A pair of brass hub caps picked up along the road and which have been turned into ash trays are among the writer’s trophies.
The loss of the hub caps allows grit to get into the bearings and to prevent this as far as possible by making the driver take care of them, the prices of extra caps have been made entirely out of proportion to their real value by some manufacturers.
Some of the lost parts are of such shape that they would very readily puncture a tire, so that they are not only a loss to the owner of the car from which they dropped, but to the fellow who follows and picks them up for a punctured tire.
The writer has seen the pin holding in place the tie rod, which keeps the wheels in alignment, drop out, and in another case, hunting a knock, found the cylinder loose on the base because the nuts had been without lock washers, or cotter pins, and had worked loose. They might in time have worked off entirely and there would have been a “cylinder missing.” He has also seen the entire engine loose on the frame so that it was doing a fox trot while running.
Drivers should keep watch of the non-skid chains, for they wear and drop cross links often. The driver who wishes to avoid personal annoyance and annoyance to everybody else within hearing distance, will take pains to see that the cross links are never so loose that they hit the mud guards, nor have broken ends which hit. A spool of wire will enable one to fasten broken or loose cross links to the side chains and repair links can be put in when the garage is reached.
The owner should become well acquainted with his car, so that he knows where the different bolts and nuts are. Many will tighten up all they know about, but do not bend their backs to get underneath where they can see the dust-pan bolts and brake-linkage bolts. If the owner knows where these parts are he should make it his business to see that every bolt and pin is locked with a lock washer or cotter pin. Then he should go over them at least once a month and tighten them up. He may be sure he will pay several times their value and a mechanic’s time if they are lost, so that economy is involved as well as the inconvenience of having the car stopped on the road.
CHAPTER XLII
HUNTING TROUBLE
Ordinarily the fellow who starts to hunt trouble finds it quicker than he expected, but not so with the automobilist; when he starts to hunt trouble—in the car—it seems to be a very demon for eluding the searcher. Trouble will hide in a tiny piece of carbon lodged under a valve or between spark-plug points, in a wire that has jarred loose, in an interrupter point, a piston ring, a gas pipe—oh, in the most secret and insignificant place—in size—and just defy one to ferret out the demon. One learns that the insignificant things are really the most important at times.
Yet most troubles incident to the operation of a motor car may be located very quickly if one will but go after them in a systematic way, and not wander aimlessly about the engine and other parts. The hardest thing a driver has to do when the engine stops or acts up is to divest himself of the idea that he knows just what the trouble is. He is sure he can fix it in a minute and he putters around a long time before he makes up his mind that it is something else and it takes a lot of time to prove that to some persons.
The best way to go about it is to start without preconceived ideas as to what the trouble may be, and follow a system, which is really a process of elimination. Remember that to start a gasoline engine three things are necessary—gasoline, compression, and a spark at the right time, and that to keep it running it is necessary to have water for cooling, unless it be an air-cooled engine, and oil for lubrication.