[Jake Raby]

I've been a member of automotive forums since 1995, back when Rennlist was a newsgroup.

I've never had so many accusations made about advertising and marketing by enthusiasts until I began sharing things about these engines online. With the air-cooled forums the guys are much different and much less accusatory, and they feel that we are just another one of them, where here, we are shunned for being professionals in the field.

It got much worse when the economy crashed, lots of vendor haters popped up and I feel it was because they were struggling and barely making it, when they see that we are having the best years ever. They failed to consider that the reason we were having those best years ever was because of the foresight and forethought that we had years prior concerning these engines. While others were too busy swapping out engines that failed, we had been dissecting and figuring the issues out; then working to do something about it.

People used to laugh at us for "wasting time taking these disposable engines apart".

Over the years I made well over 100K posts on aircooled forums and never met this much resistance, and never once encountered a "vendor hater" as those guys were happy as hell that vendors existed and that we'd engage with them on a forum. I guess the people that own the cars are just as different as the cars, themselves.