2014 subaru outback headlight bulb size
2018 Limited vs 2021-2023 Sport OR downgrade trim in exchange for MT
2023.05.29 23:15 ConfusedDumpsterFire 2018 Limited vs 2021-2023 Sport OR downgrade trim in exchange for MT
Susie the Super Subaru was gravely injured on April 26. I was determined to fix her (perfect orange, loaded limited 2018 xtrek), and I still might, but it’s going to be a very big, expensive job. In the meantime, I need to buy a car.
I’m learning things. First, I was the luckiest person alive when I bought mine and didn’t know it until now. I don’t want a different car, and after my accident (tboned passenger side +/-60, spun and totaled a third vehicle), I really never want a different car. I could compromise with a Limited Impreza maybe but I actually really like the ground clearance a lot. I don’t care for Outbacks and they gave me a loaner Forester once which I didn’t like much either.
I can’t buy new right now. I am debating against replacing my exact car (lol for about what I paid for it f’ing new five years ago) or going to a 21/22 and ‘downgrading’ to Sport from Limited. I’m going to be mad about the speakers. And the power seat. My headlights are cool. I want a sunroof, but I suppose I could compromise. Is there anything else I will lose that I love in my 18 Limited? I think I’m fine with leathewhatever material, as long as it isn’t sticky. I’m trying to compare specs but it’s an odd comparison. I like the upgraded engine.
I’m also considering tossing it all out and going for a ‘22 MT instead just because. I miss driving manual and it’s now or never. I do love the super awesome tech in my Limited, though, and I bought it specifically because it wouldn’t let me wreck it (ha HA, foiled…fml).
Is it worth it to upgrade/downgrade to a newer sport from a much loved limited? The MT is something I need to chew on, but weigh in here as well if you’d like. I’m really thinking on this but I also feel like it might just be FOMO.
submitted by ConfusedDumpsterFire to Crosstrek [link] [comments]
I’m learning things. First, I was the luckiest person alive when I bought mine and didn’t know it until now. I don’t want a different car, and after my accident (tboned passenger side +/-60, spun and totaled a third vehicle), I really never want a different car. I could compromise with a Limited Impreza maybe but I actually really like the ground clearance a lot. I don’t care for Outbacks and they gave me a loaner Forester once which I didn’t like much either.
I can’t buy new right now. I am debating against replacing my exact car (lol for about what I paid for it f’ing new five years ago) or going to a 21/22 and ‘downgrading’ to Sport from Limited. I’m going to be mad about the speakers. And the power seat. My headlights are cool. I want a sunroof, but I suppose I could compromise. Is there anything else I will lose that I love in my 18 Limited? I think I’m fine with leathewhatever material, as long as it isn’t sticky. I’m trying to compare specs but it’s an odd comparison. I like the upgraded engine.
I’m also considering tossing it all out and going for a ‘22 MT instead just because. I miss driving manual and it’s now or never. I do love the super awesome tech in my Limited, though, and I bought it specifically because it wouldn’t let me wreck it (ha HA, foiled…fml).
Is it worth it to upgrade/downgrade to a newer sport from a much loved limited? The MT is something I need to chew on, but weigh in here as well if you’d like. I’m really thinking on this but I also feel like it might just be FOMO.
2023.05.29 21:48 MogMog37 BEST midsize SUV for city driving; hybrid preferred
I'm currently driving a 2014 Hyundai Veloster, but it's started to nickle and dime me to death and I think it's time to trade it in for a new, or new to me vehicle.
I'm really sick of Hyundai's issues, and I definitely won't be going with them again. Probably looking at Toyota/Subaru, but haven't really found anything that's got good availability. So far, the Corolla cross hybrid looks best, but I know it's not even out yet. I might be willing to do a regular Corolla cross, but I'm not sure if I should just wait it out for the hybrid. I took a look at the CHR as well, but I saw some posts that they have low customer satisfaction. The Subaru Crosstrek hybrid and rav 4 seem a bit too big for me. I don't really need that much extra space and seating, just looking for a bit more space and capacity for bike racks and stuff than my current hatchback.
Overall, I'm just looking for a reliable mid-size SUV that would likely last me 10 yrs if I wanted. My current Hyundai is only at 98,000 miles and already becoming a hassle.
I appreciate any recommendations! Thanks
submitted by MogMog37 to whatcarshouldIbuy [link] [comments]
I'm really sick of Hyundai's issues, and I definitely won't be going with them again. Probably looking at Toyota/Subaru, but haven't really found anything that's got good availability. So far, the Corolla cross hybrid looks best, but I know it's not even out yet. I might be willing to do a regular Corolla cross, but I'm not sure if I should just wait it out for the hybrid. I took a look at the CHR as well, but I saw some posts that they have low customer satisfaction. The Subaru Crosstrek hybrid and rav 4 seem a bit too big for me. I don't really need that much extra space and seating, just looking for a bit more space and capacity for bike racks and stuff than my current hatchback.
Overall, I'm just looking for a reliable mid-size SUV that would likely last me 10 yrs if I wanted. My current Hyundai is only at 98,000 miles and already becoming a hassle.
I appreciate any recommendations! Thanks
2023.05.29 21:46 poli8999 2017 LT headlight replacement bulb size?
Is it H11 or 9005?
Just the stock option.
submitted by poli8999 to cruze [link] [comments]
Just the stock option.
2023.05.29 07:16 flaminghotcheetoh99 Looking for a used car
Hoping for max price at 16k. I currently have a 2011 Mazda3 that I love, but it sucks in the snow and I live in a place with pretty snowy winters. I thought I wanted a Subaru Outback. I went to check one out that was in my price range, fully loaded, seemed perfect (except the title was rebuilt which made me very nervous). When I sat in the Outback it just felt way too long. I got nervous that the Outback was too big and I’m back to the drawing board looking for suggestions.
Some musts: -hatchback -AWD -Reliable/doesn’t have super high avg maintenance cost -Large enough for a medium sized dog to ride along -Backup camera -Bluetooth capability
Some things I’d like but aren’t necessary: -moonroof -heated seats -2017 or newer
I’d be willing to buy a higher mileage car to bring the price down. I’ve put 32k miles on my car in 10 years, so I’m not super worried about mileage getting too high super quick.
Suggestions appreciated!
submitted by flaminghotcheetoh99 to whatcarshouldIbuy [link] [comments]
Some musts: -hatchback -AWD -Reliable/doesn’t have super high avg maintenance cost -Large enough for a medium sized dog to ride along -Backup camera -Bluetooth capability
Some things I’d like but aren’t necessary: -moonroof -heated seats -2017 or newer
I’d be willing to buy a higher mileage car to bring the price down. I’ve put 32k miles on my car in 10 years, so I’m not super worried about mileage getting too high super quick.
Suggestions appreciated!
2023.05.29 00:40 RandomAppalachian468 Don't fly over Barron County Ohio.
The whirring blades of my MD-902 throbbed against the warm evening air, and I smiled.
From 5,000 feet, the ground flew by in a carpet of dark forests and kelly-green fields. The sun hung low on the horizon in a picturesque array of dazzling orange and gold, and I could make out the narrow strip of the Ohio River to my left, glistening in the fading daylight. This time of year, the trees would be full of the sweet aroma of fresh blossoms, and the frequent rains kept small pockets of fluffy white mist hanging in the treetops. It was a beautiful view, one that reminded me of why being a helicopter pilot trumped flying in a jumbo jet far above the clouds every day of the week.
Fourteen more days, and I’m debt free.
That made me grin even more. I’d been working as a charter pilot ever since I obtained my license at age 19, and after years of keeping my nose to the grindstone, I was closing on the final payment for real-estate in western Pennsylvania. With no debt, a fixer-upper house on 30 rural acres all to myself, and a respectable wage for a 26-year-old pilot, I looked forward to the financial freedom I could now enjoy. Maybe I’d take a vacation, somewhere exotic like Venice Italy, or the Dominican Republic. Or perhaps I’d sock the money back for the day I started a family.
“Remember kleineun, a real man looks after his own.”
My elderly ouma’s voice came back from the depths of my memories, her proud, sun-tanned face rising from the darkness. She and my Rhodesian grandfather had emigrated to the US when they were newlyweds, as the violence against white Boer descendants in South Africa spiraled out of control. My mother and father both died in a car crash when I was six, and it had been my grandparents who raised me. Due to this, I’d grown up with a slight accent that many of my classmates found amusing, and I could speak both English, and Afrikaans, the Boer tongue of our former home.
I shifted in my seat, stretched my back muscles, and glanced at the picture taped to my console. Both my parents flanked a grinning, gap-toothed six-year-old me, at the last Christmas we’d spent together. My mother beamed, her dark hair and Italian features a sharp contrast to my father’s sandy blonde hair and blue eyes. Sometimes, I liked to imagine they were smiling at me with pride at how well I flew the old silver-colored bird my company had assigned to me, and that made the long, lonely flights easier to bear.
A flicker caught my eye, and I broke my gaze away from the photograph.
Perched in its small cradle above the controls, my little black Garmin fuzzed over for a few seconds, its screen shifting from brightly colored maps to a barrage of grey static.
Did the power chord come loose?
I checked, ensuring the power-cable for the unit’s battery was plugged into the port on the control panel. It was a brand-new GPS unit, and I’d used it a few times already, so I knew it wasn’t defective. Granted, I could fly and navigate without it, but the Garmin made my time as a pilot so much easier that the thought of going blind was dreadful.
My fuel gauge danced, clicked to empty, then to full, in a bizarre jolt.
More of the gauges began to stutter, the entire panel seeming to develop terrets all at once, and my pulse began to race. Something was wrong, very wrong, and the sludge inside my bowels churned with sour fear.
“Come on, come on.” I flicked switches, turned dials, punched buttons, but nothing seemed to fix the spasming electronics. Every gauge failed, and without warning, I found myself plunged into inky darkness.
Outside, the sun surrendered to the pull of night, the sky darker than usual. A distant rumble of thunder reverberated above the roar of my helicopter’s engine, and I thought I glimpsed a streak of yellowish lightning on the far horizon to my left.
Calm down Chris. We’re still flying, so it must just be a blown fuse. Stay in control and find a place to set her down.
My sweaty palm slid on the cyclic stick, and both feet weighed heavy on the yaw pedals. The collective stuck to my other hand with a nervous vibration, and I squinted against the abyss outside.
Beep.
I jumped despite myself, as the little Garmin on my panel flared back to life, the static pulling aside to reveal a twitching display. Each time the screen glitched, it showed the colorful map detailing my flight path over the ground below, but I noticed that some of the lines changed, the names shifting, as if the device couldn’t decide between two different versions of the world.
One name jutted out at me, slate gray like most of the major county names, appearing with ghostly flickers from between two neighboring ones.
Barron County.
I stared, confused. I’d flown over this section of southeastern Ohio plenty of times, and I knew the counties by heart. At this point, I should have been over the southern end of Noble County, and maybe dipping lower into Washington. There was no Barron County in Ohio. I was sure of it.
And yet it shown back at me from the digital landscape, a strange, almost cigar-shaped chunk of terrain carved from the surrounding counties like a tumor, sometimes there, sometimes not, as my little Garmin struggled to find the correct map. Rain began to patter against my cockpit window, and the entire aircraft rattled from a strong gust of wind. Thick clouds closed over my field of vision like a sea of gray cotton.
The blood in my veins turned to ice, and I sucked in a nervous breath.
Land. I had to land. There was nothing else to do, my flight controls weren’t responding, and only my Garmin had managed to come back to life. Perhaps I’d been hit by lightning, and the electronics had been fried? Either way, it was too dark to tell, but a storm seemed to be brewing, and if I didn’t get my feet on the ground soon, I could be in real trouble.
“Better safe than sorry.” I pushed down on the collective to start my slow descent and clicked the talking button for my headset. “Any station, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, over.”
Nothing.
“Any station, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, requesting emergency assistance, over.”
Still nothing.
If the radio’s dead, I’m really up a creek.
With my hand shaking, I clicked on the mic one more time. “Any station, this is—”
Like a curtain pulling back, the fog cleared from around my window, and the words stuck in my throat.
Without my gauges, I couldn’t tell just how far I’d descended, but I was definitely very low. Thick trees poked up from the ground, and the hills rolled into high ridges with flat valley floors, fields and pastures pockmarking them. Rain fell all around in cold, silvery sheets, a normal feature for the mid spring in this part of Ohio.
What wasn’t normal, were the fires.
At first, I thought they were forest fires for the amount of smoke and flames that bellowed from each spot, but as I swooped lower, my eyes widened in horror.
They were houses.
Farms, cottages, little clusters that barely constituted villages, all of them belched orange flames and black pillars of sooty smoke. I couldn’t hear above the helicopter blades, but I could see the flashes on the ground, along the road, in between the trees, and even coming from the burning buildings, little jets of golden light that spat into the darkness with anger.
Gunfire. That’s rifle fire, a whole lot of it.
Tiny black figures darted through the shadows, barely discernable from where I sat, several hundred feet up. I couldn’t see much, but some were definitely running away, the streaks of yellow gunfire chasing them. A few dark gray vehicles rumbled down one of the gravel roads, and sprayed fire into the houses as it went. They were fighting, I realized, the people in the trucks and the locals. It was horrific, like something out of war-torn Afghanistan, but worse.
Then, I caught a glimpse of the others.
They didn’t move like the rest, who either fled from the dark vehicles, or fired back from behind cover. These skinny figures loped along with haphazard gaits, many running on all fours like animals, swarming from the trees by the dozens. They threw themselves into the gales of bullets without flinching, attacking anyone within range, and something about the way they moved, so fluid, so fearless, made my heart skip a beat.
What is that?
“Echo Four Actual to unknown caller, please respond, over.”
Choking back a cry of shock, I fumbled at the control panel with clumsy fingers, the man’s voice sharp and stern. I hadn’t realized that I’d let go of the talking button and clicked it down again. “Hello? Hello, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot out of Pittsburgh, over.”
