Evening Star Newspaper, October 24, 1926, Page 72

i = DEFINES IDEAL | John Smith BY FREDERIC is not selfish: rather he is a motoring martyr, a ch have exploited, in an interesting way, his experie THE and His Car C. RUSSELL willing and glad to s for the benefit of | . AUTU HEAU“GH]" ~ John Smith it a character whom every motorist should welcome. He Trade Journal Holds Lack of Proper lllumination Chief Cause of Accidents. Lack of sufficient light, rather than overbright glaring headlamps, the chief factor in trafic mishaps ri sulting from faulty fllumination, ac or is eording to statistics presented in the | current issue of the Jowrnal of the Society of Automotive Engine The ideal headlight is defined th as the one that shows with sufficient clearness all that a driver &ee when the road ahead is free from approaching vehicles and that pro Jects very little light to the spot on Which the eyes of an approaching driver are focused Obviously, no system of can accomplish both objects at same time. A& roads ave neither level nor straight, the eves of an ap proaching driver may occupy almost any position in the patte thrown by the lamps. hence quate lighting is possible that w at times cause glare. Any system, therefore, must he a compro- mise, lighting Adjustment of Lamps Cited. The light heams thrown by lamps mounted rigidly on the car can be ad- justed to any desired angle with the | horizontal, hut when once adjusted, all changes In direction, hoth horizon tal and vertical. of the axis of the ear must be followed by the axis of the light heams. The requisite com- promise in angle of tilt lies between an axis high enough for fliumination of the r and the eves of an approaching driver. The hest possible compromise of t kind gives at times only 100 to feet of visible distance on the 1 surface. as when approaching the foot of a hill. wher on topping the hill the maximur: light is thrown into the eyes of an approaching driver. No adequate lighting of road signs, pedes trians or other ohjects at the side of the road seems tn he possible with this type of lighting A compromise effected by devices for tilting or dimming the lamps in- volves changing the light pattern when meeting other cars. The driv jng light may give the hest pattern for open-road driving and the mgeting light the hest possible illumination compatible with the terest of both | drivers. Where Speed Is Safe. On all roads where touring speeds pre safe very little light is needed or desirable on the road surface within 30 10 100 feet, hut when meeting other vehicles bright fllumination is needed in this area and on the shoul der and right-hand side of the road. This makes 11 imperative that practi cally no light should be projected above the horizontal at any time, and the driver, in self-protection, is forced to depress his own lights. thus auto matically protecting the other driver from glare The safety feature might be en hanced by arranging the system so that switching from one adjustment tn the other would be accomplished hy pressure of the left foot of the aperator. the depressed beam being the one in nse except when the driver hoids the button down. % Fine: %1045 12595 Detroit, plus revenus tax needs to | the |, low enough to avoid | 4| haust strokes. the 20,000,000 or mq No. 163—Firing Orders. “I wonder,” | cleaned the spark plu happen if these ignition { hooked up wrong."” | “Youd have a scrambled engine,” I told him How's th different says his mine, vet it’s a six, tov.” | “You can't have a different ss you also change the open. e of the "nderstand, ating that you could not run vour engine if vou happened to fire it in a different order. You can run on five cylinders, vou know. I once re versed cvlinders three and four on a certain six I was driving, and the only % that happened was less power added_vibration. uppened No. 4 was being fired > when it nelther opposed the action of the engine nor con- ted anything to it. You might make a similar change and find your- | self firing a spark every time the in- | take e opened in the particular i That might mean a bad | | | “what wonld wires were Brown says there are to fire engines. le quite different RBut Smith did not understand how | evlinders of the same number could he fired in different ways. In order to explain it to him it was necessary to go back to some fundamentals. Smooth Sequence Vital. | “First you want to remember that | it you fired all the cylinders of a mul- | ti-cylinder engine simultaneously the | effect would be the same as firing one { large one-cvlinder engine,” I went on. “It waonld be necessary, of course, to have the valves open and close at ex actly the same time in each cylinder, |and” a large flywheel would be re- | quired to carry the engine over the | perlod of compression, intake and ex- The purpo! muiti-cylinder engines, however, is to | provide a_smooth sequence of power strokes. You get more of a sequence in a two-cylinder affair than in the one-cylinder type, and more in a four- | evlinder engine than in the two-cvlin- | | der variety. Not until you reach the | six-cylinder type, however. tain another advantage rlapping of the power conventional six r, piston > with the . 