How to buy your dream car

It is over a year since I last blogged
I guess it is almost a year since I last posted an article on this blog. As a matter of fact I din't even notice a year had gone by. I feel I have an obligation to give some explanation as to why it has taken so long to post an article. About a year ago, I was employed and working for someone. I had a good job, more than most young people of my age can ever dream of. Don't get me wrong, I was not sucked, I actually quit after realizing I was not utilizing my potential to the fullest. I realized I had a lot of time at my disposal, I had even started blogging and doing so many other things during my free time. (Please am not saying blogging is a waste of time). Therefore I quit my job as you can read here http://evans-nyagei-amenya.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-day-i-quit-my-job.html

I have been so busy on my start-up company
I now have a start-up company which I have been working on day and night. I can assure you that, for the entire seven years I worked for someone I never felt the kind of purpose and fulfillment in life like I feel now. It has been a roller coaster but if I went back one year, I will take exactly the same decision I took. I know I am not yet where I want to go, but at least I know where I want to go and I know only I can take me there.

My company http://softmate-technologies.com/ develops financial applications for the emerging market. some of our products include:

1. Agency banking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5L74h-86r8
2. Core Microfinance solution http://youtu.be/HIRcoa7g3eY
3. Core money transfer apllication
4. Alternate banking Channels

We are currently doing some implementation for core micro-finance system and other applications in West Africa. And from a humble beginning of only one staff member (me), Softmate Technologies Ltd is proudly a home to five dedicated staff members.

General rules to consider when buying a car

Now back to cars. From the feedback I got in the previous post http://evaaggy-happyme.blogspot.com/2012/01/overated-toyota-nze-and-underrated.html where I compared Nissan B15 and Toyota NZE I made some analysis which will inform the content of this post. It is obvious that everyday first time car buyers are coming up and don't know where to start or what to look for in a car they want to buy. I therefore felt it necessary to outline three tips that I have learnt with time. These tips are mostly applicable to the developing countries where buying a second hand car is the norm rather than the exception.

1. Most cars in their class are the same, the difference is your taste

Most people list several cars (Cedia, Toyota 110, NZE, Nissan B15, Subaru, etc). The question they want an answer for, is which one from the list should they buy? Well the answer is, you may need a magnifying glass to really set any one of these cars apart from the rest. They are all small economy class cars that can endure a moderate amount of beating. Other than going to office and back and an occasional trip up-country, don't expect anything much from these cars. If you treat them well, they will serve you for long and are quite economical. Spare parts can easily obtained locally. Same thing applies to mid-size SUVs (Sport Utility Vehicle) like Pajero IO, Nissana X-Trail, Subaru Forester, BMW X3, etc. Of course in this class some are more luxurious than the others.

2. Go for your taste

The world is full of mediocrity because everyone wants to do the what the other guy did. Everyone is afraid to follow his/her own heart. We have been so conditioned to avoid failure at all costs. Imagine back in your life when you started going to school. If you made a mistake as small as mispronounce a word, everyone laughed at you. Our parents and guardians, from very early on life have always trained us to do things in a certain way. Whenever we are in doubt, we always want to fall back and find out what everyone else is doing. Our society, instead of producing independent thinkers and renew itself for future growth, it is making copy cuts of itself hence very little change. That is why I will insist, refer to point number 1 and then buy a car of your choice. 

3. Cheap is expensive

Am not saying you buy the most expensive car available. All am saying is refer to point no. 1, then buy the newest car you can get with your budget. A newer car will have most components still in good working condition. A very beaten up car, though cheap, it won't be long before you start creating acquaintance with most mechanics near your homestead and office.

Please live your life and follow your dream. If you don't you will be part of someone else's dream. There is never the right moment to do anything. But we always want to take all the time to prepare and wait for that right moment. Guess what? The day you finally decide to start living, you might realize it is too late.

