If you watch The Family Guy, you’ll remember the episode when Peter gets a segment on the local news called, “You know what really grinds my gears?” On it, he would tell everyone what pissed him off or annoyed him and it is one of the funnier episodes that the series has produced, in my opinion anyway. As I was sitting behind an idiot in traffic the other day, driving a full 20-MPH below the posted speed limit, I got to thinking about my own automotive pet peeves. The list gets kind of long but there are lots of things that tend to tweak me one way or the other depending on the situation. For instance, I really dig diesel trucks and their performance potential but I drives me up a wall when a dude comes into a cruise night with a diesel truck and decides to blast giant plumes of soot for no other reason than cracking up his buddies. It is dumb and annoying.
I am sure we all have a laundry list of these complaints when it comes to actual driving, so go there if you will. At the drag strip, one of my personal pet peeves is when there is a guy driving an 11-second car with more people at the starting line than John Force has with him. Do you really need the guy spotting you on a freaking burnout and then the other guy directing you into the beams coupled with the lady filming the whole thing on her iPad? I watch guys stage frigging dragsters by themselves and you can’t move a small block Chevelle into the lights on your own?! I’ll avoid going down the rabbit hole of bitching about hybrids, people incapable of understanding why anyone would be interested in old cars to begin with, and guys who know nothing about an automotive subject but insist on blathering on at length about stuff that is just totally wrong.
Ok, so there is my rant…what’s yours?
BangShift Question of the Day: What Is Your Biggest Automotive/Gearhead Pet Peeve?
Slow(er) drivers in the left lane.
This!!!
That old asshole at the office (who talks about his hi-po cars, but never drives them) who always describes them as \”it\’s BARELY legal!\”
What does that mean? It barely squeaks by emissions? Your bumper is right at the limit allowed by state patrol? You have a really dim turn signal? I\’ve called him out multiple times, each time he stutters and says something along the lines of \”well you know, it\’s got a LOT of power!!\” STFU Doug.
The douches who surge around fairgrounds like there motor is injected when its not
Metric anything. I’m sorry but this is good old Merica.We don’t fancy that there off shore ,making change out of a meter way of wrenching. I had to go out and buy a complete new toolbox and fill with single number wrenches and screw drivers just to put washer fluid in the wifes “new” vehicle
The whole starting line thing is maddening! Distracted driving is absolutely ridiculous. My #1 pet peeve? People talking about how fast their car, bike, boat is and have nothing to back up their claims. I have proof that I have gone fairly fast in a production class automobile. I witnessed a woman pedal a bike at Bonneville 147 mph. (The Land Rover she was drafting was impressive!) If you don’t have a time slip or a traffic ticket, it didn’t happen..
Phillips screws .. .even though they look better then Robertson’s .
People driving along staring at their phone, the term “barn find”, guys who finally buy their “dream car”, let it sit in the garage for two years then sell it. Big wheels (18’s or bigger) on old cars. Trailer queens, self driving cars. People that think owning an electric car makes them superior human beings. I’m sure there are a few hundred more, I just can’t think of them right now.
RPM’s
Revolutions per minute’s?
Single use plastic fasteners. If you ever need to remove something from your car, you will need to buy a pack of whatever you will removing because you’ll wind up breaking a few.
The terms barn find, holy grail, unicorn, patina
Any sentence with the word “NASCAR” in it ….
Going in the auto parts store to get anything and after I tell them make model and year they what is ask make model year
Ummm after DZUS fasteners (sent by the devil) I’d have to say 3/4 race cam…..
“vin number”
My pet peeve is people who put SBC and LS’s in everything because its cheap and easy …
People who can’t watch a race unless they’re standing on the starting line. I may have intentionally sprayed them with rubber during my burnout… (Seriously guys, I’m on a bike–if I throw a chain backwards, good odds of dying if you’re within 40′ behind me!). Go sit in the damn grandstands!
Jr Dragsters. There is no reason that they need five people and ten minutes to get lined up. Let the kids just make their pass!
Anything that requires assistance to stage and yet doesn’t require a funnycar cage. I get it if it’s the first time out with a new combination or something, but your 14 second Fox doesn’t hit the tires hard enough to require that much precision finding the groove, sorry.
