CARE OF THE MOTORS

Evening Star, Issue 24003, 30 September 1941, Page 10

CARE OF THE MOTORS

N.Z.E.F. MOBILE WORKSHOPS (From Official War Correspondent with the N.Z.E.F.) CAIRO, August 24. If you can picture a motor workshops manager with dictatorial powers that give him the right to order your cur off the road for repairs, then you have some idea of the measures the Army takes to ensure the long life and proper use of its millions of pounds’ worth ol: motor vehicles. In the N.Z.E.F., as in every other formation, hundreds of skilled engineers and mechanics keep a continuous, and meticulous check on the roadworthines of every vehicle, for an avoidable breakdown is almost a crime. In a mobile workshop in one of our desert camps I looked behind the scenes of the efficient, much-praised transport work of the New Zealand Army Service Corps, and found a good part of the secret of its efficiency. At a casual glance it might have seemed the exact counterpart of a civilian motor engineer’s establishment. The activity was much the same, but the big difference lay in the fact that, while the civilian must usually wait for business to come to him, the Army man demands it. Every truck, every car. every motor cycle under his control is called in once a month for a thorough inspection. and if this reveals a defect ho simply orders the vehicle off the road until repairs have been made. An Auckland warrant officer, T. Hedley, who is the “ little dictator ” of this typical A.S.C, workshop, showed me how his records contain a complete case history of each vehicle. Every inspection and repair job, together with such details as mileages and fuel consumption, are entered up. When the vehicle is next called in it is most useful to have its past history “ on tap ” in this way.

The A.S.C. workshops are completely mobile, and can be packed up and put on the move within an hour or two. One huge lorry is filled with steel cabinets containing spare parts, and has a battery charging plant; and another, which is the workshop proper, carries heavy generating equipment, electric lathes, drills, and similar tools. The jobs which cannot bo bandied with this material, either by_ orthodox methods or clever improvisation, are rare. I saw a. fitter with his head down over the long Rolls Royce engine of a Red Cross ambulance. Warrant-officer Hedley remarked that only the holder of a Rolls Royce “ ticket ” was allowed to touch the company’s engines. “ Well, there you are,” he added. “ We’ve even got a Rolls Royce man.” Others were working on captured Italian army lorries brought in from Libya.

A good deal rests with the man in the driving seat when his vehicle is on the road. He must he able to carry out running repairs and treat his vehicle with proper care and attention. Good' drivers develop a genuine love of their machines, a sentiment that revealed itself in Greece, where the jettisoning of their vehicles seemed a personal loss.