The beauty of a high performance car

It amazes me

On the rare occasions when I take a look underneath the hood of a car I am totally amazed at how complicated the thing looks. All those wires and connections, all those parts that are interconnected and work together as a whole with just one purpose: propelling the car forward. There is such a lot that can go wrong when you think about it that it is amazing that most often, things just work!

The classic combustion engine is a machine that runs on controlled explosions. Think about that: tons of controlled explosions are taking place every time you start an engine. They take place in little chambers and they push a valve outward. Timing is of the essense: the valves are interconnected and go back and forth like a seesaw, so you don't want simultaneous explosions in interconnected chambers, right? So something directs the traffic of the impulses to explode, the sparks.

The spark plugs are given the explosion command by the internal computer of the car I suppose. I'm not quite sure on the mechanics of that and because I don't know this is where the magic begins for me.

The magic is also in the performance enhancing that you can do by installing high performance parts for cars in your vehicle. To me it's sheer magic that you could install a beautifull gadget and it will make your car go faster or burn less fuel, whatever it's set out to do.

Polishing and pimping

Polishing all the chromium parts and making all the visible parts shiny is a bit of a hobby for the serious car-buff. When it all looks shiny it even goes faster, or at least, it feels that way. When you've polished everything on the outside you're a bit of a show off, but if you polish everything under the hood, you're my kind of person. I don't like grease stains on my hands and clothes and on anybody I associate with so going for that clean look is really a must for me.

Pimping your car with spoilers and suchlike can also improve the performance of the car, creating less air resistance and as such they are, aside from nice looking extra's, performance parts that can make a real difference in your car's behavior on the road.

Another thing often overlooked in terms of performance are the tires on your car. Esspecially if you live in an area where there's a big difference between summer and winter it's important for the performance of your car to install wintertires in wintertime. The rubber on wintertyres is softer and that way it has more grip on the snow. It's a sin to keep the wintertires on in the summer though, for two reasons. One is that they tyres will deteriorate quickly when you're driving them on hot roads. The other is that there's a minute amount of drag from the tires that will slow you down considerably. It will also keep you from having the optimal miles to the gallon ratio and in these expensive times every little bit you can gain there counts.

Blasting away

Not really a Velocity factor but important for the enjoyment of the vehicle by men and women alike is the car stereo. With state of the art surround sound and big bass boosters the car is one of the few places where you can truly enjoy great music and feel like you're encased, enveloped by the music. The sound inside a car can be just as overwhelming as during a live concert and it really takes you away. It is palpable in your gut, you can sense it with more than just your ears.

Naturally, when you're enjoying great music in your car, it's important to keep your attention on the road as well. You wouldn't want to wind up driving 20 on the highway because you're so engrossed in your mantra's or classical music, nor would you want to get a speeding ticket because you're rocking to the Boss himself. Still, a car stereo is a beautiful addition to an electric high performance vehicle.

5 questions about the future of cars

Foreign cars

The American car industry has missed the whole point of last few decennia. Instead of going with the trend and building ever smaller cars. Cars that perform well but are smaller simply because not that much space is needed in general when you're just driving to work or the grocery store. The new type of car is smaller, more economical in terms of how they use their space ánd get's great mileage.

Instead of building what most customers want: something that will get them safely from A to Z and back without guzzling too much gasoline. Even if the customers appear to want the bigger cars, this is only so because there simply aren't that many small cars available to them. They aren't used to them being out on the street and even if they are there, they seems somewhat out of place with the big models. It takes a real man to choose a small car.

Not only is the performance of the smaller car great in terms of mileage, withimport performance parts their speed of acceleration just to name an item can be improved on dramatically.

Small is the new big

The same developments we've seen in personal computers is starting to happen for cars. Instead of the gazz guzzing machines of yesteryear, people are now more likely to invest in an electric car and thus save at least half on fuel, more if you couple it to your own solar panel units.

Any child can see that it takes more energy to more a huge object than it does to move a small object (assuming that both have a similar weight/size ratio) So if you have a huge car, like the Hummer or some of the other rather backward American type cars, you're burning more fuel. If there's only one of you in a Dodge Ram, you're using up more than your fair share (if there is such a thing as a fair share) of the earths powersupply.

Things could move rather fast if we allow technology to develop unhampered by vested interest from the oil company's. Telephone has seen a similar speedy development where we started with Alexandre Graham Bell, making those bulky plastic phones all the way down to the first mobile phones with which you couldn't call for hours, simply because your arm would get too tired. All the way to todays smartphone, that basically is a unit larger than the first 4 types of computers, with more memory and more possibilities than it's predecessors from 1980.

It's time to start rethinking the concept of large cars and discover the joys of thinking out of the box with cars.It's time to start being curious about the why of things.

Why four wheels?

Why four (or more) seats, if there's only one of you?

Why a new car every year or two?

Why fossil fuels if you can go electric?

Why doesn't my employer offer me an electric lease car?

Worries about performance?

Your motor won't have to move so much steel and glass if your vehicle becomes smaller. This means quite simply put that you save a bundle on fuel that way. If it only has to carry one person, why not go for a one person car? Time for the industry to sit up and pay attention: we want personalized vehicles.

