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Hybrid Cars

Posted by Owen Jones º June 17, 2011 º Automobiles º 0 comments

Basically, hybrid electric cars have two engines: a conventional petrol or diesel engine (the same as you would find in any contemporary car and an electric, battery powered engine, as you might see in a milk float or a forklift truck. The magical difference is that the car’s on board computer judges which engine is necessary to provide the power required by the driver and switches it on.

Therefore, if you are accelerating to cruising speed for motorway driving; going up hill or overtaking, the car will almost certainly use its liquid fuel engine and then as you slacken off the accelerator to, say, cruise down the motorway; go down the other side of the hill or to drive in slow traffic, the computer will turn off the liquid fuel engine and turn on the electric engine.

The electric engine can be regarded as free to run, because it runs off batteries which are recharged by the car whilst it is using petrol or diesel and at some other times, such as while it is braking (and the alternators are recharging in both modes). You should never have to recharge your car’s batteries overnight as they do with forklift trucks.

There are in essence two sorts of hybrid cars: the semi hybrids and the full hybrids.

The semi hybrids have the same sort of set up: two engines, one running on liquid fuel and the other running on batteries, but the electric motor is not capable of running the car on its own. It is there to ‘assist’ the petrol or diesel engine.

In this type of hybrid, the electric motor is called an ‘assist’. These semi hybrids will save money on fuel, but whilst the car is moving, you are burning fuel all the time.

The biggest difference when it comes to the full hybrid is that both engines are capable of powering the car independently. Whilst you are running on electricity, you are running at zero cost to your wallet and at zero expense to the environment, unless you are really pushing the car and then both engines may be working in union.

This switching of power sources is done automatically without any intrusion from the driver. In the case of the Prius, for instance, this extraordinary achievement is accomplished by what Ford calls its Hybrid Synergy Drive. Other companies have their equivalent to the HSD.

In order to get the most out of these full hybrids, you actually need to be doing an ‘average amount’ of driving under ‘average’ or ‘mixed’ circumstances. For instance, if you are driving in traffic, the car will want to use the electric engine, but if all you do is drive in inner city traffic jams the batteries will soon become exhausted and you will be driving on liquid fuel all the time, which sort of negates the main reason for spending a lot extra on a hybrid in the first place.

The car needs to travel on open motorways in order to recharge its batteries so that it can use them when it gets back into town. If you only drive in town traffic, you might be better off getting a small run about instead.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on several topics, but is now involved with how to compare tyre prices. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Car Tyres For Sale.

Finding Antique Car Shows

Posted by Owen Jones º June 11, 2011 º Automobiles º 0 comments

Are you interested in gorgeous old cars? Lots of individuals are and there are lots of antique car exhibitions in America and Europe to prove it. Antique car shows are a good way of viewing these old cars and standing up close to them. They are a fully working part of automotive history – many of them are a hundred years old and still working fine.

So, if you would like to go to a show of ancient cars, how do you go about finding one? It depends on what you want actually, because there are basically two types of car show.

There is the permanent kind, a sort of museum, usually a private collection which is open to the public like the one owned by the Marquis of Beaulieu, the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu, the New Forest in the UK.

Then there are the rallies of antique car aficionados and owners like the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run. There is a equivalent event organized by Louis-Vuitton which takes place at different European locations, but I last saw it at Portofino in northern Italy.

The museums tend to be open all the year round, but the rallies normally take place in the summer, because lots of the old cars were open topped and uncomfortable to drive in the rain and the cold.

The obvious place to begin searching for a collection or rally of antique cars in your region is on the Net, but there are also lots of magazines on the topic full of great glossy pictures of old, remarkable cars. These magazines will also carry notification of up and coming activities.

If you favour the personal touch, look up an antique, veteran or classic car club in your region and go along to their next meeting. You are certain to meet someone there who can advise you on the best up and coming rallies of old cars and the best collections or museums in and around your area.

Actually, this is probably your best option if you live in a city. You cannot beat the face to face approach for procuring the best information and seeing the enthusiasm in the eyes of the vintage car driver. It is infectious to talk with anyone who is passionate concerning their hobby.

If you still decide to look on the Internet, one of the more personal ways of obtaining information on vintage car activities, is to sign up for some newsletters.

Simply do a general search on, say, ‘vintage car rallies’ or ‘vintage car museums’, visit a couple of sites and sign up for the newsletters of the sites that take your fancy.

In this fashion, you are sure to receive advanced notification of all the top vintage car shows and you may even get a coupon to save you money on the entrance fee as well.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on lots of topics, but is at present concerned with car detailing prices. If you want some suggestions on detailing cars come over to our website now at Detailing Car Interiors.

