The future of tuning?

The new Nissan GTR is certainly turning some heads. It would appear that the gadgets and wizardry that make the car work can perform magic.

We are talking supreme levels of traction and power throughout the rev range. Despite it gargantuan size it handles like a car half its weight. The Nissan R&D boys have turned out something special. The car at is stands is a very complete package. However there is a down side for the car tuner.

To produce such amazing power levels the car has been hardwired to resist tuning. The GTR contains one of the most anti tuning and aftermarket modification defence array we have ever seen. This step was taken to placate the Japanese authorities that the car would not become a 1000bhp monster like the previous incarnations of the Skyline in the hands of Japans premier tuners.

The main ECU is pretty damn hard to open and reprogram due to encryption. Further to this the car has accelerometers and GPS receivers and it is able to work out if the car is faster than it was designed to be. So too much acceleration, faster cornering or sharper braking all trigger the "anti mod" warning, invalidating your warranty at best and at worst the car will start to protest.

This is only the surface, try fitting larger wheels and you again hit the anti tuning defense grid. The speed is also restricted unless the GPS pinpoints your location to a Nissan Recognised track so the car will actually police your speed limit depending on where you are.

I'm sure that many tuners will find ways around all of this and I can't wait to see what extra power and performance can be extracted from this monster. I know the guys at TorqueCars are keenly watching and waiting for updates. This does show the car makers attitude to car customisation and personalisation and it is certainly a worrying trend in automotive design.

The ricer or Racer test.

Ricers are those kids who know little about style and subscribe to the "if it makes more noise it must be faster" philospophy. Although Typically aimed at Japansese cars the word has evolved to apply to any kind of tastlessly modified car.

The racer is the ultimate car enthusiast who drives with skill on our roads and only goes fast and pushes the limits on a race track. There are of course many categories in between but this survey will help to identify which classificiation you fall into.

http://www.torquecars.com/tools/racer-ricer-test.php

Here is what I got - do let me know what your results are using the feedback section.

The Track day Racer
Congratulations you are officially a Track Day Racer. You shun all things glossy and shiny. You know a lot about tuning and performance cars. You would rather have a standard looking car with a highly tuned engine than drive anything that shouts "look at me!" You accept breakdowns and component failures as the price of trailblazing the cutting edge of car ownership.
Your average weekend will be spend underneath the car tweaking the suspension and tuning up the engine. Alternatively you will always attempt to be the first away at the lights, but only if you are up against something that looks it might be a challenge!

You have the reflexes and driving skills of a pro driver.

Because of your responses to the survey we can make the following, more detailed comments.

You are welcome to join TorqueCars as you enjoy many aspects of cars and driving. You can join here www.torquecars.com/forums/ We feel that you would have a lot to contribute to our tuning forums and will certainly learn a lot. You do not enjoy general chat forums so our car specific topics are where you will spend most of your time.

We are sure you will appreciate our mpg calculator so you can now quote your exact fuel consumption and see how much you can save in fuel prices! You will also appreciate the fuel saving tuning and driving tips we have in our main articles section. You are the type of person who expects to get what they pay for. Quality over quanity is your mantra so have a read in our styling section and see which mods would be the most worthwhile. www.torquecars.com/styling/. Our articles will help you to avoid making mistakes and purchasing the wrong modifications.

This personality profile report for you demonstrates that your main focus is on speed and performance. There is a lot more to driving than going fast in a straight line. When you learn to take the corners you will achieve a higher place of driving Zen. Perhaps you should look into drifting or track day driving rather than the drag strip.

The pitfalls of car tuning.

Car tuning has become more than a popular hobby it has become a multi $1,000,000 industry. There is no shortage of parts available for every conceivable make and model of car. Sadly though many of the manufacturers' claims are far from the truth. A common ruse used by the car manufacturers is to show the performance gains of their products fitted to a high performance engine. On a 300 BHP car the parts may well deliver a power increase of 30 BHP but on a much smaller engine car producing just 76 BHP you would not be able to see a power gain in excess of a few BHP.

