68 Clitheroe Advertiser & Times, Thursday, November 30lh, 2006


www.prestonsgroup.com


motorstoday.co.uk ~ B


“Today's batteries have to operate at several de­ grees below freezing on a number of mornings each year. Remember - a battery is only a chemical re­ action in a plastic box. At minus 5 degrees Centi­ grade, a battery has to work very hard indeed to persuade your car, van or truck starter motor to turn an engine that is encased in a cold, thick lubri­ cant.


which covers appropriate maintenance and safety check procedures, all aimed at keeping motorists and their vehicles moving over the winter period. Managing director Roger Pemberton, explains:


. ficiency rating against a new battery. 2. If it is recommended you buy a new battery do


year and preferably in the autumn. Go to your local battery specialist and ask him to check your battery capacity. A good specialist will do that with his fancy electronic tester and do it for free. The result of the test (often printed out) will give you an accurate ef-


not necessarily buy the cheapest. Everything is built to a price - batteries are no different! Buy a good


tery failure accounts for more roadside and drive­ way failures than anything else. Therefore, we have produced a simple checklist for motorists to adhere to, which is designed to keep them safe while driving overwinter. 1. Have your battery checked out at least once a


resppnse to the key start. They also have to cope with the extra loading of electric and electronic giz­ mos we don't seem to be able to do without, such as: central locking, power windows, electric hoods, tele­ phones. seat warmers, sat navs, dvd players, coffee makers, televisions and so on. “The motoring rescue organisations say that bat­


“Today’s batteries are built to deliver a powerful


Be sure to look after batteries motors @


MAKING TRACKS THIS WINTER ... A SEASONAL GUIDE FOR THE MOTORIST •


a t t e r y brand Numax is highlighting to motorists the need to look aftei; their car bat­ tery this winter or run of risk of being left stranded.


"^e company has produced a five-point checklist, MOTOR MATTERS


what a recent survey has revealed. The old female driver debate has provid­


ed easy fodder for generations of workman­ like stand-up comedians but how accurate are the stereotypes? Some 1,000 motorists were questioned in


S _ — —


a poll that looked at various types of driv­ ing behaviour in men and women and, unfortimately, the results are only likely to add fuel to the fire. I t transpires that men are twice as likely to instigate road rage using offensive gestures and th a t the majority of women are in favour of issuing points to road rage culprits. No fewer than 53% of men admitted to


worn or loose belt will seriously reduce the alter­ nator's ability to keep your battery fully charged. 4. Make sure that the battery terminals are clean


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quality battery, one with a long manufacturer's guar­ antee. ' 3. Make sure that your car is serviced regularly, A


and free from corrosion. Dirty terminals and poor­ ly-earthed batteries create a huge amount of resist­ ance, damaging your battery's ability to power the starter motor. 5.1f you have a low-maintenance battery (one where you can remove the filler tops) ensure that


the electrolyte level is where it should be. Usually this is about a quarter of an inch above the top of the plates. Once again, your battery specialist will be happy to do this for you. If your battery does need topping up, use deionised (or distilled) water. Not acid.


or for your Commercial


of the Arctic Circle, the snow is com­ ing sideways past us and the only shelter is a flimsy canvas teepee. Tyre testing is not always as glamorous as you would imagine. Watching the Goodyear engineers


cones and setting times against the clock on an icy rally circuit does have its appeal. The trouble is weTe 300km north


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more than accelerating the Golf to lOOkm/h and then mashing the brake pedal while keeping the car pointing m a straight line. The Racelogic box would then use its satellite position­ ing to work out the rest. The difficul­ ty came in trying to get a consistent reaction time in pulling your foot from the throttle to the brake. Sev­ eral runs later, I decided that I prob-


tyre’s wet braking performance. Al­ though many winter tyres are bought for their prowess on snow and ice, it is a little known fact that when tem­ peratures drop below 7 degrees Cel­ sius - such as on a typical British win­ ter morning-winter tyres, with com­ pounds that do not stiffen in cold weather, come into their own. The wet braking test involved little


rig up a Golf with Racelogic test gear, it was obvious that when it came to back-to-back objective comparisons, there would be no place to hide for a poorly performing set of rubber. We had been furnished with information regarding the superiority of Goodyear's latest Ultragrip? tyre, now it was our turn to see if our own findings matched the PR hype. The first test aimed to measure the


The ice storm S


o u n d s like a bunch of fun doesn't it? Sliding a BMW 3 Se­ ries sideways on a snowy test track, jinking through a maze of


