Roadside Assistance

There are a whole bunch of awesome businesses ready and waiting to come to our aid when we experience a breakdown while on our way from A to B.  As we draw closer to the holiday season, having the backup of a roadside assistance team in our travel plans is a jolly good idea.  According to some of the latest stats from Australia’s NRMA (National Roads and Motorists’ Association Limited), even a brand-spanking new car can still have a breakdown.

A few years ago, I was doing a lot of travelling between office sites and, in the space of 6–12 months, I had had a spate of three-or-so callouts.  Two were for the alternators giving out, and I forget what the other was for – possibly a dud battery.  I also remember a time when I was barely out of my teens, that I had locked the keys in the car, and a very skilful bloke came and unlocked the car within seconds.

The NRMA is one of those roadside assistance teams that are ready to come to the rescue.  New cars are great when they work fine, and most do for most of the time.  NRMA recently stated that car technology is improving, and now there’s even cars that drive themselves, but still these cars have the potential to break down. Over the last year, the number of call outs that the NRMA have had for new cars aged between 0–3 years old has risen by 43% compared to the previous year.  Over the entire year there were 103,262 new cars in Australia that needed the NRMA breakdown assistance service.

In a 2017 NRMA survey, cars that were between 11–20 years old had the highest number of breakdowns, followed closely by cars aged 4–10 years old.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, the car’s batteries were at the heart of most of those breakdowns.  During that year, 25% of the callouts were for dud batteries.

Across the ditch in NZ, the AA found out that, in relatively recent years, their number one callout for road assistance was also for a flat or faulty battery.  Batteries can go flat for various reasons but most commonly they are faulty because the car has been unused for a while, or only used for short journeys.  Also, there may be a faulty component in the battery system or the car’s charging system (maybe the alternator has worn out).

The NRMA also came to the rescue of plenty of people who had locked themselves out of the car (5%).  It’s easier to lock your keys in the car than you think!  Number two for AA was for lost keys!

The third most common reason for AA to be called out was for damaged tyres and wheels.  The cause of a damaged or flat tyre is most often due to hitting a sharp object, but other reasons include the tyre’s valve failing, the tyre’s hitting a kerb or a deep pothole at speed, or even just old age.

AA found that AdBlue was the next main reason for their callouts.  Most modern diesel vehicles use a Selective Catalyst Reduction (SCR) method for lowering harmful nitrogen oxide emissions from exiting the exhaust system.  AdBlue (also called urea or Diesel Exhaust Fluid (DEF)) is an additive that helps with this process, and it requires to be kept topped up for the car to work properly.  The modern diesel engine won’t start if it runs out of this stuff, so it’s important to keep it topped up.

Number five for AA callouts was for the Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF).  Again, the DPF is a part of the exhaust system on vehicles with a diesel engine.  The DPF traps fine particles of soot and burns them off into a less-harmful gas.  Generally, long hot running keeps this filter clear, but it may get blocked up if you do lots of short journeys.  The car won’t run properly, and a warning light comes up on the screen if the DPF isn’t functioning as it should.

Engine oil issues accounted for AA’s next most common callout.  Having the wrong level of engine oil inside your car’s engine can damage it.  And that gets expensive!  Having too much oil can be just as risky as having too low a level of oil.  Make sure you do check your engine oil.  Even Toyota’s, as they start to cover moderate kms, can start to use a bit of oil between services.  Learn how to regularly check your engine oil using the dipstick.  Your vehicle’s handbook will give you a good guide for checking the level of oil in your engine, as well as a guide for adding the correct amount of oil for topping up your car’s engine.

Faults with the car’s alternator was the next biggest issue.  If you experience persistent battery problems and dim headlights when your car’s engine is idling, you could have a fault with your alternator.  If your ignition warning light comes on and the engine temperature rises quickly, the belt that drives the alternator and the water pump may have broken.  If this happens, then stop right away and get help!  If you don’t, the engine will quickly overheat and self-destruct itself costing lots of money in repairs or even a total engine replacement.