The overdrive button

Most people believe that when the dashboard lights with an orange light O/D OFF, the car will travel fastest. If you are in this category of people, don't worry, you have actually come to the right site. However I will forgive you for one thing. The overdrive button is actually inverted. We are used to our lighting switch being OFF until we switch it ON. the overdrive button goes contrary to this norm. It is always ON till you switch it OFF.

most automatic cars have a panel against which the gear selector lever slides to aid in selection of appropriate gear. You will see the following numbers and alphabets clearly marked: 1,2,D,N,R,P. I believe from your intuition you understand what 1 and 2 mean. Yes, they mean gear 1 and gear 2. You might wonder, when do you ever need to use this gears in an automatic car. Well here are a few example. Imagine you are going down a steep desent and want to maintain a max speed of lets say 10km/h. Just move the gear selector lever to 1 or 2 depending on the speed you need and you can safely take your foot of the break pedal. The car will maintain a constant low speed down the desent. 

D is the most used in normal everyday driving. It gives the car's automatic transmission system the freedom to do what it was created to do. Except some systems fall asleep on the job and don't know exactly when to do what! Those which stay awake decide what gear to engage at what time depending on the driving conditions.If you are depressing the accelerator pedal slightly, it will most likely be on gear one. It will then move gradually up to gear 2 and 3 as you open the throttle more by depressing the accelerator pedal further down the floor.

N allows you to disengage the engine power from the transmission. But after you do this. you need to make sure you are stepping on the brake pedal or you have engaged the hand brake.It is very unwise to drive on N for an automatic car and I believe any other car. A car in which the engine power transmission to the wheels is cut off will be hard to control under emergency situations. The precision of maneuvers is lost basically for two reasons: One, traction between road and tires is greatly reduced. Two the engine breaking power is non-existent. Only use the N when you are in traffic jam, i.e., when you are physically inside your car. And to make sure this actually happens. You will realize the key will not come out if you switch your car off in N position.

R is self explanatory. This you use to reverse your car. P of course is for parking.

Ok, big question, where is gear 3 and 4? Look at the title of this post again. That is the answer. Actually, the overdrive button is always an ON button. Which means under normal driving conditions overdrive is on. This means the automatic transmission can move all the way from gear 1,2,3 and finally 4. However when you toggle the overdrive button OFF by pressing it, immediately the dash board will light with "O/D OFF". This simply means gear 4 has been cut out of the transmission and the car can only go up to maximum of gear 3.

The reason why you are not rich

Frankly speaking, the reason why you are not rich is not because you haven't tried getting rich. The real reason why you are poor is simply because you don't know how to get rich. I am not talking about some get rich-quick schemes that will make you poorer than you were before you joined. Get this right, there is nothing like pay 10$ and earn 50,000$ a month. To start with you can never buy your way into riches.

The simple fact is, you have all the tools within you to accomplish your life long dreams of living the kind of life you want without being bothered by small things like bills to pay. If you can live your dream life, most likely you will be in a position to help others realize their dreams. So lets start with you. First of all lets look at some traits of people who will never make it in life, at least in as far as making money is concerned:

