I dunno what it is... I just love hatchbacks. heh. See, you guys say it sounds "ricey"... did you look at the pics? I would in no way call that car a "rice rocket" (damn i hate that name, it's like a racial slur that's 'okay'", but then i guess that depends on your definition of one. There's no rediculous stickers or spoilers or anything to make it LOOK fast when it isn't, it's the real deal. As for how fast can they really go... believe me I've been in a few that could IMHO smoke Cameros. (i in no way want to get in a pissing contest, cause i'm REALLY not into racing at all, and could be way wrong, but i've seen a few of those light bodies do some rediculous speeds.)

I have my doubts that it'll even pass smog, and i need more of a commuter speed demon, so it's looking like a negative... i dunno, i might go test it this weekend and see. Thanks! =]


|| loren.cox || 080000446 ||

i hate that name, it's like a racial slur that's 'okay'", but then i guess that depends on your definition of one.

According to the author of the Riceboy page, it refers to the nationality of the car, not the driver. In my experience, the cars falling into the category are almost all Hondas or Acuras.

I agree that it can be interpreted as a racial slur, which is a Bad Thing. I don't know what else to call the phenomenon, though. Perhaps "boy racer"?

___________
Tony Fabris

Loren, you are right. The only thing that gives the car away as "upgraded" is the exhaused pipe...

I personally would be nervous about a car that has been upgraded that much. What happens when the turbo blows or the engine does something horrible? I know that a lot of people will disagree, but I like "stock"!

My Miata is bone stock, engine-wise, and I feel like it's plenty fast. Plus, if it breaks, anyone can fix it. I don't need to take it to a speed shop...

I'd put the cash into a more performance oriented stock car. When I say performance, I'm talking about taking turns well, not just speed.

- Jon

According to the author of the Riceboy page, it refers to the nationality of the car, not the driver. In my experience, the cars falling into the category are almost all Hondas or Acuras.

Hmmm... well, i happen to know that my wrecked Si was made in Canada... so NOW what do we call it

I agree that it can be interpreted as a racial slur, which is a Bad Thing. I don't know what else to call the phenomenon, though. Perhaps "boy racer"?


I've heard it used many times as a racial slur...which has been adopted by the culture. A lot of people around here are calling em "toy cars" now. I just always get this weird feeling when i hear or read Rice Boy or Rice Rocket... Maybe i'm just oversensitive.

I personally would be nervous about a car that has been upgraded that much. What happens when the turbo blows or the engine does something horrible? I know that a lot of people will disagree, but I like "stock"!

Exactly. That's what i'm tentative about in the first place. I wish i had a good friend that loved working on this type of thing... hookups are the way to go. Honda's are just so damn cheap to fix, the parts are everywhere. But, yes, you are correct, which is why i'd kill to get my hands on a Civic Hatchback SiR, but alas, they weren't ever released here in the states. So, now i'm lookin' at getting another Si Hatchback, and putting some money on basic engine upgrades, or takin' the jump to a newer '99 or '00 Si Coupe...which aren't to damn shabby speed and handling wise. I'm test driving Scott the installers this weekend. =]





|| loren.cox || 080000446 ||

A lot of people around here are calling em "toy cars" now.

I like that. It fits.

My two cents? Don't buy a tricked-out car like that. Even if it's not a "toy car", it's still been modified beyond the original specs of the manufacturer and you don't know what's been done inside. Or what the trick-out features are doing to its longevity. If you really want a used car instead of a new one, then get one that you can reasonably believe will be reliable.

___________
Tony Fabris

Actually American brands can be riced out as easily as anything else. Who hasn't seen a VW Beetle with huge rear spoiler decked out to look like a porsche by now?? And how many Neons have you seen with Viper racing stripes? Come on. And Camaros and Mustangs are big players in the domestic rice scene. According to the author of the rice boy page, it does not refer to the nationality of the car nor the driver. http://www.riceboypage.com/what_is_riceboy/ read carefully.

Anyway, it is somewhat uncool to target a raced modified japanese car and put it down by calling it riced out when it is not.

