CYCLING AND MOTOR NOTES.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XIV, Issue 854, 19 July 1906, Page 12

CYCLING AND MOTOR NOTES.

(By

“Petrol.”)

Few people have any idea of the tremendous growth of the motor industry in England and Europe. The French motor trade has just been convulsed with a strike that has given the French trade for this year a big setback. All the leading French factories were shut up, and_ ove 30,000 mechanics thrown out of e ployment. The magnitude of some of the big French automobile fac tories can be gathered from the following figures of employees out on strike- —De Dion, 7000 men; Panhard, 4506; Darracq, 3500; Clement, 3500; Renault, 2000; Krieger, 2000, and Hotchkiss, 750; notdozens of firms with from-500 to 100 employees. The wage sheet of the French Automobile trade is to be over £12,000,000 per annum. The great loss which the French automobile trade , has undergone may easily be calculated when it is remembered that every. man in an automobile factory represents one car per year. This is the rough rule of the trade, so a factory, employing 2000 hands expects a production of 2000 cars per year. Thus for these works, lost time means lost’ cars, for it is impossible in the motor trade to do much in the way of making, up. for lost, time, as two shifts, cannot ..often. be employed to advantage,, as each man .has his special task,, which he. takes up where he left.it.;. France’s loss (the strike lasted nearly a month) will mean a considerable' gain to the automobile trade in ■ England, Germany,, and'ltaly,, and by the . same tokep, will .render it. difficult:.for Australian .motor ..agents, to get early. . delivery; of up-to-date stock;; - . , On May 16 Harry- Green, the famous English ;-road ‘ rider, lowered the fifty miles’ -unpaced record,- - which has stood to . the . credit ■ of A .A. - Chase since 1898, \by-22sec. Green’s time was 2hr 6min 46sec. This was on a straight-away course. The English record for fifty miles on an out-and-home course is 2hr 17min 39sec, set up by G. A. Olley in 1904. * * * * R. Arnst, the Sydney Thousand winner, left for Australia on Friday last (writes “ Rover.”) On arrival in the land of the cornstalks he will go at once to Newcastle, there to place himself, per arrangement with a Christchurch syndicate, in the hands of George Towns, the ex-champion oarsman, who will see what stuff the burly cyclist is made of from a rowing point of view. Dick has practically abandoned cycle racing, for he recognises the impossibility of doing justice to the two forms of sport. This does not mean that he will absolutely refrain from starting in a cycle race, and he may be a competitor in the next Sydney Thousand. * * * * Dr. Stopford, one of the best-known of our many motorists, tells me he is giving up motoring and going back to the gig again. “ Wretched weather and miserably bad roads have proved too much for me,” said the genial medico, “ and I’ll have to do the best I can with the old-fashioned method of getting about.” * * ♦ * What is termed a semi-pneumatic tyre for motors, consists of a number or balls within a cover, or of air compartments therein. Each compartment in connected directly with the open air by a very small channel, and the theory of its action is this: —As each ball or compartment is brought under the wheel, the weight of both wheel and car above it presses the aperture against the ground and closes it, so that the air within the compartment is compressed, and forms a cushion for the car to momentarily rest upon. There cannot be, of course, the same pressure of air within the tyre to support the weight, as is the case with a fullyinflated, continuous tyre, so that the effect would be more like riding on a

partly-deflated one; but as a counterbalance to this, there would be an absolute immunity from the effect of punctures, and, at the same time, the constant drawing in of a little cold air from the atmosphere on each revolution should tend to keep the tyre cool, and prevent destruction by overheating. The device is but a compromise; it does not make the resiliency, and, therefore, the pace will suffer, or increased horse-power must be used if the speed is to be maintained. * * * * While mud may have a damaging effect on the mechanism of a car, that caused by dust is infinitely greater (points out “Fortis” in the “Australasian”), for it is possible to keep mud away from the vital portions, but dust, especially Australian dust, will find its way almost anywhere, and seems to be a good second to X-rays in penetrative power. . It is . well known that the hard, cutting particles of grit, of which the road dust so largely consists, constitute a very patent factor in wearing steering-gear joints, when they soon become loose, and rattle and work badly.. Some

motorists who have recognised this trouble have made an attempt to protect the joints with flexible leather coverings, filled with a semi-solid lubricant. Many other portions of the working parts are not so easily to be treated, such as the small auxiliary parts under the bonnet, the rocking valve gear, where used, and, perhaps, most important of all, the cylinders, for it has been demonstrated that fine dust, drawn in by the carburettor air intake, finds its way into the cylinder, and slowly grinds away the sides and piston rings. * * * * In a list of American cycle-path records up to 1905, Major Taylor’s flying start quarter-mile, paced (20sec), and flying start half-mile (41 sec), made so far back as 1899, still stand. The best unpaced for the same distance is by Samuelson —quarter-mile,

24sec; half-mile, 51 l-ssec., made last year. Records in competition over a like distance are longer still, and stand to the credit of F. Kramer, the quarter-mile being 28 l-ssec, and the half-mile 54 4-ssec —from scratch, of course —established in 1902. * * « * The best mile on the regular track -—from flying start, and paced —is Imin 6sec, by R. Walthour, in 1904. Samuelson again has the unpaced mile in lmin 52 3-ssec, made in 1901, while Kramer is king in competition, he having compassed a mile in lmin 49 2-ssec, in 1904. Macfarland is credited with covering this distance in lmin 49sec, in Sydney, two or three years ago. The American record for the hour is 50 miles 3yds, by H. Caldwell, in 1903, and in 24 hours John Lawson pedalled 528 miles 923 yards, in 1900.