Blow out

Blow out may be defined as a sudden escape of a confined gas or liquid. As a driver, there are a few things you’re never trained for and one of them is a ‘blow out’. For me it was a much more cold experience than a robbery incident that had a pistol jammed right in my stomach. It can be a scary experience and often you see your life flash right past you as you hear the loud deafening sound of your tires as they rip to pieces and you struggle to bring your car to a stop. You remember every movie you’ve seen where someone lost a tyre and the car somersaulted.
The most common causes of blow out’s are usually aging tire’s. Experts say that the life span of a tyre is 4 years from its date of manufacture!!!!! In a country where we have challenging roads it’s safe to say that this value must be lower here. Our roads do make our cars take a beating and the tire’s which connects cars to the roads must suffer the worst of it. Incorrect tyre pressure, worn tires from alignment issues also aid blow outs.

Blow out on a 4x4 vehicle
I was lucky as the Blow out I experienced (twice) was below a 60Km/ hour and at both times the rear tires were lost. My brother, Jigga had his at a much more interesting speed of a 110Km/ hour. He’d been travelling at 170Km /hour but felt the need to reduce his speed. That must’ve been God speaking to him. He recalls that as he dropped to 110km/ hour, he saw his left rear tyre explode and rip to pieces in his rear view mirror. He said it was like time had been slowed down. All he remembered at that point was that our Dad said don’t stamp on the brakes…don’t stamp on the brakes if you ever have a blow out.

High speed blow out on a Ferrari
Normal braking requires an even distribution of brake force in the car, when you experience a blow out, the brake force is no longer uniform as the tyre that has lost pressure from the escaping air will not find traction. This is made worse when the driver stamps on the brakes. The car simply loses control and depending on the road speed and tyre in question, you may somersault!!!!
In the event of a blow out;
1st thing you should do is not to panic.
2nd do not step on the brakes. (Your natural instinct is to brake…DON’T)
3rd grab your steering wheel with both hands.
4th take your foot off the accelerator.
5th look for the clearest stretch of road ahead of you and point the car in that direction
6th let the car coast to a stop (let it come to a stop on its own)
7th put up the necessary caution signs and change to your spare (hope fully you’d have 1)
Its essential to bear in mind that as you service your engine at intervals, tyre maintenance is also a must and should not be left to road side vulcanizers. This must be done at a service station where the alignment and wheel balance is checked by professionals( i and Jigga once met a road side vulcanizer who swore he could simply by looking at your tires set it to the right pressure). If you suffer an engine failure from neglect, you most likely will survive it, a tyre failure from Neglect? Well I don’t know..........

Be Smart

Slama bowed out of my possession in the week just passed. As a result of our very un-reliable transportation system in this country I’ve had to hitch a ride with anyone heading my way. On one of such trips home I got into an argument with the occupant of the vehicle I was in. Namely Jigga and one Igbo Boy.
The loud mouthed Igbo Boy made a very offensive comment. He said if he were in a Discussion continues (Honda Accord 2005) and someone pulled up to him in a Skoda Octavia, He’d laugh real silly at the Octavia guy. Needless to say, I was angered by his comments as this is the Lame, un-informed and un-spirited loyalty that makes cars like Honda and Toyota’s so very expensive the world over.

Skoda superb

Toyota Camry
How did Honda and Toyota achieve their reputation for reliability? : By building cheap and dependable cars spanning over 60years. So what is so funny when an Auto Company with a humble background (19 years since Vw’s owned Skoda) that makes sensible cars so funny? I promised him that other than my love for German cars I’d prove him wrong with Statistics.
The Following day I got digging and got the following:

The figures speak for themselves, in a previous article the reason people are killing themselves for certain brands isn’t because they like them it’s because others are buying them. At 3million Naira the 1.6MPI Octavia is more than a worthy bargain. It’s as far as I’m concerned a better car than the Corolla (I didn’t even bother getting the cost of the corolla just to show you how confident I am)
Let’s also keep in clear perspective that Toyota isn’t as reliable as it used to be. According to caranddriver.com, Toyota lost the Accord/Camry battle with the launch of the last generation Accord. A record it held for the previous 5 generations. Then there’s the UIA, un-intended acceleration that a good portion of Toyota’s line suffered which led to a world-wide recall ( I don’t remember any Toyota’s being recalled in Nigeria).
On a final note, let’s not get carried away by the success of the day, else you risk loosing it to harder, more committed and ever dynamic competitors. The winner here by any milestone is clearly the Skoda, even demonstrated by its Superb name.