Detailing A Vehicle’s Interior

Posted by Owen Jones º June 2, 2011 º Automobiles º 0 comments

The things required to detail the interior of a vehicle are: a vacuum ( a shop vac would be best), a bucket of hot soapy water and one of clean water, soft rags, window cleaner, a small paint brush, and a hard bristle brush.

The first thing that should be done is removing any things that are not needed in the vehicle, this includes floor mats. This prevents items from getting in your fashion. Next you ought to vacuum everything you can. This includes of the floor, under the seat, rear window, speakers, seats, and all vents. This will save a great deal of cleaning time later.

The next step would be to start cleaning the dash with a soft soapy rag, using the small paintbrush to get into the vents and any other small region that is difficult to get to. Wipe these areas with the clean water. Be certain to get into the small grooves present on most steering wheels.

Next would come the doors. The same process can be used as on the dash. Work in your own way for the remainder of the vehicle using these steps being certain to do the ceiling while cleaning the rest of the vehicle. A different region that is normally forgotten is the glove box. It is up to every person as to whether they clean it or not.

At this time washing all windows would be the next step. Use a soft rag and a good window cleaner. There are a lot of different brands to choose from, such as Windex and Safelite Auto Glass.

If the seats of your vehicle requires to be washed it can be done with the soapy water and a bristle brush. Dip the brush in the soapy water and start scrubbing the seat and back. Do not soak the cloth. Using the brush, clean the seat, back, and sides.

The small paint brush comes in useful to work into hard to reach parts. If you have a shop vac then proceed to vacuum the region washed. Repeat process if the seat is still dirty. After you are finished, vacuum the seats the best you can to absorb the surplus moisture.

Armour All, and other brands has a range of special cleaning products that you can purchase if you prefer to. Just be certain to match the cleaner to the sort of cloth you have in your vehicle.

Following the instructions on those products is important. Next is scrubbing the floor. Using the bristle brush and soapy water, scrub the floors down and vacuum. This might have to be repeated a few times depending on how bad the floor is.

When working on the driver’s side be sure to wash all pedals. If there are floor shifters they need to be washed at this time. A good vacuuming will pick up what has been brought to the surface. The floor mats can be scrubbed and placed back in the vehicle if the floor is not too wet.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many subjects, but is now concerned with car detailing prices. If you want some tips on detailing cars come over to our website now at Detailing Car Interiors.

Installation Options For Auto Navigation Systems

Posted by Owen Jones º June 1, 2011 º Automobiles º 0 comments

Auto navigation systems or sat nav systems, as they are commonly referred to, are in practically every new car or truck that is purchased these days. But what about older cars and trucks?

Older vehicles can also take advantage of these new auto navigation systems because of the various installation choices open to drivers. An auto navigation system does not have to be fitted by the manufacturer of your automobile.

In fact, there are many third party installers of auto navigation systems: there are ‘specialist technicians, garages will do it or you can do it yourself. True, you may run into difficulties if you want to cut a hole in the instrument panel of your car or truck and you may be loathe to remove your CD player in order to install one, but there are also plenty of models that can be attached by other quite straightforward methods.

Moreover, if you do not only travel by car, there are other alternatives that you may prefer, such as the portable options so that you can take your sat nav in your craft on the water with you or on a bicycling or walking holiday.

These portable devices range in quality, but they still work well and are becoming better all the time. Satellite navigation by laptop or PDA is another option that offers good quality mobile information.

The major difficulty with conventional paper road maps is that they are out of date before you buy them. Some of them are years and years out of date as they may have lain on a bookshop shelf for a very long time.

In contrast, GPS or GPRS satellite navigation systems normally provide information that is up to the minute on important information like traffic jams or floods and up to the hour on lesser problems.

This up to date information is being keyed into the database twenty-four-seven by thousands of intelligence providers world-wide and then sold on to the people that made your sat nav system.

You automatically buy a license to access that data when you buy your sat nav system. However, you may have to renew your license every year.

When it comes to choosing one of the auto navigation systems, remember to check the service and licensing details. Another point to keep in mind is the cost of the auto navigation system and its installation cost. Having sat nav installed by the manufacturer of your vehicle is the easiest alternative, but it is by far the most expensive one too.

You perhaps pay between double and treble for this means of installation, but if you are purchasing your vehicle on finance, well, you will be paying interest on that for five to ten years as well and that will mean that you will pay closer to ten times what it would cost to have sat nav fitted by a third party.

It is definitely worth keeping in mind when you go to buy a new car and see one of those fantastic auto navigation systems pre-installed.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on various subjects, but is presently concerned with the fleet management tracking system. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Laser Temperature Gun.

