Autoblog

The process of constructing roadways in a Michigan is a long and arduous one that takes many millions of dollars, countless workers standing around and at least five seasons to finish. Roadways here on the home turf of the American auto industry are a unique breed. Even though Windsor, Ontario is just across the river from Detroit and has exactly the same climatic conditions, its roads are completely different from those in Michigan. That becomes immediately apparent as your roll off the Ambassador Bridge. We here at Autoblog strive to keep you, our loyal readers, informed about all things even vaguely related to cars. Therefore, we present our step-by-step guide to the creation of a Michigan road.

The process typically starts in the spring as soon as the salt has been rinsed away. Before the first crocuses pop out of the dirt, the crews start setting out signs and orange barrels along the edges of the most heavily traveled thoroughfares. There they typically sit for anywhere from one to four weeks before the crews return to start closing off lanes of traffic. After another interval of random length, the heavy equipment begins to arrive and the process of tearing apart the existing pavement begins. Just to make sure that no one accidentally misses out on the fun, the same scenario is usually repeated along several parallel paths that might serve as alternate routes between any two major points that people commute.

Learn about the rest of the process after the jump.

click above to watch Ask Autoblog: How do you cook with your car engine?

We've been working hard to add more video content to Autoblog, and one bright idea was to resurrect Ask Autoblog as a video series. To kick things off, we decided to answer a question that we had ourselves: How do you cook a meal using the only heat generated by a car engine. We didn't want to try something easy like hot dogs, so we went with ham and potatoes. Follow the jump to see whether or not we found success in the plastic-clad engine bays of today's cars, and let us know what you think of the results. Also, if you've tried to cook food in your engine bay, let us know what you made, and whether it worked out for you.

We'd also like for you to ask us any questions in the comments section of this post that may be on your mind, and we'll pick the ones best suited for video and answer them on Ask Autoblog. If the response is good, we'll make this a regular thing and maybe pick up a sponsor to pay for it. So check out the first Ask Autoblog video after the jump and ask away in the comments.

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Car vs. jet stunts are kind of ridiculous, but they're entertaining nonetheless. The more exotic the hardware, the better the entertainment, and Lamborghini's Reventón is about as exotic as it gets these days. In a made-for-TV showcase (no, we haven't found video yet), a Lambo test driver and an Italian fighter pilot lined up one of the jet-inspired supercars and a Panavia Tornado combat plane on a 3000-meter runway to see which vehicle could accelerate faster. Long story short, while it probably made for great TV, the Lambo lost in the end. Hey, the 650-horsepower Reventón may be badder than both John Shaft and Truck Turner combined, but when matched against a fighter jet whose twin Turbo-Union RB199 engines combine to make 39,332 horsepower at sea level, it's bound to come up a little shy. We'd take one, anyway.

[Source: Lamborghini]

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One of yesterday's biggest stories was, of course, the introduction of the Ford Verve concept car that will be presented by the automaker at next month's Frankfurt Motor Show. The B-class show car forecasts the "Kinetic Design"-influenced next-generation Fiesta, and now you can hear from the team that created the plucky little 3-door in a short video released by Ford yesterday afternoon.

Follow the jump to see a 3-minute look at the creative process, complete with designer commentary. We'd also like to call your attention to the new Autoblog Video "bumper" attached to the beginning of the vid. It now incorporates our new logo, and is hot off our man Dan Roth's PC as of last night. Let us know what you think.

[Source: Ford]

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Kia will officially whip the cover off its jaunty Euro-only (why, God... WHY?) pro-cee'd 3-door hatchback on September 11 at the Frankfurt Motor Show. We'll be there to bring you on-scene coverage, but in the interim, Kia has provided a new set of photos showing the car in its entirety. Based on the same architecture that underpins the 5-door cee'd, the pro-cee'd is longer, lower, lighter and sportier-looking thanks to styling elements unique to the 3-door.

Despite the differences in appearance, the pro-ceed boasts interior passenger room on par with its five-door brother, thanks to its identical wheelbase length. And while on the subject of the interior, it's very appealing to the eye -- a requirement if it's to be a viable player against the likes of the VW Golf. Longer doors with 70-degree openings help make backseat ingress and egress less cumbersome (thus minimizing Britney-style exhibitions), and cargo capacity behind the rear seat is said to equal that of the more reserved and outwardly practical cee'd. The pro-cee'd will be available in a wide array of trim, engine, and color combinations when it hits the Continent next year. We'll take one of the 143-horsepower cars equipped with the Sport Pack (shown). Oh wait. That's right, we can't. Bummer.

Press release after the jump.

[Source: Kia]

With all the discussion about the domestic automakers' future lately, a few of our readers have left comments requesting some additional background on the situation; primarily, the history of the oft-touted "legacy costs" and how they affect the Big 3's survival.

The legacy costs have their roots in the concept of "cradle-to-grave" care provided to industrial workers by their lifelong employers. Such a system utilized employer-funded pensions to provide retirement income and catastrophic injury coverage for employees, and also ensured workers that they would receive a high level of health care coverage upon retirement. This arrangement minimized the burden on government-funded social security programs and provided significant incentive for loyalty on behalf of the employee, but also depended on steady growth within the manufacturing sector - an assumption that, as we now see all too clearly, turned out to be wrong.

