RANDOM NOTES

Hawera Star, Volume LII, 28 January 1933, Page 12

RANDOM NOTES

AT HOME VXD ABROAD.

NEWS FROM ALL SOURCES,

Rubber for road paving is being strongly recommended bv the various banks, insurance companies, and so ori having offices in the City of ‘.London.

Experiments are being made in Bradford with “sandwich roads,” consisting of a din bed of stone, lightly roiled, a layer of sand mortar, and a 2in topping of old broken granite setts.

Professor Merchant, president of the Institution 1 of Electrical Engineers, England, looks forward to the time .when arterial roads will be so well lighted that headlamps will be unnecessary.

Motor bars have recently made their appenranep in Berlin. Fitted with tin elaborate bar counter and carrying High bar ’Stools, these mobile bars travel through the suburbs and are reported to'be doing excellent business.

Although coal gas as a motor vehicle fuel has been almost entirely experimental in 'Great Britain and other countries, in Paris the Paris Gas Company has been operating a fleet on this “fuel” for six years. After testing oiio of these vehicles, “Motor Transport" states that throughout the run the machine’s performance was not distinguishable from that of a welltuned modern vehicle running on petrol, though its speed was limited by governor to a maximum of about 35 m.p.li. It: exhibited a very satisfactory liveliness when negotiating traffic, and in this respect appeared to advantage as compared with other heavy vehicles encountered on the road.

'Unquestionably the smallest working petrol engine in the world has recently been completed by an American youth for use in a model aeroplane. It has a bore and stroke of seven-eighths and 1 inch respectively, and weighs ILJoz complete with battery, coil, and fuel tank. The engine is of conventional two-stroke design, with a steel cylinder with radiating fins, aluminium tworing piston and counter-balanced crankshaft. Ignition is oy a miniature spark plug, and the coil and battery are the heaviest parts. Lubrication is by the petroil system, and a mixing valve replaces the carburettor. With a light flywheel ‘the engine runs at S 00() revolutions a minute, and at 5000 under normal propeller loan.

One of the most interesting of rc- . cent economising inventions is a new carburettor, eapaoie of converting into suitable gas a mixture of GO per cent, crude oil and 40 per cent, petrol. No structural alterations are needed in the engine, the actual mileage per gallon is better than that from petrol alone, and the cost of the crude oil is only 5d a gallon. The carburettor, invented by the famous European engineer, M. Ilenri Claudel, is of the four-jet type, obtaining heated air from the exhaust system. It is as successful on touring cars as on trucks, involving no sacrifice of power, speed, or flexibility. One six-ton truck, tested with full load, gave 5.05 miles a gallon on petrol, and 7.00 on the cheaper mixture, while the figures for a three-tonner were 9.S and 13.4 miles respectively. The cost in England of fitting the new carburettor is about £ls.