In my 28 years (and counting) of driving, in six different countries, I've yet to come across anywhere that knows how to set car tyre pressures properly. I've not yet found a garage, dealership, oil-change shop or tyre store that understands what the sticker inside the driver's door means, nor how to use a pressure gauge.
At this point I'm convinced such a place doesn't exist. Generally, when someone else has worked on my car, I get it back with tyres that are anything from 5psi below the recommended pressure to 10psi above. My current Range Rover dealer is about the closest I've seen with all four tyres consistently 2psi above where they're supposed to be.
Underinflated tyres are bad, but on the occasion where I've had overinflated tyres, it's been dangerous. All tyres have a maximum inflation pressure and on one extreme occasion, a Subaru dealer gave me my car back with all four tyres inflated to 62psi. That was 7psi above the max pressure rating on the tyre and a full 34psi higher than the door sticker.
You can normally tell instantly. You'll get in your car and it will either feel like you're driving on grease, or on granite wheels. The greasy feeling means the tyres are underinflated. Rock-hard spinal re-adjustment feeling means the tyres are overinflated.
Spend a tenner and buy a decent dial pressure gauge (not one of those cheap pen type ones) and always check your own pressures when you get your car back from anywhere that's touched the wheels.
The same holds true for the lug nuts or bolts. If ANYONE touches them for ANY reason, check the torque yourself a day later, because as with tyre pressures, in 28 years I've yet to find a single place that knows what a torque wrench is.
I know you shouldn't need to do this but such is life.
Monday, October 3, 2016
Monday, September 26, 2016
Americans now own F1. And I think that's A Very Bad Thing.
Well it's happened. F1 has been sold to the Americans. Specifically Liberty Media for $4.4bn. With a "B". Bernie Ecclestone is supposedly going to stay on for another few years, but a full buyout is planned if the regulators approve it.
Red flags and alarm bells started going off when Greg Maffei, the CEO of Liberty Media, said this:
"We think our long-term perspective and expertise with media and sports assets will allow us to be good stewards of Formula One and benefit fans, teams and our shareholders."
So F1 is going to be run for the gain of the shareholders, and that's a problem. Shareholders generally don't know what they're talking about and have a propensity to ruin companies very quickly because all they care about is a quick buck and chasing dividends. Look at what happened to Lego - a company that could do no wrong, with the world's strongest brand in toys, who listened to their shareholders in the early 2000's and nearly bankrupted the company because of it.
My own direct experience of Liberty Media comes from SiriusXM satellite radio. I used to have XM Radio and it was pretty good. Cost me $7 a month. Then Liberty Media came along in 2008 with Sirius and bought out XM. Prices jumped to $19 a month for the same channel lineup and the service went to hell in a handbasket. In the end I ditched it because they couldn't keep the bill straight from one month to the next and the constant pressure to buy an even more expensive package was insane.
It's not just Liberty Media that's the problem though. I'm not a fan of this much American money being in F1. The sport is a uniquely European and international series. F1 fans don't need Indy car, or NASCAR, or any of the other won't-race-in-anything-other-than-perfect-weather events. We don't need commercial breaks and timeouts every 90 seconds. We don't need identical cars built to identical templates. We don't need oval circuits. In short - we really don't need American-style management and ownership of our sport. Liberty Media need to learn that throwing money at something won't make it better, or "fix" it, especially when it doesn't really need fixing.
But it's happened anyway, and I suspect the influence will start to become evident over the next 12 months. American interests have steadily been ramping up pressure to "own" F1 because it's a sport they're not very good at, and Americans don't like competing in things that they can't win. I suspect there will be pressure to have a second or even third US event added to the calendar. There will be pressure to use US-supplied tyres and engines, maybe even chassis'. Can you imagine Cooper being asked to supply F1 tyres? Or the teams headquartered in the UK, Germany and Italy being told to move to the US? Neither can I.
If they try to homologate the sport into a TV-commercial-break-ruled Indy-car type series in an effort to appease the beer-chugging, short attention span, redneck motorsport crowd, F1 will be forever ruined because that's not what it's about.
I hope beyond hope that Liberty Media do the right thing and listen to the fans and the teams. They have a Golden Goose here. But my suspicion is that they'll just do the usual "America Knows Best" routine and f*ck it up for everyone. They'll kill their goose and wonder what happened to all the eggs.
Red flags and alarm bells started going off when Greg Maffei, the CEO of Liberty Media, said this:
"We think our long-term perspective and expertise with media and sports assets will allow us to be good stewards of Formula One and benefit fans, teams and our shareholders."
