Car Care

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To maintain your car so it can serve you well for a long time to come, it really pays to heed the following advice from Goodyear:

Care for tyres

If you keep your ears peeled to tyre talk and handling, you are bound to come across the word “camber”. In case you are wondering, camber is the tilt of the top a  wheel inward (towards the vehicle) or outward (away from the vehicle).

Camber is usually adjusted where the tyre is mounted onto the suspension, and it plays a big role in the way your car handles and the wear it goes through.

Too much inward tilt or negative camber can result in accelerated wear on the inside edge of the tyre, while too much outward tilt or positive camber causes accelerated wear on the outside edge of the tyre.

Ideally your car’s camber setting should have all tyre treads planted as flat against the road as possible under all driving conditions.

It is best to set your tyre’s camber settings to the car manufacturer’s default setting as it provides the best combination of tyre grip, handling and tyre longevity.

Most tyre specialists with proper equipment would be able to find any off-camber settings and easily set it right. 

Questions and Answers

Q: I drive a 1.6 Waja and have installed ngv with a gas tank volume of 77 litres. I am wondering whether my tyre pressure is correct. The recommended tyre pressure for the 195/55R15 by the manufacturer is 210kPa for front and 190kPa for back. With my huge tank, I wondering what is the correct type pressure.

A: It is not size of the tank but the weight of the contents. The tank is made of the glass and is very light and compressed ngv cannot weigh more than the petrol  it replaces. So in other words, do not worry. You are still within the weight limit for the car.   

Q: I just bought a second hand 2005 Nissan Frontier which has already clocked 153,000 km. Recently I found a 76 premium synthetic diesel engine oil which liquid titanium, 5L at RM128. Can I use that oil?

A: If the engine has not been using synthetic oil for all its life, using it now 153,000km on the clock is not going to make the engine go any better. I would use mono grade SAE 40 or 50 diesel spec oil rather than the synthetic.

Car bursting into flames

A car bursting into flames in an accident cannot simply be blamed on RON 95 fuel.

One of the reasons why this seems to be prevalent nowadays is probably due to the fact that with fuel injection system, the fuel in the fuel lines is at a much higher pressure and when a fuel line bursts during an accident, fuel would be spraying in the engine compartment until the ignition is turned off or there is no electricity to the feed pump.

In the days of carburettors, the fuel pressure to the carburettor was in the region of only 4 to 7 psi and most cars used mechanical pumps, Therefore when an engine stopped due to an accident there was no fuel flow and so less chance of a fire.