Technobabble – Rotard Heaven, Germany’s Museum Autovision
Technobabble Rotard Heaven by Dave Coleman If you find yourself in Germany with a day to kill, you could do worse than Googling “rotary musem Germany.” I did just that, and…
Posts by author
Dave Coleman
101 posts
Project MiataBusa – Part 1: What The Hell Are We Thinking?
Project Miatabusa – Part 1: What The Hell Are We Thinking? by Dave Coleman With all due respect to the rest of the project car stable, this is destined to be the…
Wrench Tips #13 – Painting Behind Brake Lines
Wrench Tips – Tip #13: Painting around brake lines I used to think masking brake lines with tape was the only way to paint around them. This inevitably sucks not only…
Wrench Tips #12 – Spark Plug Hose
Wrench Tips – Tip #12: Spark Plug Hose I’m sure this has happened to all of you. You know when you dig a classic Miata show car out of the…
Wrench Tips #11 – Welding Plastic
Wrench Tips – Tip #11: Welding – It's Not Just For Metal This tip comes courtesy of MotoIQ nerd and fellow LeMons racer John Walker. I haven't actually tried this yet,…
FrankenMiata – Handling with a Hacksaw
Best-Engineered Cars of Lemons – The FrankenMiata Part III: Making it handle with a hacksaw. by Dave Coleman The FrankenMiata is a handling machine. Sure, it slices through fields of $500…
Wrench Tips #10 – Bust a (lug) Nut
Wrench Tips – Tip #10: Bust a Nut How many times have you jacked up the front of you car to work on the suspension only to realize you forgot…
Wrench Tips – #9 Wrench in Color
Wrench Tips – Tip #9: Color Code Your Tools Grabbing a tool from your toolbox (or off the floor) is kind of like shifting gears when you drive. It's a…
Wrench Tips #8 – The 1-Page Service Manual
Wrench Tips Tip #8: The 1-Page Service Manual Oops, 2 days late… What a hangover! Wrench time is for working, not for reading. Nothing breaks your mechanical rhythm like wasting…
Wrench Tips #7 – The Box-End Breaker Bar
Wrench Tips Tip #7: The Box-End Breaker Bar This tip is from MotoIQ reader Jeremy Fiel, though I, too have used this simple trick many times. If you're using a…
Wrench Tips Geek Hub
Wrench Tips #1: Take a Picture… Wrench Tips #2: Living Without Indoor Plumbing Wrench Tips #3: Loop Those Hoses! Wrench Tips #4: Sort Your Bolt Bucket. …
Best Engineered Lemons #3 – The Angry Hamster PART II
The Best-Engineered Cars of LeMons #3 Part II: the Angry Hamster Gets an Engine Last week, we introduced you to the Angry Hamster, and showed you how much cutting and…
Wrench Tips #6 – Re-Using Copper Washers
Wrench Tips Tip #6: Re-Using Copper Washers Its not that I'm cheap… Ok, let me re-phrase that. Its not JUST that I'm cheap, it's that I'm lazy and don't plan well.…
Technobabble – Irvine Syndrome
Technobabble: Irvine Syndrome How the Irvine company, the Emperor of Japan, and your bumpstop thumping street machine blew up my girlfriend’s Sil80. by Dave Coleman Irvine, California is a master-planned…
Wrench Tips #5 – Retracting Pistons the Easy Way
Wrench Tips Tip #5: Retracting Pistons the Easy Way Changing brake pads is 15 minutes of simpleness. Step1: Pull the old pads out. Step 2: Push the pistons back in. Step…
Best Engineered Lemons #3 – The Angry Hamster Z600
The Best-Engineered Cars of LeMons #3 – the Angry Hamster Honda Z600 What you are about to see is a ridiculous feat of LeMons engineering. At 1400 lbs and 116…
Wrench Tips #4 – Sort Your Bolt Bucket
Wrench tips Tip #4: Sort Your Bolt Bucket Bolts shall not be thrown away. This mandate is programmed into every car guy's DNA. Sadly, most car guys still practice a Neanderthal…
The Best Engineered Lemons – #2 the MetroGnome
The Best-Engineered Cars of Lemons #2 – the MetroGnome You think the big story here is sportbike power in a Geo Metro, but you're wrong. The big story is the…
Wrench Tips #1 – Take a Picture
We turn a lot of wrenches at MotoIQ, and between the bloody knuckles, we've actually learned a thing or two. Going forward, we'll be posting a helpful tip each Friday…
Wrench Tips #2 – Wash Your Hands
Wrench tips Tip #2: Poor Man's Indoor Plumbing Got a tiny garage without plumbing? Me too. While they aren't quite GoJo, baby wipes are designed to clean up some seriously nasty…
Wrench Tips #3 – Loop Your Hoses
Wrench tips Tip #3: Loop Those Hoses! If you're working on a good, old-fashioned return-line fuel system, there's a really easy trick to contain flammable spillage and protect the fuel…
Frankenmiata – Turbocharging
FrankenMiata – Turbocharging for $95.55 By Dave Coleman We didn't need power. We proved that to ourselves by leading more than 6 hours of a LeMons race with our 77…
The FrankenMiata Geek Hub
The Frankenmiata's construction was so complex, so long, and such a horrendous pain in the ass, a single story couldn't contain it. Click through the four chapters to gradually expose…
Best-Engineered Cars of LeMons
The Best-Engineered Cars of LeMons By Dave Coleman The 24 Hours of LeMons is recognized as many things. Incredibly stupid. Safer than OxyContin. A flagrant waste of natural resources.…
FrankenMiata: Part I – Freebuilding the Engine
FrankenMiata: Part I – Freebuilding the engine By Dave Coleman There is a moment of magic at the end of every engine build. It's that mysterious and suspenseful instant when a…
Inside the 800-hp Olsbergs Fiestas – update 1
Inside the 800-hp Olsbergs Fiestas The general chronology goes something like this: Sweden, sometime in 2008: Four-time Swedish rally champion Andreas Ericsson runs a successful team of Ford Fiestas…
Technobabble: Electric Cars and Turbos (how MIT is Going to Save The World)
Technobabble: Electric Cars & Turbos (How MIT is Going to Save the Wolrd) by Dave Coleman A few months ago, a short press release fluttered across the internet. It was…
Project Rally Beater – Return to Glory
Return to Glroy… or to rallying an old piece of crap, at least. By Dave Coleman Photography by E. John Thawley III and Yujiro Otsuki It only took one turn…
Project Silvia – How To Polish Your Tube
Project Nissan S13 Silvia: How to Polish Your Tube (or What to do When Your JIC Struts Dry Up) by Dave Coleman Engineering a car is a series of compromises.…
Project Silvia – The Official Guide to Not Screwing Up Your Wheel Bearings Like I Did
Project Silvia – The official guide to not screwing up your wheel bearings like I did… by Dave Coleman The first one died after an ordinary day at the Streets…
Project Silvia – Once We Went Black, There Was No Going Back
Project Silvia got its iconic flat-black paint job out of necessity. Before we shook the can, Project Silvia was a sad sight. The right rear fender was rendered in grey…
Project Silvia – After the Honeymoon
Building a project car is one thing, actually living with it is something altogether different. Construction is the realization of a dream, no matter how long, slow, painful, and expensive…