Top Car maintenance apps for your smartphone

Top Car maintenance apps for your smartphone

Road Trip (iOS) is probably one of the best mileage and maintenance tracking apps for iOS available. Tracking fill-ups and mileage is super-fast, as is adding maintenance history, expenses, and reminders for future work. The app has a tire log to track summer and winter wear on your tires, and supports other vehicles like boats and motorcycles. You can track as many vehicles as you like, too. The lite version gives you a taste, but the full version will set you back $5 for the iPhone or the iPad (it's not a universal app, so you'll have to buy it twice for both platforms.)

Car Maintenance Reminder (Android) is a free app that will keep track of your fuel efficiency, cost, and mileage, but also gives you a place to track all of the maintenance and repairs you have done to your vehicle. You can add notes, costs, and of course, get notifications and reminders when you should get some work done. The free version tracks one vehicle. If you have more than one, the $3 pro version is for you.

AutoCare (iOS/Android): AutoCare has been around for a while, and does a pretty good job of tracking your vehicle's maintenance history, mileage, repair history, service expenses, and more. You can even use it to remind you when it's time to get something specific done so you won't forget. Plus, it supports multiple vehicles. It'll set you back $4 for iOS users, and $2 for Android users.

Car Minder Plus (iOS) is another good, simple app for tracking your mileage and your vehicle maintenance. You get presets for things like oil filters, air filters, belt inspections, and oil changes, and you can enter in your own maintenance work and expenses to the log to keep track of what you've had done. From there, enter in your service intervals, and the app uses simple red/yellow/green indicators to tell you when it's time to get that work done. The app will cost you $3.

aCar (Android) is free, and one of the most popular Android apps for tracking vehicle maintenance and mileage. Tracking fill-ups and mileage is quick, entering in your maintenance history and expenses is easy, and you can even enter specific notes or information about parts you prefer or that your vehicle requires. The app notifies you based on time and/or mileage when you should have work done, and supports custom notifications. aCar Pro adds in multiple languages, home screen widgets for quick access to data and logging, and connections to other popular car apps and websites, all for $6.

Courtesy of Lifehacker.com.

Pet Travel Tips for the Car

Here are some tips to keep your pet safe on your next road trip

Start healthy – Make sure your pet is not sick before traveling.  A checkup at the vet can prevent any discomfort on the road.

Plan for restraint – Use a travel crate, pet seat belt, car seat, or other form of barrier to keep your pet safe.  Make sure you familiarize them with the restraint before traveling so that they are comfortable.

Pack enough essentials – Especially food.  Their particular brand of food might not be available or sold at your destination.  Don’t forget water bowls, bedding, leashes, and their favorite toys.

Frequent stops – Don’t go too long between giving your pet exercise and bathroom breaks.  This is also a good time to make sure they stay hydrated.

Top 5 Tips for Driving in Rain

April showers are here, check out these quick tips on how to get to your destination safely.

1) Allow for more travel time - You should drive at a slower pace when roads are wet.

2) Brake earlier - and with less force.  This gives the drivers behind you enough time to slow down.

3) Don't use cruise control - This may cause you to accelerate if you're hydroplaning.

4)  Don't cross running water - The force of the water can be greater than the weight of your vehicle.

5) Keep your headlights on  - but don't use your high beams, those will obscure your view.

Embarrassing driving moments that will make you facepalm (We know you're guilty of #5!)

Nobody's perfect, right?  We all make mistakes, but sometimes those little imperfections can become downright embarrassing!  Here's a list of uh-ohs that have probably happened to all of us at some point.

#1. Leaving your turn signal on. We're talkin' miles after you've made that turn.

#2. Cutting someone off in traffic by accident.  No matter how apologetic your courtesy wave, it will not help you here.

#3. Not realizing the light has turned green!  Don't worry, though. The collective roar of cursing drivers and screaming car horns should rouse you from that daydream pretty quickly.

#4. Messing up while parallel parking.  Repeatedly.  You swear, you do it perfectly every time when there's nobody else in the car!

#5. Getting caught singing, dancing, digging for gold... Avoid the shame and keep these, er, personal habits at home.

How many of these cringe-worthy driving faux pas are YOU guilty of?  Join the conversation on our Twitter and Facebook pages!

All Fuels Are Not Created Equal

Do you still buy the cheapest gas you can find? Ever worry it might mess up your engine? Maybe you should, if you drive a newer, direct-injected car, as the hostile environment these high-precision multi-orifice injectors operate under makes them vulnerable to the performance-robbing deposits cheap gas can leave. 

According to consulting engineer Jerry Horn at Chevron, these deposits are formed from a series of compounds, among them olefins and di-olefins with double-bonds that break down, forming gummy deposits that can alter airflow around intake valves or fuel flow out of injectors. Jim Macias, fuels technology manager at Shell, adds that these carbonaceous deposits start out as one of the 300 compounds in gasoline, then polymerize on hot surfaces. There's no single component to target, which complicates preventing or cleaning them. 

