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Harley parts

November 4th, 2008 admin Posted in Automobile No Comments »

Harley-Davidson is one of my favorite bike manufacturers. If you have Harley-Davidson vehicles then read on. You can find Harley parts in rayprice website. They have fully stocked their inventory to match your repair and customizing needs. You can browse through their catalog for the parts that you need. You can also get 20% off on all genuine Harley-Davidson wheels. So what are you waiting for? Just visit the website now.

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Help others drive safely?

July 3rd, 2008 admin Posted in Automobile No Comments »

Whenever I ride my bike or drive my car on the road, I see that most of the people’s vehicle does not have the tail lamp working. How difficult it gets for the one that follows these kinds of vehicles? Only with the tail lamp glowing, you realize that you need to apply brakes and slow down and this is exactly the point of reference. These lamps will not cost any huge amount and can be purchased as low as INR Rs.20 and I do not see any affordability clause here. This saves from many accidents happening. So for those that reads this, please check if your vehicles’ tail lamp is working fine. If not, amend it now.

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6 ways you’re wasting gas

May 26th, 2008 admin Posted in Automobile 2 Comments »

By Peter Valdes-Dapena, CNNMoney.com staff writer

With all the worry over fuel prices, you’d think drivers would do whatever they can not to waste gas. But look around and you’ll see lots of them tooling around as if they owned their own tanker fleet. One of them might be you.

Here are six ways drivers typically waste gas every on every trip:

1. Racing away from green lights

* When the light turns green, you don’t have to take off as quickly as possible. That pedal under your right foot is called the “gas pedal” for a good reason. The more you press down on it, the more gas you’re pumping into the engine.

* Press lightly on the gas pedal, and you’ll still accelerate, and you’ll still get where you’re going. You might be surprised at how little pressure it takes to get your car up to speed in a reasonable time.

2. Racing up to red lights

* When you’re driving down the street, and you see a light red light or stop sign up ahead, you should lay off the gas sooner rather than later.

* There’s no point in keeping your foot on the gas until just before you reach the intersection. Let off the pedal sooner and give your engine a rest as you coast to the stop while braking gently. As an added benefit, your brake pads will last longer, too.

* By themselves, these first two tips can improve your fuel economy around town by as much as 35 percent, according to tests conducted by automotive information Web site Edmunds.com.

3. Confusing the highway with a speedway

* Even if it doesn’t involve hard acceleration, speeding wastes gas. The faster you go, the more air your vehicle has to push out of the way. It’s like moving your hand through water. The faster you try to move your hand, the harder the water pushes back.

* In tests by Consumer Reports, going 75 instead of 65 miles per hour reduced fuel economy by between 3 and 5 miles per gallon, depending on the vehicle.

4. Bumper-buzzing

* Tailgating is a bad move for many reasons. First of all, it’s unsafe. You reduce your ability to react if the car in front of you slows or stops. It also means you have to pay ultra-close attention to that car which reduces your ability to scan for other hazards ahead of you and to the sides.

* And tailgating wastes gas. Every time the driver ahead taps his brakes, you have to slow down even more than he did. (That’s because you can’t react immediately so you have to slow even more because you’re slowing down later.) Then you accelerate again to get back up to speed and resume your bumper-buzzing routine.

* Hang back and you’ll be safer - plus you’ll be able to drive more smoothly and use less fuel. A good rule of thumb is to allow two seconds of space between your car and the one ahead. You can figure that out by counting off two seconds after the car in front of you passes an obvious landmark like an overpass.

5. Driving standing still

* You’ve probably heard that it takes more gas to restart a car than to let it run. Maybe that used to be true, but it isn’t anymore. With modern fuel-injection engines, it takes very little extra gas to restart a car once it’s warmed up.

* Idling, meanwhile, burns about a half-mile worth of gas every minute, according to the California Energy Commission. That’s why hybrid cars shut down their gasoline engines whenever they stop, even for a moment.

* Now you don’t want to shut your engine down for every little stop in your regular, non-hybrid car - it’s not designed for that - but if you’re waiting for someone to run in and out of a convenience store, turn off the engine.

