The Unofficial "Ask a Stupid Question" Thread

Cool! I'm out working on cars today, I made myself stop before I rigged the rube goldberg contraption I had together; it would likely have ended with me making a gas sprayer hose, lol. I don't need a tragic "Gas hose fight accident" replay, lol.

 
I was able to get the old battery out of lazarus today, and am working on humping the new battery down to it, so I can practice driving. :) I'm insured, at least!
 
I found the rest of the stuff I needed to finish the amp reinstall/ battery relocation for the red cougar.100A fuse holder,gold plated brass battery connectors,heavy gage junction blocks and ring terminals. I have new weather sealed feedthru's for the firewall. I'm still tempted to use the big orange shielded 350mcm cable for the relocation, but every time I look at it I end up giggling, lol. That 1 30 ft cable is over 100lbs, lol. 2 of those ran 120A of 3.3V power to a medical scanner, we stuffed in an MR.
 
Thanks!
I've I'd the right wire, I ran out of daylight. Tomorrow, I put the battery in this car, and pump the fuel out. I bought new gas cans just for old gas. I'll store it out by the lawnmower gas, that gets stolen every year, lol. I even have an empty can for fresh gas. % gallons should get me back to the gas station. Fuck; it occurs to me that I have a loose 7AH 12v battery, from a ups, it'll run 3-4A for an hour. It should run a fuel pump long enough to empty 10 gallons of gas.It was full when I left maryville with a dropped valve; I remember thinking, "I hope I make it home", about halfway. IDK what's in there, I'll find out tomorrow. I know it was getting really shitty mileage.:)
 
Ok, here's my sign...

Swapping out my center shift console in my 96' for a 97' with the cupholders. The one going in is grey, I have to paint it regardless. Black would be by far the easiest route to go. I would RATHER it matched the rest of the interior, and "lucky me" I have the one-year-only saddle colored interior plastics. (I actually really like the saddle) So, does anyone know where I can get the right color/shade paint? I have looked quite a bit but finding an exact match has proven to be problematic. I COULD just go black and be done with it.

Just thought I would see if anyone here has gone down the same path and found a close match OR if anyone has just gone black and was satisfied with how that looked.
 
+1 for SEM. the saddle you want probably won't be called saddle but I think they still offer samples and you can compare from those

Definitely with you on color matching, saddle with black bezels ruins the unique look of the dark dash contrast
 
It's finally warmed up. As far as Tan plastic spraypaint, desert tan seems to be available. If you want it lighter or darker, try different colors behind it. Black nd white will give it the most difference, so You can find it as camo paint
 
It takes forever to pump out 15 year old,uh, "Gas", lol. If someone used this in a lawnmower, it would not run. It's damn near diesel. I think I'm going to have to pull the filter. I'm glad I'm going to replace the pump. After I wash the bs in the tank thru this stock one, it's toast.
 
Grog6 said:
It's finally warmed up. As far as Tan plastic spraypaint, desert tan seems to be available. If you want it lighter or darker, try different colors behind it. Black nd white will give it the most difference, so You can find it as camo paint
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Desert tan would be way way way way too light, even if you put it over black(in my experience most rattlecan paints are totally opaque after about 3 coats anyway). Saddle on the dash and console is more like chocolate brown than tan.

1707168369004.png

Plus while you might get lucky and find a color match from a Krylon or rustoelum hardware store rattlecan, you probably won't find the right sheen, nothing looks worse in an interior than a random glossy piece. SEM is pretty dead on with the factory satin texture, it applies nicer too and doesn't take forever to dry like enamels
 
Grog6 said:
It takes forever to pump out 15 year old,uh, "Gas", lol. If someone used this in a lawnmower, it would not run. It's damn near diesel. I think I'm going to have to pull the filter. I'm glad I'm going to replace the pump. After I wash the bs in the tank thru this stock one, it's toast.
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I pumped out my tank to replace the sending unit, I got 5 gallons out briskly with the 255lph walbro lol
 
theterminator93 said:
The factory pump is what, 90 lph? 3x the fuel and 1/3 the flow = 9x the time. :eek:
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Its even lower than that, according to the part number from Walbro its only 70lph. I'm thinking the 90lph one might be used in SCs.
 
10 gallons is only 40 liters, roughly. I pumped 4 hours, and there's still a shitload of gas in it. Another funding, all of my batteries are bad, even the one I bought optimistically last year.: rolleyes:
 
Probably low voltage on the battery then, if it's taking that long. Or the lines are so full of varnish and crud that the flow is severely restricted... :leftright:
 
Side note...

I love this "Stupid Question" thread. Always interesting stuff here!

I'm just wondering from the perspective of site traffic and site growth, plus making it easier to find information later down the road, would it be better if we start creating more original threads again?

Just putting it out there for the Admins and Moderators to consider. I certainly have planted my share of questions into this thread, so I'd have to get used to any change.

What I love about this thread is that we're pretty much all on it. It's more like a chat room at this point.
 
I used a 12 7ah gel cell, that didn't help. Tomorrow, I charge it for a few hours, get lazarus started, and get it to az, and get a freaking new battery, with at least a 5 year warranty!
 
The average person probably wouldn't even notice that shifter console being black. Still, I want it as close as possible to original. I have come to accept that there is no logical way to go on audio except aftermarket. Not much I can do about that as there is practically nothing OEM available and what IS available (NOS, refurbs, et...) I would need to take out a 2nd mortgage, for something of inferior quality IMO.. So that is one item removed from stock. I guess even changing to the cup holder piece would be counted as NOT STOCK.

