Cycling And Motor Notes

Otago Witness, Issue 3004, 11 October 1911, Page 59

Cycling And Motor Notes

BY DEMON.

FIXTURE. Warriiambool to Melbourne Road Race.— Saturday, October 14.. • October 21 and! 28.—Motor cycle reliability trial to Timjaaru and back.

! The fallowing are the conditions of the Otago Motor Cycle Club's reliability trial to Timaru and back, to be held on Saturday and Monday, October 21 and 23, leaving Dunedin at 9.30 a.m. on the 21st, and .returning on Monday at 10 a.m.: — Private Owners Class —-Ist, silver cup valued at £3 3s; 2nd, trophy valued at £2 2s; 3rd, trophy valued at £1 Is. Trade Riders trophy presented by Messrs Stedman and Wilson: 2nd, trophy presented by Messrs Cooke, Howlison, and . Co. Silver medals will be presented. to all competitors making a non-stop run throughout the trials. Entries close on Monday, i October 16; 12 entries or no trial. Each ridter shall carry a number, to be supplied by the committee, for convenience of checking, same to be fixed as directedRiders leave at intervals of one minute, in pairs. Any mechanical repairs must be made by the rider of the machine requiring such repairs, otherwise he will be disqualified. Competitors are particularly requested to observe all stoppages, eto., recorded in the trials, whether of themselves or other riders, and carefully record same in their record book. In the event of a competitor not filling a complete record of all his own stops and the causes thereof, he will be rendered liable to disqualification. Competitors must state nature ' of stop, place, and time taken to rectify. ' This rule will be strictly adhered to, and no matter what manner of stop occurs, it must be recorded. In the event of two or more competitors finishing with equal points, the final result will be determined i by a petrol consumption test, to be held as soon as possible after the event, the .same machine to be used in both events. Speed indicators and mileage recorders will . be allowed. Railway time will be adhered to throughaut the trial. Half an hour will be allowed at Oamaru each way for lunch. The Award Committee (consisting 1 of Messrs Clark, Lough, and Ansell) shall 1 meet 48 hours after the conclusion of the I trials, and protests, if any, must be in the I hands of the secretary within that time, and will be duly considered- After the 1 award has been made no appeal will be considered unless in the hands of the secretary within 48 hours of publication of same. The result of the trial will be determined as follows: —Each competitor will be awarded 500 marks. Penalties will be imposed as follows: —(a) Competitors will be penalised one mark per minute for every minute early at checks or controls, and for every minute over three minutes late; (b) 30 minutes each way will be allowed for punctures; (c) mechanical re ! pairs will be penalised 10 marks per stoppage. Mechanical repairs shall mean any repair where a spanner, screwdriver, or other tool is • necessary to effect such j repair, except in the caee of removing tyres to repair a puncture. Any competitor having- to change a belt or chain, even though tools be not used, will be penalised 10 marks f per stop. Any competitor changing his gear will bo penalised 10 marks per change, variable geared machines excepted. All stops must be added to lunning time—i.e., if a competitor be 10 minutes late at Palmerston, he

must be thesame amount late at tlie other controls until arrival at destination. If he be delayed five minutes for a tyre or other trouble he must be that amount late at all controls after such stoppages. This is in order to maintain the average of 20 milea per hour as far as possible. Petrol -will bo obtainable at Oamaru each way. • Messrs Rutherford (-Buick), Cheyna (Talbot), and Robert Hudson (Siddeley) drove through to Kurow last week- They report the roads in the North Otago district as being is fin© order. Mir Hudson xs at present touring in South Cantor bury, _ and later on goes to Hanmer. Dr Church has purchased from the local agents (Messrs Wimpenny Bros.) a model 46 Overland oar. " This machine 13 of 25 h.p., with torpedo body. The Southland Farmers' Co-operative Association has also secured two Overlands—a model 46 (25 h.p.) and a model 49 (25 h.p.). The latter is a" five-sea.ted car, with njg-h sidfe doors, and gate change gear. Mr R. C. Horsley, of Christchurch, has beor.' in town during the past week. Our visitor drove down in his 15-20 h n. B.S.A. car. p

