Comments by "Mikko Rantalainen" (@MikkoRantalainen) on "Conquer Driving" channel.

  1. Here in Finland they say that when you pass the driving test and get your license, you can start learning to drive on public roads. The license doesn't mean you're good driver, only that you are not so bad that it woudn't be safe enough to let you continue training on public roads at all.
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  2. I would also say that this video is a testimony of the lack of skill for the original instructor Andrew had. It seemed like many tips and instructions given in this video were new information to him even though he has already been driving quite a bit.
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  3. 23:11 "and you probably save more money saving your tires than saving a tiny bit of fuel" I fully agree you there! Tires are so expensive that having extra tire wear is not worth only a slight improvement in the fuel economy.
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  4. I was positively surprised by the level of driving demonstrated here. I was expecting much worse with mostly experience in the USA only.
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  5. The only way to get rid of tailgaters would be to increase automated traffic enforcement and starting to fine tailgaters. If they received a couple of fines per week saying "you're following the car in front of you too closely, here's a fine for it", they would probably figure it out in a year or two.
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  6. It would have been interesting to add a short training with manual gearbox and see how fast he would have learned that. It's obvious that the overall car control was not a problem so learning manual gearbox and clutch shouldn't be a too hard task.
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  7. 27:00 I think you should underline that "cover the clutch" means "be ready to press the clutch pedal but do not press it even slightly yet". She keeps pressing clutch nearly halfway instead of covering it which is a sure way to destroy the clutch prematurely if she takes that as a habit.
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  8. It's interesting that UK rules say that you shouldn't put on your turn signal before you're sure that the next lane is already free / you have already checked the mirrors. Here in Finland, the official rule is that turn signal is used to signal intent. If you want to switch lanes, you turn on turn signal, then start to look for the space – as a result, you don't need to look at the mirrors or look to the side before turning on the turn signal. However, you must check the available space before applying any sideways movement to the vehicle. This allows more time for the other drivers to react to your intent and hopefully make some space to help the lane change.
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  9. Interesting test. I usually have about 5 psi above the factory spec because I like the small change in handling and if it also improves economy, it's fine. (The handling is a bit more accurate thanks to less tire rubber flexing but it might be a bit more noisy.)
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  10. I think it might be easier for students to understand how to use the clutch if you told them that clutch has very limited lifespan for the middle part of the pedal movement and it costs per second. Holding the clutch fully down or fully up is free! And it's important to not even touch the clutch pedal when you're driving for longer distances because any extra weight on the pedal will cause extra wear to thrust bearing of the clutch.
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  11.  @Wolf-Spirit_Alpha-Sigma  I think that pedagogy for learning manual transmission is just pretty poor in most places. The tips on clutch use I've seen on this channel this far seem pretty reasonable for new drivers so it would have been interesting to see if a person from USA would learn manual transmission quickly with proper instructions.
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  12. 16:10 Seat (and every other VAG car) also has a small button in the re-fueling channel and if you press it with the tip of the gun, it will open an air valve which allows filling the tank fully. However, you're only supposed to press that button if you're going to burn at least a couple of liters of fuel because otherwise it might turn out that the fuel from the station was cold and when your car sits in the sun, the thermal expansion of fuel causes it to overflow! That said, the exact amount of air behind that button changes how much fuel you can fill in.
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  13. One interesting tip I've learned about brake modulation is to imagine curling your big toe upwards during braking if you need to release the pressure just a little. That's much more accurate method than trying to move your whole foot or even bend the ankle.
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  14. Great results for 2.0 liter gasoline engine! I was expecting much worse results.
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  15.  @melgrant7404  Some modern cars have truly insane cost for suspension spare parts. And if the hit is bad enough to bend the attachment points of the suspension parts, it will only get more expensive. As an example of insanely expensive parts, did you know that modern BMW cars have headlights that cost about 3500 USD per side. And if you have BMW laser headlights on X5, the replacement cost is closer to 5000 USD per side. That makes zero sense to me but BMW owners are still buying those cars – I would rather vote with my wallet and avoid getting such expensive crap because you might get unlucky and have a hit from a stone fling from the tire of another car.
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  16. 5:00 I think it would be good to explain why you should take it gently to the operating temperature. Historically the reason was that engine oil didn't work well enough until the temperature was high enough and you could damage the engine with high load without the optimally working oil (because oil being too cold). Modern fully synthetic oils are good enough to allow proper lubrication even when cold but the thermal expansion of the engine parts (different parts made out different metals have different rates) is still the reason to avoid heavy loads until the engine has acquired proper temperature. I think nowadays the biggest issue is piston ring blowby which causes extra sooth into the engine oil and reduces quality of the oil if you keep loading the engine too high when cold. Plus if you heat one part of the engine really rapidly with high loads while the other nearby part is still cold, thermal expansion rate between those parts causes a lot of stress to the parts.
