Auto Wide World

The Mazda Hydrogen Vehicle Connection

We all know what Mazda is. But as per what a hydrogen vehicle is, that is something not quite familiar for most people. You see, a hydrogen vehicle is actually considered as an alternative fuel vehicle, or an AFV, for instead of using the usual type of fuel or gas to give it power, the hydrogen vehicle can run using hydrogen as the primary source of its power.

So now the question is what is the connected between the Mazda brand and hydrogen vehicles? The answer is quite simple. You see, Mazda has been doing research on hydrogen vehicles. After all, the company has sure been showing very keen interest in this type of vehicle. Perhaps Mazda is still trying to find the answer to some problems that hydrogen powered vehicles pose. One of these is that hydrogen for cars can be quite costly and the vehicle does not perform well. However, with the type of technologies that the industry is capable of doing, perhaps the future is starting to get brighter for Mazda and its interest in hydrogen powered vehicles.

Of course, despite the blatant interest Mazda has with this kind of vehicles, the company still has the time and the capacity to continuously produce new vehicles in their vehicle range. Also, it still continues on creating products for the market like Mazda Tribute auto parts among many others. The company also is still continuously designing, testing, and producing new vehicles for the market.

The hydrogen powered vehicle interest that Mazda has displayed has been noted some fifteen years back. In fact, it has already created various prototype vehicles that they claim to hold the capacity to run on hydrogen. If you would remember the Mazda HR-X Prototype vehicle, this is one concept car that the Mazda has shown off to the motoring public. And it was during the Tokyo Motor Show done back in the year 1991 that the company introduced this hydrogen vehicle prototype. What this one held was a rotary engine that could run on hydrogen.

Years have passed and the interest on hydrogen vehicles has not yet waned for Mazda. And many enthusiasts are on guard and trying to see what developments the company has in store for the future.

Mazda Tribute auto parts

Margaret Adams is the present manager of the largest auto manufacturing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This 35 year old maiden is a certified car enthusiast.

Share This

Ford Intends To Buy $3 Billion China-made Components To Cut Costs

Ford Motor Co. announced earlier that it will be purchasing as much as $3 billion worth of China-made components to boost its aim to cut production costs. The purchase transaction is anticipated to take place this year.

“Ford will buy between $2.5 billion and $3 billion in auto parts in China,” said William Ford Jr., chairman of the Dearborn, Michigan-based carmaker. Bill Ford explained, “We are only scratching the surface in China. China is very key to our global sourcing strategy particularly as the quality of the local suppliers’ ramps up.”

Analysts in the auto industry explained that the reason behind the purchase is the automaker’s need for cheaper auto parts to satisfy its goal to cut costs up to $6 billion by 2010. It can be recalled that Ford experienced a slumped sales in the United States. Said plight resulted to third quarter loss amounting to $5.8 billion.

Among the 3 largest American automakers, Ford was the last to produce vehicles in China. Production took place in Chongqing city in the year 2003. Ford Fiesta parts and those of Mondeo where assembled in the territory. In that specific endeavor, the automaker invested $1.5 billion.

In 2004, Ford agreed to put up a third factory in Nanjing city, China to assemble its 8 new models. The building of the plant is done in cooperation with Mazda Motor Corp, its affiliate. That particular investment proved to be beneficial because Ford China sales more than doubled in the first three quarters of 2006. The automaker sold 114,685 vehicles via direct sales. It was approximately 2.2 percent of the 5.28 million vehicles sold in the particular period in China.

Ford shares the biggest slice of China sales with American auto giants - General Motors Corp. and DaimlerChrysler AG’s Chrysler Group. General motors divulged that its 3 quarters China sales increased by 37 percent to 645,680 units. DaimlerChrysler AG, on one hand, reported perfected sale of 16,400 Mercedes-Benz luxury cars in China and Hong Kong within same period.

