Tips for Driving with ABS (Anti-Lock Brake Systems)

Four-wheel ABS is a safe, effective braking system when used properly. It offers an important safety advantage by preventing the wheels from locking during emergency braking situations, allowing drivers to maintain control over steering and operate vehicles more effectively. To take full advantage of the maximum safety benefits drivers must learn how to operate their anti-lock brake systems correctly. The National Safety Council shares the following recommendations from the ABS Education Alliance.

Which Is Better: FWD or RWD?

The controversy has gone on for decades: which is better – front wheel drive or rear wheel drive? We used to have predominately rear wheel drive (RWD) automobiles on the road, but now, front wheel drive (FWD) vehicles are beginning to dominate. While the majority of current passenger cars are front wheel drive.

The Drag Racing Scene of Pakistan

Pakistan is a third world country but just like all other countries, drag racing is a popular sport and is getting more popular day by day. I liked it in the beginning but within few years – it developed into my passion, I left all the hobbies and only took interest in drag racing. The hunger for racing was huge, it brought an adrenalin rush so powerful and sedating that it cannot be described in words. In late 2007 I got my first digital camera and I started to take photos of every track gathering made videos of the races that happened just to keep memories.

Automotive Sector Entrant Policy Revision: Chinese Minicars We Can Embrace

Ever since we got the news of Chinese automobile manufacturers are allowed by our government to enter our market to end the monopoly of the local assemblers, people are very excited & anxious to know about the possible low budget Chinese mini cars which may fall under 350,000 price bracket.

Toyota Launches All-New Designed Vitz In Japan

Since the imports were allowed in Pakistan, Yaris as its known as Vitz in Pakistan enjoyed great success, and why wouldn’t it. Was a great looking hatch back under everyone’s budget but things changed when the dollar and yen prices sky rocketed.  However, Vitz has not just enjoyed success in Pakistan but around the globe as well, Vitz was introduced in more then 70 countries and region including European countries where it achieved cumulative sales of more then 3.5 million units.

Neighborhood Vehicle All Set To Be Manufactured Here

But there’s a problem, albeit a bit complicated one but I’ve decided not to take part in it anyways. Neighborhood vehicle are basically small electric vehicles or EVs as their known other wise. They have small range which is why they’re known as Neighborhood vehicles. Given its range, these small EVs are dedicated for universities, industrial parks, towns or airports, more like the small car of the house assigned with duties for fetching kids or groceries, etc.

Understanding the term ‘Horsepower’

The term ‘horsepower’ (hp), which represents the unit of power, was first introduced by James Watt in 1782 in order to help market his improved version of steam engine. James Watt (1736-1819) was a Scottish scientist, who brought the fundamental changes in the steam engine.
This started off the Industrial Revolution in England. The background history of the term ‘horsepower’ goes like this:

Few tips you should always be careful about

Most of the driving tips are from common sense. Sometimes we forget basic check up with our vehicle creating bigger problems while on road. During my past almost 14 years of driving experience, I learned alot and today I am going to share some with you.

1. Older cars need more regular checkups. Basic check up start from your home. If you don’t do them periodically you end up at a mechanic mostly as your car grows with you.

A rather haste endeavor: Govt. allows import of 5 year old cars

Recently, Honda announced Civic’s exit from Japan. They told the reasons were the small Kei cars have brought down the sales of Civic in Japan, but many saw it coming. Due to the fact that Japan is running out of space quite fast which also means that the average Civic buyer is also running short of space to park the fat, bulgy Civic in his driveway if he has one. Much of the Civic owner’s in Japan are middle-class folks which don’t have a garage mostly or have tiny ones. Parking space in the city is another issue but the Kei cars have solved this to an extent, especially the problem of in city driving.

