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Ladies' Mirror, Volume V, Issue 6, 1 December 1926, Page 69

Faults Of The Qrid

that he proposes to carry there. In - accordance with the modern craze for "equipment and still more equipment" on the motor-car, runningboards are becoming places for the carriage of things that have been crowded on and which simply will not-go anywhere else. Battery and tool boxes are two examples of the ■ things which are mounted on run- . Ring-boards, but ought really to be housed inside the chassis frame and allowed for in the original design. Spare petrol cans and wheels are. perhaps, permissible on the runningboard, but they are apt to take space that makes the carriage of luggage quite impossible. Of the methods of carrying luggage on a running-board where space is 'available a wooden box bolted down on to the board and further held by straps right round box and board is probably the best. It may be made so that "it is easily removable when there is luggage to be carried, and it may be lined with American cloth or baize, so that articles of clothing may be packed into it with no more wrapping than that of good brown paper. So long as the car be kept out of deep water splashes the interior of the box will splashes the interior of the box will i-„ ~ a~ „„ , ~ „ .• i„ • v -i, keep dry and the articles in it will , „ „ . „. ,i j , , be as good at the end of a long tour as they were at the beginning. tour as they were at the beginning. Nevertheless, most users of this Nevertheless, most users of this ■ , -,, , , ~ c «. idea will, doubtless, prefer to put .i • „ .;< , ... • -j ~ things like clothing inside a suit-case ( l„, -,, r. • , ,i , j .. • that will fit into the box, and it is

certainly the best way of doing things. Box and suit-case can be made or bought with the other in mind, so that the box will take the suit-case exactly or will leave some space at top or bottom in which may be carried a few of the extra tools and spares that one sometimes likes to take on a long tour. The carriage of luggage loose inside a car is the worst possible way, but it is certainly the way most often chosen. When two people only are travelling in a four-seater car. it may be excusable, so long as the various articles are packed so that they cannot jolt about and rub each other and the upholstery, and a little practice with any particular load in a particular car will always indicate the and safest way of packing so that before the tour is two days old the luggage will go into much less space and be much more rigid than at the start. But if, as sometimes happens, the toolbox is housed underneath the floor of the tonneau, the owner who uses the tonneau for luggage-carrying is asking for all he gets when something goes wrong on a dark, wet night and all the luggage has to come out before a spanner can be found. When luggage is being carried on top of the tool-box. as in this instance, there should always be a small supplementary tool-box free to immediate access and in it should be one adjustable spanner, one screw-driver, one pair of pliers and the wheel removal tools, unless as in the most sensible of modern cars, these are housed under the bonnet.

T f it is to carry a load of any real weight and size the luggage grid has two important disadvantages from the point of view of the driving of the car. It means an added weight behind the back axle that on greasy roads will much increase the liability to skidding and will make any skid, once started, much more difficult of correction than it would have been otherwise. Secondly, it materially increases the over-all length of the car, so that manoeuvring in confined spaces, either in garages or in roads of only modest width, may be much restricted It ought not to be necessary to say, but unfortunately it is, that on many cars carriage of luggage on the grid means that the fuel tank cannot be replenished while the luggage is in position and that, should a puncture occur in either rear wheel, location of the jack under the rear axle becomes extremely difficult, if not quite impossible. Both these things, of course, ought not to be. The fixing of luggage on the run-ning-board is often suggested, and there are on the market many devices for this purpose. The position is quite sound mechanically, for it keeps the weight well within the spring centres and the extra weight on one side of the chassis is not likely to matter much, unless excessive ; also the luggage is less exposed to dust than when it is on the grid at the rear of the chassis where dust is sucked in by the partial vacuum created as the car moves along, and on the off-side runningboard the luggage is not likely to interfere materially with access to any part of body or chassis that are likely to need attention.