Back in the 1990s, as Tier I emissions regs were phased in, the deposits -- created by fuel impurities -- began causing problems for the emissions gear that manufacturers had to guarantee for 100,000 miles. So the EPA established a minimum fuel-additive performance standard in 1995, but the standard was below what some suppliers were then offering, so many reduced their fuel detergency, making matters worse for the subsequent Tier II standards of 2004. After unsuccessfully lobbying for higher standards, a group of automakers (Audi, BMW, GM, Honda, Mercedes, Toyota, and Volkswagen ) consulted with fuel suppliers to establish a higher voluntary standard, marketed as "Top Tier Detergent Gasoline." 

Top Tier is a performance standard, establishing tests and minimum acceptable results for intake-valve and combustion-chamber deposits, fuel-injector fouling, and intake-valve sticking. It also requires that all fuel grades marketed by the brand meet the standard (not just the premium grade, for example). Additive manufacturers pay for the testing, fuel suppliers pay an annual fee to participate, and compliance testing is conducted by third-party labs. Over and above the three basic tests to certify Top Tier fuels, the major fuel suppliers conduct additional testing. Jerry Horn explains that Chevron is "trying to cover more of the on-road vehicle population with additional engine and vehicle dynamometer tests, and then also we do tests with a cab company in SoCal to test fuels under relatively severe service conditions." A revision to the current EPA and CARB test regimens is also expected in the future, perhaps to include testing of direct-injection, but certainly to change the standardized test engines.

So how do Top Tier fuels like Chevron and Texaco with Techron, Shell's Nitrogen-Enriched, and BP's Invigorate work? Each employs top-secret organic chemistry (Chevron admits theirs involves a polyether amine. Others often employ polybutene amines, if that helps), but by and large the molecules include a "hydrocarbon tail" (that keeps the detergent soluble in fuel) attached to a head that includes a functional group containing nitrogen. When enough of these nitrogens attach to a deposit, it comes off. Then the nitrogens can attach to the clean surface and prevent new deposits from forming. The fresh challenge with DI is designing functional heads that don't lose their cool at temperatures of 4000 degrees F or higher. Chevron and Shell both claim that running a few tanks of fuel can remove the deposits left by miles of use of minimum-standard fuels. 

National gas prices are still well below historic highs, but as for fuel-system cleaning products, Macias cautions "the aftermarket treatments tend to be high-concentrations of these additives. Some of that material can get into the crankcase and the effects are not entirely known. It is a big dose of materials, and we are not sure if it could cause damage to the catalytic converter. The only way to ensure that a vehicle maintains peak performance is to use top-quality fuel consistently." Horn states this about these concentrated aftermarket additives "You can wash [deposits] off, but they'll come back, and any deposits can impact air-fuel mixture and combustion, emissions, drivability, fuel economy, etc."  

If you love your car like you love your pet, feed it the good stuff, at least every other tank or so.

Source: http://blogs.motortrend.com/1403_all_fuels_are_not_created_equal_technologue.html

Best road trip songs of all time!

Driving on long road trips doesn't have to be boring. Music can be quite the element that turns a regular drive into an epic memory that you will never forget. For this reason, we have decided to compile the best driving songs of all-time. We understand music is very, subjective, so please do not hesitate to chime in and tell us what you prefer! 

Those are motivating, fun, upbeat and will keep you going for hours!



1. "Sweet Escape" - Gwen Stefani
2. "Highway to Hell" - AC/DC
3. "Don't stop me now" - Queen
4. "Road Tripping" - Red Hot Chili Peppers
5. "Hurricane" - Bob Dylan

Car Graveyard in Bastnas, Sweden

Deep within a Swedish forest lie 1,000 forgotten cars from the 1950s. The rusting vehicles are all that remains of a scrap yard set up in the wake of the Second World War. Back then it was the final destination for cars abandoned by American soldiers leaving Europe after the war. Two forest-dwelling Swedish brothers ran the scrap yard until the 1980s before they abandoned the site in the 1990s, leaving the forest undergrowth to claim the cars. Today, rusting classic cars including vintage Opels, Fords, Volvos, Buicks, Audis, Saabs and a Sunbeam litter the natural undergrowth.

Photographer Svein Nordrum ventured into the dense woods to snap some pictures of the abandoned vehicles. He said: "It is very quiet in there. It is a strange feeling when you’re there, as if you’re on the edge of the world... The forest is very dense. You can only see a couple of cars at any one time - the rest disappear into the woods. The cars are now a part of nature in a way. The trees grow all over and through the cars, with branches sneaking through windows and over the bonnets."

 
The 1,000 corroded vehicles are collectively worth an estimated £100,000 in scrap. However, efforts to remove the cars from the forest have been thwarted. Nordrum said "Some people in Sweden want to remove the cars, but environmentalists keep stopping them. Apparently birds and other animals have made nests in the bodywork."

The car graveyard is in the mining country of Bastnas, a town in southern Sweden. Hikers have discovered trees growing around bodywork and moss covering seats and steering wheels.