Slashdot Mirror

You really should link to instructions on how to do that, as most people don't know about this.

Handbrake isn't even necessary, and in fact I simply never touch it.

And you're a complete idiot for doing so (as are the others above who say they do the same thing). You are putting the entire weight of your vehicle on your transmission by doing so which will lead to premature wear and possibly having your transmission damaged.

The parking brake is there for a reason. The folks who designed this feature wouldn't have put it there just for looks.

But don't believe me, believe the experts and these guys as well. In fact, ask any driving school instructor anywhere in the country and I can guarantee they will say the exact same thing.

That's because you aren't looking.

http://www.autoblog.com/2010/0...

http://www.edmunds.com/fuel-ec...

http://www.cartalk.com/blogs/t...

Correct for city driving. But this is a more recent development and it's not that much more. If you can keep the engine in the most economic sweet spot longer, you will get better gas mileage. It's hard to do that as effectively with a finite number of gears, even with flawless picking of the shift points by the driver..

However, if you are doing highway driving, the manual wins, every time.

Not true...

This used to be true because Automatics had torque converters with a slip system and Manuals didn't. Manuals lock into a gear and have no slip. Automatics have a slip mechanism that allows the car to stop at a light and not stall. This slip system also meant that there was some slip at higher speeds resulting in poorer fuel mileage in older Automatics.

However, modern Automatics have the ability to automatically "lock" the torque converter into a gear at higher speeds. This negates the advantage that manuals had at highway speeds.
http://www.cartalk.com/blogs/t...

In fact, a lot of the old arguments for selecting a Manual have dropped by the wayside as Automatic transmission technology has improved. There are really only two remaining arguments for get a manual, the first is that cars with manual transmissions cost a bit less and the second is that, for many, they are fun to drive... That last one will never go away...

California? I'm surprised that the legislature hasn't succummed to the Save The Skeets activists and outlawed that.

The biggest danger to driving, drivers and pedestrians is the cell phone. Folks walk out into traffic staring at the samsung. Go 10 blocks in Manhattan, you will get at least a dozen of these folks. No spatial awareness at all. In public. I saw a guy holding a cell phone conversation on speaker while bicycling yesterday. The guy who doesn't move from the light when it goes green didn't stall his manual, he's texting. Left Lane blocker ? contractor or housewife in huge SUV/Pickup...62 in a 70...ON THE PHONE. Really, just close your eyes instead and go lalalalalalaaa

http://www.cartalk.com/blogs/d...

I bought a 2014 Honda Accord a few months ago. It has a camera in the trunk lid, that gives an image of what is in back of the car on the center panel display when the transmission is in reverse. When you turn on the right turn signal a camera in the right hand mirror housing displays an image of the right side of the car and the adjacent space. There is no such camera on the left side. I assume this is because they don't want drivers moving left to look to their right towards the center panel display.

I believe that many current model cars have similar cameras and displays.

A 360 display would be a step further in the evolution of these displays. But, I am not sure they are totally necessary. Vision forward and within the front 180 degrees is really not much of a problem. The A pillars are small and it is easy to look around them with very small head movements. Only the areas to the side and back and below the trunk lid are obscured. The back up and right turn cameras cover those areas, the only real blind spot is to the left and back.

BTW: Car talk has a detailed explanation of how to position your side mirrors to minimize your blind spots.

From the first paragraph of the Obituary at cartalk.com:

"Turns out he wasn't kidding," said Ray. "He really couldn't remember last week's puzzler."

There is a nice and humorous obituary on their website.

But they beat me to it. http://www.cartalk.com/content... Mr. Plotz had better do a good job.

Just this once, being Scottish doesn't make you right.

Here's an explanation. I notice you said everyone else is doing it wrong, but neglected to explain why your car lets you ride the clutch without wearing parts.

You can point a camera anywhere you want, they'd be far more versatile than mirrors, ... You'll most likely get multiple cameras, stitched views, and more coverage, not less

Really? I've had a stitched view for over a decade now. (PDF) It takes no power or extra equipment and I can see what's in the adjacent lanes behind me.

