I’ve ruined another perfectly practical car–and I’m grateful for it | Articles

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It’s been a while since I’ve truly ruined a perfectly good car, but I’m working on it! Solid work, sir! 

BTDT, have multiple T shirts.  At this point I’m very careful to NOT do that anymore, as I realize the amount of time I spend with the car on track is 1% of my driving time.  I’d rather swap brake pads in for a track day and then swap them back out afterwards so I don’t have to deal with the squealing and pick a more street friendly motor mount so the car doesn’t shake all around at idle.  When I did One Lap, I pulled all the decals off afterwards so it wasn’t a rolling billboard.  

It’s just more enjoyable that way on a car that sees 98-99% street use

My favorite transition is the one after that. When you take said vehicle that’s been ruined for everything that doesn’t entail driver engagement and start eliminating potential failure points. Hydraulic power steering? Gone. Ignition switch and tumbler, gone. Coolant temperature sensor and fan switch, standalone pre-wired flexcool setup. Dodgy 30 year old fuel pump, now a 340lhp setup with enough overhead to support E85 

My favourite story is the time when I somehow thought it was a good idea to take STR-prepped Miata to go pick up a girl for a first date — and this was happening maybe a week or 2 after I’ve installed high durometer polyurethane engine mounts on the car…

We kinda had to yell during our in-car conversations, but somehow I still managed to get a few more dates with the same girl afterwards — picking her up in my daily beater, of course…

If it bothered me at all I would just drive my Wife’s stock Honda.

Yeah, been there done that to a 2008 Subaru STi…….modded it to the point it was barely streetable. Loved that car. Driving it in traffic made you feel like predator looking for your next meal. Finding a smug exotic car driver and shutting them down was great fun.

I did that to the Rio…. and now I’m promising myself the Forte stays stock. hahahahahahahahaha as if that is even possible.