Starter motors fail as they age.  Although starter motors are usually tough and robust, they do fail eventually.

The ninth most common issue that required AA was for problems with the car’s fuel system.  Never start your engine if you’ve accidentally put the wrong fuel type in your car (diesel instead of petrol or vice versa).  Also, fuel filters can get clogged up causing rough engine performance.  The fuel filters also require servicing and even replacement for many cars.  But then if you don’t have any fuel in the tank, then the car won’t go either!

Tenth most common reason for a callout was for the car overheating.  In this case, there could be problems with the engine or with the engine’s cooling system.  If there’s steam coming from your engine or the temperature warning light is on, just pull over and stop.  A hot engine is a recipe for costly damage.

In light of all these things, it is wise to have a roadside assistance team there to back you up at any time of the day or night, whether it is the holiday period or just an everyday commute.  NRMA, RAC, and 24/7 Roadservices Australia are three roadside assistance teams that offer us a great service.  Of course, there are others as well.

Here are some quick tips if you have a breakdown while out on the road:

• Turn on your hazard lights as soon as you sense something’s wrong.
• Slow down and pull off to the side of the road.
• Stop in a safe place and put the parking brake on.
• Once you are safe, call your roadside assistance team.

Christmas Tree Pick-Up

Bringing the Christmas Tree Home

Christmas is sneaking up on us with just 20 days to go!  It got me thinking about the Christmas tree.  My son has struggled to find any decent wild pine in his area or any pine that he can pinch a branch off for his Christmas tree this year.  Instead, his go to for this year has been a glitzy artificial $12 tree from Kmart, not that great for the environment.  Yes, it looks pretty cool, flashes and changes colour, showing off the star on top nicely, but there is fun lost in this plastic answer to what is a quintessential feature of Christmas.  There is, however, fun to be had making the effort to go out and choose a real tree.  Yes, that tangible, fragrance, with real leaves, real bark, and real spiders.  This is the classic scent of Christmas that matches the delicious ham and turkey, custard and Christmas pudding, way better than any fake alternative.

All around the more populated areas of Australia there are numerous places that sell gorgeous live Christmas trees.  From Tomalong Christmas Tree Farm, in New South Wales; to Chrissy Trees 4 You, in Queensland; to Adelaide Hills Christmas Trees, in South Australia; to Sunbury Christmas Tree Farm, in Victoria; to Santa’s Shaped Christmas Tree, in ACT; to Christmas Trees of Wanneroo, in Western Australia; or to Richmond Christmas Tree Farm, in Tasmania – these are just some of the places you can visit for bringing that perfect look and smell of Christmas back home for Christmas.  Now is the time to head out and find that tree to decorate.  Most places will offer a delivery service, but you can also do a pick-up of your own.  Picking the tree up yourself is the most entertaining way of getting the tree and taking the kids/family/friends with you makes for an enjoyable and often humorous excursion.

This leads me to answering the question: how does one best bring a Christmas tree home?  I mean they can be up to 12 ft tall, fat, and even a bit cumbersome.  If you do have a trailer or a ute, then these vehicles are the best for an easy diy for Christmas tree collection.  Take a rope or a tie down to make sure the tree is properly secured for the homeward journey.

But what about if you don’t have trailer, a ute, or even a truck or van?  Well, the next best thing is to secure the tree to the roof of your car.  If your car comes equipped with the roof rack, then you’re good to go.  If you don’t have a roof rack, then you can pop a soft sheet over the roof of your car and position the tree on top before tying it down using tie downs.  The tie downs can be anchored by lowering the windows enough for you to fasten the ends of the tie down to the grab handles inside the car or even on the lip protruding from the top of the door – if there is one.  Just make sure that you are legal and that the tree doesn’t have too much of an overhang past the ends of our vehicle.

The other thing to keep in mind is that your field of vision can’t be blocked.  Placing the tree trunk end at the front end of the car and the top of the tree pointing rearwards ensures that, as you travel back home, the wind drags neatly over the tree without whipping against the branches, potentially damaging the tree and the perfect look.

