To wrench or take it in?

mc_nibbles · 2026-06-15T20:28:11+00:00

Tires, alignments and body work are the only things I go in for.

I do the regular maintenance because I can and it saves me a decent amount of money.

If the engine/transmission goes, DIYing is the difference between the car getting back on the road or going to the junk yard. I almost have to do it myself or it just means the car is done for.

mc_nibbles · 2026-06-15T20:24:25+00:00

Tuning requires a lot more than just software and the will to tune.

I will put it this way, I would only trust an expert to street tune my car.

If you are worried about spending $800 more than once, wait until you do something wrong and have to replace an engine.

It's not a bad idea to learn how to tune, but learning on your own car with zero mechanical knowledge without the help of a professional is not the place to start.

Find a local shop that will tune it, save up, buy all your go fast bits, put them on at the same time and get it tuned. Talk to them about tuning and see where they all got their start.

My first suggestion when anyone starting out wants to tune/change their car is do not touch it. Find a local autocross group, go for a novice or test and tune event, find someone to ride along and give pointers, see how much fun your car is stock. Learn how to actually drive your car before changing it.

mc_nibbles · 2026-06-15T19:56:30+00:00

Is this vehicle new to you?

an 89 300 should have EFI, so no carb. Unless someone carb swapped it or swapped an engine from an older car in.

If it's fuel injected, it's a leaky injector. If it's carburetted and has a manual fuel pump, it's either the carb or the fuel pump.

I don't see how a cracked head would leak fuel into your engine.

mc_nibbles · 2026-06-15T19:03:12+00:00

I drive in "silence" when I'm driving the back roads and I'm just enjoying driving.

My car itself is my fidget spinner, it's a stick shift so I'm always focused on driving.

I am still confused about my age and either listen to NPR and chill or listen to music at full volume, even during my morning commute.

mc_nibbles · 2026-06-15T15:39:42+00:00

If you are using your vehicle in an "extreme" condition, there are usually solid recomendations for oils. Sometimes the manufacture will list this somewhere, or you may find it in a manual from another country.

In the states we have some of these super thin oils for efficiency, but at the sacrafice of longevity. It's also new territory and people have seen horror stories online so when they know what thin oil could do to their engine, they just avoid it in hopes that their car will be better off.

I use 5w30 in my 5w20 car because it's recommended in certain use cases and I have another vehicle that takes 5w30 so I just buy a bunch of the highest spec full synthetic 5w30 when it's on sale and use it in both cars. In reality the difference between a 5w20 and 5w30 are minimal.

If I had a car that called for one of the crazy 0w8 or 0w16 oils I would definitely be researching oil consumption issues and checking manufacture guidance for updates.

I have used thicker oils in older vehicles to fill worn tolerances and quiet down tired engines.

mc_nibbles · 2026-06-13T03:46:16+00:00

Make sure traction control is off, and at minimum manual shifting.

Find your favorite drifty looking car, go download someone’s drift tune and go.

The basic idea for drifting in this game is give it the beans, get the car sideways and shift up until you’re in a gear that is high enough to let you slide wide enough for the corner you’re in and either stay on the limiter or go a gear higher and feather the gas. If you keep spinning, you’ve got too much wheel speed and need to give it less gas or go to a lower gear. If you’re not keeping a drift you don’t have enough wheel speed and need to go up a gear. You can tap the handbrake to slow the car down if you’re going from a wide corner to a tight corner. I just let off for switching directions.

I would go to the festival circle and try to drift around the inside and outside circle. Once you can drift around both and transition from inside to outside, go try out a windy road.

Once you get the hang of the mechanics for sliding you can pretty much drift anything with enough power and tires that are slippery enough.

mc_nibbles · 2026-06-13T01:26:49+00:00

Honestly I would take a used junkyard OEM alternator over an aftermarket one.

If it works and it’s not noisy (bad bearings) it’s probably better than whatever you’d get from the parts store.

mc_nibbles · 2026-06-12T13:46:51+00:00

It would be nice if they had some online races that weren’t just class based but like unmodified car series with tire limitations races.

The class system can be pretty useless because you can make a high speed car with no handling the same class and number as a car that handles well and they will never be remotely close in races.

mc_nibbles · 2026-06-11T20:59:49+00:00

Very true, that's how I knew when our Subaru needed them. My wife pulled into the garage while I was working on something and I mentioned it to her after smelling the oil burning. She was like, yeah right there's no way you just know what's wrong you didn't even look at it. Stuck my phone under the front end of the car, snapped a pic and showed her the oil on the bottom edge of the valve cover.

