Motordom

Southland Times, Issue 22351, 16 June 1934, Page 13

Motordom

News & Notes

OF GENERAL INTEREST ON THE ROAD AND ON THE WING. THE LATEST HAPPENINGS. The Food Problem. I have often wondered just how competitors in trials like the Monte Carlo Rally manage to get sufficient food to keep themselves going while averaging the terrific speeds called for by the regulations. At last the secret is out. Bearing in mind that the food to be carried must occupy but little space, many of the competitors in this year’s Monte Carlo Rally carried with them supplies of Sun Maid Raisins, Cadbury’s Chocolate, and Oxo Cubes. These commodities carried them through the four days’ and four nights’ struggle with the elements. When doing any long-distance touring, it is not a bad idea to take a leaf out of the rallyites’ book and carry a small supply of wellpacked foods such as these—they are very Useful in staving off those pangs of hunger which sometimes assail one about an hour before lunch or dinner. Through the Scottish Highlands. With the completion of the Glencoe road, a great new tourist highway has been opened through one of the most wildly beautiful and romantic parts of the Scottish Highlands. In place of the old road which at certain points was no more than five feet wide, a perfect tarmacadam highway now leads for 30 miles by easy curves and gradients from Ballachulish to Tyndrum. Although the new road saves a rise and fall of more than 1100 feet, nothing is lost of the scenery, and motorists can still stop on the Muir of Rannoch and pick out no fewer than 32 mountain peaks. The new Glencoe road is claimed to be a triumph of engineering skill. Its permanent all-weather surface is constructed throughout of tar and local stone, and in 30 miles no fewer than 23 new bridges have been constructed, of which two particularly striking examples are those spanning the Water of Tulia and the Etive. The Dog’s Day. If you were to ask me what member of the household had benefited most from the era of car-ownership for everybody, do you know whom I should name? I should name the dog. For, till the last few years, the average doggie was a respected, cherished member of the household while he remained at home but, except in very rare instances, when the family went out Fido had to stay at home and mope in silence, or howl under a shower of missiles from the neighbouring dog haters until his master and mistress returned. What a difference nowadays! In most households the dog is the first in the car when a visit is being paid to friends—that is if he is a well-be-haved dog, calculated not to tear up the antimacassars, or knock over the wax fruit. I wonder what is the wisest choice of breed for the car owner? Not knowing, and not wanting to know anything about any others, I plump for the chow. He is good-tempered, trustworthy, ’ not given to scratching up people’s gardens or chasing game, presentable, and good to look upon. What do you think? The Melbourne Show. A show that has been attracting insufficient attention from biologists and eugenists is the Motor Show at Melbourne Exhibition says The Bulletin. This usually annual event had been in suspension for some years under a ukase issued by General Depresh. Its resumption indicates that the interim has been well spent by those sculptors in steel and rubber and painters in duco, the designers of Model A 93951934, complete with penwiper. Some hint of what was in store for the potential car-buyer had already been vouchsafed on the streets, a few months ago. But these were merely tentative and stumbling steps into the unknown. There is a Chrysler, slowly revolving on its elevated base with the pride of a stallion conscious of the nobility of its blood, which for creepycrawliness baffles description. It resembles a torpedo fitted up by some eccentric for human habitation, or some sort of boring tool, and, if you climbed into the thing and pressed the accelerator, you would not be quite certain whether it would travel straight ahead, burrow slowly but surely into the earth, or shoot, whistling exultantly, into the empyrean. This vehicle goes the whole hog or beetle in the direction of air-flow or streamline, and it is difficult to imagine much further development in that direction as far as automobiles are concerned. It will be necessary now to modify the human structure in the direction of the tapeworm before cars can be designed more like rifle bullets than they are now. This is where the eugenists and biologisits could lend a hand. This Streamlining. It had to come, this streamlining. Cars of quite modest size now do their sixty or seventy miles an hour as a matter of course. Modem engines have such staying power that, discovering this, motorists to-day keep going allout for miles at a time. They put up avergae speeds from one town to another which would have been considered fantastic two or three years ago. They achieve well-nigh incredible performances, yet feel no strain. Drivers and cars finish a long day’s run equally fresh. So far so good. But there is a snag. These fine performances are only attained at a price. Every motorist of experience has observed with alarm the increasing fuel consumption of the smaller car, compared to the mileage-per-gallon done on cars of similar rated h.p. a few years ago. To-day it almost comes to this: That for an equal performance, whether it be an average speed of 48 m.p.h. or a long hill climb at a certain rate, the same amount of petrol is used on a medium-sized as on a large car. Now it is a proven fact that the resistance offered by the air to the passage of a car increases with the square of the speed. Our light cars to-day are often roomy, as big in the body, as some 20 h.p. or 30 h.p. automobiles. It is only reasonable, then, to argue that as much petrol is required to propel a 12 h.p. car at 70 m.p.h. as is needed to drive a much larger vehicle at this speed. This is where streamlining—the “aero-line”—comes in. At once the bugbear of wind-re-sistance fades into the background. Power is no longer wasted pushing an unsuitably-shaped body through the air. Where less power is required, less petrol is used, and once again we are back to the light car of our ideals: as economical to run as it is to tax, insure and maintain. There is an old saying in the motor industry, “What is right, looks right." The aero-lined body is a lovely, graceful thing because it is so essentially right, epitomizing all that has been learned about lessening airresistance in thirty years of study.

