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Real Winter Driving

 
 


Posted by Drew458    United States   on 01/29/2009 at 06:11 PM   
 
  1. I just moved to Ontario, we went in to a shopping centre (they seem to be called malls here) and there was one of these in bright yellow on display inside, the company who own it were advertising adventure trips!!

    Posted by Chris Edwards    Canada   01/29/2009  at  11:07 PM  

  2. Oorah!

    Posted by cmblake6    United States   01/29/2009  at  11:56 PM  

  3. Schweet. I remember seeing some pictures of an old Land Rover that had a similar modification done to it. It had equilateral triangle-shaped tracks at all 4 corners, and it had 2 modes of operation. It would run like this Hummer or your average tank on most terrain, but when you were fording a river or driving through deep mud, you could lock the hubs, and all 4 tracks would rotate like paddles!

    Posted by Red Five    United States   01/30/2009  at  08:38 AM  

  4. You know, Оба́ма, Pelosi, and Reid will shit over this. cool smirk

    Posted by Macker    United States   01/30/2009  at  09:42 AM  

  5. Don’t pick on my ninnyvan - it sure beats the heck out of the old stationwagons I grew up with. Although being able to parallel park my mom’s Vistacruiser [http://www.vistacruiser.com/] did get me my drivers license and a tad bit of awe from the guy testing me. I think that we will buy one more - then try to find a sedan (although we always have to consider the wheelchair & other handicap equipment) that might work - but for now ninnyvan it will be. At Christmas we even were able to put a full mattress and box spring in the back - the ninnyvan rocks!

    Posted by wardmama4    United States   01/30/2009  at  10:36 AM  

  6. Speaking of handicap equipment, I saw a man, the other day, getting his power chair out of the back of his pickup (with cap) with some sort of winch hooked up to a swing-out crane arm. It was a VERY slick arrangement. Complete with a control box on a long cable so he could wind the cable up/down while sitting in the chair.

    Posted by KnightHawk67    United States   01/30/2009  at  10:55 AM  

  7. Slick it is KnightHawk but we could not even afford the ninnyvan when we bought it - can’t afford the mod to have a lift - and couldn’t afford a pick up with the winch. The Rehab hospital was po’d at us for just getting a standard ninnyvan. It did not even register on them that no one was going to pony up the funds for us to get a modified van - as we make too much money to qualify for all the nifty ‘aid’ programs out there. Heck even though he is on SSI - here in OH, one of the few states which separate SSI/Medicaid - we made $200./year more than the minimum for him to qualify for Medicaid (which for us would only help with dental/vision).

    I know that part of it is that we hate filling out the stupid forms, I resent having to produce every single bill I pay and having to waste an entire day in some moronic bureacrats office - but I truly do think part of it is that we’ve always had an income (no matter how pathetic) and that we are the wrong color - for most ‘programs’, oops bureacrats to give a damn.

    But not to worry - his electric wheelchair has been unhooked and in a closet for 3 years now (great use of the taxpayers $7,500) and he uses the regular wheelchair for aftershower only now. Which is exactly what the Shriner’s was pushing for, but the Rehab just couldn’t register, along with a lot of things, apparently. I would have to guess that is why they fell from #1 in the US (2002) to not even in the Top 25 (2008)!

    Posted by wardmama4    United States   01/30/2009  at  11:51 AM  

  8. Don’t get me wrong Wardmama, I think the minivan is a very practical vehicle. But, just like Volvos, they seem to be driven by overly cautious drivers a lot of the time. I don’t own a minivan, or a Volvo, so I can’t give a reason why this is so, but it could be a chicken-egg thing; a bit of self-reinforcing circularity. The end result as it effects me, a driver of a regular car, is that minivans are something of a road terror. It is my observation that their drivers pay less attention to the road and the traffic situation than drivers of other vehicles, that they are more likely to be talking on their cellphones or messing about with on-board entertainment systems, etc. I do not know the handling characteristics of these vehicles, but I have seen, countless times, that their drivers are very hesitant to turn corners; they always seem to slow down almost to a stop before turning, and usually take the corners very wide. Around town they are the slowest accelerating vehicles on the road; when a stoplight turns green I always have to wait several extra seconds for traffic to start moving if one of these is ahead of me. Yet on the highway they can never seem to go fast enough, and are far more prone to tailgating than even the SUVs, who make an art form of bumper-to-bumper vehicular intimidation in my state.

    So sure, I’d love to have a treaded monster like the one this post is about, just to lay some payback down. Back in the day when Chrysler first brought the mini to market they were terribly underpowered. This has not been the case for many years. Their chassis get better all the time, as do their suspensions and brakes. So it is not an unreasonable expectation on my part that these things are at least capable of getting out of their own way on the roads, and everyone else’s way as well. Yet they don’t. They don’t corner, they don’t accelerate, the drivers don’t pay attention, they don’t signal, they often don’t yield, and they don’t maintain speed around town. I swear half of them are bashed up in the rear due to difficult parking, and while the drivers are willing to live with the cosmetic damage they don’t seem to realize that their brake lights and turn signal bulbs are out because of that. So I resent them and label them ninivans because each one is more likely to be an obstacle or a danger to me than any other kind of vehicle on the road.

    Posted by Drew458    United States   01/30/2009  at  03:45 PM  

  9. Gunbroker had an auction on it, last week or so, of a HMMWV with a twin .50 BMG mount on the roof--and some 30,000 rounds of .50 BMG ammo.  The best guess is that the vehicle was made before 1985, and the twin .50s were too.  Apparently, it could be had on a C&R license.  I don’t know what it went for.  My remark was that I doubted that you’d ever get cut off in traffic.

    Posted by BlueStateSaint    United States   01/31/2009  at  06:28 AM  

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