Want more power????

Man’s quest for power ultimately sent Him out of the Garden of Eden, when he sought knowledge what he actually sought was power. The race for power is ever evident in the auto industry as with most manufacturers that have products in same groups tend to out-do each other with almost every model they release. BMW’s M3 and Audi’s RS4 are typically good examples.
The power war between the car giants is worse than what ensued between OBJ and Atiku in the last dispensation. These brilliant car manufacturers have arrived at the pinnacle of this battle by various means; vehicular weight reduction, improved aero dynamics and advances in engine design with stuffs like direct injection. But one common denominator that is ever present in almost every car that chooses to go berserk on its power numbers is that the engine is always charged up.
If you remember clearly the very 1st memories you’d have of a sports car is the Toyota Supra. It was fast right? The Supra employed one of two available means of charging up an engine, it used the Turbocharger. The other alternative more commonly in use is the Supercharger. Both are basically the same thing just differentiated in the means of achieving their aim.
Basically both turbo and Superchargers are compressors that compress air that is fed to the engine. The advantage of compressing the air is that it lets the engine stuff more air into a cylinder. More air means that more fuel can be stuffed in, too, so you get more power from each explosion in each cylinder. A turbo/supercharged engine produces more power overall than the same engine without the charging.¬

Single scroll Turbocharger

Superchager
The key difference is that the Turbocharger uses waste exhaust gases to drive its turbine while the Supercharger uses a regular belt or chain and pulley system like your alternator or water pump. Turbochargers are actually cheaper to fix and for an engine not producing any boost power increases the efficiency of the engine by atomizing all of the fuel (ensuring no fuel leaves the system un-burnt). The downside is that the power band on the turbo chargers tends to be in the higher rev range of the engine. Meaning that if you need instant power from stand-still, you might not get it; a feeling often described as Turbo Lag. Superchargers have a more linear power curve but actually are more expensive and use up a considerable amount of the engines power. The Super charger on the McLaren Mercedes SLR actually uses up to 126Hp!!!! That’s more than a Corolla puts out.
Engine power is increased by either of these chargers. Sadly fuel consumption also increases, but this is more than a welcome sacrifice for the increased power?

I don't get it!!!!!!

Searching for a worthy replacement for Slama has been a very daunting task. 20 years ago in Nigeria if you had to buy 2 similar cars that were only differentiated by their transmission(manual and Auto) the Manuals were always more expensive because no one wanted a Slush box.Today the story is very different.
Every available web site I’ve been to reflected this new trend. No 1 wants a manual anymore. Almost every car model in the market has an option of Automatic on sale and in a few brands like the Camry; the Auto-box is standard, relegating the manual transmission to an option. One of the rarest manuals you can find is the 99-2001 camry that has a manual transmission.
Thus making that old famous economic principle of Demand and Supply affecting price, markedly true; it is so bad that you can almost not find any Toyota product with Automatic transmission for 300k. If you wanted a manual you’d get, (NICELY). I predicted then that we’d all 1 day buy automatics but I didn’t understand that Nigerians are probably the largest collection of people on earth with the band wagon effect. What pains me most is that I thought people were buying Auto’s because they’d come to understand that this was the right choice (in Lagos we live in traffic, for the working man, we spend close to 4 hours every workday on the road. That’s 17% of our active time!!!! What good is a manual transmission here?) But I just realized that 20 years ago everyone was buying a manual so a new car owner would buy 1. Take the pure water example, there was a time in this country every Tom- dick and harry was into the business. You want another, take web design. There was a time this really horrible car was so popular; the Opel Omega. I was in the university at the time and it was so popular in Oyo state that when the state Government of Lam Adesina was doing some kind of Bonanza for its workers, the car of choice was the Opel Omega.
Let’s leave my examples of cars and go to entertainment, do you remember the time that everything you saw on Nigerian Tv was some kind of Reality show or the other? How did it all start? Some very smart guys brought the apprentice show to Nigeria and whooommm every one Jumped on-board the Reality Tv craze. The problem of Piracy of Nigerian artistes started in a similar way. My secondary school was next door neighbors to traders in Alaba Int’l. A few people left the TV/ video sale business because the market had become overcrowded and decided to go into sales of CD’s. They started off with foreign artistes and today we all know the rest. Big Bros Jiggaman is probably lounging somewhere in the Bahamas while the likes of Raskie watch in Hunger( Really no1 pirates Raskies work, who’d buy it?).
You want a hit in this country, start, pioneer or better still rebrand or repackage a new thing!!!!!!!!

