HIGH ROAD AND BY-ROAD

Waikato Times, Volume 98, Issue 16096, 20 September 1924, Page 20 (Supplement)

HIGH ROAD AND BY-ROAD

A COLUMN FOR MOTORISTS. (By "Crank."} FLIGHT ROUND AUSTRALIA. Colonel Brinsmead, 'Controller of Civil Aviation, left Melbourne on August 7, 1924, at 10.30, on a flight round Australia. He is accompanied by Captain Jones as pilot and Mr Buchanan as mechanic. The D.H.50 aeroplane which is making the flight underwent thorough preliminary tests during the past weeks. It is expected that the flight will take about one month, although no effort will be made to accomplish the trip in any set time. Colonel Brinsmead will survey proposed air routes, and will study the operations of the air fleets already flying over the Charleville-Cloncurry route in Queensland and the DerbyPerth route in Western Australia. Much valuable information will be gained as to the practicability of aerial services in remote parts of the continent. Careful preparations have been made to ensure the success of this flight. The organisation of supplies of petrol, lubricating oil, and distilled wafer, <to be available at all points along the route where stops are to be made, has already been -carried out by the Vacuum Oil Company Proprietary, Ltd. Plume Aviation • Motor Spirit and Gargoyle Mobiloil, have been selected as the fuel and lubricating oil respectively for the aeroplane engine. The recent, round-Australia, flight by WingCommander Goble and'Piight-Lieuten-ant Mclntyre has already given worldwide prominence to Australian aviation. The start of the present flight i. the beginning of another important page in the history of flying. SUMMARY OF ENGINE TROUBLES. Loss of power at low speeds may be due to the following causes:— Poor compression—valves leaking. Too rich or too lean mixture. ' Dirty plugs. Too great tension in vibrator blades. Weak exhaust valve spring. Air suction at induction pipe. Too small gap in spark plugs. ' Too much tappet clearance. ■ At high speeds it may be due to: Bad commutator surface. Ragged or dirty platinum points in coils. Too great gap in spark plugs. i Weak valve' spring. Unsuitable mixture.' J INDECISION. It is shown upon good authority that too many collisions and accidents are the direct result of indecision, and that there must be an effort made to stand by one's decisions with regard to passing other cars, turning, parking, stopping, and starting. . The driver! who slowly but deliberately drives through a line of pedestrians > who won't obey the traffic officer is. much less likely to injure them than the-driver who starts to assume his right and then changes his mind. Soon as indecision enters the mind 6f the party of the first part the same mental attitude is found in the mind of the party of the second part. There is confusion, and, Anally, an accident. LEARN TO DRIVE. The prevalent idea that the firsttime buyer of a car should learn to drive on a borrowed one, so that his own shall not suffer damage on account of mishandling, is open to question, because the average novice would appear to experience more difficulty in changing over from one car to another than he has when he starts for the first time to handle a car of any kind. His slight experience of driving may be a positive drawback when he is taught in one kind of a car as a preliminary to taking over one of another make and size. In fact, men who have driven one particular car—their own—for two or three years, and then have bought a new one quite different in many ways from the old have done far more damage to the gears, transmission, and tyres (the last two by faulty clutch operation) than they did to their first cars while learning to drive. TRUSS RODS FOR REAR AXLE. Where the light chassis is used to carry, loads in excess of the ?cwt for which it is intended, or where rough roads are the rule, it is worth while to go to the expense (quite a small item) of having truss rods fitted to the rear axle to prevent sagging. While the rear axle of \J,he present-day Ford is an improvement on axles of the older type, it may be strained by overloading, and it may be found that the process of straightening a strained axle tube, should such a defect be detected, is rather, difficult, and that a replacement is the only satisfactory, though necessarily more expensive, course. SPARKS. The motoring associations in the North Island are adopting badges for members. The sum of £305,825 was received from fee's and taxes on motor cars in Sydney last year. , In the Bombay-Poona reliability trials the principal hill-climb is up the Bhor Ghaut, which represents a rise o* 2000 feet in four miles. Five States are now in the 1,000,000 registration class in U.S.A. These are: New York, California, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. California has the record for the number of population per car. The figure is 3.2, as against an average of seven people per car for the United States. No fewer than 10,059 motor vehicles of all kinds were registered in Sydney in 1914. Last year the total was 54,043. These figures do not include motor cycles. FAULTY KICK STARTER. If in operating the kick starter it is found to slip out of mesh, though the pinion and ratchet gears are apparently properly adjusted, it will be found that the kick-starter bracket and motor-base anchor bolts are loose. The bolts must be tightened and the kick-starter readjusted. It is necessary to remove the short chain guard to perform this operation. The wrench for spark plugs and rear-axle nuts fits the kick-starter adjusting nut. ALIGNING FLY WHEELS. After flywheels have been disassembled it is absolutely necessary that they be properly aligned before being replaced in the crank case. This can only be accomplished on lathe centres, or on proper aligning fixture with centre?. The rider should not attempt to undertake this work without the necessary equipment. To do so will invariably result in shafts running untrue causinp short life of bearings and ruinous vibrational stresses 1 in the motor- *

MOTOR CYCLE NOTES. During 1923 the United States of America exported 92 motor cycles ito Germany. Recently a Belgian motor cyclist was summoned for riding on the path reserved for cyclists, and pleaded before the juge d'instruction that the road was in an excessively bad condition. The J.P. examined the road, found the complaint justified, and refused ito fine the motorist. H. Le Vack, who recently broke several world's records at Brooklands, gives the following comparisons between the 250 and 1000 c.c. engines:—At 6300 revolutions per minute, with a 52 to 1 gear, the 250 c.c. engine gained 87.3 miles per hour; the 1000 c.c, at -4600 r.p.m., en a gear of 3.4 to 1, exceeded 114 miles per hour.

The care of your tyre valves has an important bearing on the upkeep cost of your machine. Take pains to see that these little valves are in proper working condition. If they are not the chances are that you run part of the time on improperly inflated tyres, with a consequent increase, in your season's tyre costs. Think it over.

ETIQUETTE. The owner of the automobile should take a seat on the right. He gets left enough as it is. When meeting another car driven by a woman at an intersection always remember the old adage, "Ladies first," and courteously grant her, the right of way. She'll take it, anyway.