LOCATING TROUBLES IN LIGHTING AND IGNITION SYSTEM
If no charge shows on dash meter when engine is running at speed equal to 15 m. p. h., connect good ammeter in series with dash meter; if this meter shows proper charging rate, trouble is with dash meter; if it also shows no charge, connect voltmeter with generator terminals. If it indicates a very high voltage, generator is O. K. and trouble is between generator and battery.
Test cut-out and examine all connections and wires.
If lights light when engine is stopped, trouble is between generator and ammeter. If lights do not light, trouble is between ammeter and battery.
If no, or low, voltage is indicated, trouble is with the generator, regulator, or wire between generator and regulator.
If starting motor will not crank engine, make sure battery is O. K., connections bright and clean, commutator and brushes in good condition, and that starting switch makes good contact. Crank engine by hand to make sure some mechanical defect is not preventing engine from turning.
If starting motor spins but does not crank engine, pinion or drive gear may be loose, chain broken, or overrunning clutch slipping. If a Bendix drive, pinion may stick in worm due to dirt in threads.
If none of the bulbs light, examine connection at battery, ammeter, lighting switch, and wires between those units for breaks; also all the bulbs may be burned out.
If a grounded system, examine ground connection at frame.
If only one bulb fails to light, trouble must be in its own circuit. Take trouble lamp or voltmeter and test at contacts of connector at lamp. If you get current at this point, trouble is with bulb or contact pins sticking, or not long enough. If you do not get current at this point, examine fuses, connections at lighting switch and connectors; also wire for breaks.
As a short circuit on the car generally shows its presence by its effect on battery, preventing it from holding a charge, if meter shows discharge all the time, remove wire from meter or battery. If needle remains on discharge, needle is stuck; if it drops to zero, there is a short circuit or cut-out does not open.
A short circuit beyond the lighting switch will not show on the meter until switch is turned to circuit in which short circuit is located. This will cause lights to dim and show a heavy discharge on meter.
As there are other circuits whose current does not pass through meter, a short circuit in them would not be indicated on meter, but would be indicated by running down of battery. To locate, remove all bulbs, also all wires from one of the battery terminals. Connect one side of the trouble lamp to battery terminal and the other side of lamp to wires removed. Any current leaving the battery must now pass through the trouble lamp causing it to light.
1—If trouble lamp lights when lighting switch is turned off, short circuit is either in starting motor-circuit, generator circuit (or cut-out does not open), horn circuit, or in wires between lighting switch and battery, or in ignition circuit. Eliminate one circuit after another until trouble lamp goes out. Then examine circuit on which it goes out for short.
2—If trouble lamp lights only when lighting switch is on, short circuit is in circuit beyond lighting switch. Examine circuit indicated on face of switch when in position that trouble lamp lights, as switch can be divided into sections. Eliminate one section after another until trouble lamp goes out; then examine this circuit for short.
CHAPTER XLVIII
THE GOLDEN RULE OF MOTORING
This volume does not pretend to set a standard of manners for owners of automobiles, nor does it profess to be a first-aid course in courtesy, much less suggest lessons in gentlemanliness, which might as well be called gentleness at once; yet there is sad need of instruction in all these things, if one may judge by the experiences of the road and of the inn and garage stops along the way.
Now the writer believes that the American citizen is a gentleman to the manor born, of natural right and disposition, and that he does not leave his manners at home, as he is supposed to leave his religion at the church door. A gentleman in the drawing-room will be a gentleman on the highway. He will not be a boor because the man he happens to meet is one, not even if the majority are.
Why is it, then, that there is an utter absence of courtesy, or if there be an occasional display of good nature it but emphasizes the lack of it in general? Undoubtedly this is a fair statement of conditions in and about the metropolis. It is not true to anywhere near the same extent in the Western country, and “Western” ought to be understood in this connection as anything west of the Alleghany range.
The writer has been astounded on several occasions in Denver and other Western cities at the really human spirit of the drivers. They actually stopped of their own accord to let the writer, a pedestrian at the time, cross the street, and did it in so gracious a way as to make it seem a real pleasure. Picture that on Fifth Avenue, New York City, or upon any of the highways out of the metropolis on a Sunday or holiday in warm weather.
But it is not alone in the attitude of the driver toward the pedestrian that there is remissness, but in the behavior toward other drivers that there is need for improvement. What is easier than to cheerfully make way for the man who wishes to pass by, or to turn aside as much as may be necessary for the other car we meet; to slow up at the intersection, instead of spurting to get ahead of the other fellow, and making him jam on the brakes to avoid a collision? Why is it necessary to try to get the best of the other fellow, as though driving were a contest of wits and that skill on the road consisted in “beating the other fellow to it?”