Here's an story, a while ago, I worked on a reporting engine that for some reason would not print shades of gray to a postscript printer. It rendered the shades of gray as hash marks. I spent quite a while on there, and worked out that the postscript engine was incorrectly sending this to the printer that way, and I ended up getting adobe to fix this, and send a fix out to my client. It completely corrected the problem (now correctly prints gray tones) with what amounted to a driver upgrade. One of the programmers on their side pointed out that I did not really "fix" the problem with lines of code and called the fix a hack. Several months into the project, when working on a good deal of actual code, during a code review, several people did not even bother to look at the code because they didn't want to look at a bunch of hacks, or that they have a good impression that I was "just a hacker" and don't know much about programming or development.

Anyway, if someone spends a good deal of time working on a car's engine, doing all the research and testing and putting in quality parts in a modest fashion without a lot of pomp and rice, and then have somebody look at the car and go "gee that's a japanese car, that's so riced out..." -- i see it this as an almost childish attempt to put down someone's hard work, in a rather cruel misrepresentative way. It's not cool.

Calvin

I've been in 11 and 12 second 4 bangers, and 0 to 120 mph in 11.5 seconds in a quarter mile easily can whoop ass on 12 bangers. (e.g. Viper is a 12.1 second car..)

Calvin

You have to ask yourself what you're trying to get out of it. If you're planning on building up a car yourself, and investing your sweat into it... or are you going for an easy way to a built car? You have to understand that reliability will be shot or decreased, as will gas mileage in many cases. So long as you know what you're getting into, then why not?

Calvin

Anyway, if someone spends a good deal of time working on a car's engine, doing all the research and testing and putting in quality parts in a modest fashion without a lot of pomp and rice, and then have somebody look at the car and go "gee that's a japanese car, that's so riced out..." -- i see it this as an almost childish attempt to put down someone's hard work, in a rather cruel misrepresentative way. It's not cool.

I agree with that statement. The only thing I laugh at is when someone puts spoilers/stickers/tailpipes/lenses/etc onto a car to make it look fast but doesn't do any actual performance enhancements.

And you're right about the fact that the car doesn't have to be a Honda. There are plenty of American cars whose owners make them fall into that category.

___________
Tony Fabris

I would agree that you want to be real carefull buying a tricked out car. It may be a great "sleeper" but if you couldn't have done the work in the first place you'll have problems doing the fixes if something goes wrong. Also ask yourself why someone puts that much into a car and then sells it. Maintainance issues? Insurance issues? Can you control your driving in a car like that?

As to the type of car, I just have a problem with the coffee can exhaust. No matter what you put under the hood the 4 banger just doesn't have the growling sound of a good V8. I put a Rear Muffler Bypass on my 928 I got this last summer (it still has first stage muffler and cats) and now it sounds almost as good as the empeg car!

Here's a picture of the car:

http://www.tower-mt.com/pics/davids_gt/2000_Lake_CdA_Drive/pres0002.html

and you can hear the sound of it on the dynomometer at 180mph indicated (6500 RPM in 5th gear) at:

http://www.tower-mt.com/pics/pacnw/2000_Dyno_II/ (click on DavidSchmidt.mpg. It's a hair over 6mb)

Quite a bit heavier car, but will do about 14 seconds stock AND go through the corners nicely to boot.

These cars were never accepted completely by the traditional Porsche fan because it's a front-engine, water cooled V8, but that's gotten the price for them down to a quite reasonable level. (No WAY my wife would have let me buy a new one.)

Mk2, 40gb (9gb free!), blue

i'm REALLY not into racing at all,

Loren, after looking at the pictures and studying the specs, and after reading your replies to other posts in this thread, I don't think you will be happy in the long run with that car.

Just as an aside, referencing posts further down the list than this one, sorry... that car is the exact opposite of a rice-boy car. It is what would be better called a "sleeper", a car that looks stock but is considerably performance enhanced. Like I am going to do when I put the SHO powertrain into my Taurus station wagon. :-)

Anyway... that will not be an inexpensive car to drive and maintain. Unless you are religious about keeping your foot out of the gas, and thus keeping that turbocharger operating minimally, you will have to run high test gas, even with those 8.5:1 pistons. The first time you get hard on the accelerator for any length of time with regular gas, you will have at least one of your cylinders with a 0.0:1 compression ratio, and enough metal from the hole melted in your piston spread throughout the inside of the engine that you will be looking at a minimum $2500 repair bill.

