Apparently I can load a USB stick with mp3s and play them off that. Or just use an aux cable and my Google play subscription.
I barely need fm
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Casually HardcoreOnce an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered Userregular
edited May 2015
Dealing with sirius isn't so bad when you blocked all 900 phone numbers they use.
Satellite radio had its era, but now that the compress the music to the point of sounding like shit and I have so many tracks on my usb that I can listen it to a whole year without repeating a song satellite radio is dead.
Yeah, free up until they start sending you bills for those free three months. I somehow got signed up for their premium service or something. It was very cute that the name on my bills was owner owner. I tried to cancel my account online but that service was only available by calling them. Nope. Sorry Sirius you're not even going to get my name let alone a phone number or any kind of payment information from me.
I used Sirius once. The evening I bought my car and never again. The sound quality was so terrible I never turned it back on.
I'm sorry if I'm a bad person for doing this, but after reading and hearing multiple horror stories about how much of a pain Sirius's customer service is I had no intention of every paying them for a service that came free with my car.
On a lighter note, I've been having an issue with my exhaust banging on something on what I thought was the rear subframe or suspension. About a month ago I took it to a local independent Audi/Merc/VW/Porsche specialist to have them do my 50,000 mile inspection, oil change, and figure out what was causing the sound. They charged me $300 for the inspection, oil change, and fixing a leak on my downpipe. They did nothing about the issue I had described despite the fact they would have heard it when they took my car for a drive to heat cycle the exhaust paste. I was not exactly happy about that.
This week my car was due for the NYS inspection so I took it the garage down the street from where I work that I had been taking my previous car to for about 6 years. They took my car for a short drive up the street and figured out that the right rear backing plate had rotted out after a quick look under the car. I should have just gone to them in the first place because they've been fantastic to me for years, but I wanted to try a garage closer to home that specialized in my make of car. Live and learn I guess.
That said, I'm ridiculously happy that my car doesn't make an awful racket whenever I go over bumps and that it passed the state inspection. I was rather worried because it has a high flow aftermarket turboback and one of my side markers is out because the harness is corroded.
Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
edited May 2015
A Sirius trial was packaged with the GTI I bought last summer and I also had the deluge of mail and phone calls for a while. I think I managed to stop it, though, by eventually just telling the caller I was absolutely 100% not interested in the service. Requested removal from all calling and mailing lists etc. Maybe I just got lucky?
Oh and the sound quality was abysmal. I think I used it three times at most.
Tynnan on
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Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
Anybody in here keen on slamming and stretching a nice clean little VAG?
I cannot stand the slammed/more low/stanced nation stuff people do to GTI's and other VAG cars. Let's take a great handling car and ruin it solely for the sake of looks. While it may not be something I like they may also not like what I've done to my GTI, but we can both appreciate the time, effort, money, and passion we both share for our cars.
That license plate though. I'm both cringing and laughing.
Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
Yeah I'm not a fan of 'stancing' cars. Dropping it on bags is fine so you can park it on the grass, but stretching tyres is stupid, and "extreme fitment" is stupid.
I appreciate a good lowering, so long as it doesn't negatively impact performance. Filling out those wheel wells without causing any rubbing is 100% fine by me. People can do what they want with their cars, full stop, but it's not going to stop me from giving a little sideways frown when I see their now terrible handling car sitting on splayed out wheels.
In other news I'm looking at aftermarket exhausts for my Dart this morning. The website I'm using has a little guide for picking the right exhaust for your engine/rear bumper (turbo vs. N/A, integrated dual tips vs. no integrated tips). They offer 3" exhausts for the N/A engines, but they have a little disclaimer that's making me chuckle:
However, for those of you that have a 2.0, or 2.4, because your car is non turbo and it needs to have back pressure, we highly recommend you DO NOT get the 3 inch exhausts as those are designed for turbo use and your car will lose power, and be excessively loud. We list the 3 inch exhausts in the 2.0/2.4 sections because some of you guys insit on buying a 3 inch, however in dyno testing we have seen 3 inch exhausts lose power.
