First Post! Uber Leet! Just worth mentioning that the 'CCA Foundation, under the guidance of Bill Wade, has been conducting the Street Survival teen driving education programs, which are geared to improving teen driver's basic skillset. If anyone has friends or family with teen drivers, consider mentioning the program to them, and they can check more out at http://www.streetsurvival.org/
First post on the new topic...nice job, I'm uber jealous! You're right, it really is a great program! We're holding a Street Survival School in Houston coming up in April and I know MANY other chapters have them scheduled for 2009 so hopefully Bill and the Foundation will meet their goal for the number of schools they would like to see hosted this year. While we're on the subject...the biggest delay we have on the morning of the schools is getting the cars properly tech'd. No matter how clear we make it in the literature we send out or how many times we mention it (we even call and talk to the parents/students before the school), they ALWAYS show up with loose stuff in the trunk, radar detectors still hanging in the windows and, worst of all, severly under-inflated tires! Cleaning out the car is fairly simple and quick but when you have to inflate 150+ tires the morning of the event...it takes a LONG time! We've asked all the instructors to bring air tanks and/or compressors if they have them but it still takes way too long. Anybody come up with a better solution? One problem we found is that most of the students (and parents) in the Street Survival Schools don't even own a tire gauge. It's different when we run the Car Control Schools because those are geared towards members and they are usually a little more on top of the tire situation. The attendees in Street Survival are not, for the most part, "car people" so checking tire pressure is not really in their vocabulary. Just curious if anyone has come up with a good way of speeding the process up?
Get a tire store as a sponsor and convince them to donate a bunch of free pressure gauges that just incidentally happen to have their logo printed on them. Not a bad idea to have them send along a store representative with a big ol' truck-mounted compressor, either.
Thanks for the feedbak CR, unfortunately, since the official name of the school is the "Tire Rack" Street Survival School, I'm thinking I'm a little limited on which tire store to contact . It's interesting you brought that up though because last year, Tire Rack DID supply us with small air pressure gauges for all the students but... Only about 60% - 70% of them worked (which is fine because they were free after all). The students had no idea how to use them so we still had to have a staff member do it for them. We had a big compressor there but since a good 75% of the cars needed air, we had line of 30 cars waiting to use it. If we COULD get them to show up with a truck and a big compressor, we could probably have three or four lines running at once which would definitely speed up the process. I may talk to a couple of my Club Racer buddies that have bigger trailers, they almost all have compressors mounted and we could easily hook up a manifold with three or four drops. Putting air in 8 - 10 cars would sure be quicker than 30!! Thanks CR!
Pretty lame those things didn't work. I see two directions from here. 1.) Tell Tire Rack to get with the program and supply decent stuff or 2.) Tell Tire Rack you're going to try to get their local approved installer(s) to step up and do it. Otherwise, you'll have to go with any willing supplier. This is their chance to get long-term customers by making a good impression! Guys like us don't expect much out of freebies like this (my tire gauge is from Pegasus Racing) and we will shop around for tires & installers. OTOH, if you tell a 17-y-o who's having a ball out there learning this stuff that Tire Rack is who you use and he has a new (working!) tire gauge to remind him, well ... One other thought. How about a simple 'homework' assignment for your students? They should be used to this from school. As part of their enrollment package (I assume something is sent in advance), require that they learn to check those pressures and fill out a short form with their tire pressures from one day before the school. Maybe even ask for eight pressures: before and after inflating/deflating to reach the correct pressure. It is not asking too much of them to know how to do something that every motorist should know.
Sounds like a reasonable idea to me - I wonder if there would be some way to make sure they do it and not their parent(s); however, it might well get the tires squared away prior to event-time, mostly.
OK, I LIKE this idea!! I'm going to draw up a little form for them to fill out with all four individual tire pressures before and after and a space for them to list what their owners manual / door sticker lists as "proper tire inflation". This may well take care of 80% - 90% of the problem! Good job CR!! Thanks for the idea, I'll definitely post and let you know how well it worked. This may be something that could become a standard part of the curriculum.
No sweat. FWIW, I just stole the idea we use for instructors to self-tech their cars here. In fact, it could easily be expanded to cover all the stuff we usually check. Just make a check-off list for them to fill out. It's not really hard to see if a battery is firmly anchored or if the trunk is empty. Air pressures are probably the highest level task they'd have to do on the list. Did you know that the Girl Scouts have a 'car care' merit badge? Seriously. My daughter's 11, but she did pretty much everything to qualify for it over a year ago. Plus, it was a good way to get her to do most of the work changing her mom's snow tires this spring. She loves the electric impact. But the point is, she knocked this stuff off in an afternoon with only the car and the owner's manual. I had to do almost nothing (as hard as it was not to try - I did lift the wheels up onto the bolts).
Dashate Here in FL with the Florida Suncoast Chapter we run a two day event, which may not be practical for others. We run the classroom the 1st day at a local dealership in the late afternoon and assign homework which includes, among other things, a reminder to check tire pressures on the way home from the class. In addition, we e-mail an instruction sheet the day prior to the classroom which includes this statement... 8. Increase tire pressure by about 5 psi above that required for normal street driving. For most vehicles, this would bring the pressure up to 30 to 35 psi. Check the tire sidewall for max psi; STAY 5 PSI UNDER THE MAX RECOMMENDED. The slight increased pressure will prevent excessive tire wear during the car exercises. Also, it's easier to reduce pressure at tech than add it! Seems to work pretty well for us.
