Before you go filling up your new pickup truck with your best friends garden supplies, check out the load rating, and think about how much weight you will be putting into the bed of your truck. I was moving some bricks recently, and we had to be very careful not to put to much weight into the truck. Some items can put too much load on your truck, even without filling up the bed. Going back to the bricks, the handling of the truck was severely degraded and we only filled it about half way. So don’t think that just because the truck isn’t overflowing with patio block that you aren’t done loading them. You fill a truck by weight, not by volume!

If you can’t guess what this is about by reading the title, then check out part 1 of this series.

Season 2 Episode 1 - The 18″ rims they put on the car were plated with 24 karat gold and worth more than the car itself.

Season 2 Episode 2 - They made a Ford Escort into a replica BMW M3. One word West Coast Customs; why?

Season 2 Episode 3 - I know this is a list of impractical modifications, but when I came across something they did that is actually cool I figured I had to post it. They started with a 1958 Volkswagen Bus, added a surf board rack, 40″ television in the back, and a school bus style fold out stop sign with the word “chill” written on it. This sets the bar for their work. They need to customize the car to it’s strengths, and the surf rack does just that on this car.

Season 2 Episode 4 - A working sink and large mirror in a car? Come on. It doesn’t matter that the owner wanted to be a make-up artist. She didn’t say she wanted to open up shop in her trunk.

Season 2 Episode 5 - As if the thousands of controlled explosions that occur under the hood of this Chevy Blazer weren’t enough of a fire hazard, West Coast Customs added a fireplace in the back. Was it because they didn’t know how to fix the heater?

MTV’s Pimp My Ride has to be one of the dumbest shows on television. Sure, the cars look much nicer after they are done, but they start with the worst cars they can find, and it isn’t hard to improve on that. That isn’t my problem with them though. I hate how impractical some of the things that they add to the cars are. Here is a list of the most impractical modifications made by Pimp My Ride.

Season 1 Episode 2 - They added an automatically extending shoe rack into the trunk of a car. Not only is it ridiculous that they think someone needs so many shoes in their car that they may need a rack, but this rack also totally kills the trunk for storing anything else (like bodies).

Season 1 Episode 5 - They added a fish tank between the rear seats of a Mitsubishi Mirage. Now I enjoy looking at fish tanks, but a Mitsubishi Mirage just doesn’t have enough room in the back seats for the fishes, and what are the fish going to do in the summer when the car interior heats up to 140 degrees.

Season 1 Episode 6 - They modified the seats to fully recline so that the driver and passenger could watch the television they installed in the headliner. I don’t get it. Was an in-dash tv not good enough, or does this girl live out of her car and like to watch tv before she goes to sleep?

Season 1 Episode 8 - They installed a coffee maker in the center console, but in the process had to remove the cup holders to make room for such “extensive modifications”.

In the interest of time, and keeping this article around the optimal “blog length” I am going to stop at season 1, but I will be doing more of this in the future so check back.

I can see the merits of plug-in electric vehicles. Large power plants can produce energy much more efficiently than the engines in our gas or diesel vehicles, and batteries have become pretty good at storing this energy. This makes for an electric car that is much cheaper to operate than its gas counterpart, but what happens in the event of a disaster (natural or otherwise) where we have a widespread loss of electricity? Or what if it is just a short term power outage, but it is during the time when you can usually recharge your battery?

Lets say you own a plug-in electric vehicle with a range of 50 miles. You live 30 miles from your work so on a normal day you drive to work and arrive with plenty of battery power left. You then plug in your car to charge while you work and by the time you are ready to leave you have a fully charged car. Now what happens if due to construction or a thunderstorm your work is out of power and as soon as you get there they tell you to go home. You are now 30 miles from home with 20 miles left in your battery and no place to charge your car.

I do think plug-in electric vehicles will, and should, become more popular in the future, but sometimes it is more reliable to carry your power source along with you (like in your gas tank).