AC OR NO AC

Hey there! We are back again to help. The issue of using AC or not causes a lot of debate everywhere. Some say it decreases the car fuel efficiency while others say it does not.

So the thing is this: the AC compressor gets its mechanical power from the car engine. In simple terms, the car engine gets more load and therefore consumes more fuel when the air conditioning unit is put on. On the other hand, the car experiences what is called aerodynamic drag if it is driven with the windows down, and this also makes the engine work harder to maintain a car at a particular speed, thereby reducing the fuel efficiency. So the question is which causes more harm?
The extra load the air conditioning unit adds to the engine is fixed, irrespective of the speed or driving conditions of the car whereas the drag experienced by a car increases with higher speeds. This has been confirmed by experiments and has been concluded that for speeds below 80km/hr, it is more fuel-efficient to drive with the AC off and the windows down while it is more fuel efficient to drive with the AC on and the windows up at speeds above 80km/hr. This is because the added load to the engine from the AC is more than the effect of drag on the engine for speeds below 80km/hr and vice versa.
A good way to make the AC more effective is to use the recirculation feature. This reduces the amount of new air intake from the surrounding and makes the air inside the car cool faster. It also prevents foul odours from the surrounding from getting into the car. Also, park in shades as much as possible.
The way to really maximise both engine power and fuel economy especially at high speeds is to drive with the AC off and the windows up. Of course this isn’t comfortable because of the heat and therefore can only be done in cold weather and preferably for short periods. Be sure to put the fan on and switch the air recirculation feature off so that fresh air can come in from the surrounding. All the best!

Understanding Your Thermostat

This is the norm: A car comes into Nigeria, we take it to a mechanic for evaluation and they tell us to remove the thermostat.
Why??? Because it is not ideal for our climate and could cause overheating of the engine. I once heard a mechanic tell someone it just doesn’t do anything. The next thing they do is to make the fans run permanently, again, to prevent overheating. THIS IS VERY WRONG!!!

The combustion process in a car is optimized at an average temperature of 90◦C. Parts of the engine could get damaged if the temperature exceeds the required range by a large degree (this is overheating) and the car will not optimize the combustion process if the temperature is lower than the required range by a large degree. The car knows this and so it always tries to limit the engine temperature to that range and it uses a couple of devices and processes to do this. The main one is the thermostat.
We all know that the car uses coolant to cool the engine by allowing it flow through the water lines in the engine. When the car is started in the mornings or after sitting for a long time, the engine is usually relatively cold. Since the car knows the combustion process is not optimized at that point, it then uses the thermostat to stop the flow of the coolant through the engine. This will cause the engine to heat up to the desired temperature quickly. The thermostat then gradually opens to allow the flow of the coolant as the temperature reaches 90◦C (this is usually when the needle is at the middle of the temperature gauge).

What generally happens when the thermostat is removed is that the coolant is always flowing and the car then looks at other ways of trying to get hot. It then increases the engine speed at idle and while moving, delays the changing of gears in an automatic transmission (in some cars it even prevents it from entering the final gear), makes use of the EGR... All these things consume more fuel and are all meant to stop when the engine reaches 90◦C. Since it never reaches that temperature without the thermostat there, all these processes continue as long as the engine is on.

Yes, thermostats can go bad over time. When this happens, replace them instead of throwing them away. Most of the time, thermostats themselves are not the reason for cars overheating. A leak in the water system is the number one cause of overheating. An easy but unreliable way to know if the thermostat of a car is faulty is to check the hose that enters the radiator and the one that leaves the radiator when the car overheats. If one is relatively cold while the other is relatively hot, then the thermostat is most likely faulty. If they are both relatively hot, then the thermostat is good. Note that overheating is not when the temperature gauge is at the middle. THAT IS THE PERFECT PLACE FOR IT TO BE.

So we have learnt that removal of the thermostat of a car can cause the car to keep pouring excess petrol into the engine, raise the speed of the engine higher than normal, affect the way the transmission shifts, prevent the transmission from entering overdrive. Does not sound good right?