The art of copying a copy

Earlier in this decade, Chinese cars came to fame due to design piracy. Several vehicles from Chinese soil emerged which had remarkable resemblance with an existing popular automobile. These Chinese cars were either partially or heavily inspired, or in some cases were an exact replica of the original car. Many of those vehicles remained as ‘concept cars’ and never really moved into production, some of them were produced but were phased out very quickly. However there were a few which became a mighty hit & were even labeled as trend setters. Among those, Chery QQ is a must to mention.

Something about Fog Lights….

Effects of Weather

The weather has a amazing effect on our every day lives. It can have an impact on what type of clothing we wear and how we spend our free time particularly holidays. Weather also affects agriculture, transportation, and industry. But harsh weather, such as tornadoes, hurricanes, and blizzards, can brutally damage property and can take lives. Freezing temperatures can damage crops particularly in citrus-growing regions. Winter snows often generate hazardous driving conditions. The buildup of heavy fog may slow traffic on the roads and cause delays at important destinations like hospitals, railway terminals and airports. Thick fog can also cause deadly road accidents. It was in outlook of the highly dangerous road conditions during fog that the ‘Fog Lights’ were made-up. In this article we’ll talk about the new technology and latest innovations engaged in the automotive fog lights.

Safety and Visibility

Safety has always been a major issue in automotives. This is why auto manufacturers keep adopting newest technologies and placing the best and ground-breaking features on their cars to craft them safer. One of these is the fog light. The most significant facet in driving is your visibility. You should be able to see in front where you’re going in order to avoid striking anyone or anything approaching in your way. However if you can’t see where you are going, the chances are very elevated that you or somebody else is going to get damage. That is why it is strongly recommended to use fog lights on rainy days, foggy days, or during night driving. High beams, which only reflect back on fog and rain, generate the entire extra blinding outcome on your eyes. Fog lights are so designed as to penetrate through the fog to offer you better visibility. They also complement the low beams of your headlights, and working together, they make best use of your vision on the road. The fog lights thus provide accuracy for a highly controlled light pattern to improve the driver’s visibility in snow, rain, sleet, thick fog, and even in blizzards.

How Automotive Fog Lights Work

 

In order to assist visibility in foggy and misty conditions fog lights which are fixed on the front of a car or truck, are now widely used in nearly all the modern cars. The fog lights come in selection of colors and intensities and provide extraordinary assistance in navigating poor weather. A scientific principle of cutting through the fog with the help of extra low-level light helps solve visibility problem especially in foggy driving conditions..

Leaving apart red which is the color already used for both stop lights and brake lights most fog lights are yellow in color because of the need for a single color light rather than white light, to reduce dispersion as the light hits the water vapor and scatters in different directions. Another reason to use yellow color is because it has the longest wavelength next to the red. But the size of water molecules has a definite impact on dispersion. The problem arises when the size of water vapor molecules in fog are large enough causing limited dispersion building the wavelength of the light worthless. So in choosing the yellow lights which was supposed to be minimizing the blur the fog lights cast, the first car companies did not take into account the impact of the water vapor size on dispersion. Also because yellow color was used to point out various cautions to a driver.

So many modern fog lights are halogen light that let them to burn at much hotter temperatures than traditional lights. Halogen fog lights tend to have a tighter beam than incandescent fog lights, which yields an extra advantage. A particular category of fog lights, seen on some newer cars, is high-intensity discharge lamps. These lights may well use a number of different minerals to function, together with mercury, sodium and halide. These fog lights are often notable by a purplish shade of color, rather than the traditional yellow color.

Although some vehicles arrive with factory installed fog lights, there are some that don’t. But you needn’t be anxious as aftermarket fog lights are accessible on the market, and come in different shapes and sizes. You can always choose to upgrade the factory-fitted fog lights to higher-output halogen , HID (xenon) or projector style lamps Not only do fog lights make your driving safer, they also add to the aesthetics, drive safely in style.

