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SchizophrenicMC

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  1. SchizophrenicMC
    My dad's end-of-production SL2 weighs 2300lbs dripping wet. It's no wonder I had so much fun tossing it around in high school. Imagine if you had modern efficient engines in older, lightweight cars. That SL2 gets 38mpg all day. The Fusion is supposed to get 36 (it never does) but imagine what that engine would do to that little Saturn. And so it's a bit odd, how at-odds the NHTSA and EPA are with each other. The heavier cars get for safety, the worse they do at emissions and fuel economy. For that matter, the heavier a car is, the more energy it has to absorb in a collision, and thus the stronger it needs to be. (And therefore heavier) It's the rocket equation all over again. I also don't believe a new Civic is less than 3,000lbs. Even my 240SX tips the scales pretty close to the 3k mark. And the new Miata may be a lightweight, but it does offend my styling sensibilities. The little Roadster has always been conservatively styled and non-provocative. A car you drive because it makes you feel good, regardless of how dopey and happy it looks. Now it just looks too snakey and aggressive and wrong. The Miata is not an angry car. Why make it look like one? A view to a kill, indeed. 2edgy4me. I like the J30 Maxima. Its shape tells you exactly what it is: a full-size sedan, with 4 doors, ample legroom, and enough power to get up and go. It doesn't have AUTISTIC HEADLIGHTS or some squished grille. There's no "taut" body lines and it doesn't have "muscular haunches". It's not a very pretty or striking car, but it's not ugly either, and it's not very easy to date. Did it come from the 80s? Early 90s? Late 90s? 2007? And what happened to bumpers? I suppose I'm rambling. I've had a couple beers in me, and I just don't like the car industry anymore. It's not the same. It's all too different and wrong.
  2. SchizophrenicMC
    I refer back to my comments about Billy.
  3. SchizophrenicMC
    Extended family bought me some goodies: Do you wanna build a gunpla? Come on, let's nip some sprues So I put the S. Matsunaga Zaku on the action base. I dunno, I kinda preferred it on its feet. I'll probably change the pose. I leaned it forward because all of my action bases are leaning back, but really it would just look better in a retro-thrust-aiming-its-bazooka pose. By the by, these Tamiya sprue nippers are no joke. By far, best nippers I've ever used. 10/10 would recommend.
  4. SchizophrenicMC
    The C7 has even more brakes than the C6, and can go even longer without fade. But that all is to be expected from a sports car. My 240SX wouldn't take that kind of abuse, without serious modification. The C6 Z06 has some pretty crazy brakes, too. A pad for each caliper piston. Crazy. But it removes heat better, cuts fade. It's not just American cars. It's all cars. Fat people are certainly one cause, but the biggest contributors are pedestrian and rollover safety requirements. All these airbags add a little weight, sure, but the real reason cars are so big and heavy is because pedestrian safety requires airspace between engine and hood, which pushes the hoodline up. That pushes the seat height up, which pushes the roofline up, and the car is stretched and widened to maintain proportion, and 17" or 18" wheels are put on to complete the look. And then, rollover safety rules require really hefty pillars to support the weight of the car, four times over. (Tesla bragging about that was stupid; it's a federal requirement for ALL cars sold in the US) And then, they stay that way because fat Americans fit into the cars better now. My grandma's 2013 Fusion is a midsize sedan,but it has more rear legroom than my 1997 Grand Cherokee- a full-size SUV back then. It's also wider and longer. Actually, all of this is true of the Nissan GT-R. It's wider, longer, and heavier than my first Grand. Hell, the GT-R is only 10" shorter than me. And that's a supercar? I miss when cars were a reasonable size, with reasonable styling. It's all gone ridiculous. Too many lines, too "muscular haunches". It's not a horse, it's a car. I'm not looking to make steaks, I'm looking to drive. I've decided to continue with my turbo build. I'm gonna make more power than the new 4-cylinder Mustang, and weigh at least 500lb less.
  5. SchizophrenicMC
    I think the takeaway here is that the kit itself is Perfect Grade, but the LED set is markedly less so. I think this PG could legitimately get away without any paint at all, and still look pro-quality, but to get the best results, you'll have to modify the LED setup a bit. Not too big a deal. In other news, I got an Eclipse HP-CS for Christmas! ...is what I'd like to say. While somebody did buy me one, they didn't realize it'd be shipping from Japan via SAL, so it's going to be a very long time before I see it. Which kind of blows, because a good airbrush is the one thing that's been keeping me from building more of my gunpla. And now I can't even buy one for myself, because I know I'm getting one.