1. Insecure people. These people are always doing things to secure their positions. This is mostly in work place. Some people always want the boss to know how good they are. They always want to be the ones to take credit for any achievement. They don't want to share what they know with others at their work place. They fear that if  someone else gets to know what they know, they will be considered dispensable. They never want anybody to rise to their level of expertise. What they don't realize is that the moment you become dispensable, it is simply a time for you to climb one more ladder step in life into a new area where once again you will be indispensable. Just get this, if you want to hold someone down you also have to stay down with them. Strive to make yourself dispensable at all time and you will realize the magic in it. First people will love you. Naturally when you share, people will like you. Second you will start setting yourself up for higher goals. Sadly some people are so good at what they do but so mean with it that actually no one ever realizes how good they are. Remember the world owes you nothing, if you don't show the world what you can really do for the world, no one will pay you to show it. First show the world what you have got, and the world will in turn pay you for it. The converse never works. If you insist, you will die with your music in you. You need to play that lovely music to the world!
2. People looking for money. This is the category in which so many of us are found. This precisely explains why 90% of the world's wealth is in the hands of 10% of the human race. A simple fact is when all your instincts, judgement and wisdom get clouded by the desire to get money, then whatever you come up with will never be worth a cent. Put people first in whatever you do and you will never look for money in your life. It is simple, if people are satisfied with your product or service, you will never beg them to pay for it. Even if they are genuinely unable to pay for it, they will pass word round and you will get other people who will pay.
3. Doing something you are really not good at. People do things they are not good at for several reasons. One is they believe, it is the in thing to do. I remember when I was in high school every one us wanted to become a doctor. We viewed medicine as a prestigious profession. Few of us really had the actual calling necessary to become a doctor. Being a top national school, we were all bright, no doubt about it. But how many of us, despite qualifying for medicine, even having done it today, would say they are really happy with what they are doing? Just because you can merely qualify to do something doesn't mean you do it. If you really want to know how passionate you are with what you do, ask yourself this, "If it were not for money, will I be doing this today?" If your answer is no, just know you will only be making enough money to pay your bills for a long time. Your calling lies somewhere untapped but you are too scared to go for it. Second reason why we do things we don't like is because of some imagined sense of security. We feel we have a salary, we can pay our bills, we can educate our kids. I agree this is really very important to us, especially when we have to take care of our families with our pay check. But really our families should be happy if we are really doing what we love to do. Life is not all about money. Actually the paradox is, when you stop thinking about money and start living, money will start coming!
4. Mediocrity. I will define this as simply passing time, lack of dedication, just being lazy and doing a shoddy job. Sorry to say, but this is what happens in most government offices. Someone gets paid a salary but does not deliver up to expectation. Not that these people cannot deliver, they have the ability to do so but simply are lazy about doing it. When something goes wrong they are very quick at looking for scape-goat routes. They have zero dedication for what they do. They would rather chat away whole day with their friends rather than do what they are supposed to do in office. They are a major contributor to product and service failures in companies since if in front office, they will not handle clients well. They are a major pain to work with. On the flip side it may mean company management is not motivating its staff well and hence most people resort to mediocrity. But my advise is, if you think this company is doing so badly, then don't waste your time there, you can actually build a company that will beat the current company you work for. Just learn from the example of Yahoo and Google. Google rose from nowhere and overtook the giant search engine Yahoo. It is very simple Google new what they were doing and still do, Yahoo din't. Needless to say, mediocre people never make much money in their life time.

Therefore to summarize everything and give you one answer as to why you are not rich today, I will say this. You have not discovered what you are good at, and if you have, you have not yet given it your best.

How to make your car sturdy on the road

Ever tried to drive a car with the following characteristics:

1. wobbles on the road
2. Noises from the front
3. You take your hands off the steer wheel and the car starts drifting to one side
4. The car seems to develop vibrations after a certain speed
5. When you break hard, you don't feel the well cushioned rubbery firmness, instead you feel like some metal just rubbed on the road
6. car always has some distant vibrations which can be felt on one wheel

The obvious culprits for these symptoms are, in the order given above:

1. Completely worn out shocks
2. worn out ball joints, rubber bushings, front shocks
3. check wheel alignment, ball joints
4. check wheel balancing
5. worn out rubber bushings, ball joints, front shocks
6. Make sure to have tires with same tread pattern

Safe driving tips on Kenyan high ways

It is really sad to imagine the number of lives that we lose every month on our roads. Thousands others are left maimed for life, partly or completely incapacitated to be able to engage in any nation building activity. The effect is multi-pronged; first in case of fatalities, families are left without bread winners, second there is an ever increasing demand for specialized treatment to such injuries as spinal injuries. As you are all aware, especially from the current campaign of, BRING ZACK BACK HOME, we do not have a centre to take care of spinal injuries. You can imagine the suffering to these patients without any treatment on site, especially those who are unable travel all the way to South Africa or Egypt, in which the nearest spinal code injury treatment centres, are located, to receive treatment. Third there is reduced or no productivity at all from the accident survivors depending on the extent of their injuries. 


So we all know careless driving can end your life and the lives of others or leave you maimed for life. Consequently we all resolve to drive carefully, observing every rule we learnt at the driving school. Always keep left; never overtake on a continuous yellow line, round corners, etc. Is that all it will take to arrive alive? Well, as much as this will guarantee our safety on the road, we have to wake up to the grim reality that there are those drivers that may decide to ignore these rules and endanger the lives of other road users including ours. This could be a public vehicle driver more intent on making more money than on the safety of the passengers. It could be a young driver and his friends wanting to show off to his friends how fast his sports car can move. And all enjoying the thrill of the speed and throwing all caution to the wind. Here are a few things you can do to stay safe despite all the madness on our roads. 