—: —Mr Arthur Wimpenny reports having had a run to Mount Stuart, and that the roads traversed' are in splendid condition. upon automobile owners that it 13 neoes* sary to keep the tyres inflated at a pressure commensurate to the weight carried, and also as to the size of the tyres; but it is not so easy for the owners to decide what the pressures should be. The following table, arranged after a long series of trials, shews what the pressure should be for different weights of cars, and the various sizes of tyres:—For cars weighing from 6001 b to 10001 b, Sin tyres and a pressure of 501 b to 601 b are recommended; for cars weighing 8001 b to 160018, 3£m, tyres inflated, to 50-701 b ; for cars weighing 13001 b to 22001 b, 4in tyres inflated to 60-751 b; for cars weighing 14001 bto 26001 b. 4£in tyres inflated to 60-801 b; and for cars weighing from 22001 b to 32001 b, sin tvres inflated to 70-801 b.

■—— While we in the colonies are wondering if the motor waggon -will pirove itself a practical commercial vehicle, the more enterprising Yankee has put it to a test--that of crossing the North American, continent,, a distance by the' route followed of 5000 miles—"a soul-trying undertaking that occupied five months." The "Pioneer Freighter," as the Saurer wag-' gon was called, was loaded, among other things, with camp equipment, timber for shoring up bridges and making mud holes passable, and a powerful winch, which is operated by the engine of the car, and which proved of great assistance in hauling the truck out of bad spots. When i% reached New York the truck looked* tha worse for wear, but it bad no trouble in "keeping step" with an escort of 15 trucks which met it on the outskirts and accompanied it into the city. Its appearance only mildly suggested the many times it had been hub-deep in sand, or became mired in two or three feet of slimy mud, which covered many of the so-called roads of f-Vi "wild and woolly west/'

Xotiviihscanclimt r • ' 'king methods of > littering' petrol, both . okko and after it is put into the tank of the car, the fact remains that engine operation often ia more or less hampered through the pi-e-------sonce of water in the fuel. For extracting- such "last drops" as accumulate when ordinary precautions fail, a moter accessories company in Connecticut, U.S.A., has brought out a little device which is suggestively termed the dry igas tube. It consist* of, a small, perforated metallic shell, something lass than an inch in. diameter and about two and a-half inches long, which is packed w.ith a substance capable of absorbing water, but which ia not saturated by other liquids. When immersed in the fuel tank therefore the tube will absorb any particles of water which may come in contact with it, retaining th«moisture for an indefinite period. When in use, a wire from the tube is attached to the lower aide of the filler cap so that the tube may be drawn otj* coraxkasaj/y and its "charge" of water extracted. This

