Pets On Board

Go on – admit it.  Your pet is definitely one of the family.  One of the reasons why you chose the car you did is because you knew that you wanted to fit the dog in the car.

On the other hand, some of you may not consider your dog or cat to be a “fur baby”, even though you’re very fond of them, but you’ll still want or need to take your pet in the car with you at some point – to see the vet, for example.

However, are you carrying your pet in the car the right way? Cars have been designed for humans and to keep humans safe during a crash (if this happens) or a sudden stop, and the designers didn’t seem to think much about animals, and with good reason – there aren’t, to my knowledge, any crash test doggies… and now I’m curious and want to look this up. Back in a minute… Turns out there are canine crash test dummies after all.  More on them a bit later. However, distractions and fascinating new facts aside, there is a right way and a wrong way to carry a dog (or a cat) in a car.

The one thing that you shouldn’t do is to have the dog loose in the cabin. If the dog is feeling in the least bit insecure, it will come and lean on you and try to get close to you for comfort. It is impossible to drive safely the way you should with a large dog panting and slobbering in your ear, or with a small to medium-sized dog bouncing up and down on your lap and yapping. Your dog should be restrained. At the very least, you should train your dog to ride in the footwell of the back seat – and even that’s not ideal.

If you have an SUV, hatchback or stationwagon, there is an obvious place to put the dog: in the boot.  However, some dogs may try to climb out of the boot to come and join you in the cabin, and then you’ve got the problem of the large dog drooling down your neck or the smaller dog yapping on your lap (or, in the case of my brother’s dogs when they climbed out of the boot of his Subaru Legacy wagon, both). If you can get one of those screens or shields, that sits between the rear seats and the boot, this is ideal, as the dog can’t climb over or through these. These guards aren’t restraints, so your dog may be injured if a crash happens.

If the dog is in the boot, you will probably want to make sure that you don’t have your lunch or other food supplies in there with it. Otherwise, when you open the boot, well, the food will technically still be inside the boot but it will also be inside the dog.  Either keep the food in a very stout esky or put the food in the cabin of the car.

But what if you have a sedan and you’re not quite prepared to go out and buy a new car even though you’ve just acquired a dog? Is that new car essential? Well, the dog may be a good excuse to get a new car, especially if you’ve been wanting one for a while. However, if the budget doesn’t quite stretch to that yet, then you need to look at restraining your dog in the cabin. You shouldn’t put a dog in the boot of a sedan, as the dog may become distressed and some may become carsick.  Dogs, like people, like to see where they’re going when they’re travelling.

There are two ways you can restrain a dog in the cabin. The first is to buy a harness for your dog. These are compatible with most five-point seatbelts, and the idea is that you put the harness on the dog, then get the dog into the car and onto the back seat (try bribery with treats if your dog isn’t keen), then clip the seatbelt through the harness. Never try to slip the seatbelt through the dog’s collar, as this could strangle your dog if an accident happens.  These harnesses are properly tested and they are designed to keep your dog safe if a crash happens. You guessed it: this is why crash test dummy dogs exist and it’s how they have managed to ensure that these harnesses actually restrain dogs if the worst happens. 

Dogs like to look out of the window, so if your dog is on the smaller side, then you can also buy booster seats designed for dogs.

If your dog is restrained on the back seat of your car with a harness (with or without a booster seat), then it can be wise to put down a blanket to protect the interior upholstery from dog hair, dribble and scratches. You can buy specially designed hammock sorts of things that fit over the seat and protect the upholstery (the dog sits in the hammock thing), or you can put down a blanket. The blanket will slide around the place, but it’s easier to wash than the big hammock thing. Your choice as to what you prefer.

The other main way to keep a dog restrained in a car if it’s small (meaning the dog, not the car) is to use a carrying crate. It’s best to restrain the crate or you have the risk of a loose and heavy object inside the cabin that could smack into you from behind in a crash. You can do this by slipping the seatbelt through the bars or handle of the crate before fastening the seatbelt. The other advantage of a carrier crate is that you can lift the dog into the back seat and put him/her where she/he needs to go, without any need for orders, cajoling or bribery.  You can also, in the case of chunkier smaller breeds that can be a bit harder to pick up (e.g., Staffordshire Bull Terriers), train the dog to enter the crate once the crate has been clipped in place.