True, I have to glance at one non-adjacent sensor to another, but then again the road is still visible around me -- if something happens in front I already have a slight visual and can immediately lock and focus on it. (Then again, in high school driving class they taught us to continually scan our surrounding, check our mirrors, as well as maintain a "space cushion" around the car.)

Oh, and a spot of dirt or water (wherever might THAT come from?) will obscure that entire mirror as opposed to just being an inconvenience.

Ever had to scrape off a mirror from the accumulated snow / ice / fog? THAT'll be easy to do on the camera lens as well, I'm sure.

Then again there's be some idiot that will reconnect the camera inputs to watch TV, never mind being slightly night-blind from the always-on slight blue glow from the camera display. Or did you want to use B/W LCDs?

Mandate this in all new cars? Well if that's what you want. Personally I'll be out buying a glass cutting kit and a lot of superglue while re-positioning the camera to get an upskirt picture of the car next to me.

You can point a camera anywhere you want, they'd be far more versatile than mirrors, ... You'll most likely get multiple cameras, stitched views, and more coverage, not less

Really? I've had a stitched view for over a decade now. (PDF) It takes no power or extra equipment and I can see what's in the adjacent lanes behind me.

True, I have to glance at one non-adjacent sensor to another, but then again the road is still visible around me -- if something happens in front I already have a slight visual and can immediately lock and focus on it. (Then again, in high school driving class they taught us to continually scan our surrounding, check our mirrors, as well as maintain a "space cushion" around the car.)

Oh, and a spot of dirt or water (wherever might THAT come from?) will obscure that entire mirror as opposed to just being an inconvenience.

Ever had to scrape off a mirror from the accumulated snow / ice / fog? THAT'll be easy to do on the camera lens as well, I'm sure.

Then again there's be some idiot that will reconnect the camera inputs to watch TV, never mind being slightly night-blind from the always-on slight blue glow from the camera display. Or did you want to use B/W LCDs?

Mandate this in all new cars? Well if that's what you want. Personally I'll be out buying a glass cutting kit and a lot of superglue while re-positioning the camera to get an upskirt picture of the car next to me.

I've thought the same thing in the past, until I heard Click and Clack talk about it...

http://www.cartalk.com/content/it-my-imagination-or-are-headlights-getting-brighter-have

That design pretty much defeats the whole purpose of having an emergency brake.

Ugh.

You might be shocked to learn that cars don't actually have emergency brakes.
This mechanical lever thingy was never intended to be one, and you won't find
the word "emergency brake" in a (modern) car's manual.

It's one o those self-perpetuating myths.

It's a parking brake.

I know Tom Magliozzi used to wax rhapsodical about his old Dodge Dart from the 1960s; and recently Dodge resurrected the brand.

So yeah - there are people that care deeply about Dart.

A throwaway comment about "fix it over the phone": Car Talk. Not the original vendor, but still "over the phone".

As for support contracts, it's like this: as a previous poster said, for big companies, the user is insulated from the purchase and install issues. It's not cheap, it's not expensive, it's installed. "Do we have support for this?" is not something they even consider.

PETA needs to turn its attention toward the care and feeding of abandoned Tamagotchi. These were purchased for children who, after having grown up, have abandoned their pets to the bottoms of toy chests or the back of sock drawers. PETA needs to fund a reserve for forgotten Tamagotchi.

Right after they get their Save the Skeets campaign off the ground.

A link to some diagrams/photos of the assembly would have been handy. If they actually expected our advice, that is.

If this were Car Talk, Tom and Ray would have asked what color the car was.

http://www.cartalk.com/content/time-get-even-lazier

Little known fact: Lev Andropov's brother Picov Andropov is working as the staff chauffeur for Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe in Cambridge, MA.

That's class, thanks

Little known fact: Lev Andropov's brother Picov Andropov is working as the staff chauffeur for Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe in Cambridge, MA.

mixes his coolant fluid with the oil.