If you have sub'd to Drive+, the latest episode has a good section on what to think about when considering lowering your car.. and how much it's going to ruin the setup if all you do is put 2.5" shorter struts on it.
I like the engineering segments they've been doing, they're interesting.
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Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
"needs to have backpressure" is total and complete bullshit, by the way. After the collector, the perfect exhaust is open. The less "backpressure" (really exhaust flow restriction) the better, whether your car is n/a or forced induction.
"needs to have backpressure" is total and complete bullshit, by the way. After the collector, the perfect exhaust is open. The less "backpressure" (really exhaust flow restriction) the better, whether your car is n/a or forced induction.
I believe that "backpressure" is a bit of a misnomer here, I imagine they're talking about a negative impact on vacuum near the exhaust valves? At least, that's how it has been explained to me in the past. A properly designed exhaust will maintain a "vacuum" on the exhaust valves to properly evacuate the cylinders, while being as free flowing as possible beyond that.
I cannot stand the slammed/more low/stanced nation stuff people do to GTI's and other VAG cars. Let's take a great handling car and ruin it solely for the sake of looks. While it may not be something I like they may also not like what I've done to my GTI, but we can both appreciate the time, effort, money, and passion we both share for our cars.
The same thing is often said about stanced Subaru WRX variants. Often I want to grab the owner of a stanced STi and yell at them to buy a bog standard Impreza if their going to fuck with the dynamics that badly.
Then I just breath and try to let them enjoy their car how they want to.
The AWE Tuning exhaust I have on my GTI did their own internal dyno tests and found that they got better performance with a 2.5" design over a 3" design. They don't explain why but do provide a lot of dyno graphs to show the difference. Almost every other aftermarket exhaust for VW's is 3" other than Miltek which offers both 2.75" and 3". I'm curious as to the technical reasons why 2.5" is better, but maybe it's as simple as the extra half inch is just too much airflow.
I bought the AWE because of the downpipe which while costing a lot more than any other comes set up to prevent CEL's and how good is sounded. After around 8000 miles I'm still CEL free so their design definitely works. Granted they just build in the extensions onto the sensor ports, but it's piece of mind of having it come that way instead of having to buy a few different extensions, install them, and try them until the CEL goes away.
Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
A properly designed exhaust manifold (or "headers") will be designed so that as each pulse of exhaust enters the collector, it will be timed such that it's mass and momentum travelling into the collector creates a lower pressure zone in the other exhaust runners to ease the flow of the gas through those runners, or the "scavenging" effect. It's the same principle that makes carburettors, media blasters, and spray guns work, where the air flow past the metering orifice draws the material out and along with the flow. In this case the metering orifices are the other exhaust runners in the manifold, and the material is exhaust from the other cylinders.
The diameter of the exhaust runners dictates the velocity of the exhaust gas, and the length of the runner dictates at what engine RPM the scavenging effect will be most effective. The runners should ideally be about the exact volume of a cylinder's worth of hot exhaust gas, and they should all be as close to the exact same length as possible. Now, on a turbo engine the collector pretty much just pipes straight into the turbine housing inlet whether it's a split pulse design or not, the difference between housing types is a whole other thing that I am not going to go into here. On an n/a engine ideally the collector pipe would be about the volume of one pulse of exhaust gas, and then just be open to atmosphere. That's a tad noisy though and exhaust gases would find their way into the car interior, so we pipe the gas to the back of the car and quiet it down by jumbling up and smoothing out the pulsed flow in "mufflers".
On the other hand a lot of engines are designed around having some of the exhaust gasses from other cylinders vent into the one about to bang due to emissions and all sorts of whatnots, so freeing it up too much could easily throw ECU errors. A decent shop would have to insist on extensive ECU changes before selling too open an exhaust system.
Guess I'm the only person that really likes Sirius. Been a subscriber for like four years now, and listening to SiriusXM U is a much, much easier way to find out about new indie bands than trawling through the internet. Also a good option for those of us who don't have unlimited cell data and can't run a streaming service 24/7.
