Basic car survival skills

The basics of a car (I use this word instead of always typing the long and complex alternative vehicles) is that they have (or are supposed to have) four wheels, an engine (or motor if it's electric), and a body. NOTE: Engine and Motor are usually used to refer to the specific part in general, basically engines are sometimes referred to as motors and vise versa.

If they have an engine then they use some sort of fuel, suck as; Gasoline, Diesel, or (recently)Ethanol E85. If they have a motor they will run on electricity.

There are many kinds of tire/wheel combinations, for performance I prefer kumohs, for off-roading Firestones do the job well, and for everyday driving I turn to Goodyear. (Does anybody smell burning rubber?)

As for body there are two kinds; chassis and Unibody. Chassis is a more rigid structure. Unibody is lighter and costs less, it is formed by simply by connecting flaps of metal to the underside of the vehicle and bolting the parts onto these flaps. Not many cars (or SUVs for that matter) use chassis anymore, it is usually restricted to truck and select SUVs. However the Honda Ridgeline
and the Dodge Rampage concept are exceptions to this rule both being light duty trucks or "grocery getters" and using unibody consruction. These two ideas are based on the (crazy) thought that no one uses trucks anymore for carry heavy loads.

There are different types, or classes, of vehicles too. There's compact/midsized trucks, fullsize trucks, and heavy duty trucks. In the SUV (or Sport Utility Vehicle) corner there's compact, midsize, and full size. With cars there's midsize, compact, sub-compact, fullsize, luxury, sport, muscle, touring, wagon, hatchback, (It's late so I'm sure I left one or two out.) Then there's a new breed of vehicle called crossover. This is a convenient combination of two types of vehicles, for example the Chevrolet Uplander is a crossover between a van and a SUV. It has the styling and ground clearance of a SUV, along with the interior volume, and convenient, however sometimes painful, sliding doors of a van. As well the Ford Edge which is a car/SUV crossover. You see? There's more to a car then meets the eye.

Well I'm gone to get a mug of coffee.

See you at the next discussion!


2007 Ford Edge


JZP