An excruciating moment passed, and I continued to zoom over the trees, the fires falling away behind me as more silent forest took over.
“Roger that Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, we read you loud and clear. Please identify yourself and any passengers or cargo you might be carrying, over.”
Swallowing hard, I eyed the treetops, which looked much closer than they should have been. How far had I descended? “Echo Four Actual, my name is Christopher Dekker, and I am alone. I’m a charter flight from PA, carrying medical equipment for OSU in Columbus. My controls have been damaged, and I am unable to safely carry on due to the storm. Requesting permission to land, over.”
I watched the landscape slide by underneath me, once catching sight of what looked like a little white church surrounded by smaller huts, dozens of figures in the yard staring up at me as I flew over a nearby ridgeline.
“Solid copy on that Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot. Be advised, your transponder shows you to be inside a restricted zone. Please cease all radio traffic, reduce your speed, climb to 3,000 feet and proceed north. We’ll talk you in from there. How copy, over?”
My heart jumped, and I let out a sigh of relief. “Roger that Echo Four Actual, my altimeter is down, but I’ll do my best to eyeball the altitude, over.”
With that, I pulled the collective upward, and tried my best to gauge how far I was by eyesight in the gathering night, rain still coming down all around me. This had to be some kind of disaster or riot, I decided. After all, the voice over the radio sounded like military, and those vehicles seemed to have heavy weapons. Maybe there was some kind of unrest going on here that I hadn’t heard about yet?
Kind of weird for it to happen in rural areas though. Spoiled college kids I get, but never saw farmers get so worked up before. They usually love the military.
Something moved in the corner of my eye, and I turned out of reflex.
My mouth fell open, and I froze, unable to scream.
In the sky beside me, a huge shadow glided along, and its leathery wings effortlessly carved through the gloom, flapping only on occasion to keep it aloft. It was too dark for me to see what color it was, but from the way it moved, I knew it wasn’t another helicopter. No, this thing was alive, easily the size of a small plane, and more than twice the length of my little McDonald Douglass. A long tail trailed behind it, and bore a distinct arrow-shaped snout, with twig-like spines fanned out around the back of its head. Whatever legs it had were drawn up under it like a bird, yet its skin appeared rough and knobby, almost resembling tree bark. Without pause, the gigantic bat-winged entity flew along beside me, as if my presence was on par with an annoying fly buzzing about its head.
Gripping the microphone switch so tight, I thought I’d crack the plastic, I whispered into my headset, forgetting all radio protocol. “T-There’s something up here.”
Static crackled.
“Douglas Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, say again your last, you’re coming in weak and unreadable, over.”
“There’s something up here.” I snarled into the headset, still glued to the controls of the helicopter, afraid to deviate even an inch from my course in case the monstrosity decided to turn on me. “A freaking huge thing, right beside me. I swear, it looks like a bat or . . . I don’t know.”
“Calm down.” The man on the other end of the radio broke his rigorous discipline as well, his voice deep, but level. “It won’t attack if you don’t move too fast. Slowly ease away from it and follow that course until you’re out of sight.”
I didn’t have time to think about how wrong that sounded, how the man’s strict tone had changed to one of knowledge, how he hadn’t been the least surprised by what I’d said. Instead, I slowly turned the helicopter away from the huge menace and edged the speed higher in tiny increments.
As soon as I was roughly two football fields away, I let myself relax, and clicked the mic switch. “It’s not following.”
“You’re sure?”
Eyeing the huge flapping wings, I nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see me. “Yeah, I’m well clear.”
“Good. Thank you, Mr. Dekker.”
Then, the radio went dead.
Something in my chest dropped, a weight that made my stomach roil. This wasn’t right, none of it. Who was that man? Why did he know about the thing I’d just seen? What was I supposed to—
A flash of light exploded from the trees to my right and shot into the air with a long finger of smoke.
What the . . .
On instinct, I jerked the cyclic stick to one side, and the helicopter swung to avoid the rocket.
Boom.
My world shook, metal screeched, and a dozen alarms began to go off inside the cockpit in a cacophony of beeps and sirens. Orange and red flames lit up the night sky just behind me, and the horizon started to spin wildly outside. Heat gushed from the cockpit door, and I smelled the greasy stench of burning oil. The safety belts dug into my shoulders, and with a final slip, the radio headset ripped free from my scalp.
I’m hit.
Desperate, I yanked on the controls, fought the bird even as she spun toward the ground in a wreath of flames, the inky black trees hurtling up to meet me. The helicopter went into full auto-rotation, the sky blurring past outside, and the alarms blared in a screech of doom. Panic slammed through my temples, I screamed at the top of my lungs, and for one brief second, my eyes locked on the little black Garmin still perched atop my control panel.
Its screen stopped twitching and settled on a map of the mysterious Barron County, with a little red arrow at the center of the screen, a few words popping up underneath it.
You are here.
Trees stabbed up into the sky, the belts crushed at my torso, glass shattered all around me, and the world went dark.
Copper, thick, warm, and tangy.
It filled my mouth, stank metallic in my nose, clogged my throat, choking me. In the murkiness, I fought for a surface, for a way out, blind and numb in the dark.
This way, kleineun.
My ouma’s voice echoed from somewhere in the shadows.
This way.
Both eyes flew open, and I gagged, spitting out a stream of red.
Pain throbbed in my ribs, and a heavy pressure sent a tingling numbness through my shoulders. Blood roared inside my temples, and stars danced before my eyes with a dizzying array. Humid night air kissed my skin, and something sticky coated my face, neck, and arms that hung straight up toward the ceiling.
Wait. Not up. Down.
I blinked at the wrinkled, torn ceiling of the cockpit, the glass all gone, the gray aluminum shredded like tissue paper. Just outside the broken windows, thick Appalachian bluegrass and stemmy underbrush swished in a feeble breeze, backlit by flashes of lightning from the thunderstorm overhead. Green and brown leaves covered everything in a wet carpet of triangles, and somewhere nearby, a cricket chirped.
Turning my head from side to side, I realized that I hung upside down inside the ruined helicopter, the top half burrowed into the mud. I could hear the hissing and crackling of flames, the pattering of rain falling on the hot aluminum, and the smaller brush fires around the downed aircraft sizzling out in the damp long grass. Charred steel and burning oil tainted the air, almost as strong as the metallic, coppery stench in my aching nose.
They shot me down. That military dude shot me out of the sky.
It didn’t make sense. I’d followed their orders, done everything they’d said, and yet the instant I veered safely away from whatever that thing in the sky had been, they’d fired, not at it, but at me.
Looking down (or rather, up) at my chest, I sucked in a gasp, which was harder to do that before.
The navy-blue shirt stuck to my torso with several big splotches of dark, rusty red. Most were clean slashes, but two held bits of glass sticking out of them, one alarmingly bigger than the other. They dripped cherry red blood onto my upturned face, and a wave of nausea hit me.
I gotta get down.
I flexed my arms to try and work some feeling back into them, praying nothing was broken. Half-numb from hanging so long, I palmed along my aching body until I felt the buckled for the seat belts.
“Okay.” I hissed between gritted teeth, in an effort to stave off my panic. “You can do this. Just hold on tight. Nice and tight. Here we go . . .”
Click.
Everything seemed to lurch, and I slid off the seat to plummet towards the muck-filled hole in the cockpit ceiling. My fingers were slick with blood and slipped over the smooth faux-leather pilot’s seat with ease. The shoulder belt snagged on the bits of glass that lay just under the left lowest rib, and a flare of white-hot pain ripped through me.
Wham.
I screamed, my right knee caught the edge of the aluminum ceiling, and both hands dove into a mound of leaf-covered glass shards on the opposite side of the hole. My head swam, being right-side-up again enough to make shadows gnaw at the corner of my eyes.
Forcing myself to breath slowly, I fought the urge to faint and slid back to sit on the smooth ceiling. I turned my hands over to see half a dozen bits of clear glass burrowed into my skin like greedy parasites, red blood weeping around the new cuts.
“Screw you.” I spat at the rubbish with angry tears in my eyes. “Screw you, screw you, screw you.”
The shards came out easy enough, and the cuts weren’t that deep, but that wasn’t what worried me. On my chest, the single piece of cockpit glass that remined was almost as big as my palm, and it really hurt. Just touching it felt like self-inflicted torture, but I knew it had to come out sooner or later.
Please don’t nick a vein.
Wiping my hands dry on my jeans, I gripped the shard with both hands, and jerked.
Fire roared over my ribs, and hot blood tickled my already grimy pale skin. I clapped a hand over the wound, pressing down hard, and grunted out a string of hateful expletives that my ouma would have slapped me for.
Lying on my back, I stared around me at the messy cargo compartment of the MD-902. Most of the medical supplies had been in cardboard boxes strapped down with heavy nylon tow-straps, but several cases had ruptured with the force of the impact, spraying bandages, syringes, and pill bottles all over the cluttered interior. Orange flames chewed at the crate furthest to the rear, the tail section long gone, but the foremost part of the hold was intact. Easily a million-dollar mess, it would have made me faint on any other trip, but today it was a godsend.
Half-blind in the darkness, I crawled along with only the firelight and lightning bolts to guide me, my right knee aching. Like a crippled raccoon, I collected things as I went, conscious of the two pallets of intact supplies weighing right over my head. I’d taken several different first-aid courses with some hunting buddies of mine, and the mental reflexes kicked in to help soothe my frazzled mind.
Check for bleeds, stop the worst, then move on.
Aside from my battered chest and stomach, the rest of me remained mostly unharmed. I had nasty bruises from the seatbelts, my right knee swelled, my nose slightly crooked and crusted in blood, but otherwise I was intact. Dowsing every scratch and cut with a bottle of isopropyl alcohol I found, I used butterfly closures on the smaller lacerations that peppered my skin. I wrapped soft white gauze over my abused palms and probed at the big cut where the last shard had been, only stopping when I was sure there were no pieces of glass wedged inside my flesh.
“Not too bad.” I grunted to myself, trying to sound impassive like a doctor might. “Rib must have stopped it. Gonna need stitches though. That’ll be fun.”
Pawing through the broken cases, I couldn’t find any suture chord, but just as I was about to give up, I noticed a small box that read ‘medical skin stapler’.
Bingo.
I tore the small white plastic stapler free from its packaging and eyeballed the device. I’d never done this before, only seen it in movies, and even though the cut in my skin hurt, I wondered if this wouldn’t be worse.
You’ve gotta do it. That bleeding needs to stop. Besides, no one’s coming to rescue you, not with those rocket-launching psychos out there.
Taking a deep breath, I pinched the skin around the gash together, and pressed the mouth of the stapler to it.
Click.
A sharp sting, like that of a needle bit at the skin, but it didn’t hurt nearly as bad as the cut itself. I worked my way across the two-inch laceration and gave out a sigh of relief when it was done.
“Not going to bleed to death today.” I daubed ointment around the staples before winding more bandages over the wound.
Popping a few low-grade painkillers that tumbled from the cargo, I crawled wriggled through the nearest shattered window into the wet grass.
Raindrops kissed my face, clean and cool on my sweaty skin. Despite the thick cloud cover, there was enough constant lightning strikes within the storm to let me get glimpses of the world around me. My helicopter lay on its back, the blades snapped like pencils, with bits and pieces of it burning in chunks all around the small break in the trees. Chest-high scrub brush grew all around the low-lying ground, with pockets of standing water in places. My ears still rang from the impact of the crash, but I could start to pick up more crickets, frogs, and even some nocturnal birds singing into the darkness, like they didn’t notice the huge the hulk of flaming metal that had fallen from the sky. Overhead, the thunder rumbled onward, the feeble wind whistling, and there were other flashes on the horizon, orange and red ones, with crackles that didn’t sound quite like lightning.
The guns. They’re still fighting.
Instinctively, I pulled out my cellphone, and tapped the screen.
It fluttered to life, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get through to anyone, not even with the emergency function designed to work around having no service. The complicated wonder of our modern world was little better than a glorified paperweight.
Stunned, I sat down with my back to the helicopter and rested my head against the aluminum skin of the craft. How I’d gone from a regular medical supply run to being marooned in this hellish parody of rural America, I didn’t know, but one thig was certain; I needed a plan. Whoever fired the missile could have already contacted my charter company and made up some excuse to keep them from coming to look for me. No one else knew I was here, and even though I now had six staples holding the worst of my injuries shut, I knew I needed proper medical attention. If I wanted to live, I’d have to rescue myself.
My bag. I need to get my go-bag, grab some gear and then . . . head somewhere else.
It took me a while to gather my green canvas paratrooper bag from its place behind the pilot’s seat and fill it with whatever supplies I could scrounge. My knee didn’t seem to be broken, but man did it hurt, and I dreaded the thought of walking on it for miles on end. I focused instead on inventorying my gear and trying to come up with a halfway intelligent plan of action.
I had a stainless-steel canteen with one of those detachable cups on the bottom, a little fishing kit, some duct tape, a lighter, a black LED flashlight with three spare batteries, a few tattered road maps with a compass, a spare pair of socks, medical supplies from the cargo, and a simple forest green plastic rain poncho. I also managed to unearth a functioning digital camcorder my ouma had gotten me for Christmas a few years back, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to do any filming in such a miserable state. Lastly, since it was a private supply run from a warehouse area near Pittsburgh to a direct hospital pad in Ohio, I’d been able to bring my K-Bar, a sturdy, and brutally simple knife designed for the Marine Corps that I used every time I went camping. It was pitiful in comparison to the rifle I wished I had with me, but that didn’t matter now. I had what I had, and I doubted my trusty Armalite would have alleviated my sore knee anyway.
Clicking on my flashlight, I huddled with the poncho around my shoulders inside the wreck of the chopper and peered at the dusty roadmaps. A small part of me hoped that a solution would jump out from the faded paper, but none came. These were all maps of western PA and eastern Ohio. None of them had a Barron County on them anywhere.