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  17. If you have separate license for manual transmission, you have the same logic as here in Finland. If you get your driver's license with manual transmission, you can drive all cars. If you get the driver's license with an automatic gearbox, you're allowed to only drive cars with automatic gearbox.
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  18. 1:10:30 It would have been good to explain where to look before reversing. It looks like Emily was looking at the instrument cluster while reversing, which is obviously a bad habit to start.
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  19. 26:00 I think it would be easier to explain that internal combustion engine can keep running between (roughly) 1000 and 6000 rpm and to spin wheels faster or slower than that, you have to use gears to change the speed. I think it's a good idea to give an example that 1000 rpm means roughly 16 rotations per second and ask the student to imagine how fast you would be going if the wheel of the car does 16 complete revolutions per second. It's also good idea to explain what happens if you go outside the operating rpm of the engine: if you go too slow, the engine will stall and shut down. If you go too high, the engine may break. That's good to understand for new students so that they can understand that if you don't know which gear is the best, you should always prefer too high gear over too low gear because using too low gear at high speeds and rapidly lifting the clutch may break the whole engine because of over-revving which causes permanent damage to the engine. I think it would be also good to explain clutch as "it allows engine and gearbox to rotate at different speeds, including stopping the gearbox". I think that would make it easier to understand why you need to use clutch to change gears while the car is already moving.
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  20. Great pedagogy as usual! The idea that you teach the pupil to turn the steering wheel according to the image you see in the mirror was very clever. That will be much easier for the pupil to understand the concept that explaining that you have to turn the wheel in another direction while going reverse. It was also surprising to learn that many pupils cannot automatically figure out that you want to mostly look at the inside corner side mirror while reversing into spot. Never assume that the pupil knows things without being told!
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  21. Great pedagogy tips!
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  22. If you have an engine with EGR and turbo (basically any modern ICE car), you should floor the engine often enough. Common way to cause EGR and turbo issues is driving always on low RPM and low torque. I recommend driving the engine to full driving temperature and the flooring it on 3rd from 2000 rpm to red line at least twice a month. And avoids a lot of carbon buildup in EGR and turbo when you get the turbo hot enough. If it's cool climate, you may want to repeat the flooring a couple of times. The idea is to get turbo so hot that it will cause carbon buildup to turn into CO2. Of course, you don't want to do that if you don't have spec compliant oil, proper coolant level and a timing belt/chain you know will not snap.
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  23. 11:10 I think the "cam belt" is more commonly known as timing belt. And its service interval is typically somewhere between 60000 km and 220000 km in VW/VAG engines. It's interesting to hear that Seat claims that it lasts the lifetime of the car. Surely the lifetime of the engine ends when the belt fails so that part is true.
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  24. 26:45 Have you tried to put it to the 2nd gear first and only then to 1st? Some cars have syncro gears that like it better when you go directly from 2nd to 1st.
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  25. I still think that you can accelerate with great economy if you go full throttle but switch gears on pretty low RPM numbers just like in your more economic drive. (Assuming manual gearbox of course, if you have any kind of automatic, going full throttle will activate lower gears which is not great for improved economy.) I'd also switch from first to second gear even sooner.
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  26. I find it surprising that you could fail the driving test in the UK for driving too slow even when there's no official minimum speed sign. Great video as usual! I think it would be more interesting for the viewer to not have the information in the title nor description about if she's going to pass or not.
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  27. Typically the tailgaters are the most clueless people in the traffic so they will not understand any kind of signals as "you're driving too close" or "overtake me now if you're going to overtake at all or take more distance". I've tried one blink of brake light (as in, no brake check, just a brake light), two blinks, blink hazards once, signal one blink towards the pavement side etc. Nothing helps for the clueless type. The only thing you can safely do is double the safe distance in front of you because you have to keep the safe distance for both of you and avoid any rapid speed changes exactly as explained in this video.
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  28. Whenever someone is tailgating me, I simply double the safe distance in front of me. I basically drive like I have to keep safe distance for both of us so that when something actually happens, I can brake check the tailgater, wait a second and then apply brakes for real. If I were to glue a bumber sticker on my car, it would probably say "I'll drive faster if you keep safe distance to me!"
