Current market position of Honda

With high fuel prices and a weak U.S. economy in June 2008, Honda reported a 1% sales increase while its rivals, including the Detroit Big Three and Toyota, have reported double-digit losses. Honda's sales were up almost 20 percent from the same month last year. The Civic and the Accord were in the top five list of sales. Analysts have attributed this to two main factors. First, Honda's product lineup consists of mostly small to mid-size, highly fuel-efficient vehicles. Secondly, over the last ten years, Honda has designed its factories to be flexible, in that they can be easily retooled to produce any Honda model that may be in-demand at the moment.

Nonetheless, Honda, Nissan, and Toyota, were still not immune to the global financial crisis of 2008, as these companies reduced their profitability forecasts. The economic crisis has been spreading to other important players in the vehicle related industries as well In November 2009 the Nihon Keizai Shinbun reported that Honda Motor exports have fallen 64.1%

At the 2008 Beijing Auto Show, Honda presented the Li Nian ("concept" or "idea") 5-door hatchback and announced that they were looking to develop an entry-level brand exclusively for the Chinese market similar to Toyota's Scion brand in the USA. The brand would be developed by a 50–50 joint-venture established in 2007 with Guangzhou Automobile Industry Group.

Following the Japanese earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 Honda announced plans to halve production at its UK plants. The decision was made to put staff at the Swindonplant on a 2 day week until the end of May as the manufacturer struggled to source supplies from Japan. It's thought around 22,500 cars were produced during this period.

Wind screen wipers

This is employed to keep the wind screen clean for good visibility during rain or snowfall etc. Wind screen wipers are operated electrically by means of a small motor but some vehicles are fitted with compressed air for this purpose. The electrically operated wind screen wiper is shown in Figure. The motor drives the worm A which rotates the wheel B. The toothed sector and connected to the wheel B with the help of link is D. When the wheel B rotates, Sector E reciprocates about the fulcrum G. This motion is then imparted to a similar sector F which fitted the wiper arm on the spindle mounted. Wiper blade is attached to the wiper arm by means of a spring lock. The wiper blade holds the rubber wiping element. The wiper arm pivots over the wind screen under spring pressure and ensures adequate and wiper blade pressure against the wind shield glass.

Whenever the replacement of blade or cleaning of wind shield glass is required underneath the wiper blade can be lifted from the glass ​​wind shield against the spring pressure. The wiper motor lever is mounted on steering column normally opposite to the flashing indicator arm. Two speeds, high and low are controlled by this lever. The high speed arm is meant for heavy rain. while the low speed is for standard rain. This lever has a provision called one touch which is used especially during drzzling ie, the wiper blade moves intermittently. This operation automatically continues till one touch is retouch to stop it.

History Of Honda Company

FOUNDER: - SOICHIRO HONDA ESTABLISHED AT: - HAMAMATSU(JAPAN) ON 24^TH SEP. 1948

He dreamt of providing people, everywhere in the world an economical means of transportation. He invented better ways of making piston rings and found a company around the idea and began production. Then his company started producing small motorcycles, including one built in 1949 called D-type dream.

 Then he thought of high capacity motorcycles and taking them to racing. So his company made bigger and faster machines, two, four, five and six-cylinder race bikes and participated in the Isle of Man TT race (125 cc motorcycle class).

He wanted to share his new motorcycles with the world and therefore he opened American Honda Motor Co. in Los Angeles. Also Honda began manufacturing motorcycles at its Suzuka factory in 1960. Honda launched its first sports car, the S500 in Japan and entered Formula-1 in 1964.

In 1989, Soichiro Honda became the first Asian to be inducted into U.S. Automotive Hall of Fame. In 1990, Honda wins its fifth consecutive 1st ranking in the J.D. Power   Consumer Satisfaction Index. In 1993, founder Soichiro Honda passed away. He dreamt of changing the way people looked at motorcycles and gave us machines that were powerful & fun to ride. SOICHIRO HONDA’S dreams changed the world of motorcycling forever.

CNG Conversion kit components :

CNG Conversion kit

The CNG conversion kit has the following main components are:

(i) Cylinder : It stores C.N.G at a working pressure of nearly 200 bar. It is also fitted with shut off valve and a safety burst disc.

(ii) vapour bag : This encloses the cylinder and the pipes connecting the cylinder valve vented out of the car. (iii) High pressure pipe : It connects the refueling valve to the CNG cylinder and pressure regulator. 

