Goodyear Wingfoot teams with Aussie Lightfoots

Helen and John Taylor, an Australian couple who have made a speciality of setting records for low fuel consumption in the USA, have done it again.

Converting their miles per American gallon to litres per hundred kilometres yields an astonishing 4.155 litres /100 km in their 2009 Volkswagen Jetta diesel.
This time they were riding on Goodyear Fuel Max tyres, and improved on their 2008 figure by a further 15.4%!

This consumption is more fuel-efficient than the most popular hybrid, and shows what can be done with modern diesel technology, careful preparation and fuel saving driving techniques.

Follow this link to learn more.

So how do they do it? Tyres obviously play a part, since Goodyear sponsored their 9000 mile circuit of the States. We are constantly told to maintain high air pressures if fuel savings are desired, but what are the limits? A tyre usually absorbs around 2 KW just rolling around under load at 120 km/h.

The safe maximum pressure of a tyre is shown on the sidewall, and for a passenger tyre is in the 36 (Standard Load)- 42 (Extra Load) p.s.i. range. It will not burst at 43 p.s.i., but a maximum is specified to maintain a margin of safety for tyre abuse such as potholes and rough edges. So economy drivers go to the limit, or beyond. A tyre with 15 p.s.i. pressure pulls nearly twice the rolling resistance as the same tyre at 33 p.s.i. at 120 km/h, the higher pressure giving a fuel consumption improvement of about 4%. Steel belt radials have the lowest rolling resistance, too.

Staying with tyre design, a narrow tread width, shallow tread pattern, and a rounded tread arc radius all contribute to lower rolling resistance, and with specially compounded tread rubber it is possible to design a tyre to maximise the reduction in a tyre’s contribution to fuel consumption.

Preparation of the vehicle using low friction lubricants, a well run-in engine, diesel fuel designed to give “more bang for the buck”, and other tricks of the trade are also used, such as refuelling at low ambient temperatures, like the middle of the night.

But driver’s skills are required to get good figures. Feather-footing, low top speeds, shift points carefully calibrated, travelling when wind speeds are low, smooth car surface with no unnecessary projections, climbing hills carefully (just making it over the top), and no air-conditioning are techniques used. Depending on the rules of the contest, in most cases coasting downhill, and drafting, is prohibited. In certified fuel economy runs conducted in Australia, an independent observer travels in the car to prevent this.

Want to know more on the tyre angle? In our All About Tyres section you will find Green Tyres are Black, David’s ten tyre tips, and Exploding Cylinders which will expand on rolling resistance and fuel consumption.

Here’s the plug! Stuckey Tyre Service

Stuckey Tyre Service is one of Australia’s premier suppliers of car tyres, whether for vintage or motorsport application, or everyday road use. We supply all the major premium tyres. Our sales office and warehouse are located at 828 Sydney Road Brunswick, Australia.

Servicing the demands of Australia’s leading motor racing teams has provided us with unrivalled knowledge of the best performance tyre and wheel combination for every application, road or track. From the most exotic European sports car to the average family sedan, we at Stuckey Tyre Service have a carefully selected range of tyres and alloy wheels to enhance the road performance, safety and appearance of your car.

At Stuckey Tyre Service you can take advantage of the ultimate precision fitting and balancing service where the utmost care is taken with your valuable tyre and wheel purchase. In particular we take great pride in being able to balance a wide variety of specialty wheels including wire wheels for historic applications. The most advanced fitting and balancing equipment is used by skilled technicians whose work is trusted by Australia’s top race drivers at speeds over 300Kpm.

We at CarbonBlack love sending customers to the Stuckey team.

Mazda 3 outstripped Holden VE and Toyota Corolla, previous market darlings

Someone once said “Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door”.

Build a pretty little car that looks good, drives well, and doesn’t cost a fortune to run, and it will attract buyers into the showrooms faster than a plain Jane, reliable, but conservative looking car.

It’s all about emotion- and you must admit, the Mazda 3 is a pretty looking motorcar!

January sales of the Mazda 3 outstripped Holden VE and Toyota Corolla, previous market darlings. The Holden defeat could be explained by the fact that fleet sales are always low in January. Petrol prices remained high for most of January, when there didn’t seem to be any logical reason why it was so.

The Australian dollar hovered around the US$ 65 cents mark, and crude oil around US $40 a barrel, so some price gouging of touring holiday makers seemed apparent. Yet prices as low as 97 cents/litre, and as high as 127 cents/litre, were recorded in Sydney in that period.