One additional question. Texas demands plates both front and back. I have the plate holder for the front already just debating whether to stay with the original black OR going white. I like the monochrome look especially with the white opal exterior but I just have never seen anything else. Had this issue with my G8 as well and installed a hide away mounting. Mine was manual but the make them motorized as well. So... stock black, white, or hideaway?
 
xlitefighter said:
The average person probably wouldn't even notice that shifter console being black.
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That's true...but the average non-car enthusiast wouldn't notice a lot of things, and we still do them.

My vote is: take your time, find the proper paint, and do it right when you're ready. Otherwise it'll forever bother you.

The Saddle interior is really unique. It's worth figuring this out. And...once you identify the perfect paint match, you can tell the other Saddle owners.
 
xlitefighter said:
So... stock black, white, or hideaway?
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I hate when plates and brackets are drilled through the plastic. Get something that mounts to metal and stick it through through the lower grille opening to mount the plate.

<-- yes I see the irony in my avatar and at some point I'm getting it repaired.

I once fabricated a bracket for a VW from some metal L-brackets you can get at a hardware store. Mounted the bracket to the bumper support through a grille opening and didn't touch the plastic.

When I bought my Fusion off the end of my company car lease, it already had the front plate bracket mounted since it was a fleet sale. I ordered the European plate bracket for the Mondeo just to cover the holes up and run something that looked like it belong there.

2DFD9BD5-1549-4C65-870E-1B3916582E55.jpeg
 
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1997ThunderbirdLXV6 said:
Side note...

I love this "Stupid Question" thread. Always interesting stuff here!

I'm just wondering from the perspective of site traffic and site growth, plus making it easier to find information later down the road, would it be better if we start creating more original threads again?

Just putting it out there for the Admins and Moderators to consider. I certainly have planted my share of questions into this thread, so I'd have to get used to any change.

What I love about this thread is that we're pretty much all on it. It's more like a chat room at this point.
Click to expand...

I've been on the fence on that as well, most of the questions in this topic aren't stupid and they're mostly car related, so maybe that would be better for search engine traffic to spin them to our fairly unpopulated pertinent sections.

I kind of took the initial spirit of this thread as a literal grab bag of general questions you really don't know, sort of like ELI5 on reddit, like "why is the moon made of cheese???" or something in the spirit of the Meme thread. It seemed to organically evolve into a chatbox thread substitute, which we closed after getting an actual chatbox, maybe reopen that one as a slower paced forum chat thread and have this be to the spirit of the name?

@Trunk Monkey, @theterminator93, everyone else thoughts?
 
xlitefighter said:
One additional question. Texas demands plates both front and back. I have the plate holder for the front already just debating whether to stay with the original black OR going white. I like the monochrome look especially with the white opal exterior but I just have never seen anything else. Had this issue with my G8 as well and installed a hide away mounting. Mine was manual but the make them motorized as well. So... stock black, white, or hideaway?
Click to expand...

I painted my frame body color but after getting reissued new plates I like the plate without any frame at all.

The new plates are made out of aluminum so they were easy to bend to the curve of the bumper cover.

IMG_3212.jpeg
 
Me? Think?

Now that's a stupid question! And we're back on topic, just like that! :biggrin:





If we find actual tech, I do think it would make more sense to put them into dedicated threads in the appropriate section.
 
XR7-4.6 said:
I've been on the fence on that as well, most of the questions in this topic aren't stupid and they're mostly car related, so maybe that would be better for search engine traffic to spin them to our fairly unpopulated pertinent sections.

I kind of took the initial spirit of this thread as a literal grab bag of general questions you really don't know, sort of like ELI5 on reddit, like "why is the moon made of cheese???" or something in the spirit of the Meme thread. It seemed to organically evolve into a chatbox thread substitute, which we closed after getting an actual chatbox, maybe reopen that one as a slower paced forum chat thread and have this be to the spirit of the name?

@Trunk Monkey, @theterminator93, everyone else thoughts?
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I agree. This thread made a lot of sense on the old site where we had literal decades of threads and posts and having a place to ask a simple car-related question (like the one I asked in the first post) was easier than searching for and bumping a 20 year old thread. Same for the ones I started on VWvortex for a couple models.

Ideally someone would ask a question and then someone else chimes in with the quick answer or a link to a thread with the long answer.

On this new site, it could really go either way. Building the subforums up without just cloning our old threads from the old site would be nice.

I will say though that I rarely check the chatbox. When I do, there's so many new messages that the topic has changed thirty times since the last time I looked.
 
Derphound01 said:
I will say though that I rarely check the chatbox. When I do, there's so many new messages that the topic has changed thirty times since the last time I looked.
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That's what I was kind of thinking, those of us who use the chatbox I think like using the real time chatbox format, but that format probably isn't for everyone and for the community topics like this (and the former chatbox thread)are a good place to hang in the forum format for everyone else.
 
Case in point: the Interior section currently has 26 topics, 17 of which started by me.

If any new member comes on the site, who doesn't know anything about BirdCats, and they go to that section, they'll think we're all a bunch of wood trim, chrome, and suede loving dandies.


I mean it wouldn't bother me... 8-)
 
XR7-4.6 said:
That's what I was kind of thinking, those of us who use the chatbox I think like using the real time chatbox format, but that format probably isn't for everyone and for the community topics like this (and the former chatbox thread)are a good place to hang in the forum format for everyone else.
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I don't have all day to sit in a chat room but like the sharing of random facts, opinions, and opinions masquerading as facts.

If people want to talk about tbirds, go right ahead. That's not why I migrated from the old forum
 
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