Continued: Major Car Myths Busted: Part II

Tubeless Tyres do not burst

With the introduction of tubeless tyres, the safety has gone up for sure but many people hold the misconception that tubeless tyres do not burst. That is not true. Tubeless tyres, like the tube tyres do blow out but the air is released at a slower rate than the tube tyres. The tyre burst incidents at Yamuna Expressway involved a lot of tubeless tyres. It does not matter if you are on tubeless or tube tyre, make sure that you are always at a safe speed to avoid such incidents.

Dirty cars faster than cleaner cars

This myth comes from Golf balls, which are dimpled to trap air. The layer of air makes them more aerodynamic and a dimpled ball travel as much as 37% more than a smooth ball. This theory is however not true with the cars. Dirt on surface of the car will actually increase the aerodynamic friction rather than bring it down unless the dirt magically takes the dimpled form of a golf ball

Bullet hitting your car’s fuel tank can cause explosion

Well, this myth comes from all the Bollywood and Hollywood flicks where we love to see cars going up in flames after being hit by a bullet in the fuel tank. It actually is not so easy to light up the car like that. If the car runs on diesel, it would be impossible to put it on fire because diesel does not lights up under normal atmospheric pressure.

If the car has a petrol engine, even then there is not enough oxygen inside the tank to make it catch fire. Fuel tanks in a modern car are located in a way that they don’t rupture during accidents. It is quite impossible for a bullet to bring the death of a car by fire.

Filling fuel early in the morning to accommodate more fuel

The theory says that colder liquid is denser and hence, you will get more for the money you’re paying. The fact is the fuel stations store all kind of fuel in thick tanks located under the ground. These tanks are resistant to temperature changes generally, the underground temperatures do not vary as much as the ambient temperature. The temperature changes are so little that it does not affect the large quantity of fuel stored in the tank and you always get almost the same density regardless of the time of day.

Nitrogen in tyres

Recently nitrogen air filling points have become very common at the fuel stations. They advertise that they run cooler and give you more mileage. Well, even Formula 1 cars run on 100% nitrogen to extract the full potential of the car. The problem is the normal nitrogen filling stations do not have the equipment or skill to put 100% nitrogen in the tyres.

There always will be other elements like water vapour and other gases. Nitrogen also has bigger molecules and retains better inside the tyre for a longer time because the molecules of nitrogen are bigger than oxygen but again, 100% nitrogen can’t be filled with the techniques vendors use and hence, you get a similar result as you would have got when filling the normal air.