Someone who did this was on Car Talk asking for advice on what to do just within the last couple of months.:)

I am writing to offer profound thanks to you for resolving an important philosophical question that has been heatedly debated for the last twenty years. The rumination began on a construction site one summer in the early 1970's, as my friend Jamie and I were working our way through college. The question we raised and have agonized over, lo these many years, is one that I've never read about in any philosophical treatise, and yet I have found it has applied to countless situations and conversations overheard in bars, repair shops, sporting events, political debates, etc. etc. etc.

Posit the question: Do two people who don't know what they are talking about know more or less than one person who doesn't know what he's talking about? (Pardon the un-PC masculine pronoun, but I have found this to be, most predominately, a male phenomenon.)

In your recent conversations regarding electric brakes on a cattle carrier, I believe you definitely answered this query and have put our debate to rest. Amazingly enough, you proved that even in a case where one person might know nothing about a subject, it is possible for two people to know even less!

One person will only go so far out on a limb in his construction of deeply hypothetical structures, and will often end with a shrug or a raising of hands to indicate the dismissability of his particular take on a subject. With two people, the intricacies, the gives and takes, the wherefores and why-nots, can become a veritable pas-de-deux of breathtaking speculation, interwoven in such a way that apologies or gestures of doubt are rendered unnecessary.

I had always suspected this was the case, but no argument I could have built from my years of observation would have so satisfyingly closed the door on the subject as your performance on the cattle carrier call. To begin your comments by saying, "We'll answer your question if you tell us how electric brakes work" and "We've never heard of electric brakes" and then indulge in lengthy theoretical hypostulations on the whys and wherefores of the caller's problem allowed me to observe that you were finally putting this gnarly question to rest.

I am forever indebted to you for the great service you have performed! I'm truly impressed that it took so many years of listening to your show to finally have this matter resolved.

I've seen this covered time and time again. In a modern vehicle, if you know you're going to be idling more than 30 seconds or so, it's better for fuel economy to shut it off. The Car Talk guys even mention it (little over halfway down).

Supposedly, with older carbuerated vehicles, you could waste a fair bit of fuel with frequent starts. Modern fuel injection systems don't have that problem, unless you have seriously leaky injectors.

There's no need for any fancy mirrors. Using this method, you can adjust your mirrors so there is no blind spot. I've been using it for years.

http://www.cartalk.com/content/features/mirrors/

The problem with that method is that it requires that you be 100% confident in the placement of your mirrors because there is no feedback on their location until it becomes critical.

In contrast, when the mirrors are showing you part of your car, it provides an automatic reference point to judge the location of the images that does not depend on the precise mirror position. Furthermore, if your car does not show in your side-view mirrors, then it indicates that their alignment is off.

Since the standard interface with rear and side view mirrors includes easy adjustments, I'd rather not depend on the placement being accurate.

There's no need for any fancy mirrors. Using this method, you can adjust your mirrors so there is no blind spot. I've been using it for years.

http://www.cartalk.com/content/features/mirrors/

#1 A car that is mostly driven by females, but is occasionally driven by the males as well.
Common examples are: beetles, sunfires, neons, miatas, civics

# 2: An automobile preferred by women, usually 'toylike', most often white in color.
Classic examples- VW Rabbit convertible, Mazda Miata, new VW Beetle.

Dude, you bought a girl car? That's a Miata at the top of the page.

Car Talk - "The Ultimate Chick Cars of All Time"

#3 Mazda Miata

.."I discovered this phenomenon when I got a Miata. "Girlie car." That's all I heard."

-- Barbie

About age 38, all by itself, a Mazda Miata suddenly started seeming like a reasonable transportation solution

You do know that the Miata just screams "chick car", just like the VW Cabriolet and New Beetle? Especially the convertible models.

-- Barbie

Here's the (draft) - final report - which explains the rationale behind the conversation test they used.

They echo your point - "There may be some concern that the phone conversations in this study were harder than typical in-car conversations. The material was difficult and the conversations, although not continuous, lasted for the duration of the test drive."

Read the report for the follow-up 'however...'.

