As the machine comes it looks so well, it inspires unbounded confidence, but the first time it is seen in undress, with the carriage part off, the machinery laid bare, the heart sinks, and one's confidence oozes out.
Parts are twisted, bent, and hammered to get them into place, bearings are filed to make them fit, bolts and screws are weak and loose, nuts gone for the want of cotter-pins; it is as if apprentice blacksmiths had spent their idle moments in constructing a machine.
The carriage work is hopelessly bad. The building of carriages is a long-established industry, employing hundreds of thousands of hands and millions of capital, and yet in the entire United States there are scarcely a dozen builders of really fine, substantial, and durable vehicles. Yet every cross-road maker of automobiles thinks that if he can only get his motor to go, the carpenter next door can do his woodwork. The result is cheap stock springs, clips, irons, bodies, cushions, tops, etc., are bought and put over the motor. The use of aluminum bodies and more metal work generally is helping things somewhat; not that aluminum and metal work are necessarily better than wood, but it prevents the unnatural union of the light wood bodies, designed for cheap horse-vehicles, with a motor. The best French makers do not build their bodies, but leave that part to skilled carriage builders.
CHAPTER SEVEN BUFFALO TO CANANDAIGUA BEWARE OF THE COUNTRY MECHANIC
The five hundred and sixty-odd miles to Buffalo had been covered with no trouble that delayed us for more than an hour, but our troubles were about to begin.
The Professor had still a few days to waste frivolously, so he said he would ride a little farther, possibly as far as Albany. However, it was not our intention to hurry, but rather take it easily, stopping by the way, as the mood—or our friends—seized us.
It rained all the afternoon of Tuesday, about all night, and was raining steadily when we turned off Main Street into Genesee with Batavia thirty-eight miles straight away. We fully expected to reach there in time for luncheon; in fact, word had been sent ahead that we would "come in," like a circus, about twelve, and friends were on the lookout,—it was four o'clock when we reached town.
The road is good, gravel nearly every rod, but the steady rain had softened the surface to the depth of about two inches, and the water, sand, and gravel were splashed in showers and sheets by the wheels into and through every exposed part of the mechanism. Soon the explosions became irregular, and we found the cams operating the sparker literally plastered over with mud, so that the parts that should slide and work with great smoothness and rapidity would not operate at all. This happened about every four or five miles. This mechanism on this particular machine was so constructed and situated as to catch and hold mud, and the fine grit worked in, causing irregularities in the action. This trouble we could count upon as long as the road was wet; after noon, when the sun came out and the road began to dry, we had less trouble.
When about half-way to Batavia the spark began to show blue; the reserve set of dry batteries was put in use, but it gave no better results. Apparently there was either a short circuit, or the batteries were used up; the bad showing of the reserve set puzzled us; every connection was examined and tightened. The wiring of the carriage was so exposed to the weather that it was found completely saturated in places with oil and covered with mud. The rubber insulation had been badly disintegrated wherever oil had dropped on it. The wires were cleaned as thoroughly as possible and separated wherever the insulation seemed poor. The loss of current was probably at the sparking coil; the mud had so covered the end where the binding parts project as to practically join them by a wet connection. Cleaning this off and protecting the binding parts with insulating tape we managed to get on, the spark being by no means strong, and the reserve battery for some reason weak.
If we had had a small buzzer, such as is sold for a song at every electrical store, to say nothing of a pocket voltmeter, we would have discovered in a moment that the reserve battery contained one dead cell, the resistance of which made the other cells useless. At Batavia we tested them out with an ordinary electric bell, discovering at once the dead cell.