I've talked (at length, ahem) about automotive forums before. In almost all cases, the forums that I've encountered contains largely misinformed discussion by disinteresting people. Whatever truth one does find is generally dispensed by the few knowledgable individuals who happen to hang around. My experience has been that anyone who knows anything generally has very little time to actually spend on said forums, as they tend to be using all that knowledge to actually accomplish something.
That being said, I've found something of an exception. It seems that a recent question I posted to the Mercedes-Benz Club of America Forums was answered swiftly and adroitly (and most surprisingly, nearly completely free of egregious of grammar and spelling errors) by a good handful of folks. It seems that the type of people who work on vintage Mercedes-Benzes aren't in the same crowd as my other cars. Bonus.
So in response to my question of, "how do I troubleshoot my carb?" I've gotten a number of great responses—one of nearly epic length.
And tomorrow afternoon, I'm going to go and fix that damned engine.
I've found the Miata mailing list to be equally well informed and quite polite and well spoken. Much better than some of the pissing contests that would often show up on the supra lists...
Both the Supra and Talon lists always seemed to have a bunch of nutty mcnutnuts clogging up the works.
Good thing I've never owned a Civic.
and then there's the vortex... it has the best of both worlds, flamey-flamerton-4SSh0l3$ and cool-knowledgeable wise and crazy old kooks (sphealing?)