The problem there is more serious than this as some performance parts can actually reduce the performance of a car. At the very least the car ceases to become usable into normal everyday driving conditions. Tuning a car for the use on track is very different to tune in a car that is going to be a daily run around.

In everyday use you need a good balance of economy and reliability along with the performance gain. Four track use, reliability is not so much of an issue, as the car will typically be stripped down and rebuilt after each race, or a few times in each race season. The track car will also spend most of its life in the upper Rev band where most of the power gains are. An everyday car will spend most of its time in the low power band and will be moving slowly so heat buildup is to be avoided.

It's for these reasons that I started writing car tuning articles and posted them on TorqueCars. Having spent a lot of money tuning up a car I quickly learned that many performance parts were not performance enhancing and actually reduced my enjoyment of the car. TorqueCars take a look at the many advantages, disadvantages and benefits of each type of modification. Before buying a performance parts or modifying your car I would strongly recommend that you read some of the articles on TorqueCars and at least be a well informed purchaser.

Old drivers vs young drivers.

The debate or you might call it the battle between the older and younger drivers continues at TorqueCars. Here are the two sides of the argument.

Young drivers feel that they are invincible take unnecessary risks and should be slowed down or restricted from obtaining a driving licence. Compulsory tests have been suggested as have tougher tests and raising the driving age to 20 years old.

Young drivers often gets tarred with the same brush, whereas in reality only a few drive recklessly and at dangerous speeds. Raising the driving aged 20 will not eradicate the problem just to move it to an older age group. And many young drivers take great care in perfecting the art of driving. Young drivers have generally faster reflexes and older drivers and what they lack experience that make up for with reaction times.

This is a difficult debates to pursue objectively, but as with most disagreements the truth generally lies between the two. Young drivers are inexperienced and it is often experience that teaches an older driver the dangers associated with taking risks behind the wheel of a car.
It is fair to say that's driving tests, particularly in the UK, a much tougher than they used to be years ago. There are many drivers in their seventies and eighties who have never taken a driving test and still failed to grasp the theory of how to use a roundabout or other complex junction systems.

Torquecars can certainly see the benefits of retests two rays general driving standards, particularly a theory test to appraise the drivers grasp of current legislation and modern road systems. We certainly see many of our younger drivers taking an interest in the debates on road safety and TorqueCars continues to promote the SAFE enjoyment of the car.

Oil companies make more money.

We are all pretty depressed at the cost of a tank of fuel. The rising cost of oil is not bad new for everyone. I note this morning that Shell have just posted obscene profits of 18.5 billion euros. With the global demand for oil increasing the price is set to climb even higher. Why though should a company that makes fuel which we all need be posting such high profit annoucements.

To my mind this smacks of a cartel. Competition is supposed to mean lower prices for the consumer but we see that this adage does not seem to apply to the fuel industries (this includes gas and electricity prices as well!)

The profits made come very much from the prices paid by you and I the average consumer. There are some things we can do to encourage more healthy competition in the energy/fuel market.

1) If we shopped around en-mass and boycotted a company it would be forced to lower its prices and then as we start buying from them again another oil company will also drop its prices.

2) We reduce demand for oil. If we agree to walk instead of take the car for every journey we can walk in 20 minutes, we reduce our demand for fuel. We will also be a lot healthier and reduce our cars running costs and maintenance by not using it for short journeys.

This 2 pronged approach requires we all synchronize our habits and mindset. We already have one thing in common - we do not like paying the current high fuel costs and we choke when we see the obscene profits made by the oil industry.

How though can we all shop around with the same buying parameters - here is an idea. Taking the letters that make up the company name we could boycot them if the letters of the current month contain the same letter? Strangely enough it works out that we boycott the main oil companies for 2 months in a row.

Hesitant drivers.

