MOTOR AND CYCLE.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 December 1917, Page 7

MOTOR AND CYCLE.

NEWS AND NOTES. Whatever may lie said about bigger cars, air cooling will always possess a .-pecial attraction for the designer of light ears, says the Autocar (KnglanU). 1 1. reduces weight, it cuts down the cost of manufacture, and it vastly simplifies the task of an owner-driver, especially in eliminating the "ir.Jiiobjoc," the de-carboni.-afion of which is the cbauli'eurless motorist's main hoodoo. Air cooling is making great strides, thanks to aviation, cylinder distortion is being cooling is being improved ■by tue importation of unwonted metals and by sounder constructional methods, and weight is gradually being reduced in an almost incredible ratio. As the net result of these changes we are almost within sight of eliminating the worst, crux of air cooling, viz., the cruel tests to which it Used to lie put in climbing steep 'lulls, when the head draught died away almost to nil just as the glowing engine most needed an iced sixty-mile-an-hour wind, incidentally, the introduction of seat starters has scotched the other enemy, for there is no longer any real reason fie an owner to fry his engine by keeping it running whilst his wife chooses hull' a yard cf ribbon. Of all types of air cooled engines the radial is possibly the most attractive. It can be struck an the. extreme nose of a chassis, ( where it will not look unhandsome, and where ail its cylinders will get an even cooling blast with a fan on the reverse side if necessary. Its short crankshaft and other constructional details endow it with amazing power-to-weight ratios. Nobody will be surprised if before many years are over we see radial aero-en-gines scaling no more lhan I'/jlb per b.h.p. at which figure an engine weighing 301b would suffice to propel a small car. The opinion is expressed by many motor-cycle experts in England that the belt as a power transmission medium will not vary long survive when we once again settle down to "normal" conditions and designers are able to concentrate their efforts on the further improvement of the motor-cycle. The belt may be expected to last a long time yet for light-weight machines and even those of mediant power, but for' the heavy C h.p. to 8 h.p. side-car combinations it is, in the opinion of some, virtually doomed. It is also anticipated that the ehain-cum-belt class of drive will he dropped for any machine above the 31 h.p. rating. This opinion is based it appears upon the experience gained under war conditions and although the belt has done wonderfully well in circumstances of unusual stress, the opportunity has occurred for the chain to exhibit, its superiority. The Motor-Cycle Trader (England) in commenting upon (he above prediction states that they find if difficult to subscribe to this view. Our own experiences and those of others with the most powerful engines made have shown us that, provided, of course, the belt is of suitable size and of firstclass niamftactiu'e, the work it will do and the freedom from annoyance it enjoys are of a sufficiently high order to warrant its retention on the most, expensive outfits, and in ordering such for pur own use we should stipulate chain-cuni-'belt transmission. We like the flexibility o;' the belt and the case with which it can : be handled in the event of anything occurring i.o the drive and when if is realised that from »OOD to 10,0(10 miles can be covered with a single belt—driving a very heavy fl h.p. side-car machine and the minimum of delay and annoyance caused by the same during the compilation of that total we hold that the belt will survive for even the Heaviest and most powerful mounts.

Few motorists in Australia are aware thai a, special committee of the. Commonwealth Advisory Council of Science iccently enquired into the production of industrial alcohol in Australia and tin; design and manufacture -of engines suitable lor .ismg alcohol as a fuel. The report of the committee has been published in full in somo of the leading English Automobile Journals.. According to the investigations made, the main aspects of the iproblem are as follows: (a) The design and manufacture of the engine; (h) the supply of the alcohol, including its distribution; (c) the denaturation of the alcohol. The committee considered it desirable to investigate al| tliese aspects concurrently, for the good reason that the spirit cannot be serviceable unless suitable engines exist, ami manufacturers will « ( 6t produce suitable designs unless a supply of spirit is forthcoming. According to our expert's views the supply of alcobol is likely to prove a much more difficult problem than the question of engine design. The most economical Australian source of alcohol at the present time is to be found in sugar molasses. If, however, the whole avilalile supply of molasses in Australia were used for the purposes in view, it would be sufficient only for the production of about four million gallons of alcohol per annum, whereas the annual importation Of petrol is already about seventeen million gallons. The total average quantity is about 50,000 tons, of which about one quarter are now used, the remaining thrmquartors are largely wasted. The present price of ethyl alcohol produced from molasses is about Is lid per gallon in Melbourne. The committee is not optimistic us to the possibility of producing any considerable quantity of alcohol from other raw or waste material at present in Australia-. The most important of these are waste timber, grass tree, prickly pear, waste fruit, and straw. The production of alcohol from waste timber or straw is .costly, and the prospects in this direction do not appear encouraging, though the whole matter fe milder consideration. Assuming that dependence cannot \: placed on waste materials, special ero,is must be grown for the purpose. The most promising sources stem to be maize, wheat, barley, and beet: It icstimated that the yield from a ton of maize should be eighty to eighty-t'ir '■ imperial gallons of 'J"i per cent, alcohol. The yield from what is about the samv. and from barley rather lower. As regards other crops, potatoes are stated to give sixteen to twenty-four gallons per ton, beet from twelve to sixteen gallons, fruit from nine to fourteen gallons, grass tree twelve gallons, and sawdust of soft wood twenty gallons, grapes eighteen gallons, and molasses sixtyfive to seventy galloiu per ton. The investigations of the committee have not vet "one far enough to enable them to estimate the cost of production from these various sources.

Tt is .estimate! that 700,000,000 gallons of petrol could be saved in a year if motorists in all countries would avoid waste by stopping 1 the engine while standing still, avoiding leal.-*, by judicious air adjustment, and tlia elimination of "excessive pleasure riding."