Car Audio Blog

I’ve been on the bus a lot over the past half a year, so a week ago I finally made the decision to get a car. It’s not like it’s so terrible to ride the bus, but I’d miss the freedom to come and go that an auto gives you. I want to go when I want to go, but I don’t have any money to spend. I decided that my options were either going to a car dealership, police car auctions, public car auctions, or government car auctions.

I think the auctions would have allowed me to save a lot of money, but it felt really weird knowing that those were confiscated by the police or the government in one way or another. It’s pretty likely that those vehicles were used in criminal activity such as a drive by shooting. If you owned a car like that, you might liken it to living in a house where you’re aware that someone has died. I didn’t want to look into auctions because it would probably not be good. I will go to the dealership instead. What I hated about my experience there is that you have to haggle.

It is puzzling to me that the price listed on a car is not the actual price you are expected to pay, since a salesman will always tell you that everyone haggles over the cost. After deciding on the car, you need to haggle about it, and I never can get past how odd this process is. When you buy most other things, it’s not as if you can haggle the prices. What’s in it for the car dealers when they let their businesses take shape like this? How come everybody doesn’t pay the exact same thing?

Was there a time when car dealerships came to realize more money could be made by negotiating with the customer or was it always that way? I’m pretty sure they’re really just trying to take advantage of those who don’t have negotiation skills. As they say, everything in life is a negotiation. I guess even if I did decide to go to police car auctions, public car auctions, or government auto auctions, I would have had to bid against other people anyway.

Technorati Tags: auctions, cars, discounts, sale

It can be extremely annoying to find that you’re not attracting the best leasing prices you could be for your fleet of cars. Most business owners in this situation would assume that their fleet was easily lsrge enough for them to be considered important clients, and get themselves better car leasing prices.

As to whether they are considered an important account really comes down to how large the contract hire company is. For one of the bigger companies, a reasonable fleet would consist of a figure closer to 500 cars, and it’s these size clients that receive the most favourable rates.

So how does a smaller acount acquire a better level of pricing and service? The most effective way is to either take on a smaller car lease company, or alternatively a large contract hire broker; it is the larger broker that would have the facilities and back up necessary to look after a fleet of company cars.

It is not advisable to use a smaller broker if your company has a fleet of vehicles; with their relative lack of manpower and resources they can struggle to effectively take care of a fleet of cars. Another distinct disadvantage to going with a smaller broker is that they very rarely have access to all the car leasing dealsthat are available in the current marketplace.

A more established broker will be able provide the other services that are of vital importance to a company that runs a fleet; the main one being checking company drivers’ licences to ensure there a no convictions, which a driver may have failed to declare to the company. It’s often surprising what can be found during these history checks; from suspended licences, to criminal convictions, to fully disqualified drivers.

A large contract hire broker will have access to the entire spectrum of financial facilities on the current market and will have good relationships with distributors, allowing you access to better deals and special offers.. Admittedly these companies appear very large in comparison to most brokers, however they would still consider a client with a 30-50 vehicle fleet as a genuinely valuable client.

Technorati Tags: car leasing, cars, company cars, fleets

The word intercooler has been banded about in car terms however it is good to establish exactly what actually is its function?  Most people are generally aware that to push more air into an engine a supercharger or turbocharger is normally used. The turbocharger is spun by old exhaust gasses and the supercharger is normally driven by a belt. Generally how the supercharger does its job is to produce air when it is driven round by a belt, and the turbo charger needs the exhaust gasses to make the turbo go round and produce the needed charge. However as they both do their jobs as the two methods are spinning they are producing heat.

The compressed air gets hot because it gets squeezed past the two compressor blades. The problem actually occurs when the hot air has to reach the engine. The hot air will actually be less dense. Therefore the less the combustion chamber in the engine can do anything with it. This situation can be so great that if the temperature got too hot, the mixture could pre ignite and cause the engine to be destroyed extremely quickly by the pre ignition allowing another Milton keynes job for an engine re-builder.

The reason the air gets so hot is because it is being highly compressed unlike normal air which gets to the engine via an air filter directly from the fresh air is fed in from the outside world and fed to the engine via an air filter this type of normal air will be quite cold. The use of compressed air is very good because it means we can get more air into a given space than if we tried to put it in normally. This is why a 2.0 litre turbocharged engine can do just as good a job performance wise as a normal aspiration engine twice its size can accomplice. This means that the compressed air will also start to loose power because of the heat transfer. This is the reason why the intercooler has to come into play.

The intercooler is a large type of air to air exchange radiator.  The intercooler is  normally between the supercharger or turbo and the inlet hose through to the engine inlet manifold.

Intercoolers are normally made up of aluminum as this material tends to cool the air better. There is usually an intake side, where the air passes into the intercooler, the air then passes along some straight tubes and between these tubes are fins very similar to a normal car radiator which then allows cool air to pass through these as the vehicle is traveling along. This will in effect cool the compressed air as it is running through the pipes and when the compressed air comes out the other side it should be cool enough to enter the engine. Now the bigger the intercooler the better job it should do.

So fitting a larger aftermarket  intercooler, normally offers much better results. For earlier cars that were fitted with turbos that did not have an intercooler fitted as standard, just adding one can also make some worthwhile improvements. There are also a number of suppliers who make specialist one offs for custom fittings.

Technorati Tags: cars, intercoolers