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 GARAGE SLOBS VERSUS GARAGE GURUS
31 March 2000
The garage of today's typical homeowner is a lot different that the dirt-floor sheds that housed the Model T Ford of the early 20th century, reports a new consumer survey from The Valvoline Company.
Valvoline's Ultimate Garage Survey found that many garages serve as home workshops, storage facilities and even party palaces. Based on the survey, Valvoline has categorized men who own garages in four distinct groups:
* Garage Gurus, who keep their garage organized and use it frequently as a place to work on vehicles and hobbies.
* Garage Domestics, who use the garage mainly as a storage facility and a place to work on household projects.
* Garage Slobs, who describe their garage as an unorganized "catch all" for trash, junk and household items that seem to have no other place.
* Garage Valets, who use the garage for little more than a place to park their automobiles.
While there are some similarities between the four typologies of garage owners identified through the survey, the groups have distinct differences in how they use and maintain their garages and their overall attitudes toward the garage.
* Garage Gurus (34 percent)
-- Make full use of their garage; keep it well-organized and walking through their garage is like walking through a supermarket, with lots of neatly organized items.
* Garage Valets (27 percent)
-- Most likely to agree that the garage is nothing more than a place to park their automobile.
* Garage Domestics (21 percent)
-- Tend to use the garage more as a place to store furniture, clothing and seasonal items.
-- Use the garage to repair household items.
* Garage Slobs (18 percent)
-- Describe their garage as an obstacle course with lots of objects and little or no order.
Other survey findings include:
-- From a list of possible items to be included in an "ideal" garage, nearly half (46 percent) selected a large set of new tools, followed by a big screen television (12 percent),
double-wide refrigerator stocked with beer (10 percent), a riding lawn mower (7 percent) or a juke box with a deluxe sound system (5 percent).
-- Nearly one-third of respondents (30 percent) would rather have Cindy Crawford help change their oil than Heather Locklear (19 percent), Pamela Lee (14 percent), Tyra Banks (9 percent) or Carmen Electra (7 percent).
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VALVOLINE OFFERS GARAGE SAFETY TIPS
31 March 2000
Garage safety on your mind?
Research suggests it might not be, says The Valvoline Company. But according to a recent survey, Valvoline says homeowners who store all kinds of things in their garages-from automotive car care products to paint thinner and fertilizer-could be living with a safety hazard.
Citing research from the Center for Disease Control, Valvoline says homeowners should consider the following tips to be sure they're taking necessary safety precautions to avoid serious injury and fire hazards in their garages.
* Fire
-- To minimize the danger of fire and explosion, store flammable liquids in metal containers that meet UL safety standards. Look for the UL mark on the container. Never use glass containers.
-- Do not re-fuel lawn mowers or other motor equipment inside the garage. Fueling should take place outside to prevent possible accumulation of fumes within the garage.
-- Inspect electrical wiring to be sure it is in proper condition. Wiring in the garage is often exposed to the elements and subjected to wear.
* Poisons
-- Store toxic material such as antifreeze and paint thinner out of children's reach and in secure, preferably locked storage areas.
-- Always store chemicals in their original containers with labels and instructions for use clearly visible.
-- Be sure all toxic containers have child-resistant caps.
* Falls
-- Garden and lawn tools should be stored so they can't slide or fall and present a tripping hazard.
-- If you notice oil slicks where you park your car, cover them with a piece of carpeting or cardboard.
-- If you have a loft area in your garage, be sure it is not accessible to small children.
* Cuts
-- Store sharp tools such as axes, knives and saws so that the blades are not exposed.
-- Disconnect the spark plugs from gas-powered equipment such as lawn mowers to avoid accidental starting by small children.
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 COLD WEATHER TESTING GETS RED HOT RESULTS
2 March 2000
KAPUSKASING, Ontario At -40C, weird things happen to cars:
Tires freeze up, becoming glass hard.
And grease, it freezes, too. So when you drive away your tires won't rotate at all. If you don't notice that the tires aren't turning, then two blocks later the rubber will have worn off the bottom of at least one tire and you're stuck with a flat.