Perhaps the answer to all this criticism is that in and about New York, where there is a dense population, there are thousands of drivers who are not from the ranks of the well-bred, by which is not meant the wealthy. The low price of cars and the thousands of used cars on the market has put them at the disposal of the butcher boy and the hod carrier and bell hop, and they seem to have the idea that the driver of a car possesses superior rights over others and must assert it. Out in the land where folks have a chance to open their lungs and breathe, a broader view of life is held. It is a fact, however, that the well-to-do families of the East are more and more requiring of their drivers that they follow the golden rule and not the Eben Holden brand. You remember Eben’s version: “Do unto others what they are trying to do unto you, and do it fust.”
Secretary of State Francis M. Hugo, of New York, recently delivered an address to a group of students in which he said a number of pertinent things concerning the operation of cars, based upon his own experiences. It is so good that it is reprinted here:
It is not too much to say that the future of motoring largely depends upon the behavior of motorists and their drivers toward the public. As fewer owners of large touring machines drive their own cars nowadays in proportion to the number driven than used to be the case, it is, therefore, mainly the behavior of their drivers on the road that is important. The subject of the training of the motor man is consequently worth much attention, and that the automobile community as a whole realizes this is evident not only by the establishment of various schools, where the mechanical side of the profession is taught to the future driver, but by the efforts of various clubs and associations, notably of the Y. M. C. A., who have started schools all over the country to help in this training.
For the past few years, those who drive motor cars for wages have been called “chauffeurs,” a word against which a protest should always be made on the double ground of etymology and nationality. To begin with, the word in reality means “stoker.” On the foot plate of a French locomotive the driver is called “mechanicien,” while the fireman is designated as the “chauffeur.” In the case of motor cars propelled by steam, the word “chauffeur” may thus be held to be remotely correct, but on the ordinary car propelled by the internal combustion engine or by electric power, there is no sense in the term. In the best French circles also, the word “mechanicien” is always used to designate the driver of a car and the word “chauffeur” even in France is said to be becoming obsolete.
The motorman, as he will, therefore, be called, is very often the subject of much discussion and sometimes of irrational abuse. Of course, there are black sheep in this profession, as in every other, but one is glad to place on record that black sheep were far more numerous five years ago than they are now. No one who observes without prejudice the behavior of motor-car drivers in New York City and elsewhere can help being struck with the careful way in which private motor cars are now driven, the neatness and cleanliness of the men themselves, and the vast improvement which has taken place in their general manners. Formerly, it was thought to be the highest mark of the profession that a motorman should be dirty in every respect, and a greasy cap, black hands and face, oily clothes and, as a rule, a half-smoked dirty cigarette in the side of his mouth, combined with a contemptuous scowl at every passer-by, was not an uncommon sight.
This state of things, however, has changed for the better. Occasionally a specimen of the primeval driver is met with, and even now the habit of cigarette smoking when in charge of a car is supposed, by the younger and less intelligent men of the profession, to confer an air of knowledge coupled with disdain. In course of time this form of swagger will die out also. The manners, moreover, of many motormen to their employers and to their fellow servants have not in the past been all that could be desired, but as stated before, their general behavior is markedly improving, and it must be remembered that, motormen are greatly superior in intelligence to most of their predecessors.
It need hardly be noted here that much depends upon the way the motorman has been trained. When automobiling was just beginning the only person available who even half knew the somewhat complicated machine of the early days was the mechanic trained for a few months in the shop where the car had been manufactured. He was master of the situation because he alone had working knowledge of its parts. No one in those days thought for one moment of a motorman from the viewpoint of good driving. The owner of the car, above all, desired to possess a good mechanic, for breakdowns were numerous and varied and half of the expenses of motoring were necessitated by renewals of parts or adjustments due to ordinary wear and tear. Nowadays serious or even insignificant breakdowns are rare, and there is hardly a first-class make of car in the market which will not run many thousands of miles without anything being necessary in the way of repairs and adjustments. Those which are necessary are, moreover, of the simplest kind. There is no longer, therefore, the same necessity for the motorman to be what is called a really good mechanic, so long as he understands the general principle on which the engine works and the arrangement of the gears.
The majority of motor-car owners have, therefore, changed in their requirements. They do not want a man who is primarily a skilled mechanic, but they do ask for a skillful driver, and on this wise alternative in the chief qualifications demanded lies a good deal of the reason for the great change which has taken place in the behavior of the motorman in the city and out of it. It may be remarked that an excellent mechanic is not necessarily a good driver, though he may be so in certain cases. What is required in the driver besides the general knowledge of the machinery is a knowledge of the customs and courtesies of the road and the habits of traffic, the possession of the qualities of alertness, foresight, and consideration for others. Above all, he should have a temperate frame of mind, an abstinence not only from drunkenness, but drinking in any but a most moderate sense. The driver of an ordinary wagon is conspicuous by his ignorance of the way to drive and his want of consideration of other traffic. He is the most persistent moving obstruction which exists. The motor-car driver, on the other hand, has to be the best driver on the highway if he is to drive without offense to the public and danger to them and himself, for he has to conduct a vehicle which is more valuable than any other and far and away more speedy though more handy, and, therefore, whose meeting with and overtaking of other vehicles is many times more rapid. In addition to these, he has to consider other dangers of the road to which other vehicles are not so liable and which come from the construction of its surface.
