HINTS AND WRINKLES.

Putaruru Press, Volume IV, Issue 145, 12 August 1926, Page 7

HINTS AND WRINKLES.

Always keep the doors of a car shut. An open door projects over the running board and gets in the way of an oncoming car or knocks somebody down. Just because it is difficult to make j a balloon-tyred rear wheel spin, through letting in the clutch too suddenly, do not imagine that you are not straining the tyre. The same applies to hasty stopping. When setting the hand control throttle in a certain position so that the gears can be shifted easier or the car made to idle nicely when removing the foot from the accelerator, check up on its position frequently. Vibration tends to let the lever slip back to a minimum idling position. Flexible Walls of Tyres Deceive.— When you shake the front end of the car, or the rear, with the idea of trying to see how much looseness there is in the chassis, do riot be fooled by the extra flexibility provided by. balloon tyres. Make sure that your shaking takes effect in the chassis itself and not in the flexible walls' of the tyres.. r- 1 The habit of neglecting. to turn on the flashlight, or failing to replace it with a new one if the old bulb has burned out ,is likely. to result in serious trouble for the ~ driver. When driving in the dark the operator is in the dark as to the exact speed at which he is travelling. He is likely to “outdrive ”. his headlights without. knowing it,, which means that ,he may be held up for speeding or caught in an accident. Besides, the ammeter or the oil pressure gauge could be registering various kinds of trouble and he would never know it—until stranded. If car owners would make a point of inspecting the wiring on their machines two or three times a year a lot of trouble would be avoided. There is no such thing as tightening up a . connection so that you are sure it will stay tight. The constant jar and sway of a car will sometimes succeed in working loose a, nut that has been jammed down, so tightly that it seemed to be there for “ keeps.” This is particularly likely to happen if there is a slack in the wire, so. that it whips back and forth. It is quite a common thing to find v batteries that are undercharged for no other reason than neglect of the owner to keep connections tight between battery and generator. How to Adjust Wheel. —Finding the power adjustment of a front wheel is 1 an operation requiring care, but very little skill, provided one knows the rule. A front wheel must spin freely on its axle, and if the nut is too tight the bearings will not be able to operate at their best. On the other hand, the motorist must be careful not to have the wheel so loose that it will wobble at the axle. The way to be sure about this is to jack up the front axle and tighten the nut on each wheel. Then spin each wheel in turn, gradually backing off its nut until the wheel is so free to turn that when it comes to rest the dust cap of the tyre valve will be at the bottom.