Useful law firm site

You don't expect a law firm site to show how auto accidents can be avoided - I mean more accidents mean more business for them I guess. However, found out that the Majlessi Law Firm - Legal Metro site has a extensive collection of videos of various car accident crash tests and shows how to avoid them.

Art Majlessi is a well known personal injury lawyer based in Los Angeles with over over 10 years practice and he heads the Majlessi Law Firm. According to their web site, the firm has helped thousands of their clients recover millions of dollars in injury cases. I was quite impressed after watching the video testimonials of some of their past clients.

You can also read up on the latest law updates including some of the latest law cases on their blog. One article which is a must read is "Nine Things You Must Do When You Are Involved in an Auto Accident".

This is one of the most informative sites I have come across recently and they have so many resources including articles on the site which anyone can access totally free of charge. Even though I hope that none of my readers (or myself for that matter) would never be involved in a major accident (touch wood), I feel that we should definitely be aware of the various types of accidents and common injury risk factors including including whiplash.

Do go over and check out the site.

Finding a repair shop with RepairPal

If you are a conscientious car owner like me, I am sure you have at one time or the other faced the problem of finding a suitable garage to repair or service your car.

Unless money is not an issue, it can really be time consuming and stressful to find a repair shop. One site in the US that is getting a lot of attention is RepairPal. Set up by a couple of auto enthusiasts and entrepreneurs in California, to make it easier for car owners to access a comprehensive auto shop directory and more. Their encyclopaedia page is filled with a lot of useful explanations of car related terms. Found it really useful.

You can get fair auto repair estimates in a few steps by choosing your car make, model, year, the service type you are interested in (for example, Timing belt replacement) and finally providing your zip code. Customers can then rate the shops as per their experience.

Signing up allows you to access a number of features including a place to maintain your car records. The will even email you when your car service is due. Definitely a useful site for all car owners.

Buying a used car - my experience 1

Buying a used car is a tiring and frustrating task. I have learnt that over the course of thiese few day. Ever since my car broke down along the A14 and I found out that repairing the engine would cost me more than the value of the car, I have been looking for a good used car.

Besides looking at the newspapers (where I didn't find anything I liked) I also went to the Auto Trader site. Initially I looked for private sellers listing their Toyota Avensis but all the good ones (read best prices) had already been sold. It's amazing how popular this model is here in the UK. My next choice was the Nissan Primera because of the good review. I usually refer to Honest John which lists1200 comprehensive car reviews. Coming back to the Nissan Primera, it was my choice because it receives quite favourable reviews. However, every single one I liked on the Auto Trader site was beyond my budget (which is not really much to start with).

A relative living in Birmingham gave me some leads around Birmingham. My friend Ishan kindly consented to drive me around. My first car was a Nissan Primera at a car dealer in Solihul. I didn't like the car the first time I laid my eyes on it. It was in a really bad shape and when I gave it a test drive, it had a really unbearable odour inside. I don't need to tell you my decision.

Next was a 1.8 Turbo Diesel in Birmingham. I really liked it but the guy who was selling it really talked a lot and it was really suspicious because the price was too cheap. He seemed over eager to get rid of the car as well. Never-the-less I decided to buy the car and gave him £70 as deposit after agreeing on a price. However, I just couldn't get rid of this nagging feeling. 

I had passed over the details of the car to my wife and I didn't know it but she had done a check on the car's history on the RAC site. You have to pay £5 but you get to learn some important details about the car. In this case, she discovered that the car had previously been involved in an accident and had been recordered as a total loss by the insurance company. It was listed as a category D "Vehicle damaged but repairable - the insurer decided not to repair". Not all category D cars are bad but I was not willing to take the chance and turned back at once. The guy agreed to give me back my deposit and he looked really miserable and I pitied him, but I had no choice.

Now it was back to the Auto Trader site and I widened up my option. I started looking for Ford Mondeos, VW Passats, etc.

To be continued in next post...

Private Fleet - Australian car buying site

I recently got to know about Private Fleet, an Australian auto broker which has been in business for nearly seven years. Though the company is based in Chatswood, New South Walesr, Private Fleet is affiliated with over 600 dealers all over Australia.

First impression of the site was quite good. With a neat and tidy layout and unlike other car sites, the page is not littered with ads.

Getting a quote is fairly simple (you will notice I didn't say "on their site"). Read on and you will understand what I mean.

All you have to do is choose a make and model. Fill in your post code and hit the "Get a quote" button. You will then be taken to another page were you would have to fill in a few details. If you are looking for a used car, you will have to fill in a few more details and you are done.