  6. SchizophrenicMC
    So are you saying the Corvette C7 has no track ability, and that all its vents are useless? Or that people buy Ferraris simply because they're capable, and not just as status items? I guess, all I'm getting at is, it's not just that kind of trend. There are a good number of cars that have these kinds of aero touches, because above 120mph, aero is a big damn deal, and close to 200mph, aero will literally make or break your car. (Which is why the Challenger Hellcat fails to exceed 200, while the heavier Charger Hellcat, with improved aerodynamics, can achieve 202) I'm sure you've driven an unsuitable car above 100mph and felt it get floaty, and I'm sure you've driven a performance-oriented car above 100mph and felt the front end suck down onto the road. Even something as cheap as a 240SX has the latter effect, while even something as expensive as a Grand Cherokee will have the former. (Except the SRT, which has had its aero modified as part of an extensive package- those huge hood vents extract a lot of heat, and combat a lot of lift) I'm with you on function-dictates-form. I'd love to keep my stock 15" wheels on my 240SX, because they're light and have cheap tires, but there's no way I'll be able to fit the bigger brakes I want under anything smaller than 16". Some people think the car would look better lowered, but all I see is the loss of ground clearance and overall travel- I can tighten up the suspension without dropping it. Lots of people switch to the Japanese coupe model's fixed headlights, but the aero on the popup model is better and sealed beams are cheaper, even if I do like the clean look of the Silvia. The coupe looks better to most people, but the hatch has better weight distribution and more carrying capacity. I like that there's not a wasted line on this car. But I guess it doesn't bother me as much that some cars have vents. My pet peeve is "muscular haunches". It's just a justification for how big cars have become thanks to new safety regulations, and increased demand for obese buyers to fit in them.
  7. SchizophrenicMC
    On the upside, Bandai farmed out the LED system to a company that specializes in it, so we should be seeing better results than some of their other LED ventures. The whole stuck-to-its base thing is a bit of a drag, but the parts all do come separately from the base as well. No reason you couldn't fabricate a new base that lets it pose in Destroy Mode with the lights on. Hell, I always intended to build it a custom power supply so I could plug it in, rather than fill it with batteries. I'm still excited for the LEDs. I think they'll add a powerful effect to the kit, and if combined with a better base, could create some amazing views. Half the fun of gunpla is figuring out how you're going to pose it, and making that work.
  8. SchizophrenicMC
    And I thought I was the whiny, picky car guy. I'll grant that, by and large, cars with that kind of vent-looking design do it because vents are cool, yo. But there are cars with legitimate cooling vents, designed for track performance, and sold to people who would never take their car to a track. Every Ferrari, for example. Hell, every Lotus, even. If you ask me, that kind of thing is the last vestige of the sports car. A car so concerned with driving well that it butchers its design to achieve heightened performance. A car that looks pretty because it was designed around its parts, rather than by some committee of marketing officers. Will most street cars with legit brake cooling ducts never see the benefit of those ducts? No. The vast, vast majority won't. But, the tiny minority who do take their car and drive them on tracks, will appreciate the increased performance from brake cooling. Saying that the only reason designers do that is to give a car a certain look, is like saying cars only have alloy wheels because they look flashier than caps on steel. Of course, we both know alloy wheels are lighter and offer better cooling for reduced fade, and that improves the function of the car in the few situations where you'd want that. If it makes the car look good, and if it can serve a function, why not?
  9. SchizophrenicMC
    In your opinion, do you think the stand is sturdy enough or big enough to hold the kit up for flight poses? I know the PG Strike's is only barely tall enough, and it's certainly not heavy enough. This is actually a pretty big PG issue. None of them come with good enough stands to show them off. They are usually legendarily stable on their feet, but there's only so much you can do with a standing pose.
  10. SchizophrenicMC
    The part about Sony getting hacked that upsets me the most is, this isn't the first time it's happened. I got a few months of Star Wars Galaxies for free, back when it was in its death throes, because Sony got hacked that summer, too. Fortunately for me, the credit card information I had stored with them, expired in 2005.
  11. SchizophrenicMC
    That was a lot of fun. Of course, it leaves us with the question: who is that girl? I almost feel like that should have been the moment to introduce Sei, rather than draw a parallel to Aila. It's gonna be a tough 2 weeks waiting on the next episode.
  12. SchizophrenicMC
    Gunpla TV also posted up a video of the build: I don't really like the EW version of the Wing Zero Custom. The angel wings are just a bit much for me. Of course, so are Deathscythe Hell's batwings. And Sandrock's scimitars, and Heavyarms' enormous gatlings and acrobatics, and Shenlong's... um. Just Shenlong Gundam in general. (I thought we were done with Racism Gundam when G Gundam wrapped up) Gundam Wing has a nostalgia factor, for sure, but I've just never been a huge fan of the show, especially not when 08th MS aired around the same time, on the same channel. Beam weapons are cool, but they're even cooler when you don't see them until the second half.
