Motoring How To Do It Cheaply I T is :a sound
axiom that, within reasonable limits, the ownership and use of every car should he economical instead of extravagant. Leaving out all question of racing or competition work, but including all touring, whether at home or abroad, the car that is running at its best is being run most cheaply. A good many years ago, when petrol was cheap and cars, compared with any of those of today, dear, it fell to the present writer to demonstrate for twelve months on end to a large number of people that the motor-car was already then a poor man's sensible possession and that its upkeep was a great deal less costly than was generally supposed. As is usually the case, it turned out that among the preached-to were quite a number of the converted, and I remember many letters whose writers argued deter- minedly that motoring was really cheaper than I had said it was. Taking into consideration the greatly altered standards of today in the value of money and what it buys, the possession and upkeep of a good car are at least as cheap as they were before the War, when the idea that other people beside the obviously rich could profitably own and use cars took definite shape.
Prices, for one thing, are unbelievably lower. The actual cost of a sound motor-car that will do its work for three or four years is at the very least 25 per cent. lower than it was. If you add the far better performance, the much wider capabilities, the reliability and the comfort you can very nearly reduce the price of the MO car of 1914, or the money-trap of 1919-1920 to about £50 or less. Add to this again such things as equipment, the life of tyres, which is at least four times what it was, the almost complete disappearance of troubles like punctures, and the larger number of uses to which the car can be put all the year round, and it will be clear that in the world's worst economic crisis one of the least dispensable and most useful adjuncts of public life is also one of the cheapest.
It is not quite fair to set up a standard of economy on the pre-War basis—not fair, that is, to the car you may be going to buy today, because the things that wear out faster now or cost more money for replacement, such as plugs and brake-linings, for example, are all much better of their kind and contribute to the cheaper performance of the car. We used not to have to decarbonise engines nearly so often in the old days as we do now—but we have the detachable head. Plugs lasted longer and brake-linings, but only because both I had far less strain thrown on them. In return for that extra expense to which we are put today—nothing much—we get a far more efficient machine and, when the account is properly balanced, one that costs much less to run. A properly cared-for car of, say, 10 or 12 horse-power will, at present rates, carry four people ten thousand miles in Great Britain or the Continent in each of three years for something like £150 less than its predecessor and in considerably less running time.
Having acquired the car—and of whatever sort it is it will be the cheapest ever made—you will discover that real economy can be achieved by the use of plain sense and, what thousands of motorists have yet to learn, the exact relationship between cheese-paring and waste. In motoring they are very often first cousins. To take a very common instance, it is still an inexplicable craze on the part of the uninstructed to make a fetish of petrol-saving. They will buy the sort of car they do not want and that does not suit them, instead of the right one, simply because a glib salesman fills them up with stories of miles-per-gallon. And having bought it they will go to an infinity of -trouble to reduce the normal consumption for which the engine is designed by people who have spent the greater part of their lives at this highly specialized work. The immediate results of this cheese-paring are, in the order of costs, burnt-out valves, which entail a bill for several hours' labour as well as for the valves themielves, loss of efficiency and therefore, in the end, an increase of consumption, reduc- tion of the life of plugs and, owing to the hotter condition of the engine, of the lubricating oil. I have not included the distaste, amounting before long to horror, of the car itself; which will inevitably be made plain by everyone who has anything to do with it. A spoilt piety of machinery is a thing to hate, as one well cared for is one of the major pleasures of life.
Never 'do anything on the cheap. Use only the best oil, petrol, plugs and tires. They cost only a little more than the other sort, and they are, worth far more. you sometimes hear of bargains in, let us say, plugs, sold off at sixpence apiece in some big shop. If you like to buy a couple as standbya, there is no harm done, ,provided you do not leave _them longer than is necessary in the engine ; but to imagine that a job lot, recently the rejected parts of aeroplanes Or racing cars, are likely to do you as well as the best new ones with all the. experience of a firm of experts behind them, is to imagine something eon. siderably more costly than vanity. It is money thrown away. :Until now, one of the first duties of the careful owner, careful of his pence as of his car, has been to change the oil in his engine at least once every thousand miles, keeping the level up all the time to the indicated height. This means that if his car is said to use a gallon of oil for every thousand miles—a fair average—in reality it uses one plus the normal content of the sump. At every thousand miles he •throws away one, one and a half or two gallons of oil and fills up again. After that he uses a quart for .every 250 miles. This point is not always quite clear to the uninitiated. Now we read of.specially treated oils that retain their qualities over much longer periods, so that it is not necessary to have that complete clearance until two or thive times the usual distance has been run. With oil at the price it is, this means a saving as agreeable as it is obvious.
These are the things that make motoring cheaper. It pays to renew the oil in your gear-box and back-axle at least as often as the makers recommend you to do, instead of forgetting all about them for a year or so. Worn out, dirty oil, full of minute cutting edges and grit, is an active dissipator of power and a peculiarly fruitful source of renewal bills. It pays over and over again to keep the inflation of your tyres at the proper pressure, just as it pays to go over them every day for embedded flints and minor cuts. Tyres are extra- ordinarilY goOd now, but they would last much longer if people gave them half the attention they require. It pays to use the brakes as little as possible, and with the modern high-compressioned, multi-cylinder engine and low gear ratio,this is an easy virtue to,practise. It saves hundreds. of miles of wear on the tyres, and although chassis frames are extremely, well built now, there is no sense in pntling heavier strains on them than is necessary in an emergency. It pays to keep your ignition plant in apple-pie order. See that the plugs have the proper point-gap and are clean, outside as well as inside, and that the make-and-break. is doing its work over all the contact surface and not over a part of it. All these things are of the kind you remember after- wards and swear not to forget next time. The main essentials of economical upkeep are : (1) never drive or stop faster than you need. Fast driving and emergency braking wear out engines, tyres and brakes, and waste fuel and oil ; (2) never use anything but the best of everything ; (3) keep a careful eye on both fuel and oil filters. If either are not perfectly free waste in one form or another is going on ; (4). keep everything in engine and chassis adequately but not over lubricated ; (5) make as little use as poSsible of your battery for staining purposes. It is disgraceful that such advice should be necessary in 1933, but if you want it to last you must do as much of the work as possible that an expensive and ridiculously delicate component is supposed to do for you. A tip that is not to be despised, though it is not an easy one to remember, is always to release the clutch before pressing the starter-button. In this way you take off the extra load imposed on the battery by revolving a set of gear wheels heavily coated with
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