In the case of cats, a carrying crate is an absolute must. Of all the many cats I have known throughout my life, only one of them actually enjoyed riding in the car, and even the one that enjoyed the car could be a menace, as she would try to jump onto the driver’s lap or onto the dashboard. Most cats, however, hate riding in the car and will fight like fury to get out. I think it’s the engine noise that freaks them out, although I haven’t tried to take a cat in an EV yet.  Make sure that the crate is very securely closed and that the door can’t be prised open, or the cat will do exactly this, and then you have the problem of driving with a very frantic and frazzled cat screaming around the interior of the car (yes, this has happened to me). If the cat does get out of the crate in transit, pull over, stop the engine, climb into the back seat (don’t open the door or window) and put the cat back in the crate. Then apply first aid to your scratches.

If you want to carry other animals in a vehicle, use common sense. Birds, rabbits, chickens and the like go in a carrying crate. Sheep and goats can go in the back of a stationwagon or SUV, but make sure you have a guard between the cabin and the boot or the goats will climb out and investigate the cabin (personal experience speaking here). However, if you transport this sort of livestock, then investing in a crate that goes on the back of an old-fashioned farm ute is a must – leave the boot for haybales and bags of feed instead.

Top Ten Spring Cleaning Tasks For Your Car

The days are growing longer, the grass is starting to think about growing and it won’t be long until the daffodils alongside the driveway burst into bloom. Yes, it’s springtime, and it’s that time of year when, traditionally, things get deep cleaned or spring cleaned.

Any time is a good time to deep clean your car, especially if you haven’t done it for a while, but here, we’ll talk about spring cleaning your car. After all, if you hope to go on a road trip this summer, then it’s probably wise to get all the deep cleaning done well beforehand, as road trips take a bit of planning and you don’t want to be caught up in cleaning as well as packing and other logistical efforts.

Exactly how intensively you spring-clean your car will be up to you and what you plan to do with your car. If, for example, you own a beloved classic that you want to take to a few shows, or a hot sports car that you hope to turn heads with, you are probably going to take more trouble than the person who has a 4×4 that gets used for serious off-roading. In this article, I’m taking the middle ground, describing the top ten things to do if you’re giving your car a good spruce-up.

#1: Wash and polish the exterior. This is a bit of a no-brainer, but it’s always the best place to start. Even if your car doesn’t go anywhere near a dirt road, it will still pick up dirt and scudge, especially over the rainy part of the year. Do this any way you like, whether it’s going to the car wash or getting out the bucket of suds and the soft brush, followed by the chamois leather and the polish you got given as a present last Christmas.

#2: Clean out the boot. If you lug around extra and unnecessary gear in your boot (and I don’t mean things like the spare tyre, a first aid kit and the jacket you keep for emergencies) then you will increase your fuel consumption, even only fractionally. Every little bit of extra weight counts. Take those old clothes to the second-hand shop, take out the picnic chairs and other oddments that you’ve got in there, and put them where they belong.

#3: Vacuum the interior. This is easiest if you have a canister type of vacuum cleaner. Get stuck in there, removing the mats and getting all the gravel and other muck that gets under there.

#4: Steam clean the upholstery. If your car has cloth upholstery, hire one of those carpet cleaning machines with an upholstery attachment and give the front and rear seats a good going-over. You will probably be surprised at how much dirt comes out. If you carry a dog in your car, then this is a must to remove the doggy smell and all that hair.

#5: Clean out all the storage compartments. Go through the glove box and other storage compartments around the interior, and sort through them. Essentials can go back in (the driver’s manual, a logbook if you keep one, tissues, hand sanitiser and a paper map if you still use one). Everything else can go to where it ought to be kept in your home or into the rubbish or recycling bin as appropriate. Vacuum out any dust bunnies and possibly wipe the interior as well, especially if you keep a stash of snacks in there.

#6: Wipe out the cupholders. Over time, sticky liquids can spill down into the interior of a cupholder, leaving a residue that shouldn’t be anywhere near something that touches your mouth. Get a rag and some warm soapy water, and give the inside of the cupholders a good clean, then dry with a fresh rag.

#7: Scrub the floor mats. Take the floor mats outside, then scrub them thoroughly with a stiff brush and some soapy water (this requires less water than using the hose and works better). It’s amazing how much muck these mats pick up, but after all, that’s their job. Make sure they’re dry before you put them back in.