The man on the radio said to head north, right before they shot me down. That means they must be camped out to the north of here. South had that convoy and those burning houses, so that’s a no-go. Maybe I can backtrack eastward the way I came.
As if on cue, a soft pop echoed from over the eastern horizon, and I craned to look out the helicopter window, spotting more man-made flashes over the tree tops.
“Great.” I hissed between clenched teeth, aware of how the temperature dipped to a chilly 60 degrees, and how despite the conditions, my stomach had begun to growl. “Not going that way, are we? Westward it is.”
Walking away from my poor 902 proved to be harder than I’d anticipated. Despite the glass, the fizzling fires, and the darkness, it still held a familiar, human essence to it. Sitting inside it made me feel secure, safe, even calm about the situation. In any other circumstance, I would have just stayed with the downed aircraft to wait for help, but I knew the men who shot me down would likely find my crash site, and I didn’t want to be around when they did.
Unlike much of central and western Ohio, southeastern Ohio is hilly, brushy, and clogged with thick forests. Thorns snagged at my thin poncho and sliced at my pant legs. My knee throbbed, every step a form of self-inflicted torture. The rain never stopped, a steady drizzle from above just cold enough to be problematic as time went on, making me shiver. Mud slid under my tennis shoes, and every tree looked ten times bigger in the flickering beam of my cheap flashlight. Icy fear prickled at the back of my neck at some of the sounds that greeted me through the gloom. I’d been camping loads of times, both in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, but these noises were something otherworldly to me.
Strange howls, screeches, and calls permeated the rain-soaked sky, some almost roars, while others bordered on human in their intonation. The more I walked, the softer the distant gunfire became, and the more prevalent the odd sounds, until the shadows seemed to fill with them. I didn’t dare turn off my flashlight, or I’d been completely blind in the dark, but a little voice in the back of my head screamed that I was too visible, crunching through the gloomy forest with my long beam of light stabbing into the abyss. It felt as though a million eyes were on me, studying me, hunting me from the surrounding brush, and I bitterly recalled how much I’d loved the old Survivor Man TV series as a kid.
Not so fun being out in the woods at night. Especially alone.
A twig snapped somewhere behind me, and I whirled on the spot, one trembling hand resting on the hilt of my K-Bar.
Nothing. Nothing but trees, bushes, and rain dripping down in the darkness.
“This is stupid.” I whispered to myself to keep my nerves in check as I slowly spun on the spot. “I should have went eastward anyway. God knows how long I’m going to have to—”
Creak.
A groan of metal-on-metal echoed from somewhere to my right, and I spun to face it, yanking the knife on my belt free from its scabbard. It felt so small and useless in my hand, and I choked down a wave of nauseas fear.
Ka-whump. Creak. K-whump. Creak.
Underbrush cracked and crunched, a few smaller saplings thrashed, and from deep within the gloom, two yellow orbs flared to life. They poked through the mist in the trees, forming into slender fingers of golden light that swept back and forth in the dark.
The soldiers . . . they must be looking for me.
I swallowed hard and turned to slink away.
Ice jammed through my blood, and I froze on the spot, biting my tongue to stop the scream.
It stood not yards away, a huge form that towered a good twelve feet tall in the swirling shadows. Unpolished chrome blended with flash-rusted spots in the faded red paint, and grime-smeared glass shone with dull hues in the flashes of lightning. Where the wheels should have been, the rounded steel axels curved like some enormous hand had bent them, and the tires lay face-down on the muddy ground like big round feet, their hubcaps buried in the dirt. Dents, scrapes, and chips covered the battered thing, and its crooked little radio antenna pointed straight up from the old metal fender like a mast. I could barely make out the mud-coated VW on the rounded hood, and my mind reeled in shock.
Is . . . is that a car?
Both yellow headlights bathed me in a circle of bright, blinding light, and neither I nor the strange vehicle moved.
Seconds ticked by, the screech-thumping in the background only growing closer. I realized that I couldn’t hear any engine noises and had yet to see any soldiers or guns pointed my way. This car looked old, really old, like one of those classic Volkswagen Beetles that collectors fought over at auctions. Try as I might, I couldn’t see a driver inside the murky, mold-smeared windows.
Because there wasn’t one.
Lightning arched across the sky overhead, and the car standing in front of me blinked.
Its headlights slid shut, as if little metal shades had crawled over the bulbs for a moment and flicked open again. Something about that movement was so primal, so real, so lifelike, that every ounce of self-control I had melted in an instant.
Cursing under my breath, I lunged into the shrubs, and the world erupted around me.
Under my shoes, the ground shook, and the car surged after me in a cacophony of ka-thumps that made my already racing heart skip several beats. A weather-beaten brown tow truck from the 50’s charged through the thorns to my left, it’s headlights ablaze, and a dilapidated yellow school bus rose from its hiding place in the weeds to stand tall on four down-turned axel-legs. They all flicked their headlights on like giants waking from their slumber, and as I dodged past them, they each blared their horn into the night in alarm.
My breaths came short and tight, my knee burned, and I crashed through thorns and briars without thought to how badly I was getting cut up.
The cheap poncho tore, and I ripped it away as it caught on a tree branch.
A purple 70’s Mustang shook off its blanket of creeping vines and bounded from a stand of trees just ahead, forcing me to swerve to avoid being run over, my adrenaline at all-time highs.
This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening, this can’t be happening.
Slipping and sliding, I pushed through a stand of multiflora rose, and stumbled out into a flat, dark expanse.
I almost skidded to a stop.
What had once been a rather large field stood no taller than my shoestrings, the grass charred, and burnt. The storm above illuminated huge pieces of wreckage that lay scattered over the nearly 40-acre plot, and I could just make out the fire-blackened hulk of a fuselage resting a hundred yards away. The plane had been brought down a while ago it seemed, as there weren’t any flames left burning, and I threw myself toward it in frenzied desperation.
Burned grass and greasy brown topsoil slushed underfoot, and I could hear the squelching of the cars pursing me. Rain soaked me to the bone, and my lungs ached from sucking down the damp night air. A painful stich crept into my side, and I cursed myself for not putting in more time for cardio at the gym.
Something caught my left shoelace, and I hurtled to the ground, tasting mud and blood in between my teeth.
They’ve got me now.
I clawed at the mud, rolled, and watched a tire slam down mere inches from where my head had been. The Mustang loomed over me and jostled for position with the red Volkswagen and brown tow truck, the school bus still a few yards behind them. They couldn’t seem to decide who would get the pleasure of stomping me to death, and like a herd of stampeding wildebeest, they locked bumpers in an epic shoving match.
On all fours, I scampered out from under the sparring brutes, and dashed for the crumpled airplane, a white-painted DC-3 that looked like it had been cut in half by a gargantuan knife blade. I passed a snapped wing section, the oily remains of a turbo-prop engine, and a mutilated wheel from the landing gear. Climbing over a heap of mud, I squeezed into the back of the ruined flight cabin and dropped down into the dark cargo hold.
Wham.
No sooner had my sneakers hit the cold metal floor, and the entire plane rocked from the impact of something heavy ramming it just outside. I tumbled to my knees, screaming in pain as, once again, I managed to bash the sore one off a bracket in the wall.
My hand smeared in something gooey, and I scrabbled for my flashlight.
It clicked on, a wavering ball of white light in the pitch darkness, and I fought the urge to gag. “Oh man . . .”
Three people, or what was left of them, lay strewn over the narrow cargo area. Claret red blood coated the walls, caked on the floor, and clotted under my mud-spattered shoes. Bits of flesh and viscera were stuck to everything, and tatters of cloth hung from exposed sections of broken bone. An eerie set of bloody handprints adorned the walls, and the only reason I could tell it had been three people were the shoes; all of them bore anklebones sticking out above blood-soaked socks. It smelled sickly sweet, a strange, nauseas odor that crept into my nose and settled on the back of my tongue like an alien parasite.
Something glinted in the beam of my flashlight, and my pulse quickened as I pried the object loose from the severed arm that still clung to it.
“Hail Mary full of Grace.” I would have grinned if it weren’t for the fact that the plane continued to buck and roll under the assault from the cars outside.
The pistol looked old, but well-maintained, aside from the light coating of dark blood that stained its round wooden handle. It felt heavy, but good in my hand, and I turned it over to read the words, Waffenfabrik Mauser stenciled into the frame, with a large red 9 carved into the grip. For some reason, it vaguely reminded me of the blasters from Star Wars.
I fumbled with a little switch that looked like a safety on the back of the gun and stumbled toward a gap in the plane’s dented fuselage to aim out at the surrounding headlights.
Bang.
The old gun bucked reliably in my hand, its long barrel spitting a little jet of flame into the night. I had no idea if I hit anything, but the attacking cars recoiled, their horns blaring in confusion.
They turned, and scuttled for the tree line as fast as their mechanical legs could go, the entire ordeal over as fast as it had begun.
Did I do that?
Perplexed, I stared down at the pistol in my hand.
Whoosh.
A large, inky black shadow glided down from the clouds, and the yellow school bus moved too slow to react in time.
With a crash, the kicking nightmarish vehicle was thrown onto its side, spraying glass and chrome trim across the muddy field. Its electro-synth horn blared with wails of mechanical agony, as two huge talon-like feet clamped down on it, and the enormous head of the flying creature lowered to rip open its engine compartment.
The horn cut out, and the enormous flying entity jerked its head back to gulp down a mass of what looked like sticky black vines from the interior of the shattered bus.
At this range, I could see now that the flying creature bore two legs and had its wings half-tucked like a vulture that had descended to feed on roadkill. Its head turned slightly, and in the glow of another lightning bolt, my jaw went slack at the realization of what it was.
A tree trunk. It’s a rotted tree trunk.
I couldn’t tell where the reptilian beast began, and where the organic tree components ended, the upper part of the head shaped like a log, while the lower jaw resembled something out of a dinosaur movie. Its skin looked identical to the outside of a shagbark hickory but flexed with a supple featheriness that denoted something closer to skin. Sharp branch-like spines ranged down its back, and out to the end of its tail, which bore a massive round club shaped like a diseased tree-knot. Crouched on both hind legs, it braced the hooked ends of its folded wings against the ground like a bat, towering higher than a semi-truck. Under the folds of its armored head, a bulging pair of chameleon-like eyes constantly spun in their sockets, probing the dark for threats while it ate.
One black pupil locked onto the window I peered through, and my heart stopped.
The beast regarded me for a moment, making a curious, sideways sniff.
With a proud, contemptful head-toss, the shadow from the sky parted rows of razor-sharp teeth to let out a roar that shook the earth beneath my feet. It was the triumphant war cry of a creature that sat at the very top of the food chain, one that felt no threat from the fragile two-legged beings that walked the earth all around it. It hunted whenever it wanted, ate whatever it wanted, and flew wherever it wanted. It didn’t need to rip the plane apart to devour me.
Like my hunter-gatherer ancestors from thousands of years ago, I wasn’t even worth the energy it would take to pounce.
I’m hiding in the remains of the cockpit now, which is half-buried under the mud of the field, enough to shield the light from my screen so that thing doesn’t see it. My service only now came back, and it’s been over an hour since the winged beast started in on the dead bus. I don’t know when, or how I’m going to get out of here. I don’t know when anyone will even see this post, or if it will upload at all. My phone battery is almost dead, and at this point, I’m probably going to have to sleep among the corpses until daylight comes.
A dead man sleeping amongst friends.
If you live in the Noble County area in southeastern Ohio, be careful where you drive, fly, and boat. I don’t know if it’s possible to stumble into this strange place by ground, but if so, then these things are definitely headed your way.
If that happens . . . pray that they don’t find you.
submitted by RandomAppalachian468 to nosleep [link] [comments]
From 5,000 feet, the ground flew by in a carpet of dark forests and kelly-green fields. The sun hung low on the horizon in a picturesque array of dazzling orange and gold, and I could make out the narrow strip of the Ohio River to my left, glistening in the fading daylight. This time of year, the trees would be full of the sweet aroma of fresh blossoms, and the frequent rains kept small pockets of fluffy white mist hanging in the treetops. It was a beautiful view, one that reminded me of why being a helicopter pilot trumped flying in a jumbo jet far above the clouds every day of the week.
Fourteen more days, and I’m debt free.
That made me grin even more. I’d been working as a charter pilot ever since I obtained my license at age 19, and after years of keeping my nose to the grindstone, I was closing on the final payment for real-estate in western Pennsylvania. With no debt, a fixer-upper house on 30 rural acres all to myself, and a respectable wage for a 26-year-old pilot, I looked forward to the financial freedom I could now enjoy. Maybe I’d take a vacation, somewhere exotic like Venice Italy, or the Dominican Republic. Or perhaps I’d sock the money back for the day I started a family.
“Remember kleineun, a real man looks after his own.”
My elderly ouma’s voice came back from the depths of my memories, her proud, sun-tanned face rising from the darkness. She and my Rhodesian grandfather had emigrated to the US when they were newlyweds, as the violence against white Boer descendants in South Africa spiraled out of control. My mother and father both died in a car crash when I was six, and it had been my grandparents who raised me. Due to this, I’d grown up with a slight accent that many of my classmates found amusing, and I could speak both English, and Afrikaans, the Boer tongue of our former home.
I shifted in my seat, stretched my back muscles, and glanced at the picture taped to my console. Both my parents flanked a grinning, gap-toothed six-year-old me, at the last Christmas we’d spent together. My mother beamed, her dark hair and Italian features a sharp contrast to my father’s sandy blonde hair and blue eyes. Sometimes, I liked to imagine they were smiling at me with pride at how well I flew the old silver-colored bird my company had assigned to me, and that made the long, lonely flights easier to bear.
A flicker caught my eye, and I broke my gaze away from the photograph.
Perched in its small cradle above the controls, my little black Garmin fuzzed over for a few seconds, its screen shifting from brightly colored maps to a barrage of grey static.
