If I were starting again for the West, I should want an American car. A new car of almost any standard American make would be better for such a trip than the best foreign one.
In the first place, our own cars have sufficient clearance—ten inches. In the second place, spare parts are easy to get. Especially is this true of the moderate priced cars, which are sold in such large numbers that even the small country garages must carry supplies for them. But the important advantage is sufficient height. There are many places, particularly in New Mexico and Arizona, where with a low car you will have to fill in ruts so that your center can clear the middle of the road; and you will have to pile earth and stones on the slopes of some of the railroad crossings, so as not to “hang up” on the tracks.
Beyond the state of Colorado, which has magnificent mountain roads, if your car is a foreign one, you should have extra-sized wheels put on it to lift the frame high enough. Of course, you can get through, by destroying your comfort and temper, in road building, and jacking the machine over places impossible to pass otherwise, and arriving in a very battered condition in the end. Another qualification besides height in favor of an American car, is endurance. American manufacturers have solved the problem of building machinery that needs little care and can be jolted without injury, where the more complicated European machinery under like treatment goes to pieces.
With a foreign car you are furthermore at a disadvantage in using metric tire sizes. You can always get the standard American sizes, which in the tubes will fit your metric casings all right, and for that matter you could probably at a pinch and temporarily use a standard casing. Metric size can be found in such places as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, but shoes have a way of exhausting themselves without regard to your position on the map.
At Los Angeles or San Francisco you can get your metric equipment for the return trip so that if you start with new tires all around and two spares, you should have no need of buying tires on the road. Mine are, according to average American equipment, way under size for the weight of my car, and my six shoes carried me through easily. In fact there was New York air in two of them when we arrived in San Francisco.
Sometimes We Struck a Bad Road
In the matter of what to carry: New tires, of course. For any but a very heavy car two spare shoes are plenty. Tubes you can buy anywhere. I only had five punctures all the way—and no blow-out. More than two extra shoes would be a hindrance because of their weight. A small shovel is sometimes convenient but not necessary east of New Mexico, and with a high car not necessary at all. African water bags are essential west of Albuquerque, but not before. Fifty or a hundred feet of thin rope may be very useful if you happen to strike mud or sand stretches, especially if two cars are making the trip together. In the way of spare parts, I should suggest a couple of spark plugs, extra valve and valve spring, fan belt, extra master links for a chain-drive car. Tire chains with extra heavy cross-pieces for all wheels are indispensable through the Middle West in case of rain. And see that the tools that have been “borrowed” from your tool kit have been replaced. Repairs on the road are aggravating enough, not to be made more so through lack of tools. Now that people carry spare rims and almost never seem to put in a new tube and pump it up on the road, they neglect to carry a pump and a spare tube, but if you should have three flat tires in one day, you will appreciate a spare tube and an old-fashioned tire pump that works!
I carried thirty-five gallons of gasoline in my tank, which gave me a radius of three hundred and fifty miles on a tank full, with which I was never in any danger of running short. I should say that a two hundred-mile radius would be plenty, except across the desert. You can buy it even there, but at about three or four times the regular rate. You may go many miles before you come to a hotel, but gasoline you can buy anywhere. Good shock absorbers all around will probably save you a broken spring or two. It will pay to look over your springs after each day’s run and if a leaf is broken, have a new one put in before attempting to go on.
In the Middle West, automobile associations or highway commissioners do magnificent work. Roads are splendidly sign posted, and in the dragged roads districts, the rain no sooner stops than the big four- and six-horse drags are out. Follow a rainstorm in a few hours, and you will find every road ahead of you as smooth as a new-swept floor. Hence for the patient motorist, who can spare the time, there is always an eventual moment when there are good roads.