Who here is new to the forum?

Welcome everyone! We're glad to have you and we're looking forward to interacting with you here.

In reply to David S. Wallens I'm new on here so I'm not really sure if I'm in the right spot or not but I got an 07 Silverado replacing the engine with the motor from a 2012 Silverado With VVT and I don't have the option of Taking the computer and wiring harness out of the donor truck my trucks been down for quite a while and I just want to get it back on the road with the bare minimum parts list I plan on deleting the AFM but I believe that VVT is the only thing holdin me up can I use the cam from my old motor in the new one also my old mower has 243 heads and my new motor has 799's do I want to go ahead and clean up to 243 or does It not really matter? And can I get away with using the AFM lifters and still delete it?

I joined just yesterday after my dad has been on here for awhile.

Hi, my name is Chris.  I went to one of the early challenge events almost 20 years ago and felt I found the Mecca for grassroots builds. I've attended autocross and drag events on and off since then.

Hello GRM, the name's Eric. I have an '09 Hyundai Accent, which I just bought.  Reading some of the build threads here and on Hyundai-Forum inspired me to purchase one. Can't  beat cheap hatches with zippy handling and stout 4 bangers. I'm pretty certain what I want to do suspension wise, but I'm still contemplating whether or not I'm going to swap in a Beta or boost the Alpha. Either way, it seems like a decent DD. See everyone around!  

Good Evening All,

I'm new to this whole forum thing so I'm gonna jump straight to it. Toy man's wife told me about this website and told me to join. I have a 2006 mini Cooper S hatchback the belongs to my daughter and she ran off the road last night and messed up both of the passenger side rims. They are bent beyond repair. The car originally had 4x100 17" rims on it stock from the factory. I have found a set of 15 inch rims that are the same bolt pattern but my concern is will the 15 inch rim fit over the front brake calipers without rubbing? I see lots of people going from 15 inch rims up to 17 but nobody going the other way around. Any thoughts would be much appreciated I'm on the hook for this repair as this car belongs to my 17-year-old daughter so I need all the help I can get. Going with a 15 inch rim will also give her more sidewall which will help with potholes and such.  

FNG here.  Joined after reading through the Craigorypeck Twincharged Capri thread and the Vigo inputs to that.   Awesome information!

My main "project" now is my DD 95 Nissan D21 Hardbody.  Changes over the last 5 years have included an auto to 5-speed swap, VG33E out of an 02 Xterra, and most recently an M62 supercharger from an 01 Frontier running on a microsquirt.  More mods to go!

In reply to fj1289 :

Happy New Year and welcome! We're looking forward to hearing more about your project on our forums. Make sure to share photos, too! 

Howdy everybody!

I'm a science teacher from Texas and sponsor for the high school car club.  My students are excited about trying to take part in the $2000 Challenge.  I'm way out of date having sold my last street/strip car 25 years ago.  The local car scene is totally different and motorsports opportunity is thin on the ground.

On the reasons I agreed to take on the extra responsibility is to try and get my students involved in organized events vs getting into trouble (or worse) doing especially idiotic stuff on the street. 

It is obvious I am behind the curve and I'll need some help getting up to speed.  If I get annoying with the new guy questions, try remember my ultimate goal is helping kids.

In reply to LionPride :

Well jump right in.  Do you guys have a car yet?  Start a build thread either if you do or you don't.

In reply to LionPride :

What part of Texas are you in?

Should have known there was a thread for FNG's. I missed it...

New guy here. Live in NorCal.

Former club level motorcycle racer (FZR400, RS125). I bought a STi in 2005 and discovered car trackdays. Sold the STi in 2008 and picked up a 2007 C6 Z06 and continued doing trackdays.

Z06 mods: LG swaybars, and coilovers, Stoptech brakes on all four corners, and delrin suspension bushings (current project). The car has almost 125k miles at the moment.

I suppose that still counts as new. Doug here, and I'm a mechanical engineering student. working in alternate semesters and completing the entire 5-year programme. I enjoy everything old, especially the aesthetics of Japanese automobiles from the 1970s and 1980s. With no formal training and no family members who are mechanics, I'm slowly learning how to update and fix things. I adore this forum's originality.