So F1 is going to be run for the gain of the shareholders, and that's a problem. Shareholders generally don't know what they're talking about and have a propensity to ruin companies very quickly because all they care about is a quick buck and chasing dividends. Look at what happened to Lego - a company that could do no wrong, with the world's strongest brand in toys, who listened to their shareholders in the early 2000's and nearly bankrupted the company because of it.
My own direct experience of Liberty Media comes from SiriusXM satellite radio. I used to have XM Radio and it was pretty good. Cost me $7 a month. Then Liberty Media came along in 2008 with Sirius and bought out XM. Prices jumped to $19 a month for the same channel lineup and the service went to hell in a handbasket. In the end I ditched it because they couldn't keep the bill straight from one month to the next and the constant pressure to buy an even more expensive package was insane.
It's not just Liberty Media that's the problem though. I'm not a fan of this much American money being in F1. The sport is a uniquely European and international series. F1 fans don't need Indy car, or NASCAR, or any of the other won't-race-in-anything-other-than-perfect-weather events. We don't need commercial breaks and timeouts every 90 seconds. We don't need identical cars built to identical templates. We don't need oval circuits. In short - we really don't need American-style management and ownership of our sport. Liberty Media need to learn that throwing money at something won't make it better, or "fix" it, especially when it doesn't really need fixing.
But it's happened anyway, and I suspect the influence will start to become evident over the next 12 months. American interests have steadily been ramping up pressure to "own" F1 because it's a sport they're not very good at, and Americans don't like competing in things that they can't win. I suspect there will be pressure to have a second or even third US event added to the calendar. There will be pressure to use US-supplied tyres and engines, maybe even chassis'. Can you imagine Cooper being asked to supply F1 tyres? Or the teams headquartered in the UK, Germany and Italy being told to move to the US? Neither can I.
If they try to homologate the sport into a TV-commercial-break-ruled Indy-car type series in an effort to appease the beer-chugging, short attention span, redneck motorsport crowd, F1 will be forever ruined because that's not what it's about.
I hope beyond hope that Liberty Media do the right thing and listen to the fans and the teams. They have a Golden Goose here. But my suspicion is that they'll just do the usual "America Knows Best" routine and f*ck it up for everyone. They'll kill their goose and wonder what happened to all the eggs.
Monday, September 19, 2016
Another driver dies in another Tesla crash and MobilEye abandons Tesla.
Tesla is already under investigation for the death of Joshua Brown when his Model S slammed under the back of a truck and killed him whilst driving on autopilot. It turns out this isn't an isolated incident. In a remarkably similar crash in China in January, another driver was killed when his autopilot also didn't see a truck, and similar drove under the back of it at full speed. In the Chinese crash, a dashcam was recovered that shows the vehicle making no attempt to avoid the parked truck.
On top of these two autopilot deaths, a third driver has now died in his model S because of a severe electrical fire. In this latest case, the Dutch driver died when his Tesla crashed into a tree at 155kmh, in an accident so vicious that it split the battery in two and sparked the electrical fire. It seems autopilot wasn't responsible for this crash but it does call into question the integrity of the battery tub again (already investigated once due to a severe fire from road debris a couple of years ago).
Dutch first responders are extremely well-versed in dealing with electric cars - they're some of the best-trained first responders for these sorts of accidents. So when they tell you that the nature and severity of the wreckage was so bad that they could not be certain whether the car might be under high voltage, you ought to listen to them.
At the time, the driver was doing a reported 155kmh which would be a bad crash whichever way you look at it, in any car, but it ought to have been survivable.
With two confirmed deaths, it's not surprising then that the Israeli company that provides Tesla with part of the Autopilot system has broken ties with them. MobilEye don't want to be associated with a vehicle manufacturer that is killing it's driver with a flawed system. Ammon Shashua, chief technical officer for MobilEye said "No matter how you spin it, Autopilot is not designed for that. It is a driver assistance system and not a driverless system."
MobilEye abandons Tesla
Tesla autopilot caused second driver death?
Dashcam shows Chinese Tesla crash
On top of these two autopilot deaths, a third driver has now died in his model S because of a severe electrical fire. In this latest case, the Dutch driver died when his Tesla crashed into a tree at 155kmh, in an accident so vicious that it split the battery in two and sparked the electrical fire. It seems autopilot wasn't responsible for this crash but it does call into question the integrity of the battery tub again (already investigated once due to a severe fire from road debris a couple of years ago).
Dutch first responders are extremely well-versed in dealing with electric cars - they're some of the best-trained first responders for these sorts of accidents. So when they tell you that the nature and severity of the wreckage was so bad that they could not be certain whether the car might be under high voltage, you ought to listen to them.
At the time, the driver was doing a reported 155kmh which would be a bad crash whichever way you look at it, in any car, but it ought to have been survivable.