Toyota's Bug

3 years ago when I was shopping for a car, I was what you could call a Nigerian-German. Let me clarify a few things. I knew that the name Mercedes Benz was coined out of Carl Benz’s name and the daughter of a prominent sponsor of Gotlieb Daimler before I was 7 years old. My Dad was a practicing Auto Mechanic. He had a regular 9-5 Job in an oil company (Conoil), but Serviced and repaired his car himself. We took a great liking to Cars at a very early age. And 1ce it was time to buy mine, it was definitely going to be a German Car. I couldn’t afford a 3 series, so I settled for the next best thing. A Golf!!!! The Golf provides a fair balance of Power, reliability, durability, simplicity and it definitely has a Fun factor to it. For me, Performance comes before anything (well I thought so).
Change they say is the only constant thing in Life, within this time I’ve gotten married and strangely I now realize that reliability in a car seems to be a more important factor than performance. The Golf is a really great car (its Volkswagen’s largest volume seller) and I’ve not for 1 bit regretted buying it, but something happened that has set me on a slippery slope. I discovered early in the day that Slama (my Golf) is scared of water like a Dog is. At the slightest site of it, she passes out. This has been made worse now by the constant rains we’ve been experiencing on the Island. Like a Navigation system I plot my movement, keeping clear of places that tend to have drainage issues. This even affected my choice to settle in Ajah over Gbagada!!!!!!
I’ve slid up to the point that I am considering the route that Jigga took, getting a Toyota to replace Slama. 3 years ago, such a thought I would consider to be sacrilege. But I’ve done a bit of research on Toyota’s in Nigeria and discovered that they hold more than 80% of its value after 3 years. i.e you buy a tiny light Camry for 1 million and after 3 years, if you use it well you can still find someone to buy it for 800,000. That’s insane!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

07/07/2010

On 07/07/2007 i walked from the Redemption camp to Berger Bustop a distance of Over 50Km's. I had 2 reasons to complete that journey 1, Man-Mekus was throwing a Binge-drinking Party and My colleague was walking the Journey with me. Had i turned around and gone home i'd have been the Laughing stock in my office. James(my colleague) was Skinny, i was Big-bonned( a natural bias was already in place). He's Dad was a Police man and you can be sure some of the Drilling he got at home worked for Him, through the 50Km walk James never looked like he was going to break down. I on the other hand stopped countless number of times,Cursing the people responsible for the traffic on a supposed Expressway. The trafic was out of this world. The reason for it, is better left for another day. Three years after that Horrid day i had a terrifying reminder of just what happens when over 15 million people travel solely on the Road, It rained Elephants and Lions on the 07/07/2010 in VI which got me thinking there's got to be an alternative to us all driving?