I suspect you will have a hard time keeping license plates on the car, as it is very unlikely that it will pass California emissions standards -- the toughest in the world -- with modifications like a "custom flex pipe cat bypass." In my part of the country, the inspector doing the emissions check wouldn't even hook the car up to the gas analyzer if he saw that -- he'd just send you out the door with no certificate.

I don't see anything in the specs about a camshaft change, and with a turbocharger you really don't need a high lift cam. But that "JG Big Bore Throttle Body" may make the car very unpleasant to drive in low speed traffic -- you are liable to find that there isn't any usable power below about 3,000 RPM.

Very likely you will find that you are burning about 50% more fuel per mile than you are accustomed to, even if you are not utilizing all the high-end performance potential of that engine. Unless you really enjoy and participate in high performance driving, you probably will not enjoy filling your gas tank every 180 miles.

Those 45-series tires look really wicked, and they will give you very sharp handling with a slip angle approaching zero degrees... and unless you keep them pumped up to about 40 pounds pressure, the first time you hit a good sharp-edged pot hole, you will have damaged a $200 alloy wheel and possibly ruined a $125 tire.

I wonder just how stiff the pedal action is on that "Clutch Master Stage III Clutch." You may end up walking around in circles after a few months working that clutch because your left leg will be bigger than your right leg. :-)

"H&R Intega Springs w/ Tokico Illumina 5 ways Adjustable shocks, Ingrall Engineering Camber Front Camber Kit, Eibach Sway bars 26mm Front / 22 mm Rear"
This car is going to rattle your fillings as a daily driver.

Those "Zspeed Aluminum lugnuts" are really neat, until the first time you get a lug wrench on one of them just a little bit crooked when you are on the side of the road in the rain, and suddenly instead of a hex-shaped lug nut holding your wheel on you have this nice smooth cylinder that nothing short of a hammer and chisel will remove. My Porsche uses magnesium alloy lug nuts -- great for reducing unsprung weight, not so good for practicality.

"2-Brand New Rota Circuit 8 15x6.5 [wheels] w/ MT 22x8x15 Slicks."
This is really scary. That tells me that this car has spent a serious amount of quality time being drag raced. There are very few activities more destructive to an automobile than drag racing. I would stay from this car as a daily driver for that reason alone.

This is not to say that this is not an excellent automobile. From the specs and from the pictures, it looks like it has been superbly prepared as a labor of love by somebody who knows what he's doing. It's a great car -- but not for you. This is not a car meant to be transportation -- it is a motorhead toy designed and built to be a weekend fun machine for someone who doesn't mind spending serious money on his hobby.

You wouldn't be happy with this car for very long.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

I agree that it can be interpreted as a racial slur, which is a Bad Thing. I don't know what else to call the phenomenon, though. Perhaps "boy racer"?

Boy racer is what they're called in the UK. I hadn't heard of the rice thing until I read it on this BBS.

The traditional thing to shout as they go past is "Driving Mummy's car again?"

Peter

Boy racer is what they're called in the UK.

I thought so. There's a line in Queen's "I'm In Love With My Car" that makes a reference to it. That's from... let's see... 1975? So it goes across generations I guess.

___________
Tony Fabris

That's from... let's see... 1975? So it goes across generations I guess.

Or I'm 26 years out of touch. It wouldn't be the first time.

I got ridiculed the other day for referring to the "winchester" in my empeg.

Peter

Nice car. Good choice of color. ;-p

Calvin

Thanks, but when you look for a used car, especially a rare variation of an uncommon car, you don't have much choice in colors. I would have preferred a metalic gray or even the dark blue, but they only imported 100 928 GT's in '90 so there were only 3-4 on the market in the entire country when I was looking last summer. The red does look good though.

I was REAL lucky that this one turned up only 250 miles away so I was able to drive with a friend to inspect and purchase it and return home the same night.

It's an awesome car, and I paid less for it than my new Explorer (though it's 10 years old). I've had it on the track once and now I'm hooked. It's the only safe place to open it up and really push it close to it's limits, and my limits are still far from it's limits.

I highly recommend the car, and for the same price as that Honda you could get a NICE 928S, probably '84-'86 and have a fast, wonderfully handling Grand Touring car with a unique style.

Mk2, 40gb (2gb free!), blue
http://www.tower-mt.com

hehe, the last time someone was referring to a winchester to me, they were pointing at a huge box, the size of a small lounge table

Frank van Gestel

I remember the days when a Winchester was a type of rifle...