Regardless of whether you consider this a valid test, they fairly convincingly show that for certain mobile phone tasks, a test subject's driving performance - albeit in a simulator - is worse that when the same driver is over the legal alcohol limit (0.08% in the UK).

in case you never figure it out, there is a way of using your side view mirrors to eliminate your blindspots: http://www.cartalk.com/content/features/mirrors/ no need for fancy gps top down view for that, or taking your eyes off the road.

Please explain what you mean. Your premise and conclusion are not related, which makes your statement completely nonsensical.

Sure it makes sense. Batteries 30% as energy dense as gasoline will move your car further than the same mass of gasoline. In other words energy density alone is a silly measure, granted even with that the difference is something like 15 times.

And if that were the issue, we wouldn't even be discussing it. I can already get electric cars that are completely useful and practical for short trips around town, so that the car spends most of its time at home charging. The problem is that none of them are any good at all for leaving town, since there's no available means to recharge them easily, quickly, or without special arrangements.

Few people leave town, not that far out anyway. 160 miles is not a short hop around town.

Citation, please. Adding generation losses, transmission losses, DC conversion losses, battery storage losses, and drivetrain losses to compare it to the total efficiency of an internal combustion engine is a nontrivial thing. Just because some dude on Slashdot assures me that "someone did look into it" does not at all make me satisfied that reality is in any way supportive of the claim.

And building a skyscraper isn't trivial either, amazingly we manage to do it all the time. It's trivial to look these things up and the numbers are well published, for chutulu's sake even wikipedia goes over it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car
http://cartalk.com/blogs/jim-motavalli/?p=208

SharePoint is underrated-- it really has gotten pretty goood. Although you say that the firm doesn't have a common infrastructure, it's likely that you've standardized on Microsoft Office. If you're using (or can upgrade to) Office 2007 (or 2010), sharepoint plays extremely well with Office. SharePoint will handle all your office documents. If you need a comprehensive solution for scanned paper or integration with other applications, I'd look at some of the commercial document management solutioms (Documentum).

Don't cheap out and try to put together some homebrew solution. Remember as Click and Clack the Tappit Brothers say, it's the cheap man/women who spends the most.

You get modded informative, but nowhere do you give any proof of your refinery cracking theory. I work in the oil business, and while I'm not in refining (I'm in distribution), I do know that API (American Petroleum Institute) has repeatedly said there is absolutely zero benefit in using a higher grade gas than recommended by the manufacturer. But if you don't believe API, than maybe believe the California Energy Commission http://www.consumerenergycenter.org/transportation/consumer_tips/regular_vs_premium.html, or if you don't believe in organizations (private or government) than maybe a car talk radio show? http://www.cartalk.com/content/features/premium/questions.html

But please, feel free to keep buying premium gas, it's quite profitable on our end :)

You're being way way too pessimistic. Is this so different from Car Talk? I'm pretty sure that that NPR show still hasn't failed yet. On top of that, I am sure there are a lot of listeners who don't know a lot about cars, but pick up small things from it. It's a great way to educate people without overloading because they pick things up at their own pace and the next time they boot their computer they notice things.

Try adjusting your mirrors like this: http://www.cartalk.com/content/features/mirrors/. Voila, no more blind spots!

I am 1.97M tall (6'6) and weigh in at 420 and I fit wonderfully well in a VW beetle so unless you are bugger than me I call BS. Plus most SUVs actually have less leg and driver space than cars do in my experience. You can do research at http://www.cartalk.com/content/features/Special-Needs/headroom.html for headroom if you are tall, or other articles for wide and or long legs. (BTW of that 1.97m all but .84m (33 inches) is torso)

I for one am not afraid to drive a Toyota Corolla

Here, let me fix that for ya:
s/for one//
s/not afraid to drive a Toyota Corolla/gay/

Okay technically it's not one of the gay cars. It's really more of a pussy car. And not the good kind.

If you recieved better fuel economy in your 76 corolla by using higher octane fuel, your engines timing was off, and this is a rather expensive ongoing solution to just getting your timing adjusted to optimise detonation.