I tried it and got the message

"We look forward to dealing with your enquiry and being of assistance in the purchase of your new or used car.
We will contact you shortly (generally within 24 business hours)..."

and so on. Personally, I would have preferred a results page with all available cars listed with pictures and all necessary information, including the price.

I know I said the site was neat and tidy but it sure could could do with some brightening up. Pictures of flashy cars won't hurt. I also suggest putting up a link to an "About us" page on the navigation rather than from a link in the text. Trust me, customers like to know who they are dealing with especially in an online environment. Having said that, they have some great testimonials from their customers including some great reviews by Naomi Robson from Today Tonight, Channel 7 and Hoyle from The Age Newspaper.

As a car fanatic, I found the site quite interesting. They have loads of information on cars including brief history of different brands and cars reviews. Do check out the site.

Highly optimised UK user car site.

If you are looking for a used car in the UK, I know the perfect place to go to. No! You don't have to go there physically. All you have to do is put on your computer and go to BuyYourCar.com and search for Used Cars. This relatively new site has some great features that will appeal to both dealers and people looking for used cars. they believe that advertising online is more than just a simple listing and picture.

The site allows you to search their listings by make, model, details, price range, distance from postcode and type of seller (private, dealer or both). The results are automatically sorted by latest offers, price (lowest or highest) distance. The distance option is a welcome feature as we want to search for a car as near to our house as possible.


The site provides some great tips for people considering to buy a car, namely in deciding the value of buying a used car. There is a list of questions, which we should ask the seller, how to inspect a used car and so on. There is even a Used-Car-Buyer's Checklist which is absolutely essential.

As for the dealers who advertise on the site, they get 'Standard listings', 'Individual Listings', 'Dedicated pages in the site' and 'Dedicated pages that list stock by Make'.

All cars advertised are also entered into the NEW Regional Search which allows customers to search for cars in their area. For example in Birmingham.

Some other great features include an online enquiry forms and Google location maps with interactive directions.

This site has been highly optimised for Google search and thus highly recommended if you are selling used cars. If you don't believe me, search for the terms "Used Cars UK" on Google and find out for yourself.

Review of the RHD Japan site

Presently there's a lot of interest in Japanese imported cars all around the World, thanks to movies like The Fast and the Furious (2001), Initial D (2005) and the like. So if you into fast Japanese cars, you might find this review interesting.

Recently, I got to know about RHD Japan, an international supplier of quality Japanese performance car parts. The Japanese company was founded in 1999 by Patrick Antell and Russell Hobbs. Since then they have been supplying quality JDM or Japanese domestic market parts to customers in over 80 countries around the Globe. I later learned that their business is recognised by the Japanese Legal Affairs Bureau as a Limited Liability Corporation (YK). They guarantee the absolute best quality service and supply of Japanese racing parts from Japan.

Going to their website, I quite liked the fact that they had taken the bandwidth of their customers into consideration. So you have the choice of entering either a high bandwidth or a low bandwidth version of their site. The only difference is that the latter has less graphics and it does definitely load much faster.

I liked the layout and look of the site. Almost everything that I usually look for in a e-commerce site are all there - including an "about us" page, FAQ, payment methods and ability to search products. The site is also secure and verified by Verisign.

One important piece of new information that I learnt from their site was that JDM parts suppliers now require legal documentation called the “Kobutsusho”. Not having the mentioned documentations can result in serious problems with the authorities. I have never come across any site of other JDM parts suppliers that mentioned this document. Thanks for the info guys.

Prices of the products are based on the location of the customer and you would need to register in order to find out the correct shipped price for each product.

Signing in does give you some extra features. For example, you will get detailed descriptions of each product plus the shipped price. Clicking on the "give me a deal" button on the top will entitles you to a discount on 3 products picked at random, for the car you choose when you signed up. You are entitled to this discount for different products once every month.


Some improvements I would like on the site:

Design:
In the low bandwidth site, the side bar is quite long and it's quite odd to see a lot of white empty space below the new products listed. A drop-down script should solve that. The higher bandwidth site doesn't have this problem.

Extra information:
Instead of putting the shipping info inside the terms and conditions page, probably they could have a separate shipping page and clearly spell out all the details necessary for overseas shipping. I would also recommend that they put up a Privacy & Security page. Even though they have a Verisign button up on the home page, it wouldn't do any harm to reassure the customers even more.

Search:
I found the search engine to be quite simple. Customers would definitely welcome one with more options such as product type, brand, etc.

Other, than that, there's nothing much I would change about the site. Even if you are not planning to buy anything, check out their Gallery. They have loads of original pictures of automobile parts, along with descriptions of the products. Don't blame me if you find yourself drooling on your keyboard.

Garage floor coatings

Most people don't consider the garage to be part of their house. It is just a place to park your car for the night or to store old junk. However, to some people it is more than that. To them the garage is an important part of the house.

Anyway, I was going through Carguygarage.com, a site that carries over 1,000 different products for garages. One of the categories on the site is Garage Floor Coating. To tell the truth , I never thought about a floor coating. However, after seeing the pictures, I realize that they would make it easier to clean the garage floor besides making it attractive.

They carry a wide range of epoxy paint chips, which are 1/4" in size and come in 1 pound bags and in three types, namely Light Sprinkle, medium Sprinkle and Heavy Sprinkle. There are so many colours and a number of combinations are possible. I personally like the light earth tone.

Which colour would you like you like your garage floor to be?

Easier refinancing

If you are in the US and looking to refinance your car, you might want to take a look at RateGenius. With it's headquarters in Austin, Texas,the company makes it easier for you to find the best possible interest rate for your current auto loan.

RateGenius has really made it easier to refinance your car, truck, or SUV by searching with over 40 different banks and credit unions from throughout the country.
Your car refinance process starts by submiting an application by phone toll-free at 1-866-728-3436 or online by filling up the details on their proprietary electronic document process.

Right now customers can wait up to 60 days before making their first payment. The best part is that they do not charge their customers for their refinancing service.

Win a T-shirt and get featured too

If you think you car is outstanding, write about it on your blog and you stand a chance of winning a cool looking t-shirt from importtuner.com. At the same time, winners would have their entry featured in an article about your ride. The contest is called the "Import Tuner Ride of the Month" and runs till 5 p.m. PST 22nd of May this year. Voting starts from that date till the 31st of May. The contest winners will be announced in late June.

Entering the contest is quite easy and involves four steps. First of all, you have to fill in your contact information. Unlike some other contests on the net, here you can specify the shirt size. You won't be stuck with a large one size fits all shirt.

In the next step, you enter the vehicle, and fill in details about your vehicle. You then upload pictures of your car. I like the fact that the images will be resized and/or cropped automatically to a 112x80 Thumbnail and a 400x300 large sized image.

Finally you hit the "Submit my ride" button and you are done.

The web page looks cool but I noticed that there is are a few things they could do to improve it even more. First of all, the picture "View contest entries" on the top right hand side of the banner may be a bit misleading as there is no link present.

Also noticed that the contest is targeted to Americans ONLY as the contact information does not have a "Country" option. Putting in a line saying "For visitors from the US only" would be advisable.

For your information, Import Tuner is a is a PRIMEDIA publication. This magazine focuses on modified / modifying cars imported to the US.

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Auto forum plus classifieds

One of my readers emailed me asking me advise about buying a used car. Well, I can only point out some greats links on the site for them. Joining in auto discussion forums might be a good idea as there are a number of people who could help with specific requests.

Car Classifieds is a site which might help with your decision. You can browse cars by make / model - regardless of whether you are looking for a Pontiac Firebird or a Toyota Corolla.

You can also join their forum where you can put up any of your auto related questions. The website claims that their Auto forum is one of the fastest growing automotive communities on the Interent.

If you are not looking for a car but instead looking for a place to place an ad for you old car, you might be pleased to hear that you can list your car for free now. Go and check out the site.

Car classifieds for charity

AutoCity101.com is a free car classifieds site offering both new and Used Cars For Sale.

You might ask, "So! There are a lot of free car classifieds websites out there, what's so unique about this site?"

Well! This website was started with a noble goal in mind. While other sites are out for the big green and monetary gain, this classifieds site aims to raise funds for the building of an orphanage network. The profits from this site will be used to develop this network that will begin in Mexico and one day expand worldwide. The orphanage in Mexico called Natalia's House, is scheduled to break ground later this year.

However, that's not all the site also has links to car reviews, gas prices in different parts of the US and Canada, as well as free pictures of cars that you can use as wallpaper for your desktop.

I am more than happy to spread the news of this nice cause.

LoudLaunch - Compensating bloggers for their unbiased opinions, reviews, and analysis. View the LoudLaunch campaign release this post was based on.

Review of Nengun Performance

The following is a paid review of the Nengun Performance website. Nengun Performance is an online reseller of after market auto performance parts. According to the information provided on the site, the company was originally from Australia but currently operating directly from Japan since April 2000.

I assume that their tagline is "the wholesale performance parts supplier on the Internet." They claim that they are able to offer really low prices on the parts because they buy in bulk from the Japanese performance parts companies with which they have direct contact.

First impression. Looking at the design of the site, I have to admit that there is an overall amateurish feel to it. Maybe it has to do with the Color Scheme. The color scheme of the site doesn't really appeal to me. Probably due to the fact that I am not a fan of sites with black backgrounds. From my experience I have found out that clean designs with white backgrounds are best for e-commerce sites. Not very exciting but it's safer.


I noticed that they have different logos on different pages and it changes everytime you reload the page. If they are interested in building a brand identity, having a unique and uniform logo should be the first step. I liked this particular logo, which I have shown here.

Moving to more serious matters, E-commerce is all about trust and I have to say that going through the site doesn't really give me that feeling of security. The first thing I look for on every e-commerce site, are their security and privacy notices. Unfortunately, the Nengun Performance site doesn't have one.

The "About page" is also not detailed enough. There are no names or contact addresses. Customers like to know who they are dealing with. The fact that there are spelling mistakes on the page doesn't help either.

In their FAQ, it is mentioned that they accept the following payment methods:
· International Direct Deposit
· Australian Direct Deposit (Westpac) and
· Paypal

However, I noticed that they do accept credit cards too. It would really boost the customer's confidence if the company provides some short of assurance that all important information (such as credit card details) sent to this site, is encrypted and is protected against disclosure to third parties.

So what did I like about the site?

I was drooling just looking at some of the products. They have an impressive collection of parts of well known brands (includes HKS, Apexi, Greddy, Mugen, Spoon, TRD and Nismo)for customers to choose from. Some of my more knowledgeable friends confirm, the prices are indeed wholesale. They also have a photo album that visitors to the site can view even without registering.

However, the question remains whether customers would be impressed enough or trust them to buy their products online.

Lemonfree car ads

Recently came across one of the best Used Cars sites on the net. Unlike other car ad sites, Lemonfree.com is a a free automobile classifieds service, which means that you not only get to search for the car of your choice but can also least your car for free.

Their site search facility was surprisingly fast and you can locate a new or used automobile in Canada and the US. A trial search for Honda Accord without any specifications produced 406 results.

Another innovative technology incorporated into their site is private messaging service, which allows you to contact the seller while you're online viewing the listing.

I wholeheartedly endorse Lemonfree.com

Searching for insurance on the net

Searching for the right car insurance can be really tough. You want to see whether other drivers would be insured, whether it has coverage for windscreen breakage, if the company would provide a courtesy car while your car is being repaired and so on. However, the most important factor that we have consider is the price.

Cheapest is not always the best choice but we have to see that we are getting thte value for our money.

The internet has made the process of searching for the right car insurance much easier. Find out how you can compare car insurance packages in the UK at insure121.com.

The great thing is that many of the insurance providers promoted by the company will offer you a discount of anything between 10% and 30% just for buying your insurance online, with no loss in cover too.

For your information, the company also lists several home insurance providers. So if you are looking for the best insurance quotes for your home on the site, you know where to go.

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Shop for a car online

Remember the old days when we had to go around town visiting different car dealer to find the car we wanted. It was often a big hassle and tiring process. Thankfully, with the Internet it's much easier today. We can surf the net in the comfort of our homes sipping a cold iced drink.

It's really easy to get car quotes online from AutoFigures.com using their Free Quote Request process, thus saving us time, energy and of course money. This new car shopping site provides vehicle pricing, reviews and specifications on more than 50 brands of vehicles.

The company partners with several top dealers with a good, trusted reputation. Consumers who opt to use this service will be contacted by a dealer within a few hours.

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Loads of funny videos

There are a lot of jokes about women and cars.

Came across this video of a lady Pumping Gas. Looks innocent enough but it gets really funny in the end. I have done that a couple of times, that is, stretching the hose across the car but this short of thing never happened to me.

Found this video at Jokeroo.com where there are loads of funny videos.

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HID headlight conversion

HID stands for High-Intensity Discharge. They are also called 'xenon headlamps', because of the xenon gas used in the lamps. HID lights produce increased amounts of light as compared to halogen lamps and assist the driver in providing an extended and lengthened stretch of the road. They can thus help in increasing the overall safety of the driver. Another positive point of the HID lights is that their life expectancy is up to 10 times longer than the factory halogen Bulbs.


McCulloch 3000K from Xenon King