Did the power chord come loose?
I checked, ensuring the power-cable for the unit’s battery was plugged into the port on the control panel. It was a brand-new GPS unit, and I’d used it a few times already, so I knew it wasn’t defective. Granted, I could fly and navigate without it, but the Garmin made my time as a pilot so much easier that the thought of going blind was dreadful.
My fuel gauge danced, clicked to empty, then to full, in a bizarre jolt.
More of the gauges began to stutter, the entire panel seeming to develop terrets all at once, and my pulse began to race. Something was wrong, very wrong, and the sludge inside my bowels churned with sour fear.
“Come on, come on.” I flicked switches, turned dials, punched buttons, but nothing seemed to fix the spasming electronics. Every gauge failed, and without warning, I found myself plunged into inky darkness.
Outside, the sun surrendered to the pull of night, the sky darker than usual. A distant rumble of thunder reverberated above the roar of my helicopter’s engine, and I thought I glimpsed a streak of yellowish lightning on the far horizon to my left.
Calm down Chris. We’re still flying, so it must just be a blown fuse. Stay in control and find a place to set her down.
My sweaty palm slid on the cyclic stick, and both feet weighed heavy on the yaw pedals. The collective stuck to my other hand with a nervous vibration, and I squinted against the abyss outside.
Beep.
I jumped despite myself, as the little Garmin on my panel flared back to life, the static pulling aside to reveal a twitching display. Each time the screen glitched, it showed the colorful map detailing my flight path over the ground below, but I noticed that some of the lines changed, the names shifting, as if the device couldn’t decide between two different versions of the world.
One name jutted out at me, slate gray like most of the major county names, appearing with ghostly flickers from between two neighboring ones.
Barron County.
I stared, confused. I’d flown over this section of southeastern Ohio plenty of times, and I knew the counties by heart. At this point, I should have been over the southern end of Noble County, and maybe dipping lower into Washington. There was no Barron County in Ohio. I was sure of it.
And yet it shown back at me from the digital landscape, a strange, almost cigar-shaped chunk of terrain carved from the surrounding counties like a tumor, sometimes there, sometimes not, as my little Garmin struggled to find the correct map. Rain began to patter against my cockpit window, and the entire aircraft rattled from a strong gust of wind. Thick clouds closed over my field of vision like a sea of gray cotton.
The blood in my veins turned to ice, and I sucked in a nervous breath.
Land. I had to land. There was nothing else to do, my flight controls weren’t responding, and only my Garmin had managed to come back to life. Perhaps I’d been hit by lightning, and the electronics had been fried? Either way, it was too dark to tell, but a storm seemed to be brewing, and if I didn’t get my feet on the ground soon, I could be in real trouble.
“Better safe than sorry.” I pushed down on the collective to start my slow descent and clicked the talking button for my headset. “Any station, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, over.”
Nothing.
“Any station, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, requesting emergency assistance, over.”
Still nothing.
If the radio’s dead, I’m really up a creek.
With my hand shaking, I clicked on the mic one more time. “Any station, this is—”
Like a curtain pulling back, the fog cleared from around my window, and the words stuck in my throat.
Without my gauges, I couldn’t tell just how far I’d descended, but I was definitely very low. Thick trees poked up from the ground, and the hills rolled into high ridges with flat valley floors, fields and pastures pockmarking them. Rain fell all around in cold, silvery sheets, a normal feature for the mid spring in this part of Ohio.
What wasn’t normal, were the fires.
At first, I thought they were forest fires for the amount of smoke and flames that bellowed from each spot, but as I swooped lower, my eyes widened in horror.
They were houses.
Farms, cottages, little clusters that barely constituted villages, all of them belched orange flames and black pillars of sooty smoke. I couldn’t hear above the helicopter blades, but I could see the flashes on the ground, along the road, in between the trees, and even coming from the burning buildings, little jets of golden light that spat into the darkness with anger.
Gunfire. That’s rifle fire, a whole lot of it.
Tiny black figures darted through the shadows, barely discernable from where I sat, several hundred feet up. I couldn’t see much, but some were definitely running away, the streaks of yellow gunfire chasing them. A few dark gray vehicles rumbled down one of the gravel roads, and sprayed fire into the houses as it went. They were fighting, I realized, the people in the trucks and the locals. It was horrific, like something out of war-torn Afghanistan, but worse.
Then, I caught a glimpse of the others.
They didn’t move like the rest, who either fled from the dark vehicles, or fired back from behind cover. These skinny figures loped along with haphazard gaits, many running on all fours like animals, swarming from the trees by the dozens. They threw themselves into the gales of bullets without flinching, attacking anyone within range, and something about the way they moved, so fluid, so fearless, made my heart skip a beat.
What is that?
“Echo Four Actual to unknown caller, please respond, over.”
Choking back a cry of shock, I fumbled at the control panel with clumsy fingers, the man’s voice sharp and stern. I hadn’t realized that I’d let go of the talking button and clicked it down again. “Hello? Hello, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot out of Pittsburgh, over.”
An excruciating moment passed, and I continued to zoom over the trees, the fires falling away behind me as more silent forest took over.
“Roger that Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, we read you loud and clear. Please identify yourself and any passengers or cargo you might be carrying, over.”
Swallowing hard, I eyed the treetops, which looked much closer than they should have been. How far had I descended? “Echo Four Actual, my name is Christopher Dekker, and I am alone. I’m a charter flight from PA, carrying medical equipment for OSU in Columbus. My controls have been damaged, and I am unable to safely carry on due to the storm. Requesting permission to land, over.”
I watched the landscape slide by underneath me, once catching sight of what looked like a little white church surrounded by smaller huts, dozens of figures in the yard staring up at me as I flew over a nearby ridgeline.
“Solid copy on that Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot. Be advised, your transponder shows you to be inside a restricted zone. Please cease all radio traffic, reduce your speed, climb to 3,000 feet and proceed north. We’ll talk you in from there. How copy, over?”
My heart jumped, and I let out a sigh of relief. “Roger that Echo Four Actual, my altimeter is down, but I’ll do my best to eyeball the altitude, over.”
With that, I pulled the collective upward, and tried my best to gauge how far I was by eyesight in the gathering night, rain still coming down all around me. This had to be some kind of disaster or riot, I decided. After all, the voice over the radio sounded like military, and those vehicles seemed to have heavy weapons. Maybe there was some kind of unrest going on here that I hadn’t heard about yet?
Kind of weird for it to happen in rural areas though. Spoiled college kids I get, but never saw farmers get so worked up before. They usually love the military.
Something moved in the corner of my eye, and I turned out of reflex.
My mouth fell open, and I froze, unable to scream.
In the sky beside me, a huge shadow glided along, and its leathery wings effortlessly carved through the gloom, flapping only on occasion to keep it aloft. It was too dark for me to see what color it was, but from the way it moved, I knew it wasn’t another helicopter. No, this thing was alive, easily the size of a small plane, and more than twice the length of my little McDonald Douglass. A long tail trailed behind it, and bore a distinct arrow-shaped snout, with twig-like spines fanned out around the back of its head. Whatever legs it had were drawn up under it like a bird, yet its skin appeared rough and knobby, almost resembling tree bark. Without pause, the gigantic bat-winged entity flew along beside me, as if my presence was on par with an annoying fly buzzing about its head.
Gripping the microphone switch so tight, I thought I’d crack the plastic, I whispered into my headset, forgetting all radio protocol. “T-There’s something up here.”
Static crackled.
“Douglas Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, say again your last, you’re coming in weak and unreadable, over.”
“There’s something up here.” I snarled into the headset, still glued to the controls of the helicopter, afraid to deviate even an inch from my course in case the monstrosity decided to turn on me. “A freaking huge thing, right beside me. I swear, it looks like a bat or . . . I don’t know.”
“Calm down.” The man on the other end of the radio broke his rigorous discipline as well, his voice deep, but level. “It won’t attack if you don’t move too fast. Slowly ease away from it and follow that course until you’re out of sight.”
I didn’t have time to think about how wrong that sounded, how the man’s strict tone had changed to one of knowledge, how he hadn’t been the least surprised by what I’d said. Instead, I slowly turned the helicopter away from the huge menace and edged the speed higher in tiny increments.
As soon as I was roughly two football fields away, I let myself relax, and clicked the mic switch. “It’s not following.”
“You’re sure?”
Eyeing the huge flapping wings, I nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see me. “Yeah, I’m well clear.”
“Good. Thank you, Mr. Dekker.”
Then, the radio went dead.
Something in my chest dropped, a weight that made my stomach roil. This wasn’t right, none of it. Who was that man? Why did he know about the thing I’d just seen? What was I supposed to—
A flash of light exploded from the trees to my right and shot into the air with a long finger of smoke.
What the . . .
On instinct, I jerked the cyclic stick to one side, and the helicopter swung to avoid the rocket.
Boom.
My world shook, metal screeched, and a dozen alarms began to go off inside the cockpit in a cacophony of beeps and sirens. Orange and red flames lit up the night sky just behind me, and the horizon started to spin wildly outside. Heat gushed from the cockpit door, and I smelled the greasy stench of burning oil. The safety belts dug into my shoulders, and with a final slip, the radio headset ripped free from my scalp.
I’m hit.
Desperate, I yanked on the controls, fought the bird even as she spun toward the ground in a wreath of flames, the inky black trees hurtling up to meet me. The helicopter went into full auto-rotation, the sky blurring past outside, and the alarms blared in a screech of doom. Panic slammed through my temples, I screamed at the top of my lungs, and for one brief second, my eyes locked on the little black Garmin still perched atop my control panel.
Its screen stopped twitching and settled on a map of the mysterious Barron County, with a little red arrow at the center of the screen, a few words popping up underneath it.
You are here.
Trees stabbed up into the sky, the belts crushed at my torso, glass shattered all around me, and the world went dark.
Copper, thick, warm, and tangy.
It filled my mouth, stank metallic in my nose, clogged my throat, choking me. In the murkiness, I fought for a surface, for a way out, blind and numb in the dark.
This way, kleineun.
My ouma’s voice echoed from somewhere in the shadows.
This way.
Both eyes flew open, and I gagged, spitting out a stream of red.
Pain throbbed in my ribs, and a heavy pressure sent a tingling numbness through my shoulders. Blood roared inside my temples, and stars danced before my eyes with a dizzying array. Humid night air kissed my skin, and something sticky coated my face, neck, and arms that hung straight up toward the ceiling.
Wait. Not up. Down.
I blinked at the wrinkled, torn ceiling of the cockpit, the glass all gone, the gray aluminum shredded like tissue paper. Just outside the broken windows, thick Appalachian bluegrass and stemmy underbrush swished in a feeble breeze, backlit by flashes of lightning from the thunderstorm overhead. Green and brown leaves covered everything in a wet carpet of triangles, and somewhere nearby, a cricket chirped.
Turning my head from side to side, I realized that I hung upside down inside the ruined helicopter, the top half burrowed into the mud. I could hear the hissing and crackling of flames, the pattering of rain falling on the hot aluminum, and the smaller brush fires around the downed aircraft sizzling out in the damp long grass. Charred steel and burning oil tainted the air, almost as strong as the metallic, coppery stench in my aching nose.
They shot me down. That military dude shot me out of the sky.
It didn’t make sense. I’d followed their orders, done everything they’d said, and yet the instant I veered safely away from whatever that thing in the sky had been, they’d fired, not at it, but at me.
Looking down (or rather, up) at my chest, I sucked in a gasp, which was harder to do that before.
The navy-blue shirt stuck to my torso with several big splotches of dark, rusty red. Most were clean slashes, but two held bits of glass sticking out of them, one alarmingly bigger than the other. They dripped cherry red blood onto my upturned face, and a wave of nausea hit me.
I gotta get down.
I flexed my arms to try and work some feeling back into them, praying nothing was broken. Half-numb from hanging so long, I palmed along my aching body until I felt the buckled for the seat belts.
“Okay.” I hissed between gritted teeth, in an effort to stave off my panic. “You can do this. Just hold on tight. Nice and tight. Here we go . . .”
Click.
Everything seemed to lurch, and I slid off the seat to plummet towards the muck-filled hole in the cockpit ceiling. My fingers were slick with blood and slipped over the smooth faux-leather pilot’s seat with ease. The shoulder belt snagged on the bits of glass that lay just under the left lowest rib, and a flare of white-hot pain ripped through me.
Wham.
I screamed, my right knee caught the edge of the aluminum ceiling, and both hands dove into a mound of leaf-covered glass shards on the opposite side of the hole. My head swam, being right-side-up again enough to make shadows gnaw at the corner of my eyes.
Forcing myself to breath slowly, I fought the urge to faint and slid back to sit on the smooth ceiling. I turned my hands over to see half a dozen bits of clear glass burrowed into my skin like greedy parasites, red blood weeping around the new cuts.
“Screw you.” I spat at the rubbish with angry tears in my eyes. “Screw you, screw you, screw you.”
The shards came out easy enough, and the cuts weren’t that deep, but that wasn’t what worried me. On my chest, the single piece of cockpit glass that remined was almost as big as my palm, and it really hurt. Just touching it felt like self-inflicted torture, but I knew it had to come out sooner or later.
Please don’t nick a vein.
Wiping my hands dry on my jeans, I gripped the shard with both hands, and jerked.
Fire roared over my ribs, and hot blood tickled my already grimy pale skin. I clapped a hand over the wound, pressing down hard, and grunted out a string of hateful expletives that my ouma would have slapped me for.
Lying on my back, I stared around me at the messy cargo compartment of the MD-902. Most of the medical supplies had been in cardboard boxes strapped down with heavy nylon tow-straps, but several cases had ruptured with the force of the impact, spraying bandages, syringes, and pill bottles all over the cluttered interior. Orange flames chewed at the crate furthest to the rear, the tail section long gone, but the foremost part of the hold was intact. Easily a million-dollar mess, it would have made me faint on any other trip, but today it was a godsend.
