“Idiot” Lights on Your Dashboard
March 2, 2010
I came across this article highlighting dashboard lights as ‘Idiot’ lights, and realized how dumb that these dashboard indicators really are. Back in the day, dashboards had analog gauges which told you if something was wrong with your car. Now, all we have is a bunch of different lights that mean absolutely nothing to us. Whenever we see one, we freak out and have to look up what it means in the manual, because it is nearly impossible to memorize every indicator and their meaning. Even though they are less expensive than gauges, they are definitely more confusing to the driver. Here is a brief explanation of some of the “idiot lights” that you may not be familiar with:
Low Oil light indicates the oil has stopped circulating. You should pull over immediately and turn off the engine, check the oil level, and have the vehicle towed to a shop for diagnosis.
Engine Temperature light is often on the dashboard with an engine temperature gauge, if it enters the red zone, your engine is too hot. You should pull over and if steam is coming from under the hood, or antifreeze is leaking, something is not right. Take your car into a shop to be looked at.
Charging System light indicates that your battery is not charged. You should drive it directly to a shop with the limited life that the battery has left. Turn off as many electrical accessories in your car as possible, and don’t turn it off once you get it on.
Low Tire Pressure light tells you when the pressure drops to 25% below the specified cold inflation pressure. If your tire is flat, you’ll have to change it with a spare, or if you think it is safe enough to drive, fill it to its specified pressure.
Brake light warns you when you are driving with your parking brake on OR if the brake fluid level is low. Have your brake system checked for a leak or other problems.
ABS lights warn you that your anti-lock brakes are not working. Have a technician check them.
Check Engine light indicates that the vehicle’s system has detected an issue. You may not notice any difference, but if you ignore it, you may damage your control system. Take the vehicle to a repair shop so they can check everything and pinpoint your problem.
Others Include:
Stability Control light indicates that the Electronic Stability Control (ESC) is active. This becomes active when you are driving too fast for the traction, usually happens in extreme weather conditions. It is a warning that you must proceed with caution.
Supplement Restraint System light alerts you when the supplemental restraints have an issue. This includes airbags, seat-belt sensors, and seat sensors.
Maintenance light reminds you to take your car into the shop for its scheduled maintenance.
Washer Level light tells you that you’re low on windshield washer fluid. Get more and read the owner’s manual to find out where it goes.
Make sure you are familiar with these “idiot lights“, so that you can know when there is an actual problem with your car, and that you can fix it before anything drastic happens.
IIHS 2010 Top Safety Pick list
November 18, 2009
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has introduced its picks for the safest cars for 2010. This study is done every year to determine which vehicles are going to do the best job protecting you and your family. For the first time this year a roof test was added to the criteria since a significant number of deaths due to a car crash are the results of a rollover.
The safety institute employed front, side, rear and now rollover to their crash test for 2010. The IIHS selected 27 cars in five categories for the award, down from the 94 vehicles tested last year thanks to the heightened roof strength standards. Subaru stands out as the only manufacturer to receive a top rating for all four crash tests in every vehicle class it competes. Multiple awards also came from Ford owned, Volvo and German automaker, Volkswagen.
In the roof strength test, a metal plate is pushed against 1 side of a roof at a constant speed. To earn a good rating for rollover protection, the roof must withstand a force of 4 times the vehicle’s weight before reaching 5 inches of crush. This is called a strength-to-weight ratio. For an acceptable rating, the minimum required strength-to-weight ratio is 3.25. A marginal rating value is 2.5. Anything lower than that is rated poor.
Testers say not to worry if your vehicle has not made the list. Although it is clear, some automakers are doing a better job with safety, all vehicles on the road meet the minimum safety standards. The IIHS says that whenever a new test is introduced, it takes about one year for most to catch up. By 2011 most vehicles will have caught up to the new rollover standard.
It’s worth noting that some of last year’s winners have not been tested for the rollover standard. Most notably, the Acura RL, TL and TSX, Audi A4 and A6, BMW 3-Series, Cadillac CTS, Hyundai Genesis, Saab 9-3, Toyota Avalon and Prius, as well as a wide range of midsize SUVs and small sedans, have yet to be tested.
25 out of the 27 winners can be found at a MileOne dealer near you. Visit MileOne.com for more information. See below for all 27 winners.
