1 f 
Certain high-speed cars perform ex¬ 
cellently on the moderate grades of 
eastern coast and California highways. 
They hang low, they gain speed quick¬ 
ly, they are flexible in traffic, and they 
have a rakish appearance that is often 
fascinating. But they perform poorly 
on rough highways and over the long, 
|j steep grades of great mountain ranges. 
The machines that perform in mud, 
in sand, on steep grades, over the pit¬ 
ted dust of alkali, over the obsidian 
and lava, over the worn granite and 
water-washes—they are not speedsters, 
but they have great pulling power. 
The heavy flywheel, turning on a heavy 
shaft, with six cylinders giving lots 
of pulling power, is what takes one 
through the anxious miles that one 
meets in clay country, after hard rains, 
or in drifting sands, or over the alkali 
flour. Great power in medium-weight 
cars is worth thinking about. Forty 
to sixty horse-power handles 3,000 
pounds of car and 1,000 pounds of car¬ 
load nicely. 
One meets countless people who 
claim to be making 200 to 300 miles 
a day. They may do that on concrete 
and asphalt or oiled stone roads. Only 
f one or two types of cars can do it on 
the hard, heavy going of the west. 
There is a special stage automobile, 
expensive and heavy, which trots all 
over the Rocky Mountains, and there is 
a heavy-make of car that is rather 
above medium weight—and high-priced 
—that does go twenty or thirty miles 
an hour over highways that most folk 
prefer to take at less than twelve miles 
an hour. Burning gas at the rate of 
six or seven miles per gallon, and cost¬ 
ing above $3,000, this light-heavy car 
does make lesser folk envious. 
But when drivers of little cars, and 
medium-weight cars, loaded down with 
camp outfit, talk about going 250 miles 
a day west of the Mississippi, except 
in California, let them go it. They 
do make great distances when nothing- 
breaks—but broken springs, broken 
anxles, wheels knocked out of align¬ 
ment, and other troubles are inevitable. 
They even brag about breaking springs. 
I Well, I drove from New York to San 
Francisco, and south to Los Angeles, 
and didn’t break a spring. But going 
over a surface drain gutter with the 
car not loaded, I broke a spring the 
first week—car bounded away up on 
the lift. And I returned from Los 
Angeles without breaking a spring. I 
simply eased my car over ever obstruc- 
l tion, rut, thankyemarm and stone. 
And cars seldom passed me on up 
grades, or on the long, rough stretches. 
I went fast enough, in my 3,000-pound 
] Car \ 
What counts in a car is performance 
| over rough road, or on long grades, or 
Page 373 
through difficult going. This is touring- 
car performance. If the car climbs 
long grades without heating, as on sec¬ 
ond gear; if it will drive all day in 
high gear over roads that compel one 
to throttle down to three miles an 
hour, and rarely permit a speed greater 
than ten miles —has ample pull on 
high, in other words—that is touring 
performance; and if, when a bridge is 
found washed out and one must go 
down a cut-bank, cross cobble stones 
and then climb a cut-bank with an 
ascent of more than thirty degrees— 
with, perhaps, a perpendicular lift of 
a foot-high step—then enormous power 
must be had at low speed or in low 
gear. 
Second gear serves for most road 
climbing in ordinary highway hills, 
even in the Rockies or transcontinental 
routes. But low must be resorted to 
at times on steep ascents — and de¬ 
scents. 
Brakes wear out if one tries to come 
down slopes of five or ten miles on 
them. The motor must be used to hold 
back the car, and brakes used as little 
as possible. If one becomes used to 
using the motor to hold a car, his 
brakes will last twice or three times 
as long on a car of any weight. The 
emergency ought not to be used at all, 
except in an emergency. But if an 
axle breaks on a slope, then the brakes 
must be good enough to hold the car 
going ahead or backing up. If they 
don’t hold the car, what chance have 
the people in it on a mountain side? 
The car one selects must have good 
brakes; these brakes must be kept in 
order. 
The steering gear of a car is of ut¬ 
most importance. It should be heavy 
enough to stand the strain. It should 
be easy to use. Some cars are hard 
to steer, others easy to steer. Appli¬ 
cation of oil at the connections should 
be easy, and a man ought to be able 
to turn the car, steer the car, with 
one hand on the wheel—but steering 
with one hand isn’t advised, of course. 
One ought not to have to use all his 
strength, or any great exertion, to 
steer his machine. If he has to, he will 
find his arms tired, his shoulders ach¬ 
ing, and his head throbbing on long 
drives, especially day after day. 
Automobiles have grown more and 
more simple In construction. The war 
developed many improvements. The 
would-be tourist may well watch the 
work of repairing in a garage. Fa¬ 
miliarity with the working parts of 
various automobiles would enable one 
to select a car for any particular pur¬ 
pose. Where one must oil, grease and 
tighten up his own car, the oiling and 
greasing chart of a car must be fa¬ 
miliar. Tourists cannot depend on 
garages to look after these details. 
Besides, when a car goes squeaky in 
a desert, who else can locate the nerve- 
racking sounds? 
Oil is more satisfactory than grease, 
I think most drivers agree. I know 
I go over a car with an oil can, and 
by going often enough, sometimes every 
day or two, I can get along without 
too frequent filling of grease cups. A 
car that has its oil cups easily acces¬ 
sible is therefore an important car to 
consider. And those cars which have 
a gallon oil tank, which one fills, and 
a system distributes the oil through¬ 
out the car—they look attractive to a 
driver! Such a system saves time. 
The most exasperating thing I know 
is on my own car. The gasoline is let 
from the filling pump into the tank 
through a bent pipe. Full speed filling 
is impossible. The car takes three 
times as long to take five gallons as 
it takes any other car to fill with ten 
gallons, I think. The oil fed into the 
crankcase also goes through a bent 
tube, and only a small stream can be 
taken. A small matter like this in a 
good car means hours of time, in the 
course of years of use. 
Convenience in all the details of the 
car saves undreamed of time. The 
garage workers cleaning a car, or ad¬ 
justing it, or repairing it, are able to 
work two or three times as fast on a 
well-arranged car as on an awkward 
one. The saving in labor charges at 
$1.25 an hour is an important item. 
In buying a car, the things to be 
demonstrated are not miles a minute, 
or the beauty of the finish, or the sur¬ 
faces of things. Let the salesman, 
for a change, show how easy it is to 
get into the carburetor, to clean it; 
into the motor, to grind the valves; 
into the valves, to adjust them; into 
the gear, into the cylinders. 
There are weak points in every car, 
things that do not work just right. 
Find out what the weak points are in 
any model. The service stations of 
automobiles of various makes can, if 
they will, tell automobile buyers the 
story of their makes of cars. A gen¬ 
eral repair garage will also tell of the 
troubles of cars that come to it. I 
know of no more profitable acquaint¬ 
ance for* the tourist than a garage 
worker. If one goes into a garage 
himself for a time, and works doing 
anything available, the experience will 
pay well. Messing into cars will get 
one’s hands into repairing his own car, 
well enough to bring it into a service 
station, in case of trouble on the road. 
A three-thousand-pound car should 
have 4 l /2-inch tires. On the rough 
roads, this “oversize”—generally stand¬ 
ard now — makes the machine ride 
(Continued on page 393) 