Half-blind in the darkness, I crawled along with only the firelight and lightning bolts to guide me, my right knee aching. Like a crippled raccoon, I collected things as I went, conscious of the two pallets of intact supplies weighing right over my head. I’d taken several different first-aid courses with some hunting buddies of mine, and the mental reflexes kicked in to help soothe my frazzled mind.
Check for bleeds, stop the worst, then move on.
Aside from my battered chest and stomach, the rest of me remained mostly unharmed. I had nasty bruises from the seatbelts, my right knee swelled, my nose slightly crooked and crusted in blood, but otherwise I was intact. Dowsing every scratch and cut with a bottle of isopropyl alcohol I found, I used butterfly closures on the smaller lacerations that peppered my skin. I wrapped soft white gauze over my abused palms and probed at the big cut where the last shard had been, only stopping when I was sure there were no pieces of glass wedged inside my flesh.
“Not too bad.” I grunted to myself, trying to sound impassive like a doctor might. “Rib must have stopped it. Gonna need stitches though. That’ll be fun.”
Pawing through the broken cases, I couldn’t find any suture chord, but just as I was about to give up, I noticed a small box that read ‘medical skin stapler’.
Bingo.
I tore the small white plastic stapler free from its packaging and eyeballed the device. I’d never done this before, only seen it in movies, and even though the cut in my skin hurt, I wondered if this wouldn’t be worse.
You’ve gotta do it. That bleeding needs to stop. Besides, no one’s coming to rescue you, not with those rocket-launching psychos out there.
Taking a deep breath, I pinched the skin around the gash together, and pressed the mouth of the stapler to it.
Click.
A sharp sting, like that of a needle bit at the skin, but it didn’t hurt nearly as bad as the cut itself. I worked my way across the two-inch laceration and gave out a sigh of relief when it was done.
“Not going to bleed to death today.” I daubed ointment around the staples before winding more bandages over the wound.
Popping a few low-grade painkillers that tumbled from the cargo, I crawled wriggled through the nearest shattered window into the wet grass.
Raindrops kissed my face, clean and cool on my sweaty skin. Despite the thick cloud cover, there was enough constant lightning strikes within the storm to let me get glimpses of the world around me. My helicopter lay on its back, the blades snapped like pencils, with bits and pieces of it burning in chunks all around the small break in the trees. Chest-high scrub brush grew all around the low-lying ground, with pockets of standing water in places. My ears still rang from the impact of the crash, but I could start to pick up more crickets, frogs, and even some nocturnal birds singing into the darkness, like they didn’t notice the huge the hulk of flaming metal that had fallen from the sky. Overhead, the thunder rumbled onward, the feeble wind whistling, and there were other flashes on the horizon, orange and red ones, with crackles that didn’t sound quite like lightning.
The guns. They’re still fighting.
Instinctively, I pulled out my cellphone, and tapped the screen.
It fluttered to life, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get through to anyone, not even with the emergency function designed to work around having no service. The complicated wonder of our modern world was little better than a glorified paperweight.
Stunned, I sat down with my back to the helicopter and rested my head against the aluminum skin of the craft. How I’d gone from a regular medical supply run to being marooned in this hellish parody of rural America, I didn’t know, but one thig was certain; I needed a plan. Whoever fired the missile could have already contacted my charter company and made up some excuse to keep them from coming to look for me. No one else knew I was here, and even though I now had six staples holding the worst of my injuries shut, I knew I needed proper medical attention. If I wanted to live, I’d have to rescue myself.
My bag. I need to get my go-bag, grab some gear and then . . . head somewhere else.
It took me a while to gather my green canvas paratrooper bag from its place behind the pilot’s seat and fill it with whatever supplies I could scrounge. My knee didn’t seem to be broken, but man did it hurt, and I dreaded the thought of walking on it for miles on end. I focused instead on inventorying my gear and trying to come up with a halfway intelligent plan of action.
I had a stainless-steel canteen with one of those detachable cups on the bottom, a little fishing kit, some duct tape, a lighter, a black LED flashlight with three spare batteries, a few tattered road maps with a compass, a spare pair of socks, medical supplies from the cargo, and a simple forest green plastic rain poncho. I also managed to unearth a functioning digital camcorder my ouma had gotten me for Christmas a few years back, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to do any filming in such a miserable state. Lastly, since it was a private supply run from a warehouse area near Pittsburgh to a direct hospital pad in Ohio, I’d been able to bring my K-Bar, a sturdy, and brutally simple knife designed for the Marine Corps that I used every time I went camping. It was pitiful in comparison to the rifle I wished I had with me, but that didn’t matter now. I had what I had, and I doubted my trusty Armalite would have alleviated my sore knee anyway.
Clicking on my flashlight, I huddled with the poncho around my shoulders inside the wreck of the chopper and peered at the dusty roadmaps. A small part of me hoped that a solution would jump out from the faded paper, but none came. These were all maps of western PA and eastern Ohio. None of them had a Barron County on them anywhere.
The man on the radio said to head north, right before they shot me down. That means they must be camped out to the north of here. South had that convoy and those burning houses, so that’s a no-go. Maybe I can backtrack eastward the way I came.
As if on cue, a soft pop echoed from over the eastern horizon, and I craned to look out the helicopter window, spotting more man-made flashes over the tree tops.
“Great.” I hissed between clenched teeth, aware of how the temperature dipped to a chilly 60 degrees, and how despite the conditions, my stomach had begun to growl. “Not going that way, are we? Westward it is.”
Walking away from my poor 902 proved to be harder than I’d anticipated. Despite the glass, the fizzling fires, and the darkness, it still held a familiar, human essence to it. Sitting inside it made me feel secure, safe, even calm about the situation. In any other circumstance, I would have just stayed with the downed aircraft to wait for help, but I knew the men who shot me down would likely find my crash site, and I didn’t want to be around when they did.
Unlike much of central and western Ohio, southeastern Ohio is hilly, brushy, and clogged with thick forests. Thorns snagged at my thin poncho and sliced at my pant legs. My knee throbbed, every step a form of self-inflicted torture. The rain never stopped, a steady drizzle from above just cold enough to be problematic as time went on, making me shiver. Mud slid under my tennis shoes, and every tree looked ten times bigger in the flickering beam of my cheap flashlight. Icy fear prickled at the back of my neck at some of the sounds that greeted me through the gloom. I’d been camping loads of times, both in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, but these noises were something otherworldly to me.
Strange howls, screeches, and calls permeated the rain-soaked sky, some almost roars, while others bordered on human in their intonation. The more I walked, the softer the distant gunfire became, and the more prevalent the odd sounds, until the shadows seemed to fill with them. I didn’t dare turn off my flashlight, or I’d been completely blind in the dark, but a little voice in the back of my head screamed that I was too visible, crunching through the gloomy forest with my long beam of light stabbing into the abyss. It felt as though a million eyes were on me, studying me, hunting me from the surrounding brush, and I bitterly recalled how much I’d loved the old Survivor Man TV series as a kid.
Not so fun being out in the woods at night. Especially alone.
A twig snapped somewhere behind me, and I whirled on the spot, one trembling hand resting on the hilt of my K-Bar.
Nothing. Nothing but trees, bushes, and rain dripping down in the darkness.
“This is stupid.” I whispered to myself to keep my nerves in check as I slowly spun on the spot. “I should have went eastward anyway. God knows how long I’m going to have to—”
Creak.
A groan of metal-on-metal echoed from somewhere to my right, and I spun to face it, yanking the knife on my belt free from its scabbard. It felt so small and useless in my hand, and I choked down a wave of nauseas fear.
Ka-whump. Creak. K-whump. Creak.
Underbrush cracked and crunched, a few smaller saplings thrashed, and from deep within the gloom, two yellow orbs flared to life. They poked through the mist in the trees, forming into slender fingers of golden light that swept back and forth in the dark.
The soldiers . . . they must be looking for me.
I swallowed hard and turned to slink away.
Ice jammed through my blood, and I froze on the spot, biting my tongue to stop the scream.
It stood not yards away, a huge form that towered a good twelve feet tall in the swirling shadows. Unpolished chrome blended with flash-rusted spots in the faded red paint, and grime-smeared glass shone with dull hues in the flashes of lightning. Where the wheels should have been, the rounded steel axels curved like some enormous hand had bent them, and the tires lay face-down on the muddy ground like big round feet, their hubcaps buried in the dirt. Dents, scrapes, and chips covered the battered thing, and its crooked little radio antenna pointed straight up from the old metal fender like a mast. I could barely make out the mud-coated VW on the rounded hood, and my mind reeled in shock.
Is . . . is that a car?
Both yellow headlights bathed me in a circle of bright, blinding light, and neither I nor the strange vehicle moved.
Seconds ticked by, the screech-thumping in the background only growing closer. I realized that I couldn’t hear any engine noises and had yet to see any soldiers or guns pointed my way. This car looked old, really old, like one of those classic Volkswagen Beetles that collectors fought over at auctions. Try as I might, I couldn’t see a driver inside the murky, mold-smeared windows.
Because there wasn’t one.
Lightning arched across the sky overhead, and the car standing in front of me blinked.
Its headlights slid shut, as if little metal shades had crawled over the bulbs for a moment and flicked open again. Something about that movement was so primal, so real, so lifelike, that every ounce of self-control I had melted in an instant.
Cursing under my breath, I lunged into the shrubs, and the world erupted around me.
Under my shoes, the ground shook, and the car surged after me in a cacophony of ka-thumps that made my already racing heart skip several beats. A weather-beaten brown tow truck from the 50’s charged through the thorns to my left, it’s headlights ablaze, and a dilapidated yellow school bus rose from its hiding place in the weeds to stand tall on four down-turned axel-legs. They all flicked their headlights on like giants waking from their slumber, and as I dodged past them, they each blared their horn into the night in alarm.
My breaths came short and tight, my knee burned, and I crashed through thorns and briars without thought to how badly I was getting cut up.
The cheap poncho tore, and I ripped it away as it caught on a tree branch.
A purple 70’s Mustang shook off its blanket of creeping vines and bounded from a stand of trees just ahead, forcing me to swerve to avoid being run over, my adrenaline at all-time highs.
This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening, this can’t be happening.
Slipping and sliding, I pushed through a stand of multiflora rose, and stumbled out into a flat, dark expanse.
I almost skidded to a stop.
What had once been a rather large field stood no taller than my shoestrings, the grass charred, and burnt. The storm above illuminated huge pieces of wreckage that lay scattered over the nearly 40-acre plot, and I could just make out the fire-blackened hulk of a fuselage resting a hundred yards away. The plane had been brought down a while ago it seemed, as there weren’t any flames left burning, and I threw myself toward it in frenzied desperation.
Burned grass and greasy brown topsoil slushed underfoot, and I could hear the squelching of the cars pursing me. Rain soaked me to the bone, and my lungs ached from sucking down the damp night air. A painful stich crept into my side, and I cursed myself for not putting in more time for cardio at the gym.
Something caught my left shoelace, and I hurtled to the ground, tasting mud and blood in between my teeth.
They’ve got me now.
I clawed at the mud, rolled, and watched a tire slam down mere inches from where my head had been. The Mustang loomed over me and jostled for position with the red Volkswagen and brown tow truck, the school bus still a few yards behind them. They couldn’t seem to decide who would get the pleasure of stomping me to death, and like a herd of stampeding wildebeest, they locked bumpers in an epic shoving match.
On all fours, I scampered out from under the sparring brutes, and dashed for the crumpled airplane, a white-painted DC-3 that looked like it had been cut in half by a gargantuan knife blade. I passed a snapped wing section, the oily remains of a turbo-prop engine, and a mutilated wheel from the landing gear. Climbing over a heap of mud, I squeezed into the back of the ruined flight cabin and dropped down into the dark cargo hold.
Wham.
No sooner had my sneakers hit the cold metal floor, and the entire plane rocked from the impact of something heavy ramming it just outside. I tumbled to my knees, screaming in pain as, once again, I managed to bash the sore one off a bracket in the wall.
My hand smeared in something gooey, and I scrabbled for my flashlight.
It clicked on, a wavering ball of white light in the pitch darkness, and I fought the urge to gag. “Oh man . . .”
Three people, or what was left of them, lay strewn over the narrow cargo area. Claret red blood coated the walls, caked on the floor, and clotted under my mud-spattered shoes. Bits of flesh and viscera were stuck to everything, and tatters of cloth hung from exposed sections of broken bone. An eerie set of bloody handprints adorned the walls, and the only reason I could tell it had been three people were the shoes; all of them bore anklebones sticking out above blood-soaked socks. It smelled sickly sweet, a strange, nauseas odor that crept into my nose and settled on the back of my tongue like an alien parasite.
Something glinted in the beam of my flashlight, and my pulse quickened as I pried the object loose from the severed arm that still clung to it.
“Hail Mary full of Grace.” I would have grinned if it weren’t for the fact that the plane continued to buck and roll under the assault from the cars outside.
The pistol looked old, but well-maintained, aside from the light coating of dark blood that stained its round wooden handle. It felt heavy, but good in my hand, and I turned it over to read the words, Waffenfabrik Mauser stenciled into the frame, with a large red 9 carved into the grip. For some reason, it vaguely reminded me of the blasters from Star Wars.
I fumbled with a little switch that looked like a safety on the back of the gun and stumbled toward a gap in the plane’s dented fuselage to aim out at the surrounding headlights.
Bang.
The old gun bucked reliably in my hand, its long barrel spitting a little jet of flame into the night. I had no idea if I hit anything, but the attacking cars recoiled, their horns blaring in confusion.
They turned, and scuttled for the tree line as fast as their mechanical legs could go, the entire ordeal over as fast as it had begun.
Did I do that?
Perplexed, I stared down at the pistol in my hand.
Whoosh.
A large, inky black shadow glided down from the clouds, and the yellow school bus moved too slow to react in time.
