10 BAD DRIVING HABITS THAT DAMAGES YOUR CAR

Many of us love driving but unknowingly we are doing some mistakes that may ruin our car and may cost us in the future. Check if you are doing it correctly or not. Following are the most common mistakes we do while driving.

1. RESTING YOUR LEG ON CLUTCH WHILE DRIVING.

While driving you should rest your left leg on the dead pedal/rest pedal. If the dead pedal is not provided, then simply rest it on the floor but not on a clutch. If you drive by resting your foot on the clutch, then there is a chance that u are accidentally pressing the clutch while driving. This habit will increase your car maintenance bills.

Logic

The function of a clutch is to engage and disengage the engine from transmission/gearbox or simply from wheels. When you press the clutch you are actually disconnecting the engine from gearbox and vice versa.

The clutch has 3 main parts viz flywheel, pressure plate and clutch plate as shown in the figure above. We actually operate the pressure plate while operating the clutch pedal and clutch plate is responsible to transmit the power, it is sandwiched between flywheel and pressure plate and is made up of friction materials which wears as per its use.

It is very important that the clutch plate should be stable while the car is moving. And should tightly grasp between pressure plate and flywheel. There should not be any relative motions between flywheel and clutch plate and between the clutch plate and pressure plate. This relative motion will speed up the wearing of a clutch pedal. Also called as clutch slipping.

While resting your foot on the clutch and accidentally pressing it, you are actually loosening the force between flywheel, clutch plate and pressure plate. This will develop the relative motions and will wear the clutch very fast.

2. SHIFTING IN NEUTRAL WHILE DESCENDING

Many people do this in the interest of getting those high Km/lit values from their car on long trips, but is actually a wrong way to decent your car or getting high mileage. By doing so your car mileage will not affect much (the engine will consume the fuel as it will be in the ideal condition) and it is also not a safe way to drive. But there is another technique which will increase car mileage and is also very safe. It's called ENGINE BRAKING.

Engine Braking

It is a technique in which one has to decent his car by shifting it's transmission into a particular gear depending upon the desired speed and avoid pressing accelerator pedal if not required. After some time the fuel supply to the engine will cut. The engine then will be rotated by the wheels itself. This is called engine braking because here the engine is providing the resistance to the wheels. This is a very safe way to get high mileage while descending your car from hilly areas.

 3. COLD START DRIVING

Cold start is, starting your car after a long time when your car's engine is at the ambient/atmospheric temperature. when you start your car's engine in the morning for the first time, you will notice that the RPM needle will be initially above 1000rpm for few seconds and after that, it settles at 1000-800rpm. You should avoid driving immediately after cold start. You should wait for the needle to settle at 1000-800 rpm mark (whichever is ideal rpm of your car). This time is very much essential for the engine to heat up at the working temperatures and to properly lubricate itself. By driving your car immediately after cold starting, will reduce its engine life. Some of the cars have the feature, in which cold start warning light will flash, indicating the driver should start driving after this light goes off.

4. REVERSING

You should reverse your car by completely stopping it. If there is even a slight movement of your car while engaging into reverse gear, the brushing or knocking sound comes from the gearbox. This is the sound of gears clashing with each other. The design of reverse gear is different from rest of the gears so while engaging reverse gear you have to be more careful. Engaging the reverse gear forcefully can damage the gearbox and can result in wearing of gears. 

5. SHIFTING DOWN THE GEARS WITHOUT REV MATCH

1 <-> 2   --- ~20 kmph

2 <-> 3   --- ~40-45 kmph

3 <-> 4   --- ~60-65 kmph

4 <-> 5   --- ~75-80 kmph

This often happens when someone tries to lower the gears at high speed in order to reduce the speed of the car. Every gear has a particular speed range as shown in the table above. Referring above table. If you are driving at 75 kmph on 4th gear and suddenly you shifted to 3rd gear then you will experience the sudden jerks. It is ok to do so sometimes, but not if you are shifting the gears in improver range very frequently. Shifting gears out of their speed range will damage some engine parts and will lower the clutch and gearbox life.

6. RESTING YOUR HAND ON GEAR KNOB

Many of us have this habit of resting our one hand on the gear knob and holding steering with another hand. But this is not the appropriate driving gesture.

Reasons

Resting hand on gear knob can transmit some force from your hand to the synchronizer in the gearbox and can damage them. 
 

You have to hold the car steering with your both hands so that in the emergency situations like tyre bursting (especially the front tyres) you can easily manure your car to avoid accidents.

7. FREQUENT BRAKING

Avoid frequent braking especially on those long highway drive as this will heat up the brake parts and will also reduce the overall life of brakes.

Conditions of frequent braking

• Descending from hilly areas.

If you do excess braking while descending from the slope to control your car, avoid braking and practice engine braking which has it's own advantages as explained above.

• City driving

Do not speed unnecessarily (aggressive driving) while driving in the city. In the city, you have to use brakes very frequently especially in traffic conditions. In these conditions in order to avoid frequent braking, just try to predict the car's move at your front and do necessary actions.

8. PARKING HABITS

If you park your car by only engaging it in gear or by only pulling the hand brakes, then you are doing it wrong. By engaging either of these individually, can damage the respective parts.

The proper way to park your car is to engage both, the gear as well as the parking brakes. This applies to automatic as well as manual transmission cars.

9. AVOIDING WARNING SIGNS ON INSTRUMENT CLUSTER

Modern cars have the number of sensors to sense the abnormal working of any part of an engine. These sensors are connected to the car’s main computer ECU/ECM. This computer ensures the smooth working of your car.

If something wrong happens in your car, then the ECU will give you signal through the instrument cluster by blinking the respective malfunction light these lights are called as warning lights. If you avoid such light and continue to drive, then this might cost you in future. Also, you must have basic knowledge about the meaning of each light/sign, for this, you can refer the car’s instruction manual. As soon as the light in your instrument cluster blinks, you have to contact your mechanic for examining your car.

Ideally, there should not be any warning light blinking in instrument cluster while driving your car.

10. IGNORING SUSPICIOUS SOUNDS

If you notice some noise coming out from your car when u ride over from potholes or simply cruising on highways, then do not avoid it rather get your car to examine from your mechanic. Sounds can be from the suspension systems, from the engine compartment or from doors of your car which is to be examined as early as possible.