Most everyday hatchbacks, sedans, and wagons are good for carrying up to 75 kg on the roof.  Others can carry more.  SUVs, vans, and dual cab utes can usually handle 100 kg.  However, do check your manufacturers recommendations before trying to put a heavyweight monster on your little Toyota Yaris.  You can shrink the tree by lopping a bit of the bottom off the tree without losing out too much on the perfect shape.

Another way you can transport your freshly cut Christmas tree back to the house is inside the cabin of your car.  If you’re not too prissy about the interior of your sedan or small hatch getting bits in it, and not too dismayed with a 6 ft tree rather than a 12 ft one, then sliding the tree through the front passenger door, over the lowered backrest, and through onto the rear seat is possible.  Of course, a station wagon or hatchback can swallow a tree through the boot space and over the lowered rear seats.  If it’s a sedan, then the top of the tree may need to poke out through the lowered front passenger window, particularly if it’s tall.  Obviously, the smaller the tree, the easier it is for you to get the Christmas tree inside your car to transport home.

With Christmas just around the corner, it’s time to start decorating, and the first thing to go up has to be the tree!

Some More Exciting Mazda News

If you are anything like me, then you’ll be driving along the highway spotting the cars coming the other way.  One of the snazzier brands out on the roads would have to be those from out of Mazda’s showrooms.  Mazda’s great variety of models all look great and boast some striking modern designs.  Even the new Mazda BT-50 ute, a very reliable workhorse, is looking pretty slick, and so too the family-oriented new Mazda 6 Sedans and Wagons.  Mazda also offers a wide range of brand new SUVs with sharp looking exteriors and endearing interiors that are well-equipped.  The small MX-30 is one of these SUVs, and it also has some cool new materials used inside the cabin – like the cork inlays that offset nicely against the premium leather trim.

Toyota, Mazda, Kia, and Hyundai sell the most cars in Australia; Toyota being out in front by a decent margin, with Mazda coming in at second place.  For quite some time, in Australia, Mazda has been a popular vehicle to buy.  Mazda’s 2022 sales of 43,687 are down 9% on this time last year, though Mazda retains its 2nd placing to Toyota’s 1^st place for overall sales.  Sales drops have occurred right across the market, thanks to the shortages of components and current logistical issues.  Mazda had sold 101,119 vehicles in 2021, quite a large portion of the whole pie, considering all the brands that are available to buy new in Australia.

So, what’s some hot off the press Mazda news?

You may have noticed a tidy looking compact SUV running our roads the past couple of years.  Mazda’s MX-30 is one of Mazda’s newer creations in recent times – gaining in popularity too.  The little Mazda MX-30 has been a key model for Mazda in that this has been Mazda’s model of choice for bringing new technologies, hybrid motoring, and EV motoring into their modern fleet of vehicles that will also lead them in a new direction for future motoring.

As the direction of future transport trends toward cleaner engines and lower emissions, Mazda launched a series of mild-hybrid powertrains.  We saw these first being used in the Mazda 3 and Mazda CX-30.  The Mazda MX-30 provided a mild-hybrid engine, but Mazda also made available their brand new pure-electric drivetrain available for the MX-30.  Designed purely for an emissions-free city commute, the Mazda MX-30 Electric uses its 107 kW to whistle up to 0-100 km/h in 9.7 seconds and up to a top speed of 140 km/h.  The driving range proves to be over 175 km, a handy dollop of motoring before recharging needs to happen.

Some other new Mazda technology which will be implemented will be that of a new small rotary engine as a supplementary power source.  With a NEDC (New European Driving Cycle) accredited range of 224 km, this will provide Mazda-buyers with another means of excellent low-emission city transportation.

Mazda’s approach to electrification is based on the customers’ demand for EVs, and the regional infrastructure available to support them.  Within 5 years, Mazda hope to introduce a new hybrid system alongside more battery-electric models in their line-up of new vehicles.  This is in response to the newer European emissions rules that come into effect.