is, accomplished by the simple expedient of bilking tfte cartridge in a moderately hot oven. While the device is capable of retaining -three ounces of water —more than would accumulate in a- fair-sized tank in from fouir to six months' use^—the manufacturers recommend that the baking process be done onoe every three montns, 90 that the absorbent in the tube is always ready to., soak up whatever water has found its way into the tank. The railway strike in England recently brought .homo the value of the meohanioally-propelled road vehicle to the travelling public in an unmistakable manner. The oall upon public service vehicles —motor buses, fcaxicabs, char-a-bancs, ute.—was heavy, for thousands of people baa to use bhem to get fco and from their homes and the commercial centres of London. The proprietary companies of those vehicles reaped a rich harvest, while numerous cars were hired fco carry passengers to distant cities and towns, Liverpool, Bristol, Bath, Brighton, etc., for which high rate were paid. Even more pronounced was the demand' for the commercial vehiole, and the trad© is now at its wit's end to fill the orders which are pouring, in. One manufacturer considers the real birth of the traders' motor, vehicle bo date from the strike. He further says that commercial houses have learnt from the recent disturbances that they have no option but fco provide themselves as quickly as possible with Jong range, speedy motor road brains for the conveyance in hulk of both raw materials and finished products, while dealers in ali manner of farm produce, foodstuffs, and the retail dealers and distributors "must equip themselves just as speedily with motor waggon and light, fast delivery vans. A study of the conditions on which the strike has been settled so far reveals that the railway companies' future must be assured as much as the men's because the Government will recognise the right of the great carrying corporation to retaliate- by raising their rates. Hence it may be assumed that the charges will be heavier, which will mean, incidentally, that road transport, even at present rates, would appear proportionately cheaper than it is to-day. Indeed, the more closely one considers the problem the certain it is that in many respects the transport of the country will gradually return to the highways which such traffic originally used. —: — Within a comparatively short period the conversion of the equipment used by the London Fire Brigade from horsedrawn to meohanioally-clriven vehicles will be complete. The experience of the brigades with motor vehicles had proved entirely satisfactory, and, according to the report of the General Purposes Committee, no fewer than. 102 petrol or electrio motor esoapes-v&ns, 76 petrol-driven fire engines, 10 motor cars, and 23 petrol or electric motor long-ladder vara will be required. The cost is estimated at over £200,000.

The other day a motorist was complaining that his o'ngine refused to burn ? Jowly while running light He was porectly certain that the carburettor and the ignition system were in perfoc* condition, but as soon as he throttled down in order to get quiet running when the oar

was standing the engine stopped. The symptom had been one of gradual growth, and it had puzzled him no end to account for it. A very -brief inspection of his engine showed where the fault lay._ The inlet valve guides were worn sufficiently to allow air to pass between guide and valve stem, with the result that when the throttle was closed beyond a certain point the engine was simply inhaling too weak a mixture to fire. , '•■''■','.. capable of winning the Dunlop £2O for breaking Leon Meredith's 100 rnileis unpaced record, that rider is Don Kirkham, of Lyndhurst, Victoria, who, off scratch, covered the 131 miles from Goulburn to Sydney in the record time of Ghr 19min 31sec, 16min less than T. Larcombe's previous record ride, and secured second place. Fairly tall and slight in build—though"" he seems thicker this year than when last year he won and got fastest time—Kirkham has now proved himself one of the most' briliant road riders Australia has so far produced. As in last year's race, Kirkham rode a B.S.A. machine fitted with very low handle-bars, 6£in cranks, 84 gear, wooden rims, and Dunlop road-racing tyres. He earned the admiration of his fellow-competitors by his speedy uripaced riding, catching bunches and going past them so fast that thoy could not stay with him. He said he had a good ride, but found the roads very rough after those of Victoria. President Taft uses the motor car extensively both for business and pleasure. Only once has the Presidential motor car been mixed up in a serious accident, and this was last summer, at Beverly, when the President's son, Robert, was driving. The car struck an Italian labourer, who was rather badly hurt, but upon his recovery he received from the President £lO0 } and in addition his travelling expenses back to Italy.

—: —ln July last three English motorists drove a 14-20 h.p. J. D. Siddeley type Deasy car from Southampton to Glasgow and back, a distance of 1005 miles, insido 48 hours. Beyond tyre troubles, which included a couple of bursts, the run was without accident. The bonnet was sealed before the start, and the seals verified (it the finish. It appears that before starting on this trip the car had been driven 3542 miles, and had no special preparation. Mr B. L. Arrowsmith, of Worcester street, has sold an 18-24 h.p. Dennis ' car to a- Dunedin client. This car is a new typo, and amongst the best cars im- ] E orbed. The Dennis cars are manufacturer! '. y the firm which turns out the Dennis free engines, and are the oldest motor car manufacturers in England. They are j also the inventors of the famous silent I overhead worm-drive, and hold the world's j patents for it. s j The motor industry has grown to . its present proportions during the com- j paratively short space of 15 years. From the time tho first oar was placed on the roads, enthusiasm, both lay and technical, I has never been lacking, and it has naturally resulted in a constant demand for the now means of locomotion on the one hand, i