5 starts ton No. 1 | has' completed its stroke, and o on | down the line. This makes for in- | creased smoothness. As a matter of | fact, two-thirds of every power stroke |in a .six is augmented by one-third |each of two other power strokes When vou reach an eight-cylinder en- of the conventional type no power is ever pushing singly upon the haft. In a 12 there are alwavs | three pistons pushing simultaneously. Timing Key to Smoothness. | here are exceptions to these rules, | vou should remember. There is one eight in production that fires like twin-fours, and a twin-six that is no | longer manufactured was a_twin for You could run it on either set of viinders. If you disconnected all the ignition wires on one block of a conventional V-eight you would find that the engine wouldn't perform at all. It all depends upon timing.” Smith wanted to know whether the power of a motor was a matter of timing. “Power is due to many factors,” 1 explained. “In the old days they used from | firing | > in using | other members of the motor clan. ! to think that the size of the cylinders t, but with racing motors c-inch displacement now | doing more than a hundred miles an | hour as an average speed, every one | has a different idea about it. Power | hinges on engine speed more than on size, according to experience, and for ;rllu\m' peed it {8 necessary to have many inders. This explains the popularity wf the eights, the straight elghts having the advantage of great- er simplicity than the V-type. . An- other thing that contributes to power is freedom from vibration at high en- gine speed. This brings in your tim- ing feature. “The better the engine is timed the smoother it will run and the higher speed it will attain without vibration and excessive friction losses. If you are familiar with the different firing orders vou'll understand that as yet nothing approximating an it as to what's what in tim- g. livery engineer seems to have his own ideas. Firing Orders Vary. “One popular six fives 1, 4, 2; 6, 3, 5, starting with the cylinder next to the radiator. Most of the other sixes fire 1, 5, 3, 6,2, 4 Bear in mind, of course, that these firing orders are closely linked tip with the timing of the valves, which is a matter entirely too complicated for backyard discus- sfon. “One popular four fires 1, 2, 4, 3, while another fires 1, 3, 4, 2.’ The lat- ter arrangement seems to be preferred by the manufacturers of improved four-cylinder engines. “In the eights the variation is sur- prising. Offhand I know of nine dif- | ferent methods of firing eights, and they are found on popular makes of cars at that. The order 1, 6, 2, 5, §, 3, 7, 4, seems to be the most popular th the designers of straight eights. ine makes use that order. To give you an idea of how differ- ent the orders are, let me show you this list:" Smith found one straight eight fir- ing 5, 4, 8, 7, 2, 1, while another fired 1,'3,'2.'5.'8," 6, 7. 4. The latter zives ome of the oddest-sounding hausts of any automobile. Of three popular V-eights he found as many combinations of orders. What amazed him was to think that anything appearing so haphazard could be the result of such painstak- | ing thought and precision. It gave him new respect for the builders of automobile: Next week, No. 164—Rhythm of the Road. 7 ALL MOTOR LICENSE FEES ALLOTTED TO HIGHWAYS Motor license fees must he applied to highway building and maintenance in Pennsylvania. The attorney general of the State has upheld the Pennsyl- against the expenditure of such funds for the construction of concrete plaza in front of the State Capitol at Hargisburg. The attorney seneral in making his | ruling. declared the money must come |from” ‘the so-called hond fund —not from that paid by motorists. 5.000 o St, vania Motor Federation in its protesty SUNDAY STAR. WASHINGTON, 300000 CARS SEEN IN 4 YEAR iHead of Pittsburgh Experi- | ment Station Revives Prob- | lem of Saturation. Since that elephantine child of American industrial genius, the auto- mobile, was a toddling infant, it has been the pleasure of thousands of ob- servers to discuss ‘‘the saturation point.” Of late, however, this illusive “point” has been rather lost to sight in the most terrific wave of buying in the history of the industry. It has remained for Dr. A. C. Field- ner, head of the Pittsburgh Experi- ment Station of the United States Bureau of Mine, to revive the disous- slon. Fieldner assumes the satu- ration ratio of passenger cars to be one car for every four persons in the country. In a recent address in Philadelphla he declared that auto- mobile registration, on this basis, will level off {n 1932. "After that, he he- lleves, any further increase will be due to population growth. - Sees 31,000,000 Total. The total number of automobile engines in this country will reach 31,000,000 in 1930, Dr. Fieldner esti- mates, or double the number in use in 1925. Another 50 per cent will be added in the course of the next 20 years, bringing the total of 1950 up to 45,000,000 Terming-an adequate motor fuel supply a national necessity