Large cars
Buick LaCrosse*
Ford Taurus*
Lincoln MKS
Volvo S80*
Midsize cars
Audi A3*
Chevrolet Malibu (built after October 2009)*
Chrysler Sebring sedan (with optional electronic stability control)*
Dodge Avenger (with optional electronic stability control)*
Mercedes C-Class*
Subaru Legacy*
Subaru Outback*
Volkswagen Jetta sedan*
Volkswagen Passat sedan*
Volvo C30*
Small cars
Honda Civic sedan (except Si) (with optional electronic stability control)*
Kia Soul
Nissan Cube*
Subaru Impreza (except WRX)*
Volkswagen Golf four-door*
Cars Are Safer Than Ever
October 20, 2009
On September 9, 2009, the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety destroyed a perfectly good 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air. This wanton dispatching of a perfectly good 50-year-old Chevy dismayed lovers of vintage cars, but it did add a “Thank God” to the old saying, “They just don’t build them like they used to.”
Presumably as a part of celebrations marking its Golden Anniversary year, the IIHS set up a mano a mano matchup between a 2009 Chevrolet Malibu and the hoary Bel Air. One round, no timeouts.
In one of those cold, unwelcoming crash-test buildings, the two cars and their dummy pilots smacked each other at a speed of 40 mph in the front-offset format. That meant that the Bel Air’s left headlight struck the Malibu in about the middle of its hood. The result was not encouraging to those who believe that ancient iron trumps 21st Century plastic.
If the Bel Air’s dummy driver didn’t “die” in the crash, it would be a simulated miracle. The driver of the Malibu, however, enjoyed the protection of an airbag and seat belts, and got through the encounter bruised but breathing.
Because I am old enough to have driven a 1959 Bel Air when it was new, the IIHS demonstration got me to thinking about just how far we’ve come in the safety area since the year before John F. Kennedy became President of the United States. In those 50 years, we have come to take a lot of now-common safety features for granted. Here are just a few of them.
Tires: Tired no longer regularly blow out or otherwise lose their air supply at the slightest provocation. We often overlook the considerable contributions the tire companies have made to safe vehicle operation.
Seat belts: These things have come from cumbersome urban legends (“My great-uncle’s barber knew a man who was trapped in a burning vehicle by his seat belt.”) to easy-to-use devices that only the criminally dense among us refuse to use.
Airbags: Taken together with seat belts, the airbag has kept no telling how many drivers in their seat after a crash instead of letting them rocket through the windshield. We now also have side and head-level airbags.
Crushable steering columns: Once upon a time it was possible to impale yourself on the steering column and suffer the discomfort that comes with shoving the horn button through your sternum. Not any more.
Antilock braking systems: These lifesavers are as ubiquitous as wheel covers nowadays and demonstrate on a daily basis what a good idea it is to have electronic wizardry keep all four of your car’s wheels turning at the same speed.
Crumple zones: You can see these at work if you watch Indy racing. Instead of using the driver to absorb impact, you use collapsing front ends and engine compartments. This theory can be traced to an old stunt man trick: jumping from the third floor onto a stack of cardboard boxes which collapse in order and diminish the kinetic energy our hero generated during his free fall.
Alcohol awareness impact: Not a feature, but a practice that deserves mention. The involvement of alcohol in vehicular accidents and deaths almost defies overstatement. The IIHS estimates that 40 percent of road fatalities involve alcohol. Bad enough, but down substantially from the 1970s when the figure was 70 percent. The National Institute of Health says that reductions in driving after drinking saved more than 150,000 lives between 1982 and 2001, which would be more than the combined total saved by increases in seat belt use, airbags, and motorcycle and bicycle helmets.
There are of course a bushel of other new safety features—electronic stability control, rear-vision cameras and directional headlights to name just three—and there are dozens more either here or on the way. But suppose we ask what have all these improvements done for us?
The answer is one hell of a lot. Using only a few of the relevant statistics, here’s the story in brief.
In 1959, 36,223 motorists missed their next meal. As a nation we drove 700.5 million miles, and that worked out to 5.2 fatalities per million miles traveled. Last year, with our population having grown from 179.3 million in 1969 to an estimated 300 million today, the year 2008 saw 37,261 highway deaths. U.S. motorists drove 2.9 billion miles last year and averaged 1.27 fatalities per million miles traveled.
