13,000$Can. plug and play, no noise, 200 sold in the U.S.A.

[krash]

Sounds great! where do I load my JTM45?

http://www.burley.com/products/adventure/flatbed.cfm

[Structo]

. When I see a full size truck or SUV behind me on the highway, I do whatever I can to get out of that lane. I am dang sure they can't stop fast enough to keep from running over me if I have to stop in a hurry to avoid an accident.

Oh, was that you?

[UR12]

I drive a Miata. I have driven sports cars most of my life. No, not American muscle cars or oversized fast cars, but real sports cars that weigh less than 2500 lb and are meant to go, stop and turn fast.

Real sports cars don't have roll up windows I love my 2400lb 168hp Mini Cooper S. 38 mpg highway, There is also no better fun than taking my 356 Porsche out on some winding country roads and sticking your foot in it (no roll up windows in the Porsche) I'm with ya on this one Krash!

[Structo]

I think if I was in a crash I would rather be sitting in my 3 ton truck than in a sardine can like a Miata. That is if you weren't thrown from it in the first place.
At the time my truck was built it had one of the highest safety ratings.

I understand peoples hate towards bigger vehicles ( I rode motorcycles for years) but once you have driven one and notice how people don't pull shit on you when driving crowded lanes you would enjoy it.
Plus I don't think I could fit a thousand pounds of tools in a sports car.

[skyboltone]

I drive a Miata. I have driven sports cars most of my life. No, not American muscle cars or oversized fast cars, but real sports cars that weigh less than 2500 lb and are meant to go, stop and turn fast.

Real sports cars don't have roll up windows I love my 2400lb 168hp Mini Cooper S. 38 mpg highway, There is also no better fun than taking my 356 Porsche out on some winding country roads and sticking your foot in it (no roll up windows in the Porsche) I'm with ya on this one Krash!

Hey Dana, didn't the original '67 911S weigh less than 2000lb and have about 190hp?

[UR12]

Plus I don't think I could fit a thousand pounds of tools in a sports car.

They put about a ton of gold in the back of a Mini in the movie "The Itallian Job" and that was on TV so it has to be real All that gold squashed the tires on the armored truck but not the Mini.

What pisses me off about full sized trucks are the ones that people jack up and put bigfoot tires on raising their bumpers about 4 ft off the ground. Talk about unsafe. There should be a law against that. Oh wait there is. Wonder why that isn't being enforced? Most are "pavement princeses" that will never be taken off road, but just jacked up to look cool and kill people.

You should live here in KY or WV where we have coal trucks hauling coal from the mines. Everyone of them are over weight, bad brakes and doing 200mph to make as many runs from the mine to the processing plant and back as they can in one day. They get paid by the ton delivered. I don't care if you are in a Hummer if you are in an accident with one you're going to be a spot on the pavement.

[Structo]

I'd have to agree about the jacked up trucks. I think it has something to do with manhood but I'm not sure....
Not to mention raising the center of gravity above a stable design.
And the guys that think just because they have a 4x4 they can whiz by you on ice and snow......they might go faster but they can't stop any better than anybody else.

[UR12]

Hey Dana, didn't the original '67 911S weigh less than 2000lb and have about 190hp?

If I remember correctly it was about 2400 lbs and the first year for the Fuchs. Wonder if Andy was building amps back then or just Porsche wheels

"Just about a year after showing it in prototype form, Porsche put the 911 Targa into production in the fall of '66 as a 1967 model. Using a roll bar under a stainless steel cover, the Targa featured a removable, foldable top from that bar forward to the windshield header and a soft canvas cover with a flexible plastic window that could be unzipped from the car and removed. The first Targas were miserable; the tops leaked and the rear windows were distorted when new and quickly yellowed after being exposed to the sun. But the Targa would improve.

For enthusiasts, even more exciting news for '67 came with the introduction of the 911S — for Super — available as both a coupe and a Targa. Porsche threw some spark curve and timing changes into the regular 911 engine, bumped the compression ratio up from 9.0 to 1 to 9.8 to 1 and the result was an output jump to 180 horsepower in the 911S. The S also came with a new set of gears in the five-speed transmission; a set of gorgeous, unmistakably Porsche, Fuchs five-spoke alloy wheels; a rear anti-sway bar; and ventilated disc brakes. There was also, in a fit of inelegant engineering, a 24.2-pound weight fitted to the front of the S in an attempt to help the car's weight balance.

Worth a mention were 20 911 "R" models built during the '67 model year with stripped interiors (no carpet, for instance), thin-skinned aluminum doors, fiberglass deck lids, taillights swiped from a Fiat, oversize carbs, a magnesium engine case, dual spark plug cylinder heads and much more. With about 210 horsepower on board, these race-ready, lightweight rockets were the start of the 911 racing legend."

[CaseyJones]

Awww, I'm a latecomer to this discussion so the link to the vehicle in question doesn't work.

I'll toss in my two cents worth on the big car small car discussion:

Driving a large vehicle because it's "safe" is stupid foolish obsolete Cold War logic. During the Cold War we tried to out build the Russians on nuclear weapons, in a way it worked because the cost eventually bankrupted the Soviet Union. Afghanistan was the straw that broke the camel's back in the Cold War and guess where we are right now but that's a different discussion.

Cold War logic stipulates that you pop a nuke on my head and I'll pop a nuke on yours. The way it was supposed to play out is that if the Soviets launched we'd launch, the idea was to get all our missiles in the air before our capability to launch was eliminated. Of course we're talking total and complete annihilation, something on the order of 10x overkill so some "clever" people started thinkin' up pleasant little concepts like "limited" nuclear war, neutron bombs and things like that.

