CYCLE AND MOTOR NOTES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 21, 23 January 1913, Page 3

CYCLE AND MOTOR NOTES.

PAY ATTENTION TO THE BIKE

Only a very small proportion of the bicycles in use on the roads are accurately adjusted in all their details. One has merely to watch carefully the stream of morning riders to business to realise this fact, and to be impressed by the aggregate waste of power involved in loose bearings, badly adjusted saddles and handle-bars, chain either too tight or too slack, bent pedal spindles and kindred defects. If the rider of the neglected utility bicycle could be made to perceive how much of his energy is going to waste in a twelvemonth through his refusal to give his machine a little regular and necessary attention, he would no doubt mend his ways. The bicycle is, after all, a very delicate piece of mechanism, considering the arduous duties it has to perform. Its delicate items, however, are wonderfully durable if they receive the slight but methodical attention which is their due. Granted this attention, the bicycle may be kept efficient and valuable for a marvellously long time. On the other hand, the owner who never gives a thought to its requirements, or who carelessly neglects them, may ruin its mechanism in one short season. CHEAPER MOTIVE POWER. The continual rise in the price of petrol in all parts of the world is attracting serious attention from experts with a view to finding a cheaper substitute. In England alone close on seventy million gallons of petrol were used last year, and the recent increases in pince in England now represent a large sum of money, which has annually to come out of motorists’ pockets. The same applies to almost every motoring centre in the world.' So far recent developments point ’ to ‘benzol, which j is obtained from coal, providing the begt and cheapest substitute. 4- me\y, process known as : Del Monte has recently been invented, which is? Said to yield a bigger percentage of benzol per ton of coal than any other .known process. ThcCinventors- of tire Del Monte process claim that they .can produce from three to ten gallons of 100 per benzol pet ton in addition to several other valuable products for which an active market exists. One colliery in England is already erecting a plant capable of turning out over seven million gallons of benzol ' per' arimini; which canj be retailed at lOd per gallon. It ik computed that if only fifteen millibii' tons of Coal, out of the annual English output of 265 million tons, werq used to produce benzol by the Del Monte process, more than ample fuel would be forthcoming to displace all the petrol imported into Great Britain. Recent developments in the production of benzol now give promise that in the immediate future, the price of petrol will come down, the result of a large’output of benzol, which is said to give considerably more power than petrol. The petrol companies represented in this part ol the world state that the latest increase in price of petrol is attributable to the extra cost of freight charges. It is also stated that the recent increases emanated from those who control the Eastern Oilfields, and not from the companies who handle the American supplies.