REMARKABLE SERVICE AERO ENGINES’ PERFORMANCE. TRIBUTE TO BRITISH MANUFACTURER. Remarkable evidence of the dependability of British aero engines is afforded by a recent report from the Avio Linee Italiane S.A. of Milan. This company operates air lines over a number of Very difficult routes, the Rome-Milan line surmounting the Appennines and the -Milan-Munich and the Milan-Zurich lines, the Alps. The sudden meteorological changes encountered over these mountains constitute a very severe test not only of the aircraft and engines but of the personnel, and only men and material of the highest quality can maintain the service efficiently. The company uses six three-engined aircraft fitted with air-cooled Siddeley Lynx engines. These machines have flown two million kilometres without any accident or incident of any kind and have never made a forced landing on account of engine trouble. The engines have totalled 33,575 hours’ running which is equivalent to 1343 hours per engine, and during this time some 20,000 passengers and 350 tons of goods, luggage and mails have been dealt with.

Equally encouraging from the British standpoint is the report of the Siddeley engines used by the L.A.P.E. which operates the new line from Seville to Las Palmas (Canary Islands) via Agadir, Casablanca and Cabo Juby.

But perhaps the most interesting tribute to the dependability and long life of the modem aero engine is the records of various Siddeley engines used by the Imperial Airways. The Jaguars used in the Argosies have flown 10,489,700 engine miles in Europe and North Africa while the Serval engines in the Atalantas have flown 2,815,952 engine miles in India and South Africa. In Europe and the Near East the Lynx in the Avro aircraft and the Genet Majors in the Wessex aircraft have flown 1,242,100 and 713,700 engine miles respectively. According to the operators, all these types have given satisfactory service, while satisfactorily low fuel consumption and cost of maintenance and repair figures have been achieved.

PROPOSALS AT HOME ROAD TRAFFIC BILL. BACK TO SPEED LIMITATION. The chief motoring concern In Brit ain recently has been the advent of the Government’s Road Traffic Bill. It has occupied many columns in the Press but for the purposes of this column the Manchester Guardian has been taken ar authority. The Guardian says that the ieimposition of a speed limit for private motor cars on virtually all roads which are not in the open country and the establishment and driving tests for new drivers are the two main features. It summarises the chief proposals in the Bill as follows:— Speed Limit.—A limit of 30 miles an hour is imposed on private cars in built-up areas—that is, on roads where a system of street lighting is maintained at the expense of the rates. A “streetlit” road may be deemed not a built-up area at the discretion of the local authority and the Minister. Revised lower limits will continue on heavy goods vehicles. Tests for Drivers.—For new drivers driving tests are to be imposed, with a fee up to 10/-. Drivers of heavy goods vehicles have to obtain an additional licence, with a suitable test for new applicants. Disqualification.—A person convicted of careless driving will be liable to disqualification for one month and on second" conviction three months. A Court may disqualify a convicted driver until he has passed a driving test. Pedestrians.—Pedestrian crossingplaces may be proposed by local authorities, and there will be power to fine any pedestrian or driver breaking the regulations. Cyclists.—Pedal-cyclists will be required to have a white painted patch on the rear mudguard and efficient reflectors. Homs and Hooters.—The regulation of the use of horns and similar devices is proposed. Part 2 of the Bill amends the law with regard to the insurance policies for third-party risks, with a view ,Jo safeguarding further the position of parties injured in motor accidents. Part 4, in addition to simplifying procedure with regard to the licensing of passenger road services in certain details, provides that new drivers of heavy-goods vehicles shall be required to pass tests and to obtain special driving licences from the Traffic Commissioners. It is remarked that the partial restoration of a speed limit after the repeal ,of the general 20-mile-an-hour limit by the Road Act of three years ago was not generally expected, but members of Parliament are so keenly conscious of public resentment on the subject of the increasing dangers of the roads that little opposition to the Bill is threatened. The fact that road accidents since the beginning of this year show a further increase on last year’s heavy toll will assist the Minister of Transport in getting his proposals through Parliament. Driving tests for new drivers will be subject to regulations which have not yet been prepared. The Minister of Transport intends to get in touch with the motor organizations before devising a scheme of tests. What the authorities desire to secure is that the new driver shall not only have some acquaintance with the mechanical part of driving, but that he shall also know something of road matters and the Highway Code. No provision is made in the insurance clauses of the Bill to deal with the situation created by the legal maxim which prevents claims against a negligent driver who has been killed in the accident, but it is intended to remedy this defect in the law before the Bill reaches its final Parliamentary stage. The Lord Chancellor intends to make proposals at an early date arising out of the report of the Law Revision Committee, and these will be of general application and will not be confined to road accidents.