How, pray tell does that relate? Simple: Bashing one SUV into another is the equivalent of a nuclear exchange, you'd be smashing one very heavy vehicle into another. Even if you bash an SUV into an immovable object like a tree or a somewhat movable object like a guard rail all that weight carries inertia. It's not gonna be pretty.

Handling-wise your large vehicle is similar to herding a cow with a stick compared to maybe pickin' up and tossin' a chicken. At least I can dodge on my motorcycle which has minimum protection, no seat belt and no air bags. If there's a way out a little over a foot wide I can avoid most problems. The same concept applies to sports cars and other small and light vehicles, usually they're much more maneuverable and stop in a much shorter distance than larger vehicles especially on marginal surfaces.

I'm far more interested in how well I can avoid a crash than how well my vehicle performs in a crash.

When I ride I'm proactive rather than reactive and I apply the same concepts when I'm behind the wheel. On bike I'm constantly overtaking traffic, that reduces the chance of some idiot pushin' me around from behind. If there's someone at a stop sign or a light and they're still moving I cover the brakes, if they're not stopped there's a chance they'll pull out in front of me. I look at the driver's side front wheel not the driver, many drivers consider it o.k. to pull out in front of you if you make eye contact.

You want the right of way? FINE, you got it. If you're a jerk about it we'll discuss it later...

[krash]

right on caseyjones. and dana.

like i said i like my odds of not getting into a wreck in my sports car much better than your odds of avoiding injury in an inevitable wreck in your behemoth vehicle.

[skyboltone]

This way you just die happy

[IMG:800:578]http://i29.tinypic.com/2zqctn8.jpg[/img]

[CaseyJones]

This way you just die happy

Good God, y'all!

Now THAT's a Knuckle for ya!

At first glance it looks like it has no front brake but at second glance it has one of those fancy rim brakes like the newer Buells.

I don't know if I'd want to ride it across India much less ride it in the rain, no front fender on that one. Do sacred cows excrete sacred cow shit?!

[skyboltone]

This way you just die happy

Good God, y'all!

Now THAT's a Knuckle for ya!

At first glance it looks like it has no front brake but at second glance it has one of those fancy rim brakes like the newer Buells.

I don't know if I'd want to ride it across India much less ride it in the rain, no front fender on that one. Do sacred cows excrete sacred cow shit?!

I don't want to misrepresent that I own that thing, but I did show the little missus the pitchur and told her I was gonna start putting the parts together for something similar. Ain't that oil tank a scream? Anyway, she says " What's that gonna cost? and I said I might get it done for about 30. "She says thirty what?" We haven't had a single argument about amps or guitars since.........but bike wise all I got so far is a woody. Oh well, in my mispent youth I had a bunch of them. Back in the olden days. Before disk brakes. When the only way out was to swerve or get'r down somehow. I got the road scars to proove it.

[CaseyJones]

I don't want to misrepresent that I own that thing, but I did show the little missus the pitchur and told her I was gonna start putting the parts together for something similar. Ain't that oil tank a scream? Anyway, she says " What's that gonna cost? and I said I might get it done for about 30. "She says thirty what?" We haven't had a single argument about amps or guitars since...

If you substituted sweat equity for cash you could build something like it for under $10k. Pay someone to build it and the price goes right back up. It depends on whether you absolutely HAD to have a Knuckle with a girder or you could make do with a Shovel and a hydraulic fork. That's always been my approach, work with the parts I have and spend no more than I have to. By the time I get done fabricating every piece of sheetmetal on the bike and making a couple bushels of custom doo-dads no one pays much attention to my relatively mundane wheels for instance. Billet wheels are played out, anyway!

If you really wanted to replicate those wheels and maybe go one-up I'd start with a couple late '70s Honda Comstars. Comstars were those stupid wheels with the machined rim and the stamped spokes riveted on. The "spokes" would loosen up and put you on yer head! Anyway all you want is the outer rim. It looks like our maroon Knuckle has two front rims, the rear is pretty tall and skinny. Nothing would prevent you from hacking up two Gold Wing rear wheels for instance. Turn up a custom hub on the lathe and hog out some custom billet spokes on the mill. Bolt it all up and throw an allen wrench in your tool bag in case you didn't use enough Loctite.

I was lookin' at an ashtray screwed to the wall of a bank the other day. It's brushed aluminum with a die formed lid. An hour of welding, a couple hours of filing and polishing and there's your oil tank. Got a crowbar?!

[skyboltone]

I don't want to misrepresent that I own that thing, but I did show the little missus the pitchur and told her I was gonna start putting the parts together for something similar. Ain't that oil tank a scream? Anyway, she says " What's that gonna cost? and I said I might get it done for about 30. "She says thirty what?" We haven't had a single argument about amps or guitars since...

If you substituted sweat equity for cash you could build something like it for under $10k. Pay someone to build it and the price goes right back up. It depends on whether you absolutely HAD to have a Knuckle with a girder or you could make do with a Shovel and a hydraulic fork. That's always been my approach, work with the parts I have spend no more than I have to. By the time I get done fabricating every piece of sheetmetal on the bike and making a couple bushels of custom doo-dads no one pays much attention to my relatively mundane wheels for instance. Billet wheels are played out, anyway!

I was lookin' at an ashtray screwed to the wall of a bank the other day. It's brushed aluminum with a die formed lid. An hour of welding, a couple hours of filing and polishing and there's your oil tank. Got a crowbar?!

Yeah I hear you. Really I would go the Paughco route but I do love that girder. There's a lot of 80" motors around too. They just don't sound right. Anyway, it's all back burner right now, but the mind never stops ya know?