CHAPTER XLI

KEEPING DOWN THE AUTO UPKEEP

If the general run of auto owners and chauffeurs do not mend their ways city streets will be paved with a mixture of asphalt and auto parts and country roads will be lucrative fields for the junkman. Anyone who doubts this need but inspect the pavement at busy corners and see what a collection of junk is strewn along, particularly at the places where many cars make sudden stops.

To illustrate: The other day a car stopped and the driver pondered what was the matter that the engine had no power. Failing to get a solution, as he was near a garage, he called for a mechanic to look it over.

“A few minutes ago,” he said, “the engine had so much power I couldn’t stop it when I wanted to; now I can’t make it pull at all.”

“Open your throttle,” the mechanic said.

“The throttle is open,” was the response.

“Oh, I see,” said the workman, and he disappeared into the garage. In a few minutes he reappeared with a small bolt and proceeded to connect the throttle linkage so that the lever and accelerator pedal would open the throttle when moved.

What had happened was that through neglect the bolt had worked loose and dropped out so that the lever did not move the throttle arm, and advancing the lever had no effect.

This bolt probably is one of those to be found imbedded in the pavement somewhere about the city. An examination of the pavement of any of the automobile thoroughfares will reveal nearly all the fifty-seven varieties of auto accessory parts in the asphalt. A great many of the bits of metal found there will be broken skid-chain links, but the writer counted twenty-six different species of other lost parts in crossing Fifty-seventh Street at Eighth Avenue, New York City.

While counting them a driver came along and was unable to stop his car properly—the brake did not work and he had to use the emergency brake after nearly running over a pedestrian. He got out and found that a pin was gone in the brake linkage. A spring cotter had worked out or sheared off and the pin had rattled loose and dropped out.

Many of the stray parts are of a similar nature; nuts, bolts, washers, screws, cotter pins and the like which have worked loose because of neglect. Their absence will doubtless account for a good many of the rattles and squeaks which their former owner is now complaining of, and to replace which he will pay the garage man several times their value.

The average instruction book given with a car will advise the owner to go over the car every so often and tighten up the bolts and nuts as a precautionary measure, but usually no attention is paid to this until the car stops or develops some unusual sound. Then a mechanic is called in and it takes him a couple of hours to find the cause of the trouble, while the owner stands around cursing the maker of the car.

Probably a good many of these parts along the road are due to careless mechanics who drop small parts in the dust pan and will not take the trouble to fish them out, or leave them on the running board and after a time they jar off to the roadway; but it shows there is a lot of carelessness among drivers when they even lose number plates and hub caps.

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.