One of the few remaining Mk1 owners... #00015

I agree totaly, even if you should be slaped for calling a VW an american car. ;)

american cars have their own version of "rice boy", in minnesota, we call them hicks. instead of suping up the little cars, we have huge pickups, with every sticker, light bar, lift kit, and wheel upgrade imaginable. and not one of them will ever carry a cord of wood in their life. it's bad enough to have 15mpg cars in traffic, but to have 8mpg trucks that you can't even see around.

12gig red mk2 -- 080000125

ugh you beat me to it. :) I used to work on Winchester Blvd, where the Winchester House is located, built by the crazed widow of the Winchester Rifle company founder...

Calvin

VW? Americans invented the bug and sold it to Germany.

heheh come on, give me some slack while I rant eh??

and..That's not just mnnesota. That's all over the midwest. In California, those very same trucks undergo a different sort of treatmen, they get slammed or coiled over, smaller wheels put on, chrome highlights all over, mudflaps dragging, airbrushed hood..........

Calvin

Doug, thanks for the run down, i really appreciate it. I wish i had 13g's and a garage laying around cause i'd buy that sucker and start racing.

And Calvin, thanks for the comments... very well said.

David, i checked out those mpg's... and damn, that thing hums! Very nice. Sweet car, but not really my style. Thanks for all the info though!

Well, i just got the quote back, they are totalling it. $6445.13... i paid $5000 for it, so i'd say that's fair .

Damn this is tough not having a car... i'm so damn ANXIOUS just to get in a new one i can't stand it.


|| loren.cox || 080000446 ||

Glad you're happy with the price they're paying you.

You know, that would make a fantastic down payment on a new car. With that kind of down payment, you could have three-year financing at a terribly low interest rate (I financed my new Honda for 3 years at something like 3% APR) and own the thing flat-out at that point.

___________
Tony Fabris

Yeap, that with the 5k i have saved up should do nicely for a down payment. If i go the new car route.

I just hope i have SOMETHING at the empeg meet in March!!! =]



|| loren.cox || 080000446 ||

Loren,

A friend of mine is selling his 12 second Spyder. It's quite built up, and he's already done a huge amount of upgrades with regards to stereo equipment as well. He has MB Quarts all around, and a TV lcd monitor that swings out as well. I've sat in it as he raced other cars, he raced a camaro and in a few seconds it was so far behind, 7 or 8 car lengths, ...? get in touch if you're interested.

Calvin

... should do nicely for a down payment. If i go the new car route.

I have no first-hand knowledge on this, so don't take my word as gospel. But I am somewhat of a motorhead, and everything I have heard and read about the new Ford Focus tells me that it should be on your list of possible replacement cars. The tests I have read favor the Focus in two areas in particular: handling/performance, and ergonomics. The hatchback even looks a bit like your late, lamented Civic.

Take a test drive in one and let us know what you think.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

For what its worth - If you are serious about a ford focus you might want to look into renting one for a couple days first.

I have always wanted to rent a car for before buying it...It just never seems like rental companies stock cars that I am interested in. I've had a Focus as a rental car before, I know several companies stock them. This could be the best way to see if you really like the car in all situations (day, night, long drives, etc..). Plus - you need a car anyway.



-Doug
(Mk2-12G-Blue or Green)

WOOHOOO! If all goes well i'll be pulling up to the empeg meet in a '99 Honda Civic Si, electron blue. I drove it last night and damn, when that VTEC kicks in... zippy little car. The high revs were weird at first, but i got used to it real quick and was doing 45 in 2nd without even realizing it. Scott's doing the re-install of the empeg and lcd this week, so it'll be all hooked up by the meet. I'll see if i can drag him along so us young 'uns can have some representation . I can't wait to get on those hilly NorCal roads!


|| loren.cox || 080000446 ||

Congrats Loren!

I'm planning on leading a group on a pretty serious drive after our meet. Let me warn in advance... this road is pretty technical and fast. Everyone should DRIVE AT THEIR OWN PACE! Do not feel pressured to push beyond what you feel comfortable with. (Zandr, you are exempt from this post) ;-)

That said, who's in for it?

- Jon

oh hell yes! I'm there. =] =] =] Remember, it gets dark pretty early...


|| loren.cox || 080000446 ||