I have never said to myself “Gee, those taillight covers look cool.”

Image stolen from truckaccessorizer.com

I seem to have acquired an undeserved label as the Fiero guy. A few years ago, I bought an '84 Fiero to try to save on fuel costs. The '84 quickly revealed itself to be a total POS, so I bought an '87 off of a friend that was in better condition, but had a slush box. Over the next several months, I very slowly worked to swap the 4-speed from the '84 into the '87, and before I ever finished the swap, I found a good deal on an '86 GT. This is how I came to own at one time 3 Fieros.

The '84 and 87 combined to become my LeMons racer, and I drove the '86 daily for the past year or so.

There have been occasions of other Fiero owners stopping by my house just because I have Fieros parked out front, even though I'm currently down to just one and a half of the little buggers.

To cap it off, any time a friend, family member, or co-worker comes across a Fiero for sale, or just sees one on the road, they feel it necessary to tell me about it. There was a Fiero for sale street-side about 3 miles from my house last fall, and 3 separate people saw fit to tell me about it. (one of them even told me twice, since he couldn't remember if he had told me yet).

Over the years, I have developed an appreciation for my GT, and find myself defending the Fiero to many a disparager. So, as much as I feel the label of "Fiero guy" is undeserved, I concede that I may have inadvertently stepped into the role.

I just picked up my “new” daily driver (’05 GTO) a week ago, and the biggest annoyance is the stock shifter. All of the forums say that the GMM Ripshift is the way to go, so I’ll probably be buying one of those in the near future.

The next biggest niggle is the pedal spacing. I haven’t yet found a way to contort my foot to heel-and-toe the thing, but in fairness it’s really a point and shoot instrument of blunt force, so maybe it just wasn’t meant for heel-and-toeing.

That almost makes me want one now. But they really did themselves a disservice by showing the Z32 in the promo. It really shows just how much better the 300ZX has aged relative to the 3000GT.

I have vivid memories of the Conquest sitting at the dealership when my mom was picking up her brand new Reliant. My passion for the car has waned slightly, not in small part to the drifting crowd molesting most remaining examples. That waning enthusiasm relative to my initial lust originally had me contemplating the Conquest as my Chariots of fire choice. But I couldn’t do it. Even though I no longer desire to own a Conquest, I couldn’t disparage a car that got so much right, so I went with its successor. Even the addition of AWD was little consolation when the primary architecture was of a FWD vehicle. (The same reason that I prefer the WRX to the EVO)

The Mitsubishi 3000GT/Dodge Stealth twins weren’t so much Chariots of Fire as they were The Crying Game. Even though they were a marked improvement over the Daytona as Dodge’s competitor to the Supra, 300ZX, RX7, Camaro/Firebird, they were hiding a secret shame. It looked the part, until you opened the hood and saw a transverse engine. Don’t misunderstand me. It’s a fine car, and they certainly have a significant fan base, but for the intended market segment, wrong-wheel-drive is just unacceptable to me.
It would be nice to carry the The Crying Game analogy further, and say that my appreciation for the car was enough for me to overlook what’s hiding under the hood, but if there is rubber to be laid, I don’t want it done by a transverstite.

Proper attire is required to ride in my van. Bikinis and/or hot pants are expressly prohibited. Please remove them before entering.

"A pride of lions and the Ford LTD ad campaign: Name two things that benefit from a slow gnus day."

Then you've never been to Disney's Animal Kingdom to see the "Tree of Life."

The crossed helical gears in a Torsen T2 have some marked similarities to a worm drive, and most explanations of Torsen functionality use worm gears as an analog. By varying the helix angles of the crossed gears, you can approach what would be a worm gear like system, but it is still subject to being a ratio of the lesser loaded wheel (i.e. you can make it 10:1, but 10x0 is still 0).

Of course, the drag on the unloaded wheel will never be truly zero, due to frictional losses, so with a high enough torque multiplier ratio, it is possible to generate relatively significant amounts of torque at the loaded wheel.

There is a limit to this, where the frictional coefficient will not allow any differentiation due to excessive normal forces on the gear teeth.

Your Lego model intrigues me, and it would have been cool to see it in action, and to see how well it acted as a differential. (The better a differential is at applying torque to an unloaded wheel generally has a direct counter effect on how well it differentiates rotational speed)

An open diff is actually ideal up to the point where the limit of traction is reached on one wheel.