Cars of Technology

Remember when everyone tried to get us to buy those stupid compact fluorescent lights? Before that we had those really dumb incandescent bulbs that only used about 10 percent of the electricity for creating light. Those old incandes cent bulbs did a much better job at providing heat than they did at providing light. Today it’s all about Light Emitting Diodes or what we call LED lights. Kevin Doughty, who works in product development for Home Depot, points out “ LED light fixtures are digital products, much like our cell phones and TVs.  As performance improves, costs come down.   We are now at a point where the quality and reliability of LED fixtures are at or exceeding the performance of traditional light sources. Additionally, you can make up for the upfront investment in less than a year – especially as many LEDs solutions are nearing the same initial cost of fluorescents.” The Temperature of Light We measure light temperature in Kelvins. If you want the inside of your shop...

A fuel filter can actually filter too much.   You can filter so many particles out of your fuel that the filter clogs almost immediately.   If the filter allows too many particles to pass into your fuel delivery system you end up with clogged jets and injector nozzles. You need to find that special spot between too much and too little. Boeing found that a large number of fuel contamination problems can be traced back to the actual fueling process itself. This is probably the case with cars as well. In other words you can start with clean fuel but once you start putting this fuel into your car you introduce a significant amount of particulates. Anytime you transfer fuel from one container to another you introduce contamination. One source of contaminants that you may not have considered is the fuel tank vent line. As the fuel tank is drawn down ambient air is drawn into the  tank through  this vent line. Remember we’re talking about particles that are only three or f...

           Are You Insured? Really?   You buy insurance because you think something bad is going to happen to your car. It could be a fire. It could be an accident. It might even be that someone likes your car so much they steal it. Your insurance policy is designed to protect you against financial loss should any of this happen.             The insurance company is betting that none of the above will happen to your car. They only make money if everything goes very well with your car. They’ve created some very sophisticated mathematical models that allow them to predict the chances of something bad happening to you car. The insurance company is making a very sophisticated bet that your car is going to be just fine.             The whole principle behind the insurance industry is to sell you something you may never use. Insurance companies make ...