One of the difficulties in assessing change in vehicles over a procession of models is getting past the obfuscation that normally accompanies car publicity. Both in advertising and PR material, every model is always billed as being vastly better than the preceding model.

Of course, in many ways newer models or versions often are better – but in other ways sometimes they are not.

One example of this is the weight of cars: as we all know, cars of today are much heavier than the cars of yesterday. However that’s a process that has been largely unremarked upon as it has been occurring. The upshot is we only now say: “Hell! Look at how heavy new cars have become!”

But this insidious change occurs in other design aspects as well.

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http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/when-is-a-bike-not-a-bike-when-its-electric/2008/06/15/1213468240544.html

As electric bikes get more powerful, and lose their pedals, riders risk breaking the law. But what should the law be? Unlimited power? And how is that power to be measured?

At least one AutoSpeed reader is riding an electric vehicle that looks pedal powered, and looks legal in power, but is capable of at least 5 times the legal power output in short spurts…

When I heard of that reader I just laughed.

But if the law in its current form prevents people making use of efficient, low pollution and cheap transport, surely it’s in need of review?

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I kinda think that – in some respects, at least – tyres are like toilet paper.

We’ve all heard of the person who raves about their tyres – no, not the grip but instead their longevity.

“I got 50,000 kilometres out of my last set of Duramax Ultradistance and this set still have plenty of tread depth after forty thousand kays,” they say.

When I hear that sort of comment, I always think two things:

1) Geez, you must be a wimp of a driver, never pushing hard around any corners; and

2) Your tyres must have rubber as hard as rock – and hell, that must make them grip really well…

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Look, to be honest, I felt certain something would go wrong.

Too many links in the chain.  Too many uncertainties.

Driving from the Gold Coast to Brisbane airport. Catching a plane to Melbourne. Staying with friends for a few nights in Melbourne then catching the train to Wangaratta. Camping in a caravan park, then leisurely  riding bikes the 100-odd kilometres to Bright along the bicycle-and-joggers rail trail, following the path of the old railway line.

And then back again.

Camping each night. Finally, the train and plane and car back to the Gold Coast.

Complete all the way with two folding Brompton bikes, two folding Burley bike trailers, full camping gear – and two adults and one three-and-half-year-old.

Broken spokes, collapsing tents, exhaustion, mishap and injury. Gears that wouldn’t mesh, gears that were wrong ratios. Getting lost and misjudging basics like water or matches. Trains that didn’t arrive; taxis that didn’t appear. Broken chains, fractured towbars, irritability and anarchy.

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Back when I owned my first car, about 25 years ago, I just adored the VDO gauge catalog.

Not knowing much about cars, I was terrified of touching the engine’s carby, or the suspension, or the brakes – or anything much at all. But I knew I could install extra instruments without wrecking the car, so plenty of new gauges found their way into the cabin.

In that first car, an air-cooled 2-cylinder, I installed a VDO oil temperature gauge, one with the sensor mounted in a new, purpose-designed dipstick. In later cars I fitted VDO cylinder head temperature gauges, exhaust gas temperature gauges, turbo boost gauges, and transmission temperature gauges.

Gauges are good – you learn about the operation of the car, can immediately spot when you’re pushing the driveline too hard, and can see problems as they develop.

So the other day, when I was at a show that had the (apparently) latest VDO catalog, I enthusiastically grabbed it. It’s actually marked as being the 2007 VDO Racing catalog, but it’s the same old format that I looked through so long ago – comprising automotive, commercial vehicles and marine.

But, after reading through it, I bloody well wondered why I bothered picking it up: the 1985 catalog would have done just as well!

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Here in Australia, major car modification workshops are generally well established. That’s said in the light of full knowledge that workshops come and go; but equally, others build a strong reputation and live on for decades. Some even span two or three generations of the one family.

I know that you can always find customers to denigrate any workshop, but places like Turbo Tune in Adelaide, Nizpro and Beninca Motors in Melbourne, MRT in Sydney, ChipTorque on the Gold Coast, and Romano Motors in Brisbane are longstanding workshops with good reputations.

And I wonder which Australian business – either these or others – will be first: the first to realise that there’s money to be made in specialising in a new-age of car modification.

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Despite what some might say in discussion groups, everything I ever write for AutoSpeed is carefully considered and thought-through, whatever the consequences of its publication.

So, for example, I was prepared to write content in Part 2 of our water injection series that showed, despite the good hardware, the results in some ways were disappointing.

“What a let-down!” said one discussion group poster.

That may well be so, but I don’t ever want to be in the position of claiming some modification benefit that others cannot duplicate.

In the same way, for our stories on advancing the ignition timing by tweaking the intake air temp sensor (see The 5 Cent Modification) modifying the action of the EGR valve (see Part 1 and Part 2), I was deliberately understated in my description of the potential benefits.

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I recently bought an interesting publication from the bookshop of the Australian National Library in Canberra. (Incidentally, this is a fabulous bookshop for all things Australian – political, historical, the arts, sport, and so on.)

The book is called Australian Tractors and subtitled Indigenous Tractors and Self-Propelled Machines in Rural Australia. It’s an interesting examination of the tractors that have been built in this country.

Written by Graeme Quick, an agricultural engineer and historian, the book covers some wonderful examples of Australian ingenuity and doggedness; people making – often with relatively primitive machine tools – tractors that could work the fields, day-in and day-out.

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http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/pricey-petrol-does-a-world-of-good/2008/05/28/1211654120229.html

“By pretending it can control prices, the Government is continuing to peddle the lie that it can control everything. It will also perpetuate the illusion that the way we have lived in the past – driving big, inefficient cars – is the way we should live in the future. Prices signal otherwise.”

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