| | |  | | PRESS RELEASES | | | First up you need decent equipment, gadgets that try and measure inertia and hand held stop watches are never going to do the job, mainly as a result of the human error involved in trying to get these devices to work the exact same way every time you record data. | They make use of the world recognised Racelogic VBOX test equipment, as used by the best locally and internationally. This powerful equipment is non-contact and based on a new generation of high performance satellite receivers, and will measure speed, distance, acceleration, lap times and much more up to 20 times per second to an accuracy of around 1cm. | Consider that your hand held GPS unit used for finding places and reading maps updates a whole lot slower and is accurate to normally around a massive average of 6m, perfect for finding your way around, but not at all suitable for measuring that final 100th of a second when sprinting to 100 km/h. | Now that we have covered what having decent equipment means, what do the methods of testing and other physical conditions mean to the results? | The test car is delivered, and most manufacturers use a fleet of test cars, so various publications get different cars to start with. Some have higher mileage than others, some have different makes of tyres and then there are different rates of wear and tear across these test cars. All of this already starting to add to a difference to figures that is going to be achieved for the same make and model of car. | Now as you head off to test, in our case, we once again make use of world-class facilities and take our testing to Gerotek just west of Pretotria. You need to ask yourself, is the location the same every time, are road surface conditions the same, is the road level in both directions? All these things will make a difference to traction and the ability to run true on a level surface, no uphill to hinder the car or downhill to help the car. | So now you are ready for your first run. How much fuel is in the car, what octane is it, how hard or soft are the tyres? All these things will affect your results before you have even let the clutch out for the first time. And this is before you take into account; you have altitude that robs the car of natural power, high ambient temperature, brisk wind and atmospheric pressure all doing the same | Having taken not of all the above conditions and recorded them, you are now on your way down the test strip and here the biggest variable in the equation has an effect on the figures achieved, and this is the test pilot. Everybody has varying levels of ability when it comes to driving a car, never mind trying to extract test type data from a car. Change drivers and the results will change without any of the many other variables changing. | Another very important note to bear in mind, the best performance test drivers are not necessary the quickest, they are the most consistent and need to be in order to bring you figures that can be realised over and over in the real world that we find out on the road. | So the next time you want to rip into your best friend because you have seen or read somewhere that his car is no longer the undisputed speed king of the road, just remember that the figures you have seen are only a reflection of what that test car was capable of on that day when driven by a particular tester, under whatever weather and road conditions were present when the test was done. | Change any of the parameters of this test and these figures WILL change, change them again and these figures WILL change once again, that is the simple bottom line to proper performance car testing. | | |  | | | Click Here to get an SAC consultant to advise you on your conversion! | | | Performance / power conversions, modifications, engine upgrades available for Alfa, Audi, BMW, Chev, Chrysler, Colt, Ford, Honda, Hyundai, Isuzu, Jeep, Kia, Mazda, Mercedes, Mini, Nissan, Opel, Toyota, VW Golf GTI and more... | | | | |
