I've moaned about quick-change oil places on this blog before. One piece of advice - just don't take your vehicles there. They may seem cheaper up front but they're really not. Our local dealerships do oil changes for the same price but employ people who at least have some talent.
A friend of mine had a problem with a quick-change oil place about a year ago. I won't name it but it rhymes with 'Whiffy Tube'. She took her car in for an oil change and they forgot to put the filler cap back on. So that got lost as soon as she drove off, and the oil started to spray out of the filler at the top of the engine coating everything inside the engine bay. The fumes inside the car were terrible and it took weeks to clear out the last remains of the smell. Fast forward to a month ago, she took her car in again, but to a different branch because she was planning a long road trip and wanted to make sure everything was OK. This time, they broke off the mounting points for her airbox. So the weight of the airbox was hanging off the air hose going to the throttle body. Naturally, that eventually came off as the hose clips couldn't hold the extra weight. New airbox, air hoses and throttle body required. Fast forward to this week, a work colleague took his car to a branch in a different city and they nicked one of his brake hoses with something sharp. He found this out on the way into work when he went to brake and couldn't. When he took his car into his dealership, they found the cut in the brake hose, right next to where the sump drain is on his car (thank you Honda, for that wonderful design). And it was a cut, not a break, snap, perished hose or anything like that.
Of all my friends and colleagues, I only have one who has never had a problem with a quick-change oil place. I'm sure there ARE places that employee mechanics with some talent but honestly I've never found one. In fact I'm not even sure the use of the word "mechanic" applies.
What happened to customer satisfaction, pride in the job and all the other decent ethics we used to have?
Reminder - competition to win some Quixx products is still open : Win Quixx products
Monday, August 27, 2012
Monday, August 20, 2012
Guest post : Star's Cars
Famous stars and their cars have long been inextricably linked. Clark Gable’s love of cars and involvement in a minor traffic incident gave rise to the urban legend that he had killed a pedestrian whilst drunk driving, Jayne Mansfield famously lost her head over a 1966 Buick Electra and Steve McQueen had a legendary obsession with speed.
Star car envy is as rife as celebrity obsession itself so to fuel the fires a bit more or dampen them completely here is a list of some famous celebrities and their cars. Go on, ask yourself if you really want to drive what they are driving.
Car collections
Some stars make no bones about their car obsessions. Here are some who go public with their collections.
Rapmobiles
Rappers’ love of bling is matched by a love of chrome. Akon showed just how ‘paid’ he was with an exhibition of his car collection at a recent Atlanta V103 Car and Bike Show. It included a Ferrari 458 Italia, Audi R8, Lamborghini, Mercedes SLR and a Porsche Panamera. 50 Cent has spent a little more than his name may suggest on his ‘blue car collection’ which includes a blue Lamborghini Murcielago Roadster, a blue Rolls Royce Ghost and an imaginatively coloured blue Ferrari F430.
To read this whole guest article, head on over to Star's Cars at carbibles.com.
Star car envy is as rife as celebrity obsession itself so to fuel the fires a bit more or dampen them completely here is a list of some famous celebrities and their cars. Go on, ask yourself if you really want to drive what they are driving.
Car collections
Some stars make no bones about their car obsessions. Here are some who go public with their collections.
Rapmobiles
Rappers’ love of bling is matched by a love of chrome. Akon showed just how ‘paid’ he was with an exhibition of his car collection at a recent Atlanta V103 Car and Bike Show. It included a Ferrari 458 Italia, Audi R8, Lamborghini, Mercedes SLR and a Porsche Panamera. 50 Cent has spent a little more than his name may suggest on his ‘blue car collection’ which includes a blue Lamborghini Murcielago Roadster, a blue Rolls Royce Ghost and an imaginatively coloured blue Ferrari F430.
To read this whole guest article, head on over to Star's Cars at carbibles.com.
Monday, August 13, 2012
Guest post : hiring auto transport companies
If you're moving somewhere or taking a long trip, you may wonder whether it would be cheaper and easier to tow your extra car or to have it moved by a professional automobile transport company. You may also be faced with the choice of driving your car or taking a plane and hiring someone else to move your car. Here are some of the pros and cons that may surface as you weigh your options for getting your car from one place to another.