TRAFFIC SIGNALS POSITION IN BRITAIN. INSTALLATIONS OUT OF DATE. /Three-quarters of Britain’s traffic signal installations will have to be scrapped before England can enjoy, the most efficient system of control avail-able—vehicle-actuated signals. Only in London and five neighbouring counties are the older “fixed cycle” signals outnumbered by the most modern type. These facts are brought to light in an Automobile Association analysis of the distribution of traffic signals throughout the country.

The Liverpool and North Wales area makes the best showing in the rest of the country with 47 per cent, of its signals vehicle-actuated. Essex with 40 per cent, is next and then there is a. big falling off. In Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire the A.A. analysis shows only 26 per cent.; throughout Scotland 23 per cent.; in Manchester and the North-Western Counties 22 per cent.; in Yorkshire 18 per cent.; and in Glousestershire, Somerset, Wiltshire and Dorset 18 per cent.

In one or two districts there is little or no evidence of the use of the modem type of signals, notably in the Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire area. In Northumberland and Durham only 5 per cent of the signals are vehicle-actuated, 11 per cent, in South Wales, 9 per cent, in Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire and South Derbyshire, and 12 per - cent, in Devon and Cornwall. In the huge Midland area also the proportion is as low as 12 per cent. At important crossings in many parts of the country, traffic signals now operate throughout the twenty-four hours, and vehicle-actuated signals are obviously more satisfactory for the periods when traffic is spasmodic. It is, therefore, to be hoped that highway authorities will, whenever possible, convert fixed time-cycle signals in the interests of uniformity and efficiency. When the advantages of the vehicleactuated system are considered, the cost of conversion is comparatively insignificant.

UNLUCKY SHIP CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS. The discovery that a sealed box supposed to contain £6OOO worth of gold bars shipped from South Africa to England was filled with cement provided the climax of an extraordinary series of incidents that were revealed recently. The mystery box was taken to Southampton in a consignment of £2,000,000 worth pf bullion by the Union Castle ship Balmoral Castle. When its contents became known, it was disclosed that during the liner’s voyage out and home many remarkable things happened. A pilot fell into the sea; a stowaway was discovered mixing with the passengers, and after a violent scene, handcuffed by the ship’s police; a passenger died and was buried at sea; and an assistant purser disappeared overboard. The vessel had only just left Southampton on her outward trip when the pilot fell into the water as he was about to be dropped. The next incident was the finding of the stowaway a day out of Cape Town on the homeward voyage. The passenger’s death occurred the next day. A few days later, after the liner had left Madeira, it was found that Frederick Hamon, an assistant purser, 25 years old, was missing. The “man overboard” alarm was sounded, and the liner retraced her course and circled round. Searchlights swept the Sea, but no trace of the man was found. As soon as the ehip arrived at Southampton her precious cargo of gold was landed. There were 359 boxes, which had made the voyage in the specie room, inside the mailroom, just under the crew’s quarters and against the forward hatch, and one was found to be filled with cement.

