How to save car fuel

In these days of credit crunch and high fuel prices, i thought you might like some advice on how to save petrol. I will outline some points below and why they are important. It is hard to give exact facts and figures so just do the things you can and don't worry about the things you can't.

1. Do not take the car out on lots of short journeys - walk or cycle if you can. When you brake, the heat generated in the brakes comes from the moving energy of your car which in turn came from the fuel. Lots of braking which is common in short journeys is very inefficient.


2. Do not leave the car ages to warm up on cold mornings. As long as you keep your revs low (< 2000), you are not saving the engine from any more wear and tear than if it is left idling in the cold. Let it run for perhaps a minute but any more is wasting fuel.


3. Avoid constant accelerating and braking. Again, braking heat is wasted fuel. If you are on an A road and there is traffic, speeding up to 65 or 70 in a gap will undoubtably require you to brake as you approach the next lump of traffic, try and even out your speed so you can keep it constant.


4. Do not use excessive accelerator pedal going up hills. You understandably use more fuel going up hill and you cannot get all of this back by rolling down the other side so keep your gas pedal steady and allow your vehicle to slow by 5 or 10mph going up a hill, it will not add significant time to your journey but watch your mpg stay up.


5. Keep your car in good condition and serviced regularly. You can lose over a third of your car's potential efficiency by using dirty oil and filters as well as fuel injection systems. Poorly tuned fuel systems can inject too much fuel for the amount of power the engine can actually produce.


6. Avoid excessive acceleration. As you accelerate, the fuel system is usually pouring loads of fuel into the engine and most of this during acceleration remains unburned and wasted. Accelerating at a reasonable level reduces the amount wasted.


7. Keep your top speed down on the motorway. The faster you go, the more wind drag your car has to counter and this all costs fuel. If you have an mpg meter, compare the fuel used at 60 to that at 70 and think what that might mean for 80 or 90mph.


8. Try and read the road ahead. If you only have 1/4 mile before a roundabout you gain little or no time and lose fuel by speeding up excessively only to brake again. Also, on many A roads, you will not be able to go far at 60mph before having to slow to turn off or to avoid hitting the slower guy in front. A little thought and you might not need to go right up to the speed limit.


9. Keep your revs below 2000 in normal mode but make sure they are high enough for the gradient you are driving. Trying to maintain speed on a hill at 1000rpm will probably use more fuel than selecting a lower gear and being closer to 2000rpm since if the car has little power at 1000rpm (which it often doesn't) you might be wasting fuel trying to generate the power you need for your speed.


10. Every now and then, take your car revs up nice and high to make sure the fuel system stays clean. Running constantly at low revs can cause the system to gunge up with no perssure to clean the gunge out again.

Why philosophy should be a mandatory subject

Philosophy for most people conjures images of either very clever or very boring people talking about riddles or extremely complex problems that most of us neither know or care about but it is so much more when taught properly. It is traditionally separated into 5 disciplines but the one I am most interested in is logic although there might be some crossover into ethics depending on the logic.

For instance, should we kill healthy people to harvest their organs for sick people? 1 Person could help save 5 or more people! Many people, I would expect, would simply be disgusted by the idea but why? If people thought about it and analysed it, something that philosophy teaches, we might not actually know why we would be disgusted by the idea. Why do people bully each other, why do people get wound up, are some people born to be stupid? All of these might be interesting questions for children to debate at school and it might help them to avoid unhelpful situations.

The reason I was reminded of philosophy and why its application is important is looking at the wind power debate (realistically wind power vs nuclear power). I expect strong views on either side. 'Green' people find the idea of dirty fuel like uranium to be outrageous, nuclear people think that wind power is unworkable. The problem I have is that logic seems to be put to one side so people can have an argument based on their ethics rather than the practical reality of life. Some systems can go ahead without 100% certaintly, knowing that we can iron out difficulties on the way. For instance, we might think that a power station that needs to supply 5Gw on paper can only actually output 4.9Gw which leads to a shortfall but which in reality will probably never happen and by which time we can either improce the efficiency of the station or add another generator etc. Some systems, however, pass or fail on just one problem. If the UK wants 10% of its electricity from wind power then that 10% needs to be available all the time. Even 1 or 2 minutes of outage, although not a problem on paper (99.9% sounds good), the reality is that power cuts would have to be applied or the voltage would drop since people at work are not going to switch off their computers when a drop in the wind is detected. Some research guy at the Met centre recently said that during the winter, it is known that the wind can lull for sometimes a few days across most of Europe and that is now a BIG problem at a time when people are using the most energy. No-one will export to us because they will need their own power then.

I then wonder how much better our government decisions would be if philosophy was taught as a mandatory subject at school.

Going to church is a pain?

We were talking once at church about which services people attend and why. Some of the obvious things were parents with young children go to the morning services 1) because they are up early and 2) because there are activities organised for them. Others said they went to the 5pm service because lots of the other young people went there so they could catch up with each other. Some people however were of the opinion that they went to the first service in the morning so that the rest of the day was theirs. This is understandable. People do not want to go to a morning and evening service which basically uses up their whole Sunday when they have worked all week or otherwise go to a 5pm service that means they don't get a whole day to do something, especially if they want a lie-in the morning.

I then thought however that this state of mind was slightly disturbing. Church was seen as a burden rather than a blessing, something to try and fit in with our 'normal' life, something that didn't get us excited and therefore pushed to the top of our priority list but something to be tolerated, to prove how good a Christian we are. This is most sad. The early church seemed to be full of meaning, power, love, practical service to each other. I guess the root problem is that for most people and most churches, this is no longer the case.

Personally I think this is a 2-sided problem. On the one hand, many leaders in many churches are either not spritual enough to even know how God wants them to run their churches or otherwise spiritual people are still bound by traditions and order and control and programmes rather than being spirit led and fluid in their approach. When was the last time your church broke with its usual format? The other side however is that it is hard to be like that when the members of the church are not supporting the ministries of the church. While people are simply sitting through services and not being part of youth work, or womans work, or mens work, or prayer ministry or healing minstry etc, the leadership can only do so much.

The solution in my own opinion is simple yet costly. Leadership have to remove the scaffolding or saefty net from the way the church is run and they need to insist on members being involved in ministries. There can be no excuse. I can't see any way for somebody to be a Christian or church member and not be involved in at least one minstry even if it is only practical rather than spiritual. From the members point of view, we all need to insist on being involved, even if the leadership are not very good at delegating, we need to insist on our God given right and expectation to be part of the body of Christ and not, as in some cases, just an annoying rash getting in the way of the leadership. I don't think it can be enacted from just one side and that is why communication is required. if people don't like it, they can leave - hopefully they will find somewhere else they like - but the people who remain will be something useful and powerful in the Kingdom of God.

Music Vid

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=uhqeGyYXuJ0

My good buddy and singer songwriter Jeff Martinez. We miss you dude.