Updates on Rear Fog Lights

There had been recurring turmoil over the installation of rear fog lights for relatively some time in the past. But the recent decision to add the safety feature (rear fog light) was in response to an online petition by more than 700 U.S. Mini owners requesting that Mini parent company BMW AG activate the rear fog lights on their cars. Many owners say they want the feature because they fear trucks won’t see their small cars in bad weather.

Understanding ABS

Basic Information:
Anti-lock Braking Systems (ABS) is a form of electronic braking which was invented to help a driver to control a vehicle under heavy braking by preventing the wheels from locking-up.

Offroading

OFFROAD MACHINE

Take Off

Landing

Jump

Toyota Hilux Tiger

The real OFFROAD MACHINE

Environmental Pollution & Hazards of Natural Gas vs. Gasoline

What is CNG?

Natural gas consists mainly of methane (CH ). In addition to this, it usually includes ethane, propane and butane, long-chain hydrocarbons, water, hydrogen sulphide (H S) as well as inert gases such as carbon dioxide (CO ) and nitrogen (N ). The composition, however, depends to a great extent on the deposit.

Natural gas is compressed to 00 bars and carried as CNG  Compressed Natural Gas) in pressure tanks on the vehicle. The gas is usually depressurized to 7 bars by a high-pressure regulator and supplied to the engine induction system through a special mixing device.

In comparison with gasoline, natural gas has an unfavorable  volumetric energy content. Therefore, natural gas can only practically be applied in transport after being processed to a fuel with higher volumetric energy content.

Environmental View

Not long ago, the world used to be free of toxic compounds in the atmosphere, unlike today when every other person is contributing a large amount of waste gasses in the air. These waste gasses exit through the car’s exhaust pipe and into the atmosphere, free, free to pollute the world.

The topic for debate is that which fuel contributes more, CNG Compressed Natural Gas] OR Normal Pump Gasoline. [ISOOctane].
In theory, CNG is supposed to be less harmful for the environment. Carbon monoxide and non-methane hydrocarbons are reduced by upto 90 % compared with gasoline (on a car without a catalytic converter). The way catalytic converter designed for gasoline remains largely ineffective for the degradation of nitrogen oxides and methane in natural gas operation mainly due to low carbon monoxide values.
However, the quality of CNG in our country has led many to believe that it is not the clean fuel as it should be. Local CNG suppliers use low quality mixtures, introduce toxins into the gas stream to save up money and increase volume. Even after looking at these factors, CNG is way cleaner in an internal combustion engine than Gasoline.

Advantages of CNG Over Gasoline:

- 20- 25 % less carbondioxide emission.
- up to 90% less carbon monoxide emission.
- 75-90% less non-methane hydrocarbons.
- Approximately 80% less ozone deterioration potential.
- No Acid Smell from the exhaust gasses.
- No volume losses through vaporization from the tank while    refilling.
- No carcinogenic substances.
- Less Expensive than gasoline.

Disadvantages of CNG Over Gasoline:

- Heavy methane gas emission (global warming).
- Approximately 50 – 100 % more nitrogen dioxide emission.
- 20- 30% less power output with existing dual fuel engines at optimized conditions.
- Additional fuel station network necessary increasing Fire Risk..
- Weight and Space requirements for gas cylinders in a vehicle.
- Frequent Fill-ups.
- Dangerous Fire Hazard in case of Accident.
- Dangerous Explosion Hazard in case of Accident.
- Fire Hazard in case of gas leaks &/or substandard cylinders.
- Low Reliability.

Pakistan: A monopolist’s dream

We have sugar mafia, political mafia, banking mafia, real-estate mafia and finally the automobile industry mafia. The list of these active mafia’s do not end here since our policies provide prudent room to form any mafia one would like to create or join the existent. The people of Pakistan have endured this phenomenon with the world wide Auto manufacturer’s have included the mafia in Pakistani ergonomics I reckon.