MAINTAINING EFFICIENCY CARE OF THE CAR. HINTS FOR OWNERS. The resolves made by practically every motorist when he takes delivery of a new car, to keep it in perfect mechanical order, and to preserve the “show-room” appearance, seldom last more than three months, by which time the tasks of cleaning and routine inspection and adjustment, which were so gladly undertaken shortly before, receive scant attention. It is probably the loss of interest of most owners in their cars after using them for a few thousand miles, and the consequent lack of attention, that results in many machines of good design and construction being traded in or sold for comparatively low figures after being driven for a year or two. If a car is neglected it is almost impossible for the average owner-driver to restore it to efficiency, but frequent attention from when delivery is taken will do much to prevent a modem motor from deteriorating, and at the same time will amply repay the owner when the time arrives for a sale or trade in to be arranged. There are many tasks requiring neither expert knowledge nor special equipment that can be performed at home, although generally it is wise to leave to a qualified mechanic major repairs or adjustments calling for a high degree of accuracy. Adjustment of brakes and headlights are two important duties that are frequently neglected by owners. Both are simple, although they call for care, and may prevent accidents. In adjusting the brakes it is well to jack all four wheels from the ground, if the adjustment is an individual one for each wheel, but in some cases there is a master control that takes up the four brakes evenly. Brakes should be tightened until a very slight movement of the pedal or lever is sufficient to bring them into operation at the same time making sure that there is no tendency to bind. Tappets also require periodic attention, correct adjustment preventing an annoying clatter, and also ensuring better performance. A novice should not as a rule interfere with the distributor, although a keen owner, with the proper feeler and spanners, can adjust the points after cleaning them with a rag dipped in clean petrol. Inspection of the oil and petrol filters is essential at regular intervals, while greasing should not be delayed over long. Although a modem external finish will withstand considerable abuse, frequent washing and occasional polishing both keep it in good order and add greatly to a car’s appearance.

THANKS TO FARADAY OIL FROM COAo. SCIENTIST’S VISION OF POWER. Wonderful is fiction. More wonderful still is fact. There are sermons in stftne-guards, books in the runningboards and romance in everything, if one has only the time to search it out, says a contributor to an English magazine.

Behind the spirit that drives one’s car, for example, there is a wonderful story that has its scene in the oilfields of Mexico and of Iraq or in the coalfields of Britain. Let us consider the story of benzole, which began with the dreams of a little btiy standing in front of a smithy fire more than a hundred years ago.

Flights of Fancy. All the truly great things that science has achieved were dreams at first, airy nothings, often the elusive visions of a wondering child’s mind stretching out to prospects beyond its ken. Michael Faraday’s were such. As he stood in his father’s smithy and watched the glowing forge fire converting coal into heat and gaseous smoke, his alert and active young brain began to wonder if it were possible to utilize those gases going to waste up the chimney. Thus Newton regarded the apple falling in his garden and Watt the steam issuing from the spout of the kettle. Such is indeed the quality of wonder in genius. When we marvel at its fertility—there is romance. Benzole is romantic, for it is the dream of a genius come true. For years later, when Faraday had forgotten his father’s forge, had been apprenticed to a bookbinder and, sick of that uncongenial work, had secured a post as assistant to Sir Humphry Davy, after studying chemistry assiduously, he was led to experiment on the liquefaction of gases in his spare time, and after many patient attempts he at length announced to the Royal Society in 1825 that he had succeeded. The liquid which he had been successful in producing from gas was the aromatic hydrocarbon known in chemistry as benzene, or, as it is more commonly known, benzole. Discovery of Benzole. Faraday, however, genius though he was, did not realize the importance of his discovery. He lived in the early years of the steam age. He could not forsee the advent of the internal combustion engine; nor could he forsee the coming of the Great War—two events of supreme significance in the history of benzole. Produced originally for use industrially, benzole during the war came to be demanded for the manufacture of high explosives and in such increasing quantities that plants were erected with all speed at gas works, coke ovens and tar distilleries throughout Britain. When the war was over the producers were faced with the problem of what to do with these plants which had sprung up to meet a national emergency. Should they be scrapped or adapted to another purpose? Someone then suggested: Why not explore its possibilities as a motor fuel? The results were so satisfactory that the demand grew to an extraordinary extent and the producers formed a cooperative organization known as the National Benzole Company to market the spirit for them. A Growing Output. There has been so much talk recently about production of oil from coal that one is to be forgiven for imagining that it is still a dream of the future or at best a mere experiment 'of to-day. It is surprising, therefore, to learn that every year well over 30,000,000 gallons of benzole are produced from British coal in Britain. This total is rapidly growing and more and mote gas works and municipalities are laying down benzole plants to extract this valuable spirit. I have seen the production and progress of benzole almost literally from coal mine to carburetter. In a coal mine in the North of England, a thousand feet below the earth, I saw miners lying on their sides, their bodies glistening in the dim light of their lamps, digging the coal that was to become benzole. From the coal mines of Durham, Yorkshire, Scotland, the Midlands and Wales, the coal goes to gas works, coke ovens or tar distilleries in the next stage of its conversion into motor spirit. At Beckton on the Thames, the biggest gas works in the world, I saw the coal arriving by rail and water, being crushed and washed and then fed mechanically into huge coke ovens, where it is heated at high temperature for 15 or 20 hours. During that intense “baking,” the coal is split up into gas which is led away through pipes, and into coke which comes tumbling out of the ovens at the appointed time like a white hot cascade from an inferno. The gasses are first passed into the hydraulic main and freed from tar and ammonia in scrubbers. My guides took me from one building to another explaining the wonders that were going