* And don’t go through the drive-through at fast food restaurants. You’re already paying enough for the oil in those chicken nuggets.

* Bonus tip: Don’t idle your engine to let it warm up before driving. It does your engine no good and it wastes gas. Instead, start driving right away, but drive gently until the engine is warm.

6. Short hops

# For really short trips, take advantage of the opportunity to get some exercise. Try walking to the store instead of driving. You can save gas and burn a few calories instead.

# If you can’t hoof it, save up your errands. A lot of short hops that let the engine cool down at home between trips can use twice as much gas as starting the car once and making a big sweep to all your stops, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

# Go to your farthest destination first so your engine has a chance to reach its optimal operating temperature. Then make your other stops on the way back. With the engine warmed up, the car will restart easily and run efficiently all the way home.

# Are you feeling the pinch of high gas prices? Tell us how gas prices are affecting you and what you’re doing to cope. Send us your photos and videos, or email us to share your story

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Slow down a little, save a lot of gas

May 15th, 2008 admin Posted in Automobile 3 Comments »

Got this info from one of my friends. Speeding on the highway adds a surprising amount to your fuel costs.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — With gas prices rising, gas-saving advice abounds: Drive more gently, don’t carry extra stuff in your trunk, combine your shopping trips.

This is all sound advice but there’s one driving tip that will probably save you more gas than all the others, especially if you spend a lot of time on the highway: Slow down.

In a typical family sedan, every 10 miles per hour you drive over 60 is like the price of gasoline going up about 54 cents a gallon. That figure will be even higher for less fuel-efficient vehicles that go fewer miles on a gallon to start with.

The reason is as clear as the air around you.

When cruising on the highway, your car will be in its highest gear with the engine humming along at relatively low rpm’s. All your car needs to do is maintain its speed by overcoming the combined friction of its own moving parts, the tires on the road surface and, most of all, the air flowing around, over and under it.

Pushing air around actually takes up about 40% of a car’s energy at highway speeds, according to Roger Clark, a fuel economy engineer for General Motors (GM, Fortune 500).

Traveling faster makes the job even harder. More air builds up in front of the vehicle, and the low pressure “hole” trailing behind gets bigger, too. Together, these create an increasing suction that tends to pull back harder and harder the faster you drive. The increase is actually exponential, meaning wind resistance rises much more steeply between 70 and 80 mph than it does between 50 and 60.

Every 10 mph faster reduces fuel economy by about 4 mpg, a figure that remains fairly constant regardless of vehicle size, Clark said. (It might seem that a larger vehicle, with more aerodynamic drag, would see more of an impact. But larger vehicles also tend to have larger, more powerful engines that can more easily cope with the added load.)

That’s where that 54 cents a gallon estimate comes from. If a car gets 28 mpg at 65 mph, driving it at 75 would drop that to 24 mpg. Fuel costs over 100 miles, for example - estimated at $3.25 a gallon - would increase by $1.93, or the cost of an additional 0.6 gallons of gas. That would be like paying 54 cents a gallon more for each of the 3.6 gallons used at 65 mph. That per-gallon price difference remains constant over any distance.

Engineers at Consumer Reports magazine tested this theory by driving a Toyota Camry sedan and a Mercury Mountaineer SUV at various set cruising speeds on a stretch of flat highway. Driving the Camry at 75 mph instead of 65 dropped fuel economy from 35 mpg to 30. For the Mountaineer, fuel economy dropped from 21 to 18.

Over the course of a 400-mile road trip, the Camry driver would spend about $6.19 more on gas at the higher speed and Mountaineer driver would spend an extra $10.32.

Driving even slower, say 55 mph, could save slightly more gas. In fact, the old national 55 mph speed limit, instituted in 1974, was a response to the period’s energy crisis.

It was about more than just high gas prices, though. The crisis of the time involved literal gasoline shortages due to an international embargo. Gas stations were sometimes left with none to sell, and gas sales had to be rationed. The crisis passed, but the national 55 mph speed limit stayed on the books until the law was loosened in the 1980s. It was finally dropped altogether in 1995. (The law stuck around more because of an apparent safety benefit than for fuel saving.)

