Tyre Supplier Wanted for F1

Tenders are invited for supply of tyres to high tech automotive company.

Previous inscrutable supplier of past 13 years, exclusive supplier past three, willing to pass on tales of heartaches and drama to successful tenderer at the conclusion of the 2010 season.

Apply – if you’re rich, resourceful, and only slightly demented – to:

Bernie Egglestone PLC -F1 cars Division

(Bridgestone Firestone have announced that they are relinquishing their role as the only tyre supplier to Formula 1 Racing at the end of the 2010 season.)

P.S. The ad is a spoof.

Brad Pitt falls off his Chopper

So Brad Pitt fell off his “chopper” motorcycle. Unfortunately for him as he was in view of the paparazzi.

Hasn’t anyone told him that motorcycles with very high castor angles on the front forks (laid back at an acute angle) have very poor stability at low speeds.

They fall over.

That’s why BMX bicycles and trail bikes have their front forks ALMOST vertical, so they can be manoeuvred at low speeds. If they are vertical, then steering at high speeds becomes very twitchy.

In contrast, high castor angles steer very much in a straight line at higher speeds. Think Peter Fonda (who? say the younger generation) and his “Easy Rider” motor bicycle. Man, was that laid back.

That’s why shopping trolley front wheels always have a small, but positive castor angle on the steering wheels. Otherwise they just jiggle from side to side, and are a pain. Hence why Brad felt!

Your car’s “alignment” incorporates all of the above to keep you safe and in control, and hopefully without the paparazzi.

Wire Failure – from Ipods to Tyres

FAILURE – not a pretty word is it? Yet I had two failures this week, both due to FATIGUE.

My steam iron cord failed just where it comes out of the rubber tube at the end of the handle, and my I-pod just where the ear bud cord comes out of the plastic.

Why there? The iron had a long rubber tube, and a spring shaped thingy as well wound around it. Yet it still “failed” there. The wires inside were charred, but very fine. The I-pod wires were just fine, and broken, if you get my drift.

Why do they make them out of such fine wire, you were going to ask. Well if they made these flexible leads out of a thicker wire, they would not last long at all. Witness when you want to bend a coat-hanger till it breaks. It doesn’t take long, and it gets quite hot to hold where you’re bending it.

But like the iron and the I-pod, it will always break first where it is being flexed the most. This needs a bit of explanation.

So it is with tyres. If nothing else destroys it, such as road damage, the tyre will fail where it flexes the most. Wrong! It fails first where the greatest differences between flexibility (the tyre sidewall) and rigidity (the bead/lower sidewall); or upper sidewall to tread and belt area exists. It fails due to fatigue because by then, it will have rotated and flexed at these parts of the tyre, on average 30 to 45 million times for a passenger tyre, and 100 to 130 million times for a truck tyre.  Truck tyres go further because they’re inflated harder, so don’t flex as much, though they may have worn out three tread lives by then- tyre speak for been retreaded twice.

After that, the carcass of the tyre is not worth retreading because it is approaching the unreliable stage due to fatigue. Reliability is highly prized- and highly priced you might say.

Passenger tyres go at least twice as far as they used to 30 years ago, so a large chunk of the fatigue life built into the tyre is consumed in the first tread life. This is why retreading of passenger tyres has declined to such an extent. It is also why the motorist should look after his tyre pressures. The flatter or more overloaded the tyre, the more the tyre deflects as it rotates, and eats into its reserves against the ultimate failure- fatigue.

Incidentally, the wires in the steel belts of tyres are cables of wire made up if strands of fine wire, just like in the steam iron. The wires in the bead, which locks the tyre on the rim, don’t flex, so they are more like a coathanger wire. The iron had lasted quite well really- at least the fatigue beat the corrosion inside the steam chamber!

For the Techies – How Hard is Rubber?

Natural rubber is the sap of a rubber tree, converted to a solid by coagulating it with acetic acid. Rubber used in tyres is generally the product of an oil refinery.

When combined with chemicals such as carbon black, antioxidants, and hosts more, sulphur added, the mixture subjected to heat and pressure, it comes out vulcanised. Sulphur makes the process irreversible.

Part of the “black art’ of making up the various mixtures used in the many components of a tyre, is varying the “hardness” of the rubber compound. For example, the rubber around the bead wire is compounded up to be quite ‘hard’ since it doesn’t move when the tyre rolls along. Conversely, the sidewall is ‘soft’, because it moves around a lot- it flexes.

However, most attention is paid to the tread compound, because this affects the wear and grip of the tyre because it’s the only part that hits the road.

How is it measured?

The tool used in the trade is a Shore A Hardness Durometer. Never heard of it? There is a range of them, designed to measure the hardness of different materials.

It simply is a small hand held tool with a domed plunger that is pressed into the surface of the rubber. The reading obtained on the quadrant scale when the needle is first pressed squarely against the rubber, is the hardness. Some cautions though- rubber hardness varies with temperature, it softens as it gets hot- every race car driver knows that. Also, the rubber ‘creeps’ away from the plunger, and as you hold the plunger against the tyre, the initial reading falls away.

