Your alternator doesn't charge your battery the way you think it does.

It's a common misconception among drivers that if their battery is flat (by which I mean dead), a good long drive will charge it up. After all the alternator generates power, right? Well yes, and no. Have you ever seen or driven a car where, as you sped up, the lights got brighter? That's because the battery was dead and all the electrical power was coming from the alternator with no battery to act as a load-balancer.
Bear in mind here the distinction between a low charge, and a flat, dead battery. Yes - alternators can revive batteries that have drained somewhat, but they can't revive a dead one (or at least it's not recommended to try). When people say 'flat battery' they normally mean 'low charge'. A truly flat battery is one that is nearly dead.
In a properly functioning car, the battery is there to start the car and be an electrical load-balancer. After the initial current draw of the starter motor, the alternator takes over and runs all the loads (lights, wipers, radios and other electrical gear) whilst providing a topping-off charge to the battery. Run that battery down far enough (under about 10v) and either the alternator won't recharge it, or it will damage the cells and give them a surface charge that will draw off so fast that it makes the charge useless. The alternator can't really be relied on to recharge a fully dead battery. So much so that most alternators have a warning label like this on the box when you buy them:

The alternator in most cars is typically sized to match the demands of the running car. In other words, when the engine is on and the car is running, the alternator provides the required electrical load for all the equipment and typically doesn't offer much more than about a 5%-10% overhead for the topping-off charge. To fully charge a nearly dead battery could take a very long drive with everything electrical turned off and as stated above, could result in a near-useless surface charge (and/or a dead alternator). A quick 10 minutes down the motorway isn't doing anything for you.
That's why you should invest in a battery charger if you ever find yourself with a very low battery. Use the grid's power supply to charge your car's battery instead of trying to overload your alternator. Chargers come in many sizes from 0.75 to 1.5 amps for slow 'trickle' charging, all the way up to 200 amp quick chargers (although you'll need a dedicated electrical supply for something that beefy). Optimate, Battery Tender and Black & Decker all do reasonable chargers in the $20 to $60 range, available from most local car parts stores or online mega vendors, and using them is pretty easy.
They'll typically come with a variety of connectors - clamps, ring connectors and accessory plugs. The accessory plug might seem like the ideal choice but many modern cars don't have live 12v accessory sockets when the ignition is off, plus you're trying to charge a hefty car battery through tiny cables so I just wouldn't recommend that. Ring connectors are good if you need to charge the battery time and time again because you can wire one end of the charging cable permanently to the battery.
The most useful connectors are going to be the crocodile clips. Simple to use - connect the red one to the positive battery terminal and the black on to the somewhere on the chassis or engine, plug the charger in and leave it alone. A decent modern charger will be able to charge in three or four different modes - bulk charge, top-off and maintenance are the most common three. It should choose which mode to use based on the condition of the battery, and there'll be a light or indicator on the charger to tell you what's going on.
Two final points : some cars, notably high end Audis and VWs, have their 12v battery in the trunk or under the driver's seat. Typically they'll have charging posts under the hood somewhere for easy access - Audi put theirs under a plastic flap at the back of the engine bay, in the middle. Flip it open and there's a "+" post in there. For the negative terminal, just clamp the clip to any part of the chassis or engine where there's bare metal.
And secondly : if you have to keep charging the battery, it means either your alternator is about to give up, or more likely, the battery itself is about to give up. Expect 3 to 4 year's life out of a normal 12v car battery, irrespective of what the manufacturer or guarantee tells you. 5 years is out of the ordinary. 6 years is extreme. If you live anywhere with wild temperature swings, expect 2 to 3 years before you need a replacement.

Cars and their tolerance of extremes.

Last summer I would drive home from work in the afternoon and regularly see temperatures in the 39°C to 41°C range. A couple of weeks ago, I drove to work in the morning and it was -15°C. I live in a moderately temperate part of the world but even so, a seasonal temperature swing of 56°C is a torture test for cars. To put it another way, if you shifted that temperature so the bottom end was zero celcius and filled a bath with water at that temperature, you'd freeze to death in a matter of minutes. If you replaced it with water at 56°C, you'd scald or burn within seconds. And yet we drive cars that we expect to deal with the same temperature swings. Ok it's not cold enough here to need to light a fire under the car to keep all the liquids from freezing and gelling - that's northern Alaska territory - but even so - 56°C temperature swing. Think about it. We expect the paint and finish on the outside of the car to tolerate that temperature difference. We expect the engine to start every morning and for the brakes, steering and suspension to work. We expect to be comfortable inside with the air either warmed or cooled from ambient outside temperatures to something like 18°C in the cabin. We expect windows to defrost, wipers to work, and electrical systems to function. We expect to be able to sit in long traffic jams on the hottest days without the engine overheating, and to warm up quickly on the coldest days so as to be usable in a hurry. And for the most part, every modern car can deal with these extremes (and more) without any hesitation. So take a minute next time you're driving in absurd weather, to thank the designers of your vehicle for providing you with a mode of transportation that is convenient, comfortable and reliable. Compared to the 'good old days' modern drivers have never had it quite so good.