Experts are saying that the recovery plan of Ford has substantially contributed to the surged in sales. Nonetheless, some of the analysts noted that the automaker is moving too slow while its rivals are taking swift yet precise steps.

Jason Moore, a 35 year old freelance writer from Austin, Texas. He also works as a marketing analyst for an established auto parts store in the country. You can visit Ford Fiesta parts for more information.

Share This

Before You Pick Up that Spanner

You’ve found and bought your restoration project, it’s in the garage and you are itching to get cracking. Enthusiasm abounds and you just want to get stuck in. A long weekend and you will have most of it apart. In three months you will be driving your dream on the open road. Unfortunately it doesn’t always work out like that. Three months turns into three years and the remove parts and the chuck in a box approach to the strip down now has you confused about what goes where. Worse, there’s a growing pile of parts you don’t recognise.

We’ve all done it, not necessarily with restoration projects, even repairs and modifications that take a long time can cause similar chaos.

So let’s back up to just before you brought your project vehicle home and do some planning and organising. A full restore requires a lot of space, up to three times the size of the assembled vehicle, depending on how much of the original vehicle will be restored or reused. For a car, interior trim takes up a lot of space and needs to be stored in a dry location to prevent the trim rotting. Body panels that are to be reused need to be stored where they won’t be damaged and new panels need to be dry to prevent rusting.

If possible invest in good quality racking for your garage or workshop. The amount of racking required depends on the vehicle and number of parts you will keep either for restoration or re-fitting, but being able to store parts in an orderly fashion will help you as the part you need is always in the bottom box.

Next you need something to store the parts in. For small parts you can use plastic lined paper bags (paper, so you can write on the outside), or plastic food bags and a roll of labels. The parts bags then go in a larger container. The size of the container depends on the storage space available, but could be stackable plastic containers, cardboard boxes or archive boxes, which have the advantage of a lid. It’s worth having a think at this point how you will group the parts in these containers or boxes finding them easily in the future depends on coming up with a reasonably straightforward and logical storage plan now.

The parts bags and boxes will need to be labelled, again so that you can identify the part later in the project without too much head scratching.

The workshop manual should have a detailed diagram of the wiring loom, including the colour scheme. If you are in any doubt you can use tie on tags, available from office supply companies, to identify what should plug into the loom at what points. This is a useful technique if the wiring diagram isn’t clear even if you are planning to replace the loom as you can transfer the tags from the old loom to the new loom.

If you are keeping the interior trim get hold of good quality plastic bags, large enough to seal the trim in, packing tape is ideal for sealing and joining bags together for large items such as the seats.

Work out how you are going to catalogue the parts and the digital photographs you will take during the strip down. This is probably the most crucial step, as there is no point having parts nicely labelled and stored and hundreds if not thousands of digital photographs if you can’t work out what any of them are. Some sort of cross reference between the photograph and part is desirable although labour intensive if carried out manually.

With the garage organised and armed with a digital camera you can start stripping your vehicle. Take pictures of the part in place, mounting points and any aspect of the removal that is tricky or could be forgotten - for example having a part that could be replaced a part upside down, and then only being able to discover this when more of the car is assembled, causing delays as a section of the car is dismantled in order to rectify the problem. Check the photographs are OK before taking the part off; photographic software allows you to zoom into the photographs to see the detail, but if the photograph is blurred or out of focus you won’t be take advantage of this.

Organising your restoration project before and during the strip down phase takes time and commitment, but the time invested will benefit the project during the restoration and assembly phases and may retain your sanity as you complete the engineering jigsaw you have created. In addition you will have a detailed record of the restoration of your dream vehicle and not too many bits left over.

Nigel West has taken apart numerous cars for racing, rallying and the road and even managed to get some back together. Fed up with forgetting how things go back together he used 20 years of software development experience to create Restoration Manager, a simple yet effective piece of software designed to manage the parts, photographs and notes that a vehicle strip down produces.

http://www.restoration-manager.com

Share This