(iv) Refuelling valve: It is used to refuel the cylinder.

(v) Pressure regulator : It has a solenoid valve shut off supply to the engine. The C.N.G stored at high pressure in the cylinder is reduced to just below the atmospheric pressure by the pressure regulator. The pressure does not allow  when the engine is negative the gas to pass not running. 

(vi) Gas-air mixer : It mixes accurately the gas fed into the cylinder. 

(vii) Petrol solenoid valve : This is used to cut off the petrol or a diesel supply to the engine when it is run on gas. 

(viii) Selector switch : It is fitted on the dash board to enable the driver to choose whether the engine is to be run on petrol or diesel or CNG. This is so designed that when the engine is switched off the gas supply is also switched off. It indicate the quantity of CNG available in the cylinder.

Air conditioning

Automotive air conditioning is done to control the temperature, humidity, purity of the atmospheric of the air and circulate the same in the automobile to make the journey of passengers comfortable so that they Should not feel too much cold in winter and too hot in summers. Earliest, most of cars were having the cooling provision only as shown in Figure. It consists of refrigeration system, an air circulation and distribution system and a control system as shown in the layout. It includes the compressor, condensor, dehydrator and connecting lines in addition to expansion valve, orifice tube, suction throttle valve and high pressure cut off  switch. The commonly used refrigerant is freon 12 .

The compressor driven by a belt from the engine pulley through an electromagnetic clutch sucks the low temperature and low pressure refrigerant vapour from the evaporator ad compresses it to high temperature and high pressure vapor. Then it is discharged to the condenser Air is caused to flow across the condenser while driving or by the action of the engine fan or a electric fan. Cooling of the refrigerant vapor covers it into liquid at high pressure This liquid is ten stored in the receiver from where, it is passed through dehydrator to extract any moisture the Then the dry refrigerant liquid is passed through the expansion valve mounted at the net side of the evaporator The expansion valve allows the liquid refrigerant to expand to low pressure the evaporator. A sensing device called temperature tube signals the diaphragm in the expansion in valve its e size depending upon the refrigerant at the outlet, temperature evaporator to vary This helps in achieving automatic temperature control.

Air from the blower is forced to low over the evaporator coils Which removes the latent heat of vaporisation moisture and impurities from the air. Condensed moisture from the evaporator and impurities dip into a tray from where they are drained out. The automatic temperature control or manual control system uses the same refrigeration and air during circulation.

In winter season for heating the air, the hot water of the engine is circulated through the pipe coils or through the independent small med under the radiator cooling col. Air is forced by the blower through these coils. The warm air is distributed through the grills in the car. At the time of heating cooling is stopped.

Multi Point Fuel Injection (MPFI)

As shown in figure 1 the multipoint fuel injection system in which there is independent injection for each cylinder mounted in the inlet port. This provides improved mixture preparation and distribution in comparison to single point and carburettor systems. Air supply is controlled by the throttle body and the butterfly valve fitted in the intake system.

In single point injection. a single injector for the entire engine is mounted above throttle buttery valve which feeds the engine in a manner similar to the carburettor system. But in multipoint injection when the independent injector is placed above below the throttle valve, it is called indirect multi point injection.



The working and layout of mechanically operated multi point fuel injection system is shown in Figure 2. An electrically operated fuel pressure pump is mounted near the fuel tank to pump fuel from the fuel tank to the metering distributor through a filter at a specified pressure of about 0.7 bar. The relief valve provided between the pressure pump and metering distributor returns the excess fuel to the tank there by keeping the fuel supply to the metering distributor at constant pressure. The metering distributor supplies fuel to each injector in turn The injector is held closed by spring until the fuel pressure opes it to deliver atomised spray of fuel.

Semi centrifugal clutch

This clutch is similar to the centrifugal clutch with only difference that light clutch pressure springs exerting low pressure at idling speeds are used. The pressure between the plates is Increased with Increase in the speed of rotation of the clutch in Proportion to the pressure requirements by means of centrifugal weights linked to the pressure plate Figure shows the action of the rotating weights which trend to move the pressure plate towards the flywheel and the ends of the release levers are moved back against the throw bearing. Relatively light clutch pressure springs exerting low pressure at the idling speed is enable depression of the clutch pedal for shifting of gear.