Embbio Innova

Archive for February, 2012

There is no joy quite like the joy that comes with getting a brand new car. It’s an exciting investment that appeals to all of the senses. It looks good, sounds like a kitten and smells brand new. So of course you may naturally assume that a brand new car doesn’t need maintenance the same way an older car does and you would be correct, for the most part. But a new car needs to be taken care of if you want it to last long enough to become your old faithful road warrior.

All new vehicles come with a user manual that explains all of the ins and outs of the vehicle. It will also tell you how often certain services need to be performed like oil changes. Get acquainted with this manual. Even if you don’t read every page, flip through it and pick out the most important points. The index will be able to direct you to any page so keep the manual in a place where you can always access it easily.

Oil changes should be performed every three thousand miles or every three months. Ask your dealer for any additional information if they don’t automatically supply it. It’s important not to go over this limit and ignore the need for an oil change. As oil gets dirty, it can slow down the engine and make it feel bogged down or run rough. Get your oil change on time so it continues to purr like a cat.

There are other things that you need to keep on a maintenance timeline as well. You must make sure the tires are rotated as necessary for optimum traction on the road. You also need to check all of the fluids in the car on a regular basis. Even if they don’t need to be refilled or changed, you need to know they are all as they should be. From transmission fluid to brake fluid, there are a lot of things to stay on top of. Check all of the fluid reservoirs as well to make sure there is no damage or possible leaks.

Keep your engine clean by using cleaners that are designed to be used under the hood of your car. As the engine gets dirty it can become clogged up with oil spills and dirt. A clean engine will run much better and has a good chance of having fewer problems. It also makes it much easier to identify a new problem.

Get a car wash regularly to maintain the exterior appearance of your new ride. The road is filled with dirt, oil and salt. These things can eat away at your paint job which leaves hideous results over time. Keep your paint brand new with a car wash once a week. Give it a good wax every quarter of a year at least as well to protect your clear coat.

When it comes to maintaining your new car one of the best things you can do is to drive it with care. If you blast around like a maniac and lay on the gas a lot, you will put your engine under unnecessary stress. Love your car and it will take care of you.

Preparation for Ignition Coil Test The first thing you want to do is always take the necessary precautions. When working near or around a running engine one must exercise great caution. You should be aware of any loose clothing. If you have long hair you want be careful that it does not make contact with any part of your car’s engine and its moving parts.

Testing the ignition coil on your car is one of the fairly easier tasks to perform. It’s not that complex nor does it require any special tools or equipment. One thing to keep in mind is that your ignition system produces a great amount of electricity. Should anything go wrong, the result could be very dangerous. Proceed cautiously.

If your coil has already been removed from your vehicle and you need data that is more specific about your coil, you can perform what is called a bench test. Set up the bench test by removing the one spark plug wire from its plug. Then remove the spark plug with a plug socket. Now you want to connect that spark plug back to the spark plug wire. Do this with great care; you don not want anything to fall into the empty spark plug opening or you’ll have a problem.

Testing the Ignition Coil: The Bench Test: Grab a pair of insulated pliers. Hold your plug wire with insulated pliers. Now, you need a grounding point so look around your engine for one. You want a spot that is easy to access and that has exposed metal. You could even use the car’s engine for this.

Hold the spark plug wire with your insulated pliers and make contact with your chosen grounding spot with the threaded part of your spark plug. Have some one start your car’s engine and pay attention to the spark plug gap. You are looking for a bright blue spark to jump across the gap – the electricity. If you can observe this blue spark clearly, even in daylight, then your spark plug is working just fine.

Testing the Ignition Coil: The Multimeter Test There are a number of other tests you can perform for your ignition coil. However, if you want accurate information on the status of your ignition coil then you should perform a multimeter test. This test is far more accurate in determining whether you need to replace the coil or not. It is considered the only proper test for a coil.

You could rely to an extent on the bright blue spark you see in your bench test but if that spark is somewhat weak and your eyes can’t really tell, using this spark plug can cause your vehicle to run rough or incorrectly which is the last thing you want.

Let go inside the ignition coil for a moment. The ignition coil contains two coils of wire that are right on top of each other. We refer to these coils as windings. There is a primary winding, the first wire, and a secondary winding, the second wire. The primary winding collects the electricity to create the spark. The secondary winding sends it out to the distributor. It is possible for either of these windings to malfunction causing your vehicle’s ignition coil to fail. Sometimes an ignition coil can completely fail meaning it makes absolutely no spark whatsoever.