#8: Change the air filter. The air filter should be changed once a year or else every 20,000 km (more or less), depending on how dusty your area is where you drive. If you don’t click up many kilometres or drive anywhere dusty, then the annual spring-cleaning session is a good chance to change the air filter.

#9: Wipe down the dashboard. Don’t use anything fancy for this in a modern vehicle, as fancy cleaning products will hurt touchscreens. Just use a bit of warm water with detergent and a soft cloth. In fact, this will clean the dashboard of an old-fashioned car as well.

#10: Clean the glass inside and outside. You probably cleaned the exterior glass and mirrors while washing the exterior of the car, but don’t forget the interior of the glass, as quite a bit of the muck that causes sunstrike is on the inside of the glass. Don’t go crazy with the window cleaning products, as these can leave streaky residues that are much worse than the original dirt; instead, use as little as you can get away with, or even just use a microfibre cloth that cleans with just water.

The Stanley Steamer

Now that electric cars are becoming more popular, and there’s talk about hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, our attention has been turned to what’s powering our cars.  In this context, it’s interesting to one of the solutions used in the past as an alternative to petrol or diesel power: steam.

A good friend of mine, during a discussion on fuels, EVs and similar topics, wondered whether steam could be used to drive a car.  I was sceptical, but it turns out that I was wrong. A little over 100 years ago, steam-powered cars were indeed a thing.  They aren’t just a steampunk fantasy, as I had thought.

One of the most popular type of steam-powered cars was invented by the Stanley twins in the USA at the end of the 19^th century. Bizarrely, F.E. and F.O. Stanley also invented one of the first photographic airbrushes, as they started their business ventures in the area of photography.  However, automobiles were a lot more interesting, and they started the Stanley Motor Company in 1902 after an earlier attempt with a company known as Locomobile. 

At that time, many internal combustion engines that ran on petrol or diesel needed a crank to start them up.  These cranks were tough to turn and required a fair bit of elbow grease.  They could even be dangerous, as if the car backfired while someone was cranking it, this could leave the person doing the cranking with a broken arm.  However, the Stanley Steamers used gasoline (petrol) to generate a good head of steam, which provided the power to turn the wheels, and they didn’t need cranking.  Stanley Steamers were designed with safety in mind, as they had a system in place to prevent the boiler from exploding if too much heat and pressure was generated.

For its time, the Stanley Steamer had some fairly impressive specs.  It was a rear wheel drive affair, and didn’t require a transmission or clutch system, meaning that they were easier to drive.  The power output varied depending on the engine type.  The basic model (the compact engine) could deliver 7.5 kW.  Two twin-cylinder engines were developed, the smaller one (3¼-inch bore and 4¼-inch stroke) also put out 7.5 kW, but the larger one (4-inch bore and 5-inch stroke) delivered a massive 15 kW.

For its time, the Stanley Steamer was quite fast.  In fact, a customised version of the Stanley Steamer known as the Stanley Rocket Racer became the holder of the world land speed record for automobiles over a mile, clocking up 204 km/h in a trial at Daytona.  This record stood for five years, and remained the best time over a mile for a steam-powered car until 2009.

As time went by, the Stanley twins refined their design, switching to lightweight aluminium bodywork and features such as condensers that harvested the steam so that the range of the water tank could be extended. 

However, the makers of cars with internal combustion engines managed to find an alternative to the crank: the electric starter motor. This meant that the drawbacks of cranks were no longer, and the Stanley Steamer lost its biggest attraction, especially with the rise of cars produced via mass production and sold cheaply, Ford being the best known example of these.  The Model T cost less than a quarter of the price of the Stanley Steamer and the engine of even the base model, which ran on petrol, kerosene or ethanol (now, that’s an idea worth revisiting), had the same power output as the best of the “Flying Teapots”, as the Steamers were known.

Given the stiff competition from the internal combustion engines inside the Model T and similar vehicles, things didn’t look good for the Stanley Steamer. Eventually, after one of the twins died (in a car crash, of all things), the company went under, ultimately closing in 1924.

The Stanley Steamer wasn’t the only steam-powered car in existence.  Others have been made and sold, especially the Doble, and the idea has come back now and again over the past century or so, especially given concerns over pollution and the availability of fuel.  Saab had a go at making a steam car in the 1970s during the fuel crisis of that decade (the project failed, unfortunately).  An Australian inventor and enthusiast named Ted Pritchard tried to develop one in the 1960s and beyond and had some success.  Until he died in the early 2000s, he was pushing for the use of steam-powered cars. 