With a crash, the kicking nightmarish vehicle was thrown onto its side, spraying glass and chrome trim across the muddy field. Its electro-synth horn blared with wails of mechanical agony, as two huge talon-like feet clamped down on it, and the enormous head of the flying creature lowered to rip open its engine compartment.
The horn cut out, and the enormous flying entity jerked its head back to gulp down a mass of what looked like sticky black vines from the interior of the shattered bus.
At this range, I could see now that the flying creature bore two legs and had its wings half-tucked like a vulture that had descended to feed on roadkill. Its head turned slightly, and in the glow of another lightning bolt, my jaw went slack at the realization of what it was.
A tree trunk. It’s a rotted tree trunk.
I couldn’t tell where the reptilian beast began, and where the organic tree components ended, the upper part of the head shaped like a log, while the lower jaw resembled something out of a dinosaur movie. Its skin looked identical to the outside of a shagbark hickory but flexed with a supple featheriness that denoted something closer to skin. Sharp branch-like spines ranged down its back, and out to the end of its tail, which bore a massive round club shaped like a diseased tree-knot. Crouched on both hind legs, it braced the hooked ends of its folded wings against the ground like a bat, towering higher than a semi-truck. Under the folds of its armored head, a bulging pair of chameleon-like eyes constantly spun in their sockets, probing the dark for threats while it ate.
One black pupil locked onto the window I peered through, and my heart stopped.
The beast regarded me for a moment, making a curious, sideways sniff.
With a proud, contemptful head-toss, the shadow from the sky parted rows of razor-sharp teeth to let out a roar that shook the earth beneath my feet. It was the triumphant war cry of a creature that sat at the very top of the food chain, one that felt no threat from the fragile two-legged beings that walked the earth all around it. It hunted whenever it wanted, ate whatever it wanted, and flew wherever it wanted. It didn’t need to rip the plane apart to devour me.
Like my hunter-gatherer ancestors from thousands of years ago, I wasn’t even worth the energy it would take to pounce.
I’m hiding in the remains of the cockpit now, which is half-buried under the mud of the field, enough to shield the light from my screen so that thing doesn’t see it. My service only now came back, and it’s been over an hour since the winged beast started in on the dead bus. I don’t know when, or how I’m going to get out of here. I don’t know when anyone will even see this post, or if it will upload at all. My phone battery is almost dead, and at this point, I’m probably going to have to sleep among the corpses until daylight comes.
A dead man sleeping amongst friends.
If you live in the Noble County area in southeastern Ohio, be careful where you drive, fly, and boat. I don’t know if it’s possible to stumble into this strange place by ground, but if so, then these things are definitely headed your way.
If that happens . . . pray that they don’t find you.
2023.05.28 23:29 mauvelousmia Used Model S
Anyone bought a used 2013-2014 used Model S and claimed the used tax credit? Also looking for battery longevity info.
We are looking at used 2014 Model S P85 or 90, around 80k miles, for around $25k cash. This would be our first electric vehicle and we want to avoid a car payment. We also like the perk of free supercharger use and live in a city where this is convenient. Ultimately, this would be a way to dip our toes into the world of electric and buy a new Model Y when our second car (2012 Subaru Outback) kicks the bucket.
submitted by mauvelousmia to TeslaLounge [link] [comments]
We are looking at used 2014 Model S P85 or 90, around 80k miles, for around $25k cash. This would be our first electric vehicle and we want to avoid a car payment. We also like the perk of free supercharger use and live in a city where this is convenient. Ultimately, this would be a way to dip our toes into the world of electric and buy a new Model Y when our second car (2012 Subaru Outback) kicks the bucket.
2023.05.28 10:25 danielmatthew97 CX-5 or CX-50?
Hi all,
I have a 2017 Toyota RAV4 (which I love), and I'm considering getting a new car for a number of reasons. My RAV4 is the base model with hardly any features, it's not AWD (which I really want), and the trade-in value for it is surprisingly high. I went to look at Mazdas today, and I have to say I was very impressed. Going in I knew I was going to look at the CX-5 and CX-50 since I want something similar in size to my RAV4. I initially was leaning more towards the CX-50 since it's the newer model, but I also like that the CX-5 is made in Japan, has been around longer and has great reliability and safety ratings, and the design is also incredibly sleek and classy looking. When I got to the dealership, the car salesman who was helping me highly recommended the CX-5 over the CX-50. He was not shy about not being a huge fan at all of the CX-50 and believing the CX-5 to be a much better car. I sat in both and much preferred the interior of the CX-5, and after discussing trims and features, I started to be a lot more convinced on the CX-5 over the CX-50. I test drove it and absolutely loved it. But I'm not the best nor the most experienced when it comes to buying cars and understanding how car salespeople work, so in retrospect I'm wondering if the salesman might have had a reason or an agenda of some sort in persuading me to go with the CX-5? I mean, I told him all the features I want, and I can get them all in the CX-5 for a few thousand dollars cheaper than the 50, but still. It seems a bit odd that he was so adamant about the CX-5 being the better choice, so I thought I'd come on here and consult. Should I give the CX-50 more of a shot?
Also, the trim I'm looking at is the Premium, and I'm wondering if any of y'all think it's possible for me to talk down the price from MSRP, or if this current car market would probably not offer me any success in talking the price down. I would really like to get the best deal possible. I initially looked at Subaru Outbacks and another RAV4. Subaru didn't seem to be working with me on offering me a good deal, and there's an immense shortage of RAV4s with tons of people on waiting lists, so that makes negotiating the price down a bit tricky, which all led me to come look at Mazdas.
submitted by danielmatthew97 to mazdacx5 [link] [comments]
I have a 2017 Toyota RAV4 (which I love), and I'm considering getting a new car for a number of reasons. My RAV4 is the base model with hardly any features, it's not AWD (which I really want), and the trade-in value for it is surprisingly high. I went to look at Mazdas today, and I have to say I was very impressed. Going in I knew I was going to look at the CX-5 and CX-50 since I want something similar in size to my RAV4. I initially was leaning more towards the CX-50 since it's the newer model, but I also like that the CX-5 is made in Japan, has been around longer and has great reliability and safety ratings, and the design is also incredibly sleek and classy looking. When I got to the dealership, the car salesman who was helping me highly recommended the CX-5 over the CX-50. He was not shy about not being a huge fan at all of the CX-50 and believing the CX-5 to be a much better car. I sat in both and much preferred the interior of the CX-5, and after discussing trims and features, I started to be a lot more convinced on the CX-5 over the CX-50. I test drove it and absolutely loved it. But I'm not the best nor the most experienced when it comes to buying cars and understanding how car salespeople work, so in retrospect I'm wondering if the salesman might have had a reason or an agenda of some sort in persuading me to go with the CX-5? I mean, I told him all the features I want, and I can get them all in the CX-5 for a few thousand dollars cheaper than the 50, but still. It seems a bit odd that he was so adamant about the CX-5 being the better choice, so I thought I'd come on here and consult. Should I give the CX-50 more of a shot?
Also, the trim I'm looking at is the Premium, and I'm wondering if any of y'all think it's possible for me to talk down the price from MSRP, or if this current car market would probably not offer me any success in talking the price down. I would really like to get the best deal possible. I initially looked at Subaru Outbacks and another RAV4. Subaru didn't seem to be working with me on offering me a good deal, and there's an immense shortage of RAV4s with tons of people on waiting lists, so that makes negotiating the price down a bit tricky, which all led me to come look at Mazdas.
2023.05.27 16:00 BaseballSeveral1107 SUVosis in cities must stop.
Before I start, let's categorize the SUVs:
SUVs are gas-guzzling. This is simple physics. The more mass, the more energy it needs to move at the same speed. The engines of SUVs were designed specifically for off-road so 4 wheel drive is the standard in many of them. 4 wheel drive helps you in mud but doesn't help you slow down, so drivers can drive as fast as they want to, as soon as they don't plan on stopping. The worst are pick-ups which have even more ridiculous fuel consumption, because they are for off road and transporting heavy stuff in the wilderness of Canada and Northern US.
SUVs are not eco-friendly. Here we return to their fuel guzzling.
The ergonomics of SUVs and pickups are terrible. One such can take up from 1.5 to 2 parking spaces. And that's not an exaggeration. Pickup trucks often have to stand on the pavement, for the inconvenience of the pavement, just to fit in and not block the roads. In one parking lot near my block, I see an SUVosis where cars jut out on both sides of the road and a second space so as not to block either of them. Passing SUVs on the streets of an old city is a tragedy.
And most importantly, they are deadly. A higher center of gravity equals a greater chance of a rollover, and a difference in height means zero chance for a car, pedestrian or cyclist. Especially pedestrians and cyclists. A normal car will simply scoop you up like a snow shovel on the roof, which sucks, but doesn't kill you in most cases. Small SUVs and crossovers hit you in the hips and head, you're even more screwed. Pickups and big SUVs are the worst because they sweep you under the vehicle where NOT. YOU HAVE. CHANCE. For survival. In addition, the higher height, so you will not see a small child, which is almost a guarantee of accidents in residential areas and cities. The blind spot in front of the hood of the SUV could fit 8 crouching children in a row, and none of them can be seen from the driver's perspective. In addition, the majority of drivers, not only in the US, but globally, according to manufacturers' research, are poor and dangerous drivers, using them to avoid the consequences of their actions. Such drivers don't think about other people, use their phones more while driving, are more risky while driving and obsessed with high status. Source 1 and source 2. And the higher, brighter headlights blinding everyone coming from the opposite side and in front of the vehicle.
People buy them to prop up their ego. They used to buy them when they needed them for hard work, for the countryside or off road. Now, thanks to the propaganda of the car industry, which has more money, people buy them, but the lines of more practical cars, such as the Ford Focus, are closed because almost no one buys them anymore. By the way, this turns into an arms race. People are concerned about accidents involving SUVs, so they buy bigger ones to win.
We should prevent it. But first the counterarguments. First of all, it's none of my business who drives what and that limits freedom and communism. But your freedom to wave your hand and drive an SUV ends where my face begins and the sidewalk separated by a green belt. Besides, it's my business whether, as a pedestrian, I get into an accident and whether this accident will not end in death. Would you have said the same thing when gun licenses were introduced and alcohol advertising and cigarette packaging were regulated to warn of the dangerous effects of their use? Secondly, you need space and you have to tow something. But SUVs don't actually have a trunk. The DACIA Duster has 408 liters of luggage space, and the FORD Focus 2014 (I own one) has 476 liters with the seats up and 1262 liters with the seats folded down. Of course you can fold down the back seats of an SUV but it won't make sense with families and you can do the same with the back seats of a station wagon. There's roomy goodness in every station wagon's trunk. Every family had one before automakers convinced the aging GenXers that what they needed was an SUV with a 1.2m hood. Besides, people who buy SUVs mostly don't carry anything bigger or tow any yacht or trailer. If you really need that space and comfort, there are minivans. For businesses, there are vans. They are easier to come out of and have low hoods so you see everything.
Also, there are no sports in Sports Utility Vehicles. There's no sport in driving an SUV (Unless you run over pedestrians and browse Reddit or Twitter).
We should prevent it somehow, maybe even some petitions to regulate it or ban. Parking permits should be more expensive for SUVs to compensate for their size. Ads for these monsters should have warnings just like ads for alcohol and cigarettes. And getting registered and allowed to own one should be like getting a gun license, with a psychological test to make sure no psycho runs over anyone or anything. People who need them would be required to have a commercial licence.
For more information, here's a Not Just Bikes video on that problem.
submitted by BaseballSeveral1107 to Vent [link] [comments]
- Crossovers, evolving towards station wagons and hatchbacks, but still SUVs so I'd categorize them as such, like Volvo XC60.
- Small SUVs, most common in Europe, like Dachia Duster.
- Big SUVs, mostly found in the US and Canada, but slowly coming to Europe, like Cadillac Escalade.
- Pickup trucks, most common in the US and Canada, like Ford F150, coming to Europe too.
SUVs are gas-guzzling. This is simple physics. The more mass, the more energy it needs to move at the same speed. The engines of SUVs were designed specifically for off-road so 4 wheel drive is the standard in many of them. 4 wheel drive helps you in mud but doesn't help you slow down, so drivers can drive as fast as they want to, as soon as they don't plan on stopping. The worst are pick-ups which have even more ridiculous fuel consumption, because they are for off road and transporting heavy stuff in the wilderness of Canada and Northern US.
SUVs are not eco-friendly. Here we return to their fuel guzzling.
The ergonomics of SUVs and pickups are terrible. One such can take up from 1.5 to 2 parking spaces. And that's not an exaggeration. Pickup trucks often have to stand on the pavement, for the inconvenience of the pavement, just to fit in and not block the roads. In one parking lot near my block, I see an SUVosis where cars jut out on both sides of the road and a second space so as not to block either of them. Passing SUVs on the streets of an old city is a tragedy.
And most importantly, they are deadly. A higher center of gravity equals a greater chance of a rollover, and a difference in height means zero chance for a car, pedestrian or cyclist. Especially pedestrians and cyclists. A normal car will simply scoop you up like a snow shovel on the roof, which sucks, but doesn't kill you in most cases. Small SUVs and crossovers hit you in the hips and head, you're even more screwed. Pickups and big SUVs are the worst because they sweep you under the vehicle where NOT. YOU HAVE. CHANCE. For survival. In addition, the higher height, so you will not see a small child, which is almost a guarantee of accidents in residential areas and cities. The blind spot in front of the hood of the SUV could fit 8 crouching children in a row, and none of them can be seen from the driver's perspective. In addition, the majority of drivers, not only in the US, but globally, according to manufacturers' research, are poor and dangerous drivers, using them to avoid the consequences of their actions. Such drivers don't think about other people, use their phones more while driving, are more risky while driving and obsessed with high status. Source 1 and source 2. And the higher, brighter headlights blinding everyone coming from the opposite side and in front of the vehicle.