A multimeter test is performed with the ignition coil completely disconnected. This meter provides numbers to help you determine the status of the coil – far more reliable than a visual assessment. There are different types of digital multimeters and they can be found online or at your local auto repair retailer.

Of course, to use the multimeter, you will have to know the resistance specifications for your ignition coil. If you don’t know what they are then refer to your vehicle’s service or repair manual for that information.

Testing the Windings

Aerodynamics is one of the leading factors in vehicle performance. Car racing has focused on this aspect ever since the 60s, when the first inverted wings were installed on formula cars. In time, the development of aerodynamic devices grew stronger, often borrowing ideas and solutions form the flight industry.

By improving aerodynamics, engineers saw faster lap times and more driver control over the car, both at high and low speeds. The final element that contributes to improved handling and grip is the downforce – using the underbody of the vehicle to facilitate airflow and “stick” the car to the tarmac.

Since the introduction of aerodynamics, automotive engineers used the distribution of downforce as the major decisive factor in car performance. Because of aerodynamic advancements, some racing cars reach cornering speeds of 4 G (four times the acceleration of gravity). The same factors that apply to racing cars also stand true for street legal vehicles. The shape of the car, the airflow created by accessories and car parts, the effect of the rear wing spoiler or frontal spoilers – all these contribute to the aerodynamic level of the car. For improved downforce, you can try several solutions, such as installing a well calibrated rear wing or lowering your car’s suspensions.

History and trends in aerodynamic development.

Modern cars are always tested from an aero dynamical point of view. Wind tunnels are used on car prototypes to see what each segment of the car does to airflow, and other tools such as computational aerodynamics and aerodynamic design and optimization are employed in order to find the best airflow solutions.

The concept of body streamlining appeared after Chevrolet-Chaparral implemented some groundbreaking airflow elements in their Can-Am cars. The rear axel of the car had a wing attached to two struts and the wing was adjustable at pit stops to tune the car for the best efficiency. The idea became very popular in a short while, and other aero dynamical improvements were soon to follow. Lateral sealing skirts were later developed and formula racers ended up reaching speeds of 1.7 G. Lotus introduced the ground effect car – the bottom part of the vehicle was shaped in such a way that the volume of downforce provided was much greater than with previous models.

Today’s cars, from a Ferrari F50 to a Smart, employ aerodynamics as an essential factor in their construction. Manufacturers focus on this aspect of car making – improved aerodynamics reduce fuel consumption, habitat noise and also provide the driver with more control and stability, thus improving vehicle safety.

Copyright 2005 Jason Bibb

The consumer car market in America is a highly competitive one, requiring manufacturers to sell some of the most sophisticated, energy efficient and highest quality vehicles in the world if they are to maintain a toehold here.

Earlier Exits

Not everyone can make a go of it in America with Isuzu and Daihatsu exiting in recent years and Peugeot, Fiat, Renault and others leaving the market years earlier. A few manufacturers including Hyundai, Volkswagen and Kia are expanding their presence in the United States, pressuring weaker competitors, some of whom are weighing whether to stay the course.

Suzuki and Mitsubishi are two manufacturers whose fortunes have changed in recent years. Both of these Japanese car companies have seen their sales drop by more than 75 percent over the past few years as overall car sales have nose-dived. Still, Subaru, Hyundai and Kia managed to pick up sales, proving that consumers are flocking to those brands selling the products they want at prices they can afford.

Sinking Sales

Suzuki hasn’t said much about their plans despite being on track to sell just 25,000 vehicles this year, far off its recent peak of just over 100,000 units annually. Mitsubishi, however, has addressed rumors that it would be leaving the U.S. given that sales have slid ever since topping out at 354,000 units in 2002.

For 2010, Mitsubishi is expected to sell 68,000 vehicles, an 80 percent drop from 2002. Still, those numbers are up over 2009 when Mitsubishi managed to sell just under 54,000 vehicles.

Mitsubishi Products

Addressing concerns of a possible exit from the states, Mitsubishi president Osamu Masuko told Automotive News that the company plans to stay put and will win new customers by updating its product line. Masuko also said the company would aggressively seek to sell 200,000 units annually, but did not offer a date for when that goal would be reached.

