How to decide on your very first race car (Part 8)
Now that the engines are out of the way, it is a good idea to look at other features that should be taken into consideration when purchasing your first race car. Probably one of the best features for visibility are the headlights. For headlights, one’s preference
should be finding a vehicle with pre-installed High Intensity Discharge (HID) lights.
One common misconception that people have is that HID’s will always make visibility better. That is certainly
not true! Now there are different types of headlamps. The ones that come pre-installed are referred to as stock headlamps, which have reflectors, and can be changed with projectors. Most people that install HID’s prefer to do it in projectors, but
have the idea that projectors are useless without HID’s, and that using normal bulbs will give you trouble seeing properly.
This is not true. Factory bulbs have better visibility than most aftermarket ones do. Projectors come in two different types. One is halogen and the other HID. 99.9 percent of projectors sold are halogen, but people don’t know that. They just assume that
they are for HID’s and install them, and then get ridiculous results.
The main point of a HID is to provide light at a focused point. Halogen bulbs and HID bulbs have different focal points. Thus, those projectors built for halogens will not yield good results with HID’s and vice versa.
When checking for headlights, you must make sure that the HID’s installed have a perfectly straight cutoff line. Any light above that line will get into the eyes of oncoming drivers, resulting in a loss of visibility.
However, with the right HID’s and headlight assemblies, HID’s are very beneficial. They use up only one third the wattage of normal halogen bulbs and are four times brighter. They also last six times as long as halogen bulbs, and have less infrared and
ultraviolet light than normal bulbs. Infrared and ultraviolet light fatigues drivers and surrounding motorists. All in all, HID’s are a much better investment, as long as they are installed properly.
Aside from HID’s, there is also something else that should be considered in terms of visibility. However, this can be easily explained from a driver’s point of view. Imagine that you have just gotten into a car that you are auditioning as your first race
car. Sporty gauges, a six spoke steering wheel, carbon fiber dashboard, racing seats, and sensors adorn the interior.
But all of these mean nothing if you cannot properly see out of the car. First of all, you must make sure that the car’s front pillars do not block your vision. Also, the lower a car seat is, the less you will be able to see the road in front of you. You
can tell if a car is right for you if you can see the hood and the ground about 10-15 feet in front of the car.
Of course, you will not be able to see directly in front of the car, but you should be able to see at least some ground. Otherwise, you will not notice something small in your path until you run over it, by which time it is too late. Besides that, you should
have a sufficiently large rear window so that you can see behind you.
Another thing to remember is to avoid cars in which the windows are tinted or too dark. In the daytime it may seem like something good since it can keep out the sun, and thus ultraviolet rays, but at night it’s a pain to try and see what’s next to or behind
you. So now that visibility has been discussed, we will take a look at body styling and suspension in a car that you wish to use for auto racing.
Tags: