MOTOR NOTES

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LII, Issue 17088, 17 July 1926, Page 10

MOTOR NOTES

MOTOR-CAR WITH TWO ENGINES 1000-H.P. MONSTER.

fiC VALVES AND 48 SPARKING

I'LUGS.

LONDON. June 2

The largest motor-car tho world tins scon, officially rated at 1000-h.p. and so unwieldy that it is only designed to travel'at speed in a straight line, will shortly be finished at a British motorcar factory in the Midlands.

The car is a Sunbeam, designed by Mr. L. Coatalen. It will be driven by two engines, each rated at fiOfl-h.p. Each engine is considerably larger than tho single engine in Babs, Mr. Carry Thomas' car which recently lowered tho world's speed record by covering a mile at an average speed of 170 miles per hour. When the twin engines are housed in its colossal chassis it will develop 650 more horse-power than any car in existence. It is designed for an attempt on Mr. Thomas's speed record, and Major H. O. D. Segrave, who will drive the monster either on the sands ,it Pendine, Carmarthen, or at Southport, Lancashire, in September, hopes to reach a speed of more than 200 miles an hour. EIGHT PETROL FEEDS.

The car will be fed with petrol from eight carburettors, and its ignition will be supplied from no fewer than 12 magnetos of British manufacture —in fact, the ear throughout, down to the smallest detail, is to be British made.

Each engine has 12 cylinders, making 24 in all. Thera are four valves to eacii cylinder, a total of 96. There are two sparkling plugs to each cylinder, a total of 48.<

The thrust of the monster will bo terrific. An allowance is being made of three gallons of petrol, for ouch minute the engine is running. This works out at roughly, one mile to the gallon. Tho tyres, which have been especially made by a British firm, are so immense that they cannot, be properly blown up by an ordinary tyre pump and so they vvil be inflated by air cylinders under compression. TWO ENGINES. One. of the engines will be? housed at thp front of the car and the other over the rear axle. There will be a common gear-box for the two in the centre of the car, through which power will be transmitted to the rear wheels. The driver will have to operate two cluches, which, of course will bo connected so that they can be worked by the same pedal. As it is considered that the great tyres will afford too much resistance to the wind, the body will be carried right over tlie wheels to* within a few inches of the ground, giving the car the appearance of a tank. SAYS ONLY RICH WILL USE GARS. U.S. OFFICIAL PREDICTS GASOLINE FAMINE WITHIN NEXT TEN YEARS. NEW YORK, June 5. From time to time the cry that a fuel shortage is imminent, is heard. Usually folks shrug their shoulders and say that it probably presages another rise in|tho price of gasoline. A study of the situation, however, reveals a* condition far from reassuring and which shows that the possibility of a shortage is real, according to W. T. Thorn, of the United .States geological survey. The total domestic production of gasoline in the United States in 1923 wa.s 7,755 943,-145 gallons and the domestic consumption was 0,(585,<X15,,280 gallons, of which the motor car used more than 80 per cent. In 1925 the productive capacity of American oil companies was strained to the limit with a constantly increasing drain on the amount of fuel developed. By the end of 19'Jti when there should be 2(1,000,000 motor vehicles registered in this country, there is likely to come a line between production and consumption so than that the two will just about rest on the same figures, it is estimated.

Air. Thorn predicts that within the next ten years, tho diminishing supply of gasoline will have, brought the cost of operating an automobile out of reach of the poekotbook of the average citizen. Mr. Thorn says in part:

"The time 1o prepare for the threatened shortage is now. Obvious methods of meeting the threat are more economical ears. If the automobile engineer can produce a car that will give 1000 miles of operation on half the gasoline now required to do ■.. that distance, the effect is to double the fuel supply. The average car dav will give greater mileage per un.it of'fuel than the cars of even live years ago. There are signs that still greater economies on this side will come.''

NUMBER THIRTEEN IS FOUND FATAL IN MOTOR RACES.

The Automobile Club of France has been asked to eliminate No. 13 from motor speed races. Count Masetti, who was killed in a race in Sieilly recently, piloted a car number thirteen. Three others, Home!. Matthis and Tot city, have been killed while pilotlug cars number thirteen.

It will be welcome news to motorists that an all-round reduction in motor car and motor-cycle .tyres has been announced by the tyre companies to take effect immediately. The price of tyres, as with petrol, has a great effect upon the popularity of motoring. Dear petrol and dear tyres put a definite check upon the demand for cars, the one beenuse it represents an easily measurable item in the cost of rmtning. and the other for the reason that, as was evident earlier in tin. year, it might produce an advance in car prices,

One of the important international automobile fixtures for 1920 is the British Grand Prix, which is to be nm over a course of ?M miles at Brooklands. England, on August 7th next. This is the first time that England 'lias had a firnnc! Prix rare and it will give the Old Country a chance to revive past glories. They have had their Tourist Trophy races, but they have taken place in the Isle of Man, A long lime ago, so long ago in fact.

■that only a small proportion 'of the; hah'-a-million motorists in England remember anything of ahem, they had the Gordon Bennett Cup races in Ireland. The glamor of the International (nands Prix has succeeded the renown of the old "Cordon Bennett" and the Royal Automobile Club of England, the first of its kind in the world, has since bad no races under its control except the Tourist Trophy events,, the last of which took place in 1922. ' This y*ear, however, the governing body of motoring in England has been given and has 'taken the chance of running one of the great international races which count towards tho speed championship of the world. The .British Grand Prix at Brooklands this year will be of equal importance with the Grands Prix of France, Spain and Italy, the Grand Prix of Europe, and the Indianapolis "500," which takes place in America.

Progress in the design of cars may appear to falter, but actually it never slops. Year by year, in scores of drawing offices, hundreds of clever brains are steadily evolving new methods of production side by side with new details of design. No real improvement ever bursts on the world full-blown. A thousand tiny steps of testing, experiment and road experience go to the making of the perfect car that some day the public will drive and wonder why it took so long to evolve. Evolution applies to ears very much as it works in the world of nature. Progress is more by a process of elimination and replacement in detail than by fundamental alteration in design. Cars still betray their origin from the old coaching days even on the most elaborate examples of modern design. This, obviously, must be truo of the coachwork and not of the. nieachanism that propels it. There would seem to be still too wide a gap between the work of the engineers who design the chassis and the coachbuilders who make—or mar—the final result. Cars are still built as though they were to have two soparato en-' titles and were not inter-linked at every stage of their joint evolution.

So reliable is the modern car that its owner and driver is likely to neglect it. If under-lubrication of any chassis details were immediately made evident by loud and prolonged •squeaking from tho parts affected, they would bo lubricated more often. As it is, many minor but nevertheless important parts only get their rations of grease or oil at rare intervals, when the motorist, having half an hour to spare, bethinks him of his grease gun or oil can. Shackle bolts, rear-axle bearings, steering gear and fan bearing.': are the most frequent sufferers, but those which are really starved of lubricant are those, oft-times hidden below the floorboards, on tho brake cross-shafts or at the forward end of the torque tube. Usually the proud possessor of a new car will diligently go tho rounds, grease gun in hand, at least as often as instructed to in tho handbook found in the tool kit. But as the freshness wears off, and the mud and dust of travel accumulate in those un-get-at-able places beneath the chassis and behind the wheels, so will the owner's enthusiasm wane, and at length the work will be performed at irregular intervals, often several hundreds of miles apart. Now all this is not as it should be. A serious effort should be made .to keep the times of greasing regular and frequent. A good plan is to do the work in sections. For instance, one time the front spring shackle bolts and tho steering connections should be dealt with. On the next occasion the rear shackles and axle bearings should be greased. Yet again, it is the turn of the universal joints and brake-operat-ing mechanism. Thus subdivided, five or fen minutes once a week (except of course, when op tour) will be spent on greasing and oiling.

Ar this time of year when the roads may be expected to be very frequently wet, it is well to remember that a skid may occur in spite of all precautions, but if the speed has been kept down it is not • likely to prove dangerous. One may be driving comfortably enough, say', at 25 m.p.h. on a road which though wet is not slippery, and run unexpectedly on to a piece of new surface; and tho car may become suddenly unmanageable ami slide about in any direction. A violeut application of rear brakes will only make matters worse, and"the best thing is to slow up gradually. Front wheel brakes if fitted., will sometimes steady a ear, but the best advice is to keep the speed down. A skid may occur in spite of all precautions, but if the speed has been kept clown it is not likely to prove dangerous. When a skid docs occur, it is well to release the clutch, for wiien the engine is disconnected from the road wheel it cannot accentuate the skid by driving the wheels round nlid causing thorn to slip in the direction of rotation. Suppose, therefore, that the rear wheels skid to the left, the car will then be pointing to the right-hand side, and if the wheels quickly regain their rolling motion, which is likely when the clutch is released, the car will head for the right-hand side of the road unless the front wheels are immediately turned to the left. This is known as steering into the skid, and it will do much to maintain the proper line of 1 ravel. In road races a driver will often skid his rear wheels intentionally for the sake of getting round a corner quickly. It is hud for his tyres and sometimes wrenches one off the. wheel: it is also bad for thechassis, and in touring it is bad practice generally. Finally, it is easier to avoid a skid* by careful driving than to correct one without hitting anything.