These really wind me up and are a complete nightmare. They are a danger to themselves and all that they encounter. The typical profile goes something like this:-

1. They will not pull out onto a main road if they can see another car coming. (The road has to be completely empty for them!)
2. They will start to pull out and then stop halfway causing an obstruction or overhanging part of the main road.
3. They will see you coming on the main road, wait, and then pull out in front of you. Rather than picking up speed they will dribble along at a really slow pace with a long line of cars behind them.
4. At night they will slow to a crawl if there is an oncoming car. Then when the road is clear and you have an opportunity to overtake they pull out into the center of the road!
5. On roundabouts they will start to pull away then stop dead and will frequently have other drivers going into the back of them. (I know the other drivers are at fault but some blame must be shared by the hesistant driver who stopped for no apparent reason!)
6. Joining the motorway the hesitant driver will park at the end of the slip lane because he hasn't taken an opportunity to pull out and wait for a long gap in the traffic.

I accept that we all make mistakes and will not admit to being perfect. On a daily commute you often encounter the same cars and when they consistantly do the same things you really start to wonder.

I wish that all drivers were retested every 5-10 years and this will help to keep driving standards focussed in peoples minds. We all pick up bad habits but I'm sure we would all be a little more studious if we knew that we were going to have to face a retest every few years. This test will also get a lot of old (incapable) drivers off the road. It is a hard thing to give up your licence, but when you face a danger to yourself and all those around you it is time to concede that it is time to hang up your driving gloves and hat and take the Bus instead.

Cars don't like sitting around in storage.

One thing I have noticed with all of the cars I have owned is that they like it when you use them regularly. Having owned 2 cars for much of my driving career there was generally a daily runaround and a fun car for the weekends and summertime. Of all the cars I have owned as weekend only cars there were problems attributable to not using it often enough.

Silly things like corrosion acceleration where the rust seems to accelerate quicker, pipes start to split and crack and even quick deterioration of brake disks. When a car is used often it seems to keep all of these things at bay.

Tyre pressure also mysteriously decreases when a car is left standing. Fuel tanks empty. Fuel pumps fail. Doors get stiff and creaky. Electric windows seize up. Air-conditioning systems just refuse to reactivate themselves.

The list goes on and on. I can only conclude that cars are meant to be driven. Now I am running just 1 car my servicing and maintenance costs for the year are less than 30% of what they were for 2 cars.

If you are storing a car. Leave it in a dry garage with the brakes off and chock up the wheels. Running the car once a week and revving the engine to simulate road use rather than letting it idle will help to keep the car in a good condition.

Reliability issues when to scrap the car.

One of the most annoying things about car ownership is unreliability. When it comes to breaking down I think I have to be a gold medal holder and got to be on first name terms with the AA recovery call center staff. This goes back to the time I owned a Rover 220 Gti, a car which I greatly loved and my first real hot hatch.

The previous owner had neglected servicing. Actually he thought servicing entails topping up the oil when the oil light comes on. Needless to say after a few weeks the engine went. I replaced this and within 200 miles the new engine had gone as well! A garage diagnosed a serious drive shaft wobble in the gearbox which I likely to have caused the engine to fail. So next time round I got the replacement engine stripped down and sources a stronger gearbox from a 220 Turbo which had a torsion diff and lower gear ratios.

Even after this I had trouble with oil leaks, and minor electrical component failures. Starter motor, rear washer, split core plug, exhaust failure due to a speed bump.

I got into the trap of throwing good money after bad in the hope that there was nothing else that could go wrong! In the end the car cost me £1000's in repair bills. It would be far simpler if there was a simple formula we could use to determine if a car is worth repairing. So here is my philosophy which I will now set in stone (or type at least)

Repair the car if:

• The total cost of the repair is lower than 30% of the value of the car and the total mileage the car has covered is under 70,000.
• If a car is over 7 years old and the repair cost is lower than 50% of the value of the car and the car is under 80,000 miles.
  If the car is over 15 years old and the repair costs less than 80% of its market value (we are getting into collectors car territory here.)

Do not repair the car if:

• The mileage is over 100,000 and the repair cost will exceed 50% of the market value of the car. Or if the total cost of repairs exceed 60% of the value of the car.

Each time you repair the car deduct 50% of the cost of repair from its market value for the next calculation. (That way if a car become unreliable you will only lose a certain amount of money rather than need to finance it with a bottomless pit.)

Make a business decision and dump the car before it sucks all of your money and time and cut your losses and invest in a newer car.

