OCR Text |
Show IfitMifili iiumiii mmrr """"" FOUR-WHEEL DRIVE AIDS ROAD SURFACE When a man or a family gets used to eating pancakes for breakfast, it takes an extra effort and much advertising adver-tising to make them believe that there Is a breakfast food that is cheaper and better. It is the same with everything. Roads and automobiles- are no exception. excep-tion. We have our present style automobile automo-bile driven by the two rear wheels. The two front wheels carry about the same load, many times there is more weight on the front wheels than the rear ones. And still the rear wheels are compelled to do the pulling for all four. In traveling around the country on dirt or gravel roads you will notice the road surface is full of short little holes dug Into the road by this pull on the wheels. Because the pull on the road surface with the present style drive is exactly equal to the pull on the tire surface, any dirt or gravel road will give way under such a pull or strain. This strain or pull on the road surface sur-face is entirely gone from the front wheels. If we used horses to pull the auto instead of an engine, we would do away with all this pull by the wheels on the road surface. Now, It was never supposed that rolling a road did It any harm. Neither would rolling an auto over the road do much harm. By driving an autn over the road with all four wheels turning together we would be as near the rolling idea, as possible. By turning turn-ing all four wheels at the same time they simply act as rollers and do not dig into the road snrface enough to pull It loose. I claim that four-wheel drive will more than pny for the extra cost in saving on tires alone, writes J. B. Ketchum of Illinois, In Hoard's Dairyman. Dairy-man. It would also save on gasoline; less horse power would be required. It Is the big secret of good roads in Oils country. Until we get the auto perfected per-fected and a successful four-wheel drive, we will never be able to maintain main-tain any road system at a reasonable cost. Our present automobile engineers are just about the same as the man that got used to the pancakes. |