With two confirmed deaths, it's not surprising then that the Israeli company that provides Tesla with part of the Autopilot system has broken ties with them. MobilEye don't want to be associated with a vehicle manufacturer that is killing it's driver with a flawed system. Ammon Shashua, chief technical officer for MobilEye said "No matter how you spin it, Autopilot is not designed for that. It is a driver assistance system and not a driverless system."
MobilEye abandons Tesla
Tesla autopilot caused second driver death?
Dashcam shows Chinese Tesla crash
Monday, September 12, 2016
Corporate ticket-buying at motorsports events.
With the Singapore GP just around the corner, I'm reminded of something my wife and I noticed at last year's race. Corporate ticket-buying is ruining F1 for genuine fans.
We had front-row seats - right on the start line. We got to see the drivers up close and personal during the national anthem. We got to watch Vettel and his crew fussing with the Ferrari, so close we could have thrown popcorn and had it land in the cockpit. We got to listen to all the sounds of the grid work and teams, and we got to enjoy the race from a fantastic position in the stands.
Three seats down from us, on the front row, there was a block of 12 seats that were empty for practice, and qualifying, and for the beginning of the race itself. About 10 minutes in, a group of people all turned up wearing identical IBM shirts, all carrying theme-cocktails, laughing and joking and generally being a nuisance to everyone else. They occupied those 12 seats for about 15 minutes, before all getting up and leaving, never to come back.
We saw the same thing up and down the pit-row grandstand - blocks of seats all being temporarily filled by corporate clones, only to be left empty for 90% of the time. I find this repulsive. Genuine F1 fans would love to have had any of those seats, but instead, some corporate raffle bought a block of seats and gave the tickets to people who had no idea why they were there, no idea what they were watching, and were genuinely disinterested in the whole race.
Perhaps the companies that do this should find out first if the people they're giving the tickets to actually want to go to the race, rather than to just turn up on the company's dime and get drunk. Or better yet - don't waste the company's money at all, don't buy the seats, keep the ungrateful corporate drones at home and let REAL fans have the opportunity to sit in these prime locations.
Like I said: close to the action....
We had front-row seats - right on the start line. We got to see the drivers up close and personal during the national anthem. We got to watch Vettel and his crew fussing with the Ferrari, so close we could have thrown popcorn and had it land in the cockpit. We got to listen to all the sounds of the grid work and teams, and we got to enjoy the race from a fantastic position in the stands.
Three seats down from us, on the front row, there was a block of 12 seats that were empty for practice, and qualifying, and for the beginning of the race itself. About 10 minutes in, a group of people all turned up wearing identical IBM shirts, all carrying theme-cocktails, laughing and joking and generally being a nuisance to everyone else. They occupied those 12 seats for about 15 minutes, before all getting up and leaving, never to come back.
We saw the same thing up and down the pit-row grandstand - blocks of seats all being temporarily filled by corporate clones, only to be left empty for 90% of the time. I find this repulsive. Genuine F1 fans would love to have had any of those seats, but instead, some corporate raffle bought a block of seats and gave the tickets to people who had no idea why they were there, no idea what they were watching, and were genuinely disinterested in the whole race.
Perhaps the companies that do this should find out first if the people they're giving the tickets to actually want to go to the race, rather than to just turn up on the company's dime and get drunk. Or better yet - don't waste the company's money at all, don't buy the seats, keep the ungrateful corporate drones at home and let REAL fans have the opportunity to sit in these prime locations.
Like I said: close to the action....
Monday, September 5, 2016
I'm cured of my lust for a Dodge Charger.
Forever and a day, I've lusted after the Dodge Charger. The current version - not the old one. I love the looks, front and rear. With larger wheels and lower profile tyres it looks amazing. I love the wraparound red tail lights and the similar part-wraparound daytime running lights on the front. It just looks like it means business.
Then I rented one. An R/T version with a Hemi.
And now I don't want to own one any more.
Driving it was fun, for sure, but it was not a pleasant concert of well-balanced parts that were easily orchestrated. It was more like three drunks racing shopping carts down a back alley at night.
The engine was very urgent - too urgent. With an alleged 370 horsepower and 395 lb-ft of torque (although it really didn't feel like it), the lightest touch of the accelerator and it took off, meaning it was largely useless in stop-go traffic. Once in the open though, it felt a bit more natural, at least until it came time to overtake. If left to it's own devices, the command to kick-down for an overtake is faxed to the engine, to arrive with great delay, to the point where you end up pressing harder on the accelerator thinking maybe it didn't realize what was going on. Apparently this 8-speed box is a vast improvement over the older one but if that's the case I'm wondering just how bad the older one must have been. I mean this current generation one is so indecisive it spends a great deal of time hunting between gears. Far better is to use the paddle shifters on the steering wheel to force it down a gear - that's nearly instantaneous. And mercifully once in manual mode, after a short period of time the gearbox goes back to full auto (unless the shifter is in the "M" position).