Leather seats, at -40C, become hard as rocks (unless you have seat heaters).
Plastic body parts crack, and sometimes even explode if pushed or kicked.
Power steering fluid can become frozen, as thick as glue, which can lock the steering.
Knobs can break off of radios. Windows snap out and break. Window channels can simply pop out because the materials have frozen and the glue no longer holds.
And, of course, there are those familiar cold-weather starting problems. All of which explain why more and more manufacturers now do extensive cold weather testing in Canada. Ford Motor Co. has a cold weather testing site in Thompson, Manitoba and Toyota Motor Corp. just opened a facility in Timmins, Ontario, last November.
But the granddaddy of all cold weather test centres is right here in Kapuskasing, Ont., 840 kilometres (520 miles) northwest of Toronto. It belongs to GM of Canada and it's managed by GM engineer Garry Whorpole.
"Nothing beats hot weather and cold weather extremes," says Whorpole. "If a car is going to falter, it's going to be in very cold weather or very hot weather. So here, we're testing the extremes, hoping to learn something to prevent something from happening over five or six years in a more regular environment."
There certainly isn't anything regular about Kapuskasing weather. The daily mean temperature for January is
-23C. From December to the first of March, the mercury creeps above freezing for only an average of seven days. It's not unusual for the temperature to hover at
-40C for weeks on end. And the record low, recorded in January, 1935, is
-47C. Without factoring in the wind chill. Of which there is plenty on most winter days.
But 34-year-old Al Dixon doesn't mind. He's lived his whole life in Kapuskasing, a Cree name meaning "bend in the river," and every winter he's one of 100 or so seasonal workers involved in testing vehicles at GM's Cold Weather Development Centre. His job: among other things, cold start, with several other workers, dozens of vehicles each morning. Sometimes he and the rest of his crew change 160 batteries a day. Then they take those vehicles out onto a test track and abuse them, trying to squeeze out driveability problems.
"It's a great job," says Dixon. "The best thing is that over the years we see the things we log in these log books get fixed. So we feel like we're really doing something."
The two main activities at the centre involve cold weather starts and related testing for some 200 vehicles each year, and cold weather durability tests for an additional 60 or more vehicles.
In the latter, technicians and drivers not only record data from on-board computers, but also log the results of their vehicle abuse. That is, the testers try to replicate two years of typical usage in a test period of about 10 weeks. So they run the vehicles through 11 different test loops, stopping and starting, and frequently slamming doors and hoods, cranking up fans, turning down mirrors...cycling anything and everything that moves and operates. And, of course, they also run tests on snow? and
ice-covered obstacle courses.
"Our winters up in Kap. are such that 99 per cent of North American vehicles will not experience a winter as severe as here," says Whorpole. "So if you can survive Kap., basically you can survive anything anywhere."
That's by design. GM of Canada first began serious and extensive winter testing in 1968, but 30 years ago it was all a pretty makeshift affair. A handful of engineers tried
cold-weather starts in the parking lot of the Kapuskasing Inn, recording their data with the instruments in a large van that had previously been used to develop hot rod automobiles.
Soon, though, then-GM of Canada engineering director Dick McLaughlin, nephew of GM Canada founder Sam McLaughlin, recognized the value of a permanent cold weather facility. He assigned a young engineer named Gerry Malloy the task of doing the research to justify the expense, and then to make the business case to senior GM management.
"At the time there were a lot of small groups within the company off doing testing of their own," says Malloy today. "They may have gotten what they needed, but we felt that by putting everything together there were some real economies of scale and some real opportunities for real learning."
They chose Kapuskasing not just for its extreme weather, but also because it is relatively near GM
Canada's Oshawa headquarters and the parent corporation's head office in Detroit. They also needed a place accessible by air, highway and at the time by rail. And they needed a place that could accommodate an influx of dozens of engineers each year. That meant hotels and restaurants.
Kapuskasing, a town of 9,500 with a pulp mill as its major employer, was perfect.
While GM's Cold Weather Centre became official in 1971, construction of the extensive facilities began in the summer of '72 and the official opening came in February '73. Today, the permanent facility covers 159 acres and includes a 1.9 km. oval test track and a variety of buildings that include 19 vehicle work stalls, offices, a data acquisition centre, eight cold cells (giant refrigerators for testing vehicles in completely controlled environments), work yards and even fuel dispensing stations.
GM's testers spend their days and nights assessing cold cranking, cold starting, driveability, heater performance, front and rear defroster performance, tires, brakes batteries and various components, and the abilities and capabilities of advanced braking, traction and stability control systems.
Malloy, who left GM in the mid?'70s to start his own cold weather engineering research company, says that over the years the biggest revelation for engineers involved the extent of what cold weather does to all the body components.
"The rubber seals, the materials, even the kick panels underneath the instrument panel. They're all affected. You might happen to kick one of those panels with your boot and it would fracture with the cold. It becomes that brittle."
The facility has also had a hand in dramatically improving battery performance, in the development of
multi-grade oils for winter use, in improving heater performance, and in ensuring that electronic components and systems work in extreme weather. Of course, there is also the essential work related to making sure your car starts when it's
-30C.
"When it was -30C back then (in 1971)," says Malloy, "if you could get a car started in 30 seconds it was more than a competitive product. Today, if the temperature is down to
-35 or -40, it will probably start in five seconds. And if it doesn't, it probably won't start at all."
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 NIBBLY
ANATOMY OF A COLD-WEATHER START
2 March
2000
The secret to a cold weather start is found in a combination of three things:
1) Getting the engine cranking fast enough so that once it starts to fire, it will pick up and run. Among other things, battery performance is critical. Particularly when batteries are only charged to 70 or 80 per cent of maximum.
2) Getting the right air-fuel mixture in the combustion chamber so that combustion happens. In the days of carburetors, this was a particular problem. But with the introduction of more precise fuel injection and
multi-port fuel injection, the air-fuel mixture can now be more precisely modulated.
3) Getting the spark in the combustion chamber at the right time and at the right intensity. Again, in the days of point and distributors, this was also tricky. But with today's electronic ignition systems, timing the spark and its intensity has become extraordinarily precise.
Advancements in all three areas have led to cold starts in under five seconds.
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NIBBLY
Engineer Gerry Malloy says that one of the more exhilarating winter tests was designed to find a solution to a problem called "snow packing."
"Some of the earlier vehicles didn't have much in terms of shrouding under the engine compartment, so if you were driving in six inches of snow for any period of time you'd get snow packed up around the engine.
"When you would stop and shut the engine down, the snow would melt and then freeze if the car sat for any period of time. Then later, when you'd start the engine and drive away, only to find that the steering gear frozen,
locked-up, and you'd have no steering."
To evaluate this condition and find a solution, the engineers looked for an unplowed logging road covered with six or eight inches of fresh snow. A van was then be fitted with a drag device of some sort, a chain perhaps, and it then took off at 80 km/h (50 mph) with the test vehicle right behind at about a car's length. This was intended to build up snow in the engine compartment.
"It's really exciting following that van at 50 miles an hour, because you can't see anything," says Malloy, chuckling. "All you could see were the plastic strobe lights of the lead vehicle. The driver (in the test vehicle) just sat there, mesmerized by the lights. If there was a turn in the road, you had to be real quick. We damaged a few cars that way."
But they did perfect a shrouding design to prevent snow pack build-up. And that development has probably saved some sheetmetal and not a few lives.
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 NIBBLY
COLD WEATHER DEVELOPMENT CENTRE HISTORY
2 March
2000
* GM first began cold weather work in Kapuskasing in 1941 testing military vehicles for the government.
* In the early '50s GM started conducting its own ad hoc cold weather testing, working from the parking lot of a local motel. This work later moved to rented space at the Spruce Motors garage, now the Eastview Pontiac Buick Dealership.
* In 1968, the first large-scale project was undertaken between GM of Canada and the Chevrolet Division to assess the effectiveness of the starter for the 350 V8 engine.
* this successful project led to the humble but earnest beginnings of routine, annual cold weather test and development programs in 1970.
* From 1970-73 GM of Canada rented additional space from Spruce Motors garage to conduct larger test programs.
* In 1973 the full scale and permanent cold weather test facility officially opened on a
23-acre site (later expanded to 159 acres).
* In its first winter season, the new facility was used by 140 people from 19 GM division to perform 1,392 tests on 70 vehicles.
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 TOP 12 THINGS TO DO WHEN STORING YOUR CAR FOR WINTER
2 March
2000
Some cars were never meant to be driven in the harsh cold of winter. You know which ones they are: vintage and collectible cars, sports car, convertibles and the like.
So, what do you need to do to tuck away your wheels safely until spring? Here are the top 12 steps for automobile winter storage:
1) Find indoor storage space: You're looking for a cool, dark and dry spot. If you don't have a garage handy, find a storage centre or perhaps rent some space in your neighbour's garage. Classified ads and the yellow pages of your phone book are good places to start your search.
As an alternative, a number of companies offer portable storage enclosures-car bags, portable garages and the like. Whichever you use, make sure you're able to seal your vehicle completely from the outside air. To help absorb the inevitable moisture that will be trapped in such housings, include some silica gel desiccant inside.
The key point to remember is that you want to shield your car from damaging sunlight, as well as any other airborne contaminants that might damage your car. Sunlight, in particular, will fade the paint and cause deterioration of the vinyl, leather and rubber parts.
2) Change the oil and filter: You want to store your car with fresh oil, not old mucky stuff full of corrosive acids and moisture (byproducts of combustion) that can attack your engine's internal components. Make sure you run the engine thoroughly to circulate the new oil.
3) Add a fuel stabilizer to the gas tank: That will keep the fuel from deteriorating. Remember, pump gasoline is a cocktail of chemicals that react with the atmosphere. Over time, stored fuel that is untreated can forming gum and varnish that can clog the fuel system. Typically, pump gas remains fresh for only about three months. The highly concentrated additives in the stabilizer should the system free of gunk for 12-18 months.
4) To fill or not to fill (the gas tank): If you're storing the car in an enclosed spot where escaping gas fumes could be a problem, store with only half a tank of gas and add the fuel stabilizer. In either case, make sure you run the car thoroughly to circulate the stabilizer locking up for winter.
5) Flush the brake fluid: And replace it with new fluid. You don't want old, brown, moisture-laden fluid sitting around for the winter. The moisture could cause corrosion, among other things.
6) Flush the cooling system: Or not, depending on whether you have an all-cast-iron engine or aluminum. If you've got iron, flush and replace with fresh fluid. With aluminum engines it's better to drain the coolant so it doesn't spend the next few months reacting with the aluminum, potentially leading to a form of corrosion.
7) Charge up the battery: Ideally you'll also take out that battery and place it on a trickle charger for the winter. Also, clean off the top with a cloth soaked in baking soda and water.
8) Give your drive belts some relief: If possible, slightly loosen the drive and/or accessory belts to take pressure from the pulley bearings.
9) Take a load off the tires: Place your car up on jackstands to prevent flat spots from forming on the tires and to take weight off the bearings and suspension. Remove the wheels and tires, let out a bit of air pressure and store them on their sides out of the sunlight. If you must store your car with the wheels and tires on, add about 15 pounds of pressure to prevent flat-spotting.
10) Seal 'er up: That means sealing the tailpipe and another other openings (don't leave the trunk open) so that mice and rodents don't make your car a winter home.
11) Wash and wax: Do the outside, of course, and also clean up inside, adding a protectant to vinyl, leather and rubber components. Make sure the interior is completely dry before sealing it up or you'll have mildew by spring.
12) Tell yourself what you did: List all the storage steps you took so that in the spring you know what needs to be done to get back on the road. Where'd you store the tires? Do you need to add coolant? Did you unplug the sealed exhaust? These are questions you'll need to answer and a list is the best place to start.
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