Guest post : Diminished Car Value Claims: You Deserve More

If you’ve been in an auto accident, you may be eligible for compensation beyond the repair costs.
You stepped out and bought a new car. It’s shiny, perfect and pristine. You love it so much you park it a football field’s distance away from the store and the junkers in the parking lot just waiting to ding it. You not only park your baby in the garage at home, but you also put a cover on it so as not to later find little kitty paw prints all over the paint.
You take every precaution to protect your new car from the elements, so it’s beyond devastating when, WHAM, you’re caught in a wreck and your prized possession is mangled.
As long as you’re not the one at fault you can count on a check from the other driver’s insurance company for the repairs. But what about the worth of your car? After your car has been in an accident it will not be worth as much, even if it’s repaired and feels "like new."
You’ve seen those commercials about car buyers wanting to see a vehicle’s accident report. If it includes damage, it makes a big difference in the price of the car. The monetary difference between your car’s pre-accident value and what it’s worth after the accident is called diminished value.
For instance, if a 2009 Lexus IS F is worth $40,000 prior to an accident, and is worth $25,000 afterward, the value of the vehicle has been reduced by $15,000 and the vehicle’s owner is entitled to compensation (depending on your state’s law. To get paid for your diminished value, you’ll need to send a letter and an appraisal report to the at-fault party asking for proper and timely compensation for your loss.
First things first - get your vehicle appraised by an independent appraiser who specializes in diminished value. There are plenty of companies out there who do this, but not as many who will handle your situation with care and fight for you, so choose wisely. The appraiser will most likely require a police report and proof that the at-fault party’s insurance company will accept liability and approve your repair estimate.
Getting completed reports from the police and cooperation from insurance companies can be a lengthy and frustrating process at times, so keep calm and be patient. If all goes well, you could have your claim settled and a check in your hand in 30-60 days.

Sara Thompson is an Inbound Marketing Specialist for Webfor, representing Autoloss.com

Robby Gordon has no place in the Dakar

Long-time readers of my blog might recall that I have an axe to grind with Robby Gordon, especially when it comes to his participation in the Dakar Rally. Let me explain. I've deeply enjoyed watching and attending the Dakar since I was a kid. I love the camaraderie of the racers, the mix of bikes, trucks, quads and cars, and the general demeanour of the teams and personalities that this event attracts.
For the uninitiated, it's a 14-day, 5,300 mile rally that used to run from Paris to Dakar, but is now run in South America retaining only the 'Dakar' name. It's a severe test of drivers and machines, there are regularly deaths and injuries and it's not unusual to see less than 40% of the initial entrants finish. It's difficult and dangerous and everyone looks out for everyone else.
Then Robby Gordon came along with his peculiar brand of arrogant, boorishness, somehow thinking he was entitled to win because he'd taken part in some silly little "desert" race in California. His attitude is completely wrong, for a start. He treats the Dakar like his own personal playground and you can tell all you need to know about him from the very first day of the rally. Where all the other competitors drive up the start ramp, get out of the car, greet the crowd, do press interviews and are generally pleasant to the press and public, Gordon prefers to jump the ramp through the start gate, perform a doughnut and then drive off in a royal "f*ck you" to everyone there. That's just the start of it.
Last year he was caught cheating, and whenever he has a bad day, he has the mother of all tantrums. Most of the racers take bad days in their stride. Gordon prefers to nearly give his co-drivers concussion by throwing helmets, punching things and driving like a dick. It's like watching a 5-year-old being deprived of their blanket:

I'm sorry but that's not the behaviour of a grown adult. That's the behaviour of a spoiled, entitled brat who isn't getting his way.
He's full of hostility and very obvious disdain for anyone not on his team, and has no sense of team spirit or the camaraderie required for serious off-road racing.
Two years ago he bitched and whined when his team driver flew past him while he was stranded on the side of the road, saying that they should be working as a "team" and that he should have stopped. Last year, when the opposite happened, he abandoned Nasser Al Attiyah in the middle of the desert. Apparently Robby Gordon's idea of "team work" is "everyone must help me". No surprise then that his team, co-drivers and team-mates change every year. Nobody will do more than one rally with him.
He's impatient and dangerous when he's driving, forcing other vehicles out of the tracks into brush and rocks as if he was redneck racing in NASCAR. Last year he damn near killed one of the motorcyclists when he knocked him off his bike because he was (to quote Gordon) "in his way". Overall he's actually a terrible, terrible driver. This year is the fifth time he's tried the Dakar. He's failed spectacularly three times and been disqualified for cheating once. This year he beached his car on the only sand dune of the day on the 8 mile first day stage. Then he broke his gearbox trying to get it off. The second day he beached it again and needed a tow. The fourth day he turned it over and lost 4 hours, whining and complaining that "the dune wasn't marked on the map" when everyone else was flying past his wreck on the same route without any issue.
He talked crap about the Mini team last year and again this year saying "minis are for girls" but oddly, because the Mini team have talented drivers, they're handing Gordon his ass on a plate (as usual). Finally he talks smack about the other drivers ("Nasser is full of shit", "Peterhansel is a whiny bitch") as if that's somehow going to endear him to the other teams, organisers and spectators (note: it doesn't).
So please excuse me if you see me cheering and clapping when I see his stupid orange Hummer upside down in the desert, or beached, or sitting in a rocky gully. He's destroying the Dakar, he has no place in this event, and frankly the sooner he realises that and gives up on it, the better off motorsports fan will be.

