Has anyone found a good vehicle spreadsheet or database? When I get a hankering for another car I always agonize over weights, wheelbases, lengths, engine options, etc. I have a few standard catalogs and I can individually look up things but that's tedious.
Say for instance I wanted to know what the longest station wagon is, or the lightest RWD car ever produced. With a spreadsheet I could just sort by a column, or a database I could search... kinda like when you're shopping for tires on Tire Rack... sort by price, treadwear, and rating to help you pick the right one.
I put one together when we were shopping for our last car. I wondered why people hadn't put them together before. I still have it kicking around, but it's for modern hatchbacks.
I wonder if I should start one on google docs and we can all edit it with our collective intelligenceseses
I was wondering about a similar resource the other day.
Is there any good list of exterior engine and transmission dimensions? It would be very helpful when thinking about LSx swap candidates. I'd like to see how the GM engine compares dimensionally to the engines that cars came with.
mguar wrote:
In reply to curtis73:
Well how many data points should we list? How are things like affordability, reliability, and commonality calculated?
For my purposes I won't need all of that, but some people would. For instance, if I were to buy a 68 Spitfire I wouldn't care about engine reliability because I have dreams of a Toyota driveline swap.
I wonder if there should be a customer rating system kinda like the stars on Netflix, then the ratings would average out. One guy who thinks his MG was reliable would be counteracted by an MG hater who never got his running. Kind of a way to take subjective input and make it a little more objective.
As far as commonality, one could get a ballpark idea from production numbers.
I'm thinking of length, width, height, curb weight, drive type, production numbers, available engines/transmissions, etc. Basically I want to turn all those Standard Catalogs into a huge database.
Woody wrote:
I was wondering about a similar resource the other day.
Is there any good list of exterior engine and transmission dimensions? It would be very helpful when thinking about LSx swap candidates. I'd like to see how the GM engine compares dimensionally to the engines that cars came with.
I've found very few. There is an engine weights page here http://www.team.net/sol/tech/engine.html, and I found a jpg of an old book page that listed some dimensions of the old-school american engines. Its nice because it lists the side the starter is on, the fuel pump, etc.
I would love to have this kind of database to refer to. The best I've found is MSN Autos: http://home.autos.msn.com/default.aspx But they are a mainstream source, so they focus more on recent cars. If it's much older than the 90s, you're out of luck. Similar for places like Edmunds.
I love the crowdsourced Google Docs idea. I have a pile of old car magazines that I could refer to and contribute. Personally, I think the database should only contain objective, measurable attributes like weight, wheelbase, engine displacement, etc. It starts to become very subjective once you get into things like reliability. I'd also like to have some way of noting the source for the numbers, since there will be discrepancies.
impulsive wrote:
I recently stumbled across this site:
http://www.carfolio.com/specifications/
HEY.... that satisfies my craving. Thanks!
impulsive wrote:
I recently stumbled across this site:
http://www.carfolio.com/specifications/
That is amazingly complete. I even found the Fitch Phoenix in there!
