TurboDriver

Haha well you know'd I'd have some detroit in my veins....I grew up in Rochester Hills before I moved to the other hot-rod heaven. I was actually there for a few woodward cruises, not to mention the hot rod power tour of heck, over a decade ago. Used to troll around gratiot as well just to see the cars. When I was young and stupid, had most of my impromptu street races on mound road. Nice and flat, nice and long, and a Christmas-tree every mile or so. My buddy's dad had a '32 ford Vikki with a buick turbocharged 3.8 engine in it. His friend had a T-bucket with a twin-turbo 502 big block. I sadly never got to ride in it, but his dad recalled its' ability to "roast" the slicks at 45 mph. I had a high-school friend that had a Dodge dakota he stuffed a 360 in (This was before the R/T came out in 1998). Nothing like a big engine in a small car. I want to take the turbo engine in my srt-4 and put it in a toyota mr2 spyder. They are both driven by transverse transaxles, so it shouldn't be too difficult. I figure if I remove all of the convertible components and get rid of some of the silly weight-adders (Spare tire, smaller battery, window glass, etc) I can get it under 2000 pounds, but still have around 340 ft/lb of torque at the rear wheels. Should be interesting........Ahhhh if I only had the space to store all of my "creations"

Thats awesome guys. Most of the cars I've had ran fuel injection, so none of the really-cool musclecars or imported track toys. That Rousch sounds awesome. I had an '89 LX 5.0 for a few years. I bled chevy blue, but after two Camaros, I was sick of the 305 that had no power (And I refused to drive an Auto so the 350 was not available). I loved my mustang. Never had so many impromptu races. I ended up getting two more Camaros afterward, a 94 Z28 with an auto (Ended up giving it to my wife) and I had another 94 Z28 with a Corvette Grand-Sport cam in it, 4.10 gears, 6 speed, and a few other small mods. I never ran it, but the guy I bought it from ran it, his best was about a 13.2 @ 110 mph. It had a lousy 60' time, but the 7-5/8" rear housings are no where near as strong at the 8.8 the mustangs have. I sure am liking the new 2011 with the Coyote engine. Yeah I can't wait to loose some weight. I went through a lot to lighten my srt-4, can't weight to do the "driver" mod and drop quite a bit of weight on it.

Thanks Cocoabean - You read my mind. I checked it out this morning, scanning for 65/35 and hit a good section about preferred vs. participating providers. Looks like for my plan, participating providers are covered at 65%. I've decided to switch to try being banded at cedar-sinai since they are a center of excellence, and I (presume) have surgeons that are preferred as well. I have registered for their first step (seminar/consult) on july 7th. Wish me luck! :thumbup:

I have Fep BCBS PPO Standard...Looks like some people on here have the same thing, but not sure if it's HMO or PPO. I'm based in CA so I think it is 'handled' by Anthem Blue Cross...But I could be wrong. I already went in for the initial weigh-in, seminar, and consultation and I got a call from the center today that my insurance does not exclude it, but they did say something about 65/35. Just curious, does that mean I have to pay for 35% of the total costs? Does that sound like what other people have heard? I have a BMI of 40.0, but I think they miswrote it at 41.3. Either case, they told me that I need to get 5 years ( :biggrin: ) of medical records from my PCP (to document my weights). Then I need to get an upper endoscopy, and sleep study. Then they can put it together as a "package" and get an estimate for my out of pocket costs. Does this sound familiar either? It sounds like what I'm going through is more complicated than what others have. I don't have a problem getting the info (Been a BMI of 30+ for probably the last 20 years) but just curious... Sorry for another question......Are there other fees that sneak up on you? In other words, 65/35....if that means I pay 35%...Then is that just the deductible and there are other fees on top of that, or is that probably it? Reason why....When I spoke with the insurance person they briefly said that cash patients pay $16k and insurance gets a higher rate ($20k)....Keep in mind this is CA so costs are high here....Anyways...35%(20k) ~ $7000. I see lots of ads on this webpage for quite a bit less than that -cash- so I'm trying to do the math in my head. What I'm afraid of is that they have a good idea of what it's going to cost me, but they want me to invest more time in the program (e.g. getting the 5 years records, endoscopy and sleep study) so that I don't "price" other surgeons (And not waste time going through their process) Thanks for any advice and input. Sorry this is so long.

Just wanted to drop in and say hi to everyone. I just joined today. I have just started the process. I have federal employee BCBS PPO (Standard). Just curious if anyone else has went through the process with it. I am planning to have Dr. James Nazarian M.D. do the surgery in Beverly Hills. Yesterday I went to the seminar and he was very nice, yet very much a Dr. (Which is what I like) opposed to a "presenter" as I've seen when I went to 1-800-get-thin. I am a very methodical person, and I've studied various forms of surgery for the past 5 years or so. Being so close to Mexico, I've been extremely tempted to go there. I've trolled many forums for quite a while, read "Lap band for Life" and watched so many surgeries on you-tube, I could probably perform them myself :smile2: I travel quite often, so I will confess I am slightly concerned about running into a bad situation where I would need to uncompress the band, yet find myself in an area where my only choice of care is a hospital. The Dr. yesterday told me that it is very simple and most hospitals should be able to figure it out, even if they don't deal with the lap band there....Just curious on opinions on that... Not sure how much of my profile shows up, but I'm a BMI of 40.0. My problem has never been getting the weight off, but I just can't seem to keep it off. Off topic, but I am a very big car guy, so feel free to chat about that as well! Well enough with the intro...Happy Father's day to everyone out there and I look forward to any advise and thoughts you may have.