Another new guy, chiming in. I'm almost two years into ownership of my '96 NA Miata and I have spent a lot of time reading through information in the forums here.  Such a fantastic resource and I'm psyched to dive in and formally join the community. I moved to CT in 2016 as a university piano technician and basically did nothing but work for a few years. When Covid hit, I was fortunate enough to have some time to do some sim racing and then decided I'd try out some lead-follow HPDE for real and see if I enjoyed it. Well, WonkoTheSane took me out in his Spec Miata at Thompson Speedway for my first ever time out on track and by turn 2 I knew I was addicted. Fast forward, I've now had one solid season in the Miata with NASA and MassTuning and I'm currently getting the car set up for more. I'll post a quick write up on the car build soon, though it's pretty standard stuff for the most part so far. Cheers - Rob

Hey all, brand shiny new member here

Haven't been involved in any legit cool car stuff in oh about 20 years but looking to rectify that in the very near term. Used to AX an '86 MR2 and then a '90 Miata, both great cars and a ton of fun. I'm hoping to find something solid, potentially b-spec and cheapish ;) to get back in the game. Looking at an R50 Mini currently but Fiats, Fits, Yaris, 2's are all in play.

The DD is a '17 Civic Sport Hatch with the silly paddles, why oh why did I do that to myself lol, also have a '17 Fiat 500 Pop Sport pkg/5spd which is my wife's DD these days.

Also have a Triumph Street Twin that is a wonderful bike but it may go to help fund the car project, we'll see.....

oh and I love GRM, was a subscriber back when and I have been grabbing a few issues lately so I am sure I will re-up shortly

In reply to Wattage :

Welcome to the GRM forums and welcome back to being back involved in "legit cool car stuff" (although it sounds like you have some fun DDs, too). We're looking forward to hearing about your journey back to our sport.

I'm new!  I just bought a 2006 Z06 ("Red Zed") from somebody on this forum. He suggested that I make an account here and post my life with his former car as a continuation of the story he's already shared.

I live in an inner Columbus, Ohio 'burb called Upper Arlington with my wife of almost 24 years and three teenage sons, all three of whom are stoked about Red Zed.  My youngest two children like cars.  I can tell my 16-year-old is fired up.  I've told him that he'd better like to work more than he does if he wants to have cars. Maybe the Vette will motivate him.

Since 2015, my toy has been a 2015 Ford Focus ST.  I sits in the garage for the winter and has never seen salt.  One Vette owner I've known for a long time referred to it as a "pregnant rollerskate." That pregnant rollerskate has made me happy, happy, and more happy for almost eight years now.  The Focus will be demoted to winter duty, and to daily duty on days when I don't want to drive the Vette.  Life's good.

I don't autocross and I've never tracked.  But I have friends who like to drive in Hocking Hills and run Ohio's Triple Nickel, and so do I.  Also, once per year I and several friends meet in Robbinsville, NC for four full days of driving Tail of the Dragon and surrounding roads.  Our tires come back worn and our smiles last the rest of the year until we get together there again.  This year's trip is an even bigger deaf for me because I went over the top of all the TotD friends with the Z06.  I surely won't know what to do with all that car, but I'll have fun figuring it out.

I'm new, been lurking. I grew up in the rural midwest, moved to the burbs, moved to the city, seen it all man. I'm a father, college student, seasonal worker, and possibly an inspiring teacher. May do grad school in the future.

I am not a physical racer by any stretch, besides some drag racing in my youth and a 1 day performance class at Road America a few years back.

I do sim race though. I have a t300 setup with a shifter, handbrake, and load cell pedals. I played much GT6, now GT sport, and Dirt Rally 2.0.

I've also rode motorcycles for a while. Had a ZR550 Kawi, and still own two non running bikes, one a TL1000S Suzuki and my personally restored yet seasonally failing 1986 Honda XL600R. (Been working on that one the past week)

I like to use this forum for tech info. I have an old 05 Corolla XRS that I've been piloting for many moons. I recently did an alignment tune thanks to info on here and it may have been the best mod I've ever done. The car is otherwise about 3 bolt ons and an ECU reflash away from stock.

I'd like to rally cross, as I am a big WRC and rally raid fan, but with kids, college, and the availability of events, I haven't done so yet. 

