Car Care

Found this cool site wherein you can actually see and find information about the specific car part. This has some summer tips for the maintenance of your car. Check it out.

Save gas - use your foot

By using your right feet properly you can gain 35% more out of your current vehicle. Here are the tips:
1) Roll your windows, reducing the use of air conditioning
2)Use cruise control on the highway which has big impact on the economy
3)Let go off your right foot in the city by accelerating slowly in the green light and stopping slowly on red lights. As soon as you sense that you will not be able to make the green light in an intersection do not accelerate let the car slow down and put the brakes for stopping near the traffic light. This saves approx 25% to 35% of the fuel. This takes some time to get used to and you might have somebody at the back honking but if you continue this is a big saver!
4) Inflate your tires and keep them inflated to their optimum level
5) Regularly change oil based on the manufacturer's recommendations and if you do the vehicle will consume less gas.
6) Find the cheapest gasoline station and you can easily find them if you look across the street, in one intersection you would atleast find one that is priced few cents less than the other stations. Compare with costco or sams club.
7) Save some money in your wallet!!

Cars on Autopilot

At one point in 90s the cruise control was one of the greatest inventions for cars but now it is outdated. We have cars that go on autopilot like Mercedes S class which can sense the traffic and adjust the throttle which it calls "adaptive cruise control". Then there is Lexus LS 460 which can do parallel parking with some braking from autopilot. The Acura RL has a collision warning system and if the driver does not respond then it will brake automatically. Infiniti has lane departure warnings if the car strays from its original lane without signals. Given these kind of innovations James Bond cars are not unrealistic.

Oldest truck in the world

The oldest truck was built by Mercedes Benz on 1st October 1896. It had four hp two-cylinder engine, weight of the complete vehicle: 1,200 kilograms for carrying a load of 1,500 kilograms, invoiced to British Motor Syndicate Ltd. London. Ten years after the invention of the first car, Gottlieb Daimler had built the world´s first truck.

The world´s first truck looked like a horse-drawn cart without a drawbar. The driver was seated on the coach-box ahead of the front axle, out in the open air. Hence the truck was a cab-over-engine unit.

The engine was installed in the rear – a Daimler "Phoenix" two-cylinder engine which developed 4 hp from a displacement of 1.1 litres. Engine power was transmitted to the rear axle by a belt system, a design resembling that of the planetary hub reduction axles introduced decades later.

coolest cars

Since the beginning of the automobile era, people always found a way to be different from the norm. Sometimes, these differences made them stand apart, sometimes they looked weird. Although Monster cars/trucks are different I would not know if they qualify to be cool but there are lot of car which makes the driver cool. Automobile magazine has done extensive research and came out with the 100 coolest cars something to check out in the weekend and be proud of yourself if you are a owner of any of the cars.

Fastest car

Imagine a car that travels over 230 mph and costs in the neighbourhood of $1.2 million and can hit 62 mph in 2.5 seconds and it is not a dream but a reality. The car Veyron manufactured by Bugatti is the world's fastest, most expensive and most exclusive factory-built car. It has short curvy two-seater with massive power. Its 1,001 horsepower engine has four turbochargers. The car's features sound like those on a jet: diffuser flaps, air-intake scoops, a tail wing that acts like an airbrake and 1.7 miles of cable to power onboard electronics. Bugatti, owned by Volkswagen, can only produce one Veyron per week in its newly built factory in France, and will only produce the two-tone vehicle when one is ordered. The company will also stop when it hits 300 orders.Veyron took Bugatti seven years to build. The seven-gear, all-wheel-drive Veyron is so fast that its designers customized three different suspension modes: a mode for "standard" driving below 136 mph; a "handling" mode engaged when the front diffuser flaps open, the body drops closer to the ground and the tail wing and spoilers are "deployed"; and a third "top speed" mode, used for speeds above 233 mph, that has to be manually activated with a separate key.

Daimler's alternate fuel vehicle

Finally Daimler has an alternate fuel vehicle that runs on ethanol and the company said in a news conference that it will dedicate 25 percent of its vehicle production to ethanol-ready vehicles because of this rising gas prices. The car maker is expected to sell about 250,000 flex-fuel vehicles next year and half a million by 2008. Chrysler will begin offering flex-fuel versions of its Jeep Grand Cherokee, the Jeep Commander and the Dodge Dakota pickup truck, the company said. What with the rising gas prices and mounting tension in the middle east, this seems to be a genuine alternative.