Towards the end of this decade, Mazda’s entire line-up will offer fully electrified versions.  One model that has been talked about as being another exciting Mazda EV will be the little MX-5’s progression into EV powering.  Now that’s a tasty thought!

Old Features We’re Happy (Or Maybe Not) to Say Goodbye To

A topic we were talking about the other day was about how the features in the cars we drive today differ from the cars of yesteryear.  It was interesting discussing this subject because it made us more thankful for the newer vehicles that we can drive on the road.  I love classic cars, even cars that were built a couple of decades ago, still believing that there is a place for them on our roads – especially with one or two upgrades that can be carried out on a classic, thus making them fit for today’s purpose.  Here are just a few of the features that were raised:

Cigarette Lighters

A definite feature that we were happy to say goodbye to was the smelly old cigarette lighters, and their companion ash trays which inevitably broke or popped out of their position while travelling.  And what about the burn holes in the seat fabric, the stains, and the stale cigarette smoke smell that got into all the interior fabric of the car?  Saying goodbye to smoking inside cars is a feature that can stay dead and gone in my book.  Vaping isn’t that much healthier either as they add more and more chemicals to the vape.  Just thinking about the health issues that arise with inhaled cigarette smoke in a confined space – let alone for the person who does the lighting up – is enough for me to say “Good riddance”!

Manual Heating and Cooling System

Older cars had simpler manual switches and dials for heating up or cooling down the interior.  I have to say that these work pretty well when combined with a nicely positioned open window and howling fans.  That said, you could only cool the interior down to what temperature the air outside happened to be, so when the temperature soared to over 30°C, at best, this might be what you could cool the cabin down too.  However, old school heating systems still heated up a cold cabin very easily – on most cars anyway –when heat from the engine could be blasted neatly through to the occupants inside the cabin area.  Old systems are usually less expensive and easier to fix if they do go wrong – like when the fan unit wears out or the vents get blocked.  That said, a cold air conditioning system blowing sweet icy-cold air into a cabin on a sweltering hot day is exceptionally nice and hard to beat!

ABS and ESC

The laws of physics can’t be messed with.  Even a brand new car still has four wheels which can only grip onto the road as much as the pad of rubber that is in contact with the road will allow.  Yes, the fancy ABS and ESC systems are awesome and definitely help save lives, especially in the wet, yet once these systems fail what happens next?

Power steering

Love this one!

Tape deck/CD players

Tapes did have a habit of getting chewed up in the head unit, especially when the favourite songs were played over and over again!  I still like a good CD player.  CD players work really well up until the little laser wears out as or the CD gets far too scratched because it was left on the floor of the car for two months with people accidentally stomping on it, before being rediscovered on car cleaning day.

Alternative Power for Motoring

Electric vehicles, hydrogen-powered vehicles, bio-fuelled vehicles, solar-powered vehicles, and they all have their place on the roads.  The thing I like the most about them is that they lower poisonous emissions like carbon monoxide and nitrous oxides in a congested city environment.  We all like to breathe clean air.  Introduce them gradually, in a way that’s environmentally and ethically sustainable, and affordable for people to buy.  Batteries still need lots of resources to make them, and cars aren’t the only things consuming precious metal for all the electronics and battery sysems.  The tech for capturing harmful emissions from fossil fuels has also improved massively as well.  Classic cars aren’t that hard to convert over to electric, and this could be encouraged and be much less expensive to do, not to mention sustainable.

Safety Ratings

Car safety ratings have improved out of this world!  Thanks to the ongoing work and input of engineers and research, a modern day car is miles safer than an old one – especially if involved in a major accident.  I’m always going to be thankful for seatbelts, airbags, crumple zones, more safety cage rigidity, and crumple zones.  Buy a decent new car today, and it will come fully kitted out with all the latest active accident avoidance technology to keep you (the driver or passenger) safe as well as the other road user(s) around you at the time.

Book Maps

I still love a good paper map in booklet form.  There is something about navigating old school that appeals to the challenge and satisfaction of getting yourself A to B while map-reading.  There is more satisfaction gained by being involved rather than passively letting the GPS do all the work for you.

What have I missed?