on in the complicated series of retorts, towers and stills that we saw. The gas goes to the benzole scrubbers where it meets a stream of creosote oil which disolves the benzole out of the gas. Then the oil meets a current of steam which drives out the benzole. The benzole vapour and steam leave the top of the still and pass into a water cooler where they are condensed into crude benzole and water, and then into a separator which isolates the crude benzole. That is not the end of the story. The benzole is washed again and freed from impurities and then the clean spirit, very virtuous after all the washing and brushing-up it has had, passes into the fractioning stills and then into a condenser where it is converted into refined benzole. Evolution. All this I took my guide’s word for. Since I had glanced inside the glowing coke oven, all the processes had been going on mysteriously inside all that complicated apparatus, but at last he led me to a little window in the condenser and remarking “There’s your coal now,” I saw a trickle of clear fluid. Such is the romance of benzole—or rather only one aspect of it. If Michael Faraday were alive to-day and could be taken to look at the great coke ovens with their white-hot furnaces, as he once as a little boy stared at the glowing fire in his father’s forge, he would see the fullness of the romance his genius dreamed darkly a hundred years ago. He would see the miracle which he himself had helped to render possible—motorcars covering the roads that were once the haunt of the plodding horse, and aeroplanes putting girdles of speed around the earth. REMARKABLE CAR A LONG HISTORY. THRILLS AT THE WHEEL. It was reported at the last meeting of the season at Mangere Speedway, Auckland that:—“The fastest car in this section was G. Mathieson’s Miller.” This is a famous car. That it is—or was—a genuine speed job is proved by the fact that when the original owner raced it at Montlhery after the war, he established several world’s records. W. Allen, New Zealand international dirt-track driver, vouches for this, but he cannot remember the driver’s name. He was a French count, he said, and his name began with a “Cz.”

It was an old car when it was brought to a New Zealand owner. But there have been few like it in this part of the world. It was virtually a 2 and a 2J litre job in one. It had two crankshafts, two sets of rods, and two sets of carburetters, four of one make, and eight of the other. All these parts were interchangeable—the car could be made into a 2-litre or a 2J-litre job at will.

Allen tells of a unique incident that hoppened at Muriwai Beach in 1927. Among the cars practising for races was a 9 h.p. single seater racing Fiat, whose mechanic, an Italian, had been sent to New Zealand with the car. On this particular day, he was standing near the end of the practice run, when a car came dashing along. The Italian broke into excited speech. That, he said in broken English, was the Miller that made a world’s record at Montlhery on such and such a date. One of the racing men corroborated the Italian. But how can you recognize it? Tie asked. Yes, the Italian could recognize it. He remembered the day when the Count was driving on the French track.

A very hot day, and the driver’s feet got very uncomfortable. So to relieve them, the driver pulled into the pits and battered a hole in the bottom of the scuttle dash for ventilation. The audience was sceptical. The Italian had not seen the car before in New Zealand, and that he should identify it at nearly a mile away, and at speed, seemed difficult to believe. So when the Miller pulled in, the sceptics rushed to investigate. The Italian was right—there was a patch, as described in the scuttle dash.

To revert to the Mangere meeting, the Miller did not win the race in question, which was the first of the series of “mountain” races, a la Brooklands. These were held over a circuit embracing nearly a lap of the track proper, plus a newly-made switch providing several difficult bends. The Miller took the wrong turning. This speedway must surely be one of the most interesting in Australasia. It was built by George Henning, a well-known motor trade identity and sports enthusiast, of Auckland. He had a mile and a quarter track hewed out of a clay basin. A long, a difficult, and a costly task. But it has given the New Zealand drivers scope for splendid sport.

As mentioned recently, Allen will also investigate the midget car racing in U.S.A., with the idea of its introduction to Australia. Already he has Australian orders for two midget cars.