Since getting my recent car which shows your fuel consumption as you drive I have adopted the ‘using gravity’ approach to driving. I was amazed to see that when cruising I’m using around 7 or 8 litres per 100 km but when accelerating you can use in excess of 20 litres per 100, do the […]
With fuel costs rising we chanced on a little diesel Peugeot 205, and the way we drive we get about 59 miles to a gallon. Prius eat your heart out!
Don’t fill your fuel tank right up…driving around with a tank full of fuel your vehicle will weigh more which will reduce fuel economy. [For the record, the average car holds about 55 litres of fuel, and 1 litre weighs about 0.71kg (but varies on type of petrol of temperature). So a full tank of […]
Buy the best car you can afford for cash. Old cars don’t depreciate as fast as new ones and sometimes even appreciate in value. I bought an old English car for $505 in 2006. It got another warrant this week (May 09). It still goes really well and is still worth at least $500. In […]
When it has been raining, wipe down your car with an old towel, including the windows. This saves on wash and polish costs. I only need to polish the car before summer and again before winter to preserve it.
Think about colour when buying a car. I read the other day that white cars hold their value best. Greens and maroons are the worst. The study was done by sed-car pricing experts in Britain. It found white cars typically hold about 5 per cent more of their value than the market average for a […]
I found out from my pensioner neighbour that Monday to Friday, around 9am, I can catch a free bus (because I am a pensioner) outside my house and travel to Tauranga, returning about 2.30pm. Whilst in Tauranga I can travel free anywhere the yellow buses go. e.g Papamoa,Bethlehem, Welcome Bay, etc. The Katikati bus is […]
Buying or keeping a car over 40 years old results in considerably reduced registration fees and insurance is a lot cheaper as well. Depreciation is no longer a factor and if you buy the right type of car the worth may actually be going up. Gas mileages on well maintained cars are usually quite good. […]
Reusing newspaper. Use as wallpaper – very appropriate in rooms like a study. Makes good carpet underlay to stop those sneaky drafts.
I have a friend who made a really attractive lamp shade from a newspaper. The old shade had worn out so he simply pasted the pages around the frame. What made it really interesting was that he used the newspaper that reported the 1987 sharemarket crash. It is always an interesting read and it is […]