The history of the car battery

I came across an interesting infographic a couple of weeks ago that I thought was worth sharing - the history of the car battery. Although it's more of a 'history of car electrical systems' too. Worth reading because it has some useful information in it but it might also jog a few people's memories about the age of their current battery. They don't last forever and if you live somewhere with extremes of temperature, you'll be lucky if a modern car battery lasts 5 years. It's not that they're badly manufactured, more that modern cars put such a tremendous strain on the electrical system with all the entertainment systems, heated seats, power-this and power-that, and car battery design hasn't changed much in the last few decades. Anyway - the infographic : The history of the car battery.

Captain Risky

A short post this week - in fact no post at all. Just enjoy this Australian ad spot for an insurance company...

Check your lights

As usual at this time of year, the number of 'one eyed monsters' is clear for all to see : people who have one headlight out and thus try driving with the remaining headlight on full beam to try to compensate. It's irresponsible, it's not very courteous to other drivers, and it costs about $10 and 10 minutes of your time to fix. So go and get a replacement bulb - in fact get two and replace both at the same time - and swap out your headlight bulbs. Just make sure not to touch the glass part of the bulb or you'll very quickly have it blow again.
Caveat: if you have HID lights and one of those suckers is out, make sure to remortgage the house before visiting your dealership to get it replaced.

Racing game camera views

I've recently been putting a lot of time into Forza Horizon 2 on my Xbox One. And by a "lot" of time I mean it's quite likely I've spent more time driving cars in the game in the last couple of weeks than I have spent time driving my real car in the real world.
The game itself is great - like the original Forza Horizon but with most of the annoyances taken out. But it reminded me of something that I've never quite understood : the above-and-behind camera view. I'm not sure why the game designers continue to put this view into the games. It's pointless, it's not realistic, and it makes the game much, much harder to play. The in-car or on-hood views are by far the easiest camera views to use, and both are a huge improvement on the helicopter-chasing-my-car idea.
It comes down to how you experience the world. In your own life, you don't see yourself in the 3rd-person - you see out of your eyes - 1st-person point of view. This means that when a game presents you with a 3rd-person point of view, it's unnatural and awkward. I said above I don't understand why the game designers do this - I suppose I do really - it's to let you see the car you're driving in all it's detail. Looks nice, but it's counterintuitive.

There's another videogame series that suffers the same problem - Metal Gear Solid. It's a shooting game (like) but the camera is above and behind the player (not like) which makes aiming the gun and hitting anything with any accuracy completely impossible.
If you enjoy driving/racing games, surely the point is to have fun and try to hone your skills? If you have a camera that presents an unrealistic fish-eye view of the world from behind you, you can't place the car properly on the road and you spend most of the time fighting the awkward camera view.
Apparently though I know nothing about this because it seems the best competition and career racing gamers all use the above-and-behind camera views, which makes me wonder how much faster they'd be if they used the 1st-person view instead? Personally, on a circuit race somewhere like Catalunya, my lap times are a good 1.5 to 2 seconds quicker when using the correct camera view.

Wash the unseen parts of your car

If you're in the northern hemisphere, it's winter up here and in a lot of places, winter means ice, snow and salt on the roads. This is also the time of year when you'll see people jet-washing their cars and cleaning up all the glass and paintwork without ever bending over to jetwash under the wheel arches or underneath. At this time of year, the paintwork and glass isn't the important part - it's all the stuff underneath that is caked with road salt and the other cocktail of chemicals used to keep the roads clear. You really don't want that stuck to all the metal parts underneath so if you're jetwashing, bend over and spray the underside of your car and under the wheel arches. Or go to an automatic car wash that has underbody jets. Your car will thank you for it.

Warming your car up on a winter's morning.

I watched a report on my local news channel a couple of weeks ago where they had an 'expert' tell everyone that the advice to warm your engine up before driving was out of date and that for any vehicle made since 1996 it was a fruitless exercise. He explained that the various sensors and other parts of older engines that benefited from being warm to work properly had been superceded by OBD-II and its ability to finely monitor and adjust all the functions of your engine under pretty much any condition.
That's true, but what he spectacularly failed to mention was that if you drive it like you stole it right after turning the key, your engine oil is still cold and thick and even with a decent 5W40 oil, you won't be getting the benefits of really good lubrication right off the bat. Ok sure you might not need to let the engine run for 10 minutes before driving it in the winter, but don't just start it up and blast on to the motorway. Have some mechanical sympathy and give your engine a chance to get some temperature in it before you start. After all - it's why people in northern climates have sump heaters and core heaters to pre-heat their oil and coolant before driving.