CHAPTER XXVII

AN AUTO FURNACE FOR WINTER

Have you a little hot air furnace on your car? You need one on frosty mornings unless you want the engine to act as though it had an acute attack of bronchitis for half or three-quarters of an hour. Maybe you’ll also need to get out the teakettle and some more extras to get started in proper shape. A lot of men borrow their wives’ dishrags also to help start the cars. Great help, too.

There is not a bit of foolishness about this as the man who has a car will appreciate, if he has tried to start it with the temperature down at the freezing point and a wind blowing that would carry off the engine heat so fast the metal would remain cold. Probably most other folks have noticed that a lot of cars sputter and cough and spit and pop as though all kinds of trouble were going on inside, and the experienced ear can detect many a six-cylinder hitting only on two of the cylinders, while many a flivver is chug-chugging away like one of the old one-lungers of ancient auto days. Not only is this at the start, but for blocks and even miles.

Now to a novice, the new owner, the first inclination would be to cuss the manufacturer and the engine. It isn’t the fault of the engine at all; it is because “the gasoline doesn’t gas.” However there is a solution of the problem, at least enough of a remedy to make life a little happier for the owner.

This condition of gas was absent for several years. In the early days of automobile construction, before the manufacturers were able to devise a carburetor for vaporizing gasoline under all conditions, we had this same trouble as soon as the weather turned cold. Persistent experiments produced a carburetor which overcame the trouble. Then almost as soon as a carburetor was developed which would vaporize the gasoline under adverse conditions, somehow the volatility of the gasoline was found to have decreased.

You will remember the contest between armor plate and big guns—as soon as an impenetrable armor plate was invented, some genius would go ahead and find a powder or gun which would shatter the impenetrable plate. Then the armor factory would try to find something to outwit the gun maker. That is the way with carburetor and gasoline. It is time for the carburetor maker to devise a scheme to volatilize the heavy gasoline now supplied under all conditions—particularly in cold weather. There are signs that he is matching up to the emergency.

It is true that the gasoline now sold has a greater heat-producing quality, if only we can get it properly mixed and volatilized. It may be that the gasoline producers, by putting heavier gasoline on the market, have been of a real service to auto men, once we have learned to utilize it economically and efficiently. They may have had in mind the higher power, but they have given us a gas which is very hard to vaporize on a frosty morning. Sometime soon, probably the carburetor man will catch up and give us a vaporizer which will handle it. Until they do, we will have to look for means of overcoming the difficulties now experienced, and it is largely a question of warming up the air.

In changing gasoline from liquid to vapor, considerable heat must be supplied. When the atmospheric temperature is too low, there is not sufficient heat in it to vaporize the gasoline sprayed into the carburetor. When the engine is warm, the process of vaporization goes on from the needle valve to the moment of ignition, but if the engine is cold, the process is retarded more or less, and under some conditions it is possible for thoroughly vaporized gasoline to be again condensed. The man who does not understand is inclined to say uncomplimentary things about the engine and talk about “fireproof gasoline.” The only trouble is that the temperature is so low that we must heat the air before we send it into the carburetor. Practically all the carburetor manufacturers put out a “stove” to heat the air supply, which is attached around the exhaust pipe, so that the hot air surrounding the pipe is conveyed to the carburetor, which warms the air entering the intake, thus supplying the heat necessary to effect vaporization. This “stove” or gas warmer, the chauffeurs are beginning to call a “hot-air furnace.”

The process of vaporization absorbs a large amount of heat. To raise the temperature of the liquid one degree takes a certain amount of heat. The amount required per degree remains the same until the point of vaporization is reached, when two hundred times that amount of heat is required to effect vaporization. The “hot-air furnace” supplies the extra amount of heat.

A great many carburetors have the mixing chamber water-jacketed and the water from the cooling system is circulated through it, supplying some heat in that way. Sometimes that in itself is sufficient, but at present it seems advisable to use both. Neither one of these is in operation when the engine is started; the “hot-air furnace” depends upon the exhaust pipe being heated, and the water-jacket upon the engine itself being heated long enough to warm up the circulating water. So that it becomes necessary to find some means to supply heat until these warm up.

When the car is started in a warm garage the gasoline will vaporize properly and the engine will run in good shape, but as soon as the car goes out into the cold air it will cool the engine so that some of the gasoline will be condensed. Therefore we close the radiator cover partly or wholly until the engine is thoroughly warmed. If the car is started in a cold garage, the teakettle and dishrag method must be resorted to. Wrap the cloth around the carburetor so that it does not cover the air intake, and pour the boiling water on the rag, taking care that none gets in the air intake. The hot water will heat the carburetor and intake pipe and raise the temperature of the mixture so that the engine will run. In some cases it may be necessary even to drain out the cooling system and fill it with hot water, so that the combustion chamber becomes heated up.

As the weather becomes colder it will be found necessary, no doubt, to close up the radiator more and more in order to keep the engine at the required temperature. High engine temperature, up to the point where the water in the cooling system begins to boil, is desirable from the standpoint of efficiency, and if no trouble is experienced with irregular running, the hotter the engine is, the larger amount of power is developed.

One manufacturer has incorporated in the radiator a shutter-like device, by means of which the amount of air admitted may be regulated from the driver’s seat. Doubtless others will follow, or find an equally good substitute.

Radiator covers to fit almost any car now made may be procured at trifling expense; one may simply put a piece of cardboard over it. Being out without a cover recently when the engine did not work right, the author stopped when he came to a newsboy and bought a paper and tied it over the radiator, getting home all right with this substitute.

One man complained that his car would start out well and run all right as long as he was going away from home, but as soon as he turned homeward it would begin to act up. He wanted to know if the car had the wanderlust. Inquiry developed the fact that the trips he spoke of on the going trip were with the wind and returning against it. The added force of the wind over the engine cooled the engine too much, and he was advised to cover the radiator under such circumstances. He reported no trouble after trying it.

Of course, sometimes, the skipping can be overcome by enriching the mixture by the dash control, but with the present heavy gasoline the enriched mixture does not seem to do much good and is simply adding to the supply of gasoline which already is refusing to vaporize. Therefore it seems to be the stove and the dishrag for the cold engine.