So that is absolutely no help when the salesman tells you that the tread of the tyre that he’s selling is hard and long wearing. You might get a clue by pressing a reasonably blunt pencil into the rubber. If the rubber is “soft” the indentation might stay around a while after you remove the pencil. If it’s “hard”, the indentation might disappear quicker than for a softer rubber.

That’s not much help either, is it?

This is because there are many variations on a theme to make a tread compound. But beware of the salesman who tries to tell you that the tread is long wearing, and hard, and gives good grip, particularly in the wet. That’s nirvana, and hasn’t been achieved yet, to my knowledge.

So treads and sidewalls might have 1-2% sulphur, bead wire compounds 6% sulphur, and the old fashioned black ebonite ruler that granddad had, contained 35% sulphur, and was as hard as the hobs of hell.

I did say that it was a “black art”!

Why CarbonBlack?

Our Website is named CarbonBlack- because that’s what tyres are made of – right?

Well, partly – about 35% of a tyre is carbon black.
So what is it? And where does it come from?

As with most things these days “Oil” is the answer, which is one of the reasons why tyres cost so much.

Carbon black USED to be made from burning natural gas in insufficient air, and collecting the smoke that resulted, rich in carbon, on cooled metal surfaces. This was sometimes called “lampblack’, or later “channel black”. The pollution it caused was indescribable, let alone the waste that escaped to the atmosphere.

So another process took over in the early 1950s, called “furnace black”. Oil was burned inside a furnace in insufficient air, and the resulting carbon collected at the outlet. Dependent on the type of oil burned, the design of the furnace, the operating temperature, the flow rates, nozzle design, and any number of variations, it was quickly discovered that the actual properties of the carbon black (still just carbon remember) could be varied.

A whole new family of carbon blacks resulted, from the smallest particle size, intensely black as used in printing inks, to the larger and softer grades used in say motor tubes, which had quite a grey colour, and all the grades in between.

But wait- there’s more, as the Demtel man used to say.

The actual surface of each carbon particle could also be varied, to be extremely absorptive or low absorption. This structure varied the way that the carbon molecules could be intimately mixed into the long chain rubber molecules, which affected the degree of reinforcement imparted to the rubber by the carbon black. This then had a direct affect on the physical properties imparted to the rubber by mixing it with carbon black, such as wear, cut resistance, tensile strength, stiffness (modulus), elasticity, heat build-up under flexing, and a host of other properties.

So the fast developing science of carbon black became dominant in the development of rubber compounds. Without carbon black, tyres would be slippery in the wet, would wear out very quickly (particularly when hot), and generally would not be suitable for today’s automotive uses. That’s just the tread. Other blacks were designed for use in the casing, in the tubeless liner, bead compounds, bead stiffeners, and the many other applications used in a tyre.

The name of our web site pays homage to its importance to the rubber industry.

Terrible stuff to get out of your skin though. I couldn’t wear a white shirt for years!

If tyres burn, why don’t we set them alight and save the planet?

Riots in the streets are nearly always accompanied by stacks of burning tyres defining the no-go zone. They burn very well, although smokily. Once started, they’re almost impossible to put out.

So why aren’t they used more widely as fuel if they burn so well. After all, there is a millions of tyres discarded worldwide every year. They are no good for landfill, because they don’t decompose, and are hard to keep below the surface. In fact, I know of a pile of over 200 million tyres outside L.A. waiting for someone to devise a use for them.

Furnaces to burn them have been developed, and the resulting heat used to raise steam, or for central heating. These take either whole tyres, or shredded tyres, use a conveyor feed system to load the furnace, but somehow haven’t been widely adopted. Someone has to load the conveyor, too!

The reason for non-adoption is possibly “acid rain”. When rubber is vulcanised, it is combined with sulphur. This process cross links the rubber molecules, and converts the rubber material into a stable, three dimensional lattice, which is elastic. The level of sulphur is generally 1 to 2 percent. This level of sulphur is around the same as for high sulphur coal. When burnt, (oxidisation) it becomes sulphur dioxide, and other oxides such as sulphur tri-oxide, dependent on the air/fuel mix. Burn coal, you get carbon dioxide, burn tyres you get sulphur dioxide. High sulphur coals are very much out of favour.

In the atmosphere, these oxides of sulphur combine with water to form sulphuric and sulphurous  acid, which pollutes the air, kills vegetation and our forests which are the lungs of the world.

So a great deal of research into the design of the furnace to minimise these effects and scrub the exhaust gases clean of smoke and pollutants is required, which makes the furnace more expensive.

Then there’s the costs of collecting the old tyres, sorting , classifying, shredding, and the costs of disposal of the ash that results from the burning, though the steel content can be recovered as slag from the furnace grate. However, there awaits big rewards for the designer of a furnace that will be easily portable, has a captive market for its product (heat), and a ready supply of worn out tyres available at preferably no cost.

