I've been pretty much chained to a computer for the past 3 weeks while tending to an intense work project requiring many extra hours. Caused me to miss NSXPO this year... 
But an increase in NSXpriming during my "smoking breaks" at work has me wanting to post something I've been pondering for a while now. I was asked a question via PM this weekend by a newbie shopper, and I was able to answer by copy/pasting my similar response to another newbie shopper from a few weeks ago. Out of curiosity I did a search for "newbie question" and was entertained to see how many repeat questions popped up....
I remember officially starting my NSX search by joining NSXprime & NSXCA and spending hours on the Prime wiki as well as sorting thru posts in this sub-forum (which I think at one time a few years ago was called something like "new & prospective owners"). The more educated and self-sufficient I tried to get, the more questions I had, resulting in unavoidable PM's and bumping threads or creating new threads for questions that have been asked repeatedly over the past decade and keep getting asked by newbies now & then. Now that I can look back upon that phase with a more experienced viewpoint, I remember sifting thru the wealth of info in the forums & wiki to be like trying to learn a language by reading a book where the chapters weren't numbered and where I wasn't interacting with anyone; most everything was there in front of me but I had a hard time putting things into sequence and context and priority for a shopper... And occasionally I'd stumble upon a thread with some discussion of first-hand experience that really helped "flavor" the info in the wiki.
Once I owned one and posted a "new owner" story, the shoe was on the other foot and almost instantly I started receiving emails with the same type of questions was asking over the past year. Here are ones I remember asking myself and/or have been asked or keep seeing posted repeatedly now & then:
-what are NSX model differences & operating costs, what are the "best" years of nsx to own
-where are the best websites or resources to shop for NSX's
-"nsx regrets" (real-life lessons to learn from!)
-how have people financed theirs lately
-how much should I expect to spend, is this a good price to pay for this NSX, where's good to research market prices
-do mods increase or decrease nsx value or reliability
-how long can you really go between timing belt changes
-what should I do about a car being in snap ring range, how much should I negotiate down in price, should I proactively replace the case now, how can I tell the snap ring is going "bad," is there a registry for tracking which trans's in the snap ring range have failed, has anyone come up with a way to proactively predict or measure whether the groove (chamfer actually) is "bad" since a cover can be removed and the snap ring can be viewed (the answer to that last one is No).
-is buying a salvaged NSX ok, should I consider this salvaged NSX, is paint/bodywork a big deal
-who/where are known NSX gurus near me, should I just go to a dealership for service
These are all super fair questions even if some of them are subjective and ones only the buyer him/herself can answer. But I really enjoyed helping a half dozen or so shoppers who PM'd me with questions in the past 5 months after I was suddenly perceived as an "experienced NSX guy" and guiding them to resources to help them answer their own questions - in fact I feel personally responsible for helping connect two buyers with two sellers whom I was in contact with during my search, one of them being a 19k mile '92 GPW that I passed on only because the my '93 appeared just as I was getting ready to make a move on that '92, and that feels really gratifying.
But as an engineer with an insatiable urge to want to improve things and make them more efficient if possible, I see an opportunity to help newbies to use currently-existing resources better, almost in the form of a list of links in a "bedtime story book" fashion where they could efficiently answer questions they don't even know they have yet as a new shopper. This could also help the experienced owners here by giving them somewhere to point to when they're asked questions by a newbie shopper. As much as I enjoy seeing shawn110975 repeatedly point newbies to the honda tuning buyer's guide, or nsxtasy and other tire/wheel gurus generously help demystify newbie fitment questions in great detail in a new thread every 3 months, or Larry Bastanza occasionally chiming in with always helpful tidbits, or Coconut's trying to help shoppers locate good deals...I can't help but think that everyone might benefit from a "sequenced list" of typical newbie shopper links to existing Prime wiki articles and "popular" threads that turned into defacto wiki articles themselves.
So, whether this thread takes off or not, I'm going to start organizing a "sequenced new nsx shopper bedtime story list" of links to nsxprime wiki articles, nsxprime threads, and non-nsxprime weblinks in this thread. I've been a bit of a pack rat when it comes to subscribed threads - I have over 100 subscribed threads that I organized into various folders during my search that helped me immensely both during my search and when answering PM's by shoppers asking certain questions. I even refer back to them frequently for myself. So adding those here will be easy for me. I went for a long ride in my NSX last weekend and I'm still riding the buzz from that.... so this is also in response to the gratitude I still feel from the huge help I got during my search from Prime people, especially thedon67, Larry B, nsxtasy, alum04org, Teej, redbird92, shawn110975, pbassjo, Phoen$x, 99NCNCX, SOS & Source1, etc. What comes around should ideally go around...
Later in the week I'll start adding links here to the wiki & certain threads & weblinks in what seems to be a logical order/hierarchy for the newbie shopper. Feel free to post key links here that you think are valuable and I'll add them in, and feel free to chime in on suggestions for sequencing or whatever catches your eye - there are a lot of smarter people than me here on Prime and I feel I learn something new each week here - so don't be shy or think I have some personal agenda I want to display, lol.
Have a good week and I'm looking forward to having a thread I can point newbies to when they PM me for help, to give them the best help possible. I'm always super happy to read an exuberant post by a new NSX owner, so this is also my selfish way of speeding up the process of getting new "new owner" bedtime stories to read.