Automobile transport companies move private vehicles from one place to another. At first glance, this seems like an easy way to get the job done. Just drive your car to the drop-off point, sign the papers, and hand over the keys. Needless to say, this is a big benefit of hiring a professional car moving company.
Unfortunately, this method comes with drawbacks as well. Most of them stem from the commercial transportation process. Clever Gems says that at terminal-to-terminal auto transport companies, your car will be loaded onto a semi along with several others and driven to a hub. There, your car will be unloaded from the first truck and put onto one that's going in the direction of the next terminal. At the last terminal, it will be unloaded one last time and then left to sit in a parking lot. The parking lot is out in the open and may or may not have any security.
To read this whole guest article, head on over to hiring auto transport companies
Automobile transport companies move private vehicles from one place to another. At first glance, this seems like an easy way to get the job done. Just drive your car to the drop-off point, sign the papers, and hand over the keys. Needless to say, this is a big benefit of hiring a professional car moving company.
Unfortunately, this method comes with drawbacks as well. Most of them stem from the commercial transportation process. Clever Gems says that at terminal-to-terminal auto transport companies, your car will be loaded onto a semi along with several others and driven to a hub. There, your car will be unloaded from the first truck and put onto one that's going in the direction of the next terminal. At the last terminal, it will be unloaded one last time and then left to sit in a parking lot. The parking lot is out in the open and may or may not have any security.
To read this whole guest article, head on over to hiring auto transport companies
Monday, August 6, 2012
Phantom traffic jams - why you shouldn't use your brakes
Both in my blog and on my site I've long complained about the inappropriate use of car controls - people driving with a foot on the brake, unnecessary braking, lack of use of indicators etc. And for the longest time I've known about phantom traffic jams - where traffic comes to a stop for (seemingly) no reason. I've written about this elsewhere on my site but it's never for no reason - it's because of someone being inattentive, or not understanding that taking your foot off the accelerator causes your car to slow down without using the brakes. The explanation is simple, but I recently came across the youtube video below that demonstrates it perfectly. One person - just one - uses their brakes, and that's all it takes to turn a smooth-flowing road into a jammed-up nightmare. The person behind the initiator has to brake, and they do so just a little harder than the person in front. That effect ripples backwards through the traffic until finally, someone ends up coming to a complete stop, and from there, the phantom traffic jam appears. The M25 around London is a classic example of this, and the idiotic variable speed limits they put don't help traffic flow, they hinder it because now people have a proper reason to brake - speed cameras - and the rest is self-explanatory. Enjoy the video and think about it next time you're on the motorway. Can you moderate your distance simply by paying more attention and taking your foot off the accelerator instead of knee-jerk reacting and hitting the brake? (I know they can't do this here in Utah :-) )
Also : the competition is still running to win a BlueDriver wireless OBD2 scanner.Win a BlueDriver
Also : the competition is still running to win a BlueDriver wireless OBD2 scanner.Win a BlueDriver
Monday, July 30, 2012
Guest post : Get the 'drift' ?
Anyone who has seen the stunts and set pieces that pepper Tokyo Drift, the third instalment of the Fast and Furious film franchise, will understand the excitement of drifting. Drifting has a much longer history than its cinematic debut in 2006 and fans of drifting competitions can attest that the thrills and spills of drifting are even larger than life when seen from the side of the track than on the big screen.
Professional drift cars have been tweaked and modified to fine tune their performance and safety: the choice of specialist tyres, modifications to suspension and brakes and the use of a limited slip differential are the main areas of focus. However anyone can get the drift. With a private road, an understanding of drift technique and an unmodified car fresh off even a Hyundai car dealerships forecourt anyone can drift. This masterclass should give you the basics of drifting that you need: once you’ve got the drift you can go on to master the art.
To read this whole guest article, head on over to How To Drift at carbibles.com.
Also : the competition is still running to win a BlueDriver wireless OBD2 scanner.Win a BlueDriver
Professional drift cars have been tweaked and modified to fine tune their performance and safety: the choice of specialist tyres, modifications to suspension and brakes and the use of a limited slip differential are the main areas of focus. However anyone can get the drift. With a private road, an understanding of drift technique and an unmodified car fresh off even a Hyundai car dealerships forecourt anyone can drift. This masterclass should give you the basics of drifting that you need: once you’ve got the drift you can go on to master the art.