and a continual striving by the engineer to evolve a perfect vehicle on the other, x'he motor car, although it has increased the total of the number of vehicles on the roads, has also supplanted a great many horse-drawn vehicles,. a change which has not been carried out without a certain amount of strained relationships, especially during the first five or six years, between those dependent on the respective, industries, and even to-day the feeling of resentment has, remarks the Automobile andCarriage Builders' Journal, not entirety disappeared. However, motor bodies are> in the majority of cases, made by the carriage builder, and ho will have gained by the change in his business generally in direct proportion to his ability to adapt himself to the new condition of affairs. —— The claim made for some sparkingplugs that will add 15 per cent, to the power of the engine has not yet. proved itself, although this little and indispensable adjunct has been much improved in latter years, and in the following ways: —(1) The use of nickel as the non-fusible metal which constitutes the points; (2) the firm formation of the plug, so that the points cannot bo moved inadvertently; (3) the provision of a cushion under the porcelain to allow of the expansion of the metal stem; (4) the use of short, stout, and atrong porcelains, glazed in such a manner as not readily to take a deposit of water. ' The unusually lengthy spell of hut weather in England this year revealed a new phase of motoring to the car users. The greater number of modern automobiles have bodies known as the "torpedo" type —deep-sided, and entirely closed in—a pattern most suitable for a cool climate. The torpedo body during tho heat wave proved so close and uncomfortable, that many motorists had ventilators fittoJ, while "cape-cart" hoods were used freely —almost an unknown thing in England unless actually raining. Tyre troubles

caused directly from the heat were very numerous, and many a cover "went off pop !" that otherwise might have given its owner a fair amount of further use. The Vacuum Oil Co. Propy. (Limited) states that in every motor cycle vent of interest, not only in Australia, but both in Great Britain and America, users of Pratt's spirit have achieved some remarkable results, the tremendous speed of Burman —141.73 miless per hour—being a case in point, as well as the historic combat j between Collier and Rosier. A further ' test of the quality of Vacuum goods is ! evidenced by the fact that in 1910 two ' million gallons of Mobile oils wore sold in Great Britain, and for the first half of this year the output of Pratt's had ] reached 20 million gallons for that period. I equal to about two-thirds of the entire j British trade. To commemorate the Coronation of . the world's most eminent cyclist, H.M. j King George V., the Mead Cycle Company, of Liverpool, has issued an extremely handsome monster size art souvenir, which ; depicts in a variety of charming colours their Majesties the King and Queen, attired in their Coronation robes; a magniI ficent panoramic view of the procession;

no fewer than 26 sumptuously tinted lifelike portraits of the -world's mightiest monarchs, and the most -gigantic and beautiful bicycle illustration that has ever appeared in any cycle list in the world. A free copy of this delightful 'souvenir will be sent to any reader on receipt of a post card directed to the Mead Cycle Company, Liverpool.