Tips to Improve Your Fuel Economy

Hey! Here are some things that could help you save some money. They are from research and experience. Please feel free to add more tips or suggestions as comments:

• Keep your car in good shape. Do the oil change when required; change the air filter whenever it is dirty, check fuel injectors...
• Travel light. Remove excess luggage in the car. It isn’t important for 4 people traveling in a car for an errand only 1 person can do (except you are rich enough to bear the burden of the extra fuel).
• Check your tyre pressure regularly and also know that worn tyres affect the fuel economy negatively. Also make sure the tyre in the car is the recommended tyre for the car.
• Accelerate slower and steadily. Rapid acceleration consumes a lot of fuel. Try to maintain a particular speed. Also brake gently. Anticipate the stop you want to make on time and start stopping way before it. This can be summarized as Gentle Driving.
• Combine many trips into one main one. Avoid short trips. Instead of driving to buy something down the road, take a walk instead. That saves your fuel and it's good exercise.
• Do not keep your car idle unnecessarily. CARS NOWADAYS DON’T NEED TO BE WARMED IN THE MORNINGS. They will warm up as you drive. Don’t rev the engine at idle. You are just wasting energy and ruining the engine.
• Do not remove the thermostat from your car or make the fans run permanently. The car optimizes its fuel economy when the engine is hot (that is when the temperature gauge is around the middle area of the scale). If your thermostat ever goes bad, replace it instead of removing it totally. We will talk about this in detail soon.
• Use the climate control efficiently.
• Do not over fill the fuel tank. You should stop adding fuel when the nozzle shuts off automatically the first time. Also make sure the fuel tank cap is closed tightly.

Please feel free to add more tips or suggestions as comments.

The Tyres

So let us not move to another important part of the car, The Tyres. Again, these are usually over looked. The first thing is to make sure the tyre pressures are always right, depending on what the particular car model says they should be. Over inflated tyres wear faster, they make the brakes less effective, and reduce traction among other things. Under inflated tyres reduce stability, worsen the fuel economy, and damage the rims among other things also. So it is important to get them right. The correct tyre pressure for each car model can be seen either on the owners manual or around the drivers door area in most cars and should be checked preferably in the mornings. Rotating of tyres should be done in accordance to the car specs. Generally, for front wheel drives, the tyres in the front are taken to the back, while the back ones are taken to the front. The new front tyres are then changed from the left to the right.

I have noticed that we tend to buy bigger tyres than what the car asks for. This isn’t too good because it throws your speedometer and odometer off slightly, affects your gear ratio and gear changing if you are driving an automatic and damages the transmission on a long run. However, they also tend to make the car more attractive and improve the fuel economy (not in all cases)
When buying new tyres, we usually see some codes written on it. Let me use P215/65R15 as an example. The P stands for passenger, the 215 stands for the width of the tyre in mm, the 65 is the ratio of the height to the width, R stands for Radial and 15 stands for the rim size. Tyres with bigger widths have better traction and grip on the road but aren’t fuel efficient because of the increased friction.

When buying new tyres, always check whether they are rotation specific or not. If they are rotation specific, then they need to be installed properly, with the arrow pointing in the right direction of rotation (i.e the forward direction). Failure to do so will cause rapid wear in the tyres. Also check if the tyre contains some coloured dots (commonly red and yellow). The dot should align with the valve of the tyre. By doing so, you are limiting the amount of wheel balancing you will have to do and so it reduces the vibrations of the car. The general life span of a tyre is six years, used or unused and the date of manufacture is usually written on the side wall of the tyre.

There are more to tyres and car maintenance in all, but these are the basic things to know. And remember, cars are man-made mechanical machines. You can do your best at observing all the rules, but still things can go bad or fail and they depreciate with age. This is peculiar to machines and even the human body. Our own part is to do the best we can at maintenance so that we can use the cars for as long as possible with as little stress as possible.