External combustion engines (which is what a steam engine is) aren’t as efficient as ICEs but they produce a lot less pollution, as they don’t burn as much fuel.  They are heavy, thanks to the need for a strong boiler and a water tank.  They can accelerate quickly once they’ve got a good head of steam up, but they do need a fair bit of time to boil and let the pressure build; this is one of the things that experimenters wanting to bring back the steam car try to work on.

And what about the future?  Given the push towards vehicles that are less dependent on petrol and diesel, will we see attempts to make the steam car come back again?  Electric cars have made a comeback (and how!), so perhaps steam will do the same. 

What’s Behind The Automotive Supply Chain Shortage?

One thing that I’ve noticed (and perhaps you have too) is that sometimes, car manufacturers can’t quite pump out as many units as they had planned, meaning that sometimes, we have to wait for a great new model to hit the Australian market – or else we find that when it does get here, it might not quite have all the electronic features that had been planned.  What’s behind all that?  This hasn’t happened before for as long as I can remember, including during the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–08. 

The problem seems to be that the automotive manufacturers can’t get hold of enough computer chips (semiconductors) to produce as much as they want to.  After all, car manufacturers make cars, not computer chips, so they have to get them from somewhere else.  These semiconductors are used in just about everything inside a new car, from the power steering through to the entertainment system, to say nothing of all the driver aids and sensors that every modern car comes with. Given their importance to motoring safety and convenience, a shortage of semiconductors obviously has an effect on the amount of cars that can be produced.

Like many things, you can blame it on COVID-19.  No, you really can.  It’s a supply and demand thing.  The problem is that the companies producing these silicone-based semiconductors can only make a finite number of these chips in a given amount of time.  After the semiconductors have been made, they have to be shipped on to the companies that put them into cars… and into other things.  During all the lockdowns and other madness of the pandemic, two things happened.  The first is that productivity in factories and in the supply chain slowed down dramatically because of the newly introduced hygiene measures. Extra cleaning meant there was less time to make, check and pack the semiconductors, staff shortages meant fewer people to do the work, and quarantines and travel restrictions meant that the products couldn’t be shipped as quickly.  So the semiconductor factories couldn’t produce as much.  This slowdown was particularly noticeable in the countries where the semiconductors were made – mostly in the East and Southeast Asia, which had stricter and stronger lockdown measures.  So that was one reason.

The second reason why COVID-19 led to a supply shortage was because the semiconductor chips are used for every single electronic device you can imagine (and in some you can’t imagine as well).  Now, what happened during the lockdown?  We weren’t driving as much, and we all had to stay home for work and for entertainment.  This meant that a lot of people invested in better home computer systems that allowed them to work from home or work remotely, and quite a few people decided to upgrade (or get into) gaming equipment.  I know I bought some new tech over this time, and you might have done so as well.  Given that the demand for new cars was going down but the demand for home-based electronics was rocketing, you can guess where the makers of the semiconductors decided to channel their products.  It didn’t help that a lot of car companies reputedly cancelled a bunch of orders at the start of the pandemic into the bargain.

Now, this slowdown was a bottleneck in the supply chain.  Things have calmed down at the supply end of the supply chain, but the after-effects are still being felt in the automotive industry, and it’s going to take a while for this to catch up.  However, things are taking longer to catch up than expected for a couple of other reasons.  One of them is strictly car-related.  There has been a push towards more electric vehicles, both BEVs and hybrids.  These cars need more silicon chips and semiconductors than ICE vehicles, and the supply of these chips is still catching up.

The other reason why it’s taking so long for supply to go back to normal is because of the Ukrainian conflict.  When armed conflicts break out, there is inevitably a huge demand for bigger, better and more sophisticated tech.  This is nothing new, and a lot of today’s big-name car manufacturers cut their teeth on producing war-related equipment 100 or so years ago.  However, this means that companies producing the componentry – such as silicone chips and semiconductors – will be on the hunt for big contracts from governmental defence departments, as these pay quite well.  Once again, this means that there aren’t as many semiconductors available for the automotive industry.

Given that Pestilence and War have led to Shortage, it would be easy to get gloomy and believe that The End Is Nigh, but I prefer to be optimistic.  If we’re patient, I think things will get better.  Stay cheerful and keep on driving safely!