By ANDY ENRIGHT


tertaining for proper petrolheads, al­ beit a little more subjective when it came to evaluating the tyres. A set of cones was laid out up to a hairpin bend and then back through another jinking route. Driving against the clock, it was


apparent that the winter tyres would be massively more efficient than a regular all-season tyre on this sort of surface. In fact, it is doubtful that normal summer rubber would haive even found enough traction on the glazed ice to get rolling. The ability to test tyres back to


back with competitor products is in­ valuable. When we purchase a set of tyres, even brand new budget rubber will feel sharper and safer than worn out premium tyres. This makes com­ parisons difficult for most of us, but putting them back to back showed up some enormous differences. Rather interestingly, it demon­


strated that the best tyre does not al­ ways score highest in terms of sub­ jective feel. In fact, it is often the tyre


with the lousiest grip that proves the most fun. A graphic indicator of the dispari­


ty between brands was the fact that one leading brand was fitted to an Alfa 147 which was routinely being dragged out of snowbanks. With a test season that lasts from


late October to late April, Ivalo is a great place to undertake winter test­ ing. There are three separate test


ably did not have the metronomic precision of the Goodyear test driv­ ers. The slalom tests were far more en­


regularly breaking the speed limit com­ pared to 30% of women, and men think men think th a t speeding is much more acceptable with 22% believing that it was reasonable to drive over 90mph - only 8% of women shared the ^m e opinion. Some 41 % of men admitted to using a map while driving compared to only 23% of women. When it comes to passing the driving


tests, men fare a little better, taking an average of 13.5 lessons in comparison to the typical 22 lessons for women. Only 3% of indes and 23% of females admitted to tak­ ing more than 30 driving lessons.


turn reasonable people into hide­ bound bores. I t can also compromise great cars,


S


ignoring sensible engineering solu­ tions because ‘that’s the way things are done around here.’ I can th in k of many examples


straight off the bat and BMW’s per­ fect 50:50 weight distribution would probably be one of them. Such weight distribution is fine for its performance M-cars but do you really need perfect balance when you’re lugging loads in an estate or cruising in a convertible? Evidently not, as the latest 3 Series drop top features a centre of gravity not measured to millimetric precision in the middle of the car. Engineering any folding hard top


means putting a good deal of metal­ work and motors in the rear of the car. In order to get the perfect weight balance, BMW would have needed to


YOU may not be fully aware but there's a battle raging on Britain's roads, a battle of the sexes or at least that is


BMW worth the weight By Andy Enright_______


TICKING to dogma can be a dangerous thing. I t can lead us to places we’d rather not go and


car to accommodate the larger sec­ tions of a two-piece roof. The down­ side of stacking three pieces atop each other instead of two in the boot is that when they’re folded, there’s not a great deal of luggage space left. Never mind. From this point the story improves. Because of the larger glass rear


undertake, radical and costly design changes such as relocating the fuel tank. BMW has been selling 3 Series


Convertibles for many years, first through Baur and it has refined the art of building a desirable drop-top very well, the latest Z4 and 6 Series convertible models featuring triple­ layered fabric roofs that are about as


huge grins, the test drivers set to work rigging another Golf for wet weather braking tests in the driving snow. -


would normally run on studded tyres, this looked even more frightening than a faceful of reindeer, but as Thiry flung the car from bend to bend, hammering between pine trees and getting big air over a hump, it was apparent that we were only scratching the surface of what proper winter rubber could do. As we emerged from the car with


tyres like the Ultragrip?. Enabling a Ford Focus to go where a Land Cruiser with normal tyres could not get a purchase, these tyres were put through a final demonstration by ex- World Rally Championship driver Bruno Thiry. Fitted to an Impreza rally car that


meting to minus 14 in December and January and the maritime climate bringing plentiful dumps of snow to refresh the test arenas, it is a great place for testing. Remote but not too far from many manufacturers’ Euro­ pean headquarters, Ivalo is becom­ ing the mecca for winter testing. The results of this frigid labour arc


celeration, lateral grip and handling on both snow, ice, slush and wet tar­ mac. There are also serpentine hill climbs, straight hill climbs and aqua­ planing test courses. Road sections can be used to test directional stabil­ ity and tyre noise. With temperatures routinely plum­


areas, one conveniently located at Ivalo airport, another just east at Mel- latracks and a remote northerly facil­ ity at Kaamastrack. There are even frozen lakes nearby which can also be utilised for extreme manoeuvres. The main tests involve braking, ac­


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good as this sort of hood gets. With the 3 Series, BMW felt the time was ripe to follow a divergent path and get with the technology that’s driving huge customer demand - folding hard top roofs. Like all the most modem versions, the BMW system is a three- piece rather than a two-piece system. The advantage of this is that you don’t need a distended bottom on the


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screen and side windows, visibility has improved by 38%. The rear seat backrests can be folded flat to pro­ vide additional luggage space if the 210 litres in the boot isn’t cutting it. As an option, customers can also specify a through loading facihty for bigger items th a t can still be used with full folding hard top functionali­ ty.


The line-up starts at £33,030 with


the 218bhp 325i Convertible, which sits just below the flagship variant and the version that’s got everybody in the know excited, the £37,895 306bhp 335i Convertible. This is a revolutionary engine insofar as it marks BMW’s first turbo-charged petrol unit ever offered in an open top car.


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Clitheroe Advertiser & Times, Thursday, November 30th, 2006 69 BMW Service.


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