MOTORING NOTES

Hokitika Guardian, 14 August 1937, Page 6

MOTORING NOTES

(By Ah' Old Mechanic).

A motorist came. iii . the other , day looking pretty, distressed; a condition which 1 soon discovered was due. to liis ignpfance .of his car, rather, than tdq anything wrong with the machine it-1 j self/-.., •' • ■ % . •'J&sj.askesd roe to' take a ride with-him y and tell him just how bad the'universal -| .joints.;in;vnis.ciir were. ' v A - “They’re all'‘right, l said, alter driving the car. ■

“Didn’t you feel that slipping al low

speed?” he asked.’ . “Yes,” 1 replied, “but that’t not tho universal joints. Dirty distributor points are causing it. The engine is not firing correctly. That means there are dead spots in its performance/ ;It does almost feel a!s if the universal joints were bad,” : , The moral of this anecdole is that

car-owners pay -.too little attention to the' electrical system. For instance, whfrri' "ah engine shows a tendency to stall, not one car-owner iri fifty but thinks of a dirty carburettor or one that idles too slowly.

Thosg. th.ings dp cause stalling, .to he sure,; hut sip does a distributor- that is dirty, Or one that is delivering sparks that. are...weak or too slow. • .

Now, of course, you can overcome the trouble if it is in the distributor—at least to a certain extent—if you make the engine faster by say setting up the carburettor. But if the electrical side of the power plant is not functioning properly, it hardly seems wise to 'make another unit work incorrectly to overcome the fault. Old-time motorists were oh to most of the tricks of the carburettor. - They knew ft wouldn’t go on performing effi-ciently-for an indefinite time, and they i had it ..attended to father regularly. My. suggestion .would be that we all ? still realise such a procedure is hecessary. It’s going pretty far afield to k look for an excessively worn -universal ' joint as an explanation of an electrical t trouble, but it goes to show how tlifat J system has a hard time breaking-into -the consciousness the average motorist.. j-- •• ■ i ;