Last summer, I visited Mexico with a few friends. One of those friends was the internationally famous musical sensation Joshua Schulman from the band “Thunderbang!“. Josh was the driver and I was primarily the passenger. I sat back, drank Pernod, and took in the beautiful scenery and heavy aromas. I was also in charge of the radio, and bribing officials when we encountered trouble. Bring lots of extra cash to Mexico.

Now, driving in Mexico City is insane. We rented a car, a Nissan Tsuru (although we were given a Chrysler Town & Country), to visit the Toltec ruins in Tula, and on the way back had the misfortune of getting lost north of Mexico City’s historic district, where, among other mistakes, we drove through a market and almost killed a number of extended families.

Josh was nice enough to highlight some of the choice bits of driving wisdom he learned from this harrowing experience in Mexico City:

I love internet radio, it has more selection than satellite radio and it’s free. Granted most of its crap, but still, even if only 10% of internet radio stations are any good, they still have satellite beat. And remember: free. So why don’t we have it in our cars? The technology obviously exists, I can surf the internet on my tiny little phone. And cheaper manufacturing costs means it’s economically feasible, so whats up?

Most new cars already have small computers and some level of connectivity, but they’re still not interactive the way personal computers are. Microsoft has apparently come out with a new service called “Microsoft Live Search for Devices”, which would allow automakers to install localized search services on in-car navigation systems.

LKQ Inc. (LKQX) is a company that manufactures and sells aftermarket auto parts. They manufacture the parts mostly in Taiwan and sell mainly to auto repair businesses, service shops, and dealerships in the United States and Canada where they have about 300 locations. They’re the dominant aftermarket parts sellers in most of the country, so chances are, when you go to a local repair shop and get a new aftermarket part, it came from LKQ.

When I worked at my family’s auto salvage and repair shop, I dealt with LKQ on a daily basis. We had 8+ acres of salvage cars and a huge warehouse of inexpensive used parts to sell, but it was still often times cheaper to buy new parts from LKQ for resale. They’re an extremely efficient company with a high quality, very low cost product.

Apparently those nimble sport cars that we love so much are costing us. Every year, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety compiles all the car accident and insurance data and comes up with lists of the vehicles that are most likely to cause the car insurance companies trouble (get into accidents, get stolen, etc).

The majority of the cars on the top 10 list are all hugely popular with the under 25 crowd. They’re also fast and small; combine that with “often times piloted by inexperienced drivers” and it really shouldn’t be any surprise.

So you’ve locked your keys in your car and you need to get to work, but you don’t feel like paying a locksmith $100 dollars to do it and you don’t feel like smashing your window and having to pay for a new one later. What do you do?

If you owned a slim jim, you could use that, but slim jim’s are unreliable at best. Most of the time they just damage the mechanisms inside your door. Here’s the way professional locksmiths do it.

Ninja rocks are small bits of the ceramic from spark plugs, used by crackheads and jerkoffs to break any of the tempered glass on a car (anything except the windshield). Usually the door glass.

All your average crackhead needs to do to make some ninja rocks is to find a spark plug and smash the ceramic insulator part into about 1/2 to 1/4 inch bits. Then they just need to throw them at a car door glass and steal the 2 dollars in quarters and red Phillies hat from off of my seat while I’m eating Pho in the Vietnamese place. I hate crackheads.

The Environmental minds over at EcoGeekare running a series to encourage drivers and commuters to serious consider a Carectomy; or to at least study whether a Carectomy could fit into a part of their lives. …Not exactly a topic car aficionado’s discuss easily. In their series they discuss some of the savings and Environmental impacts of leaving your vehicle behind and seeking out cleaner ways to get to where we need to go. Alternative transportation such as mass transit, walking and biking are offered up in place of the four-wheeled means by which most Americans commute from their non-urban homes to their places of employment. They also envision a reclaiming of the Urban city by homes and families as a means to reduce the necessity of commuting.

Like many Americans who live in rural areas or cities that do not qualify as metropolis’s there are some difficulties to taking on the Carectomy. A lack of sidewalks and safe biking roads can be treacherous for pedestrians, and for many smaller areas there is a complete lack of Mass Transit. However, with that said, a Carectomy should be of some consideration. Maybe not a complete carectomy, but a partial one by many would at least be a start.

So we are asking you…  Are their areas in your life, whether it is the work commute or a trip to the store, where cleaner, alternative transportation’s can replace the need for your car or SUV? What is the state of Mass Transit in your community? Could you survive a Carectomy? And at what point would the price of gas force upon you a partial Carectomy?

Source[EcoGeek]

Believe it or not, some people dread having to buy car tires. They stick with what’s on their car for as long as possible, even to the point of said tires going bald, endangering the lives of anyone in the vicinity. But for the uninitiated, or those who haven’t bought a tire since everything was sized in purely imperial measurements, buying a car tire of any kind, let alone the perfect one, can often be painful and confusing. That said, here’s a simple guide and some tips for buying the right car tires.

Tire Ratings System

The alphanumeric rating system of tires can be maddening, even for car enthusiasts. Throw in the fact that the letters for speed ratings are, as some might hope or expect, not in alphabetical order, and that each manufacturer trots out their “branded” technology, and you can safely say that even the informed amongst us can sometimes get confused on how to choose the right tire. But rest assured, you can still find the perfect tire for your vehicle without using the confusing alphanumeric tire rating system.