Ah, no. I timed it my self. First was the broad timing, then the octane selection. I used a handy dandy digital tach and an induction light. I even verified TDC by putting a 3/8 inch extension in cylinder 1 and made damn sure the mark lined up. If my timing was off, odds are my CO rate would have been more significant than 0%. My fuel economy was pretty tops, my emissions were low, and I was perfectly able to maintain 120mph for 2.5 hours at a time where my economy would drop by 20% or so. My engine was in tune. Everything thing said it was in tune, there was no evidence that it wasn't in tune. My plugs showed no signs of pre-detonation, just the usual grey and white residue. It's hard to judge electrode wear on Botch platinums, but when they were not in stock and I had to get Autolite, everything was golden, or I should say grey with white.

IIRC the compression ratio on that engine was 9:1, it being a 76 it was geared for both leaded and unleaded fuels. The chart from the time period states at that ratio an octane rating 96 is recommended. I presume that's the RON number, where IIRC 91 RON = 87 RON+MON/2.

I understand where you are coming from, you can adjust your timing to compensate for different fuel grades, which I certainly had to do if I had the misfortune of getting fuel in the mountains that was actually 82 RON+MON/2.

Back to your statement, "Premium gasoline does not result in better mileage." That's clearly false. Premium fuel can produce more energy per volume than regular.

http://www.cartalk.com/content/features/premium/myths.html
"In actual fact, you'll get a greater range of fuel economy between different brands of regular gas, than you will between the same manufacturer's regular and premium gasses. Interesting, eh? We thought so."

They claim they only measured a slight difference between premium and regular, but a larger difference between different kinds of gas, which was pretty much my observation. I found Texaco was best for my 76 corolla, with the best result with the premium gas where I measured consistently 40mpg.

You could say most cars you can't tell the difference. That could be true. You can also say that it's a substitute for adjusting your timing, again, that's true too. But we are talking about a Japanese 4 cyl which used higher RPMs to achieve power, where slight predetonation would have a serious impact.

One really needs to actually measure it for them selves.

I first learned about this here. Shortly afterward, I drove down to see my future mother-in-law in my fiancee's new car. My fiancee let her mother drive and I promptly was scolded for not having the mirrors the "correct" way. I tried to explain to her why it's better, but she wouldn't hear any of it.

My fiancee also complains about that method because if she has people in the back seat it leaves a blind spot behind the rear passenger's heads.

I think this method is wonderful. I just wonder why driver's education instructors don't teach it.

That's fucking retarded. Unless you're at a standstill for several minutes, you'll actually be consuming more energy than you save.

You're probably a troll, but I'll address this common misconception.

1. Modern fuel injection burns hardly any gas at start-up. The cost in gas is at most, for the biggest fuel hog, around 10 seconds of idling. Source: I heard the guys on CarTalk discuss this topic a few years ago.
2. Even on old carburetors, the cost of startup is less than "several minutes". However, if you're still driving one of these, maybe you're just afraid that when you turn it off it's not gonna turn ON again. :)
3. Idling is 100% inefficient. It is also the most polluting state your car's engine is ever in. If you don't need the A/C on, there is no need for the car to be on while you wait 2 - 5 minutes at long lights.
4. Wearing out the starter motor: Again, this is b.s. These things are rated for so many restarts it's ridiculous. If the starter is going to break, it's usually unrelated to the number of starts. The culprit is typically poor lubrication. Source: CarTalk again in the same discussion.

Save yourself some bucks. Help out the elderly and children by reducing ground level ozone. Turn off the car when you are sitting there and won't be moving for awhile.

-l

Are there any (major) sites still using Real as their video delivery of choice?

Unfortunately, yes: cartalk.

Gas caps are almost always on the opposite side from the muffler per Click and Clack, the Tappit Brothers.

As to the actual side the gas cap goes on, I don't care. Cars are designed and manufactured for which side of the road they drive on. I don't see British cars on the Autobahn (much). So designing where the gas cap goes, can be market specific.

