Author archive
Keeping your wheels turning
What are some of the easier maintenance tasks that you can do on your car? It’s often very satisfying being able to carry these tasks out yourself knowing that you’re keeping your car in top shape, as well as saving yourself a few dollars in the process. If any car parts need to be replaced in your routine maintenance, you can easily pick these bits up from your local Supercheap Auto outlet, your car’s own Service Centre or the local garage.
Checking your tyre pressures is simple. You can pull into most fuel stations and find an air compressor that measures the tyre pressure for you. Top up the air inside the tyre if the pressure happens to be too low.
Your car’s air cleaner filter is another simple check. The filter cleans the air which enters the engine. Carburettor engines usually have the air cleaner installed on top of the carburettor. Engines with electronic fuel injection usually have square or rectangular filters, and the filter is usually mounted on the body of the car, adjacent to the engine. Taking the air filter out is very easy. Usually they need replacing every 30,000 km or sooner if the roads you travel are dusty. Making sure that the air entering your engine is clean will ensure that the life of your engine is maximised.
A car battery is simple enough to remove and replace when dead. With routine maintenance of the battery, checking the electrolyte level in the battery cells is a must. If the levels are low, you can top them up with distilled or deionised water. Also check that the battery terminals are clean. A wire brush or sand paper can be used for cleaning the terminals. Any corrosion is caused by the acid in the electrolyte, and this can be removed with a solution of hot water and baking soda. The cable terminals can be cleaned by dropping them into a cup of the hot water and baking soda mixture. Once you’ve cleaned the battery all up, coat the fitted terminals with petroleum jelly or grease to prevent further corrosion.
Keeping the body of your car looking great is easy enough. Regular cleaning of both the exterior and the interior will definitely maintain the appearance and the condition of your vehicle. Chipped paint can be touched up with a paint pen/brush. Turpentine or kerosene will remove any tar splodges on wheel rims or paintwork. Don’t forget after washing the exterior; make sure you give it a good polish. Remember to keep the drain holes in the doors clean and clear, as any water trapped inside the door panels will cause rust.
Checking your water level inside your radiator is so simple, but often this important check is neglected. There is no need to fry your engine. Regular checks will detect any coolant loss which can quickly be rectified. While on the subject of fluid levels, do check brake fluid, gearbox and engine oil – and top up if necessary. These are so simple to do, and the fluids are readily available from a garage.
You can check your windscreen wipers. These are easy to remove and replace if the old wipers are smearing rather than shifting the water off the windscreen when it rains.
Light bulbs are also easy to purchase and replace if you find that a light isn’t working.
If you like cars, you’ll probably enjoy checking over the car. If cars don’t press your button that much but you can see yourself doing odd jobs to keep it in good shape, you’ll likely find that you’ll gain an appreciation and better understanding of how your car works as you go about these simple routine maintenance checks.
Drop those kilos!
If you want to make your car more fuel efficient, what’s the next best thing to a more efficient engine? You make the car lighter. Design engineers working in the field of car body construction work overtime to create lightweight materials for the modern motorcar. Often new materials have been used from other transportation industries like aeronautical engineering, which is a field that always pushes the boundaries.
Spare a thought for these engineers because while on the one hand the demand is for more fuel efficient cars, from the other side there is the push to make the car as functional and practical as possible, which equates to the requirement for more space and bigger cars – usually a recipe for gaining weight.
Safer cars need stronger frames and more systems on-board, and this only leads to more kgs. More luxury, and more bells and whistles, also adds to a car’s overall weight, so we can see why automotive engineers are working overtime to combat the growing trends. I’m trying not to sound like a ‘Jenny Craig’ sales rep suggesting we all should slim down and lose the kilos.
Motor racing is a fun and exciting way of trialling new materials and engineering designs. You’ll find that the cars involved in Formula One, European Touring Car racing and Aussie V8s will use the new materials available to make their cars lighter and faster.
The Automotive Circle International group (http://www.automotive-circle.com) is a European body who gathers expert engineers together to collaborate progressive ideas and discoveries in the field of new automotive materials and design. These are just some of the bright gurus behind making the cars we drive better and better.
Recently, Mazda engineers have found a new material which is light and strong. They have applied this new material in the new Mazda CX-5. In collaboration with Japan Polypropylene Corporation, Mazda has developed a new plastic resin which is lighter and thinner than the previous resin used in the formation of a car’s bumper.
BMW has placed its bets on carbon fibre reinforced plastic as the material for a successful automotive future. Ferrari insists that aluminium is superior. Ferrari believes they can whittle down the thickness of their aluminium sheet metal from 1.5 mm to 0.8 mm. Ferrari’s way of keeping the lightweight aluminium sheets strong is by reinforcing it with ceramic fibres. Incredibly, this could drop the weight of their cars by 15-to-20 percent.
Reducing a car’s weight is next to gaining mpg directly from the engine. There’s, obviously, a lot happening behind the scenes that, maybe, we’re not so aware of.