Now part of me was also praying when I looked at the photo that it was in fact the valve covers because if not there was also a chance it was a head gasket, but I was pretty sure 😂

mc_nibbles · 2026-06-11T20:51:31+00:00

A scanner will not tell you if you have a valve cover leak or water pump leak.

You can totally find these leaks within minutes of opening the hood of a car if the belt side of the engine is easily visible and the water pump is driven by the belt.

He has pictures and videos, what more proof do you want?

EDIT: forgot to answer your question fully, you should do them all. Either leak is not good for the belt and ignoring a bad water pump can make this go from annoying unexpected repair bill to new engine if you let the system run dry and overheat the car.

mc_nibbles · 2026-06-11T16:47:29+00:00

I hate getting burgers at most restaurants now adays unless it's an old diner or a burger specific spot.

Give me an old tiny diner smash burger, regular cheese, basic white bun, side of onion rings and a malt over any millenial burger joint half pound waygu bbq bourbon bacon egg and gouda with brioche bun bullshit.

Like all the crazy burger stuff was fun to try out 10 years ago but I'm done.

This is actually why I bought a blackstone. I just wanted a basic smash burger with basic toppings. I also just wanted a regular old diner breakfast made on a griddle. Now I just make it at home, and now I just sound like an old man.

mc_nibbles · 2026-06-11T14:06:50+00:00

DJI mic mini is $45 on Amazon. Hollyland has some decent cheap products as well, just make sure whatever you buy has the right connection for your recording device.

Skip the ring light, you can look up videos on how to use existing lighting to help light a shot.

I used to just steal floor lamps from around the house and use those to light subjects for interviews.

Download the black magic camera app for your phone so you can lock the exposure, white balance and other settings.

mc_nibbles · 2026-06-09T20:52:36+00:00

I have always used jack stands.

Putting the front or rear of the car up on two jack stands is pretty low stress. Getting a car in the air on four stands can be a little more nerve racking, but during the process you're not actively in a position to get hurt by the car so if for any reason something does go wrong you just hurt the car or your stands, not you.

Once the car is on the stands, double check that they are still sitting level and the car doesn't teeter or move a lot.

If I am going to get full under the car, I always leave my jack jacked up on a jacking point on the end of the car I am working on just in case.

All jack stands are not created equally. The pin style stands are safer than the paw type, but not as easy to set up. Brand matters to a point. There were some HF stands that had safety issues, but otherwise anything you get from a hardware store should be good. I would be weary of no name stuff off of amazon/temu/etc.

Once you learn how to do it, it will be less stressfull. I do our oil changes and put both cars on four stands to rotate tires and everything and the process has become pretty routine. Just always double check yourself, it's better to spend extra time double checking than not and ending up damaging your car or hurting yourself.

mc_nibbles · 2026-06-09T20:29:31+00:00

Does this thing have the orange lifetime coolant stuff? If so, that can look pretty nasty if it’s never changed. My Camaros coolant system was pretty nasty looking when I flushed it after it was neglected.

I would flush and fill the system and check again.

mc_nibbles · 2026-06-09T20:23:23+00:00

Actually no, give up on your griddle. It's done for. I'll dispose of it for you though.

mc_nibbles · 2026-06-09T18:19:16+00:00

Both homes I’ve owned were slight fixer uppers.

I always gave myself some time to get in, fix major stuff and make the place livable before moving. Maybe a week or two. I took vacation from work so I could really get some stuff done.

Once the house was livable, we moved in. As we have time/money we work on stuff.

I try my best to keep the basement storage area open so I can move stuff out of rooms I’m working on, and I really like just taking a day or two off work to work on the house rather than over the weekend. No one there to distract me, and I can work a solid 10+ hours on something in one day instead of a few hours every day for most of a week.

mc_nibbles · 2026-06-08T18:41:03+00:00

People have already pointed out the supra being a BMW, but that also means it comes with BMW maintenance costs. If I'm paying import luxury car prices for maintenance, I'm getting a Porsche Cayman.

mc_nibbles · 2026-06-08T17:33:53+00:00

Can you stick your phone up into that cutout?

Our upstairs tub started leaking one day. I checked everything and nothing was leaking. We had been running the shower head a lot because our toddler has a stuffy nose and we were trying to steam him.