Long time subscriber, been a while since I've been around here though.

Used to have an unnatural fondness for old GM crapboxes but finally grew out of that...I think...

Doesn't mean I don't still love weird things. What sane person tracks/autocrosses one of these? Best lap of 1:30.6 at Putnam Park completely stock on the stock Pirelli PZeros. It's so hilariously fun when driven in anger and gets some attention at Cars & Coffee events. Needs lowered but I need to find different wheels, +35 offset on the wheels I have my all-seasons mounted on and they poke just a little bit. Maybe could get away with H&Rs but I'd rather have the Storm springs that play nice with the adjustable dampers. Over the past year of ownership it's gotten a K&N, Takeda turbo inlet upgrade, and a Turbosmart BOV because cool whooshy turbo noises.

Winter beater and probably new daily driver is an 04 Mitsu Eclipse 2.4 auto. Got it for stupid cheap and won't shed a tear if it got wadded up by some nutjob on my commute.

I've been reading the mag since it was Auto-X, created a forum account a while ago but it's been so long I had to do a new password.  By way of introduction, I ran a Gremlin in the Central Indiana Region SCCA autocross series, HS, and did well. That may date me. After that, lots of autocross in various cars, mostly 510 Datsuns, a first-gen Integra, a real Sentra SE-R, and a C5 Corvette. I'm personally responsible for a number of wadded-up Datsun 510 shells, then went off-road for a while but as the body (me) got beat up I moved away from that. Now I'm one of those guys that the state trooper just tells to slow down, 'cause "surely you're not young, dumb and full of...." .  As a certified old fart, I have my fair share of  sto-rees,  most of them at least based in fact as I can recall them, some maybe not so much, but one of the best ones just happened. 

It goes like this: Our sometimes neighbor has recently scored a 1984 Volvo 244 DL, about 250k miles, originally out of Alaska, bought by him in Colorado. He's the documented third owner. I had only heard about the car until today, when he had it trucked down here to the Austin area to get some work done on it, and maybe to show it to us, being that he knows my wife and me are gear head types. We met at a crawfish boil, and my dear wife said to Nathan, our 38 yr old neighbor, "why don't you drive our WRX and let Russ (me) drive your Volvo home".  Neighbor Nathan says "Okay", so I hand over the WRX keys and climb (fall?) into his actually very nice 244, and I do mean "fall". The driver's seat is a bit sacked. It starts fine, only a bit of oil wafts through the windows, and off I go, recalling what a 40 lb flywheel means when coming off the clutch. Jeez, a 4-spd with a broke overdrive. Cool. No tach. Even better. My first thought is "Damn, it's gutless like a 240D, but hey, what can go wrong?".  After a couple of long gentle constant radius curves (we're on some of the finest Taxas hill country roads to be found here) I get settled in and used to lots of body roll, no power and the  fine aroma of crankcase vapor, coupled with the biggest steering wheel this side of a Gillig bus ever to be used in a passenger car anywhere in the world. I start giggling.  Then I start finding out if it will slide. It won't, at least within  the limits of what I have to work with, but it's all about momentum and getting back to actually revelling in body roll and even pitch. And I'm just approaching the "recommended" speeds for corners. I'm still laughing. Then I see my WRX coming up behind me, finally.  So I start using what power (91 HP?) I have available and get some distance on my own car, my wife in the passenger seat coaching Nathan, and I laugh some more. Now I'm well over the numbers on those orange signs and the big old Volvo is much more composed than me. Me, I'm laughing my ass off. This is FUN.

Well, it was only a  fifteen minute drive or so, but the end result is that Neighbor Nathan got to experience something totally out of his realm (my WRX) and I got the best fifteen minutes of sheer driving joy since I quit driving a Lemons car. I honestly don't know who had more fun: me, hustling along in a meatball, or Nathan, experiencing a driver's car for the first time. His grin was possibly as big as mine, but for me it was going back  to things forgotten while he discovered something new. Who's the winner? Who cares. I think I proved to myself that while it may not be an absolute, it is immensely more fun to go fast (relatively speaking) in a slow car than to go slow in a fast car. Maybe that's why that even though I thoroughly enjoy driving the WRX, I still get a charge out of getting in the '91 Miata I refuse to sell just because I can go fast in it, a slow car. 

