What kind of mileage do you get with those motorized sin machines, termis?
About ~40 mpg / 5.5L/100km for regular street duties. You can probably expect 40-50mpg for most bikes.
That said, I think full-on motorcycles are horrible when it comes to A-B transportation. You gotta unlock everything, gear up, deal with shitty weather, and plus it's more tiring commuting on motorcycles than on cars.
Hence, I only use mine for weekend/track riding and that's it.
Scooters are a bit more forgiving. I might buy one of those bigger scoots (400cc+) for basic A-B transportation once I move on down to a place where it's a bit more conducive to year-round riding.
What I really wish they had a lot more of vehicles like what I had in Japan in these shores -- city cars/kei cars. My Mitsubishi Minica had a 660cc (yeah, a 0.66 liter engine!) inline-triple. Rock-solid, and got me around to all the places I needed to, obviously got fantastic mileage, and I didn't have to deal with the hassles of motorcycle commuting pointed out above.
That's not quite as good as mileage as I hoped, but still way better than I get now. It'd be fun to ride on the sunny days, though it'd take forever to save enough gas to offset the initial cost, so I'm probably better off saving my pennies and dreaming.
Check out the overpriced Smart fourtwo for 1 liter and three cylinders of fury; available at a local dealer now!
The boring story of how I wrecked my '03 Honda Civic EX
Good to hear that nobody was seriously hurt, but the owner of the Jeep was one creepy bastard. What kind of sick f*ck gets a couple of teenagers liquored up and lets 'em drive? Expect to see the tool bag having a conversation with Chris Hansen sometime in the near future.
Anyway, nice new wheels. It's good to see Honda finally putting out some stylish cars again. They went through a serious ugly phase for a while there.
Civics are nice on the outside, but they're ugly on the inside. Whoever designed those dashes should be severely beaten with an overripe banana.
Red 92 Ford Ranger(from when Mazda made the engines for them), & it just rolled over 100,000 a month ago! I only drive it to & from work, & occasionally to pick up heavy stuff from Home Depot/Lowes. Oh yeah, manual transmission.
Not that it really matters, but those engines are 100% Ford. The four pot was a T88 originally developed for the Pinto, the 4.0 V6 was a Taunus engine originally from Germany, and the 3.0 V6 was a Vulcan motor from the Taurus. You're likely thinking of the manual tranny (M5OD), which indeed was (and still is) sourced from Mazda. It's too bad that Ford let the Ranger wither on the vine; it's still a pretty competent and reliable little truck, which is surprising considering how little development has gone into it over the last 25 years.