CLEANING THE RADIATOR. The external cleanliness of the radiator is a point whurh- requires attention from J..M motorists. If the honeycomb cells beot.ine choked with mud or dust, the cooling efficiency will be greatly reduced. The radiator should be kept day and free from grease. Wiping it with an oily rag attracts dust, and detracts from its efficiency fo: the purpose intended It may be kept clean quite easily by means of a bristle bcttle brush pushed through the air spaces. It should not b 3 allowed to get bright, but should be kept painted dead black. Lamp black and size is a good thing, but may become 'washed off in stormy weather. Any dead black paint is good, or ground lampblack mi-ted with new milk will keep on onoe dry, and will not be effected by wet. Any good blcck. however, as long as it is a "dead black," will do. PATENT SPRING WHEEL. A new spring wheel for motor oars, motor lorries, eta, has just been patented by two well-known Sydney citizens in the persons of- Messrs Grace and O'Reilly. It is devised to lessen the vibration, and to take the place of pneumatic-tyred wheelsAs everyone knows (says Sydney Town and Country Journal), the great expense in connection with motoring is the upkeep of tyres. A set of covers nd tubes runs into sums ranging from £2O a set for small oairs to £BO or £IOO a sot for the larger vehicles. it is churned by the inventors and patentees of the riew spring wheel that pneumatic tyres need not be used now by motorists, or, if they are used, they cam last four times as long if used in conjunction with the springinig arrangement which taey have peneeted. Tne writer had a trial on a oar the other day to Cbogee and back, and found the car fitted with the new spring wheels just cis comfortable as if it had on pneumatic tyres. Granted that young Mr O'Reilly is an expert diriver, the i'act remains that even over rough ground there was a similar absence of bumping to what one associates only with pneumatic-shod wheels. There seems. a big future before the Grace-O'Reilly patent, and if it is only made adaptable to all vehicles it will likely prove a boon.

WATER COOLING ON MOTOR CYCLES. Though this subject is getting an increased share of attention, it is doubtful if it will, for a very long time, oust the-air-cooled engine (says a writer in. the Bicycling Newe and Motor Review)". To my mind, the great delicacy of small radiators is a serious objection, to their use on motor cycles, which are subject to greater vibration than oars, and are also more liable to injury through falls than are cars or other vehicles which a.re not dependent upon equilibrium for their stability. An air-cooled engine will work very well on quite a low gear if the design is right, more especially if ■ the cylinders are small; and as they will do all that an ordinary man requires, where dots the need for water-cooling come in? The answer is: In increased-- efficiency, decreased petrol consumption, longer life for valves and piston rings, reduoed carbon deposit, etc., eto.; and these are things well worth having, provided their .price does not. include the sacrifice of the sent good features of the air-cooled engine. The risk of cracked cylinders, too, is far •greater with a motor cycle than with oars, for irot only is the bulk of. water much smaller, but it is difficult to protect the engine or radiator, as is possible with oars. Then, motor cycles are stabled in all sorts of places, and very few owners could arrange to warm their "garages-" It may be urged that winters are not very severe in this country, and motor cyces not very largely used' in the winter, but in or out of use the risk of a cracked cylinder or burst radiator would be ever present to the man who owned a water-cooled motor cycle. BRITISH AND GERMAN CARS COMPARED. Comimenting on the Prince Henry tour of English and German motorists, which was held last month. The Tknte says: — "The Prince Henry tour provided an unusual opportunity of comparing British and German cars in the gross. Of the 37 competing oars which started from Homburg in the German team, all but three or four were of German manufacture; and though the British team were less patriotic, or perhaps it would be better to say more catholic, in their tastes, still, about 20 out of the 28 British competitors' cars were of British manufacture. The general impression gained was that the German oar is, on the whole, a, coarser and less refined vehidlo than the British. Less trouble, for instance, seemed to be taken to secure silenoe. It was ordained in the regulations for the tour that all the cars should be provided with efficient silencers to the exhaust. The term efficient in this connection is, of course, somewhat vague; but it may fairly be said that, judged by English standards, some of the German cars made so much noise with their exhausts that it was almost possible to suppose that they were using silencer cut-outs, which, however, were strictly prohibited. As regards warning signals, it appears that the cars were commendably moderate; but at least two of them —both English—used shrill whistles, which were sounded in most unsuitable places. The impression of coarseness "was given in the coachwork of the German car's. Many of them were most luxurious vehicles, fitted with every device to secure the comfort of their occupants ; yet, taken as a whole, they looked lunupy and ungraceful compared with those of the English team. Nor was their general appearance enhanced by the common German oustom of driving with the screen lowered, the drivers relying upon elaborate leather caps and goggles to protect themselves from the dust.