New Years Eve.

[William]

Happy New Years Eve, everyone. Be safe tonight, and may 2026 be a good year for all.

Bill

[electra225]

Happy New Year everyone!

[Doug]

Happy new year to all.
Staying at home

[TC Chris]

Went to a dinner party tonight, then home to the cottage on the shore of Saginaw Bay, where it's about 14 deg. F. out. If I look out the front window, there's nothing until you reach Canada. Look out the back door and across the road and see a state wildlife refuge, part of the State Park. Nice place to be. On the way down today it was icy & snowy so I had my new truck in 4WD for the first extended period.

Chris Campbell

[William]

Chris, do you still have your Ranger?

Bill

[TC Chris]

Still have the trusty old Ranger. It's not worth much, and I really don't want to see my old friend flogged around town by some uncaring new owner. When the rear tires on the new truck broke loose going uphill on the big moraine yesterday, I just put it in 4WD. In the Ranger, I'd just ease off ever so slightly and seek that balance between too much torque and just enough to reach the top of the hill. I always got up the icy hills, although there were some close calls.

And then there's the allure of having a truck with three pedals. Recently, the editor of MLive wrote about attending a driver's school and listening to the race-driver instructor.

"And he was worried. Not about distracted driving, exactly. Not even about speed. He was worried that technology was making us worse drivers.

"Cars, he admitted, had never been safer. Steel-belted radials. Power steering. Anti-lock brakes. Traction control. All of it engineered to forgive our mistakes, smooth out our inputs – in short, to protect us from ourselves.

"But an important tradeoff had occurred.

"Each advance put another layer between the driver and the road, he argued. We were losing the feel of the car – how weight shifts in a turn, how tires communicate grip or the lack of it, how momentum works when you’re piloting 4,000 pounds of steel at highway speeds.

"Yes, we were safer – but also steadily less skilled. Less attentive. Less connected to the physics of what we were doing.

"Self-driving cars were barely a thing then, but he waved a hand at the future anyway. If we surrendered even more responsibility, he said, we wouldn’t just become worse drivers … we’d stop being drivers at all.

"His warning wasn’t just about cars. It was about what happens when technology takes over tasks we once did ourselves. I’ve been thinking about that lately as the holidays approach. "

He went on about how technology is a mixed bag. It was a thoughtful piece and I responded. Technology lets us respond! But the old Ranger may keep my driving skills honed.

Chris Campbell

[danrclem]

Happy New Year to all.

My son and daughter-in-law took us out to eat yesterday but we were home long before most people start celebrating.

[electra225]

There is a T-shirt vendor at a cruise-in I attend. He has a T-shirt that says on the front "Old car theft control" and on the back it has the shift pattern of a four-speed transmission. One good thing about owning a car with a Dynaflow is that, if someone steals it, then has to reverse out of a parking spot, they won't be able to find reverse. I work with a man in his 50's who has never driven a car with three-on-the tree........

Standard transmission, hydraulic power steering, carburetors, distributors, engine-driven cooling fans, two or three-speed automatic transmissions, whitewall tires, whitewall tire cleaner, power radio antenna, features that were considered "deluxe" back in the day no longer exist....

I read the other day where a substantial percentage of the new semi trucks built are equipped with automatic transmission. Manual transmissions are available, at least on Mack, but most fleets use automatics. I drove an old Autocar with a 13-speed Roadranger transmission that was so worn out, it was almost like an automatic. All I had to do was to push the lever into neutral and it would just kind of find the right gear on its own....

Chris, your trusty old Ranger has been a good friend and loyal servant. Being hesitant to trust it to someone without that sense of loyalty is understandable. I probably should sell my old Buick, but the ink on the title transfer wouldn't be dry before some kid tried to put "juice" on it and make it a hop car......

[Conelrad]

All but one of our vehicles have manuals. I refer to that as an Millennial anti-theft device.

D

[danrclem]

It's probably been over 20 years since I've driven a manual shift in a car or truck, but I think I could pick it up again pretty easy. I used to prefer a manual but with all of the stop and go traffic now I think I'm sold on an automatic. My old tractor does have a manual, and it's not synchronized either. It'll upshift good when I'm on the road but when I try to downshift it's a different story.

[TC Chris]

Last winter I had the Ranger at the dealership, one of several places that tried & failed to diagnose the brake problem. When I went to pick it up, the service manager called an employee to bring it up from the storage area. He looked at the employee and silently made a shifting motion with his right hand. The employee silently shook his head "no." I said, "Tell me where it is and I'll go get it."

By the way, the brake problem abruptly cured itself after three shops replaced parts and told me it was fixed but it wasn't. If it happens again, I'll probably replace the "combination valve," what I was calling the proportioning valve until YouTube corrected me. It not only proportions, F-R between discs and drums, but also builds in a front delay while the rear shoes are moving. Now that I have a new daily driver and can work on the Ranger at leisure, I could do it myself.

Chris Campbell