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  29. I think it's always safe to assume that the car is not signaling, it's going to continue in roundabout. Signaling to exit the roundabout is always about improving traffic flow of other people and if you don't signal before leaving the roundabout, you're just selfish. Unfortunately, many people are selfish.
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  30.  @barsorrro  Sure, going to real track would be even better but if everybody started with a racing sim, they would already have much better wheel control and you don't need to make it really complex with moving platforms and VR stuff to make it worth doing. If they had learned to steer the car and use the pedals in the sim, the time in real car could be used for more productive things like how to interpret the behavior of other drivers instead of trying to learn how to use clutch in hill start.
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  31. ​ @barsorrro  Great points! You could use something like BeamNG which can simulate multiple different types of clutches. And of course, you should have a pedal that has non-linear force for the clutch pedal, just like in normal car.
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  32. Great pedagogy in this video! I think telling the student to imagine bending her toe upwards or downwards to do minor corrections to pedal movement will help accurate controls even more. If you do coarse pedal movement by moving the whole foot and minor adjustments with toes, the overall control will be more accurate.
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  33. Can somebody explain the rationale in UK driving code for the need to check the mirrors before giving turning signal? Isn't the point of turning signal to give intent of your driving direction in the UK? Here in Finland, you put on turn signal first, then start to look at the mirrors and if it's safe, then you rotate the wheel. This allows other drives more reaction time than the UK style and I fail to understand the situation where the UK style would be better. (I understand the idea that if some people are driving like they have a rubber band from wheel to indicator signal switch and the moment the turn signal lights up, the wheel starts turning. However, if you don't use the turn signal to indicate intent but action, why bother using it at all?)
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  34. 8:15 Because fuel is cheaper than replacing the clutch, you should always rev match if you have the skill. Pretending that fuel is the only thing to consider for economy would be silly.
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  35.  @robertthomas5906  The car in front of you never drives "too close to you". The problem is always you if there's too little space in front of you.
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  36. 21:20 The Italian tuneup is still needed for diesel engines with variable vane turbochargers (also known as VNT turbo). Those will end up so much sooth / carbon buildup in the VNT mechanism that the VNT mechanism starts to stick / get clogged up and will eventually totally freeze. The official repair in that case is to replace the whole turbo, which is quite expensive. Instead, you should do Italian tuneup once a month where you drive the engine hard enough that the turbo heats up hot enough to burn any sooth inside it – probably try to get the coldest part of the turbo near 400 °C so maybe 2–5 minutes of heavy load for the turbo instead of one quick acceleration.
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  37. And don't cheap on the oil quality. In the old days, you could just get "fully synthetic 10W-40" oil and consider it high quality. However, "modern" car engines may have very exotic requirements for the engine oil. For example, our year 1999 daily driver VW Passat has PD TDI engine (engine code AJM) which requires special oil spec that matches "VW 505.01" requirements. Note that oil having "only" spec "VW 505.00", "VW 506.00" or "VW 507.00" is not good enough for that engine even thought those are official oils for different engines. And this engine is known to fail often and I'd bet that it's because the use of non-spec engine oil for the engine. You don't need to get the OEM oil, any oil with the required spec is good enough. However, the ".01" suffix in "VW 505.01" specifies special additives in the oil so in-theory higher quality oil like "VW 507.00" is not okay if your engine requires those special additives. That said, in case of VW, the OEM oil may be cheaper than the competition, so ask for a quote from your local dealer.
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  38.  @seancurran8108  I think it doesn't matter if the fuel is injected or not. What you actually need is drive-by-wire control for the throttle operation. If your accelerator pedal is cable connected, ECU (engine control unit) cannot open the throttle when RPMs drop and the ability to simply lift the clutch requires that ECU can increase throttle if RPM starts to drop. There's no extra logic for the cluch pedal, all the smarts are in ECU which simply tries to everything possible to keep RPM above stalling speeds at all times. (For diesel engines, replace throttle with fuel metering.)
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  39.  @tristan6509  Yes, if you lift the clutch with sensible speed. Drop the clutch while the engine is idling and you'll stall even a diesel engine.
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  40. 5:10 If your car has dual-mass flywheel and you run the RPM low enough to exceed the capabilities of the flywheel springs, the flywheel will be damaged if running for long periods with too low RPM. Of course, one could argue that such flywheel is improperly designed because a correctly designed flywheel should have springs that can handle the whole RPM range of the engine without problems. For example, I think some VW and Audi cars had flywheel problems when they originally introduced dual-mass flywheels. The problem was especially silly because the whole idea of having dual-mass flywheel is to improve performance with low RPM.