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Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
On the other hand a lot of engines are designed around having some of the exhaust gasses from other cylinders vent into the one about to bang due to emissions and all sorts of whatnots, so freeing it up too much could easily throw ECU errors. A decent shop would have to insist on extensive ECU changes before selling too open an exhaust system.
Without cam changes to make use of the race-spec manifold it would all be a waste of time anyway. However once you're past the collector any flow restriction hurts power, so as long as you don't end up with some horrible droning fartbox of an exhaust system, spend good money and get a nice free-flowing exhaust and you will pick up horsepower across the rev range.
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Forever Zefirocloaked in the midnight glory of an event horizonRegistered Userregular
My Mustang GT has that 3 month Sirius trial thing. I've listened to it some, I kind of dig the decades stations. Listening to 50s and 60s stuff that I don't really care to find myself but enjoy just cruising to is nice
But yeah they called and I shut them down hard and haven't heard from them since. I've received a few pieces of mail recently is all
XBL - Foreverender | 3DS FC - 1418 6696 1012 | Steam ID | LoL
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Raijin QuickfootI'm your Huckleberry YOU'RE NO DAISYRegistered User, ClubPAregular
oh btw guys, fixed my goddamn mirror for about a fifth of the price than it could have been (don't need to paint anything, for starters). But I learned a different lesson
... don't leave duct tape on your car for months and months
I'm gonna have to have a good go at that with some solvent on the weekend.
A properly designed exhaust manifold (or "headers") will be designed so that as each pulse of exhaust enters the collector, it will be timed such that it's mass and momentum travelling into the collector creates a lower pressure zone in the other exhaust runners to ease the flow of the gas through those runners, or the "scavenging" effect. It's the same principle that makes carburettors, media blasters, and spray guns work, where the air flow past the metering orifice draws the material out and along with the flow. In this case the metering orifices are the other exhaust runners in the manifold, and the material is exhaust from the other cylinders.
The diameter of the exhaust runners dictates the velocity of the exhaust gas, and the length of the runner dictates at what engine RPM the scavenging effect will be most effective. The runners should ideally be about the exact volume of a cylinder's worth of hot exhaust gas, and they should all be as close to the exact same length as possible. Now, on a turbo engine the collector pretty much just pipes straight into the turbine housing inlet whether it's a split pulse design or not, the difference between housing types is a whole other thing that I am not going to go into here. On an n/a engine ideally the collector pipe would be about the volume of one pulse of exhaust gas, and then just be open to atmosphere. That's a tad noisy though and exhaust gases would find their way into the car interior, so we pipe the gas to the back of the car and quiet it down by jumbling up and smoothing out the pulsed flow in "mufflers".
I disagree with that last bit. The length (and diameter) of pipe after the collector (secondary pipe of a 4-1) is also important to tuning. If you just cut the pipe off right after the collector, you move the secondary scavenging pulse resonant frequency way up in the rev range. Unless you're in a race car, that's not really a benefit. Tuning the length of the longer secondary pipe gets you a torque bump lower in the usable rev range. Some factory car exhausts now include resonator boxes in the secondary piping to tune the secondary pipe length rather than letting the length go all the way to the muffler.
"needs to have backpressure" is total and complete bullshit, by the way. After the collector, the perfect exhaust is open. The less "backpressure" (really exhaust flow restriction) the better, whether your car is n/a or forced induction.
Yes, "needs more backpressure" is bullshit, and it comes from a misunderstanding of why exhausts work. Smaller pipes are needed to keep the exhaust gas velocity high for good scavenging and thus good torque (while balancing that against the larger pipes needed for top end HP). That smaller pipes also create higher backpressure is a detrimental tradeoff in this equation. Basically, they are confusing an effect with the cause.
