BSA Starfire wrote:

I work as a MOT tester here, and being in Devon the English Riviera there are a huge number of Golf Mk4's, new Bettle's and T4 van's that frankly are only driven by dickweeds. To get them through the emissions you have to get them REALLY hot, this involves running them at 4000 RPM for 10 minutes or so before the Catalysers get hot enough in an enclosed space. I have mild emphysema, the combo is not a good one!
Never understood why the Golf IV was soo loved, the handling is soggy, they are heavy and a pig to work on. And the smaller 1.4 & 1.6 engine was total rubbish. As for the T4, terrible vehicles, rusty, weak and slow. Yet people pay a fortune for them. It's all brand snobbery, funny really.

And if people were able to actually tune their cars like they used to be able to do before absolutely everything was computer controlled, it is generally really easy to tune to pass for emissions.

The thing about tuning to pass emissions almost always reduces power and fuel mileage.

This is coming from somebody who grew up with my family having older vehicles and tuning stuff myself when I got older.

Once a year we would tune to pass emissions and then tune afterwards so the vehicles actually ran properly.

The whole system is a freaking joke.

I totally agree, the emissions stuff is pure crap. for example the only way to get a Mercedes SMART car through the emissions is to do it without the RPM reader on idle rather than at 2500RPM where it should be, yet this little 650cc was designed to be a ECO car! They put out more crap than most other 2 litre cars and are rubbish!
Again a dreadful drive, hard to work on and very weak. Yet people buy the name.

Yawn OP must have never had any fun, there is a big difference between the overclocking some people do and everyone else who has done it responsibly.

The wear overclocking puts on components is greatly overstated. IC's are made to last years and years of 24/7 operation, and half of forever is still a very long time. Because retro gear sees so little daily usage, I worry about any kind of capacitor and the solder joints eroding over decades before moderately overclocked chips. (It's certainly going to take more than 30 years for me to put even 10,000 hours on a vintage system.) The eventual damage is going to come from something else failing.

I only overclock my own retro gear within good taste, though. 😀

BSA Starfire wrote:

I work as a MOT tester here, and being in Devon the English Riviera there are a huge number of Golf Mk4's, new Bettle's and T4 van's that frankly are only driven by dickweeds. To get them through the emissions you have to get them REALLY hot, this involves running them at 4000 RPM for 10 minutes or so before the Catalysers get hot enough in an enclosed space. I have mild emphysema, the combo is not a good one!
Never understood why the Golf IV was soo loved, the handling is soggy, they are heavy and a pig to work on. And the smaller 1.4 & 1.6 engine was total rubbish. As for the T4, terrible vehicles, rusty, weak and slow. Yet people pay a fortune for them. It's all brand snobbery, funny really.

Nah, If it isn't air cooled they aren't real VW's.
My hatred towards newer VW's isn't that strong but I'll agree it is funny. What started as a company aimed at the general masses is now considered somewhat lower end of premium. When in essence they are no better (or worse) then just about every other mass market car manufacture.

I was once quite keen on overclocking just about anything, but perhaps age caught up to me.. haha. I had great benefit from my i7-920 that ran fine at 3.8, coming from 2.6 stock. Still runs, actually.

My vintage stuff runs at what the stamp says, mostly because it often introduces instability and like previously mentioned one can just set up a younger PC if one needs more computing power. I personally get more shivers in the nerd by expanding a given system, say adding more RAM or adding features like early video accelerators and stuff. I see you guys fill up every PCI and ISA slot in your builds and it just looks right.

I do not worry much about the longevity of the hardware because I take care of temperatures and I often have long sessions with the stuff running - not many 'cold starts' or 'short trips' for you car folks. I do however avoid stressing my oldest hard drives more than necessary.