But an increase in NSXpriming during my "smoking breaks" at work has me wanting to post something I've been pondering for a while now. I was asked a question via PM this weekend by a newbie shopper, and I was able to answer by copy/pasting my similar response to another newbie shopper from a few weeks ago. Out of curiosity I did a search for "newbie question" and was entertained to see how many repeat questions popped up....I remember officially starting my NSX search by joining NSXprime & NSXCA and spending hours on the Prime wiki as well as sorting thru posts in this sub-forum (which I think at one time a few years ago was called something like "new & prospective owners"). The more educated and self-sufficient I tried to get, the more questions I had, resulting in unavoidable PM's and bumping threads or creating new threads for questions that have been asked repeatedly over the past decade and keep getting asked by newbies now & then. Now that I can look back upon that phase with a more experienced viewpoint, I remember sifting thru the wealth of info in the forums & wiki to be like trying to learn a language by reading a book where the chapters weren't numbered and where I wasn't interacting with anyone; most everything was there in front of me but I had a hard time putting things into sequence and context and priority for a shopper... And occasionally I'd stumble upon a thread with some discussion of first-hand experience that really helped "flavor" the info in the wiki.
Once I owned one and posted a "new owner" story, the shoe was on the other foot and almost instantly I started receiving emails with the same type of questions was asking over the past year. Here are ones I remember asking myself and/or have been asked or keep seeing posted repeatedly now & then:
-what are NSX model differences & operating costs, what are the "best" years of nsx to own
-where are the best websites or resources to shop for NSX's
-"nsx regrets" (real-life lessons to learn from!)
-how have people financed theirs lately
-how much should I expect to spend, is this a good price to pay for this NSX, where's good to research market prices
-do mods increase or decrease nsx value or reliability
-how long can you really go between timing belt changes
-what should I do about a car being in snap ring range, how much should I negotiate down in price, should I proactively replace the case now, how can I tell the snap ring is going "bad," is there a registry for tracking which trans's in the snap ring range have failed, has anyone come up with a way to proactively predict or measure whether the groove (chamfer actually) is "bad" since a cover can be removed and the snap ring can be viewed (the answer to that last one is No).
-is buying a salvaged NSX ok, should I consider this salvaged NSX, is paint/bodywork a big deal
-who/where are known NSX gurus near me, should I just go to a dealership for service
These are all super fair questions even if some of them are subjective and ones only the buyer him/herself can answer. But I really enjoyed helping a half dozen or so shoppers who PM'd me with questions in the past 5 months after I was suddenly perceived as an "experienced NSX guy" and guiding them to resources to help them answer their own questions - in fact I feel personally responsible for helping connect two buyers with two sellers whom I was in contact with during my search, one of them being a 19k mile '92 GPW that I passed on only because the my '93 appeared just as I was getting ready to make a move on that '92, and that feels really gratifying.
But as an engineer with an insatiable urge to want to improve things and make them more efficient if possible, I see an opportunity to help newbies to use currently-existing resources better, almost in the form of a list of links in a "bedtime story book" fashion where they could efficiently answer questions they don't even know they have yet as a new shopper. This could also help the experienced owners here by giving them somewhere to point to when they're asked questions by a newbie shopper. As much as I enjoy seeing shawn110975 repeatedly point newbies to the honda tuning buyer's guide, or nsxtasy and other tire/wheel gurus generously help demystify newbie fitment questions in great detail in a new thread every 3 months, or Larry Bastanza occasionally chiming in with always helpful tidbits, or Coconut's trying to help shoppers locate good deals...I can't help but think that everyone might benefit from a "sequenced list" of typical newbie shopper links to existing Prime wiki articles and "popular" threads that turned into defacto wiki articles themselves.
So, whether this thread takes off or not, I'm going to start organizing a "sequenced new nsx shopper bedtime story list" of links to nsxprime wiki articles, nsxprime threads, and non-nsxprime weblinks in this thread. I've been a bit of a pack rat when it comes to subscribed threads - I have over 100 subscribed threads that I organized into various folders during my search that helped me immensely both during my search and when answering PM's by shoppers asking certain questions. I even refer back to them frequently for myself. So adding those here will be easy for me. I went for a long ride in my NSX last weekend and I'm still riding the buzz from that.... so this is also in response to the gratitude I still feel from the huge help I got during my search from Prime people, especially thedon67, Larry B, nsxtasy, alum04org, Teej, redbird92, shawn110975, pbassjo, Phoen$x, 99NCNCX, SOS & Source1, etc. What comes around should ideally go around...
Later in the week I'll start adding links here to the wiki & certain threads & weblinks in what seems to be a logical order/hierarchy for the newbie shopper. Feel free to post key links here that you think are valuable and I'll add them in, and feel free to chime in on suggestions for sequencing or whatever catches your eye - there are a lot of smarter people than me here on Prime and I feel I learn something new each week here - so don't be shy or think I have some personal agenda I want to display, lol.
Have a good week and I'm looking forward to having a thread I can point newbies to when they PM me for help, to give them the best help possible. I'm always super happy to read an exuberant post by a new NSX owner, so this is also my selfish way of speeding up the process of getting new "new owner" bedtime stories to read.
urchasing_an_NSX