In a standard exhaust, transitioning from small diameter pipe to large diameter pipe creates a lower pressure pulse reflection that travels back up the primary pipes and pulls gas out of the cylinder (scavenging). On a turbo engine, the turbo acts like a wall to the exhaust pulses, typically right at the collector so scavenging doesn't really work. The pulse bounces off that wall and is instead reflected as a high pressure pulse back up the exhaust primaries essentially trying to push gas back into the cylinder (and out the intake). This is why turbo cams typically need less overlap to prevent this reversion.
Additionally, a turbo works better the greater the pressure differential is across the turbine. One way to increase this differential is to make the pressure on the outlet as low as possible and that means using a large diameter exit pipe. This large diameter is not a detriment like it is on a normally asperated exhaust because after the turbo there is no need to keep the gas velocity high for scavenging purposes. This is why turbo-back exhausts are typically a larger diameter than what is required on a normally aspirated car. The lower gas velocity and thus scavenging from the larger diameter pipe is why normally aspirated cars lose torque when fitted with the over-sized turbo exhaust.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
I always thought back pressure was used in the design of older carbs to increase the air to fuel ratio. Well, not so much designed as it was designed around. But, ideally back pressure can go fuck itself.
oh btw guys, fixed my goddamn mirror for about a fifth of the price than it could have been (don't need to paint anything, for starters). But I learned a different lesson
... don't leave duct tape on your car for months and months
I'm gonna have to have a good go at that with some solvent on the weekend.
Gaffer tape holds the universe together, but it doesn't half leave a mess when it lets go.
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BillyIdleWhat does "katana" mean?It means "Japanese sword."Registered Userregular
I saw something that literally surprised my Californian self the other day, and that was a relatively new Renault on the road. I had no idea they were still sold in the U.S.
I saw something that literally surprised my Californian self the other day, and that was a relatively new Renault on the road. I had no idea they were still sold in the U.S.
They're not?
Edit: Yeah, the last year they were sold here was 1989.
jgeis on
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BillyIdleWhat does "katana" mean?It means "Japanese sword."Registered Userregular
I saw something that literally surprised my Californian self the other day, and that was a relatively new Renault on the road. I had no idea they were still sold in the U.S.
They're not?
Edit: Yeah, the last year they were sold here was 1989.
It was a Renault Sandero, I guess it was driven over the border from South America?
I saw something that literally surprised my Californian self the other day, and that was a relatively new Renault on the road. I had no idea they were still sold in the U.S.
They're not?
Edit: Yeah, the last year they were sold here was 1989.
It was a Renault Sandero, I guess it was driven over the border from South America?
I would say that's Good News!
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LuvTheMonkeyHigh Sierra SerenadeRegistered Userregular
I saw something that literally surprised my Californian self the other day, and that was a relatively new Renault on the road. I had no idea they were still sold in the U.S.
They're not?
Edit: Yeah, the last year they were sold here was 1989.
It was a Renault Sandero, I guess it was driven over the border from South America?
I saw something that literally surprised my Californian self the other day, and that was a relatively new Renault on the road. I had no idea they were still sold in the U.S.
They're not?
Edit: Yeah, the last year they were sold here was 1989.
It was a Renault Sandero, I guess it was driven over the border from South America?
You mean....... the Dacia Sandero?
Could it be??
It was badged Renault, but I figure it's that one.
PSN: BillyIdle_
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LuvTheMonkeyHigh Sierra SerenadeRegistered Userregular
edited May 2015
Sorry it's probably an obscure Top Gear bit.
I mean, it's definitely a Top Gear bit, just confined to a few episodes.
A Sirius trial was packaged with the GTI I bought last summer and I also had the deluge of mail and phone calls for a while. I think I managed to stop it, though, by eventually just telling the caller I was absolutely 100% not interested in the service. Requested removal from all calling and mailing lists etc. Maybe I just got lucky?
Oh and the sound quality was abysmal. I think I used it three times at most.
I had a free three months, when I called to cancel it they gave me another free three months, and then at the end of that I received an e-mail saying they'd activated my account for a free month hoping I'd reconsider. The music does repeat way too often for me to ever want to pay for the service, and when I called to cancel they asked why. I said 'The music is too repetitive' to which they said 'Yeah but its repetitive on normal radio too'... So your sales pitch is 'well, we're not worse than a free service'
Also, on the discussion of SiriusXM radio, I've kept my subscription around just for Radio Classics. I love driving home at night while listening to old detective dramas and sci-fi radio shows.