People buy them to prop up their ego. They used to buy them when they needed them for hard work, for the countryside or off road. Now, thanks to the propaganda of the car industry, which has more money, people buy them, but the lines of more practical cars, such as the Ford Focus, are closed because almost no one buys them anymore. By the way, this turns into an arms race. People are concerned about accidents involving SUVs, so they buy bigger ones to win.
We should prevent it. But first the counterarguments. First of all, it's none of my business who drives what and that limits freedom and communism. But your freedom to wave your hand and drive an SUV ends where my face begins and the sidewalk separated by a green belt. Besides, it's my business whether, as a pedestrian, I get into an accident and whether this accident will not end in death. Would you have said the same thing when gun licenses were introduced and alcohol advertising and cigarette packaging were regulated to warn of the dangerous effects of their use? Secondly, you need space and you have to tow something. But SUVs don't actually have a trunk. The DACIA Duster has 408 liters of luggage space, and the FORD Focus 2014 (I own one) has 476 liters with the seats up and 1262 liters with the seats folded down. Of course you can fold down the back seats of an SUV but it won't make sense with families and you can do the same with the back seats of a station wagon. There's roomy goodness in every station wagon's trunk. Every family had one before automakers convinced the aging GenXers that what they needed was an SUV with a 1.2m hood. Besides, people who buy SUVs mostly don't carry anything bigger or tow any yacht or trailer. If you really need that space and comfort, there are minivans. For businesses, there are vans. They are easier to come out of and have low hoods so you see everything.
Also, there are no sports in Sports Utility Vehicles. There's no sport in driving an SUV (Unless you run over pedestrians and browse Reddit or Twitter).
We should prevent it somehow, maybe even some petitions to regulate it or ban. Parking permits should be more expensive for SUVs to compensate for their size. Ads for these monsters should have warnings just like ads for alcohol and cigarettes. And getting registered and allowed to own one should be like getting a gun license, with a psychological test to make sure no psycho runs over anyone or anything. People who need them would be required to have a commercial licence.
For more information, here's a Not Just Bikes video on that problem.
2023.05.27 15:48 zoinks_zoinks 2014 Subaru outback headlights burnout
Title says it. Headlights burnout every six months of so. Both sides. Been doing this for years. It uses H7 bulbs. I haven’t done anything other than replace them, which is annoying for cost, safety, and difficulty of accessing these bulbs. Has anyone dealt with a similar issue? Voltage, grounding??? Where should I start trouble shooting?
submitted by zoinks_zoinks to subaru [link] [comments]
2023.05.27 15:19 1mz99 Are the HID bulbs going out or the ballasts?
 | 2014 Avalon Limited Hybrid, headlights mainly on the passenger side have been flickering at a high frequency non-stop for the last 10k miles. submitted by 1mz99 to MechanicAdvice [link] [comments] Recently the headlights have been randomly flashing but in a different way than in the video. Most notably whenever I'd accelerate the engine at around 3-4k rpm and let off, the headlights will flicker on and off for a few seconds. Heard these HID bulbs are over $200, would I need $800 2 on each side to replace? |
2023.05.25 21:43 latenightsnackcar 2014 Outback 2.5i Limited Questions
Looking at a 2014 Outback this weekend. Has 204k miles on it and is priced for 7k from a dealership lot.
Like the car, will absolutely need to see it and drive it and wanted to reach out to you all and get your thoughts on a couple questions as this would be the first Subaru I’ve owned.
How reliable is an Outback after 200k miles?
I’ve watched Mr. Subaru on YouTube for what to look for in a car before you buy. He was super helpful, is there anything in particular I should be on the lookout for or make sure to double check myself?
What questions should I be asking the dealer?
Any feedback is appreciated!
submitted by latenightsnackcar to Subaru_Outback [link] [comments]
Like the car, will absolutely need to see it and drive it and wanted to reach out to you all and get your thoughts on a couple questions as this would be the first Subaru I’ve owned.
How reliable is an Outback after 200k miles?
I’ve watched Mr. Subaru on YouTube for what to look for in a car before you buy. He was super helpful, is there anything in particular I should be on the lookout for or make sure to double check myself?
What questions should I be asking the dealer?
Any feedback is appreciated!
2023.05.25 16:20 BigHeadDjango Series 21 Week 1 - Summer Seasonal Tunes! (Explore The Horizon) by BigHedDjango
Hello everyone! BigHedDjango here, tunes for this week to help you out.
Weekly photo: https://i.imgur.com/3dwixAD.png
Photo by PapaMuneef007. Check out more of their photos in-game!
All feedback on tunes is appreciated - good or bad. Specially when tunes are bad. At the end of the day I am just the mechanic and you guys are the racers. Do not hesitate irrespective of your tuning knowledge or racing skills!
Tuning method: 1. Stock look - stock wheel rims, default wheel rim sizes, no aero (unless absolutely necessary for handling and stability) 2. Max performance with max handling possible 3. All cars tuned vs. Unbeatable AI on championship tracks in seasonal weather. However! Unbeatable AI is broken and bugged. Not every car can win 7/10 random races vs Unbeatable AI without abusing rewind/restart. Very few cars can beat it consistently. Hope it gets fixedsoon one day... 4. Bodykit only used if it does not ruin performance
Easy Win Road Circuit - 177 632 200
Easy Win Dirt Trail - 991 376 926
Easy Win Dirt Scramble - 135 436 707
Easy Win Cross Country Sprint - 114 199 871
Easy Win Cross Country Circuit - 181 401 852
Easy Win Street Scene Sprint - 134 229 457
Easy Win Drag Strip - 812 084 897
📸 Also don't stop yourself from checking out my photos on the creative hub. Wow! What beautiful photos! 📸
Don't hesitate to ask if you need any help!
🛠️ I am open to requests for cars you might want me to tune! It would also help me understand FH5 tuning better. So let me know the car and class and I'd get back to you! 🛠️
submitted by BigHeadDjango to forza [link] [comments]
Weekly photo: https://i.imgur.com/3dwixAD.png
Photo by PapaMuneef007. Check out more of their photos in-game!
All feedback on tunes is appreciated - good or bad. Specially when tunes are bad. At the end of the day I am just the mechanic and you guys are the racers. Do not hesitate irrespective of your tuning knowledge or racing skills!
Tuning method: 1. Stock look - stock wheel rims, default wheel rim sizes, no aero (unless absolutely necessary for handling and stability) 2. Max performance with max handling possible 3. All cars tuned vs. Unbeatable AI on championship tracks in seasonal weather. However! Unbeatable AI is broken and bugged. Not every car can win 7/10 random races vs Unbeatable AI without abusing rewind/restart. Very few cars can beat it consistently. Hope it gets fixed
___
FORZATHON WEEKLY CHALLENGE - Above And Beyond
1972 Land Rover Series III * Tune - 555 073 331 (C class CC tune) * Rear aero; High profile tires * Malpais Trailblazer south-west of main festival site is easiest * Easy Win Cross Country Sprint - 114 199 871
___
TRIAL - Ad-van-ture Time
Cross Country - Sports Utility Heroes - A 800
NOTE: Try to block and slow down AI and help teammates in order to win. One player on the team needs to take at least P3 and slow down the AI for a guaranteed win2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk * Tune - 135 748 289 * Easy to drive; 6-gears; Stock engine; True Purist; v2 - minor rebuild, smoother, suspension fix
2019 Lamborghini Urus * Tune - 344 347 538 * Exceptionally good; v3 - less aggressive rear
2021 Cupra Formentor VZ5 * Tune - 151 041 985 * DO NOT SELL/DELETE THIS FREE GIFT CAR! * Good launch and accel; What Unbeatbale AI?; Stock engine; True Purist
___
EVENT LAB - Sand Bank Slalom Beach Party '27
Offroad Capable - A 800
2016 Jeep Trailcat * Tune - 463 371 045 (Tune by Don Joewon Song; Roof light bar) * You can use any of the other options as well but DJS' Trailcat is solid
___
SEASONAL PR STUNTS
RaceRestrictions - RaceClass
Danger Sign - La Mesa
2010 Mosler MT900S * Tune - 178 075 164 (PR only tune) * Mark danger sign. Look at danger sign and follow dirt road north then north-east. Spawn on this dirt road after intersection. You will be ~800 yards away. Ignore dirt road when you get to intersection and make a straight dash for danger sign
Trailblazer - Jungle Traversal
1998 Mercedes-Benz AMG CLK GTR * Tune - 788 818 587 (Tune by KapienPL; Full aero; Anti-lag)
(Rally Adventure) Danger Sign - La Cantera
2019 Rimac Concept Two * Tune - 540 241 336 (Full aero tune; Custom rims) * Spawn ~400 yards north-east where dirt road meets paved road. You need to jump from middle of the ramp to get required jump distance by falling deeper into the quarry
(Hot Wheels) Speed Zone - Treetops
2019 Rimac Concept Two * Tune - 540 241 336 (Full aero tune; Custom rims) * Start 0.9 miles from east gateNOTE: All Championships are locked to Highly Skilled difficulty
___
CHAMPIONSHIP 1 - Sick Dunes
Cross Country - Unlimited Offroad - A 800
2016 Jeep Trailcat * Tune - 463 371 045 * Tune by Don Joewon Song; Roof light bar
2016 RJ Anderson #37 Polaris RZR-Rockstar Energy Pro 2 Truck * Tune - 576 118 022 * Easy Unbeatable wins; Stock Engine; v3 - minor retune
2014 Local Motors Rally Fighter * Tune - 173 263 258 * v2 - full rebuild
2017 Ford #25 "Brocky" Ultra4 Bronco RTR * Tune - 742 246 887 * Lacks top speed and thus accel
___
CHAMPIONSHIP 2 - Cupra Formentor VZ5
Dirt Racing - Formentor '22 - A 800
2021 Cupra Formentor VZ5 * Tune - 151 041 985 * DO NOT SELL/DELETE THIS FREE GIFT CAR! * Good launch and accel; What Unbeatbale AI?; Stock engine; True Purist
___
CHAMPIONSHIP 3 - Too Hot 2 Handle (Rally Adventure)
Dirt Rally - Hot Hatch - B 700
2009 Mini John Cooper Works * Tune - 916 295 744 * Stock engine
2012 Mini John Cooper Works GP * Tune - 342 511 866 * Stock engine; v3 - smoother
2013 Renault Clio R.S. 200 EDC * Tune - 377 328 434 * Stock engine
___
CHAMPIONSHIP 4 - Orient-steering (Hot Wheels)
Hazard - Modern Rally - B 700
2004 Subaru Impreza WRX STI * Tune - 102 360 271 * Very good accel; Smooth; Stock engine; Sounds good; True Purist
2008 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X GSR * Tune - 144 803 768 * Good accel; Super smooth; Stock engine; True Purist
2011 Subaru WRX STI * Tune - 162 292 899
2019 Subaru STI S209 * Tune - 664 356 723 * Car Pass DLC Car; Slow; Stock engine; True Purist
___
TREASURE HUNT - The Pathfinder Challenge
WHAT TO DO: No idea, it's an actual treasure hunt.___
EVENT LAB BLUEPRINTS!
Easy Win Road Sprint - 696 659 852Easy Win Road Circuit - 177 632 200
Easy Win Dirt Trail - 991 376 926
Easy Win Dirt Scramble - 135 436 707
Easy Win Cross Country Sprint - 114 199 871
Easy Win Cross Country Circuit - 181 401 852
Easy Win Street Scene Sprint - 134 229 457
Easy Win Drag Strip - 812 084 897
___
HORIZON 4 AND 5 TUNES ARCHIVE THREAD!
https://www.reddit.com/useBigHeadDjango/comments/r4ptt6/forza_horizon_4_and_horizon_5_tunes_archive/Thank you to everyone for your downloads, uses, likes, follows, shares and feedback! Check my in-game profile for more tunes. You can check my reddit profile for more content___
📸 Also don't stop yourself from checking out my photos on the creative hub. Wow! What beautiful photos! 📸
Don't hesitate to ask if you need any help!
🛠️ I am open to requests for cars you might want me to tune! It would also help me understand FH5 tuning better. So let me know the car and class and I'd get back to you! 🛠️
___
Have a great week! 🥳
2023.05.25 16:20 BigHeadDjango Series 21 Week 1 - Summer Seasonal Tunes! (Explore The Horizon) by BigHedDjango
Hello everyone! BigHedDjango here, tunes for this week to help you out.
Weekly photo: https://i.imgur.com/3dwixAD.png
Photo by PapaMuneef007. Check out more of their photos in-game!
All feedback on tunes is appreciated - good or bad. Specially when tunes are bad. At the end of the day I am just the mechanic and you guys are the racers. Do not hesitate irrespective of your tuning knowledge or racing skills!
Tuning method: 1. Stock look - stock wheel rims, default wheel rim sizes, no aero (unless absolutely necessary for handling and stability) 2. Max performance with max handling possible 3. All cars tuned vs. Unbeatable AI on championship tracks in seasonal weather. However! Unbeatable AI is broken and bugged. Not every car can win 7/10 random races vs Unbeatable AI without abusing rewind/restart. Very few cars can beat it consistently. Hope it gets fixedsoon one day... 4. Bodykit only used if it does not ruin performance
Easy Win Road Circuit - 177 632 200
Easy Win Dirt Trail - 991 376 926
Easy Win Dirt Scramble - 135 436 707
Easy Win Cross Country Sprint - 114 199 871
Easy Win Cross Country Circuit - 181 401 852
Easy Win Street Scene Sprint - 134 229 457
Easy Win Drag Strip - 812 084 897
📸 Also don't stop yourself from checking out my photos on the creative hub. Wow! What beautiful photos! 📸
Don't hesitate to ask if you need any help!
🛠️ I am open to requests for cars you might want me to tune! It would also help me understand FH5 tuning better. So let me know the car and class and I'd get back to you! 🛠️
submitted by BigHeadDjango to ForzaHorizon [link] [comments]
Weekly photo: https://i.imgur.com/3dwixAD.png
Photo by PapaMuneef007. Check out more of their photos in-game!
