DD MOTORING: ON THE ROAD AGAIN – BRIAN McDAID TALKS TYRES AND FUEL

This week our motoring correspondent Brian McDaid talks about tyres and how cheap our fuel really is – or isn’t as the case may be!

Another ‘Tyre-d’ old survey!

We are very thankful to the tyre fitting companies that took part in our survey this week. From Sunday past you will receive a fixed fined of €80 and 2 penalty points for tyres that don’t meet the legal minimum thread limit of 1.6 mm.

So to prepare our readers to get the safety of their cars in order, we carried out our survey to first of all find out if the tyres on my vehicle would pass the legal thread minimum requirement of 1.6 mm, and secondly to see what would it cost to replace the tyres.

Technical difficulties.

We also planned to give a short safety talk on changing a wheel but circumstances beyond our control meant that we had to postponed this to a later date.

In Short, we couldn’t get the spare wheel out of its carrier from under the back of our vehicle because it was ceased solid.

I am told that this is a regular problem where the spare tyre is secured outside the vehicle and most times it will be ceased. This means that you might have no spare wheel at all if you can’t get the dammed thing out of its carrier. We had the benefit of the lift and and a dry garage to try and release the wheel and after a few well chosen words that we would like to say to the person who designed this as a good idea, we gave up!

I don’t know what this would be like to try and do along the road side in the lashing rain, but its well worth checking it out, just to even spray the carriage with a rust buster from time to time might help.

I was just thinking about my trusty Fiat, which I never had to change a wheel on for the 6 years that i had it. Looking back that spare wheel carrier was probably ceased as well and I never knew it , so now I know that this spare wheel is ceased in place ,chances are that I will have a puncture before I get a change to sort this problem out. Brilliant !

Tyre Survey

We went in search of a195/65/15 tyre which means we were looking for a tyre to fit a 15 inch wheel or rim, which was 195mm wide and was 65% of the width of the tyre in height.

We went to three different tyre fitting companies. Christy at Illistrin Tyres, which is a small tyre company in outside Letterkenny, We went to Yuel and Pearse Rd. Tyres, which is a larger privately owned company in Letterkenny, and finally we went to Michael at Advance Pitstop also in Letterkenny which is a nationwide company.

All of the business were more than helpful and could offer us the tyre we we looking for from €40 to €80

Tyre Test

I think when we are buying tyres is seems like a cost that we don’t want so we try and convince the garage that our car might not need tyres, I know I do that anyway. Tyre companies are in business of selling tyres but also have to make a safety decision for you as well. The tree companies turned down two of my four tyres as needing replacing , two of them done the test visually and rubbed their hand over the small indicators on the tyre, one of them measured the depth and were exactly able to tell me what my thread measurement was, which was 1.2 which is well under the legal limit.

Pricing

One of the companies offered me a range of cheapest and the dearest tyres as they showed me the prices on their computer, which in real terms was leaving the decision down to me.

They also showed me what I thought was a terrific graphic which they had printed on to the wall of their premises, showing braking distance in the wet and also braking distance on 1.3mm thread tyre compared to tyres with 1.6mm thread.

One of the companies suggest that my spare wheel was in better condition than my two rear tyres and that I buy one tyre and rotate the spare wheel to make up a good set of tyres on the road. That seemed like a great Idea until we tried to remove the spare which was ceased and made us aware of that problem.

The third company gave us one price for the tyre which was at the upper range of the pricing range and had confidence in their product. They explained that the more expensive tyre would be made with a better quality of rubber and would be both lighter and quieter on the road and also would need less balancing if my wheels were in good condition. It also would be easier on the suspension and steering of the car and in the most important test of all it would beat all the cheaper tyres in shorter braking distance on a dry or wet road.

All of the information was great to get and we see so many cars running around with badly worn tyres or badly inflated which is as dangerous, in the end my tyre cost €60 each and haggle a bit and got a discount on them. I feel that i fitted a good safe tyre at a price that i could afford and feel that I am not braking the law, but still need the get my spare sorted.

How cheap is your fuel ?

I have included a lovely image of an old petrol pump we spotted in our travels from Portnablagh this week.

The petrol was 62 new pence a gallon, when these pumps were going which was part of McElhinney Brothers garage. So for a fiver you would have got you over 8 gallons. today a fiver won’t even get you one gallon, and you will need to put another 40 cents to the fiver to get one miserable gallon of petrol. So if we turn the clock forward to the present day we are still trying to get the best price for or gallon or litre of fuel.

A lot if people have told me that they find a small difference with better fuel consumption in a fill of Topaz fuel which normally cost a few cents more than its competitors. I have included the companies details on the way they refine their fuel to make it easier for or engines to run on it.

Topaz claim an extra 24 kms per tank with this fuel.

Topaz fuels are perfect for all your vehicles, old or new, unleaded or diesel. Our fuels help clean your engine and burn more efficiently than standard fuels, which mean real savings for you.

In fact, Topaz efficient fuels can take your vehicles up to 24kms further on a full tank of Topaz fuel when compared to other standard fuels.*

How?

“In association with the world’s leading supplier of fuel packages we have sourced an additive for our fuels that: improves engine efficiency, cleans and protects agains corrosion
Reduces emissions
Unleaded

The additive used in Topaz Unleaded fuel reduces harmful deposits from fuel injectors and inlet valves, which can lead to loss of performance, reduced drivability and increased fuel consumption. What’s more, it also prevents corrosion within the fuel injection system and improves fuel economy. This can lead to increased engine efficiency of up to 3% and a reduction in CO2 emissions.

Topaz Diesel contains a high technology additive system that prevents deposit formation in the sensitive fuel injectors found in modern diesel engines. Such deposits can lead to loss of engine power, impaired drivability, increased fuel consumption and increased emissions. Using Topaz Diesel helps to remove these harmful deposits and improves your engine’s performance.

Fuel Watch.

The cheapest for Topaz this week in Letterkenny is from Tobins at 110.9 for Diesel and 127.9 for petrol which the company claim give better fuel economy.

And finally…….

My love of the railways in donegal turned up a nice story this week. Paul Hume, now living in Letterkenny was telling me that his family originally emigrated from Scotland to take up a work offer in Co Donegal. His great great grandfather Samuel Hume was a stone mason and arrived in Donegal to take up work as a stone mason building the gatehouses and station houses for the railways in Co. Donegal when they were originally set up.

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