The Terrafugia Flying Car
What you see in the video is absolutely real!!!! its called the The Terrafugia flying car. Here are the Stats: The two-seater vehicle uses its front-wheel drive on roads at ordinary highway speeds. But once it arrives at an adequate take off spot, it can extend its wings, take off and glide through the sky at 115 mph.The vehicle can go 460 miles and carry 450 pounds, but requires a runway that is at least a third of a mile long. It fits into a standard-sized garage. This Flying car was created by MIT Engineers!!!! Getting around in Lagos in 1 of these things will be a beauty. From Epe, to Badagry in no time. Nigeria, we're almost 50... we gotta sit up?????

Mileage

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about a possible replacement for Slama and as such I’ve had to go through quite a number of web sites that sell cars in Nigeria and 1 thing I’ve taken away is that Nigerians place emphasis on just how much accessorized the car is; i.e how much its “pimped up” tends to affect the way they negotiate pricing over the actual under the bonnet condition of the car.
Abroad where most used cars come from, Mileage plays a key role in pricing. Mileage in this case is simply the distance which the car has covered in its life span in Miles. The more the Mileage, the lower the price (irrespective of how many DVD screens it has). Out here it seems not to matter?
Very few cars are known to keep all of their components going beyond 250,000 miles (250K miles). A lot of cars sold in this country especially the ones originating from the American continent that are closer to being 10years and above are already over the 100k mileage. Most lie in the 150k mile range. Analysis shows that 3-5% of cars under their 1st 10 years have their mileage adjusted. Most people buy used cars in Nigeria with pricing around the 1 million naira mark (mostly from salary advances). That will get you a car of around 10 years. At an average of 10k miles per annum you’re going to get a car around a 100k miles (most, already have their mileage adjusted and it’s easy to see why. There’s so much self help tool on the internet that teaches you how to adjust your mileage yourself).

A 76,000+ mile car
So if in effect you buy a car with around 150k miles, take a loan of 1 million to pay over 4 years, drive an average of 10k miles a year, you should after 4yrs have pushed your car to the 200k mile mark? So after paying for four years, the vehicle is now in a not very reliable condition. Thanks especially to the not too good roads in Lagos.
So what’s the Sense in all of it, after paying back the Banks loan, you now have a car that’s no good? It’s simple. If you must buy a Toks, buy one that will be good to you after the bank has taken its pound of flesh from you. My advice, buy a damn brand NEW CAR!!!!!!!

Direct injection

Fuel injected engines received a similar kind of discrimination that automatic transmission cars got back in the days. Buying a car equipped with a carburetor was the way to go. My perception of fuel injected cars changed when I, my brother and my Dad worked on getting “Lord Lugard’s” carburetor engine replaced with a fuel injected engine. (Lord Lugard was what we called my Dad’s 5 series). Yeah, it was an un-popular move and other than the fact that my family is not known to go with the flow, we were well aware of the benefits of petrol injection over the use of a carburetor. Instantly noticeable was an improvement in fuel economy. Early morning start ups were now easier than ever.
A petrol engine burns a mixture of petrol and air, this mixture is via a carburetor or an injector. The basic difference between a carburetor and fuel injection is that fuel injection atomizes the fuel by forcibly pumping it through a small nozzle under high pressure, while carburation relies on low pressure created by intake air rushing through it to add the fuel through the intake manifolds.

Fuel injection
Fuel and air mixture rush in to the engine through the inlet valves(blue)
Direct injection takes the advantages of fuel injection further. It injects fuel directly into the combustion chamber of each cylinder as against having the fuel and air mixture rush into the chamber through the intake manifolds. What this simply does is that it takes fuel efficiency and power up while lowering emissions. Power delivery is more linear and the engine runs smoother.

Direct Injection
Injector squirts fuel directly into the engine as air rushes in
While you order your next car, do try to get 1 with direct injection. It works for both sides: the petrol heads get more power and the green people can sleep better at night because they know they’ve done their bit to save the planet.