Winter is coming - I hate winter driving.

Winter is well on it's way. OK I admit it - I hate WINTER. It is cold, wet and dark. Normally I wouldn't mind but we really have not had much of a summer this year. Even my sojourn into France was filled with Dodgy damp weather. But winter has implications for the motorist.

Firstly the cold means that you windscreen will generally be steamed up. Often it will start of perfectly clear but as you pull away and start breathing it quickly becomes a solid sheet of white haze. I hate wiping the screen because it leaves smears and the more times you do this the worse it gets so I park up and rely on my in car heater. (Thankfully it is quite efficient and the screen quickly demists.)

Personally not being a morning person we have the added problem of the sheer cold temperature of the car. If you wear gloves and boots you can't feel the cars controls and a scarf and hat will obscure you view of the road to dangerous levels. Perhaps I should take up hibernation.

When you have ICE to scrape from your windscreen you may have noticed that it is proportionally thicker according to how late you are. Then when it is all removed how many of us use our washers out of habit and this freezes instantly taking you back to square one.

Then as you drive along the road you will notice the trees have been busy throwing their leaves at the road to form a surface more slippery than a greased pig on roller skates! Drive carefully.

As if this wasn't enough the sun joins this conspiracy and stays low in the sky which is a pretty lethal combination with the misty screen. This is even worse when the road is damp as the glare reflects up at you.

Then we have to contend with Snow and Ice in the Winter months. Thankfully I have located an article for winter driving tips so I suggest you read up and prepare for the worst.

Sharing a car.

We all have that gut wrenching experience of sharing our beloved pride and joy with someone at some point in our lives. Here is a little insight into the problems this can cause.

The experience varies from letting a mechanic briefly drive the car for a test run, to regularly parting with the car whilst your other half, son, daughter, friend, room mate etc takes the car on a regular basis.

Nothing causes friction like the pressures caused by a communal car share arrangement. Expect arguments over the amount of fuel used, to the division of bills for wear and tear items like tyres and breaks. Then larger focused discussions occur when the car has new scratches and scrapes which in fairness could have been caused when the car was parked up.

The regular annoyances will stack up though. Drivers tend to adjust the seat, mirror (usually all 3) and even set the radio to a different station or just keep swapping the CD. Then after you have delicately set up the balance of warm/cold air jets and angled them precisely your evil NEMESIS car sharer seems to take delight in turning them to the opposite settings. After a week this will really start to grate then the tension will build and build.

Another thing that happens is that the car gets dirty and needs cleaning and hoovering. With 2 people sharing a car this job seems to become less frequently done and the last one to clean it will continually whinge at the other when they bring it home slightly dirty!

So next time you enter into a relationship, or worse still offer to teach someone to drive think carefully about the implications of sharing a car. You need to have a strong personality and set the ground rules firmly at the beginning. A camera will help you establish the defaults switch settings and resolve disputes about damage but this can be rather time consuming.

Sorry - I've got to go now! My wife wants to use her computer now so I must dust off the keyboard and realign the mouse mat. (NOT!)

What are the things that passengers do that really wind you up when you are driving? We all have our little pet hates and in most cases drivers make terrible passengers. If you ever get into my car please note the following:-

Don't touch my radio that includes turning it up or down.
Stop screaming at everything that comes towards us... hang on, no, it's me who does that. Erm... Sharp intakes of breath, or going "Oh my Goodness" and when I say "WHAT?!!??!!!!!" the answer comes "I've forgot to wash something" or something else that's completely unrelated to my driving and frightens the life out of me because I think maybe she's seen an out of control petrol tanker on a collision course with us that I've somehow missed.
Don't you just love it when someone draws on the on the condensation on your windows - the little smiley face comes back week after week.
Dont give driving advice either - I'm the one with the steering wheel. Back seat drivers are pests.
I especially hate it if I have my parents in the passenger seat. They leaps for the grab handle if you take even the merest change in course at more than 5mph. Bends that you could negotiate in the wet at 100mph are treated like downhill hairpins. And if you come off the pavement you really get some stick!....

Please note I always follow the direction on my driving licence. "tear along the dotted line...."