I've just re-joined. I was a member years ago but I can't remember which forum name I had used so here we go.  So now I'm back and I'll just use the name I have on other car forums.

I'm here to check out some other peoples projects and get a bit of mojo flowing. Hopefully get more enthused about cracking on with my own current project (Honda goldwing flat six into my hillman imp) which I have sort of stalled on while doing other summer things/life jobs.

I'm all about building things with minimal money expenditure and finding ways to make things work well without just throwing money around. One of my favourite places to visit is a car junkyard or wreckers yard looking for parts that might solve a problem.

I love reading a good, well written build thread - especially when its relaxed and comical. I'm always amazed by what some folk can build in their sheds using a few basic tools and a whole lot of enthusiasim.  So that's why I'm here. Entertainment :)

Alex

I've been purchasing GRM for decades at newsstands (yes, there used to be things called newsstands ) and then big-box bookstores.  Been lurking here for an embarrassingly long time.  
I had a very early subscription to the sister magazine, Classic Motorsports, and I evangelized that to a variety of people who became "true believers" in the content of CM, some of whom like my brother are still subscribing.

 
I daily-drove a 2000 Miata for 19 years and 194,000 until I and three other drivers were "introduced" to an inattentive driver which ended up totaling my car.  

I bought a 2019 GTI Rabbit Edition.  I always wanted a GTI, so opportunity "knocked" via the accident and I opened that door.  Sounds repetitive, but it really is a great all-arounder street car. 

But, it came from the dealer with a silly rabbit sticker on each side under the flitzer (I think that's what it's called).  I was going to remove them, but then my wife (of all people) mentioned in passing "don't Ferrari's have a horse there?"

Well, yeah they do.  So I left them on.  
 

And as Ferrari has its Cavallino Rampante (little prancing horse), so I have, if Google translate is to be trusted, Conolgio Rampante (prancing Rabbit).  Hence my name.

Besides, only the most ardent fans of Monty Python and The Holy Grail would recognize my initial choice:  Rabbit of Caerbannog.

Now that I've wasted more bandwidth than I've paid for, have a good one.

Hello All,

I only surveyed this forum a handful of times  until the other day. I spent a few hours in project section and saw everything from track builds to motorcycles to a step van camper and even a hydroplane boat restoration. I instantly thought - sign me up!  Aside from the variety of projects I refreshingly did not see a lot of ragging on people because their welds didn't look perfect etc... Ya'all seem like a pretty good group. 

I currently drag race an old gasser style vehicle (see below) and a drag bike,  but love all forms of motorsports. I will be competing in a drag and drive event this summer, and am very much looking fwd to that.  I am currently fighting the itch to start a new project, autocross seems to be on my mind lately. 

Hey everyone, I'm Ryan 

located in St. George UT USA 

I just picked up a 1963 Austin Healey Sprite mkii, aka a Spridget. Plan is a wide body road legal logbooked road racing car powered by a modern powertrain and driveline. 
 

I was pretty active in the early 2000's car scene and I lost my way, but I'm back! I'm glad to see car forums are still alive and kickin! 

I'm new here. Long time driving enthusiast in the USA, but with a distinctly non-American preference in terms of what I like in cars. Alpine; please bring the new A110 to NA! I strongly prefer so-called underpowered and very nimble sports-cars, with the weight as far back as I can get it. I am a long-term Autocross and Ice-X (that's what we tend to call Autocross on frozen lakes here in MI) driver and have spend the past 15 years doing so in a 1980 911 SC (not mine but I'm lucky enough to get to guest-drive it at an event at least once a season), a 1976 912E, and a 1968 VW Beetle. Until it simply had to see its last winter the 912E has also been my daily driver in all seasons and weather.

I have some questions about by new daily-driver, which is a compromise between what I really wanted as a new-year-round daily and what I can actually use. So instead of a Mazda Miata RF, since I can't justify yet another 2-person car, I'll be using my new-to-me 2017 Mini S Clubman All4 in Autocross and Ice-X here in Michigan, at least whenever one of my classics is not available or in extremely bad weather, and all winter, etc.

Which thread do you think is best for me to post in for questions about Autocross and the Mini?