Confirming my dislike of 'auto everything'

A few weeks ago I was in Switzerland on business and got to drive an Open Insignia that had auto-everything. Auto lights, auto wipers, power tailgate, three different driving modes that it automatically chose between. It was awful. The power tailgate was pointless, but all the added gear to make it work made it a really heavy tailgate to close manually. I had to fight the power mechanism to close it - compared to the amount of effort required to close a normal tailgate, this was extreme and I imagine all but the burliest drivers wouldn't be able to do it.
The auto lights were the typical nightmare you'd expect. The 'off' position didn't turn them off but put them on auto. The 'auto' position put them on 'auto' (why have an 'off' in that case?). The low-beam setting put them on auto-low-beam and the 'on' setting put them on auto. (Actually - because every setting was 'auto' the whole light switch seems pointless now I think about it). They'd blink on and off every time I drove into shadow or into a tunnel, and because they were HID lights, they'd auto-level every time they came on. So going into a tunnel, they'd flick on, and auto-level, which included a process of driving the reflector to its full extent both ways. ie. every time the lights came on it looked like I was flashing the people coming the other way. On off on off on off. It drove me crazy.
The auto wipers were particularly useless in snow. They didn't detect the snow, they didn't detect water already on the windshield, and they didn't detect water running down the windshield. Only direct splashing from actual rain would cause them to come on. Then it was a moving goalpost of sensitivity between them either not being on when you needed them, or wiping so much when they weren't needed that it baked winter crud on to the windshield, requiring a manual wash/wipe cycle. That of course resulted in water running down the glass after the wipers parked - something the sensor couldn't pick up - so then I had to run them manually. As with the lights, there wasn't a "normal" mode for the wipers.
The three driving maps were set to European, Lazy American, and Fat Lazy American. (I guess GM had the say on this). In default mode (Lazy American), the steering had a good 5 degrees of play in it before the wheels turned. The throttle was connected to the engine via a call centre in India, and the suspension was like a foam mattress. In 'tour' mode (Fat Lazy American) it took all those settings and backed them off even further. 10 degrees slop in the steering, no feel from the suspension, and a throttle that had a mind of its own. Randomly the car would choose between these two modes based on some dark logic that I could never figure out. The only even faintly usable mode was 'sport' which was as close to 'normal' as I could find. Decent throttle response, engine braking when going downhill, tight shift points in the gearbox and actual suspension and brakes. Of course there was no way to default the car to this mode and it would never choose this mode on its own.
One other bizarre thing: the buttons to lock and unlock the doors were located on the top of the centre console just under the GPS screen. It took me a good three days to find them because that's not a logical location to put door unlocks. (The doors themselves would seem like a much better idea, but then I don't work for GM).
The fundamental vehicle itself wasn't "bad", but it was inundated with so much pointless tech that it became a bad car because of it. The only vaguely useful 'feature' in the whole car was the auto-dimming mirrors.

Is there a Santa Claus?

Ok so this post isn't especially relevant to cars and motoring but Santa does use a vehicle, so that counts, right? So I ask - is there really a Santa Claus?
1) No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.
2) There are 2.5 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. But, since Santa doesn't appear to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average census rate of 3.5 children per household the world over, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each.
3) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different timezones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course we know to be false, but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding etc etc.
This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at around 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For the purpose of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.
4) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying a minimum of 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see point #1) could pull ten times that amount, we cannot do the job with eight or even nine. We need 214,000 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison, this is four times the weight of the QE2.
5) 353,400 tons travelling at 650 miles per second causes enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earths' atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously and vaporise, exposing the reindeer behind them, and creating deafening sonic booms. This would wake people up, and the reindeer team would be reduced to ashes in a mere 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to combined forces some 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250 pound Santa (which, lets be honest, seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds-per-square-foot of force.
In conclusion - if Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's long dead.