Climbing lane is not labeled Lorries only

I once had a near death experience. I was climbing one of the many hills just before Narok on the Narok-Mae Mahiu road. I was doing about 120km/h having come down at almost 150km/h on the opposite hill in order to gather enough momentum to climb the other. This is usually a common but rather risky habbit of most drivers when a road goes over adjacent hills or valley escarpments. You accelerate to very high speed when climbing down one side in order to gather momentum to climb the other side. Well, there was a bend on the climbing side so I couldn’t see much of the oncoming traffic. The climbing lane was free but I kept to the middle lane which is rightfully my lane.  Just as I negotiated the bend I came face to face with two giant buses occupying the two right-most lanes leaving out only the climbing lane and coming down as though the devil himself was right behind them, each trying to outdo the other. Needless to say, I was on a head-on collision path with one of the beasts. What happened next I really can’t say I was in control, a Higher being was. Mind you my entire family was inside that car. You can imagine what happens when you make a near full turn of the steer wheel on car moving at 120km/h in a fraction of a second with merely a whisker to spare. Everybody is screaming in the car and you can feel the agonizing eternity it takes as the cars suspensions are pulled to the limit on one side and compressed to a dead end on the other as the entire weight of the car is shifted of from one set of suspensions to the other in the swerve and counter swerve maneuvers. My luck was that the climbing lane was free and had room to swerve to. The car made about three nerve raking swings before leveling out and leaving me completely shaken and my passengers in utter disbelief of what had just happened. From that day on, I usually keep to the climbing lane if it is free and only get out of it when overtaking. From this incident I also learnt that just a fraction of a second of concentration when it matters most can be the difference between life and death on the road.

Use the overdrive button when going downhill

I stand corrected but I believe all automatic cars, which have now become so prevalent, have the overdrive button. This is a push button normally located on the upper right side of the gear shift lever of the automatic car. Overdrive is normally on and will be switched off when you press this button. A display O/D OFF on the dashboard appears after you press this button, indicating overdrive is off. This basically serves to cut out gear four of the automatic car. The car can now only go up to gear three. If you have driven an automatic car downhill you will notice that even if you took your foot completely of the gas pedal, the car will still accelerate. Instead of you resting your foot on the brake pedal to regulate speed, simply press the O/D button. This will limit the car’s speed to about 100km/h. This speed will remain constant; you can take your feet off the gas and breaks. Never drive at high speed downhill for the same reason Lorries move at snail’s pace downhill especially when loaded. Just know that in the grand scale of things, your car might be small and easy to maneuver but when you are going full speed downhill then the mechanisms of your car break and suspension will be stretched to a breaking point in case of an emergency just as the lorry will not be able to break from its sheer weight. I know airplane wings are tested to stand double the weight of their intended operation load without breaking, but I have not heard of someone testing the car’s breaking system on top speed with double its load and going downhill. So keep to what is a safe speed. Use the O/D button. If you want an even lower speed, simply pull the gear lever to 2 on the gear shift panel. This will limit your speed to about 60-80km/h and you can take your feet off the gas and break. Under normal driving conditions make sure the O/D OFF is not displayed on the dashboard. O/D OFF display during overtaking can be detrimental. This is because your car will struggle to hit a top speed needed to overtake a fast moving vehicle.