Know your EFI

Today’s technology does not enjoy the freedom it enjoyed in yesteryears. Today technology has to conform to various regulations relating to different aspects of life namely health, environment, society etc. Strict laws are in force to control the detrimental effects of technology. One such law in force in developed countries is the emission regulation created and enforced by Environmental Protection Agencies, which requires the content of harmful gases in emissions to stay within the prescribed limit. In the 1960’s, studies were conducted into sources of air pollution in the United States and automobiles were held responsible for the most significant damage. By late sixties emission regulation was
put into force to control this type of pollution.

Driver survives accident at 200MPH

The driver amazingly survived this horrible crash, and walked away on his own strength. The car was a Twin-Turbo Lamborghini Gallardo built by Underground Racing and was running at Texas Mile event when it went airborne after it deployed it chutes at 200 MPH for additional breaking force and disintegrated completely in moments.

What is drifting and how to drift explained

What is Drifting?
Drifting is one of the toughest forms of driving. Basically, it is getting your  car sideways down a road. It doesn’t sound very hard does it? But that’s not the case. Instead of a drifter causing a drift and then countering to straighten out, he will instead over-counter so his car goes into another drift. In short, Drifting is a controlled skid.

Google Earth takes us to Pak Suzuki’s test course

However, there is someone hiding a potential beauty from the public of Pakistan. They are the same folks who wasted millions of Rupees on advertising for launching their newest car, which they could have used a lot more sensibly by providing a playground at their very own assembling facility for their newest car they had launched. Apparently, the shortage of common-sense overwhelmed the geniuses and instead they ran an expensive launch campaign at a time where nobody is sure about anybody’s future.

How to properly Wash/Detail your car

Lets accept the fact first, most of us don’t wash our cars ourselves either we take it to the car wash at the petrol station or our drivers do it for us. That’s not bad but if you put in some time and effort yourself and follow these steps, the result will be much better and you will have a sense of great achievement.

Everything about car leasing

Leasing has now become a household name. From cell phones to airplanes everything is up for lease. But the SOPs for all are  different. I am confining myself to vehicles’ leasing and shall bediscussing various angles of the lease from customer’s point of view.

Understanding Driving Ethics

Ethics signify the science of duty; the code of morality implied to human actions as to what is right or wrong. This article discusses the ethics in driving, especially those relating to the fast lane driving. Although, these ethics have been modified over the times vis-à-vis changing requirement of the new technological world of today, the objective remains the same i.e. the road safety, fewer accidents and lower rate in road deaths.

Toyota Land Cruiser FJ/BJ 40; basic info on specs and restoration

The term jeep is commonly used for 4×4 vehicles and the most commonly seen Jeep in Pakistan is the Toyota Fj/Bj 40.

Saudis in Audis

Space Tourism at the cost of a Ferrari now

Not much to choose from? Would you rather surrender your 200,000 US$ for a once in a lifetime experience to see what the world looks like from space or buy a baby-Ferrari and be a frequent visitor to the dealership for a burnt clutch?

Pakistan’s car sale rise 10% in 1st quarter of 2010, Corolla leads the market

Sales of Cars and Light commercial vehicles in Pakistan increased by 10 percent to 33,496 units in the first quarter of fiscal year 2010/11.
Despite the fact that the business of manufacturing units had to suffer due to security issues and flood devastation, car sales still managed to grew to 33,496 units compared to 30,519 units during the similar period in the last year.

Male vs Female Drivers

My elder sister (a novice driver) once stopped at a workshop to ask what the little red light flashing among the dials meant. After a  considerable technical analysis the mechanic found out the ‘brake light’ was flashing because the handbrake was pulled up!

Your complete car buying guide is here

Better late than sorry, is a phrase we tell the fast and reckless drivers. You should also consider following it when you go out to buy a car. This checklist maybe long but is based on personal experiences and may help anyone buying a new car from any seller(Dealer/Broker/Individual).

