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DESPITE the highly efficient forms of windscreen wiper now supplied with vehicles, there remains the difficulty in connection with the comparatively small arc swept by the arm. This defect is particularly noticeable when the glass is far away from the driver, as often, it must be when the wheel is large and the screen is close to the radiator, as in the case of forward-control-bus cabs. By enlarging the upper part of the frame of the screen and slotting it for the greater part of its length it should be possible to introduce a mechanism capable of wiping the whole of the glass. The mechanism, if made in a tubular casing, couldfit into specially standardized screen frames, thereby solving coach
builders' difficulties. ,•
THIS year's commercial Motor. Show will present rather a strange contrast in the matter of oil engines. It is probable that two or three designs will be shown which will be absolute innovations— one strikingly so—but there will be several absentee makers from whom exhibits of this class were regarded as certainties, TO be a good Samaritan does not always pay. Recently the driver of a lorry and trailer saw that the load of cotton on a lorry in front was on fire. s1.8
He chased the vehicle with the object of warning those in charge, but was stopped by the mobile police, who, despite the statement • of witnesses as to the reasons for his excessive speed, reported him. The summons was dismissed, but the 'case involved a considerable loss in working time by the defendant and witnesses, whilst the owner of the vehicle bore the legal expenses. Surely in circumstances like these the mobile police could have adopted a common-sense attitude and not pressed the charge. Such acts are irritating and do not promote good feeling.
IT is interesting to notice that Leicester County
Council regards the* monopolygranted by the Traffic Commissioners to Leicester Corporation as one which will inflict hardship upon schoolchildren. Not only are passengers precluded from boarding buses running into the city where corporation services exist, but the municipality's monopoly of the buses and trams now extends 440 yds. beyond its own limits.
Large numbers of schoolchildren now travel regularly by bus and, quite apart from. other considerations,this kind of regulation increases the risk of accidents to these young people.
AT a recent meeting of a northern city council
discussion arose as to whether, in contracting for the supply of several lorries, the condition that the vehicles were to be 100per cent. British had been adhered to. A councillor remarked that he understood that the sub-committee which had been appointed to examine the lorries took little notice of them and it "was so unused to inspecting motorcars that it asked what the spare wheeL was for."
AN interesting method of rapidly determining the viscosity of oil is by utilizing a bail-dropping viscometer which tirees the rate at which a steel ball falls through the liquid. The time of passing two fixed points is determined by the changes in the frequency of oscillation of a wireless-valve circuit, the advantage of this method being that the apparatus may be enclosed and viscosities determined under high pressure.