THREE AUTO INSURANCE SECRETS

by: Steve Gillman
Want to learn something new about auto insurance? Something that can save you a lot of money or get a claim paid? Forget the usual tips. Check out these secrets.

1. Demand the legal policy minimums if you have no assets. Do you really need a lot of liability coverage if you have no money in the bank? Insurance companies will tell you that you do because you can be sued regardless. It's possible. I can't promise you that you won't be sued and end up paying a chunk of your paycheck to someone for life.

However, honest insurance salesmen admit that people without assets are rarely sued. Lawyers work on a commission in these cases, and won't take a case where there is no money to be collected. In fact, having a bigger liability policy can be an invitation to sue, and it won't protect you from personal liability, because they always sue for more than the policy limit anyhow.

If you have no assets to protect, why buy auto insurance? Because it is a legal requirement. In that case why not just buy the minimum coverage required? But be careful. My own insurance guy lied for years, claiming I had just that, when in fact I was paying for "company-recommended minimums." You might have to push the point, and may even have to sign something saying you understand how risky it is to be "under-insured."

2. Claim diminished value. If you have a collision policy, your insurance company will pay for the repairs after an accident. However, is the financial damage really fixed? Not necessarily. A car that has been in an accident and had the body fixed may look the same, but it won't sell for the same price. Would you pay the same for a car that has been in an accident?

A car that has been in an accident might be worth $2,000 less than a similar un-damaged car. This is called "diminished value," and may be covered by your policy. However, diminished value is often not paid unless you push the point. Get a car dealer to do an estimate of the diminished value if necessary, and present this to the insurance company. You pay for insurance to have your losses covered, and they aren't covered if you aren't paid for this.

3. Lower your premiums by removing kids from the policy. You may have already discovered that you pay a lot for insurance as long as you have driving-age children at home. Even if they are off at school, if their legal residence is your house, you pay more.

However, there is a little-known exception to this rule. If your children are at a college that's more than 100 miles away, you can have them taken off the insurance policy. This can dramatically reduce your premiums. The catch? They are excluded drivers, so you can't let them drive the car when they come home to visit.

These are just a few examples of the auto insurance secrets that insurance companies probably don't want you to know.

ENGINE COOLING FANS

by: Darren Dunners
The Engine cooling fans are mechanical devices that move the hot air and other gases, which can be harmful with regards to the safety of the engine unit of a vehicle. These gases and hot air can be discomforting for the people sitting inside the vehicle. Since this articles needs to discuss the Engine cooling fans, these fans can be categorized in three ways. Fans deliver large amounts of air or gas at low pressure, blowers have high rates of delivery at medium pressure, and compressors deliver at high pressure. These Electric cooling fans have an attached motor that moves blades of the fans which drives away the hot air around the radiator. Like the thermostat, the cooling fan has to be controlled so that it allows the engine to maintain a constant temperature.

Almost all the front-wheel driven cars and vehicles have the electric cooling fans installed in them as their engine is usually mounted transversely, meaning the output of the engine points toward the side of the car. The fans are controlled either with a thermostatic switch or by the engine computer, and they turn on when the temperature of the coolant goes above a set point. They turn back off when the temperature drops below that point. However, these types of automatic engine cooling fans are used in vehicles that are more sophisticated.

Cars that are rear wheel driven have engines that are usually longitudinally placed and have these engine-driven cooling fans. These fans have a switch that is controlled with the surrounding temperature and is called as a thermostatically controlled viscous clutch. This clutch is positioned at the hub of the fan, in the airflow coming through the radiator. This special viscous clutch is much like the viscous coupling sometimes found in all-wheel drive cars. These types of latest engine cooling fans can be retrieved by placing special orders.

In some perfectly designed engine cooling fans, the designers have applied a semi-analytic and semi empirical formula which is specifically developed for predicting noise radiation from engine cooling fan assemblies. These engine cooling fans significantly reduce the noise that is caused by the engine.