The Age of the Car

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 390, 26 June 1928, Page 7

The Age of the Car

HOW LONG SHOULD IT LAST?

Miles Not Years

TO state with any degree of certainty the age at which a car ceases to be a unit, is almost an impossibility. At best, if the nature of work, yearly mileage, and ability of owner is known, a close approximation can be made of the right time to quit it and buy another.

So much for the mechanical aspect —pure and simple. When considering this very important question of age and usefulness, we are faced with the interesting fact that theory and practice do not agree. In fact, in many cases they are as widely separated as the poles. Theory demands, from a purely business aspect, that whenever the annual repair bill is greater than the first year’s depreciation you must sell. This accounts for the safe and rapidly increasing practice of owners —that is, those having the capital available—buying a new model each year. From a practical point of view, however, the whole position depends upon

the amount of cash available annually as a motoring appropriation. According to theory, the youth who purchases some old crock at auction for £ls, and in spite of intermittent trouble travels 50 miles each week, pays dearly for his motoring. In practice his outlay is small; he motors for pleasure alone, and so it is only a matter of cash and personal pride as to when the car is too old to use. The Business Aspect Turning now to the business aspect, it goes without saying that to know the best time to sell with a minimum loss is quite as important, commercially, as keen buying of stock. In addition there are so many things that may vary or influence*this selling time that each case, even of identical types, must be treated on its merits. On numerous occasions the point has been stressed in these Columns of the wisdom of careful driving, coupled with detailed and regular attention to the machine. These matters have an important bearing upon the subject under discussion, as two striking examples examined by me during the last week or so will prove. The first, an old single-cylinder Brush tfi(fd shrdu rhsllud shrdlu shrdlubm of 1912 vintage and still going well. This car was discovered resolutely chugging along, heavily laden with vats of ice cream. A fairly thorough mechanical examination revealed the fact that the outfit was in really good order. It had never been laid up for any lengthy period, but kept hard at it for every one of its 16 years’ existence. A Contrast At the other extreme was a sedan of well-known make, costing £475, and six months old, the speedometer showing 10,230 miles. During a casual chat with the owner he began to abuse this machine and explained that he had decided to purchase another make. He had been offered £250 and thought he would accept it. I pointed out that a loss of £225 for six months’ running over the mileage shown was preposterous, but as he still adopted the attitude of “sell at TEST CAR BY COASTING The danger of coasting has been emphasised to a point where a lot of motorists forget that it can be helpful in testing the efficiency of their cars. Coasting, for instance, will tell whether or not bearings are set up too tight. A car can go along with such a handicap, the driver never noticing if he happens to have a powerful engine under the hood, and doesn’t check up his petrol mileage. Tight bearings either In the transmission or rear axle will waste power at an extremely high rate. By attaining a speed of 20 m.p.h. and then coasting this can be appreciated. If there is too much drag anywhere in ! these two units the car will stop within | 150 ft. Make sure, however, that tyres are j up to the recommended pressure and j that the brakes do not drag.— ‘Tap.” More than 5,000 people go through the huge factory of the Goodyear Tyre and Rubber Company at Akron, Ohio, each year according to records of the company recently announced Regular inspection tours are conducted each day by trained guides, and visitors come from all over the world to see how tyres are made.

any price,” my curiosity was aroused and I sought permission to look over the machine. Never before hav© I seen such an illustration of “murdering” a car as this proved. The outfit was to all intents and purposes ruined. Not one point of the assembly had ever been lubricated since the day of purchase. The steering wheel needed half a turn to take up slack. Second gear was damaged and would not stop in mesh. Th© doors would not close, and generally the car was in a disgraceful state of disrepair. These two illustrations explain therefore exactly why each car must be dealt with individually when assessing the “retiring age.”

Logically if two cars are taken from the showroom floor at the same time, and the driver of one proceeds to “belt” his machine to th© limit of his capacity, while the other is carefully driven and treated with due consideration, there will be a vast difference in both appearance and value at the end of 12 months. Miles, Not Years It must be remembered that other things being equal, the age of a car is not determined in years, but rather in terms of miles. Many a car on mail or service routes, in the hands of careful drivers and clever mechanics, has lived a trouble-free useful life covering 150,000 miles in tli© short period of five years. Investigating the history of this machine will invariably prove that attention has always been given various units before any serious consequences arose, so that to the casual observer it has never been in trouble, and. like the babbling brook appeared to go on for ever. In Private Hands On the other hand private owners seldom average more than six to ten thousand miles a year, and in nearly every instance they wait until something breaks or falls off before seeking expert attention. By no stretch of imagination can we conceive a car so treated ever living as a serviceable unit to the ripe ag© of 150,000 miles. It would have passed through the hands of perhaps half a dozen owners and be ready for the junk heap. The Difference Old-timers are pron© to point with pride to some ancient bus that has battled around the highways for 15 years or so, but a comparison between this and present-day motors is hardly fair. The old machine simply could not wear out, for tli© reason that it had an abnormally slow-running engine, was as heavy as a lorry, and was not fast enough to do itself any hurt. To-day machines are just as faithfully built. But they are put to greater use and pile up the miles in times unheard of when these ancient machines held sway. IMPROVES STEERING AUSTRALIAN INVENTION Designed to eliminate wheel wobble and jolts from roads, the Steersafe, an Australian invention, is now being manufactured and sold by Silas Keen and Co., of Cleveland Street, Redfern. A friction disc which dampens the movement in the steering tie rod is the basic idea of the Steersafe. It is quickly attached by a few studs to tie rod and axle, the latter forming an I anchor for the friction disc. In practice, it is found to really ! check the wandering and wobbling tenj dencies of the front wheels of old cars, ! and to ease the steering effort and I eradicate any jolts in the steering of new cars. Serrated or rutted roads, which impart the initial “skimming” action to front wheels, can comfortably be negotiated at high speeds with Steersafe fitted, without any noticeable shock to the hands or sidesway of the road wheels.