We also want the option of personalizing the driving experience by putting inimport performance parts to enhance the speed and acceleration of the car. That way instead of having a shady, unecological alternative, you have a vehicle that makes hardly any noise, uses hardly any electricity (non if you hook it up to some solar panels).

Imported car parts for improved performance

Fuel injection and more

When your car starts to stutter when you start the engine up, consider tweaking it by ordering and installing a new improved model of fuel injection. The technology in these products hasn't stopped the day you bought the car and it's likely that the best there was available at the time of production of your vehicle wasn't the top of the line to begin with. Everyone knows that the cars that roll of the line are a compromise between performance and price and when you're a discerning customer who doesn't have the money to purchase the high class cars out there that don't make consessions to affordability, this means you're getting mediocre parts to begin with. However that's not where you need to stay!

Getting top of the line import performance parts is a way to improve the performance of your car and because you do all the work yourself it's a cheap and easy way to upgrade your car to a really high performance vehicle.

Tinkering is for classic cars

Let's face it: these days if you're really a tinkerer, not a full fledged auto mechanic, there's no fun in working on a car less than 20 years old. Ever since on board computers have taken over the honest mechanics "I'll listen to the sound of your engine and tell you where the problem is" is an anomaly. Most people can't tell the difference anymore and the onboard computer has warning signs for anything that is about to go wrong before it actually spirals out of control.

In Africa and south America, where we ship our "wrecks", they keep cars on the road for ever with a piece of chewing gum and a pair of nylons if need be and people work together as a team on figuring out what is wrong with the car and how to fix it. It seems as though there they still understand the need for reconstructive maintainance. Making sure it runs is priority number one. This is why so many of the vehicles you see out there have long since outlived their natural shelf-life and are reconstructed to accommodate far more than the normal payload for any automobile that's on the road today. You can see schoolbusses that we've declared unfit for travel on the road there, painted up in glorious gaudy colors and giving off a thick black smoke whenever they accelerate and they are filled to the brim with people and luggage, stuff they are taking to the market.

Imported parts for import cars

Yes, you can use all kinds of parts with all kinds of cars. It often takes a lot of tweaking and customizing, but in theory you can use parts from an old american car and use it in a Japanese or European vehicle. The warranty on those expires the moment you take it for a drive as they aren't used to each other and the computerized systems used these days speak many different languages, so in a modern car you are more likely to make it work if you're a computerfreak than you are if you're an automechanic.

So my advise is simple: buy import performance parts for imported cars athttp://www.velocityfactor.net/. Installation should be easy with the manuals that come with the product and you'll be driving around in no time flat.

Tools are always sharp with ceramic coating

Some tools don't wear

Many tools are just fine without any protection whatsover. They'll stay sharp almost forever and look as shiny as the day you bought them for years on end.

Those are the tools that rarely get used, that are just sitting pretty in your toolshed while you and your mates play poker and have a beer. For the rest of us, tools are something that get's used a lot and most tools, in particular anything with a sharp edge on it tends to be subject to a lot of wear and tear. Protecting these tools would mean a serious step forward in the enjoyment of the use of sharp tools.

Now there's some new technologies out there that can actually make this come true! It's called vapor deposition and it's a way of depositing a ultra thin coating of a hard material onto almost any surface. The process is a specialty of the folks down at Vergason and they cater to the needs of a variety of industries, from the medical to the molding industry. With their vacuum coating process they can coat pretty much anything without having to heat the objects very much which allows them to coat metal objects without having to be concerned about the shape or hardness of the material changing.

You've probably seen these types of instruments in the kitchen. Kitchen knifes that won't wear out, made with a ceramic edge. Ring a bell? Yes, these things actually do work and they do stay sharp for a long long time.

How do ceramic coatings work?

One of the cutting tools we're all familiar with that has a hard ceramic-like coating sit's right in your mouth. Yes, I am talking about teeth. We all know that the teeth are reasonably soft and boney on the inside and if it weren't for the thin layer of dental enemal on them we would all lose our teeth very early on in life. The thin layer of something hard protects them from harm and gives them that nice, clean bite.

In much the same way putting a ceramic coating on, let's say a sawblade, can keep it from becoming dull very fast. A necessary innovation in particular since cutting the new MDF type of materials (which is really hard pressed cardboard) can dull an ordinary sawblade in an awful hurry. Any housewife worth her salt can tell you that cutting paper or cardboard with a pair of scissors will make the scissors unfit to cut anything else with them. This is why people have special scissors for fabrics. These are not so much special scissors, but basically they are scissors which are never to be used for cutting paper. Cutting only fabric keeps them sharp for a long while.

What all can you get a ceramic coating on?

Anything that is sharp and meant to stay that way is in principle a good candidate for a ceramic coating like the ones they make at Vergason. This goes way beyond your toolshed and into the medical field as well. In addition the ceramic coatings are heat resistant and for want of a better word they "glide" better. You've all seen seamstresses cut through swatches of cloth hardly even moving the scissors? Well a good seamstress would simply love a ceramic coated scissor because it would "glide" through the material with very little friction. Because of these special qualities ceramic coatings are also useful in the injection molding industry.

Not only is it good for cutting through wood, cloth or paper (or MDF) but it is esspecially useful in cutting though tougher materials like metal. Used on drills, saws, taps and a myriad of other instruments it helps prevent damage to the tools and keeps things sharp and easy to work with.