CYCLING AND MOTOR NOTES.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVI, Issue 936, 13 February 1908, Page 13

CYCLING AND MOTOR NOTES.

One of the lessons taught by the recent great motor car shows in London and on the Continent was the attention that is being given to the important matter of providing some satisfactory means of keeping ’ubricating oil in the place it is intended for—inside the bearings, and not outside. Nothing is more unsightly than oil • stains , on a car, and more'annoying to the motorist who has some regard/ for neatsnpss and order, and' who likes to .have his car kept smart. inside the .bonnet as well as outside than to find that, despite his care in' lubrication, oil and grease are sp'ashing- out of the receptacles; In some -cases cars- which have come under notice it has seemed that the under-screen has been fitted much less to prevent mud dust from getting to the mechanism than to form an oil and grease collector to conceal the faulty construction of certain bearings which cannot retain the oil. On

some makes the gear-boxes are notorious offenders, and eak pounds of lubricant in the course of a few hundred miles.- Besides the fi thy mess that such leakage creates by attracting dust, it is practically a dead loss of valuable material. Given thorough y good design in the bearings and the adoption of oil-retaining devices, it should be possible to keep every part of the mechanism inside the dust-screen clean and practically dry, so that an examination could be made without it being imperative to put on overalls.

At the end of last year it was computed that, in Great Britain, there were 54,000 motor cyclists.

On some ofthe motor-’bus lines in London it has been calculated that the total working expenses come to about 90 per cent., of the total receipts, due in a great measure, it is thought, to the unduly lengthy penny sections, and secondly to the great cost of tires.