What Did You Drive Before You Drove A MKVII Golf, GTI or R?

TheWombat said:

Everyone should learn to drive a slow car first; God knows, my first car, a 1976 Dodge Aspen, was slow enough. Builds character!

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BlueHen said:

I personally think everyone should have to drive an early 80s piece of Detroit quality with sagging doors, a leaking t-top, slipping auto transmission, rusting light blue paint, cracking vinyl interior, and a starter that had to be rocked from time to time to engage. My 81 Monte Carlo was a character builder for sure.

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steddy2112 said:

Last car I had before the current GTI was a 2008 Cobalt SS.

It had a bunch of things done to it I guess. CF hood and trunk. Spherical and sealed leading and trailing control arm bushings. Custom set of HyperCo springs. 2 piece floating front rotors. Trans mounts that rotated the engine to align the axles to eliminate wheel hop. Garret cored intercooler with anti heat coating. Charge pipes. Catless downpipe. ECM tuning with HPTuners. Set of custom made headlights with FX35 HID housings put into the OEM unit. OZ Ultraleggeras 18x8 +38 with Dunlop Direzza Star Specs 235/40/18. At one point it had an Exedy Hypersingle six-puck clutch in it and I had a pretty sweet GT2871R swap on it.

What had happened was this:
I used to help run a forum and we'd plan a trip to the Tail of the Dragon every year. Since we all know about DI and valve coking, once I increased crankcase pressure via the 2871R I really did a number to the intake valves. Coked them up to the point where it pretty much misfired driving down the highway under light load. Pressed for time(due to the annual trip to the Tail was about a week out) my options were to swap out the head or swap out to a lightly used engine and turbo for the same price. Deeming that 400 whp was a bit much for a FWD car and waaaay too much for how tight the TOTD was, going back to the stock turbo was the clear choice/compromise. It's real easy to get 320-350 whp out of the stock turbo on those cars. One of the issues with the 2009 MY LNF engines was a high porosity casting in the engine blocks. Less than 120 engine blocks were affected(out of the over 20,000 made that year). I knew it was a gamble buying an 09 engine but what were the odds I got a porous block?

1:1

Still really sad about this car. It is head and shoulders better than the current Golf platform in terms of performance. In terms of fit and finish and creature comfort the GTI/Golf is a miles better car though. So it's a trade of sorts, and leaves me looking for the performance I had. Oh and the stock seats in the Cobalt SS are probably the best I've ever sat in period. Brace your anus, big ass picture dump incoming:

Said seats:

Aforementioned HyperSingle:

+ big sticky tires(note: that is not myself in the picture. Confirmed not a doggo or over skinny white guy who wears way too short of shorts, that'd be my dad)

+420 ft-lbs at the crank and a no-shift(which was advertised with the car BTW, but of course on stock power. Made DSG-esque farts with a catted downpipe and fireballs catless)=

This is why the hypersingle came out btw. Also this is the reason we have dual mass flywheels on our cars. To keep this from happening. The no chatter and "ease of driving" are side effects.
The retrofits:

Floating rotors and the stock monoblocs. Oh and it's spring time here:

Riceboi before I got the hood painted:

Domoass:

Old guys from Canada are clinically insane:

Intercooler I mentioned before:

Manifold for the swap and the GT2871R(.064 a/r if anyone cares):

Post-swap pic. Nothing to really see:

And no moar ricer hood:

If you read all of this, thanks for taking the time to.

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The Fed said:

I can go back to a Flintstonemobile.

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BlueHen said:

I personally think everyone should have to drive an early 80s piece of Detroit quality with sagging doors, a leaking t-top, slipping auto transmission, rusting light blue paint, cracking vinyl interior, and a starter that had to be rocked from time to time to engage. My 81 Monte Carlo was a character builder for sure.

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steddy2112 said:

An early 90s DSM non-turbo(even worse the 92hp 1.8) is a real character builder. Preferably manual. So when the battery or starter dies you learn how to push start it.

Rear discs had a spider gear rather than a drum built into the discs like everything does today. That bitch would freeze every time it was cold out. When it snowed it meant you didn't need trays to go drifting, because your rear brakes were already fukt lol.

Honestly there's not much difference between 80s-mid 90s big three-mobiles.

Source material to back said observations:

and

They're like B-flick movies only instead of being so bad they're good it's you can't believe it was sold like this lol.

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ElectricEye said:

I agree.
Some people have no idea how bad cars were in those days.
Truly bad.

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PouncingPanzer said:

That must be a GM thing, while I was in high school I worked in a GM parts department and the LS2s had a batch like that with inconsistencies in block material quality and lots were cracking but most were coming in with "phantom oil leaks". The blocks were so porous that oil was actually seeping through the blocks. Crazy. One LS2 had only 1200 miles on it. Shiniest piece of scrap I've ever seen.

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PouncingPanzer said:

That Dakota looks solid for it's age. I had lots of Dakotas early in my driving life, 4 actually, loved only one though. I had a 2000 2WD with the first gen powertech 4.7L, and a 5spd. FUN TRUCK! Dropped a Dana 60 in the booty and it actually wasn't horrible in snow either. I broke the transmission tailstock off during a drag race(legal). I finished the race, but by the time I stopped the carnage to the cast aluminum housing was complete lol.

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steddy2112 said:

Lost foam casting was the issue with the Ecotecs. If you pour too fast when the foam off gases too quickly the aluminum gets displaced rather than uniform placement.

Pretty sure the LS-series has sand cast blocks though. You have to really try to fuck up sand casting lol. Sounds like a couple people had a case of the "fuck-its" that day.

Just blew ass that I had a 186 out of 20,000 chance(or 0.93%) to get one and I did.

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steddy2112 said:

The Dakota pictured actually blew out part of the cast iron block(318) and still drove for like another 15 miles with no oil and coolant. Shit when I junked it, the guy drove it onto the flatbed to take it away lol. I did like that truck. A lot actually. The S10 is a necessary evil in my life. It's been pretty reliable but holy shit does it not want to do anything but sit. Doesn't want to stop, go, turn, etc.

Still not as bad as the '97 F-150 I had. Never again.

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PouncingPanzer said:

Interesting. Very. I had an Ecotech in my 03 Cavy, loved it. A friend of mine and myself tried hydo-locking his on purpose(trans was FUBAR and he was done with it) and it took two tries lol. Hell of an engine.

LS is sand cast, which typically is bullet proof indeed. But, maybe they along with yours were Monday engine, gotta get the Tuesday or Wednesday ones Ha.

Yea, that is some bad luck man.

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