Archive for October, 2007

You’ve seen them around: family sedans with HUGE alloy rims.

Sometimes you also shake your head and wonder, all these riceboys. Don’t they realise the rim is just aesthetic and does not contribute to the car’s performance?

No they do. Let me explain.

Certain rally designed alloy rims are lighter (less weight = more speed) and also are designed to increase the cooling of the brake disks. Some designs have better build quality than others and some break very easily when hitting a pothole or curb at speed.

Always go for the best quality alloy rim that you can afford and read the reports and reviews. (Common sense lah!) Avoid buying a different overall size. If not, you’ll have to get the suspension and tracking realigned to avoid uneven wear under acceleration.

A lighter rim will improve handling because less weight is rotating around the hub so components such as suspension and brakes will last longer. The gaps in alloy rims also aid brake cooling and allow the brakes to do a better job at slowing up the car.

Big rims look ‘fierce’ but I have not found anyone yet who says that they have improved the ride or handling of their car, well, maybe higher fuel consumption.

Keep the overall rim width with tyre dimension as the OEM provided but go for a larger alloy and ultra low profile tyre if you really want the big wheel look.

Lower profile tyres are noisier and due to their low flexing they give excellent handling characteristics.

Wider alloys are much better than taller ones and improve the handling. Many users complain that taller rims affect the speed and handling adversely and cause bumpy & uneven rides.

Remember, for alloy rims, lighter is better.

Dear Readers:

I apologise for my lack of posting activity.

Due to various projects and work and the internet, i was going crazy. My company, a Japanese trading firm, also had lost of ‘entertainment’ to do at night, if you know what i’m saying.

So i made a tough decision. They were paying well but the people and customers were nastier than the British paparazzi.

I resigned.

And right now, armed with affiliate income from the Internet and my own tidy sum of savings, I will devote my time to enginestartbutton as well as other online income.

But thanks for your viewership and readership, and I promise to inject more fresh news and tuning tips for your reading pleasure.

Dozo Arigato Gozaimasu!  

 

Today, after a long absence from blogging due to projects, I am going back to the basic E-Brake.

Why E-Brake? Many petrolheads love to do fancy shit like heel-toe drift, inertia drift etc etc. Most forget however, that the basics are the ones that save your ass.

“Philip-san, won’t E-brake wear out my tires or won’t they burst?”

No you dummy, Bridgestone and Yokohama have tested them on gruelling conditions.

Right, lets get down to the lesson.

1) Find a large open space, maybe an empty parking lot or industrial area for practice. Avoid at all cost all sorts of obstacles, such as lampposts, which can be dangerous if you spin out of control.

2) Drive in a straight line at a moderate speed, depending upon the distance you are confident with during your drift.

3) Shift into a lower gear, allowing your car to hit above 5000 rpm. Shift into 1st gear and get ready.

4) Depress the clutch hard, feel the engage,  and steer the car into the turn. At the same time, swiftly pull up the hand brake. You will need to be quick, so that the rear wheels will lock up.

5) Dis-engage the clutch as you begin to slide, continuing to steer the car into the turn, and then accelerate. The amount of petrol injected will determine how much the rear end will spin into the turn.

6)Allow the car to slide in the right direction, manipulating the steering wheel to regain control of the car as you constantly press the accelerator. Do not let the car slow down, straighten out or gain traction until the turn is completed and you are facing the desired direction.

7) Practice, tune your mistakes and keep at it. My advice is that you do not hit the road unless you are extremely confident surprise situations won’t make you panic.

P.S: - Disclaimer here. My advice is only given through my own trial and error and watching friends perform it. I am not responsible for any injuries sustained by the individual practicing without adequate precaution.

Great, you signed up for a new Subaru. But you’ll need to get an insurance quote, and you’re not very sure how to go about it.

Oh well, been there done that. In the past, a guy like me would take time to slowly go through brochures, phamplets and insurance stuff for a decent quote.

