HIGH ROAD AND BY-ROAD

Waikato Times, Volume 97, Issue 15272, 23 June 1923, Page 20 (Supplement)

HIGH ROAD AND BY-ROAD

* A COLUMN FOR MOTORISTS. (By “Crank.”) VALUE OF MOTOR TRAFFIC. The value of motor or other traffic to or through any place or locality is great and undoubted, despite the wail of local bodies that “foreign" traffic destroys the roads without contributing to the cost of maintenance —not that it can be truly said of motorists, however. The existence of “even a fairly good road enhances land values enormously, and the traffic it carries brings capital. Both of these factors are overlooked, and the passage of motor vehicles is distinctly discouraged by the display of mandatory notices as if motor drivers and owners were a pack of schoolboys on mischief bent. A writer in the Melbourne Argus to the foregoing effect seems to have hit a nail on the head. He continues: What is yet to be appreciated by many municipalities is the value of publicity —the advantages to be gained by encouraging visitors and tourists to their localities. How very different it would be if, instead of placarding the road with "don’ts," there were invitations in the shape of signs indicating the direction and distances of local attractions or scenes of historic interest! Or, again, of showing an alternative route to a centre possessing such, would be beneficial to all concerned — the visitors, the locality, and the State. CARE OF RUST SPOTS. Steel bodywork, although covered with several*coats of paint, and two or three coats of varnish, has often been known to develop rust spots, even a short while after delivery. In nearly every case the fault could be traced, not to’ the paint, but to the preliminary treatment of the steel before the paint was applied. Care had not been taken to remove all traoes of oxidation, moisture; acid, and millscale. Slight traces of acidity left on the metal surface after the pickling process, are too frequently overlooked, and liable to promote corrosion after paint Is applied. Bodybuilders might do worse than take such precautions as to use certain anti-corrosive varnishes how recommended as a priming coat before ordinary painting is begun. Alternatively, the new aluminium oxide paints, especially ground for coachwork, arc found to arrest satisfactorily corrosive influences that may have been allowed to remain beneath them. In addition, there are various rust-removing paints eminently suitable for 'macliwork. RADIATOR MUFFS. The use of radiator muffs is becoming so general as lo prompt an inquiry into the cause. The general suggestion that we now know more about combustion and maximum efficiency in an engine, in comparison with a few years ago, may be quite true,’but it does not supply the answer- From the earliest days the motorist ban ever been quick to discover a necessity, even though he was ignorant of the underlying cause for it. it is true that the better knowledge we have of caTburation and combustion enables the engineer to throw less strain on his cooling system, but whereas a few year's ago the only bugbear in that direction was liability to boil when on low gears, we now have a difficulty at the other end in that the engine in cold winds or frosty weaUier will not develop its’ full power on top gear because it is being over-cooled. Hence the radiator muff, which in addition is a protection when the ear Is left standing in the open in frost or wet and so facilitates -restarting. We do not think that, on the whole, there has been any considerable alteration in cooling systems over the past dozen years, certainly nothing to account for the fact that radiator muffs under such conditions now arc aids to engine efficiency. Our engines turn faster and compressions are higher—both circumstances which would call for a larger capacity in the cooling system, or, in the alternative, create a higher temperature In the water jacket. Yet we have had experience of automatic temperature controls which proved that even in . summer there must be a certain amount of over-cooling in many cars. Is the altered character of the fuel we now use a factor in this matter, or the lubricant? The fashionable device called the "hot spot” would seem to indicate that the fuel of to-day absorbs more heat in volatilisation and yields better results when specially treated In this way. The effect of the lubricant is important, for we have been assured that in certain races, cars whose cooling systems had run quite dry, from some cause were still driven at high speed to complete the contest.