The Best of Show at NAIAS

By a long way, the best vehicle of the show was the GMC All Terrain concept, designed by Carl Zipfel. The truck itself is a Sierra HD with a Duramax engine. The suspension is lifted and widened to accommodate some aggressive BFG 35-inch tires along with a set of Fox remote-reservoir high-performance shocks. In addition, both the front and rear suspension have a unique secondary jounce bumpstop to help the system deal with brutal high-speed bangs and knocks. The underbody looks like military spec and the bed has all sorts of cool box tech with hidden storage and power station slots.

5 Tips to Extend the Life of Your Car!

1. Be patient during the break-in period

You’ve bought your dream car and now you want to make it last at long as possible in top condition. Here are some things to remember as you pull it out of the dealer’s lot:

•During the break-in period, typically the first 1,000 miles (1,600 km), keep your speed under 55 mph (88 kpm) or to the speed recommended by your car’s manufacturer.
•Avoid heavy loads on the drive train, such as towing trailers, and loading the roof rack or trunk with heavy construction materials.
•Do not allow your new car to idle for long periods — this is good advice for the life of your car, but especially during breakin. The oil pressure generated by doing so may not be sending oil to every part of your engine.
•Use only light to medium acceleration, keeping the engine rpms below 3,000 for the first few hours of driving.
2. Drive with care everyday
Being car considerate shouldn’t stop after the break-in. Drive with care every day and your car will reward you with longer intervals without repair.

•Do not race your car’s engine during start-up.This is a quick way to add years of wear to your engine, especially if it’s cold outside.
•Accelerate slowly when you begin your drive.The most wear to the engine and drive train occurs in the first ten to twenty minutes of operation.
•Warming the engine by letting it idle in the driveway is not a smart idea.The engine doesn’t operate at its peak temperature, resulting in incomplete fuel combustion, soot deposits on cylinder walls, oil contamination, and ultimately damaged components.
•Put less strain on your engine and automatic transmission by shifting to neutral at red lights. Otherwise, the engine is still working to push the car even while it’s stopped.
•Avoid driving at high speeds and accelerating quickly, especially when it’s very hot or very cold outside. Such driving behavior will result in more frequent repairs.
•Extend the life of your tires with careful driving. Observe posted speed limits. Avoid fast starts, stops, and turns. Avoid potholes and objects on the road. Don’t run over curbs or hit the tire against the curb when parking. And, of course, don’t burn rubber.
•When turning your steering wheel, don’t hold it in an extreme right or left position for more than a few seconds. Doing so can damage the power-steering pump.
•Consolidate your short driving trips. Most of the wear and tear — as well as the pollution your car generates — takes place in the first few minutes of driving. Doing several errands at once, during low traffic hours if possible, will keep your engine happier longer.
3. Buy gas at reputable service stations

Ask whether the gas you buy is filtered at the pump and if the station has a policy about changing the pump filters regularly. If you get a song and dance, find another gas station. Some stations don’t have pump filters, making you more vulnerable to dirty gasoline. Other stations may not mix alcohol and fuel properly — or worse, water down their product. Find a station you trust and stick to it.

4. Don’t fill up if you see the tanker

If you happen to see a gasoline tanker filling the tanks at your local gas station, come back another day or go to a different station. As the station’s underground tanks are being filled, the turbulence can stir up sediment. Sediment in your gas can clog fuel filters and fuel injectors, causing poor performance and possibly necessitating repairs.

5. Go easy when you’re stuck

When stuck in mud or snow, don’t make the problem worse by damaging an expensive component. Gently rocking in an attempt to free the car is fine. But if it looks as though you’re really stuck, don’t keep at it. Throwing your car from forward to reverse repeatedly, as well as spinning tires at high speeds, can generate lots of heat and spell trouble for transmissions, clutches, and differentials. It may be cheaper in the long run to call the tow truck rather than risk big repair bills down the road. It’s a good idea to carry a traction aid in the trunk, such as sand, gravel, or cat litter.

GMC's Guides to Safe Towing from Robert Krouse

#1: Know the actual weight of the trailer

Underestimating the weight of various items placed on the trailer is something Krouse sees often. The solution is to find a truck stop, moving company, or other location with a scale open to the public.

"Always check the total trailer weight and the trailer tongue weight before you tow anything," says Krouse.

#2: Know the actual capacity of the tow vehicle as equipped

Drivers sometimes mismatch a vehicle to the trailer load. Here, the solution can be as simple as going to a dealer for weight information on the vehicle equipped just like yours.

Krouse notes that it's important to think about the amount of people and gear aboard the tow vehicle and add that to the weight being towed.

#3: Don't overload the trailer or tow vehicle

No one wants a broken axle or excessive tire wear, so don't exceed the gross vehicle weight rating.

"By putting too much weight on a trailer it can not only damage the trailer, but also the tow vehicle," Krouse says.

#4: Properly Install Combination Setup

So now you've completed steps one through three, it's still important to set up the hitch ball, brake controller, and sway controls properly.

If all else fails, RTFM applies here. Or in other words, read the owner's manual and follow instructions to install any trailering feature.

#5: Drive Safely

Always remember that your vehicle has a trailer attached: it won't accelerate or brake as quickly as it did without the trailer!

Try to avoid low overhangs if you've got a tall trailer, and make wider turns, keeping the trailer in mind.

Free Car Washes for an Entire Year

Yes, you heard me right. If you become a fan of our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/stevesmithcountry you are automatically entered to win free car washes for an entire year. We will also give a years supply of car washes to the person who recommended them to our page. So if you recommend 200 friends, that's 201 chances to win! There is no catch. This is just our way of saying thanks for being our fan! We will select a fan, at random, when we reach 500 fans!

Child Safety Seats

Why are child safety seats and inspections so important?

