OIL-BURNERS

Evening Star, Issue 18393, 29 September 1923, Page 7

OIL-BURNERS

THE MAORI’S CONVERSION,

WAHINE PROBABLY NEXT. An oil fuel plant for firing her boilers has been installed on the ferry steamer Maori at Port Chalmers. Tho work of converting hoi’ furnaces and fitting the oil tanks has occupied several weeks, and, having been completed to the satisfaction of the officials, about 100 tons of oil fuel was pumped into the tanks yesterday from the freighter Waikawa. The conversion of the Maori into an oil-burner will surmount past difficulties of supplying tho ship with bad coal, and will also do away with other faults associated with a coal-burning ship, The Maori will leave Port Chalmers about October 17 to resume her running in the ferry service, and it is expected that she will make some fast trips under’ her new power. It is probable that the ferry steamer Wahine may also stabilise her time-table by having oil fuel appliances installed at Port Chalmers when she comes here to undergo overhaul in about three weeks’ time.

The Port Chalmers workshops are said to hold a cost and efficiency record in the matter of converting coal-burning steamers into oil fuelers. At the close of the war several New Zealand steamers were converted to oil fuel. Some of this converting was done in America. Against the Americans Port Chalmers easily held its own in tho matter of cost, and in regard to efficiency honors were equal, with the port of Otago leading in the front rankers. The result of that creditable performance is that Port Chalmers is evidently destined to do any further converting of New Zealand steamers when oil fuel conditions are to bo substituted for coal. .