That is until i discovered Online Auto Insurance Quote. This site is something different in the sense that is it direct. Very direct.

Ok lets take a look at the front page. This page comes with a rating system, response timing and monetary savings.

I think the functions should explain themselves. Everything is easy to understand and you don’t need to have a general insurance degree to know what’s going on.

Clicking on the each panel, it brings you to another pages, where the plus points and packages of each insurance company is listed down, e.g  AIG offers the option to use your own mechanic or body shops.

There are also other services that 3 top 3 offer, such as housing or travel insurance, but we won’t go into that.

There is also an article section that is stuffed with valuable tips and advice on automotive insurance as well as other automotive related advice.

Overall a good site, but i just wished they had used more than 3 auto insurance companies to give a more evenly balanced look at the entire scheme of things.

Online auto insurance quotes can be accessed at this URL: - http://www.autoinsuranceonlinequotenow.com/

My apologies for not posting recently, I have been very busy settling into my new job.

It’s hard to juggle work and blogging, especially in a busy (i would say slave-driven) nation like Singapore.

Anyway I have been seeing a lot of people parking really badly all over the place.

I really think they either bribed someone, stole their driving I.D from a corpse or got their licence from the PRC practicing parallel parking using 2 water buffalos.

Kudos to a local hero, the ‘parking idiot’ vigilante, for exposing these selfish, boorish, WANKERS who make me ashamed to tell foreigners that i am a singaporean. Good on ya mate.

Are there any sites that expose the double-standards of the local parking ticket wardens as well? Heheheh….

Drifting has been glamourised in movies such as Tokyo Drift and Initial D

However not many people will tell you to wake up and concentrate on proper vehicle handling and that Drifting is actually a visual appetizer but the meat & potatoes is your handling.

That’s where the Left Foot Brake (LFB) comes in.

When driven under acceleration with no brakes applied, a front wheel drive (FWD) car will understeer when the front wheels are turned. To overcome the understeer, left foot braking is used to change brake (balance) to the rear.

By using a combination of throttle and brake you can change from understeer to neutral steer to oversteer.

Left foot braking is useful in many cases: If the road surface changes, you can change the brake balance by either adding power (accelerator) or brake pressure (braking).

What happens is this: The tire has 100% of it’s possible traction when it is rolling straight with no braking or acceleration. When you change any of these factors the tires affected will have less available traction and control slips from your grasp.

By applying brake against the throttle in a front wheel drive car, two things happen. One: The front wheels keep turning. And two: The rear wheels try to lock up. If you are in a turn, the back of the car will start to slide toward the outside of the turn.

To control or stop the slide, apply less brake and more power (this changes the oversteer toward understeer and stops the rear wheels from sliding toward the outside of the turn).

What i did with my VW Caddy Turbo was this:

I drove to a secluded area in the evening (Not to watch couples making out!) I placed some ’soccer cones’ to make a T-junction on the ground.

I got in my Caddy and practiced driving the turn trying a normal brake with my left foot.

“So basic?”

XIAO EH! (Fukienese for ’friend’) You can’t learn to LFB until you train your left leg to brake! If you have never tried using your left leg, you will find it’s like trying to write with your left hand if you are right handed.

Tough huh. Until you can drive doing the braking with your left leg, you can’t do LFB. Once you can brake with your left leg, go on to ‘lesson 2′.

Work next on the practice turn. After turning, apply the brake against the throttle (accelerator). If you did it correctly you should feel the rear of the car start to slide to the outside of the turn.

When you are pointing in the direction you want to go, let pressure off the brakes and increase the throttle. Again, if you did it correctly you will feel the car pivoting on the front wheels.

Practice makes perfect, so you need to do it again and again.

P.S: The Autospeed Guy, Julian Edgar has a post on this too. Check it out here. 

P.P.S: A word of caution -Do not try this on the road unless you have practiced for 2-3 months. I am not responsible for your severed leg on the road.