Each year about 600 to 700 children, birth to 5 years of age, are killed and about 80,000 are injured as passengers in motor vehicle crashes.

The number of annual child passenger fatalities has fluctuated considerably over the past decade. Studies of factors that might contribute to these annual variations suggest that the overriding factor is travel exposure–changes in the amount of time that children spend each year in motor vehicles. It appears that during the late 1980s, when child safety seat use increased rapidly, the positive effect of child safety seat use was overwhelmed by an increase in child travel exposure.

In 1995, about 56 percent of those children who were killed were completely unrestrained at the time of the crash.

Child safety seats could have saved most of those children who died unrestrained–about 200 children could have been saved in 1995.

As many as three-quarters of child safety seats are misused–reducing their effectiveness in a crash. Frequent mistakes include failure to use a locking clip and/or chest clip where needed and improper use of the child seat harness straps.

Not all child safety seats fit all cars. Compatibility problems can make it difficult or impossible to correctly install a child seat in some vehicles. Common compatibility problems include vehicle safety belts that cannot be made to tightly lock a child seat in place, and vehicle seat belt attachment points that are positioned so that the seat belt cannot hold the child seat securely.

Passenger-side air bags are effective at saving adult lives, but present a deadly compatibility problem for children. Infants less than 1 year of age must never ride in the front seat in a rear-facing safety seat in a vehicle with a passenger air bag. In a crash, the deploying bag could strike the rear facing infant seat very hard, seriously injuring or killing the infant. Older children who are improperly restrained are also at high risk. All children are safer in the back seat. Infants must ride in the rear seat, facing the rear of the car.

For additional information, please visit the http://www.nhtsa.gov/ and http://www.safekids.org/ sites.

For many years, drinking and driving has received the majority of attention when it comes to traffic accidents and fatalities, but another deadly combination that has become the norm for many can be just as fatal. Texting and driving has become a habit -and it’s not just teenagers! Many adults text while driving, answer emails and turn their vehicles into a mobile office…and most of us have surely driven by a swerving car only to see a parent texting- with a young child in the back seat!!

A study by AAA and Seventeen Magazine found that 61% of teens admit to risky driving habits, and 46% of those kids say they text and drive. That’s an alarming number of kids who admit to texting behind the wheel! In another study released by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, researchers found that “texting took a driver’s focus away from the road for an average of 4.6 second-enough time to travel the length of at football field at 55 mph.” In that length of time you could swerve off the road, hit another car-or cause serious injury to yourself or others.

Currently, there are cell phone applications being developed to help parents control the availability of text functions on their children’s phones. “Textecution”, an app only currently available for adroid phones, uses GPS to determine how fast a cell phone is “moving.” If it is traveling at a speed greater than 10 mph the texting function is disabled-along with internet browsing. There are still some flaws in the design-the system can’t distinguish if you are simply a passenger in a vehicle and in those cases also will not allow you to text. However in cases like that access can be requested via a quick message to the parent asking for access-parents have control of the system from their own mobile device. (www.textecution.com)

But, kids will learn from example, and if you don’t put down the cell phone while driving neither will they. And if you continue to respond to friends and business associates asking how long until you arrive at a meeting-they will continue to try and reach you when you are trying to safely arrive at your destination. Set a good example for those around you and pledge to no longer text and drive-when you have the urge to text, tweet, email or type in anyway while driving just ignore the urge or pull over. For your safety and the safety of everyone around you-texting and driving just isn’t worth the risk.

Steve Smith Country is committed to helping keep our community’s teens and families safe. Please take a moment and share with your friends and loved ones the dangers of using a cell phone while driving. You could save the live of someone you love.

Eliminate Blind Spots

Learning to set your vehicle’s side-view mirrors so you no longer have dangerous blind spots is one of the most important adjustments you can make to improve your driving safety. Once your mirrors are set correctly, it will be much easier to safely change lanes and merge into traffic, because any vehicle coming up behind or beside you will be visible in at least one of your mirrors at all times.
The rear-view mirror is easy to adjust: Its purpose is to show what’s directly behind you. But many people make a crucial error when they set their side-view mirrors – creating dangerous blind spots on both sides of their vehicle.

BLIND SPOTS
Some of us were taught to adjust our side mirrors by sitting behind the steering wheel and turning the mirrors so we can see the sides of our vehicle. But this actually creates tunnel vision to the rear of the car, and overlaps much of what your rear-view mirror already shows you. It also creates blind spots on the left and right sides of your vehicle, momentarily preventing you from seeing a vehicle that’s attempting to pass.

THE CORRECT WAY
To eliminate blind spots, adjust your side mirrors as follows:

1. Sitting in the driver’s seat, lean over to the left until your head touches the driver’s side window. Adjust the left side mirror outward until you can just barely see the very edge of your car – with your head still touching the glass of the driver’s side window.

2. Now, lean the same distance to your right, until your head is in the middle of the car. Adjust the right mirror outward until you can see just the very edge of the car – with your head still in the middle of the car.

3. Sitting in your normal driving position, all three mirrors should work in harmony with each other. Your rear-view mirror should show what’s behind you. The left mirror should show you what’s coming up on your left, and the right mirror should show you what’s coming up on your right. Before upcoming traffic leaves your rear-view mirror entirely, it should be visible in one of your side mirrors – with no blind spot, no delays.

After you make the initial adjustments, you might still need to tweak them slightly. And driving (and backing up) with your mirrors set this way may take getting used to. Learn to rely on your rear-view mirror first, and get used to what your side-view mirrors are reflecting. Once you get used to it, you should find it much easier and safer to change lanes, pass other vehicles and merge into fast moving traffic. By taking the time to adjust your mirrors correctly, you’ll be able to drive more confidently – because you will have eliminated dangerous blind spots.