News & Events

You've seen them many times in your life: tire filling stations with endless loops of hose attached ending in that oddly-shaped, knobby little tip with the strange pin in the middle. They're at gas stations, car washes, and auto shops. If you're not familiar with their proper use and the proper fill pressure for your vehicle's tires you should take the time to learn. It will save you money on tires and gas. Here's what you need to know.

Under-filling and Over-filling

Proper tire pressure preserves the life of your tires. Under-inflating them causes them to ride soft, meaning they flatten too much, as if your vehicle rested upon marshmallows. Tire surfaces not intended to contact the road will do so, resulting in damage to the sidewall areas of the tire.

Over-inflating them makes tires too rigid. The overpressure strains the integrity of the tires and creates increased risk of a rupture. It also leaves less tire surface in contact with the road, resulting in decreased performance.

You may have heard that Nevada, with its wide open spaces, was adopting a driverless vehicle program, but now California state Senator Alex Padilla, a Democrat representing Pacoima, has introduced legislation requiring the Department of the California Highway Patrol to "adopt safety standards and performance requirements to ensure the safe operation and testing of autonomous vehicles… on the public roads."

If you're wondering whether autonomous vehicles are ready for California traffic, PCMag.com reported that Padilla arrived at the press conference to announce the bill in a modified Toyota Prius that drove at least part of the route without driver intervention. Furthermore, says the PC Mag report, cars modified to drive themselves with state of the art Google sensors, GPS, and computing power have already driven more than 200,000 miles on California roads.

Most drivers are familiar with the term horsepower as it applies to automobiles. More horsepower equals a more powerful engine. More specifically, a horsepower is defined as 550 foot-pounds per second which means the equivalent of the energy required to push 550 pounds over a distance of one foot in one second. That figure is equal to moving 1 pound 550 feet in one second, 225 pounds over two feet and any combination that works out to the same total.

In terms of your car, the horsepower is the total amount of power available to make the car go. Since the car's weight is constant, notwithstanding cargo and passengers, more horsepower allows it to cover more distance in fixed period of time. In other words, it'll go faster.

The Chevy Volt was the subject of congressional hearing Wednesday as a subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee began hearings about the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's handling of the delayed crash-test battery fire experienced by one Chevy Volt during testing last year. At issue was whether General Motors received special treatment in the form of NHTSA silence about the test crash result, because 26% of GM stock is currently owned by the U.S. Government as a result of the bailout deal.

House committee members pressed GM and the NHTSA for some evidence that waiting until the single test result was confirmed as a real problem until it was publicly disclosed was somehow connected to White House secret White House intervention. General Motors Chairman and CEO Dan Akerson testified that GM had received no special treatment and "Although we loaded the Volt with state of the art safety features, we did not engineer it to become a political punching bag."

In President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech on Tuesday night brought the current state of the American automobile manufacturing industry to center stage. All of Detroit's Big Three received prominent mentions by President Obama. "General Motors," he said, "is back on top as the world's number one automaker… Tonight, the American auto industry is back."

Is it though? Based on the numbers, it appears that the American auto industry is indeed once again healthy and growing. The Sacramento Bee reported that J.D. Power is projecting January 2012 U.S. auto sales to finish up the month at 681,000 units, representing a 6% increase over the figures from January 2010. Furthermore, light-vehicle production in North America finished 2011 up 10% over 2010.

Antifreeze/ engine coolant maintenance is one of the basic engine care tasks that most car owners can handle by themselves. It is more complicated, however, than just topping off the coolant overflow reservoir with water when it runs low.

We've all seen cars sitting by the side of the road, hood open, with steam billowing out from the engine. This means that the car has overheated and the engine coolant is boiling away. Continuing to operate a vehicle that is overheating or in which the there is insufficient coolant left in the system can result in many thousands of dollars of damage to your engine, including break-down of your engine oil viscosity, bent piston rods, cracked heads, and even melting plastic components inside the engine compartment.

Every so often, emails go around explaining how someone's cousin installed some device in his car engine and is now getting noticeably better gas mileage. These might be a device that alters the fuel or air intake systems of the car, using water for gas, or in some cases magnets or exotic metals placed outside of the fuel line to chemically change fuel passing within.

Sometimes, the explanations given by the companies peddling these products seems to make sense and at, other times, they are clearly nothing but double-talk designed to confuse the facts. Some reliable third party organizations have voiced their opinions and they all agree. Based on EPA testing of more than 100 such fuel economy improving devices, the Better Business Bureau, the EPA, and the Federal Trade Commission all agree: don't waste your money. None of the aftermarket products tested by the EPA have resulted in substantially improved gas mileage.