PETROL SUBSTITUTES

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 84, 6 October 1941, Page 8

PETROL SUBSTITUTES

AUSTRALIAN CARS

USE OF EMBALMING SPIRIT

(0.C.) SYDNEY, October 1. To overcome petrol shortage, Australian motorists are using many weird substitutes, often with a reckless disregard for the care and life of their engines. Perhaps the most unusual fuel that vyas ever sucked into a carburettor, however, is embalming spirit, which some Sydney taxi-drivers are using with remarkably enlivening results. A driver who tried the embalming spirit as fuel said: "I can't, get enough of it. My old car bucked like a billy-goat when I stepped on the gas the first time I used it, but then it went as sweetly as ever." When funeral directors heard of the novel use of embalming spirit they were horrified, not only for the serious drain on supplies, on which they considered they had an exclusive call, but also for its' effect on motor engines. Standard embalming spirit has so high a corrosive quality that it eats its way through metal, they said. The manufacturers supply it in glass or earthenware jars, with warnings against allowing it to come in contact with! metal. It is so expensive that any taximan using it would go bankrupt after-b a very few weeks, presuming his engine had not broken down meantime. CAR "COCKTAIL." Other motorists are struggling along the roads on mixtures which contain eucalyptus, ether, kerosene, methylated spirits, and a host of other synthetic combinations. One motorist said he got;good results from a mixture of two gallons of - lighting kerosene, half a gallon of petrol, a quantity of fly spray oil, and eucalyptus. Others are enthusiastic about a "cocktail" of three gallons of kerosene to two of petrol, with nine mothballs thrown in to give extra "kick." All the substitutes are making the cars go, but engineering experts say the day of reckoning is to come. The chief engineer of the National Road and Motorists' Association. Mr. J. Fielder, declared that motorists are running up a repair bill of over £1,000.000. "We are receiving thousands of requests for advice on diluted oil, sticking valves, worn engines, difficult starting, objectionable fumes, excessive 'pinking' leading to wear of the cylinders, ahd loss of power," he said. "All these troubles arose, from the use of homemade fuel mixtures." '