You do make a good point about the muffler and perhaps it should be away from the curb. If so, put all gas caps on the passenger side.

I'm only looking for consistency (within a market segment) to minimize traffic hassles at the petrol station.

Someone asked the Car Guys about this just last week to settle a bet. I wonder if that set off the lawsuit. Some people are so quick to call their lawyers. Anyway, Tom and Ray said that technically fuel did expand when warm, but they guessed that the temperature of fuel in a large underground tank didn't vary enough to make more than a fraction of a cent of difference per gallon. That sounded reasonable to me, since I can keep my house much cooler just by closing the curtains.

The Prius gets 55 MPG, the Geo metro and Honda civic in the late 80's and early 90 got mid 50's.

Problem is, those cars oftentimes didn't have (or were only available as really expensive options):
anti-lock brakes
airbags of any kind
air conditioning
power steering
automatic transmission
reinforced construction (side-impact door beams, etc.)

All of that stuff above is expected as standard these days by consumers, and in the USA, some of those safety features are now legally required (e.g. the airbags). All of that extra stuff costs in terms of weight, and a double-digit horsepower engine simply won't cut these days with the amount of relative heft a car has to pull. Try dropping that 3 cylinder, 49 horsepower engine (from the [Chevrolet] Geo Metro XFi from your example) into its nearest new generation model, the Chevy Aveo, and see if you can get up to modern expressway speeds without worrying about meeting the business end of a Kenworth.

Personally, I wouldn't mind using that Geo Metro XFi to commute to and from work, but I wouldn't want to drive it on a roadtrip through, let's say, Texas in August (75 mph speed limits with no A/C and marauding Chevy Silverados and Ford F-150s going 85 or 90 -- forget it, I'll rent). It all depends on what the consumer wants these days for modern automobiles, and it becomes another "Pick Two" scenario.

Tom and Ray ("Click and Clack") of CarTalk fame has a lot more on this.

as a way to lesson our dependency on foreighn oil.
There is a difference.

As far as emission go, they are only cleaner then diesal, not gasoline.

From http://www.cartalk.com/content/features/alternativ efuels/biodiesel.html

"What's in it for me if I switch to biodiesel?

First, the vegetable oil portion of the fuel comes from a renewable resource that's grown right here in the US. That reduces our dependence on foreign oil.

Biodiesel reduces a number of tailpipe emissions, but actually increases the smog-increasing nitrous oxides compared to regular diesel.

When the "lifecycle" of the fuel is considered, using B100 biodiesel actually increases the particles that form smog by about 35%.

On the upside, biodiesel does reduce the amount of "air toxics" and soot released into the atmosphere, compared to regular diesel fuel. However, because diesel fuel is so "dirty," biodiesel is still not as clean as a regular, gas-powered vehicle. "

Uhh, BMW did that. They called it iDrive. As iDrive me Crazy...

I have yet to read a review of a BMW with iDrive where the operator liked the resulting change to the user interface.

http://www.cartalk.com/content/features/goodbadugl y/bad.html

References:

http://www.builderau.com.au/architect/work/soa/Why _Microsoft_won_t_make_your_car_crash/0,339024596,3 20274818,00.htm
http://www.cartalk.com/content/testdrives/Reviews/ bmw-745Li-2003.html?

-nB

CarTalk is a humorous radio show which answers automotive questions, half-seriously, you never know if they're giving you good advice or just messing with you. They switched from RealPlayer several years ago, because as amazing as it seemed (even to them!), RealPlayer managed to be significantly worse than Windows Media Player -- Microsoft did far, far better than them by being almost mediocre.

I happen to love car analogies. There is no car analogy that can't be tortured to explain or describe anything in the universe.

However, in this case, a better car analogy would be to compare a '57 Thunderbird (Newton) with a '87 Yugo (Q1). Er, a really expensive Yugo. With a really small gas tank. =)

The latest is not always the greatest. People will remember the Newton long long after the Q1 is forgotten. Love it or hate it, it's a computing classic.