The right tool for the right job

You know the saying about having the right tool for the right job? It's true. This weekend whilst investigating an issue under the hood of a car, I dropped a small plastic clip. It bounced off the intake manifold and rolled down between the manifold and cylinder head to come to rest between a couple of coolant pipes. Nice one. The hole it fell down wasn't big enough to get a couple of fingers in, let alone a hand. One quick trip to insert-your-favourite-car-parts-store-here and for $6 I had a retriever, also known as a pick-up tool. Or in tech-speak, a doodad for getting stuff out of tight places. It's a spring-loaded claw on the end of a flexible tube. I had someone hold a torch (flashlight if you're American) and carefully poked said tool down into the gap and was able to retrieve the plastic clip.
If I'd have gone poking around with a screwdriver, it would have ended up falling on to a timing belt or something, inevitably ending up further out of reach. The right tool did the job properly and quickly.

The joys of bluetooth

My VW has a built-in handsfree cellphone kit. The mic is built into the headliner, and everything is integrated with the dash, steering wheel controls and radio. It's wonderful. I can leave my phone on bluetooth now, and when I get into the car, the car becomes the handset.
Now I hate people who use cellphones in cars - weaving, slowing down, leaning towards the centre of the car like some they all have some weird disfigurement. Until I had this car, I would never make or take a call when driving. I was derided and made fun of on occasion for pulling into a parking lot to take a call. But now I have an interesting option. Because I don't need to fuss with the phone, I can make a call using the steering wheel controls. Better yet, if someone phones me, I have the option to ignore the call and send it to voicemail.
I'm not sure this is any safer than actually using the phone physically - I find myself distracted a bit when using the handsfree - more so than just talking to someone in the car with me. But it's nice to have the option.
It seems I might be softening in my stance on useless crap in modern cars. This is the first piece of gadgetry I've found a use for.

Hack your car

In the good old days, modifying your car was a physical affair. Messing with needle jets. Bolting on goodies. Tweaking stuff here and there. Whilst a lot of this is still true, more and more you'll find people modifying their cars with a cable and a laptop. Essentially, it's now possible to hack your car. Anything from minor functional changes to full-on engine remaps are all possible, but for the DIY-er, it's generally best to stick to the less risky end of things. I'll give you an example. My new VW Tiguan came with a lot of nanny features - things that were put there to appease the lawyers but have no real purpose. With the right piece of kit, I've been able to modify my car to suit my tastes. In this case I've used a Ross-Tech MicroCan. It's a package with a piece of software for my laptop, and a USB cable with an OBD2 connector on the other end. Using their software, I've been able to turn off the seatbelt warning chime, turn off the daytime running lights, make it so that I can have high beams and fog lights on together, alter the behaviour of the trunk release (so it now opens, instead of just unlocking) and a bevvy of other minor tweaks and mods. The interesting thing with VW in particular is that a lot of options for their European models are available, but simply disabled in the onboard system for the US. Using the software, I've been able to re-enable those features.
The other nice thing about this particular piece of kit is that it allows me to see DTC and error codes - the things that turn on check engine lights - and clear them if I want. I can even reprogram my own TPMS monitors when switching from summer to winter wheels and back.
It's the brave new world of car modifying - try it - you'll like it.

Build your own engine

GM have come up with a winner. If you're in the market for a 2011 Corvette Z06 or ZR1, they're now offering a unique owner experience; you can help assemble your vehicle's own engine yourself. They call it their Build Your Own Engine program, and it'll set you back a lofty $5,800 for the priveledge. Interesting, because - isn't that their job? I mean when you pay for a new vehicle, you're paying for all of it. Surely if you're getting to do some of their work for them, they ought to discount the price of the car?
The program is possible because the engines for those two models are hand-assembled rather than put together by robots. This means you can get down and dirty with their technicians and get hands on with the engine that will power your own car. You even get a special nameplate.

There is an aspect of this story that hasn't been discussed yet though. Two actually. First - the warranty. If anything goes wrong with the engine, will GM cover it or will they simply say "well you built it - not our problem"?

And second - resale value. Would you buy a Corvette with an engine built by the previous owner? Didn't think so.

Via insideline.com

When buying a new car, use all the tools available to you

It sounds obvious but so many people will still go to a car dealer and pay what the dealer asks for their new vehicle. It doesn't have to be that way. There are plenty of tools around nowadays to help you strike a deal. In America for example, we have the Consumer Reports new car report. (Consumer Reports is like Which? in England). For $14 you can buy a pricing report that breaks down the actual cost of the car to the dealer. Why is this important? Well once you're armed with that information, 9 times out of 10 you can drive the dealer way down on price. I recently bought a new VW Tiguan (nice car by the way) and using a pricing report I was able to get $2100 off the sticker price. How? The pricing report will show you what the dealer actually paid to get the vehicle on his lot. Not the "invoice" price they'll readily show you - that doesn't include incentives and the manufacturer holdback. (When a dealer shows you an invoice and tells you he's making no money by offering you invoice price, he's lying.) The report also shows you the cost to the dealer of any options as well as the cost to you - again so you can see if the markup is correct or not.

My new VW for example was on the lot with a sticker price of $31,125. The pricing report showed me that the dealer would get a $594 holdback from VW corporate. That's money they make irrespective of the price you pay for the car. Every dealer and sales network has this and again, if they tell you they don't, they're lying.
That, combined with a couple of other nuggets of information (like a local $1000 sales incentive - again - money they get just for selling the car) meant I was able to argue the price down to $29,000. IF my dealer paid the normal going rate to VW to get the car on his lot, he only made $568 profit on that vehicle. I got a good deal, the dealer made a profit and was also paid $1,594 from VW in incentives.

A lot of people don't like haggling on prices, especially for something like a car, but you just need to be strong-willed. If they won't come to a price you can accept, walk out. I walked out twice - it took three days to get the price down for me, with a lot of negotiation taking part on email and over the phone. That's another tip - if you can do the deal by email, it's a far better way of working because they can't pressure you and you're not subject to sitting in a showroom full of new car smell.

Of course, if you're armed beforehand with a pricing report and the dealer starts blatantly lying to you, you always have the option of going elsewhere. Gone are the days when the consumer could be treated as a cash cow - dealers need to understand that and treat the buyers with more courtesy and a more grown-up attitude. A lot of them do, but there's still those out there who won't budge from the sticker price and they need to be given a wide berth.

£46bn in tax every year

It's an amazing number, but between road tax, the tax on fuel and the various sales taxes levied on new cars, British drivers pay a total of £46bn every year (source The AA). Divided by the population of the country, it means every man, woman and child pays an average £750 in motoring-related taxes. That's an unfair number because of course not every person in England drives. So if you take the estimated number of drivers (20m) instead of the total population (61.5m), it means every driver pays about £2300 per year in motoring-related taxes. That doesn't include the new 'showroom' tax that was introduced in April this year which adds up to another £515 to the cost of a new car purely in taxes.
For those of us in America, to put that into perspective, it's the equivalent of each of us paying US$3400 in motoring taxes every year.