Cars of Technology

            We all have anxieties watching the children go off to summer camp. I’m sure you have very similar anxieties about sending your car down the road in some stranger’s truck. Will they take good care of them? What happens if there’s an accident? I’m talking about your cars here. Not your children. Oh, your cars are your children. Sorry about that.             Before you put your car into that big long box you need to do a lot of homework. The good thing is that every one of these companies leaves a paper trail: A paper trail that is required by the federal government. This means that you can find out a lot about these shippers long before you put your car in their box. Does the shipper actually own a truck? If you’re selecting a transport company on line you might only be dealing with a broker. If you use Google most of the auto shippers that come up on the screen will be a broker. T...

What’s an Aluminum Flywheel Do for Me? Richard Newton       I just love my aluminum flywheel. The problem is I can’t really document what it does for me. OK – it lowers my lap times and that’s a really big deal. I’m a numbers sort of guy. If you can’t show me numbers then I can’t believe it.       Everyone who runs road courses loves their aluminum flywheel just as much as I  do. It just changes the car totally. Hell, I’m starting to sound like on of those puff pieces that the magazines write for the advertisers. Sorry about that. .       It all started when I broke the white beast. OK – it probably just wore out. The white monster (also known as an ’85 Corvette coupe) now has over 130,000 miles. Corvettes do wear out – I guess. All of a sudden my '85 no longer had an Overdrive. Every time I would shift to OD I got a whole lot of rpms and no movement.  My 4+3 had suddenly become a 4+0. This was something I couldn't ignore....

If you’ve priced helmets lately you know the price range is tremendous. Approved helmets seem to start around $200 and then proceed to over $8,000. I recently talked to a vendor who said their average customer spends around $2,000 for a new helmet. The HANS device adds another $800. We’re getting into serious money here. What am I actually getting if I spend thousands of dollars? Do I really need to spend that much?             You might worry that a lower priced helmet doesn’t have the same level of safety as some of the more expensive brands. Actually all the value priced helmets pass the same Snell standards as do the more expensive helmets. Both the Snell and FIA tests are pass/fail and the results are not made public. This means that a lower priced helmet can be considered just as safe as any other helmet. All certified helmets have to pass the same certification process so unless you write a huge check for an independent...