A Challenge to the community Options

[boosted_K2]

Personally I have become increasingly agitated at the amount of people posting incorrect information and unbackable claims... its one thing to post to discuss it, but when you are posting "as fact" you need to make sure your facts are correct. In my honest to god opinion it would be beneficial for a good portion of the forum's members to stop posting for a while and go read a few automotive and/or engineering books or hell... even for the laziest of people, go over to howstuffworks.com or wikipedia.com and just start searching automotive related topics that you "THINK" you know about, they dumb it down so much anyone can understand it, but its technical enough to give you a much better understanding.... I challenge all of you to do it and come back with certifiable evidence to have intelligent conversations with each other, and hopefully make me feel like an idiot at some point and prove me wrong. I am not saying I know everything (hell, I don’t have a clue on a lot of things, I usually just say I don’t have a clue instead of making **** up), I'm not saying there aren’t any good or informative topics on here (skimming through a lot of the FI forum proves that), but just in general I feel this would be beneficial.

My other challenge is to understand WHY you are doing a certain modification. One thing that really bewilders me is suspension modification. Why do you spend money on body braces and sway bars and fender braces... how is that cost justified? If you are doing it for the look or the show of the part then fine I can’t have any disagreement with that. But IMO people need to start asking "what am I trying to accomplish with my setup" before they start part shopping. Save yourself the time and money by formulating a plan before attacking.

Ok, my rants over, thanks for reading.

[boosted_K2]

I was originally worried about posting this as I thought it would be taken the wrong way but man I am glad I put it up. It seems you guys really got the jist well as to what i am trying to put out there with a few little things that I can see I was not completely clear about and maybe posed in the wrong way.

From celicast3sgte:
"well its not like he is trying to say anyone here is stupid or should never post. its more of a think before you speak kind of thing. If you had an experience relating to the topic then post your experience and what you did to fix it. But what he is saying that if you do that don't preach that the way you solved it is THE way to solve it."

and from CelicaGT04:
“But i see no reason what so ever, that a person who is a member of this forum to not be able to express what they THINK would be correct. If they are wrong, who cares? Yeah maybe some people who are WELL educated can correct them, but this forum is for learnging purposes.”

since these are both commenting on the same topic I'll respond to both at once. The idea of my comment

"its one thing to post to discuss it, but when you are posting "as fact" you need to make sure your facts are correct. In my honest to god opinion it would be beneficial for a good portion of the forum's members to stop posting for a while and go read a few automotive and/or engineering books"

the situations I am eluding to aren't with people giving options or opinions to help people with issues, it's more or less with things being posted "as fact". For example; you need this, or you have to do this, or you are going to break this or the opposite (you cant, dont, or wont) or this is better than that etc... These types of things can be cleared up that they are infact incorrect by having a basic or mid level technical understanding of why and how something works or does what it does. My general gist of this is that if you dont have a decent understanding of how and why then why comment on something you dont know much more about than the person posing the question. That way, when people search for things, they don't find incorrect information. Hopefully that clears up the confusion about me telling people not to post, i just meant don't post answers if you don't really know enough about a subject... or if you want to be helpful help them look up the answer, its incredibly easy to find information on the internet but it's just as easy to find incorrect info... thats what im trying to get away from.



from purplegt4
"QUOTE(boosted_K2 @ Sep 25, 2006 - 2:35 PM) *

One thing that really bewilders me is suspension modification. Why do you spend money on body braces and sway bars and fender braces.


i have sway bars, damper kit, & nice street tires. i love twistys.

woot.gif for curvy roads!

and btw this is from YOUR profile boosted...

"am learning more and more about the sport everyday, if you are interested in getting into motorsports I am more than happy to point you in the right direction!""


honestly i love this post haha it gave me a big smile
what im getting at is theres a vast majority of people do these modifications for different reasons... most typically spirited street driving, for show, and the occasional autocrosser/open track racer. though it doesnt really partain to show (you gotta have all the goods to do well at a show so w/e) but for typical street driving how do you know what your car needs to perform better? a common misconception i am getting at is that all these parts are needed to make your car handle better. it just strikes me as crazy that people do all these crazy suspension mods and spend thousands of dollars, then dont even get their car aligned afterward, they just take it out for a spin around the block and comment how much better it feels... what is a "feel" anyway? does it turn in harder? hold a tighter radius around a turn? does it feel balanced? hows it "feel" is more than just a good or bad answer as everyone likes their car setup differently. It just seems so crazy that people would buy parts and equipment because its "good"... there needs to be something more qualitative than that. I think i am just rambling on this topic again so im done unless someone else wants to comment, or if you want to chat suspensions IM me, they are my new found fetish.... and also one of the things i know the least about haha


yes, i am learning more and more about the sport and the modification process each day. that profile was last updated well over a year ago but it still rings true, ive been fortunate enough through school, racing, and experience working on cars to have learned a tremendous ammount. Every day i feel like a total idiot when i get to class or talk to my friends who have graduated or chat with accomplished people in the automotive and racing field. I love it, and I love feeling dumb, it means I am still learning and it makes me incredibly humble, I learned that trying to fudge knowledge is no way to learn, admiting when you dont know something is the best and quickest way to find out about it.