Superchargers and turbochargers are air pumps that look and work rather like a hair drier. They force air into an engine, which makes it work more efficiently and therefore go faster.
Ownership Issues
Tyresome Foolishness
Why you should avoid vehicles with run-flat or spacesaver tyres:
Flat tyres are a pain and no one likes to deal with them, but they are generally not hard to change and not all that expensive to fix – at least until recently.
Diesels
Diesels often seem cheaper because the buyer is hypnotised by the apparently low cost of fuel instead of looking at the entire cost of ownership, including road taxes, increased servicing costs and the cost of an expensive engine rebuild that grows ever more likely with every passing kilometre.
There are a few things you should know about diesels:
A Question of Timing - timing belts
It looks a lot like the belt that holds your pants up. It works in much the same way as a bicycle chain, except that its job is to link up various moving parts inside your engine to make them all work at the same time. For this reason, it’s called a timing belt.
Know Your Battery
In your great–grandad’s day cars came with crank handles. If you had a flat battery, you simply slipped this handle into the front of the engine and turned it until the car started.
CNG & LPG
The fuel crisis of the 1970s caused a flurry of activity to produce a safe, economical alternative to petrol. The most successful of these was CNG (Compressed Natural Gas), followed by LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas). CNG is rarely used these days.
Keeping It Cool
You really need to look after your car’s waterworks.
Believe it or not, modern cars don’t give much better fuel economy than older ones. Even back in the 1950s, specially tuned Morris Minors were driving 100 miles on a single gallon of petrol (that’s around 2.8 litres per 100 kilometres) and reaching speeds of 180km/h. The catch was, they could never do 180km and 100 miles per gallon at the same time and they couldn’t do either in everyday driving conditions.
Automatics & CVT Transmissions
Many drivers don’t like to change gears, so they buy a car with an automatic transmission. Modern automatics are much more efficient than those of old. However, before you buy an automatic car, there are a few things you should know: