Beat the heat this summer

We can’t tell you how to keep your temper cool as temperatures rise, but we have some suggestions and tips that will help you to keep your car cool

Summer affects different people in different ways. While people in some parts of the world welcome the onset of summer after the bitter cold of the winter months, we inevitably go through train and flight schedules looking for an affordable escape to the cooler climes.

We are not the best placed people to tell you how to beat the heat and keep yourself fit and healthy through these trying months, but we certainly can tell you how to keep things on the cooler side during your daily commute or even on an outstation driving weekend trip with your family.

In this issue of AUTO TODAY, we bring you a special section dedicated to ways and means of beating the shooting mercury. Most of these suggestions and tips are simple and easy to follow during the course of your routine car maintenance like how to make sure that your AC is working properly rather than eating its way into your fuel bills. For this we give you a 20 point lowdown on how to ensure that your car’s AC is at its cooling best. This guide will help you to negotiate through the maze of dos and don’ts in the summer regarding your car and driving habits. We tell what all you should do while getting your car serviced, especially keeping in mind the high temperatures outside. Even, the tyres should be in a good state to tackle the high temperature of the road surface. We have also tested how different car colours have varied impact on the temperature inside the cabin. For this we actually tested six identical cars with different colours at different times of the day using a thermometer. To our great surprise, we found that car colour does have quite a bit of impact on the interior temperature. After you have fortified your car to tackle the heat, it’s time for you do a few things like keeping yourself well-hydrated while on the move.