Posts
I already do from when I had satellite radio 7 years ago.
Oh shit am I going to have to deal with this?
They are relentless
I listened to Metallica's One on it earlier today.
I can't see myself subscribing.
I barely need fm
Satellite radio had its era, but now that the compress the music to the point of sounding like shit and I have so many tracks on my usb that I can listen it to a whole year without repeating a song satellite radio is dead.
Yeah, free up until they start sending you bills for those free three months. I somehow got signed up for their premium service or something. It was very cute that the name on my bills was owner owner. I tried to cancel my account online but that service was only available by calling them. Nope. Sorry Sirius you're not even going to get my name let alone a phone number or any kind of payment information from me.
I used Sirius once. The evening I bought my car and never again. The sound quality was so terrible I never turned it back on.
I'm sorry if I'm a bad person for doing this, but after reading and hearing multiple horror stories about how much of a pain Sirius's customer service is I had no intention of every paying them for a service that came free with my car.
On a lighter note, I've been having an issue with my exhaust banging on something on what I thought was the rear subframe or suspension. About a month ago I took it to a local independent Audi/Merc/VW/Porsche specialist to have them do my 50,000 mile inspection, oil change, and figure out what was causing the sound. They charged me $300 for the inspection, oil change, and fixing a leak on my downpipe. They did nothing about the issue I had described despite the fact they would have heard it when they took my car for a drive to heat cycle the exhaust paste. I was not exactly happy about that.
This week my car was due for the NYS inspection so I took it the garage down the street from where I work that I had been taking my previous car to for about 6 years. They took my car for a short drive up the street and figured out that the right rear backing plate had rotted out after a quick look under the car. I should have just gone to them in the first place because they've been fantastic to me for years, but I wanted to try a garage closer to home that specialized in my make of car. Live and learn I guess.
That said, I'm ridiculously happy that my car doesn't make an awful racket whenever I go over bumps and that it passed the state inspection. I was rather worried because it has a high flow aftermarket turboback and one of my side markers is out because the harness is corroded.
Oh and the sound quality was abysmal. I think I used it three times at most.
...
That license plate though. I'm both cringing and laughing.
In other news I'm looking at aftermarket exhausts for my Dart this morning. The website I'm using has a little guide for picking the right exhaust for your engine/rear bumper (turbo vs. N/A, integrated dual tips vs. no integrated tips). They offer 3" exhausts for the N/A engines, but they have a little disclaimer that's making me chuckle:
I like the engineering segments they've been doing, they're interesting.
I believe that "backpressure" is a bit of a misnomer here, I imagine they're talking about a negative impact on vacuum near the exhaust valves? At least, that's how it has been explained to me in the past. A properly designed exhaust will maintain a "vacuum" on the exhaust valves to properly evacuate the cylinders, while being as free flowing as possible beyond that.
The same thing is often said about stanced Subaru WRX variants. Often I want to grab the owner of a stanced STi and yell at them to buy a bog standard Impreza if their going to fuck with the dynamics that badly.
Then I just breath and try to let them enjoy their car how they want to.
I never finish anyth
I bought the AWE because of the downpipe which while costing a lot more than any other comes set up to prevent CEL's and how good is sounded. After around 8000 miles I'm still CEL free so their design definitely works. Granted they just build in the extensions onto the sensor ports, but it's piece of mind of having it come that way instead of having to buy a few different extensions, install them, and try them until the CEL goes away.
http://www.awe-tuning.com/a-w-e-tuning-mk6-2-0t-exhaust
The diameter of the exhaust runners dictates the velocity of the exhaust gas, and the length of the runner dictates at what engine RPM the scavenging effect will be most effective. The runners should ideally be about the exact volume of a cylinder's worth of hot exhaust gas, and they should all be as close to the exact same length as possible. Now, on a turbo engine the collector pretty much just pipes straight into the turbine housing inlet whether it's a split pulse design or not, the difference between housing types is a whole other thing that I am not going to go into here. On an n/a engine ideally the collector pipe would be about the volume of one pulse of exhaust gas, and then just be open to atmosphere. That's a tad noisy though and exhaust gases would find their way into the car interior, so we pipe the gas to the back of the car and quiet it down by jumbling up and smoothing out the pulsed flow in "mufflers".