Oildowns. Seriously, just skip the track when it’s import day. Skip the first month after opening day too, generally. If you’ve got a new combination, and you can’t run it on the street for 300′ under power, put a diaper on it! Now that my home track has an engine diaper rule, everyone is scattering their transmissions instead. I guess there’s less cleanup overall, but at least twice per year I wind up standing either in the water or on the starting line for an hour while the mops come out.
I’m going to go down a different path – Facebook know-it-alls and pointless replies to questions….
Typical FB Question: “Has anyone used XXX Camshaft in their Cleveland, if so, what’s it like?”
Typical FB Responses:
“No”
“I’ve used YYY Camshaft”
“I’ve got one in my Chev”
“I’ve got a XYZ cam, works awesome. What carby you using?”
“Here’s a video of my Camaro with twin carbys and a JJJ roller cam, sounds the goods. I’d use one of these IMHO”
“What’s your diff ratio?”
“I think that might be a bit small for your combo. What heads/intake/compression ratio/cubes have you got?”
“Here’s a photo of mine”
“Can’t say I’ve used one, but my mate’s used a similar one and doesn’t like it”
“Didn’t know there was a YYY cam. Do you have photos?”
10000% my gearhead pet peeve is seeing those idiots hold on to the side of a car during the burn out. You look dumb. It is unnecessary. But on the occasion one of these idiots falls over because their shoe gets stuck to the rubber it makes me laugh.
Fake ass fabricated drama on just about every TV car show. And burnouts for the sake of burnouts. And fauxtina.
People who buys old cars just to flip them (trying to sell them higher).
They have no real interest in cars and think they are big businesmen .
As an event spectator, Junior Dragsters. Sorry, Mommy/Daddy. Otherwise, stubborn bolts.
I have so many pet peeves but the latest one is fake patina. You paint the car, then sand sections down to primer. Really? What a joke.
Hot wiring cars in movies – grab some wires under the dash and rub them together so they spark starts the car! Really?
Easy. Fast and fucking Furious franchise. Stupid movies, stupid cars, spawned more wankers in rice cars than I ever want to see. References to Nosss, stupid graphics, and Paul Walker groupies that rave the guy up like he was gods gift to cars.
Lots of the ones above plus…
people saying they did a “frame off restoration” on performance era mopars. really???
ads that say “all original, just restored”. ok which is it…is the thing all original or restored?? it can’t be both at the same time!!
“matching numbers”. ugh!!
and my #1 ass burner…why does every tv show still have to give henry ford credit for inventing tons of things he NEVER invented??? assembly line…NOPE. charcoal….NOPE. the automobile…NOPE. it’s been 100 years of the same bullshit now. can somebody at the history channel please get ONE of these shows correct?!
Lots of these are good.
My car has 10.531Ws and ladder bars, a big scoop, a roll cage, Kirkey seats, aftermarket brakes and wheels – – yet half the guys at the local cruise want to know if it has “matching numbers”….really?
Car TV shot where they have a support crew of dozens, pre-purchase every conceivable part in advance, stage everything and install some contrived drama – and then build a car “from scratch” in eighteen minutes plus commercials. Thus I have customers wondering why it takes six weeks to get a set of pistons….
Fake patina. It was cute the first time I saw it. Like a baby muskrat. Now its all grown up and needs to be killed. They put it on Ferraris and clear coat over it – what more proof do you need that a trend is dead?
The hot wiring comment is pretty good too…apparently cars in California must not have column locks…
For real. My 73 Challenger has 5.7 hemi, TKO 600, T/A hood, big brakes, etc. Wait, you didn\’t keep the original 318? Who cares!
There’s some good ones.
-Jr dragster parents who look like a pro mod crew on the starting line.
-People who take 25 mins to find the beams, yet are still 4 feet out of the groove. I’m 17 years old and found the beams and was nearly dead centered my first pass. C’mon people.
-Restoration purists.
-Street Outlaws nut swingers.
-People who overdrive the car, yet are pissed off when they hit the wall.
-People who know everything about cars because they watch Fast and Furious, or own a bone stock 2001 Mustang GT
-People who talk on and on at the track about their car that’s sitting at home. My grandfather does it constantly. I often want to strangle him
I could probably go on for way too long
People who get easily annoyed at life.
Carbs are better than fuel injection. I hate all those wires. I can make my carb run better than and fuel injected car ever.