Turtle cars

Turtle transit brought in more than $2 million by transforming ordinary cars and trucks into promotional vehicles. The first customer was Monster.com and the company transformed the car into a monster and once this was done the company took off. They had orders from Dunkin' Donuts for which Turtle Transit turned the cab of a truck into an 11-foot-high cup of coffee. (The truck bed was, of course, a box of doughnuts.). To promote Puffs tissues last year, Riseborough's staff of 11 created a fleet of "noseways" - Segway scooters with fiberglass noses. Pictures.

$4 per gallon of gas - reality

Already the gas has hit $4 in some full service upscale neighbourhood gas stations of California and New York. Follow the full story..Follow these tips.

Fuelstretch challenge

Take the fuelstretch challenge. Also they have some wonderful tips on how to save the gas here.

Rising gas prices

Hugh has pictured the situation well. Check it out!

GM Blog

Now the GM employees are blogging and was amazed at the post about the ways GM is utilizing the gas from the landfill for their operations. Check it out. Steve Reubel wrote about it.

Save trees - Get rid of junk mail

On the Earth Day, Use the guidelines by Federal Trade commission to get rid of the unsolicited mail and thereby save cutting trees to make paper.

iPODize your car

A fantastic video outlining the iPOD mods in cars. CNET analyses the three types of modules available for the putting the ipod in the car. Good one to watch.

Top 10 Gas misers of 2005

The rising gas prices has made us to rethink our choices of autos in recent times. The Insurance Institute has posted the Top 10 gas misers of 2005.

Make City Highway
1. Honda Insight (Hybrid) - 61 66
2. Toyota Prius (Hybrid) - 60 51
3. Honda Civic (Hybrid) - 45 51
4. Volkswagen Golf - 38 46
TDI(Diesel)
5. Honda Civic HX - 36 44
6. Toyota Echo - 35 42
7. Toyota Corolla - 32 41
8. Scion xA - 32 37
9. Honda Accord (Hybrid) - 30 37
10. Pontiac Vibe and - 30 36
Toyota Matrix (tie) - 30 36

Now do you have gas guzzler or a gas miser?

Best resale value cars

ALG has outlined the best resale value of the cars. Here is the summary.

SEGMENT AWARDS VEHICLES
Compact Car MINI Cooper
Midsize Car Honda Accord
Fullsize Car Toyota Avalon
Sports Car Porsche 911 Carrera
Near Luxury Car Acura TL
Luxury Car Mercedes-Benz CLS Class
Minivan Honda Odyssey
CUV (Crossover Utility Vehicle) Land Rover Range Rover Sport
Compact SUV Toyota RAV4
Midsize SUV Toyota 4Runner
Fullsize SUV Toyota Sequoia
Compact Truck Toyota Tacoma Pick-Up
Fullsize Truck Toyota Tundra

Lexus recall

CNNreports that Lexus is recalling 57,000 of its Lexus SUVs for a problem with the front seat belt which could be jammed due to a faulty seat belt. Reuters reports that Toyata as saying that it is recalling 11,000 cars in Japan and 46,000 overseas for the faulty parts. Although, no accidents have been reported so far it is definetely a concern that we should be worried about.

Travel scam

This personal incident happened last fall. We were planning for a trip and I went shopping online for the cheapest fares and then I came across this site http://besttix.net and the deal was ridiculously good atleast $100 or so bucks less than Southwest or other airlines. Then I started to fill out the online form for purchasing the tickets and gave the credit card no etc., but got the error that the credit card could not be processed. Then I receive the email from a female named Monica in New york stating that they could not process the credit card and I need to send the money via western union to an address in Bulgaria. I did not smell a rat and thought okay there might be some problem and therefore I used my personal account and transferred the money to Bulgaria. After that I gave her the number and requested for my tickets but she didnot respond and the money was cashed and I was left high and dry.Then I sent the emails to no avail. I tried to pull up the site luckily it is not there now. So beware, the cheapest fares may not be cheap after all!

Longest car

The world's longest car is 100 feet(30.5 m) long limousine. It has 26 wheels and has a pool and diving board. King sized waterbed to sleep on and can bend in the tight turns. It is mostly used in films and exhibitions. Now with the rising gas prices, I am not sure how much mileage this gives, not much I guess!

Smallest car

The smallest car made out of a single molecule and it has a chassis, axles and a pivoting suspension. The wheels are buckyballs, spheres of pure carbon containing 60 atoms apiece. The whole car is no more than 4 nanometers across and slightly wider than a strand of DNA. To see the perspective, human hair is about 80,000 nanometers thick. At room temperature, strong electrical bonds hold the buckyball wheels tightly against the gold, but heating to about 200 degrees Celesius frees them to roll. Its use - to build tiny trucks that could carry atoms and molecules around in minature factories. As you can see this is one car you cannot drive!