Car Cleaning and Its Importance…

Car cleaning refers to cleaning interior, exterior and engine. But normally we are as busy people; we do not have time to clean all parts of the car. Cleaning the under side and engine of a car is not taken into consideration here for normal day to day cleaning (Cleaning in scheduled servicing is enough for under side and engine of the car). So as mentioned in the first part of this book, it is important to keep a car clean because it increases the life time of the car and keeps the car in nice condition.

Keeping the body of car with dirt will lead to corrosion on body. If you clean it regularly, beauty of the car will remain for a long time. Always use a good quality car wash ( eg. California Gold Car Wash) but not normal soap or any other reagent. It is important to not to keep mud and dust on the body.

To keep the shine of car, wax it in every six months. Waxing kit like Turtle Car Wax Kit will help you to do it at home on your own. Parking the under direct sun light reduces the shine of paint. So park your car under a shade whenever possible. When car is parked in a garage, it must be a ventilated garage.

Cleaning of interior includes cleaning dashboard, seats, carpets door boards etc. You not need to go to an interior cleaning center in every week. Vacuum cleaners, soft brushes and soft cloths can be used for simple interior cleaning at home. It is better if you can go for a complete interior cleanup for every six months. For that,you may use a product such like Meguiar's Complete Car Care Kit if you want to do it at your home. It will help to keep healthy not only your car; it will also keep you healthy.

Driving through Water....

When we drive a car in out day to day life, we find lot of obstacles in roads. Water covered areas or flooded areas are one of the main obstacles we may find on a road. The decision we take to Drive trough it or not is a very critical decision. Because if we don't know the road well it is dangerous to drive through since we have no idea about distance of the water area, depth of water, cracks or holes in the road etc.

Driving through a deep and long water area is always not recommended for a normal car. Because in a normal car, interior, engine and electrical systems are not water proofed. If water touches any electrical parts, electric shots may possible. If water goes in to engine through silencer, air intake etc, car will stop and water inside car engine means another engine repair! Also water goes in to internal parts drastically shorten the life time of the car.Also when we buying a used car, we should bring some mechanic to check weather the car is previously flooded. Especially a car flooded with sea water may quickly become unusable.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      You may attempt to drive through a water area if you are familiar with that road and if you know it is safe to through. Typical procedure of driving through a water area is driving in moderate speed (10-20 Km/h) in gear position one without slowing down the engine until you cross the area. You can't stop the car in middle of water because if you stop, water may go in to the engine through the silencer and engine will stop eventually.

Dashboard Warnings…

On a car dashboard there are lot of indicators and meters. Meters of course we can clearly see what is happening as they displays what is all about and what is the level of it ( e.g. fuel meter shows fuel level, Speed o meter shows the car speed etc.) but when considering warning indicator lights, they have special meanings which we should have a clear understanding about them.

At Startup:

The meaning of startup here is that the instance you are putting the car key into keyhole and attempt to start the vehicle. When you turn on the car (before ignite the engine) all the warning indicators will glow. This does not mean that your car is in a trouble but it means that corresponding warning system is in test mode. Soon after you started the engine all of these indicators must be gone of if corresponding system does not have a problem. Following picture shows a car dashboard with warning indicators on at the startup position.

Car Body Kits...

People think that body kits are used for car only for the good looks but the truth is that they give more sophisticated good (sometimes bad) qualities! It's true that most of the body kits help to improve the looks (of course there are lot of awful looking body kits too....). In that matter, usual rule is that body kits improve the appearance of  newer cars but not of the older ones. As an example, how if a body kit is fixed to a Austin A10 or something like that? 

                                         Now for our case lets think that at least we have a brand new "Suzuki Liana"! (Suzuki Liana owners don't get angry with me...) Just a joke! Lets get into the discussion again. So what are the other qualities added by body kits to our cars? Most important thing is that most body kits do improve the stability or the handling. That means improvement of degree of control-ability. Most bad quality added by a body kit is that the added weight. More weight implies lower acceleration, Less top speed and hard to control in corners at high speeds. But above things can be avoided by using materials like carbon fiber for the manufacture of body kits which are light weight. But since the carbon fiber is not affordable, most people use fiber glass which have much higher weight than carbon fiber. A well designed body kit will also have air intakes for brake disk, engine and intercooler (if you got one) to improve performances by cooling them down. So when you think about a body kit, consider above tips if you really want to improve the quality of your car... :)

Turbochargers? Superchargers?...

I am sure that many of you people have heard these two words but most people do not know about the the differences between these two. So I am going to briefly discuss the differences, pros and cons of these two types.

 SUPERCHARGER UNIT

         

First thing is that both of these units are used to increase the boosting power of engines and both works as air compressors. They compress the air and increase the amount of oxygen atoms in a unit air volume so the engine will get more oxygen at a unit time. This leads to more power output ( Increases the horse power). So a car with turbo or super charger will have more horses under their hood than a same type of car that does not have any charger.

TURBOCHARGER UNIT

                           Most people have a wrong idea that supercharger will give more power always than a turbocharger. That mistake has happened since the word 'super'. Turbo works with the power of useless exhaust gas of a engine but supercharger will absorb some power directly from the engines main output mechanical power and this decreases the amount of power we are using to drive our car! But supercharger has good throttle response because it drives directly by engine. But in order to get the maximum effect of the turbocharger, engine must work at high RPM such that more exhaust gas runs through the turbo. This means we have to always drive at high RPM to get the maximum power. 

  INTER-COOLER  UNIT

                                                                                                 

Turbochargers are commonly used than superchargers because of energy efficiency described above. So my suggestion to you is to use a turbo if you want to increase the boost of your car engine. Also use an inter-cooler device between engine end the turbocharger to get the maximum out of a turbo unit. Good luck for Power!