It’s no secret that Calgary’s winters are hard on automobiles. The constant fluctuation of temperature, melting/freezing roadways, road salt, gravel, and sand, combined with the sheer size of the city in general, make Calgary an absolute hell for your car. All it takes is one winter to remove that shine from the paint, and after a couple winters your car will appear to have lost all of its lustre- heaven forbid you park on a street or parking lot instead of underground parking or a garage!

Did you know that, aside from washing your car, there are things you can do to get its paint back in tip top shape, and that you can recondition your cars interior to the point where it looks brand new? You can have a professional car detailer do it, or if you’d rather invest your own time and energy, you could do it yourself.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Exterior Car Detailing in Calgary

If you want to bring the life back to your paint, try some of the following:

* DO: Give your car a thorough wash every 10 days or so during the winter (except during cold spells).
* DON’T: Wash your car with the tire brush at the car wash. It can actually scratch your paint!
* DO: Once winter is over, give your car a thorough wash and apply a coat of wax to the paint. Follow the instructions on the wax bottle and you’ll be fine.
* DON’T: Ignore paint chips because it’s winter. The combination of moisture, bare paint, and road salt will cause your car to rust quicker than you’d think!
* DO: Have some clear paint protection film installed. The investment will easily pay for itself over time.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Interior Car Detailing in Calgary

Is your car interior looking a little worn? Try the following:

* DO: Use a high suction vacuum on all carpeted areas in your car.
* DON’T: Vacuum your dash, instrument cluster, or electronics.
* DO: Use a shampoo mixture to remove stains from your carpet.
* DON’T: Use bleach on, in, or anywhere near your cars interior.
* DO: Shampoo the seats if they’re cloth, or use a leather conditioner for leather.
* DON’T: Use glass cleaner on anything other than glass.
* DO: Take the time to do it right. A good interior clean could take several hours.
* DON’T: Try to cut corners. Cutting corners always results in shoddy workmanship and poor-quality results.

Car Detailing is all About the Little Things

Being thorough in your cleaning process will ensure that your car never smells odd, dirties your clothes with you use it, etc. A good interior clean should only be required a couple of times per year, and if you maintain your clean-up job year round, will ensure that your vehicle looks and feels great for many years to come.

A car is not just meant for transporting you from one place to another although that is indeed its main purpose. People buy cars for a whole lot of different reasons, which explains why there are so many different models available on the roads. In addition, people also love to customize their vehicles in order to make them stand out from the other vehicles on the road. If you are very particular about how your car looks then you will derive a lot of pleasure from its appearance and from other people’s reactions to it. Getting clear tail lights is one of the cheapest and simplest ways of enjoying your car better.

Clear tail lights are also known as Euro lights or Altezza lights because this trend originated in Europe where people just love their vehicles to be flashy. They look very different from regular lights because of their LED bulbs behind clear covers. These lights are very bright and attractive and they will make your car visible from very far. These LED bulbs are very strong and they give more light than regular bulbs. More importantly, they will make your car very special looking and people in other vehicles on the road will definitely sit up and take notice of your vehicle.

You will also be glad to have these lights for another reason and it is that these bulbs tend to last longer than regular bulbs. Once you install them it is unlikely that you will have to worry about getting replacements in a hurry since they will give you very good performance. Needless to say, you need to get the best possible clear lights for your car if its appearance is very important to you because high quality vehicle parts always attract a lot of attention.

There is no doubt at all that you will enjoy the experience of driving around in your car if you install a really good set of clear tail lights. You will definitely relish being at the receiving end of appreciative glances when you drive around town in your car. Make sure that you buy the best type of lights available in the market after carefully studying all the options. There are some lights that suit a particular model of car than they do other models and you need to know exactly what you are looking for before you spend any money.

The year was 1980 and Gary Numan’s Cars was at the top of the Music charts. In Britain at the time and throughout Europe, fast cars and so called ‘Yuppys’ were the order of the day in what becoming an increasingly competitive and socially divided world, prior to the technological advances brought by the infant information age.

At the Geneva Motor Show in March that year a car was revealed that was to technically change the future design of most road cars – The Audi Quattro.

The four-wheeled drive turbocharged road car, rally car and angular designed coupe, stole the show and proved that Audi with the new Quattro really had made ‘Vorsprung Durch Technik’ a massive advancement through technology.

The original or Ur Quattro as it became known, as opposed to subsequent quattro models with a small q, was not the first 4×4 road car; this honour is held by the Jensen FF.

However the innovative four-wheel drive system that Audi developed for the Quattro, did away with all the previous problems of additional driveshafts and extra weight. The Quattro team had produced a practical solution that amazed the motoring world of the day and led the way for the development of all modern 4×4 road cars.

Audi in the 1970′s was not the most avant garde of the stoic German manufacturers, however they had a young and enthusiastic research and development team and more importantly, since 1969 the financial backing of owner Volkswagen, which was needed for the Audi Quattro to be born.

The seeds of the Quattro had sprouted three years before the car was launched in 1977 when chassis engineer Jörg Bensinger and a team of Audi engineers were visiting Northern Scandinavia to evaluate the performance of another Audi car, the front wheeled drive 100 series saloons.

While there, Bensinger was highly impressed by the performance of a protype of Volkswagen’s Iltis military vehicle which was also being tested under extreme conditions.

The Iltis had new four-wheel drive technology and superb handling which easily outmaneuvered all competition in the snow and ice.

Jörg Bensinger was impressed and on his return to the Audi factory at Ingolstadt, with the encouragement of Walter Treser, a former rally driver and head of advanced development at Audi, in March 1978 the Quattro project commenced.

The Quattro design team started out by taking the worlds first 5 cylinder engine from the highly successful turbocharged 170 mph Audi 200, which was in parallel development at the time.

To the 2144 cc engine the team added a single overhead camshaft with two valves per cylinder, which boosted the engines output to 200 bhp at 5500 rpm.

This gave the Audi Quattro a top speed of 137 mph and the car could do 0 to 60 mph in just 7 seconds.

What took the world by storm though was not the power of the engine but the ingenious configuration of the new four-wheel drive system. Based on the Iltris concept, the design reconfigured the transmission and did away with the cumbersome and heavy traditional transfer box and driveshaft.

The Quattro team took the new engine and mounted it on the car in line, rather than in the usual transverse layout of the time. This allowed the gearbox to be attached to the back of the engine in a usual rear wheel drive manner. On the Quattro, power was transmitted through the gearbox in the usual manner, to a small grapefruit sized differential box immediately to the rear. From there it was conveyed by a typical rear axle.

But what made the quattros configuration so special was that it also transmitted power forward, using a hollow gearbox output shaft, to a similar differential that drove the front wheels!

The cars unique handling and sensational road holding that won so many Rallies throughout the 1980′s in its sporting configuration, was further enhanced by the Macpherson suspension, all round disc brakes, and low profile radial tyres.

When the World Rally Championships changed the rules to allow four wheeled drive cars, the future of the Quattro was certain. In order to comply with the World Rally organisers rules of homologation, Audi had to produce a minimum of 400 cars per year to be considered a production vehicle. The development project was pushed forward and Audi attempted to build 10 new cars per day or 2000 per year.

All in all, Audi managed to produce 11,452 Quattros over the period 1980-1991. The rally versions the A1 and A2 evolutions, went on to win multiple World Rally Championships between 1981 and 1983.