Whiplash

I was 10 at the time when I told my BFF that one day all Cars will come in Automatic transmission. It seemed crazy at the time. Three years after that my Dad bought his 1st automatic transmission. It was a Mercedes Benz 200 (4 cylinder, 3 speed auto box. The list of options that weren’t included were ABS, A/C, power windows, Central Lock, Power steering was however standard). This was a 1976 model car and current lineup of Japanese cars still can’t match the kind of feedback you get from the Merc. Colored in Banana like yellow it had the ride height of a Rav 4. It basically swam through water.
Most memorable was the transmission shift gate PRNDSL. No fancy Manu-matic shift option that you can find in almost all modern Auto boxes. Shift through Reverse, Neutral unto drive from a standstill, Dump the accelerator pedal to the floor, watch the Speedo rise all the way to 40Km/H and brace yourself for the worst kind of Whiplash( you can feel a minor kind in a manual when you shift through gears hard). It’s that forward and backward motion that throws your head and neck backwards and forwards.
Whiplash gets more pronounced in an autobox as the car gets older. On my Dad’s Benz, it got so bad you could feel it even when the car downshifts to 1st gear. Prevention: make sure you service your gearbox at regular intervals (oil and filter change). On a happy note Whiplash is much reduced in modern Autoboxes. On a sad note, Slama (my Car) has begun showing signs of Whiplash. I guess its time to start saying Bye-bye.

20 Year Cycle

On Tuesday on my way to work in lekki traffic, on the other lane I was passed twice by 2 Brilliance Bs4 cars. That in itself is not such an event, but just further down the Road was a ‘Tear Rubber’ Honda CRV which had broken down by the Side of the Road. Only then did I actually start thinking.

Brilliance BS4
As kids, I remember that when my Dad was short of Cash and wanted to change his Car at the time, the only viable option (as far as we were concerned) was a Peugeot GL, getting a Mercedes Benz 200 was the target or a BMW 5 series would’ve been just fine, but a Japanese Car was totally out of it, it was dimmed “Cheap”. Such was the discrimination for Japanese Cars 20 years ago, they were reliable, but people just didn’t like them. They were the Whipping boys of the Major Car manufacturers. Considering a Korean Car was nothing short of heresy at the time, i remeber a friend saying that the Daewoo Racer was not safe because it was made of plastic.
Today we know that Toyota, (a Japanese Car) is the number 1 car manufacturer in the World. And 20years down the line, the Koreans have done better at gearing up their image than the Japanese did. It’s a dream come true if you can afford to buy a Korean “Brand New” car today!!!!! Hyundai has the Genesis which Targets the likes of the 5 Series and the E class (imagine that!!!!!).
The sighting of the Brilliance Bs4 car, made me recognize the 20 year cycle. Now let me ask, how many Brilliance Bs4 cars have you seen on the Road? Quite a few I assume your response will be. Now, how many have you seen broken down by the side of the road? None I’m sure you’ll say. The reason you haven’t seen any broken down isn’t because they’re so few, it’s because of the quality engineering that goes into it. Let me add here, that the Bs4 is actually Chinese!!!!!! Brilliance Auto partners with the Bavarian Boys, BMW to make the BS4. At its launch a few years back, the BS4 actually failed the Euro NCAP crash test. At the time I ranted and abused the Chinese for trying to make cars instead of sticking to making noodles that they’re known for until I found out recently that the Ford F150( the Fastest Selling Vehicle in the World) is not mandated to undergo crash tests because it’s a truck!!!!

Ford F150
So what if the BS4 fails the Euro NCAP tests? To heck with the crash ratings, even more outstanding is the fact that India now makes cars. If you remember 20 years ago, what was the name on the Okada your neighbor had? It was likely going to be Honda. Today, we don’t have Honda bikes in this country. What you’ll find as you board the next Okada will likely be a Lifan, Jincheng or the new one Bajaj plastered so proudly on the tank. These are all Chinese and Indian.
Its pretty much the same thing in the Generator scene, you cannot find an original Honda anymore, it’s all Jin Ling (as the case with mine and my brothers) or some Xing Xang Xu Name.
The 1 question I ask is if it has taken about 20 years for “this revolution” when will Nigeria start with hers???