Downloading Computer Software Off The Net

Posted by Owen Jones º Computer Tips º 0 comments

Everybody likes a freebie and that goes for users of computers too. Acquiring these free programs usually means copying them from a disk given away with a computer magazine or downloading computer software off the Net. Just what kind of computer software you would like is up to you of course but you can get working versions of most kinds of software from the Internet, if you look about hard enough.

Most people who want to download free computer software off the Internet are searching for utilities – utilities such as anti-virus software, anti-spyware utilities, firewalls, back-up programs and word processing utilities.

You can find several thousands of programs like these to download from the Internet by typing ‘free software’ into Google or by going to download sites like download.com, tucows.com and majorgeeks.com, but there are dozens more of them as well.

These free software downloads come in a couple of different kinds. These are: freeware, shareware, time-limited usage and limited functionality programs. Freeware is literally free; the author has put the software into the public domain for anyone to use free of charge.

Shareware is comparable, but you are expected to donate a contribution if you like the software or use it regularly. Sometimes shareware is time-bombed so that it ceases working after a month or a pop-up appears each hour after a month and occasionally nothing occurs at all or a couple of features will cease to work (like ‘save’ or ‘send’).

Time-limited usage software is usually a trial. In other words, you can use the full program, but it will switch itself off until you pay after a predetermined length of time. This is quite common with costly software. Some free software comes with limited functionality from day one, but you can use it for as long as you like. The complete version is available on payment.

There is another sort of freeware which is an on-going worldwide product. Into this category falls such software as Firefox, OpenOffice, WordPress and Opera. These are excellent top-grade products and are entirely free of charge.

There are also free gaming web sites, although most of the better games are time-bombed for limited functionality or just work in demo mode, which means that you can only watch, you cannot take part. This is very annoying. If you spend an hour downloading a game only to find that it is a demo version, so strive to find out first.

The other foremost category of free software on the Net is tutorials. You can find a free tutorial for practically anything that you would like to learn. The majority of free tutorials seem to be on aspects of using a computer like programming or editing HTML, but there are also free tutorials on using major-brand software; passing exams; needlework, gardening, and just about anything else too.

If you would like to start downloading computer software from the Internet free of charge, try some of the names I suggested or do a free search on Google.

Owen Jones, the article of this article, writes on several topics, but is now concerned with the wireless broadband router. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Best Router For Gaming Online

PDA’s Can Be Used As MP3 Players

Posted by Owen Jones º May 13, 2011 º Computer Tips º 0 comments

A PDA is a personal digital assistant, but is also called a palmtop computer. They were first brought out by Apple in 1992, but they have come a long way since then. At first they were little more than electronic organizers. Later a browser was added and then wi-fi potential. Nowadays, a lot of them have the ability to play MP3 files too.

The MP3 files are normally replayed through a player like Windows Media Player, which might be a feature of the suite of applications that came with Internet Explorer. The playing of music files whilst you are working, or multi-tasking, may slow the PDA down, but that actually depends on the pace of your PDA’s Central Processing Unit (CPU) and the amount of random access memory (RAM) it has plugged in.

These are restrictions that apply to all other kinds of computer too. Storage of your MP3 tracks is achieved normally by the use of a flash memory card. You download the music to the card and then access that folder and its tracks from the PDA’s screen. The MP3 files are called from the flash card into RAM and played as they would be on any other computer.

You can listen to the music through the built-in stereo speakers, but they are usually pretty tinny, you can attach headphones or you could connect mini external speakers, which give a astonishingly good sound, as do the headphones. In headphone mode they behave likewise to a Walkman.

If you are familiar with Windows on a laptop or desktop, you will recognize Windows Media Player (WMP). It is very adaptable and will play back most forms of audio and visual media. If you have WMP on screen whilst you are listening to music and the PDA can get on line, it will automatically download interesting details about that track from the Net, if you have set that alternative in the Options Menu.

Most PDA’s are Touch-Screen, so tapping the screen ceases the music and retapping it starts it up again. If you feel that your PDA is rather slow or if you have plenty of music on your desktop computer, you could load that music onto your flashcard and plug it into your PDA instead.

WMP is a very useful tool. It will allow you to organize and categorize all your music files and keep them in lists called libraries or Play Lists. You have complete freedom to organize these play lists as you see fit: say, by music type, by artist, by album, by date, by genre or by country or by all of them. These lists can then be played one after the other or at random or merely searched for as individual tracks.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on a number of topics, but is now involved with looking for free online ringtones. If you would like to know more, please visit our web site at Family Plans For Cell Phones.

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