Linux Tips and Tricks

Now, even though it might seem simple, there are qute a few factors to look for when considering buying a car. Now, let’s go through the basic ones:

Does the car have the features you want it to? Some of the features could be:

• Electric front/rear windows
• Electric mirrors
• Heated front/rear windscreen
• CD Player
• Air Con
• Front fog lights
• GPS
• Fuel economy counter (MPG counter)

Simple, right? Well the next thing also isn’t that bad. COnsider the car type you want. Small MPV, 4 seater, saloon, etc. List the car types you want to consider. Check the size of boot and width/lenght of car as well. Now, look at different models of the cars you are considering. Well, here the math starts.

You will want to consider the following: BHP (horse power), torque (a better indication of the acceleration you can get), economy (MPG). Let me give you some good insights on this.

• Economy:
  So, on sites like autotrader, you will see MPG. But what is a good MPG? Obviously, the higher the better (MPG=miles per gallon of fuel). But what is *good* MPG? Ok, a gallon is about 4.5 litres of fuel. A typical fuel tank is about 60 litres. I litre of fuel is about £1. So, do this: MPG / 4.5 * 60. Let’s look at Citroen Xsara Picasso 2.0 HDi. It says that it’s got around 60 MPG on extra urban (btw, extra urban means motorways, urban means city and mixed is mixed.). In this case 60 / 4.5 * 60 = 800. So on a full fuel tank, which cost us £60 we can go up to 800 miles on motorways. Now that is extremely good. My Ford Mondeo 1.8i Zetec Petrol used to do around 500 on extra urban, which is 37.5MPG. It was … well, acceptable. Anyhing below that is quite low already on fuel consumption. Oh, for reference, by *acceptable* ford used to do 26.25MPG on urban (350 miles per fuel tank). Which was *OK*. Now you know what’s economy
• Speed/acceleration:
  As far as you want economy, it doesn’t go well with your car power in most of the cases. But what’s BHP (horse power)? What does it give me? What the hell is torque? What’s the bloody difference? Let’s see. For a start, try to understand this:
  BHP = Torque * RPM / 5252.
  It means that horse power is calculated by taking torque, multiplying it by engine RPM that is the acceptable high and dividing by 5252 (which is used to make BHP look human readable. It would be awkward to talk about BHPs of 59042 lol)
  So, ok, we know how BHP is calculated fron torque. But what does it REALLY mean and what impact does it have on my speed and acceleration?
  Imagine the engine. The cylinder is pushed up by fuel explosion, new fuel is injected, cylinder goes down and fuel explodes again, pushing it up. RPM means how many explosions you will get a minutes (rounds per minute). Tourque means how strong are the explosions, how strongly they are pushing the cylinder up. Now if you imagine it, the stronger the explosion the harder the cylinder is pushed up, the faster it will go around before another explosion, which will make it speed up even more! What does it mean? The higher the torque, the better acceleration you will get on each gear as the engine cylinders will speed up faster due to stronger explosions. So we know what torque does for us. But what does RPM and BHP got to do with it? Well, if the torque is hugh and rpm is high we can actually accelerate a lot before we change gear. It means that we can get more out of our gears before we change. It also means that the cylinders are moving faster before we change gear, ie more fuel injections, ie more fuel burnt. BHP is the indicator or how much horse power you got, ie how much overall power you get when using up all the strong explosions in the engine at the highest possible revs you can get. So which one is more important? For me – it’s torque. There is a saying: “bhp sells cars, torque wins races”. Well, it’s not exactly true as you need to have high torque and make good use of gearing. In case of petrol vs diesel in a practical example: a diesel car with torque of 200 at max RPM of 3000 will speed up LOADS faster then a petrol car which will need to rev up to 6000RPM at 100 torque power. In the diesel car however you loose a lot of power on gearing (you need to change gears more often, right, you go only half way the RPM). BHP will show how much alltogether it will get if you take torque and RPM into consideration. For me, the max speed of  the car is already specified in the summary of autotrader. The 0-60MPH is already specified. The only other thing I am interested in is how fast I can accelerate on a gear should I need to – when I press my foot down. And torque is the answer to that. the higher, the better acceleration on each gear. In this case I will leave BHP out of equasion, as it’s value doesn’t do much for me (unless I want to race from 0 to 60MPH, which involves gearing and will have impact then on my rating – I don’t race. I just need fast acceleration on any gear should I need it to quickly gain speed for any reason). Hope this helps clear things a bit with those, although there is a lot more to it, this is the basics. Always think of the basic equasion I gave you for calculating BHP and then try to imagine gearing, explosions and RPM when trying to think of an answer to other questions you might have on this subject. You might be able to answer thm yourself with a bit of imagination.
• Tax band and Insurance group
  Tax band = How much tax you pay. A=almost nothing, F=quite a lot
  Insurance group = how much will you be forced to pay for insurance. 1 – almost nothing; 20 – I hope you are very rich. Consider it. Check if insurance online quotes to get a picture of how much you will pay.

That’s about all I can think of right now. Hope it helps. Let me know if you can think of something else in the comments section below and I’ll add it.