We love our cars. They are like part of the family. We want our cars to look as beautiful as possible, because it means a lot to us. And this is why we spend time and money to invest in car accessories – those jazzy spoilers, those gleaming lights, those sexy ultra low profile tyres, those massive rims and what not, all in the effort to decorate our dear car and set it stand apart every time we park it in the parking lot at the grocery, or just stand by at the traffic light at the crossing.
It makes us feel like a King, because it’s our car and nobody can beat that. And this urge to buy car accessories peaks when we buy a new car. Because we don’t want to be ordinary, we all want to be extraordinary.
However, useful and rocking that the car accessories may be, at times some of the car accessories do more damage than good. And then it is not only the looks that matter, things often run deeper than that. Some car accessories may be all that powerful and strong like we want it to be, but fall a little negative on the impacts it has on the car.
So we don’t want to spend on ‘harmful’ car accessories, after all our car is part of our family. Below you will find a short indicative list of car accessories that you can give a miss the next time you are smitten by that urge to buy car accessories and give a boost to your car’s self esteem and your own in the process.
A lot of us find those massive, roomy rims on our car tyres to be extremely attractive. However, sometimes, some of us tend to go a little over the rim in choosing and buying these rims. Most cars have a standard rim size of 15 inches. Well, in that case going an inch over it and settling for sweet 16 inch rims should be satisfactory. But we don’t generally settle for satisfactory, do we? Sporty people find bigger to be better and go over the board, ending up buying something that is 203 inches over the standard manufacturing dimensions. Having 17 to 18 inch tyre rims makes the overall diameter of your tyre go even larger and your car is not built to work with it. There just wouldn’t be enough room for the huge tyres now. This means each time you hit a bump, the tyres rub against the wells, both against the liners as well as walls, thus damaging not only the tyres but also the wells, which eventually would translate into untimely breakdowns and additional expenditures that could easily be avoided. So roomier rims fans, sorry to disappoint, but if you really love your car, you need to give this one a miss.
We see racing car drivers like Patrick Dempsey drive cars with extremely low profile tyres on the racing tracks all the time. And we all want such cars, we all want that race. We often behave as if we are doing just that. Tyre manufacturers know this secret and make these ultra low profile tyres for normal cars that normal people like us drive, not to say that racing car drivers are not normal people. But little do we realize that the roads and the conditions and the cars we drive in are not meant for racing car driving. The low profile tyres have rigid side walls and barely any pliancy because that’s what racing requires, that is not what normal driving requires. For normal driving, it makes it really hard to drive, while also increasing the pressure on the car’s suspension, leading to premature and extreme wear and tear of the car suspension parts.
Again a gift from the world of racing, spoilers are meant to provide cornering grip and are fitted at the back of the car to create a down force at high speeds, similar to as described in the popular gaming app Hill Climb Racing for its bright red racing car. However, normal consumer cars are designed in a way that they have a sufficient down force at all the speeds it is designed to be capable of being driven at. It does not need spoilers at all. The spoilers available in the market for consumer cars are just placebos, they are fake. They do not provide any down force. They just drag with the car, thus bringing down your fuel economy. With the fuel prices going up, you might want to reconsider buying the spoiler you have been contemplating for some time now.
When you are driving a car, it is cutting through the air. This creates friction. Now the air needs to be directed over and below and on the sides of the car appropriately to help with the reduction of friction, with the steering and turning and cooling. The cars are thus shaped in a way that this can be achieved. However, in the racing circumstances, air dams are required to channelize the air properly around the body of the car and also to direct it to the radiator and brakes as well as the intakes to optimize the performance and get a good drag coefficient. But normal consumers do not have any of this to worry about, because our car manufacturers have been thoughtful enough and have included everything you need in the car itself. But we consider ourselves wiser and go buy air dams and body kits for our cars. We end up suffocating our car, hampering the suspension and make our car’s wheels’ lives very difficult by making it hard for them to even turn. This is wrong. Air dams and body kits need to be avoided at all costs.
We love cars, and we also love car movies. Is there anybody at all who does not dig for the Fast & Furious series or the Need for Speed or Death Race? Hardly any. So we get so inspired out of our love for movies, that we come home and mask out half of our car’s headlights to get that Need for Speed appearance. However, did you know that doing that is actually illegal? It is also life threatening as it alters the patterns of illumination and lighting when you are on the road, thus it may end up misguiding not only you but your fellow drivers in the same as well as in the opposite direction from you. And then we also love colours, after all, who likes living in a monochrome world? These days, the white lights are becoming very popular, replacing the standard issue bright yellow head lamps. But did you know the coloured lights cannot penetrate foggy conditions and will be of no help during the rains. They will also blind the fellow drivers on the road, thus increasing the chances of you as well as others meeting with an accident while driving. There is a reason why throughout the ages the car manufacturers have stuck to the standard yellow headlamps, which is because they work. So stick to it. Not everything useful has to be fancy.
Image Courtesy: Rowan Harrison
This entry was posted in: Car Tips
Tagged: anorexic tyres, avoid blinding coloured lights, avoid car accessories, avoid roomier rims, car spoiling spoilers