Get to Know your Engine

The most basic thing about engines is the oil change. This should be done at a regular interval and this depends on the kind of oil used. When using the natural engine oils (those are the common ones), it should be done either every 3000 miles or 5000 km or 3 months (whichever scenario comes first) and the oil filter also should be changed at every service.

It should become a practice to check the mileage of the car when the oil is changed. With this, you can calculate the respective miles or kilometer so as to know when next the oil change should be done. Most cars nowadays require low weight oils i.e. 30 and below. But unfortunately, the lowest you can find commercially available in Nigeria is weight 40. Therefore, I’ll recommend you use any engine oil that has SAE 40 or lower written on it, for example, 5W40 or 5W30 alike. The required oil for each car can be seen on the engine oil cover under the hood. (5W40 means that it acts as a 5 weight oil during winter, which we don’t have here and a 40 weight during summer).

Another important, yet overlooked maintenance practice by car owners and Nigerian mechanics is the change of air filters. The air filter is a very vital part and can cause a lot of headaches on the long run if overlooked. Its job from its name is to filter the air entering into the engine for the combustion process. So it prevents dust particles, stones and even insects getting in. The usual practice is to change it at every other service, i.e. either every 6 months or 6000 miles. But here in Nigeria, they usually go bad (dirty) before changed. If not changed, it could negatively affect the fuel economy of the car, cause the car to run poorly, damage the engine on the long run...
Warning **
**No matter what your mechanic tells you, NEVER WASH THE AIR FILTER AND RETURN TO THE ENGINE. This is because it is made up of paper and we all know what happens when paper and water mix.

The timing belt of the car should be changed every 100000 miles. This is to prevent it from breaking or cutting due to wear. If this happens when the car is running, it could damage your engine valves and might lead to replacing your engine head.

Spark plug and spark plug wires should also be changed about every 30000 miles (depending on what the manual of the car says). They can go a long way in determining the performance of the engine. It is very important to put the type of spark plugs and the spark plug gap recommended for the car. An example from my experience is a 2001 model camry which needed double platinum spark plugs and single platinum plugs were put in and it ran like crap. Another example is a Mercedes ML320 which didn’t have the right plug gap and didn’t idle well at all. It sounded like an old diesel generator.

All cars produced from 2000 above have reminders on that pop up telling us when to do the changes. Let us use Honda as an example here. Some appear as just ‘Maint Reqd’ or have some codes accompanying them with oil life, e.g. A1 service, A2, B4 and co. The A means replace the engine oil while the B means replace the oil and also inspect other stuff in the car e.g. the belts, tie rod ends. Brake lines etc. The 1 means rotate tyres (we will get to that), 2 means air filter, 3 means transmission fluid, 4 spark plugs and 5 engine coolant. It varies in each car model and this can be seen in the user manual.

We will talk about taking care of the transmission (gear) of a car in detail in a bit.

A few Car Terminologies

So I’m sure you are wondering what is next after buying your excellent car. Well, you have got to maintain it properly if you want it to last long. So we are going to go through the things to do and not to do when it comes to car maintenance. Before we get there, let me quickly explain some terms.

The Mileage of a car is the total distance a car has traveled in its lifetime and this can be seen on d odometer on the dashboard of the vehicle. It can either be in Km or Miles. If the primary unit of the speedometer is Miles, then the odometer measures in Miles, otherwise, it measures in Km.
According to Wikipedia, Tyre Rotation is the practice of moving automobile wheels from one position on the car to another to ensure even tyre wear.

Car Handling means how responsive and accurate the steering is. If you were driving through a bend and you needed to make constant alterations to the steering wheel then you could say the car had bad handling. If the car went exactly where you steered it, even at high speeds, then the car would be considered to have good handling.

If Jack says his car is Convertible, that means Jack has a car with a fold-able or retractable roof. Also known as a cabriolet.