All feedback on tunes is appreciated - good or bad. Specially when tunes are bad. At the end of the day I am just the mechanic and you guys are the racers. Do not hesitate irrespective of your tuning knowledge or racing skills!
Tuning method: 1. Stock look - stock wheel rims, default wheel rim sizes, no aero (unless absolutely necessary for handling and stability) 2. Max performance with max handling possible 3. All cars tuned vs. Unbeatable AI on championship tracks in seasonal weather. However! Unbeatable AI is broken and bugged. Not every car can win 7/10 random races vs Unbeatable AI without abusing rewind/restart. Very few cars can beat it consistently. Hope it gets fixed
___
FORZATHON WEEKLY CHALLENGE - Above And Beyond
1972 Land Rover Series III * Tune - 555 073 331 (C class CC tune) * Rear aero; High profile tires * Malpais Trailblazer south-west of main festival site is easiest * Easy Win Cross Country Sprint - 114 199 871
___
TRIAL - Ad-van-ture Time
Cross Country - Sports Utility Heroes - A 800
NOTE: Try to block and slow down AI and help teammates in order to win. One player on the team needs to take at least P3 and slow down the AI for a guaranteed win2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk * Tune - 135 748 289 * Easy to drive; 6-gears; Stock engine; True Purist; v2 - minor rebuild, smoother, suspension fix
2019 Lamborghini Urus * Tune - 344 347 538 * Exceptionally good; v3 - less aggressive rear
2021 Cupra Formentor VZ5 * Tune - 151 041 985 * DO NOT SELL/DELETE THIS FREE GIFT CAR! * Good launch and accel; What Unbeatbale AI?; Stock engine; True Purist
___
EVENT LAB - Sand Bank Slalom Beach Party '27
Offroad Capable - A 800
2016 Jeep Trailcat * Tune - 463 371 045 (Tune by Don Joewon Song; Roof light bar) * You can use any of the other options as well but DJS' Trailcat is solid
___
SEASONAL PR STUNTS
RaceRestrictions - RaceClass
Danger Sign - La Mesa
2010 Mosler MT900S * Tune - 178 075 164 (PR only tune) * Mark danger sign. Look at danger sign and follow dirt road north then north-east. Spawn on this dirt road after intersection. You will be ~800 yards away. Ignore dirt road when you get to intersection and make a straight dash for danger sign
Trailblazer - Jungle Traversal
1998 Mercedes-Benz AMG CLK GTR * Tune - 788 818 587 (Tune by KapienPL; Full aero; Anti-lag)
(Rally Adventure) Danger Sign - La Cantera
2019 Rimac Concept Two * Tune - 540 241 336 (Full aero tune; Custom rims) * Spawn ~400 yards north-east where dirt road meets paved road. You need to jump from middle of the ramp to get required jump distance by falling deeper into the quarry
(Hot Wheels) Speed Zone - Treetops
2019 Rimac Concept Two * Tune - 540 241 336 (Full aero tune; Custom rims) * Start 0.9 miles from east gateNOTE: All Championships are locked to Highly Skilled difficulty
___
CHAMPIONSHIP 1 - Sick Dunes
Cross Country - Unlimited Offroad - A 800
2016 Jeep Trailcat * Tune - 463 371 045 * Tune by Don Joewon Song; Roof light bar
2016 RJ Anderson #37 Polaris RZR-Rockstar Energy Pro 2 Truck * Tune - 576 118 022 * Easy Unbeatable wins; Stock Engine; v3 - minor retune
2014 Local Motors Rally Fighter * Tune - 173 263 258 * v2 - full rebuild
2017 Ford #25 "Brocky" Ultra4 Bronco RTR * Tune - 742 246 887 * Lacks top speed and thus accel
___
CHAMPIONSHIP 2 - Cupra Formentor VZ5
Dirt Racing - Formentor '22 - A 800
2021 Cupra Formentor VZ5 * Tune - 151 041 985 * DO NOT SELL/DELETE THIS FREE GIFT CAR! * Good launch and accel; What Unbeatbale AI?; Stock engine; True Purist
___
CHAMPIONSHIP 3 - Too Hot 2 Handle (Rally Adventure)
Dirt Rally - Hot Hatch - B 700
2009 Mini John Cooper Works * Tune - 916 295 744 * Stock engine
2012 Mini John Cooper Works GP * Tune - 342 511 866 * Stock engine; v3 - smoother
2013 Renault Clio R.S. 200 EDC * Tune - 377 328 434 * Stock engine
___
CHAMPIONSHIP 4 - Orient-steering (Hot Wheels)
Hazard - Modern Rally - B 700
2004 Subaru Impreza WRX STI * Tune - 102 360 271 * Very good accel; Smooth; Stock engine; Sounds good; True Purist
2008 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X GSR * Tune - 144 803 768 * Good accel; Super smooth; Stock engine; True Purist
2011 Subaru WRX STI * Tune - 162 292 899
2019 Subaru STI S209 * Tune - 664 356 723 * Car Pass DLC Car; Slow; Stock engine; True Purist
___
TREASURE HUNT - The Pathfinder Challenge
WHAT TO DO: No idea, it's an actual treasure hunt.___
EVENT LAB BLUEPRINTS!
Easy Win Road Sprint - 696 659 852Easy Win Road Circuit - 177 632 200
Easy Win Dirt Trail - 991 376 926
Easy Win Dirt Scramble - 135 436 707
Easy Win Cross Country Sprint - 114 199 871
Easy Win Cross Country Circuit - 181 401 852
Easy Win Street Scene Sprint - 134 229 457
Easy Win Drag Strip - 812 084 897
___
HORIZON 4 AND 5 TUNES ARCHIVE THREAD!
https://www.reddit.com/useBigHeadDjango/comments/r4ptt6/forza_horizon_4_and_horizon_5_tunes_archive/Thank you to everyone for your downloads, uses, likes, follows, shares and feedback! Check my in-game profile for more tunes. You can check my reddit profile for more content___
📸 Also don't stop yourself from checking out my photos on the creative hub. Wow! What beautiful photos! 📸
Don't hesitate to ask if you need any help!
🛠️ I am open to requests for cars you might want me to tune! It would also help me understand FH5 tuning better. So let me know the car and class and I'd get back to you! 🛠️
___
Have a great week! 🥳
2023.05.25 13:34 Apprehensive_Brush38 What car would suit me best?
Hi guys, I'm not really a car enthusiast so was hoping for some advice on here from those you know the ins and outs.
I'm 30m and currently drive a 2014 Corolla Ascent Sport with 167,000 on the clock. It's a bit squashy as I'm 6'6" and I only have it in the first place because I got it at mates rates.
Looking for an SUV or Wagon for more room and potentially kids in a few years as I have a partner. After I trade in/sell my Corolla for probably 12-15k at a guess I don't want to spend more than 20k so my limit is about 35k all up.
Also looking for something with less than 40,000 on the clock as I'd like it to last 5-10 years.
I'm seriously considering the below and I'd love your reasoning on which is best for me. Open to ideas too 😄
Subaru XV: Can pick up a relatively new one for around 30k. Looks good and seems quite spacious. Although the boot looks a bit small for a family car. Subarus apparently hold their value well too and go well on petrol
Nissan X trail: Similar price to the XV but more spacious. However it is a bit more thirsty. I do like the look of it but never driven a Nissan for more than a test drive and looking for feedback.
Skoda Kamiq (new). Bit concerned about the size as it looks like a big hatchback but have heard nothing but good reviews about Skoda. It also come with a 7/7/7 deal which is worth a couple of grand in itself. Price would be around 30k too
Does anyone have any other suggestions?
submitted by Apprehensive_Brush38 to CarsAustralia [link] [comments]
I'm 30m and currently drive a 2014 Corolla Ascent Sport with 167,000 on the clock. It's a bit squashy as I'm 6'6" and I only have it in the first place because I got it at mates rates.
Looking for an SUV or Wagon for more room and potentially kids in a few years as I have a partner. After I trade in/sell my Corolla for probably 12-15k at a guess I don't want to spend more than 20k so my limit is about 35k all up.
Also looking for something with less than 40,000 on the clock as I'd like it to last 5-10 years.
I'm seriously considering the below and I'd love your reasoning on which is best for me. Open to ideas too 😄
Subaru XV: Can pick up a relatively new one for around 30k. Looks good and seems quite spacious. Although the boot looks a bit small for a family car. Subarus apparently hold their value well too and go well on petrol
Nissan X trail: Similar price to the XV but more spacious. However it is a bit more thirsty. I do like the look of it but never driven a Nissan for more than a test drive and looking for feedback.
Skoda Kamiq (new). Bit concerned about the size as it looks like a big hatchback but have heard nothing but good reviews about Skoda. It also come with a 7/7/7 deal which is worth a couple of grand in itself. Price would be around 30k too
Does anyone have any other suggestions?
2023.05.24 14:31 andersvix Headlight issues
I have a 2019 Subaru Crosstrek Premium, and I just bought new headlight bulbs maybe two weeks ago. The passengers side low beam isn’t coming on when I start the car, this started two days ago and when I unplugged the bulb and then plugged it back in, it would turn on. Today though, it would not come back on. I’m not sure if it’s the wiring harness or maybe a bad fuse? Any help please?
submitted by andersvix to Crosstrek [link] [comments]
2023.05.24 14:28 andersvix New headlight bulbs not coming on
I have a 2019 Subaru Crosstrek Premium, and I just bought new headlight bulbs maybe two weeks ago. The passengers side low beam isn’t coming on when I start the car, this started two days ago and when I unplugged the bulb and then plugged it back in, it would turn on. Today though, it would not come back on. I’m not sure if it’s the wiring harness or maybe a bad fuse? Any help please?
submitted by andersvix to Cartalk [link] [comments]
2023.05.24 04:59 backinnola Headlight bulb size
Has anyone changed their bulbs to LED? I’m trying to figure out what size bulb. Some sites say H13 and other say H11. It’s a 1 LT if that helps.
submitted by backinnola to chevyspark [link] [comments]
2023.05.23 01:27 Ashittyparrot Any problem with putting blue loctite on stripped diff plug?
2014 subaru outback 2.5i
Partially stripped the threads of my front differential check hole. The plug itself is fine. Will putting blue loctite on the plug and letting it sit and cure with the remaining threads in the hole be okay? Will it contaminate the gear oil?
submitted by Ashittyparrot to MechanicAdvice [link] [comments]
Partially stripped the threads of my front differential check hole. The plug itself is fine. Will putting blue loctite on the plug and letting it sit and cure with the remaining threads in the hole be okay? Will it contaminate the gear oil?
2023.05.23 01:26 Supurfly83 Could this Subaru Outback be worth 5k?
submitted by Supurfly83 to whatcarshouldIbuy [link] [comments]
2023.05.22 23:48 Bagslapadin Headlight eyebrows
Headlight eyebrows
Wtf. 2023 and 2024 Outbacks and maybe other models. Is there a ..."body color option" for the moulding that is directly adjacent to headlights?
Didn't see one on build page.
Having the same color and texture of moulding, that is for instance, along the sides of the Wilderness edition, up front under the headlights or connecting the upper wheel well to the headlights, looks like shit
Wife doesn't like it, and I'm not about to peel 40k off the retirement fund to look at a ride every day and think that's fucking ugly.
I tried contacting a dealer, they acted dumb like they didn't understand what I was talking about and I was being a lot more polite than this post so I'll be going to a different dealer.
I mean is the best option to just find a different SUV brand kind of a bummer I want to make her happy and she's really up on the idea of a Subaru but she kind of thinks the same things about what I call the headlight eyebrows so I'm just looking for options to fix that cuz I can't be the only one that looks at that and thinks that looks like ass
submitted by Bagslapadin to Subaru_Outback [link] [comments]
Wtf. 2023 and 2024 Outbacks and maybe other models. Is there a ..."body color option" for the moulding that is directly adjacent to headlights?
Didn't see one on build page.
Having the same color and texture of moulding, that is for instance, along the sides of the Wilderness edition, up front under the headlights or connecting the upper wheel well to the headlights, looks like shit
Wife doesn't like it, and I'm not about to peel 40k off the retirement fund to look at a ride every day and think that's fucking ugly.
I tried contacting a dealer, they acted dumb like they didn't understand what I was talking about and I was being a lot more polite than this post so I'll be going to a different dealer.
I mean is the best option to just find a different SUV brand kind of a bummer I want to make her happy and she's really up on the idea of a Subaru but she kind of thinks the same things about what I call the headlight eyebrows so I'm just looking for options to fix that cuz I can't be the only one that looks at that and thinks that looks like ass
2023.05.22 23:13 f1957 Looking for new SUV
I currently have a 12 year old Subaru Outback. It has been a decent car, but I had 2 major repairs - new transmission at 80K and engine rebuild at 120k because valve guides failed...? Anyway not going back to Subaru! I am interested in Toyota because of reliability reputation. Is Toyota still worthy of that reputation and same for the Rav4? I need AWD, prefer a smaller to mid size, would consider hybrid or plug in hybrid, don't want all EV. Looking for recommendations, warnings, guidance on which car, what options, etc. At the very start of my research. Thanks for any and all help.
submitted by f1957 to rav4club [link] [comments]
2023.05.22 21:24 microwave12369 Should I change my ATF in 2014 Subaru Outback?
I bought my 2014 Subaru Outback at 100,000 miles and it’s now at 145,000 miles. It makes a high hum when switching from reverse to drive. It makes other louder noises when in reverse and fully stopped but that may be caused by another issue. My transmission fluid was checked and said it wasn’t looking too good and when I got a second opinion they said changing the fluid would put the gears at risk of slipping. I’m afraid my car won’t last too much longer no matter what I do. Should I risk it and replace the transmission fluid?
submitted by microwave12369 to MechanicAdvice [link] [comments]