Making a Big Splash
What about a car that can travel across water? An amphibious vehicle is the sort of machine that really captures my imagination and sends it spinning from one daydream to another. But will it really be a dream for so many, or will it become a vehicle that everyone will want and everyone will be able to afford?
Across the ditch in September 2009, a few young entrepreneurs (whose daytime jobs were aeronautic engineers) managed to cross the Cook Strait in a van which they bought for $2500. After a few essential modifications, Adam Turnbull and Dan Melling took it across the sea from Picton to Wellington. On the open road, the van could easily travel at 100 km/h. But on the water, its top speed was around 9 km/h. So it’s possible. Now where’s that arc welder? Maybe I could do that to my Nissan Navara ute.
Now to something a little more upmarket; not a van this time, but a vehicle made in Australia and one that looks more 4×4 in its shape. With a top speed of 100 km/h on the road, the Australian built Platypus has serious 4×4 ability and is capable of seven knots on the water. What this machine has going for it is that it can withstand heavy seas. The Platypus would have to be the amphibious vehicle I would prefer to be in if I was to head out to sea off the coast at Freemantle. Boyd Wyatt, the Australian designer/builder of the Platypus amphibious 4×4, said, “I love what others have done with their amphibious concepts, but I decided to make a vehicle that was affordable to the people who would really use them. I figure there’s a vast market of people who live in coastal regions who want a genuine, working amphibious 4×4, not a high speed US$200,000 sportscar. So I set out to build such a vehicle under US$50,000, and I’ve done that with room to spare”. This is a real cool vehicle, so Boyd can be contacted at boyd@ecn.net.au should this machine tickle your fancy.
So what’s left? The Aquada and Rinspeed. Let’s take a look at the Saleen Aquada amphibious vehicle first. The Saleen Aquada is a land and water vehicle that is capable of reaching 64 km/h on the water. The Saleen Aquada drives like a sports car on the road, and then once you hit the water, the vehicle will become like a speedboat on water. Only a very calm Sydney Harbour sea will do, however. A lake, calm sea, meandering river or estuary is more like the place you’ll take the Saleen Aquada. Very cool is the simple press of a button and drive into the water fun factor. The wheels automatically rise. Entry to the water is via beach, boat ramp, slipway or directly from the water’s edge.
The Rinspeed “Splash” is another very ingenious amphibious vehicle. Again at the push of a button, a cleverly thought-out hydraulic mechanism transforms the sports car into an amphibious vehicle. Frank M. Rinderknecht designed the machine, and clever it is. A highly complex integrated hydrofoil system enables the “Splash” to ‘fly’ at an altitude of about 60 cm above the water. On smooth water, the “Splash” is capable of reaching a top speed of about 80 km/h.
Surely we are going to see more of these types of vehicle on the road. Maybe the Chinese will catch on, and we’ll see a mass production of cheap amphibious vehicles suddenly burst onto the market. People are going to love driving these vehicles to work if it is going to cut their commute by 30 mins or more by venturing, via the direct route, across the water to the office.
Ford Achieves 2012 Top Engine Honours
In a packed assortment of very fine engines sat Ford’s little Ecoboost 1.0-litre engine. With just three cylinders, it was this tiny engine that was classed as being the best car engine in the world for 2012. It is the first time that Ford has won the ‘International Engine of the Year’ award; an award that has been running for 13 consecutive years.
Ford’s Ecoboost 1.0-litre engine was designed in Britain and also received awards for being the Best New Engine and the Best Engine under 1000cc. There were a number of factors that helped this engine achieve so well, however the engine’s ability to power the Ford Focus car se easily is impressive. The engine’s power, response and very good real-world fuel consumption figures were considered to be outstanding.
Joe Bakaj, vice president of Ford Global Powertrain said, “We set the bar incredibly high when we started to design this engine. We wanted to deliver eye-popping fuel economy, surprising performance, quietness and refinement – and all from a very small, three-cylinder engine.”
Christopher Congrega from ‘LAutomobile Magazine’ also stated, “With good torque at the very low end, this high-tech three-cylinder turbo gives the driving performance of a small turbo diesel, but without noise and vibrations.”
BMW had featured many times as a winner of the ‘Best New Engine’ and the ‘International Engine of the year’. This is, perhaps, not really a surprise here, as the performance of the smooth BMW M5 and 3.0-litre Twin Turbo engines are phenomenal. However, very small engines with much less horses under the bonnet have won this coveted award before. Fiat has featured twice. In fact, last year the best new engine was the Fiat 875cc Twinair. This tiny engine also took out the award for the 2011 Green Engine of the Year. Volkswagen, Toyota, Mazda and Honda have also shared the takings for ‘International Engine of the Year’.
For those one-eyed readers who only see to the redline, the Ferrari 458 boasted a 4.5-litre ,V8 engine that won the award for the 2012 ‘Best Performance Engine’.
BMW took out four of the twelve awards but, obviously, in other classes. I wonder when we’ll see an HSV or Ford Falcon’s Turbo six engine in the awards?
Level 2, 9 Help Street