Horsepower? Complicated this one but basically an inventor called James Watt calculated that one horse could do 30,000 foot-pounds of work in one minute. He applied this measurement to steam engines and the measurement has been use to quantify the power of engines every since. So horsepower is the measure of an engines power.

A Blind Spot is a section of road behind the driver that cannot be seen in any mirror. To see the blind spot, you should look over your shoulder before moving off or overtaking. Question: If it is a blind spot, how can you know it is a blind spot?

More Terminologies coming your way. Subscribe for Transardor Motors blog posts. Share with friends on Facebook and Twitter.

Transardor Motors...
For the Love of Cars.

CARS 101

 So we hear automobiles everywhere and some things come to mind: speed, power, fuel economy, maintenance, reliability... which of these is the most important???
  
Types

Well, these autos can be separated into different groups. We shall call a group cars, which basically is one that has four wheels and can carry up to six people. We also have vans which are commonly called "space buses". These can carry up to eight people depending on the van-size. We have buses and finally we have SUVs (Sport Utility Vehicles). These are commonly called Jeeps which is a wrong nomenclature because Jeep is just an automobile manufacturer.

What to Consider
Let us briefly look at the things to consider when buying a new car. It’s important to select the right one because ‘The cars we drive say a lot about us’. The first thing to consider is your taste. In terms of appearance, Japanese cars tend to look the most attractive (Hondas, Toyotas, Nissan etc). German cars have a classy look which generally signifies power (Mercedes, BMW Volkswagen). American cars are ‘just there’ when it comes to appearance, though a few stand out (Cadillac).

 Being a young guy, I’m not such a big fan of SUVs, though many people give the excuse of the bad roads we have for buy SUVs. I feel SUVs are just too big, make a lot of noise, very greedy with my petrol, take a lot of money when changing tyres, don’t move too well, aren’t stable...The list is endless. The only exception I can make is the Murano and Infinity FX35 and FX45.

 VANS ARE FAMILY CARS. It freaks me out when I see elderly people or people that live alone buying Siennas, Odysseys and the likes. These autos have big engines because of the big size. Big engines mean more petrol. So why waste it when you are driving all alone? So, for a family car, I’ve come to love the Chrysler Town and Country. It provides a lot of power, it's good with fuel, it's rugged, which is what we need for our roads and at the same time for good looks. Chrysler, actually, is the first car company to start making vans (space busses) and are still the best at it.

So to my favourite group... ordinary CARS. These are the ones for the majority, students, couples, family, young, old.

Talk of Engines
Engines come in different sizes. The bigger the engine, the more power it generates and the more fuel it consumes. The numbers written at the back of cars, most of the time, tell the size of the engine. For example, 1.8, 2.2,3.0... Translating these  mean a 1.8 litre engine, 2.2 litre,  etc. Big engines from 3.0 and above don’t do too well with petrol and for local shuttles but they aren’t too bad on the highways. I’ll prefer a big engine for highways because of the extra power they create. Engines also come in different shapes. We have the straight and the V. If you want a car to move you from office to your house and you are particular about your fuel economy, like me, get a small engine, 2.2 and below. The smallest I’ve seen is a 1.2 in a Nissan Micra.

 Car Reliability
In terms of reliability, all cars to some extent are reliable. It all depends on the way you take care of them. An exception is the Jaguar, which purposely has defects in the car, but this is a story for another day. I have also noticed that the Nissan Murano and Nissan Maxima always have transmission problems no matter how well you take care of them, but the Infinity equivalent seem pretty good. Japanese cars are the most popular in this part of the world and so their spare parts are generally easy to find, and cheap also. The best of them is TOYOTA. German cars rarely develop problems, but could be a pain when they do. The Korean cars, Hyundia and Kia are pretty cheap also to maintain, but to my knowledge, they are not known to have the long life and 2nd hand value as the Japanese and German cars.

I hope I’ve assisted you in deciding which car to get. You can always reach us at TRANSARDOR MOTORS for consultancy and purchase of vehicles.