The steering had three settings, which Dodge optimistically refer to as sport, normal and comfort. Those translated to vague, vaguer and vaguest. Compared to even the cheapest European runabout, the Charger's "sport" mode steering was sloppy and vague and to be honest there wasn't much difference between the three modes.
Oddly, there was a dedicated "sport" mode button in the center stack, which seemed to tighten up the gear ratios but didn't switch the steering to 'sport' mode - I had to do that three levels deep in the touch screen menu.
The brakes were pretty good - big-ass rotors with 4-pot calipers, and the feel through the pedal was not bad given the amount of power assistance in the way.
But again - driving it felt disjointed and awkward, not fluid and smooth like I'd hoped. I think some of this was down to the suspension. Calling it "choppy" is being kind. After five days of driving on regular roads with ruts and potholes, it was actually becoming painful and distracting to drive. Every small bump became a crashing, jarring punch in the spine.
I put a lot of these observations down to the car being a rental, but then I released it only had 900 miles on it, so it was basically brand new. It showed two previous Bluetooth phone connections and the registration document was dated 5 weeks ago so I was probably only the fourth or fifth renter.
I put a lot of these observations down to the car being a rental, but then I released it only had 900 miles on it, so it was basically brand new. It showed two previous Bluetooth phone connections and the registration document was dated 5 weeks ago so I was probably only the fourth or fifth renter.
In the end I think they went 100% muscle, all-out for straight-line speed without a lot of consideration for turning, and I think THAT might be why it feels so bizarre to drive.
Monday, August 29, 2016
Things I learned while in Florida
Following on from the recent post on things I learned in California, here's some things I learned in Orlando last week.
1. They have the most incredibly out-of-balance red/green signal ratio. Around where I was - near UCF - the red signals were anything from 2 to 4 minutes, followed by about 15 to 20 seconds of green. That was for crossing streets. The main roads had the opposite. Meaning that the side streets had queues on them that lasted for 3 to 4 red cycles before you got to the front. Meaning to get ANYWHERE was at least 6 minutes sitting at every red light. If I timed it wrong, it was 16 minutes. To travel the 0.75 miles from my hotel to the nearest supermarket and back took a little over 35 minutes. Including the 3 minutes I was in the store.
2. The Florida stereotype is very true - little old ladies with purple hair in gigantic cars with the left turn signal forever stuck on.
3. People can actually turn right without coming to a dead stop. Are you listening, Utah?
Driving was OK overall - too many toll roads though. It must be cripplingly expensive to live down there if you own a car. Petrol is $1 more than in Utah and with toll roads everywhere, as soon as you get on the motorway or any large bypass road, you're in it for $1 there and $1 back. To get to UCF from the airport is $2 each way. To get to International Drive from the airport is $4 each way. I swear if I lived there I'd burn more in tolls than I did in petrol.
Between the cost of petrol, the toll roads and the bizarre light timing, if it wasn't for the awful weather (35°C and 90% humidity) it would be making a good argument to walk everywhere.
1. They have the most incredibly out-of-balance red/green signal ratio. Around where I was - near UCF - the red signals were anything from 2 to 4 minutes, followed by about 15 to 20 seconds of green. That was for crossing streets. The main roads had the opposite. Meaning that the side streets had queues on them that lasted for 3 to 4 red cycles before you got to the front. Meaning to get ANYWHERE was at least 6 minutes sitting at every red light. If I timed it wrong, it was 16 minutes. To travel the 0.75 miles from my hotel to the nearest supermarket and back took a little over 35 minutes. Including the 3 minutes I was in the store.
2. The Florida stereotype is very true - little old ladies with purple hair in gigantic cars with the left turn signal forever stuck on.
3. People can actually turn right without coming to a dead stop. Are you listening, Utah?
Driving was OK overall - too many toll roads though. It must be cripplingly expensive to live down there if you own a car. Petrol is $1 more than in Utah and with toll roads everywhere, as soon as you get on the motorway or any large bypass road, you're in it for $1 there and $1 back. To get to UCF from the airport is $2 each way. To get to International Drive from the airport is $4 each way. I swear if I lived there I'd burn more in tolls than I did in petrol.
Between the cost of petrol, the toll roads and the bizarre light timing, if it wasn't for the awful weather (35°C and 90% humidity) it would be making a good argument to walk everywhere.
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