this au- thority went on to say. ““Production thus far has more than kept pace with the growing demand and recent improvements in ‘crack- ling' have made it possible to crack any type of cruce ofl to gasoline, coke and gas. Present trends in the auto- motive and petroleum industry, in our opinion, are in harmony with predic- tions that petroleum will continue to furnish the great bulk of automotive fuel during the next decade.” Utopian Promjises. Utopian promises for the future of petroleum are held out by Prof. James K. Norris, president of the American Chemical Society, who pre- dicts that the motorist of the future will come to depend on the products of petroleum for everything connected with his car except the metal frame work. For example the rubber will come from diolefine gases, obtained from the crackling of crude petroleum. Unbreakable glass for the wind- shields and windows will also come from petroleum products. To allay the fears of those whe see rapid diminution of the supply from nature, the eventual conversion of Vegetation into petroleum was pre- dicted. NEW JACKS SUPERIOR. Latest Equipment Keeps Clothes Clean From Low Cars. Careful use of the latest jack equip- ment for automobiles will prove their superiority over the old type if only in the matter of keeping the user's clothes cleaner. Balloon tires and lower hodies have brought the rotary jack with its long handle to the front in most tool equipment. g/t Performanc Within Reach of Thousa For many years, those pay top prices for motoring luxury have bought eight- cylinder cars as a matter of course. But it remained for Hupmo- bile, with its efficient develop- ment of the straight-eight, to bring the finest of eight-cylin- der performance to a far wider market. It arrived at - atime when motor’ car buyers were beginning toseeksome- thing more Almost from its appearance two years ago, the beautiful Hupmobile Eight became the largest selling straight- eight in the world. able to prestige. than the old standards of per- formanceand value;something other than price as a mark of And so completely did the conceptions of Hupmobile Eight meet the a new value, and a totally new kind of smoothness, that discriminat- ing buyers swept it to an im- mediate and overwhelming success. and upkeep. When you first drive the beautiful Hupmobile Eight, you will be amazed at its fluent power, its dashing get-away— its ease of handling and riding. You will want this car for what it alone can give you in brilliant performance, in lux- urious motoring, and in econ- omyof eight-cylinderoperation STERRETT & FLEMING, Inc. Home of the Certified Gold Seal Used Cars Note: New Showroom, Connecticut Ave. at S St. Champlain St. at Kalorama Road ,, - Celumbia 5050 D. C. OCTOBER 24 1926—PART 3. v, BODIES WORTHY OF THE VELIE Did you ever own an automobile that grew old before its time be- cause the body was cheaply built? You will never have that experi- ence with a Velie. Every Velie body is built compléte in the great Velie plantand is worthy, in every particular, of America’s Long- Life Car. Both wood and steel are used in Velie bodies — for no other combination of materials will give the quality that Velie must have. The frame-work is built of the finest hard wood that the mar- kets of the world afford—every inch of it cured to Velie’s exact- ing standards. All joints are fitted VELIE MOTORS Washingt to the finest limits known to the wood-workers’ craft. And overthis rigid frame is fitted an armor of sheet steel that has been especially treated for strength and finish. The frame-work of wood makes it possible to finish the interior as g;utifully and substantially as the finest hand-built furniture— and eliminates the possibility of “closed car rumble.” See the various Velie body types in the salesroom of the nearest Velie dealer. And bear in mind as you inspect them dlha; tll:e}r beauty is permanent — that their individuality will be as striking in years to come as it is today. CORP., Moline, IIL on Veile Co. NORRIS H. ENGLE ‘ 1136 Conn. Ave. Of eighteen years’ pro- duction 81% still in use. Main 8496 Vital units Velie builtto Long-Life Standards STYLE and POWER that’s where Chandler shines OMEDAY, motor cars will no longer look monotonously alike—but will reflect a certain individuality of style and treat- ment, as Chandler does today. Someday, all motor cars worthy of consideration will be able to run up 999 out of 1000 hills in high gear, and without effort— just as Chandler does today. Someday, no doubt, you'll be able to lubricate any car by simply pressing a little plunger—just as | [ 4 you do today in a Chandler, with its great “One Shot” System of centralized chassis lubrication. Someday, all fine cars will have enough power torque to elimi- nate the need of gear-shifting in traffic, except after dead-stops— which is a very enjoyable feature in Chandler today But why wait for “someday” for motor car advantages, con- veniences and comforts you can enjoy in a Chandler today? Richer New Closed Models—?%995 to #1795 dsk. DAVID S. 1012 14th St. N.W. G@MANDLER.CLEVELAND MOTORS OPEN EVENINGS CORPORATION HENDRICK LER