  13. SchizophrenicMC
    I'm still anxiously awaiting a Millennium Falcon of some kind.
  14. SchizophrenicMC
    F1 cars do have special brake ducts. Here's an article about engineering them, and here's a picture of some F1 brake ducts: Engineers have noted numerous time in track tests of high-performance road cars, that cooling ducts for brakes reduce fade by a significant margin, above a certain performance threshold. Something as slow as my 240SX wouldn't stand to gain, but something that with a top speed closer to 200mph and has really big brakes made of expensive, high-performance materials, could see some serious benefits. On the note of rear ducts in front-engine cars, excusing brakes for a moment, there are other items that could benefit from additional air cooling. The limited slip system in the C7 Corvette's differential, for example, produces a lot of heat during heavy track use, and some of the cooling ducts on the rear half of the car direct air to the diff, improving the effects of its heatsink fins. The C7's aero package has been quoted several times as being all function and no form. Function, perhaps, that exceeds the use of most owners, but for the ones who do track them (there are some) all this ventilation and ducting adds the extra degree of performance that can make or break a car at that level.
  15. SchizophrenicMC
    Coming back to scale, that leg is taller than MG Unicorn!
  16. SchizophrenicMC
    The huge front grille ties into the design language and gives Ford a lot of room for intercoolers. And if you don't think Ford is going to offer window louvers as an accessory, you're probably very mistaken. Such a cheap piece of kit for them to eventually sell for hundreds of dollars to weird people who don't like visibility out of the new, meaningfully-sized rear windows. No, but I do like the new Mustang. I think it's finally stepped into the modern world. And the price is amazingly reasonable. I want an ecoboost. That Fisker version looks pretty cool, though I don't think they put big enough brakes on it. You can see a gap between the rotor and the wheel. Why would you want that? Big wheels are for big brakes!
  17. SchizophrenicMC
    I'm with you there. We pretty much spend the whole series in what has traditionally been the Earth Kingdom, with some brief interludes in the Spirit World and Southern Water Tribe. The North only makes some brief cameos, and we never actually see the Fire Nation. Hell, we only see the reigning Fire Lord once. For a show about balance and a changing world, it really does fail to show the nation that necessarily must have changed the most since the last show, what with its modern pacifism. On the topic of gripes, I feel like Sokka had no official legacy beyond a brief cameo where it's revealed he was a Southern Water chief for awhile. (Of course, his dad was, so why wouldn't he be?) There will always be speculation about Su Yin, but he's the only character of the Gaang we see only once. And, I do think the writers were too subtle about Korrasami until the final sequence. Pretty much everything we see that they say was the buildup, was stuff that would happen between platonic friends. And while, if you're looking for Korrasami, you can make it look like it has a buildup, if you're not into that or you're just not a shipper, you won't see it and then you'll be like "woah, what? Hold the phone. What?" Not that I was. I like gay girls. I was hoping for this.
  18. SchizophrenicMC
    What, like I can't see my stuff with wood shelves? I've been putting gunpla on display in a bookcase for like 7 years now. It works for me.
  19. SchizophrenicMC
    Popup headlights will never return en masse. Pedestrian safety regulations require airspace between hood and anything hard underneath it. That pushes the hood line up, which pushes the grille line up. Not to mention, DOT/NHTSA requirements no longer specify the sealed beam headlights that necessitated popups for sleek designs. It's just cheaper and easier to make a funky headlight in the fascia, than to design a popup system, even without pedestrian safety regs. Which sucks.
  20. SchizophrenicMC
    HISHE
  21. SchizophrenicMC
    Part of why I don't like Detolf is it's all glass. I don't like glass shelves. If I wanted to portray the illusion of flight, I'd buy an action base for $8.
  22. SchizophrenicMC
    HGs usually can't fit the kind of gimmicks that RGs or MGs can. I'd just be glad they included a core fighter and transformation parts at all, with an HG. If you want transforming core fighters, buy some MGs. You'll also get a lot better color separation and more sticker detail. Usually not RG-level, but MGs are a lot more stable and imposing than RGs. All my RGs keep falling over and falling apart, and 1/144 isn't a very big scale. You can really sense a difference in scale between my Unicorn twins: Of course, even within a single scale, you can be deceived. Unicorn is one of the biggest Gundams. X is one of the smallest: Sometimes I can only tell it's an MG because I keep my RG GP01 at its feet.
  23. SchizophrenicMC
    It is a bit left-field.
  24. SchizophrenicMC
    brb stealing a Jeong Zack for Duchy purposes
  25. SchizophrenicMC
    I dig it.
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