Contributions from Drivers and Mechanics.
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Ten Shillings Weekly for the Best Communication Received, and One Penny a Line of ten words for anything else published.
Appreciation front a Driver.
[557] A contributor sends the following appreciative letter to us :—" Many thanks for the P.O. for ten shillings which I received yesterday. I should like to take this opportunity of acknowledging your promptness in payment. I shall take great pleasure in submitting some more 'stuff ' to you later on. It is very nice indeed for a man like myself, who has always rather dreaded writing anything, for fear it was not put together well enough, to know that, if accepted, the contribution will be put into decent sort of English and that, where necessary, a carefully-drawn sketch will be made and published, to help to explain the matter. Several of my pals thought I had drawn the sketch which you published with my letter."
We are always pleased to knock any such contribution into shape, no matter how roughly it is sent in to us. We can assure our readers that we sometimes receive communications which do indeed need a great deal of deciphering. lf, however, a letter contains interesting informa• don, this is no detriment at all.—En.
An Ignition-testing Device.
The sender of the following communication has been awarded the Ws. prize this week.
558] " W.F." (Cardiff) submits a description of a novel device for the testing of the ignition on internal-combustion engines.—" A cheap and convenient method of testing the ignition on an internal-combustion motor can be made as follows. Obtain three small wooden handles and attach] to each one a piece of small chain about 9 in. long.
We will assume that the engine has four cylinders and that we wish to ascertain if all the cylinders are working regularly and without missing fire. Now. if we hang the three chains on the first, second and third sparking plugs, while the engine is running, so as to alloy% the end of each chain to rest on the top of a cylinder, we obviously shall short circuit the high-tension current and stop those three cylinders from firing the charge, thus the fourth cylinder only should be working. While the engine is still running, transfer one of the chains on to the fourth cylin?tfr; and so on, until all the cylinders have been tested separately in the same way.
'This method of testing is more satisfactory than that of holding down the tremblers on the coil, and it is equally efficient for the testing of magneto ignition.
" Instead of the wooden handles a piece of rubber or any insulating material will do. It is not necessary to attach the chains to the sparking plugs in any tray; it is quite sufficient to hang them over the tops of the plugs in order to ' short ' the high-tension current. For a two-cylinder engine one chain only is required. I enclose a sample chain for your inspection and I think you will readily see the utility of this little device."
Doctoring a Feed-heater Pipe.
[559] The contribution which we publish below has been sent to us by " CT." (Fulham).—" Some little while back
made a repair which, it occurs to me, might be of interest to the readers of your ' D. and M.' columns. At the time of which I am writing, I was the driver of one of an early type of liquid fuel steam lorry, which was, of course, built before steam-lorry design had reached anything like the degree of perfection it has since. This particular machine was provided with two feed pumps, but it had no injector. One of these pumpsa Worthington 'donkey '— had been taken down and sent to the makers for repairs, so that I was left with only an ordinary force pump which was driven off the crankshaft. All went well for a week or so until one day I found that I was getting no feed to the boiler. When I had made an examination I found that the pump and the clack valves were in perfect order. I next uncoupled the delivery pipe at the check valve on the boiler, and I found that very little water got as far as this, even against a very low pressure. when the engines were running. This, at once, led me to suspect that the trouble might be in the feed-water heater. The arrangement consisted of a long coil of copper tube encased in a cylinder through which the exhaust steam passed. The water delivered from the pump pas.sed through this coil and so took up heat from the exhaust steam on its way to the boiler. I uncoupled the inlet and outlet of the feedwater pipes from the heater, and, by plugging up one of the holes in the heater and blowing into the other, I quickly found that the coil must have burst inside the cylinder. I therefore proceeded to take down the heater and to withdraw the coil, together with the lagging with which it was surrounded. A fairly large burst was soon discovered on the outside at the extreme end of the coil ; it had evidently been subjected to considerable ahafing owing to the lagging's being slack the tube had gradually worn thin. and finally it had burst. When all this happened I was nine miles front home, out in the country, so that something substantial had to be attempted in the way of a repair ; as the boiler pressure was 250 lb., a reasonably-sound job had to be contrived, and the following is the way it was done. I forced apart the burst coil so that I could get all round to clean the fracture, and I then closed up the hole, as well as possible, with a hammer. The next job was to solder up the fracture with tinman's hard solder of which all the surplus was carefully filed off. The tube was then carefully bound up with copper wire which I wound as taut and as close as possible over the fracture. I then soldered the whole joint up in a mass. It only remained then to spring the coil back into position ; a few bits of builder's laths were pushed in between the lagging and the coil so as to prevent any further movement. This extemporized joint stood well."
Wooden Big Ends on a Petrol Lorry.
-560] " J.M.R." submits the contribution, which we print below, for our approval.—" I have driven a 24 lop. lorry for the past nine months during which period I have had very little trouble. There generally comes a day, however, when your luck is right out, and thus it happened to me, a short time back. I thought the following hints might be of use to other drivers.
" I was coming home at midnight through Kingston when I distinctly heard a knock from the engine, so I took off the inspection covers and I found that the lubricating pipe to the base chamber was broken, consequently No. 2 big end had run out, and in a few more yards there is little doubt that the connecting rod would have, come through the casing. I had not got any spare brasses with Me and I was particularly anxious to lose no time in getting ironic, so I obtained a Mock of wood from a watchman—the stuff they repair the roads with; this wood is fairly hard. When I had taken out the damaged big-end brass, i proceeded with a hack saw to cut out a rough bearing in halves and shaped these pieces so that they fitted the crankpin fairly well. I coupled this up, as if it were an ordinary bearing. It was, of course, no use to allow that cylinder to tire, so I switched off on that one and held down the exhaust valve, and I came home all right on three cylinders. On the way, however, at Kew, the engine pulled up dead ; I had another look round and I found that the fibre magneto wheel had stripped several teeth. I screwed some woodscrews, that I had with me, into the fibre and filed them up roughly, much in the same way that was described in the letter in these columns on 1st April, 1909. These held quite well until I got Ironic."
Only One Breakdown in Nine Years.
[561] HERBERT FEARN (Burton-on-Trent) writes: `I notice that you publish accounts from motor drivers, and I think the following may be of interest to your readers. I have been driving my Leyland steam wagon for over nine years, for Messrs. T. C. Greensmith and Cu., corn millers, Burton-on-Trent, and it is still in splendid condition, and doing its work as well as ever. It has only once been broken down on the road, and this was through a crosshead pin coming out; a new crosshead and pin were then required. With the exception of this instance, and the fitting of one pair of new compensating-shaft brasses, the original brasses are still in the machine. As I have frequently heard people, who do not know much about motors, speak as if a motor were sure to break down on every other journey, I thought my experience in this respect would be interesting. I have had very few troubles of any kind, and the older the machine gets, the better it seems to be. I have heard of some people expressing a preference for being able to see the engine and gearing at work, but as mine needs so little attention, I think it is best out of the way; when it is, like mine, covered in and running in oil, it needs no looking at, to speak of. My wagon is a very handy one, has a long platform, and when I want to do any small repairs I can easily get at them. I take a great pleasure in my wagon, and, although we have a large amount and variety of work to do, it is a job that just suits me."