Garbage in, garbage out principle

The brain is one of the most complex computers; making man’s most advanced computer a child’s play. But just like all computers, the brain gives output based on the input and its state of service. If your computer is infested with viruses which have corrupted its memories and other vital functionalities, you don’t expect much service from it. If the inputs devices like the keyboard are faulty or missing some keys, again you might end up keying wrong info for processing.
Overtaking of another vehicle on the road might seem like a simple task. But if we imagine the number of head on-collisions that occur then we might as well try to keenly study what goes on through the brain when overtaking. From this it will also serve to help us know in what state your brain should be in order to execute a safe overtaking. The main receptors to the environment are our eyes and ears. We need to look ahead and see that the road is clear enough. The car is also fitted with two side mirrors and a driving mirror to enable us accurately see and judge how far behind and approximate the speed with which the traffic behind us is approaching and whether it wants to overtake. Sometimes we may forget to look on the mirrors and just want to overtake or worse still a vehicle might have begun overtaking without us noticing, and therefore no longer on the field of view of the mirrors, especially those bathroom mirrors that we fit on our cars after thieves have made away with the factory fitted mirrors. The bathroom mirrors have very narrow field of view and you might miss or have difficulty seeing traffic that wants to overtake you. Be extra careful when using these mirrors. In case you deviate from your lane the overtaking driver may honk on his horn. Needless to say you need to be attentive to all sounds around, both from your engine and any other external sound. Please don’t drive with blaring music as you will be clouding one of your most important receptor on the road, the ears.  There might be an oncoming vehicle and the brain needs to judge its speed and distance and compare it with our current speed and the speed of the car we want to overtake and make an accurate guess that if we accelerate to a certain speed we will be able to overtake safely and be out of the way before the oncoming traffic reaches us. If your brain misjudges any input here or misses out a certain input required to judge whether it is safe to overtake or not, then this is a recipe for disaster. The brain functions at its optimum when it’s free of any corruption. Corruption of the brain functionalities is brought about by such things as alcohol, loud noise, sleep, fatigue and other factors that may lessen attention. When the brain fails to make an accurate judgment, you are likely to end up on a head-on collision. If you have any doubt on whether you will manage the dash before the oncoming traffic reaches you, don’t attempt it.

Fuel saving tips

With the cost of living rising every day, it is time to consider how much you are spending on fuel for your car. Ask yourself whether every drop of fuel that goes into the tank gives you real mileage. Do you fuel your car only to spend half of it in rapid accelerations and abrupt stops?


Let me explain a few principles that will perhaps help you save fuel if not making you a better driver.

THE LAW OF INERTIA

This law simply states that any physical object will resist change to its state of motion or rest. This tells you that a stationery object needs a lot of force to start moving and equally a moving object requires a lot of force to stop it from moving. Of course this force is relative to the size of the object. Thus it requires more force to move a bus from 0km/h as opposed to a Vitz. However irrespective of  the size of your car, you will always spend more fuel to start it moving from a complete stop as opposed to fuel needed to keep it moving. Again it will need more fuel to accelerate to a higher speed as opposed to accelerating to a lower speed and leveling out. Therefore a fuel saving tip here would be to try and minimize the number of stops you make. How can you minimize the number of stops? Start by anticipating the stops. Why should you accelerate all the way up to the traffic lights or the back of the track only to hit the brakes hard. Drive moderately on slow moving traffic and you will find yourself crossing the the traffic lights without stopping. The lights will always be green for you since you are not trying to beat them. So by the time you arrive at the next, it has also turned green. In fact as you near obvious stops like round-abouts and junctions, lift your foot of the gas pedal and let the car slow down naturally.


Once again if you are not on high speed, the energy spent breaking the car is less since the resistance to stop is not as high as when on high speed. Here you also have a direct saving on your break pads. They don't have to endure so much force.

WORK DONE

In Physics, work done equals the mass of a body multiplied by the distance travelling by that body. The point to note here is, two bodies that travel same distance but have different masses require different energy amounts to cover same distance. This very easily explains that your car will consume more fuel on a full boot than when the boot is empty. We all love travelling upcountry and filling our car boots with food items when travelling back to town. Do yourself a favour and make sure you get all items out of the boot before you resume the normal trips to office in your car. At this point your might consider co-sharing fuel costs with all your friends that you always give a lift in your car! You might also want to re-consider the wisdom of always having your tank full when on short trips like going to office and back. Do you really need all that load of fuel? Just make sure your fuel gauge does not fall below the quarter mark but certainly I wouldn't advocate for a full tank on office-to-home trips. Unless of course you have to drive 200km every day!