Guide to master the art of driving

One of the characteristics of a good driver is that he or she is able to use the potential of his vehicle to the maximum in a safe manner. Whatever the type of vehicle, the foundation of being able to use all of the performance available is to use the friction between the tires and the road surface as best as possible. With a tire at each corner, the contact patch of each is usually about the size of a book, and all forces generated during the course of driving must be transmitted through these patches.

The first thing to consider is tire pressure. For a given tire and load, the ideal tire pressure is the one that does not distort the structure of the tire and keeps the entire tread surface in contact with the road surface. Keeping load the same, too much pressure will lift off the edges of the tread from the road surface since the tire will bulge out, and too low a pressure will lift up the center of the tread from the road surface. This effect will be more on a wider tire than on a narrow tire, both with the same contact patch area.

Toyota Vitz(Yaris) 2012 leaked photo or is it?

Spy photographers caught the new plans by Toyota for its subcompact hatch Vitz(Yaris) and seems that Toyota is pretty serious about its looks, as you can see the heavy camouflage. But we’re sure that this is the production model testing around various bits and pieces.

Billboards: Attraction or Distraction?

A billboard or hoarding is a large outdoor signboard, usually wooden, found in places with high traffic such as cities, roads, motorways and highways. Billboards show large advertisements aimed at passing pedestrians and drivers. The vast majority of billboards are rented to advertisers rather than owned by them. (definition by wikipedia)

The truth about HID technology to clear your misconceptions

HID Kit installations are all the rage these days, most if not all of the people are misguided by false marketing.

This article will attempt to clear some of the fog surrounding HID Kits and HID Technology in general.

Why Bikes and Rickshaws travel in the fast lane

There’s a saying that goes ‘if you want to know about a society just look at its traffic’. This really is a simple “litmus test” for a given society. Not a single country, making it to the list of developed nations, has disorganized traffic.

To say that the traffic in our country is disorganized will be a gross understatement. The whole system is a mess.

How to measure your car’s horsepower?

Try the following. You’ll be surpised with how accurate and fun this can be!

In a legal and safe way, make a little test run area. Mark out exactly one quarter of a mile (1320 feet). Weigh the car with a full load of fuel and driver (you can do this at a commercial place that weighs trucks, or place four weight scales under each tire simultaneously, or just use a published figure and add the weight of the driver for an estimate). Start an acceleration run through this distance. When you are crossing the end line, note your speed at that point.

Iran, Turkey to jointly produce a car! Pakistan included in principal market

Iran and Turkey are said to cooperate to jointly produce a car and the development of Iranian space program.

Great Wall Motors – An emerging Chinese auto giant

Great Wall Motor Company Limited is China’s top SUV & Pickup manufacturer. With more than  30 subsidiaries and 28,000 employees, it is capable of producing 500,000 vehicles per year that fall into three categories of HAVAL/HOVER (SUVs), Voleex (Passenger Cars) and  Wingle (Pickups & MPVs). It is also able to produce core parts such as engines and front  & rear axles on its own.

Ministers request Cabinet to allow Duty-Free imports of Bullet Proof cars

GEO TV News update just told that the Ministers have requested the Cabinet to allow Duty-Free imports of Bullet Proof cars for the Ministers.
The report also said that Rehman Malik have supported the proposal whereas Federal Minister for Ports and Shipping, Babar Ghauri opposed the proposal.

Honda Civic 2012

The 9th generation Civic is right around the corner, and its’ gotten lots of paparazzi-style publicity recently. The Temple of VTEC has been quick to catch the upcoming Civic with its clothes on.

If Pakistan can make a jet fighter, then dude, where’s my car?

Yes, a Pakistan made car is long overdue. The attempt by Feroz Khan was a noble one, but he relied on all the wrong folks, thus the failure. We all know that if an ordinary educated Pakistani decides to do something, he faces dire consequences of bribery, deceit, theft, fraud and above all: The Government.

A delightful coincidence between a Ferrari and a Honda

 Here’s the dash of a Ferrari 458 Italia:
Dash of Honda CR-Z: