Belt-Tightening For Beginners: How To Cut Motoring Costs

In the wake of the Budget, we can do our own budgeting and save money on motoring. Attending to everything from your car tyres to the way you drive can save your hard-earned cash and help you avoid a deficit of your own.

1: Check Tyres Pressures

Air is no longer free at many forecourts but checking your tyre pressures frequently can save you much more than the few pence it might cost. For a start, running car tyres at too low a pressure increases their rolling resistance. This makes the engine work harder to push the car along so fuel consumption suffers. Underinflated tyres wear out faster too.

Correct tyre pressures improve a car’s handling, road holding and braking. These checks can cut your fuel bill by 10 percent and increase your car tyres’ useful life.

A major upside of checking tyre pressures in that you can look over your car tyres at the same time. Being caught with unroadworthy tyres can attract a fine of 2,50 pounds.

2: Research Insurance Needs

The recession has increased competition in most industries. Car tyres have become cheaper but insurance premiums have become highly competitive. Shop around for the best deal and make sure you’re paying only for the insurance you need.

3: Don’t be a Drag

Correctly inflated car tyres won’t be too helpful if your car is being held back aerodynamically. Trundling around town with the windows open may be enjoyable but open windows equal aerodynamic drag. The same goes for a roof rack, which can impose a surprisingly high amount of drag, even if unloaded. So, remove the rack when it’s empty. Also, tidy out your car. Carrying anything you don’t need costs fuel.

Air-conditioning also saps power; switching it off unless you actually need it saves fuel. That said, aircon is a more efficient cooling medium than open windows at above town speeds. It’s a question of balance.

4: No Short Trips

Cars run inefficiently when cold. Even the most efficient can return single fuel consumption figures for a surprisingly long time when cold. So, try to use your car only when you know it will warm up fully. The same aspects apply when warming your car, particularly on cold mornings. Drive off as soon as you start the engine - a car engine running at tickover from cold uses a lot of fuel, warms more slowly and can suffer more wear. Here, the car tyres make no difference!

5: Plan Your Journey

Longer routes, stop-start driving, unnecessary mileage and diversions all have a negative effect on fuel consumption. Use the Internet, the radio, TV and your satnav to plan your journey. Avoid rush hour traffic jams, steer clear of roadworks or accidents, and try to use motorways wherever possible. Bear in mind that the shortest route may not be the most efficient; more miles under your tyres can work out cheaper in some cases.

6: Observe Speed Limits

Speed limits have always been in place for public safety, even if many have also become a political issue. Remember that travelling at 60 mph costs less than travelling at 80 mph and wears tyres less. Equally, remember that fines and points on your licence also increase insurance premiums. Moreover, you generally can’t argue with a speed camera or police radar gun.

7: Drive Carefully

With a few exceptions modern cars are powerful enough to be lively but burning your car tyres’ rubber on a regular basis, though fun, can be expensive. Fifth gear can give 20 percent better fuel economy than third can, provided you don’t select it too early. Tyre-shrieking starts and lurid cornering are best left to your imagination - and they wear your car tyres out faster.

Merityre are a leading UK independent supplier of car tyres. Why not visit their website at www.merityre.co.uk and see where you can buy your next set of tyres.

Car Tyre Physics: How Car Tyres Behave Under Pressure

Car tyres obviously play a huge part in letting cars take corners. Few people consider how they do this in a scientific way but knowing about the forces at work is both interesting and educational. Why? Because understanding what’s involved and the terminology that applies can help your driving.

In road tests - particularly in track tests - cars are referred to as having understeer or its opposite characteristic, oversteer. These terms are directly related to car tyres, but what do they mean? The short, smart answer is simple: understeer means you’ll see what you’re going to hit, oversteer means you won’t. The less drastic explanation refers to the behaviour of car tyres when great demands are being on them. An understeering car’s driver will feel the need to apply more steering input to make the car go round the corner. An oversteering car’s driver will have to apply less steering input to successfully negotiate the corner. In drastic oversteer, he’d have to add counter steering, or opposite lock. Most cars understeer, for safety’s sake.

What is the science behind understeer and oversteer? Once again, it’s about car tyres; specifically, it’s about their slip angles. What are slip angles? Something that is easily understood when they’re explained to you.

Every car tyre has a contact patch, the area of its tread that’s in contact with the road surface. Imagine the tyres of a car that’s taking a corner. Each tyre will be following a path in the direction the driver is steering. Each contact patch will be following a path but it won’t be the same path the tyre’s carcass is following. This is because the tyre’s carcass deforms in response to the forces acting on it - the lateral force imposed by the weight of the car, and any forces of braking or accelerating. So, the tread in the contact patch follows a tighter curve than that the wheel/tyre combination is following. The tyre tread’s ability to deform locally also has a bearing on the slip angle. The slip angle is the difference between the two paths.

What, then, do slip angles do? In fact, they add grip, up to a point. Slip angles increase with increasing forces, speed included. As they increase, grip improves, until the car tyres begin to lose grip.

When car tyres begin to lose grip, one of three conditions results. When the slip angles of the front and rear tyres are the same, neutral steering occurs. If a car has 50/50 weight distribution and if its front and rear tyres offer identical levels of grip, it will have neutral handling. At the limits of grip, a four-wheel drift will occur; competition cars aim for these characteristics. A car in a four-wheel drift is cornering as fast as it can, nearly at the point of sliding off the track.

Should the car tyres at the front have a larger slip angle than the rear tyres have, understeer will result. As well as being more controllable, understeer can be used to scrub away excess speed on a racetrack. After the ultimate limit of grip, an understeering car will leave the track while going forwards; it can’t corner tightly enough.

What happens if the rear tyres’ slip angles are the greater? Under these circumstances, the grip of the rear tyres will be less than that of the front. The car’s tail will slide towards the outside of the corner. In extremis, the car will spin.

In practice, many aspects affect understeer and oversteer. These include which wheels drive the car forward (front, rear or all, four), the weight of the car and how it’s distributed, whether the car is accelerating, cruising or braking, and the speed and loads involved. However, this explanation gives an insight into your car tyres’ dynamic performance.

Merityre are a leading UK independent supplier of car tyres. Why not visit their website at www.merityre.co.uk and see where you can buy your next set of tyres.