Why the public should repay Toyota

It doesn't take much does it? Just over a week after the NASA and NTSA reports came out absolving Toyota of any accelerator problems other than the known "sticky pedal" and floormat issue, Toyota's reputation is riding high again. Americans have changed their minds in the same way the wind changes direction and all is apparently forgiven. As I've mentioned on this blog before, the vast majority of unintended acceleration cases were down to the idiot drivers, which leads to an interesting problem. Reputation is everything and Toyota took a huge hit because of these people. Given that there never was a problem, doesn't it only seem right and fair that every driver who tagged along hoping for a claim payout, or claimed their Toyota had unintended acceleration, should now be forced to pay recompense to Toyota for wasting their time and damaging their reputation? More to the point, if they really can't tell the difference between the accelerator and the brake - two pedals that are radically different shapes and sizes and in different parts of the footwell - they really shouldn't be driving a car at all.

The worst part of all of this is that anyone who is even vaguely a petrolhead could have told you this this would be the ultimate outcome. We didn't need millions of dollars of research to tell us this. Why? Look back to 1985-86 when Audi suffered the same problem with the Audi 4000. Thousands of cases of unintended acceleration forced a massive recall and investigation that cost Audi dearly in sales and reputation. The end result? Stupid drivers who couldn't tell the difference between the accelerator and the brake.

Love is...?

Fluffy car mats? I doubt it. Jewellery? Not likely. If you live in America, apparently it's a car. Yes, for the last couple of weeks, the car companies have been touting the valentine's day events - give your loved one a Mercedes, or a Lexus. That's not really a gift is it? It's more of a statement of how outrageously wealthy and/or materialistic you are. There's no real thought goes into buying your wife a car.
Here's my suggestion : grab her some roses on the way home, and a nice box of chocolates. Cook her dinner, take her out to the theatre or a movie. These are all better ways of demonstrating your affection than saying "honey, check out the blown head, dual overhead cams and six pot Brembo's on this little beauty!"

Unless your wife is a gearhead, in which case, go crazy.

Happy Valentine's day :-)

Taking the piss

If you competed in Formula 1, you'd expect to be highly paid, right? I mean 19 events all over the world, racing at 170mph, putting yourself at risk, doing publicity etc etc. And you would be right. Lewis Hamilton earned $16.5M last year. Not too shabby. Now let's put that in perspective: adulterer and alleged golfer Tiger Woods earned $90.5M last year. That's taking the piss. He hits a ball with a stick and gets 8 times as much as the world's top paid racing driver? It does seem a little unbalanced especially when you compare the workload. Methinks Tiger Woods needs to be taken down a peg or two. He's not worth $90,000 let alone $90M, not by any stretch of the imagination.

Checking for alignment problems with your hands

Here's a tip from a reader this week. How to detect alignment problems early using a simple hand rub test on your tyres. Specifically feathering due to improper toe-in alignment. What's neat about this test is that it requires no tools other than perhaps a damp rag.
This test will detect feathered tires long before you can spot any feathering visually and takes about a minute to check all four tyres.
- Take the damp rag, and clean mud, debris, etc from the top area of the tyre's tread portion that you will test. (You don't have to wait for the tyre to dry.) If the tyre is already clean, you can skip this step.
- Stand with the tyre directly in front of you. Using your preferred hand, open your hand so it is flat. Place your hand on top of the tyre.
- Now rub the tyre applying moderate pressure. First push your hand away from you, moving it across the tyre tread, then draw your hand back towards you. Do this a few times so have a good "feel" of the tyre's surface.
- Repeat with the three other tyres.
An UNFEATHERED tire will feel pretty much the same in both directions of your hand's travel. You will be able to feel the edge of each tread as your hand slides over it, so it won't feel perfectly smooth, but it won't feel like you are rubbing over a knife blade either. The key point is the tyre tread surface will feel the same in both directions.
A tyre that is feathered due to excessive toe-out will have a sharp outside edge on each tread block, and the inside edge of each tread block will be excessively worn down, thus you will feel the sharp edge as you push your hand away, and the tread will feel smooth as you draw your hand towards you. The tyre surface will will different on the push stroke than it does on the pull stroke. Push = sharp. Pull = smooth.
A tyre that is feathered due to excessive toe-in will have a sharp inside edge on each tread block, and the outside edge of each tread block will be excessively worn down, thus you will feel the sharp edge as you pull your hand towards you, and the tread will feel smooth as you push your hand away from you. The tyre surface will will different on the push stroke than it does on the pull stroke. Push = smooth. Pull = sharp.
If a pair of tyres become toe misaligned by say 3 millimeters after a tyre hits an object, you will be able to detect the resulting feathering using this method within a few hundred miles after the event, long before any serious damage to the tread occurs.

New hosting plan

A mid-week blog post this week to ask the regular readers to lend a helping hand. I've recently had to migrate my site to a dedicated host because of the traffic levels it was receiving. This is a lot of work and there are dozens of paths, variables and other things that I've had to check and check again. Everything on my site does seem to work but I'm concerned I might have missed something. Sort of like when you get done putting a transmission back together and discover one M13 bolt lying on the ground.
So I would appreciate a quick comment here or email contact if you find anything on the site which is obviously broken.
Thanks !

Driving in Korea

Recently I was on a business trip in Korea and it was quite the experience when driving over there. Red traffic lights don't mean anything, neither do kerbs, road markings or stop signs for that matter. It was like driving in London but without rules. On top of that, of course, we had a Korean GPS which was hugely entertaining but completely useless to us. And to compound matters one step further, the rental company gave us a car with a mere 8km on it and told us to bring it back with no damage. So no pressure then.
Fortunately, most of our commute was between a hotel on the outskirts of Daejeon and a manufacturing plant out near the suburbs. We were able to use the outer ring road most of the time but even that was quite the experience. It's difficult to say this, but Korean drivers make people in Utah look like highly trained police drivers.