MOTOR & CYCLE.

Taranaki Daily News, 8 November 1919, Page 7

MOTOR & CYCLE.

NJEWS AND NOTES. MOTOR CYCLE PERFORMANCE. A Victorian motor cyclist—in N. Cooper, of Coke—last week recorded the best motor-cycle performance yet established over the Adelaide-Melbourne overland route. The "Coorong"' was on this occasion safely negotiated and when Mt. Gambier (2H7 miles) wa3 reached in a little over 12 hours from Adelaide, it looked as if with ordinary luck Cooper would go near winning one of the Dunlop Co.'s trophies offered in connection with this Inter-State record. Cooper, whose mount was a Dimlop-shod Indian (solo) laft Adelaide at 4 in the morning. Owing to wet roads over mountains comparatively slow progress was made to Wellington, the 65 miles taking 3 hours Mcningie (931 miles) was reached at 3 a.m., Kingston (185* miles) at 12.10 p.m., Mt. Gambier (267 miles) at 4.20 p.m., and Casterton' (346 miles) shortly after (! p.m. On the run to Colerdine, Cooper, who had not yet picked up his lamps, came to grief in the dark, dropping into a cattle pit on one of the crossings, and thereby brought his run ,to a finish, Cooper, who lost considerable time taking the wrong tracks, is of the opinion that the 20-hour time limit set by the Dunlop Rubber Co. for this trip is attainable on a motor-cycle. SECURING AN ORDER IN THE AIR. What is probably the first instance in history of securing an order for acccs-' sories while in the air has just been recorded by Mr. John Arnold! of Melbourne, while on a visit to England. Mr. Arnold, who is the Australasian representative of Brown Bros., Ltd., took a trade visitor from New Zealand for an aeroplane flight, and while at an altitude of between 3000 and 4000 feet over London, and travelling at a speed of over 100 miles per hour, celebrated the occasion by securing his fellow-passenger's signature to a substantial order.

EXPERIMENTS IN COAL GAS. The petrol shortage in England during tile war period resulted in many experiments with eon! gas in place of petrol. Considerable headway was mude, particularly with heavy passenger vehicles, motor buses, etc. The authorities appointed a departmental committee to investigate the whole question as applied to motor locomotion. Their report has now'been made public, and is sufficiently enthusiastic to lead to the supposition that there is 'a big future for some at least of the variants of the system. One cannot help, feeling, however, that, except in very limited spheres, coal-gas will never ?pe more than an inconvenient fuel for use in emergencies. The most interesting prospects are those which exist in connection with portable suc-tion-gas .producers. It is clear that a good deal has been done towards making the systems really practical, but much more regains to be done, although there seems no; reason why full success should not be achieved. If this surmise is correct, th<| sphere of the self-contained suction-das vehicle will still be limited to the Haulage of fairly heavy loads at moderate speeds. The figures given by the committee as to fuel costs are certainly I very striking. The comparison puts til a capacity for work of the suc<.:/»..ggts vehicle at seven and a half ton-miles for every penny expended on fuel, and the corresponding figure for the petrol -elude at only one and threequarter ton-miles.

On the-, subject of the gasbag method the committee is lukewarm, and this with good justification. The thing is too unsightly and umnochanical ever to be regarded as anything more than a way out of a temporary emergency. No manufacturer is ever likely to'push it as a standard means of propulsion of his vehicle. Some of the witnesses before the committee gave evidence to the effect that it had shown big financial savings. Were it possible one would be inclined to say that the semi-rigid container has even worse prospects than the ordinary gas-bag. It shares to a fair degree most of the disadvantages of the gas-bag and of the rigid metal container. The time spent by the Committee in devising a specification for a semirigid container was entirely time wasted. The use of the rigid container has distinct but limited possibilities. ' With our present knowledge of metals and cylin-der-making it should be possible to cut down the weight to a reasonable figure The containers must, however, be so placed that they can take no conceivable part in any collision or accident. This really seems to mean that they must be embodied in the first instance as part of the design of the complete vehicle awl not merely attached later on by the user.

Here again the vehicle manufacturer, who is also frequently the body-builder of the commercial vehicle, will not standardise with a view to the use of' coalgas, because it is only in a small minority of cases that the use can be justified. Of course, if at-any time none of the know liquid fuels are obtainable at anything.like a reasonable price, then there is every inducement to big users who work under the right conditions to put in compressors, and, if necessary, make their own gas and stove it; but this means a considerable capital expenditure, and, when all is said and done, the vehicle subsequently is subjected to wha.t is, in most instances, a fatal limitation, inasmuch as it can only obtain fuel supplies from its own home garage, in Ana, the committee has said, probably all there is to say to encourage people to use coal-gas, but in face of the case they put forward one can only express the opinion that the self-contained gas-pro-ducing and using vehicle will be the only representative of the system to be perpetuated, and this very 'limited.

THE TALBOT CARS. Australian motorists will be interested to learn that the well-known English Talbot Motor Co., whose cars in prewar days were very popular in this country, and were conspicuous in reliability' tests, Inter-Stats records, etc., has been .absorbed by the Darracq Co., an oldestablished French motor concern, A RECORD PRICE. What must be the record price of 32i)0 guineas for a private car was paid for a Rolls-Royee landaulet, sold on behalf of the Government in England lately. If not the record, the figure can only' have been exceeded in the early days 'of the industry. A VAST STOCK BOUGHT. According to a report from Paris the French Government's offer for the purchase of the war stocks of the American army in France has been accepted. The New York Herald states that the price which France will pay for supplies, which are valued at over £200,000,000, is approximately £60,000,000. The vast stock is said to include no fewer than 50,000 motor lorries and 30,000 cars of various types,