Yahoo! / Microsoft Deal – and what this changes for us

Two weeks ago we discussed the algorithm changes in Google that was largely commented among Search Marketers and ended the article with a nice tease “pack your bag for Bing”. Now it’s official, with the Yahoo! / Microsoft deal on search, you can definitely pack!

What is the deal between Yahoo! and Microsoft about?

This deal means Yahoo search engine will be replaced by Bing. Bing becoming Yahoo! + Microsoft’s only search engine.  If you do the maths, even with minimum numbers, Bing should grow naturally to a 15% market share in search.

That should only be a start as the deal was signed with a 10 year term and Microsoft will have full access to the entire Yahoo! core search technologies, meaning they should be able to further improve Bing and throw marketing dollars at it, whish they have already started doing!

Another major consequence is the merger of Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft Ad Center, bringing a strong player in the paid search marketing space…

What should YOU do, if you are in the automotive space online?

Clearly, it’s time to stop focusing on Google only. Microsoft has the motivation to catch up and this deal shows us that it’s not only about motivation!

Think about SEO for Bing, create a Bing webmaster account to ensure your website pages have been indexed by this engine, and check your rankings regularly.

Then, it’s time to diversify your Search Engine Advertising and give the Microsoft Adcenter a try for your ads. You’ll first realise the average cost per click is cheaper than Google Adwords and conversions generally higher, but this is only due to the fact the competition is not as fierce as in google, and this is likely to change!

What’s the timeline?

Yahoo says the entire operation will take 24 months to be completed. Therefore, you don’t have to rush just right now, but this deal will still bring a lot of changes for all online businesses and it’s better to anticipate it.

At CarbonBlack we rank better in Bing than in Yahoo. That’s a good start, but we’ll be providing better insights on how to best leverage Bing, be it organically or in regards with paid advertising to all our clients.

If you are a tyre dealer, a mechanic, a car dealer, an automotive brand… you can let the CarbonBlack experts worry about what happens between Bing, Google and Yahoo!.

Become a member now and CarbonBlack will start sending you qualified leads at the lowest cost in the market.

Google’s new algorithms – patience required or we pack our bags for Bing

SEO gurus and webmasters have watched over the last few weeks as Google has been changing its SERP rankings. From what we can tell so far, there seems yet to be clarity on the changes. To the frustration of all of us, Google does not announce their algorithm updates, and we continue to test results and frequent blogs and forums to gain any further insight. But many gurus suggest Google is experimenting with trust and authority in their algorithms.

“We have well established sites being outranked by new sites and by sites with very few backlinks. Also by sites using black hat techniques and unfortunately we see some established and often very trustworthy white hat websites simply disappearing from the rankings altogether. At the same time we have literally day old Craigslist posts ranking in the top results. Some .edu and .gov sites have flown to the top while others have plummeted.” (SiteProNews)

Patience required or we’ll pack our bags for Bing.

The CarbonBlack SEO team will keep you updated in our blog.

CarbonBlack talks to The Australian Business

CarbonBlack talks about the importance of lead generation and it’s expansion into parts and accessories ecommerce. CarbonBlack in the Australian.

- The Australian, June 2009

One automotive website to find them all…

Have you ever tried searching in Google for a vehicle pre-purchase inspection before you bought a used vehicle, only to see on the first page 10 results for property inspections?

And how do you know which websites are the best for your needs given the millions of websites out there? Today, some websites allow you to search and compare parts fitted to you car, others bring you live news of the automotive industry… But these gems are often buried on the 30th page of Google!

While Google is a great search engine, it is designed to work on a broad scale and lacks the semantic background to filter the results when searches become specific.

This is why CarbonBlack has decided to develop, share and maintain a search engine 100% dedicated to the Australian Automotive Industry.

www.allthingsauto.com.au uses the Google algorithm but has built on top of it to provide a better search experience on all automotive topics:

• selection of leading automotive websites in Australian and around the world
• almost 1 millions urls prioritised by automotive experts
• ability to refine using 12 factors filtering the type of content (e.g: news vs jobs) or type of service (new / used cars vs service / repairs)
• latest news, blogs, reviews and jobs listings

“The Internet is about sharing… We have been developing this list of great websites internally for 3 years, and have decided that it could be extremely useful to fellow industry workers” admits CarbonBlack founder and managing director Jodi Stanton.

“Everyone is welcome to further improve the engine by submitting new websites and we’ll soon be releasing widgets to carry our search engine in your browser so that you don’t have to come back to the site every time you are looking for car specs, a tyre model or the price of a performance part!” Stanton added.

www.allthingsauto.com.au is available for free and also features a growing compilation of the best automotive news sources as well as a job board for the automotive industry.

Cliff Rosenberg, part of the CarbonBlack team and previously the Managing Director of Yahoo! Australia & NZ, has contributed to the strategy of taking this concept live.

Want to recommend a great site to add? Tell us now.

Watch for great new tools on www.allthingsauto.com.au in the coming months.