hunt that way and all that is is a good way to get stuck.

Edit: Also, every single word Muhlbauer says in this thing sounds self-serving.  I don't get it

I don't see how this setup would help with traction in a swap or otherwise. The explanation I'd heard was that some low buck 2WD tractor pull trucks had more lift on the front than the back because they would run very large rear tires and they were trying to look like they had a pulling truck on road tires, although most example pictures of 2WD pull trucks suggest that isn't the case.

Nonfunctional mod fads can be pretty tough to account for.

Having owned a couple of Toyota pickups, I always assumed the Carolina Squat came about because it's really easy to lift the front torsion bar suspension but you have to swap out parts to lift the rear. Maybe you just yank out the rear springs instead. I de-squatted one of my pickups shortly after buying it by putting an impact gun on the torsion bar bolts, took about 2 minutes. That was before the look had a name.

Square left in 50 caution ocean! - Author of How To Build a High Performance Mazda Miata

I always thought it came from the SoCal desert bros who'd get a long travel kit for the front and leave the rear stock. Old desert racers used to run lower ride height in the rear too, but modern stuff is level.

Either way, I call BS on the deer hunting story.

Petrolburner said:

 

 

Lost my whole train of thought after seeing this....drool...

This makes me want to build a donk 

In reply to yupididit :

Donk the V-12. Blow every single mind that encounters it. 

In reply to Appleseed :

Especially frenchy's

In reply to yupididit :

Or perhaps... SLAB the V12

A quick note on the military:  An important aspect is going to be what part of the military.  Someone mentioned the Marines, and I know Frenchy was aviation (I forget if it was Navy or Air Force).  Those will tend to have a slightly different "slice" of the population.

As another note:  I guy on the radio, who's dad was a district court judge was known to say, "if you want to solve the crime problem in the US, just put every male in the military from 18-25".   He may have said jail, but you get the point.

Certainly no disrespect for the military or service from me, but as I like to say, there are a-holes in every group you can define, and and doesn't take many a-holes to cause a lot of problems.  This of course applies to car enthusiast also.

In our local C&C, we have had some issues with a-holes making noise.  And yes, it seems to mostly come from the newer Mustang and Mopar crowd.  Generally the crowd is a bit older and more respectful though (see military / jail note above).

In reply to aircooled :

I dodged the draft ( remember that? ) by joining the Navy. I went in enlisted and testing the second day reveled a pretty High IQ which put me in NESEP  ( Navy Enlisted Scientific Education  Program ). I selected flying as my study course. And that's how I wound up landing on aircraft carriers. That and the fact that the Navy lost a lot of fliers in Vietnam about that time. Sort of like WW 2 with enlisted pilots only not very many of us made it. 
      Sorry I digress. No cross section of any group in society is perfect.  But the military does give some young men a second chance to learn lessons their parents should have taught.   In a very real, no nonsense way.  While giving them a paycheck and taking care of them probably a whole lot better than their parents could. 

This is fitting for this thread :(

A Teenager Hit Six Cyclists While Trying To Roll Coal And Was Not Arrested

berkeley

ProDarwin said:

This is fitting for this thread :(

A Teenager Hit Six Cyclists While Trying To Roll Coal And Was Not Arrested

berkeley

Jesus berkeleying Christ. Throw the book at him and the truck too for good measure

I do think people are a but more stupid then in the past but I think it's more prevalent now because everyone has a global platform in order to air their stupidity.

I also think it has to do with the fact that we really don't punish people for being stupid anymore, so people get bolder with their stupidity......like the guy who hit 6 people

Antihero (Forum Supporter) said:

ProDarwin said:

This is fitting for this thread :(

A Teenager Hit Six Cyclists While Trying To Roll Coal And Was Not Arrested

berkeley

Jesus berkeleying Christ. Throw the book at him and the truck too for good measure

Guy was not arrested.  Why, I have no idea.  I hope he will be.  And seize his truck.  

In reply to spitfirebill :

Who's he related to? Needs to be charged.

I hope one of those Ironman athletes was well-enough to whip his ass.  But, road cyclists have a strange relationship with risk assessment.  I'm 100% for their right to ride on public streets but the choice to do so seems dubious.  

I run about 750 miles a year on greenways.  There are two crosswalks on my 5 mile circuit.  I've had two close calls in the last year crossing a two-lane road at a marked pedestrian crossing.  Can't imagine the amount of stupidity these iron-butt bikers see on their 50-mile road rides.

Cyclists have been the target of coal-rollers, as KPRC reports, and this incident is exactly what can happen in the aftermath of these stunts.

 

Geeze Jalopnik.  I can think of words like 'harassment", "menacing" or "assault" but the last word that would come to mind is "stunt". It makes it sound so casual.

We have one side of the story. While there is a good chance the truck driver was being a dick, do we know he was breaking the law?

I have personally had road cyclists attempt to swerve in front of me to stop me from passing them on two-lane roads with no other traffic in sight. As I was fully in the other lane, if I had hit him it would have been his fault. Instead of passing him with 12' of clearance, I passed him at less than 2' at 60 mph, and the bow wave coming off my enclosed trailer blew him off the road and into the ditch. 

Looks to be a dash camera in the windshield of the truck. I would be super interested in reviewing the footage. 

In reply to Toyman01 + Sized and :

No sir. This is the land of guilty until proven innocent.

Plus coal rollers are on GRM list of most wanted, right behind exhaust pops, so hes extra guilty.

Yeah, he "accidentally" hit six cyclists. I'm sure he's innocent as the driven snow. What it sounds like is that he was looking at his rear view mirror, enjoying the view of the rear group of cyclists choking on his fumes while he ran right into the first group. Not homicidal, but idiotic in a way that only a teenage boy can be. 

In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :

And you know this for a fact, how? I would love to know where you found that information so I can also make an informed decision.

Without the facts, you are making assumptions based on your prejudice and a poorly written article, instead of facts. 

chandler said:

Bicyclists seem to be ill mannered at "sharing" the road, I know there are other bicyclists on here but I see them veer in front of cars and generally make a nuisance of themselves. 

Many car enthusiasts are sometimes ill-mannered as well - including myself. I've ridden thousands of miles - off road. Just can't abide the difference  in mass between me and that distracted or aggressive guy in the car behind me. Yet some bikers act like knuckleheads despite the fact that they are the proverbial Chihuahua in a world of Mastifs.