Mitsubishi’s presence in the U.S. dates most foreign manufacturers, relying initially on its partnership with Chrysler to sell rebadged vehicles in North America beginning in the 1970s. Cars such as the Plymouth Colt and Dodge D50 were Mitsubishi products, decent sellers when people were looking at buying smaller cars. In the 1980s, Mitsubishi began to strike out on its own, selling cars through its own dealer network and offering a few models and engine choices to Chrysler.

Old Models

Popular Mitsubishi models have included the Eclipse and Lancer, but its once-popular Galant midsize sedan is outdated, having not been updated since the latest generation model was introduced in 2003. Mitsubishi also sells two crossovers, the Outlander and Endeavor, which means that its model line is thin and not in step with its competitors.

An ace for Mitsubishi is its i-MiEV electric car, a model expected to hit the market with the first wave of EVs in 2010 and 2011, perhaps signaling a new direction for the embattled automaker.

There are a lot of different mp3 players on the market today, but Apple are the leaders of the market with the numerous variations of the iPod. Initially the iPod was successful due to its styling and functions, however the current rise of popularity is also down to other factors including additional accessories and add-ons to the iPod to make it more functional and or usable.

The iPod’s primary use is for music play back, Although current iPod and iPhones are capable of so much more. Accessories that increase the functionality of the iPod are now seen as a business in there own right. A perfect example of an iPod accessory is the iPod car adaptor. Its primary function is to allow you to listen to your music while in your car. This has obvious advantages over other forms of entertainment systems in your vehicle, first and foremost you can listen to the music you love rather than what happens to be on the radio at the time, secondly the quality is far superior to the radio as they provide a digital connections into the cars entertainment systems. There are many other advantages depending on which kit you choose to purchase. However these advantages largely depend on your vehicle.

Other iPod car accessories can be found in a lot of local or online stores and include simple charging cables from the cigarette lighter, Ideal for when your iPod loses battery charge, FM transmitters, a more basic version of the Digital iPod car kit. The quality can be poor on Transmitters so its important to choose a good brand and if you live in a built up area its likely you wont receive a good reception. iPod cases aren’t specific to car accessories however they can and will stop your iPod from being damaged while left in your vehicle.

iPod accessories can be very useful if not essential for you in your every day life.

Buying a new car, if it is a financially viable option, has a number of advantages over buying a used one. For one thing, it means that your car has a resale value should you be looking to trade it in at some point. Secondly, there is something quite rewarding about the feel of owning and driving a new car. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, there is the matter of maintenance.

Used cars have a lower price in no small part because wear and tear happens as a matter of course. Eventually there will be a need to repair some of this damage, but as you will no doubt have heard, a car loses value from the moment you drive it off the forecourt at the sales lot. This is standard depreciation – once you use a car, you are making it do work which places a strain on it – and without regular services will eventually become problematic. Therefore you should not be tricked into thinking that because your car is new, it will not need any maintenance for a while. Regular and fairly basic maintenance every so often is hugely preferable to major corrective action when the cumulative faults suffered by the car become too serious to bear.

A lot of the problems suffered by cars both new and used could be avoided with a bit of regular maintenance. After all, the word “maintenance” comes from the verb “to maintain” – meaning to keep something as it is. Rather than allowing your car to drop to a level from which it needs to be cured, maintenance means that it stays at the optimum level for driving and does not need so many repairs in order to be safely and comfortably driveable. Regular checking of the oil and the filters in the engine – and changes of these to keep it running smoothly – are the basic minimum that is advisable. These are simple processes that will become second nature pretty soon.

Keeping your engine clean is also an essential element of new car maintenance. This does not need to be done extremely frequently. In fact, every 18 months to two years should be ample. This will allow the engine to “breathe”, and stop it holding in heat which will compromise the car’s performance.

Some years back, when doctors (or physicians as they were then called) checked up on a human patient, they would address the issue of “humors” – essential bodily fluids that could, they believed, give the important clues around the cause of a patient’s illness. That was at best partially true, but in a motor vehicle there are several fluids that can be checked as a diagnostic measure or just as part of a tune-up. Brake fluid, transmission and power steering are all major elements of how to keep a vehicle running at its optimum level. Checking that the vehicle has enough of each, that they are clean and functioning as they should be, will allow you to run a motor vehicle in the way it should be running for longer.