The complete motorman should have a working knowledge of the different materials of which roads are made, of their comparative tendency to cause skidding, and of the perils which arise from excessive and badly laid street-car tracks. He must know and continually practice the courtesies of the road and learn its manners and customs. He must be observant and realize that children hanging on the rear of wagons are liable to drop off suddenly and run across his path. He must be on the look-out for pedestrians, stupid, drunk, or deaf, for wagons on the wrong side of dangerous corners, and to be prepared to find vehicles in charge of sleepy drivers who will often do the wrong act on awakening. It will, therefore, be seen that the motorman to be really good has to be the best driver on the road and that the standard demanded must necessarily be high. He must possess exceptional qualities as compared with the horse driver. The question is, therefore, all important—What are the best methods of training such a man?
There is no doubt that many of the schools which are teaching elementary mechanics to the would-be motorman are excellent in their way. But there are many which are nothing but frauds. Reports have frequently been made to the State where a man has complained bitterly of having put down $25 or $50 in return for which nothing but most elementary instruction has been given and this often in the worst possible way. There has been no teaching in traffic rules or on the road, or, if given, so little as to be of no use. But at other places pains are taken, and, by diagrams in the class-room and practical teaching on the road much has been taught. There are also nowadays hand-books galore which teach the construction, repair, the common faults and likely failings of the gasoline engine from A to Z. The mechanical side may, therefore, be said to have been amply provided for.
But this is only the less important, though necessary, part of the training of the modern motorman. What is really needed is that some school should teach manners on the road and the habits of traffic,—in short, train its men for the road. There should also be problems of difficult but ordinary situations in traffic set in a written examination, the correct solution of which should be obligatory before the motorman could be said to be property trained. It is not, perhaps, easy to see at first how this sort of instruction can be given on the present scale of fees, but the schools in the future, which devote a large part of their attention to teaching the rules of the road and its customs and courtesies will assuredly turn out the best class of drivers, who will be in the greatest demand.
To begin with, the habits of horse-drawn vehicles should be studied. It is a liberal education to take a journey, for instance, on the top of a Fifth Avenue motor bus and watch the way in which the driver drives his unwieldly vehicle through the streets of New York. Other bus drivers also are rapidly becoming his equal, and let it be acknowledged that nothing but the hard school of practical, every-day experience in New York City streets, assisted by police supervision and the fear of dismissal for carelessness or accident, could produce such able drivers.
Again, the expert taxicab driver might be taken as an example of a faster class of motor traffic. The would-be first-class motorman when being trained would thus have the experience of horse vehicles and pedestrians, and have noted carefully what usually happens and have tried to understand their point of view. This is one of the first steps which should be taken in training the driver of the swift mechanical vehicle. Then example might be given of the proper way to drive cars around corners, both right-handed and left-handed, and the best manner of the ascending and surmounting steep gradients or negotiating high bridges. Driving at night should also be practiced, and prospective drivers should learn to distinguish the faint glow on the road ahead which designates the presence of a motorcycle and other signs denoting persons or vehicles. Map reading should also be a part of his instruction.
And there is yet one other thing which the motor-driving school should inculcate, though it could not technically teach the motorman—that is, good manners to his employer and his employer’s friends. To be rough and rude is a disgrace to any class, and it is the mark of a man who is either not certain of himself or is afflicted with an innate bad temper. It is not, and never can be, a sign of superiority. A respectful and civil attitude not only makes the path of life easier, but is in itself a strong recommendation. Little things which do not at first seem to matter, and are merely more in the nature of courtesy than servile attentions, should be observed. A civil salute when the owner first addresses the motorman, the readiness to help in any little matter, such as carrying a bag to the station, or the thought of a rug to cover the lap, and similar little courtesies, are the sign of the man who, if considerate in these little matters, is likely to be considerate in others more important. It also establishes him firmly in the estimation of his employer.
To sum up, the perfect motorman, though he should possess as much knowledge of mechanics as possible, should, above all, be a considerate driver, well versed in the manners and courtesies of the road and the habits of traffic. And in addition, he should try to be well mannered, as more and more motor-car owners are becoming convinced that, besides knowledge, “Manners maketh the Motorman.”