No wonder sales of small cars are booming, as it’s apparent that high petrol prices will be around for some time. Just can’t see them driving Sydney to Melbourne comfortably in 8 hours with a full load of passengers and luggage to see the Australian Open, or the Formula 1 Grand Prix. Yet that is what’s happening with the newer designs of small cars. Bring them on!

Ferrari fantasties come true

Want to drive a Ferrrari?

Well, at Supercar Life in the States you can drive a Ferrari F430, Lamborghini Gallardo, Aston Martin DB9, Mercedes CLK63 AMG Black Series and a Porsche Turbo 997 for a mere US $5000 a day. That lets you have  eight laps around the twisting, 3.6 km course in five luxury cars. Four laps are in the passenger seat while a professional driver maneuvers the course, but four others are at the wheel, chasing the instructor in an identical car.

The customers? – the wealthy, thrill seekers and those who want to drive expensive cars on a racetrack –mostly are men between 35 to 65 years old.

Car sickness? Blame the bacteria

According to a recent study commissioned by insurance.co.uk, the typical car has 283 different types of bacteria present in every square centimeter.

Microbiologists from Britain’s Aston University found the dirtiest part of the vehicle was the gear stick, home to 356 germs on a square centimeter, while one car boot in a random survey of 25 cars had 850 bacteria in a square centimeter.

“Whilst most of the bacteria we’ve found are unlikely to cause serious health problems, some cars, particularly those which regularly carry children and animals, play host to potentially harmful germs,” said Anthony Hilton, director of Biology and Biomedical Science, at Aston University.

“People would be horrified at the thought of eating off their toilet seat, but few realize eating off their car dashboard is just as likely to make them sick,” he added in a statement.

When quizzed about the most peculiar items drivers had found in their car, a whole host of unusual and downright unpleasant objects were revealed, including:

Top 5 – insects, animals and excrement

Mice (dead and alive)
Dog poo
The neighbour’s cat
Body parts from a dead seagull which a dog had smuggled in
Maggots for fishing that were forgotten about and didn’t die, but reproduced and grew

Top 5 – food

A joint of beef in the boot, which had fallen out of shopping bags weeks ago
A 3 year old, green sandwich
A baby’s bottle under a seat, which had been there for at least 6 months
A very old chicken nugget, found lodged under a childs car seat
A Cadburys Wispa, which had been left long before the re-launch

Top 5 – miscellaneous

A pair of knickers belonging to a husbands ex girlfriend
A used condom in a just-bought second-hand car
Childs vomit in a door pocket, which had gone unnoticed for days
The results of a toddler picking his nose
Mushrooms growing in the floor

Time to get the inside of your car cleaned……

The Air Car

What with rising fuel prices and the need to reduce carbon emissions, the development of a car run by compressed air seems like a very good idea. India’s Tata Motors thinks so too and is backing the project. It seems there is also interest in Australia , supported by the Victorian and Federal governments. Some of you may have already read about this car, developed by a former FI racing engineer, Guy Negre, of Moteur Development International.

The car will be driven by compressed air stored in carbon-fibre tanks- the type used by deep-sea divers. The tanks, built into the chassis, can be filled with air from a compressor in just three minutes at an air-station equipped servo. This is much quicker than a battery car. Alternatively, it can be plugged into the mains for four hours and an on-board compressor will do the job. For long journeys the compressed air driving the pistons can be boosted by a fuel burner which heats the air so it expands and increases the pressure on the pistons. The burner can use all kinds of liquid fuel and can get the equivalent of 120 miles per gallon when fuel is needed.

There are skeptics as to the vehicles’ chances of success in countries such as the US but it will be interesting to see how this car compares with Tata’s own NANO Car. But in a country like India where the car market is growing rapidly and there is considerable city traffic congestion, its encouraging to see initiatives being taken to use renewable energy in low cost cars.

World’s cheapest car at $2500

The world cheapest car by India’s Tata Motors was unveiled at India’s main auto show in New Delhi.

The vehicle is 10 feet long and can hold five very small very skinny people. The basic version comes with no radio, no air bags, no passenger-side mirror and only one windshield wiper.

There is a deluxe version that comes airconditioning which will help to cope with the Indian heat.

The two-cylinder engine is estimated to produce about 35 horsepower, good for a top speed of 120km per hour.

It is the realization of a dream for Tata chairman, Ratan Tata, who has been instrumental in coming up with a car for the masses.

He says: “It’s a car that is affordable, provides transport, meets all safety norms, emission norms – present and future, and will be a reliable form of transport, and will provide Indian families an “all-weather” means of safe transport. It is seen as a car that might change the manner in which one travels in semi-urban and rural areas which is presently not connected in any way.”

For more information and photos click onto the link below

http://www.tata.com/0_media/features/interviews/20080110_one_lakh_car.htm