Despite today’s high gas prices, don’t expect to see a return to the national 55 mph speed limit. The law was unpopular in its day, and higher speeds have become so institutionalized that even the Environmental Protection Agency’s fuel economy test cycle now includes speeds of up to 80 mph.

Driving 10 miles per hour faster, assuming you don’t lose time getting pulled over for a speeding ticket, does have the advantage of getting you to your destination 50 minutes sooner on that 400 mile trip. Whether that time difference is worth the added cost and risk is, ultimately, up to you.

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Car Air-Conditioner Facts

May 12th, 2008 admin Posted in Automobile 4 Comments »

Got this wonderful article passed on to me by my husband.

Summer time and your car’s air-conditioner will almost always be switched on when you’re driving. Here’s how you can make the most efficient use of it:

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  • For faster cooling on a hot day, travel with the windows open and the AC on (fan set high) for a few minutes. This will drive out the hot air. Then shut the windows and travel for a few minutes with the air conditioning on at the re-circulate position. Then put the air supply in the normal (vent closed) position. Set fan slower too.
  • Don’t freeze inside! The higher the difference between internal and external temperature, the higher the fuel consumption.
  • Using the AC consumes just as much fuel as if you were travelling with open windows: up to 10% more than with the windows closed and the AC turned off.
  • When not in use, turn on the AC at least once a week to prevent its refrigerant gas from leaking.
  • Prevent stale air caused by bacteria in the evaporator by switching off the AC 5 to 10 minutes before you leave the car.
  • And, of course, as far as possible, park in the shade.
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Tips on Filling your Vehicles

April 22nd, 2008 admin Posted in Automobile 1 Comment »

I got this useful information from one of my friends. I wanted to spread the information for the benefit of all.

This is a Message received from a friend:
I don’t know what you guys are paying for petrol… but here in Durban, we are also paying higher, up to 47.35 per litre. But my line of work is in petroleum for about 31 years now, so here are some tricks to get more of your money’s worth for every litre.

Here at the Marian Hill Pipeline, where I work in Durban, we deliver about 4 million litres in a 24-hour period thru the pipeline.

One day is diesel; the next day is jet fuel, and petrol, LRP and Unleaded. We have 34-storage tanks here with a total capacity of 16,800,000 litres.

ONLY BUY OR FILL UP YOUR CAR OR BIKKIE IN THE EARLY MORNING WHEN THE GROUND TEMPERATURE IS STILL COLD.
Remember that all service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground. The colder the ground, the denser the fuel, when it gets warmer petrol expands, so buying in the afternoon or in the evening…. your litre is not exactly a litre.
In the petroleum business, the specific gravity and the temperature of the petrol, diesel and jet fuel, ethanol and other petroleum products play an important role. A 1degree rise in temperature is a big deal for this business. But the service stations do not have temperature compensation at the pumps.

WHEN YOU’RE FILLING UP, DO NOT SQUEEZE THE TRIGGER OF THE NOZZLE TO A FAST MODE.
If you look, you will see that the trigger has three (3) stages: low, middle, and high. In slow mode, you should be pumping on low speed, thereby minimizing the vapours that are created, while you are pumping. All hoses at the pump have a vapour return. If you are pumping on the fast rate, some of the liquid that goes to your tank becomes vapour. Those vapours are being sucked up and back into the underground storage tank so you’re getting less worth for your money.

ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT TIPS IS TO FILL UP WHEN YOUR TANK IS HALF FULL.
The reason for this is, the more fuel you have in your tank, the less air occupying its empty space. Petrol evaporates faster than you can imagine. Petroleum storage tanks have an internal floating roof. This roof serves as zero clearance between the petrol and the atmosphere, so it minimizes the evaporation. Unlike service stations, here where I work, every truck that we load is temperature compensated, so that every litre is actually the exact amount.

ANOTHER REMINDER, IF THERE IS A FUEL TRUCK PUMPING INTO THE STORAGE TANKS, WHEN YOU STOP TO BUY, DO NOT FILL UP
Most likely the petrol/diesel is being stirred up as the fuel is being delivered, and you might pick up some of the dirt that normally settles on the bottom. ope, this will help you get the maximum value for your money

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