To read this whole guest article, head on over to How To Drift at carbibles.com.
Also : the competition is still running to win a BlueDriver wireless OBD2 scanner.Win a BlueDriver
Monday, July 23, 2012
Cars with safety aids are involved in more accidents.
Regular readers of my site and/or blog will know I have particular place in Hell reserved for pointless in-car gadgets like auto-lights, auto-wipers, auto-park, lane-departure warnings, blind-spot warnings etc. The list of these things goes on and on and I've long argued that when you fill cars with this stuff, it lulls the drivers into a false sense of security. The end result shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone then : cars fitted with lane-departure warning systems are involved in more accidents than those without. Cold. Hard. Facts.
The Highway Loss Data Institute (a division of the Institute for Highway Safety) discovered that lane departure indicators are doing more harm than good. They don't go into a lot of detail about why lane departure warning signals correlate with more wrecks, but the numbers speak for themselves.
Lane departure indicator-equipped Buick cars recorded a four percent increase in collision claims and a slightly higher rate of increase for property damage claims. Mercedes brought up the rear with a five percent increase in collision claims and a more than ten percent increase in property damage claims. Other manufacturers were scattered between the two with only one manufacturer - Volvo - bucking the trend.
The study results stand in stark contrast to researchers' initial predictions about how well these new safety gadgets would work. In 2008 the IIHS admitted that most of these things only partially work but at the same time boldly claimed that lane departure systems would prevent 10,345 fatal accidents per year (article). 4 years on, not so much.
Consider for a moment the arguments being floated in Europe right now for AEB - automated emergency braking. The exact same claims are being made right now for making AEB mandatory on all cars from 2014.
The HLDI won't speculate as to why the facts are the way they are, but it would seem pretty obvious. When you put crap like this in cars, it leads drivers to start to rely on it, so instead of actually paying attention when driving, they rely on the car to tell them when they're leaving the travel lane. In the same way that cars with blindspot warning devices are involved in more rear-end collisions (2008 report mentioned above) because people now believe they don't have to use their mirrors or look over their shoulders any more.
If governments want safer roads, they need to mandate getting rid of all this crap in cars and concentrate on driver training, testing and re-testing. If we continue the march towards more and more driver "aids", and ultimately auto-drive cars, the accident rates will only continue to march upwards as we dumb down the responsibility for driving.
(pic from Jalopnik)
Also : the competition is still running to win a BlueDriver wireless OBD2 scanner.Win a BlueDriver
The Highway Loss Data Institute (a division of the Institute for Highway Safety) discovered that lane departure indicators are doing more harm than good. They don't go into a lot of detail about why lane departure warning signals correlate with more wrecks, but the numbers speak for themselves.
Lane departure indicator-equipped Buick cars recorded a four percent increase in collision claims and a slightly higher rate of increase for property damage claims. Mercedes brought up the rear with a five percent increase in collision claims and a more than ten percent increase in property damage claims. Other manufacturers were scattered between the two with only one manufacturer - Volvo - bucking the trend.
The study results stand in stark contrast to researchers' initial predictions about how well these new safety gadgets would work. In 2008 the IIHS admitted that most of these things only partially work but at the same time boldly claimed that lane departure systems would prevent 10,345 fatal accidents per year (article). 4 years on, not so much.
Consider for a moment the arguments being floated in Europe right now for AEB - automated emergency braking. The exact same claims are being made right now for making AEB mandatory on all cars from 2014.
The HLDI won't speculate as to why the facts are the way they are, but it would seem pretty obvious. When you put crap like this in cars, it leads drivers to start to rely on it, so instead of actually paying attention when driving, they rely on the car to tell them when they're leaving the travel lane. In the same way that cars with blindspot warning devices are involved in more rear-end collisions (2008 report mentioned above) because people now believe they don't have to use their mirrors or look over their shoulders any more.
If governments want safer roads, they need to mandate getting rid of all this crap in cars and concentrate on driver training, testing and re-testing. If we continue the march towards more and more driver "aids", and ultimately auto-drive cars, the accident rates will only continue to march upwards as we dumb down the responsibility for driving.
(pic from Jalopnik)
Also : the competition is still running to win a BlueDriver wireless OBD2 scanner.Win a BlueDriver
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