Follow the jump for a breakdown on what automakers could do to address the burden of legacy costs and what they actually are doing.

In the first half of this particular write-up, we showed the basic process of replacing the front rotors and pads on a VW Jetta. Now we'll go ahead and hit the rear brakes, since the car is already up in the air and we're already covered up to our elbows in grease and brake fluid. We'll also go through the process of flushing out the old fluid and bleeding the brakes, since this car was far overdue for that task.

While many aspects of maintenance can be put off until the odometer rolls past 100K, odds are that you'll be doing some work on your vehicle's brakes long before then. Vehicles continue to get heavier and our highway speeds are ever-increasing, both of which put an incredible amount of strain on even a modern braking system. Pads and rotors will wear, and the brake fluid will become contaminated with moisture. If you're lucky enough to live in the Midwest, you can also look forward to the effects of corrosion on braking components. The braking system should be inspected every time the tires are rotated, and one can expect to go through the front brakes every 20-40,000 miles, depending on the vehicle and its usage (rear brakes often go much longer, due to their lesser role).

We'll walk through the process of servicing the disk brakes on a friend's 2000-ish VW Jetta. This vehicle was in need of new pads, and the owner decided that he also wanted to install new rotors rather than deal with the hassle of turning the ones currently on the vehicle, as the vehicle had been sitting for over a year.

Ever since Henry Ford invented the assembly line and ushered in the era of mass production, exclusivity has become an increasingly exclusive commodity. A citizen of the United Arab Emirates beat the system by commissioning a car joint developed by Mercedes and Lotec called the C 1000. It features a lightweight carbon fiber body, twin-turbo 5.6L V8 producing a prodigious 1,000 horsepower, Hewkand 5-speed racing tranny and 4 Ram AP IMSA racing brakes. Performance figures are impressive with a run to 60 mph taking 3.2 seconds, 125 mph comes in 8.08 seconds and its top speed is 268 mph. No word on whether that velocity's been tested or not.

The bidding started at $350,000 and so far, no one's placed a bid. You have two days left to beat Jay Leno to this one-of-a-kind Merc, so get to it.

[Source: eMercedesBenz]

With descriptions of the engine control module (Part 1) and sensors (Part 2) now out of the way, it's time to take a look at some of the other hardware that keeps engines running. Some of these devices will be quite familiar, and others may not seem to be immediately related to engine management or emission controls. Rest assured, however, that all are necessary to keep things running smoothly, reliably, and cleanly.

In Part 1 of this series, we took at look at the engine control module (ECM), the "brains" of a modern vehicle's engine management and emission control systems. Next, we're going to dig a bit deeper and investigate the various sensors that feed information about the vehicle's operating conditions to the ECM.

A modern engine makes use of a wide variety of technology, but it's not necessarily well-understood by the majority of the motoring public. Considering that this stuff isn't rocket science (for the most part), we figured that it's time to lift the hood on one of the cars in our garage and walk through its engine management system. Getting through it all will take a while, but your patience will be rewarded with a significantly improved understanding of what makes your car's powertrain tick.

With fresh fluids in the rest of the drivetrain, it is now time to turn our attention to the axle lubrication. Where as we stated that the transfer case fluid leads a relatively easy life, the same is not true of the rear axle. The reason for this is heat; due to the relatively high frictional losses of the hypoid ring-and-pinion gears, axle lube temperatures can exceed 300F during high-speed cruising. While certain ultra-high-performance vehicles such as the Corvette Z06 have provisions for axle cooling, most of us aren't so lucky. Throw in the fact that this lube isn't filtered and is prone to contamination by water and other environmental matter, and it's essential that it be changed on a regular basis (two years or 25,000 miles isn't a bad starting point for a recommended service interval). We'll show you how it's done on the 9.5" 14-bolt axle under the rear of our '96 GMC K2500.

With an oil change and transmission fluid swap out of the way, it's now time to exchange the oil transfer case lube for some fresh stuff. For those of you with manual transmission, you'd follow most of the same steps to service that unit, so please don't feel slighted (there will be a few in-depth posts on manual transmission service in another month or so).

(Click on through the jump for the full walk-through)!

Automatic transmissions are among the most complex mechanical devices ever assembled into a mass-market consumer product. As a result, automatic transmission fluid (ATF) has a tremendously difficult task. It has to lubricate the myriad of moving parts, providing sufficient protection to components that will rotate literally billions of times over the life of the transmission. It also has to provide enough friction to the various clutches within the transmission. ATF also provides the vast majority of the transmission's heat dissipation, and serves as a means of transmitting hydraulic signals and power.

Yes, the demand on ATF is significant, but yet it's often neglected when performing routine maintenance. Transmission service is certainly not as easy or straightforward as oil changes, but considering the frustration and inefficiency of a transmission that isn't operating properly and the jaw-dropping cost of a rebuilt unit, we'll happily roll up our sleeves and crawl underneath our '96 GMC K2500 to show how it's done.