An Unsettling and Disturbing Guide to Handling, Modifying and Enjoying Your Car...

Get a Life - the rant starts here. (Skip if you must!)

Hey, let me state it upfront... you wouldn't be reading this if you don't like owning and driving cars, and that's great in my book! However, as with everything in this life, you aren't the only one on this planet and everyone else deserves respect as well. You have a responsibility to drive with due care, to exercise caution where appropriate and to let others live as they wish. Heavy stuff, but true enough!

What I'm saying is, sure, have your fun, but look out for those around you. In extremis, your laxity and ignorance could take your life, your passengers' and others as well. More prosaically, a noisy exhaust or screeching tyres at 3am in a residential area doesn't help to raise the esteem of the car-mad fraternity amongst the general populace. Nor does inappropriate speeding (like when you have other non-speeding cars around, or intersecting roads, or driveways, or pedestrians, or wildlife...yep, just about everywhere).

In fact, simply buying and driving a car means consuming some of the world's resources, something that continues for the life of the automobile in question. So think about the size of the steel and plastic capsule you are buying and the overall impact of your purchase. Do you need to consume that much energy and material? Really?

There, I've said it. It's a personal thing. Now relax as I ramble through more of the philosophy and science that I think you should know. It's not complete, but it has helped me. And I like to share ;-)

Let's look at where you are right now. You talk the talk. You risk life and limb on the roads, hooning around. You have the car, the licence, the need for speed. (Good name for a software title, don'tcha think?) You've warmed your steed up a little, so that it burbles and purrs. You drive it around with gusto and think that you know it all. Like just about everyone else on the public roads! So why should you be any different? If you are lucky, you have small accidents.

But you do take it a bit further than most of the drivers out there, those unenlightened souls who think only of cars on a practical, useful, appliance-level. So you buy all those car mags and know every little detail about the latest sports cars from Japan, Italy, wherever. Maybe you have watched some motor racing and thought, "Hey, I could do that". Yeah, sure. If you get some money together, or a loan, you too could have a 206kW road rocket under your right foot. I think you will have seen a few such weapons driving at 6/10ths, looking under-used. What you could do with a car like that!

Kill yourself, maybe. Or someone else. Wreck the car. Wreck a life or two. Break some laws. Pay fines. Go to gaol (or 'jail', for the US-aligned spellers amongst us). Am I getting too negative? Just move along and skip this part, it's a free country (depending on where you are!).

So I guess I'm saying one or maybe two things here. Like learn to drive properly, as in attending an advanced and/or racing drivers' school; and test yourself on a real race circuit by joining a car club and competing in relative safety. Motor sport isn't safe, nothing truly is, but at least the risks are apparent and everyone knows why they are there (hopefully).

On the race track 99% of you will instantly find that your skills are deficient when taken to, or close to, the limit. You will realise also that you hadn't thought everything through - the physics especially - after all. I recommend taking these steps towards self improvement, but you may not see the necessity. Perhaps you are right, you only drive at 6/10ths and never get caught out by the unexpected. Yeah, sure ;-)

So, whether you take it seriously and get that driving training or not, you may still want to improve your driving and your car. Which brings me to the real guts of this page, namely the how-tos of car setup, as I see them. (Remember, this is a personal view only.) Most people want a good-handling fast car but few people can explain the hows and whys of 'good' or 'handling'. God help me as I attempt just that feat! (I think most people agree fairly well on 'fast', but maybe not.) Along the way I give lots of personal anecdotes, but bear with me, I mean well.

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Copyright 2005 Robert K. Russell; updated September 26, 2005. Many of the images on this site are for sale, including at higher resolutions more suitable for printing. They may be purchased and downloaded from my shopfront.

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Published on: 2006-07-22 (2122 reads)