Back to Basics – Car Manufacture – Body Finishing

If one part of car manufacture has improved more than any other in recent decades, it is corrosion prevention and painting, or finishing, of car bodies, and their various attachments. Rust is now rarely a problem that bothers us, which makes a huge difference when shopping for a used car. Much of the progress is […]

Back To Basics – Power, Torque, gearing and acceleration

Take a simple 12-inch diameter wheel, fix it to an axle, and attach a one pound weight to its rim at three o’clock, and the result will be one lb ft of torque applied to the axle.

Back to basics – Ride Quality and Comfort

Ride comfort can be a somewhat contentious subject, being a distinctly subjective evaluation that’s dependent on personal preferences, and significantly affected by the quality of road surfaces. It’s best described by the use of two terms primary ride and secondary ride. Primary ride is the result of general suspension and body movement over significant undulations […]

Back to basics – Steering geometry and wheel alignment

This is a complex subject, but a basic understanding of it is useful to appreciate its importance, particularly in relation to car behaviour and tyre wear. There are two fundamental aspects to be appreciated – the positioning of the front wheels relative to the axis on which they rotate when the steering wheel is turned, […]

Back to Basics – The Car Battery

Perhaps the original black box, the car battery is an indispensable component, unless someone one day replaces it with a compressed air tank, or a flywheel, for energy storage. In 1860, a French scientist, Gaston Plante, produced the first rechargeable lead acid battery, which relied on electrodes of pure lead metal and lead dioxide, using […]