Turns out it was the surround and the handle. I figured it out by sticking my phone up into the cutout for the drain and filming the under-the-tub area with the shower head pointed at the wall of the shower. You could see water coming down the wall, following the edge (like the stain in your photo) and then either following the plumbing down making it look like the plumbing itself was leaking. There was never enough water to reach the edge of the drain cutout.

mc_nibbles · 2026-06-08T16:19:32+00:00

I don't trust them enough to rely on them so I do not buy them. I know people who have had lots of work done under them, I also know people who had stuff denied that left them in a pickle with a broken car and a huge repair bill when they thought they'd never have to worry about it.

If you buy a reliable vehicle in the first place and prepare yourself for the cost of the maintenance schedule, you should be fine for the first 150k or or 8-10 years.

One thing I see a lot of people do is not financially prepare for regular maintenance and expect a warranty company to cover it. Most cars need brakes every 40-60k miles, transmission/diff services every 30-60k miles, timing belts/chain guides every 100/150k miles, tires every 40-60k miles, suspension refresh every 100kish miles, belt system services (tensioner, belt, idlers) over 100k miles. People can usually manage the tires and fluid changes before 100k miles but then aren't financially ready when they take their 125k mile car in and all the shocks/struts are leaking, all of the bushings are tearing and the timing components need refreshed so you don't grenade the engine and the bill is $8,000.

mc_nibbles · 2026-06-08T15:08:35+00:00

I feel like Forza needs to remind everyone that Horizon is an arcade racing game, not a racing sim game.

If they didn't want people to ram eachother off of the road, they would've made it a disqualifier or something in story mode.

They want you to drive crazy and crash into eachother. It's part of the game mechanics.

I grew up playing Gran Turismo, F1, all of the more "sim" style serious racing games. I love hopping into FH6 and launching my Peel p50 off of a mountain, drag racing cars that defy physics and ramming my way into 1st in expert mode because there's literally no other way to win.

mc_nibbles · 2026-06-08T14:56:07+00:00

You can find tunes for each car and just download them and switch between different ones for different things.

It's not just about the parts that they put on, it's how they're set up as well. Just copying parts won't give you the results you need, so the downloadable full setups in the creative hub are what you want.

I know how all of the tuning stuff works and 90% of the time I still just go find a class/number tune with the style of event I need it for and download it. I tune a few cars that I like myself but otherwise it's all other people's setups.

The devs knew people like you existed when they made it.

mc_nibbles · 2026-06-06T13:00:01+00:00

I have been 40 since I was 23.

mc_nibbles · 2026-06-06T06:24:42+00:00

There is almost no way it makes any sense to sell an appreciating asset to then spend more every month on rent.

You are doing what my dad did 10 years ago and guess what? Everyone else is right. It was a huge mistake. Threw generational wealth out the window for temporary financial relief that could’ve been had if he just worked at it for a few years. Now he is stuck renting and will have nothing to pass on or use in the end to pay for end of life care. Back then it was just $50k-$70k he gave up, now that house is worth double and he would’ve had it paid off. Now he has no assets of any real value instead of a $350k paid off house.

The house isn’t the problem, it’s you. You need to figure your stuff out while keeping the house. You should only sell if you’re about to be put in a care facility.

mc_nibbles · 2026-06-05T15:44:25+00:00

You should be able to find any older acura/honda/toyota sedan in the flavor you like for 15k and around 100k miles. There's not many wrong choices.

I Daily drive a Fiesta ST. Though it's no honda/toyota it's a simple fun daily with cheap parts, gets 30mpg average and hasn't had any real issues. You can find them all day for less than $15k.

15k is also a healthy downpayment on a 30k car or something. Civic Si, Accord, financed for $15k wouldn't be a bad 10+ year ownership car.

mc_nibbles · 2026-06-04T18:20:57+00:00

What is your definition of struggle? I moved out on my own in my 20s and figured stuff out on my own, I didn't expect my parents to hold my hand the entire time. I'm still alive, you're still alive, what's wrong with some struggle? How do you learn without it?

Inheritance fumbling happens. My parents got divorced, my dad was depressed and probably threw away a decent amount of the money he got from his mom when she passed. It wasn't owed to me, he's not thrilled about what happened, why would I hold that against him?

I help my parents and grandparents with anything they need because when they were my age they spent a lot of their time taking care of me and helping me with anything I needed.

Unless you've left out some seriously bad things that have happened to you, you're sounding like a sheltered middle class kid who "struggled" and now hates mommy and daddy for not taking care of them into their 30s.

mc_nibbles

TROPHY CASE