DENSITY

The time of day you fuel your car can determine the amount of fuel you get in terms of mass. The fuel pumps measure the fuel in terms of volume. Therefore on cold morning hours you will get more mass of fuel for the same volume since the density is high. V = m/d (V=volume, m=mass, d=density). Volume being constant, mass has to increase with increase in density in order for the pump to measure same volume. Unlike when fueling during hot afternoon hours, when the density of fuel is so low. This simply means you get a lighter load of fuel. certainly you will cover more mileage on a heavier load of fuel as opposed to a lighter one on the same price. Take this analogy, you have a glass full of raw popcorn seeds and another full of heated and puffed up popcorn seeds. They both have same volume but weigh completely different because of the parking density of the seeds.

The overated Toyota NZE and underrated Nissan B-15

Is it really true that Toyota NZE is better than Nissan B-15? 
Well to answer this question I will base it on my experience, travel and my own research. I will compare NZE and B-15 that have equal engine capacity (1490cc).

Nissan Sunny B-15

Toyota Corolla NZE

My experience
First to start with experience I already told you that my first car was a Nissan B-15 What some mechanics will tell you, part I. This was despite of all the efforts by my friends to convince me otherwise. I bought the car with a mileage reading of 83,000km. Right now the mileage is 140,000 km.
I replaced the rear shocks in july 2011 and front shocks in january 2012. I have also replaced the ball joints bushings, tie rods and battery once. Other than that for the 50,000 km on that car, the only other expense has been normal service (oil, plugs, air filter, oil filter). There is no place I have not gone with this car.


In july 2011 I bought a Toyota NZE year 2004 with milleage 43,000km. Today the milleage is 60,000km. I went with it to Mbiuni (near Kangundo - Ukambani), it broke the steering rack end. I have also replaced the rear shocks and battery.


Toyota NZE feels much lighter than Nissan B-15. when I check the weights, Nissan B15 2002 model is 1,100 kg. Though later models are lighter. Nissan B-15 year 2003 is 1,050 kg. Toyota NZE 2004 is 1,030kg. 


I know for sure Toyota NZE is better on fuel economy than Nissan B-15. At the current price of ksh. 120, I will spend 400 on Nze for me to get to work and back home with all the traffic jam. But for Nissan B-15, I will need ksh. 500. this is for a total distance of 30km.


NZE have done a good job in the seats. They are really raised and very comfortable. you dont feel like you are seating on the floor. Unlike its predecessors, the Toyota 110 and 111 which were also so crammed together leaving no spaces for legs. The NZE may look small on the outerside but it has an amazingly big room inside. It has enough leg room and nice comfortable raised seats.


Unfortunately the B-15 seats are low and not so comfortable. The steering for the Nissan B-15 is much firmer as opposed to NZE which is so soft, you can almost turn it with one finger!


NZE engine employs VVT-i technology ( Variable Valve Timing with intelligence - developed by Toyota). This has the advantage of lower fuel consumption, lower exhaust emissions and higher power output. But you need to understand that all modern engines use the same technology with different terminologies. The general name for the technology is "Variable valve actuation (VVA)". For example Nissan first developed their own form of VVT 1986 with the VG30DE(TT) engine.


The response of NZE when picking up is amazing perhaps because of its weight. However you will never catch a B-15 after it has hit 120km/h. It like begs you to push it further. Again I realized it is much easier to break an NZE without the tires screeching than a B-15. Again I think this should be because of weight. Overal NZE has good response in picking up and stopping but maybe abit shaky at high speed. On the other side you may want to be careful with B-15 when you hit top speed as stopping will not be so instant. B-15 may also tend to rev more than NZE when picking up. 


From my travelling
Now based on some travelling I have done. In Rwanda a Nissan is a rare site. Reason being they are so expensive there. So everybody is driving a toyota. In Uganda, same thing, Toyotas are prevalent never mind the year. I think they don't have age limit on imported cars in Uganda. Same thing to Tanzania, more Toyotas.
Over to Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). If you see an NZE or B-15, take a photo and send it to me. Those guys use Mercedece C class as taxis! Infact I will talk about cars in DRC in another post.


So what about Japan where both brands are actually manufactured? Well ordinary Japanes people view the two cars as same and buying one in place of the other is merely a matter of personal preference.


You are actually paying for the Toyota Logo
My conclusion: NZE should cost same B-15. There is nothing so special about Toyota NZE. So why are you paying so much for the Toyota logo?