Without cam changes to make use of the race-spec manifold it would all be a waste of time anyway. However once you're past the collector any flow restriction hurts power, so as long as you don't end up with some horrible droning fartbox of an exhaust system, spend good money and get a nice free-flowing exhaust and you will pick up horsepower across the rev range.
But yeah they called and I shut them down hard and haven't heard from them since. I've received a few pieces of mail recently is all
XBL - Foreverender | 3DS FC - 1418 6696 1012 | Steam ID | LoL
That picture and text have nothing to do with each other.
... don't leave duct tape on your car for months and months
I'm gonna have to have a good go at that with some solvent on the weekend.
I disagree with that last bit. The length (and diameter) of pipe after the collector (secondary pipe of a 4-1) is also important to tuning. If you just cut the pipe off right after the collector, you move the secondary scavenging pulse resonant frequency way up in the rev range. Unless you're in a race car, that's not really a benefit. Tuning the length of the longer secondary pipe gets you a torque bump lower in the usable rev range. Some factory car exhausts now include resonator boxes in the secondary piping to tune the secondary pipe length rather than letting the length go all the way to the muffler.
Yes, "needs more backpressure" is bullshit, and it comes from a misunderstanding of why exhausts work. Smaller pipes are needed to keep the exhaust gas velocity high for good scavenging and thus good torque (while balancing that against the larger pipes needed for top end HP). That smaller pipes also create higher backpressure is a detrimental tradeoff in this equation. Basically, they are confusing an effect with the cause.
In a standard exhaust, transitioning from small diameter pipe to large diameter pipe creates a lower pressure pulse reflection that travels back up the primary pipes and pulls gas out of the cylinder (scavenging). On a turbo engine, the turbo acts like a wall to the exhaust pulses, typically right at the collector so scavenging doesn't really work. The pulse bounces off that wall and is instead reflected as a high pressure pulse back up the exhaust primaries essentially trying to push gas back into the cylinder (and out the intake). This is why turbo cams typically need less overlap to prevent this reversion.
Additionally, a turbo works better the greater the pressure differential is across the turbine. One way to increase this differential is to make the pressure on the outlet as low as possible and that means using a large diameter exit pipe. This large diameter is not a detriment like it is on a normally asperated exhaust because after the turbo there is no need to keep the gas velocity high for scavenging purposes. This is why turbo-back exhausts are typically a larger diameter than what is required on a normally aspirated car. The lower gas velocity and thus scavenging from the larger diameter pipe is why normally aspirated cars lose torque when fitted with the over-sized turbo exhaust.
Gaffer tape holds the universe together, but it doesn't half leave a mess when it lets go.
They're not?
Edit: Yeah, the last year they were sold here was 1989.
It was a Renault Sandero, I guess it was driven over the border from South America?
I would say that's Good News!
You mean....... the Dacia Sandero?
Could it be??
It was badged Renault, but I figure it's that one.
I mean, it's definitely a Top Gear bit, just confined to a few episodes.
I had a free three months, when I called to cancel it they gave me another free three months, and then at the end of that I received an e-mail saying they'd activated my account for a free month hoping I'd reconsider. The music does repeat way too often for me to ever want to pay for the service, and when I called to cancel they asked why. I said 'The music is too repetitive' to which they said 'Yeah but its repetitive on normal radio too'... So your sales pitch is 'well, we're not worse than a free service'
Also, on the discussion of SiriusXM radio, I've kept my subscription around just for Radio Classics. I love driving home at night while listening to old detective dramas and sci-fi radio shows.