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  41. 3:05 And if you drive close the limits of the timing, even the temperature of your gearbox starts to affect the timing. I've noticed that when I do rapid gear changes it's easier to accidentally lift the clutch pedal ever so slightly too early when the temperature is freezing, especially in cars with cable operated gear shifter. This is because both the cable and the gearbox get more sluggish and you need a bit more time to fully move the shifter without forcing it too much to cause extra wear.
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  42. Your test car was too good. Running all your local town trips with 1st gear only is still more economical than most cars manufactured in the USA. Your car also had turbo which starts to get detrimental once your RPM drops below 1400–1600 rpm (I think TSI engine can run nicely with surprisingly low RPM, TDI engines seem to want at least 1600 rpm). Otherwise, gasoline engine would be most economical with full open throttle but so high gear that it cannot increase the speed at all. This is the most economical situation possible because pumping losses of the engine get higher when the throttle is closed more. (Assuming that the engine can actually burn all the fuel pumped into the cylinder which should be true unless there's some sensor malfunction.) I think you should have driven the same road in both directions twice. That would have averaged slight uphill into the results. If there's any downhill, then using higher gear will be always better for fuel economy. However, once you start to feel vibration in the cockpit, you're starting to cause higher wear to clutch and gearbox and then your total economy (including maintenance and repairs) starts to suffer. The vibration is caused why the flywheel being too light for the RPM and torque combination and the vibration will cause extra load for the clutch. Some cars have dual-mass flywheel which reduces the load to the clutch and you can drive with lower RPM without heavy vibration. The engine itself should be totally fine with any RPM between idle speed and redline. Unless there's a problem with the engine cooling system, running it for a long time at the redline should be totally fine, just stupid for your economy.
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  43. Interesting video. After looking multiple videos on this channel, I still think that UK road code has made a mistake when it requires checking mirrors before turning on your turning signal. Turning signal is about intent to do something but according to UK rules, you cannot turn on the signal when you know you're going to take a turn, only after checking the mirrors in between. I cannot see how that extra delay could possibly improve safety. The rationale that it might scare other drivers speaks more about the fact that UK drivers are familiar with the wheel rotating almost instanty after the signal coming up which is basically proof that the current system doesn't give enough time to react safely.
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  44. The terminology you used was a bit unclear. Did you press accelerator pedal only halfway for the 3000 rpm run, or did you floor it but switch gears at 3000 rpm? For best economy (assuming no wheel spin) you should go full throttle and switch gears somewhere between 3000–4000 rpm depending on your engine BSFC (Brake Specific Fuel Consumption) curve. I would assume optimal switch point for your engine is somewhere around 3600–3800 rpm. Your point about it's find to hard drivers that actually do this is absolutely true. It's because very rarely people have actually ever investigated this stuff before driving. I nearly always floor it for the acceleration but I switch near optimum RPM for economy (assuming good enough traction, during winter it's obviously much harder). Update: after seeing how good economy that TSI engine has at low RPM, it might have BSFC optimum really low so maybe optimum up-switch point could be near 1500-2000 RPM? Again, you should floor the pedal until that. But only floor the pedal when clutch is fully engaged.
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  45. For drivers like this, Tesla FSD is already an improvement in road safety.
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  46. This "spiral" implementation for roundabout would be the best overall but it's too late to change all already build multi-lane roundabouts into such now. Here in Finland, such roundabounts have lane markings that constantly push you towards the next exit and you have to constantly switch lanes inwards to stay in the roundabout. The problem here in Finland is Winter, any markings on the road will be covered by snow and it's really hard to know if a given roundabout is spiral-style or regular roundabout unless you're local and have seen it during the Summer.
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  47. I have loved to move Andrew's seat about 5 cm forward. It seems like he has to put his foot pretty straight to fully press down the clutch which will make it harder to accurately control the clutch.
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  48. I drive a car with VW TDI and there the drive-by-wire gas pedal (which obviously delivers diesel in reality) works more like setting target RPM so you can half-press the pedal to get ~3000 RPM without any kind of blip action. Just press the pedal half-way down, raise the clutch rapidly while pressing the accelerator pedal to the floor results in the fastest launch without slipping the clutch too much.
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  49. 3:50 Great demonstration with gopro attached to your head so beginners can understand where you look at!
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  50.  @flemit35  That's true that the driving was far from perfect. However, I expected much worse so I was positively surprised.
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