In rough numbers, there were 120 million more of us, we drove four times as many miles, and we killed one-fifth as many people. That is beyond outstanding.
But at what cost? In 1959, the average cost of a new car was $2,200 and the average worker made $5,010. In 2008, the average worker earned $40,532 but had to pay $27,958 for a new car. In other words, the buyer paid nearly 40 percent of a year’s take for an automobile in 1959 but had to pay 69 percent in 2008. That’s a stunning rise, and you can bet that a large part of that increase in car prices is due to the inclusion of safety equipment. Imagine how much money the bean counters could thrift (their word) out of a car if they removed all the safety devices added in the past 50 years.
The real question is: Is safety worth it? I think you have to say it is. Otherwise, using the historic yardsticks for fatalities per million miles traveled, you’d have to add about 150,000 motorists a year to the Grim Reaper’s tote board. I say spend the money.
Tire Safety and Maintenance
June 22, 2009
As the old TV commercial says, there’s a lot riding on your tires. Indeed, tires could well be the most important system on your vehicle, given that they affect every performance parameter from handling and acceleration to braking and ride comfort. So it’s no surprise that maintenance on your tires should command as much respect, if not more, than on all the other parts and systems of your car. Trouble is, most drivers just don’t think about the condition of their tires. A Department of Transportation study dating back to 2001 features some pretty eye-popping numbers: 60 to 80 percent of cars on the road are running tires underinflated by as much as 10 percent, 20 to 50 percent of them are driving with tires down in pressure by as much as 20 percent, and 10 to 30 percent of these cars have tires with pressure as low as 30 percent of the recommended pressure. Under inflation is just one reason a tire can fail. Here are four more. -Mike Allen
1. They’re Old
Check the tire sidewall for the manufacturer’s date code. It will be in the form of a four-digit number, stating the month and year the tire was produced. Unfortunately, there’s no equivalent to an expiration date. And it’s not a good idea to install tires on your vehicle that have been sitting on a warehouse shelf for many years. A decent rule of thumb is not to purchase tires more than five years old. And five years in service on your vehicle is plenty, totaling 10 years. Your mileage may vary.
2. They’re Underinflated
Tires that have too little pressure in them run hot-much hotter than properly inflated ones. The pressure in the tire keeps the tread and sidewalls from flexing. Friction from this flexing generates heat, and that degrades the rubber and the fabric construction of the tire. And don’t be fooled by the appearance of the tires. It’s impossible to see if your tires are underinflated without using a tire pressure gauge. The proper pressures are printed on a sticker on the driver’s door frame or inside the glove box. They are also in the owner’s manual.
3. They’re Overinflated
The tire inflation pressures printed on the tire sidewall are the tire manufacturer’s maximum permitted pressure, not necessarily what the vehicle manufacturer recommends. Overinflated tires will have poor grip, and the tread will wear prematurely in the center.
4. They’re Deteriorated
Ozone, road chemicals and ultraviolet light degrade the rubber. But this is probably more of a problem for RV and trailer tires mounted on vehicles that are stored outside in the sun, especially in the Southwest. Tire covers will keep the UV rays at bay longer. Avoid ozone damage by not storing unused tires near any ozone sources like electrical equipment or motors, pool chemicals or the like-especially indoors. Tire sidewall rubber is permeated with oils that are designed to leach out slowly and protect the rubber. Detergents or aftermarket protectents will remove these oils prematurely. A certain amount of weather-checking (alligator-like cracks in the sidewalls) is normal. If the cracks are down to the fabric sidewall plies, it’s time to retire that tire.
5. They’re Damaged
Any foreign object that penetrates the tire far enough to cause a leak is sufficient reason to require the tire to be removed from the rim and inspected by a tire technician for damage to the inside of the carcass. An externally applied plug or worm should be considered a temporary repair. A proper repair involves patching the tire from the inside with a plug that not only holds air but prevents water from infiltrating into the carcass’s belt plies. Water in this part of the tire will make it weaker. It’s not really possible to repair a tire sidewall.
Make sure that your automobile is up to date on its service schedule.
Click Here to schedule a service appointment at your nearest MileOne Service Center.
