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Show FIRST DAYS OF AUTDCRUGIAL Like Turkey Chicks, Treatment Treat-ment During Early Life Has Lasting Effect Did you over study the problems involved in the bringing up of little turkeys? I don't know much about It myself, confesses Ernest Color in tho current Issue of Motor Life, but ovcry time I see a chap tearing along in a brand-new car I am reminded of old Uncle Ezra out in Dubuquo, Iowa, who, between mouth fuls of tobacco juice, delivered himself thus: "Them thero turkey birds? If they gets their feet wot aforo thcy's ten days old, good night! After that you got to kill them wJth an ax, by gum." Whatever philosophy can be extracted extract-ed from thiB piece of bucolic wisdom may bo applied to the treatment of your now car. The ponderous locomotive loco-motive traveling on ideally smooth rails and tho automobile you drive over the boulovards of our large cities and over "Uncle Sam's cursed country coun-try roads" are different mainly in that tho former is attended by a carefully trained and efficiency-proved engineer, while the motorist's chief qualifications qualifica-tions for the Job of an automotive engineer en-gineer generally aro thoso of a successful suc-cessful soap manufacturer. Whatever one's notion of the new car as a monetary value may be it is well to bear in mind that mechanically mechani-cally a car is no better than its bearings. bear-ings. With the exception of lubrication lubrica-tion the most important factors involved in-volved in tho satisfactory operation of an autoraomlblo are the bearings. And It is the bearings that in a new car are apt to refuse to be Imposed uopn heforo they are proporly introduced intro-duced to their arduous duties. At the factory engine bearings are fitted very carefully. The Job itself Is not one to bo undertaken by a novice. It is painstaking work even for an expert to obtain proper bearing surfaces. But a perfoctl bearing surfaces. sur-faces. But a perfect hearing surface never is a hand-made Job, but tho result re-sult of a gradual wcarlng-in process going on during the engine's operation under load, in spite of the fact that boarings as well as shafts are finished fin-ished with the mechanical precision of exceptionally accurate machines, the final fitting of the bearings In the better cars at least Is done by hand, by the "spotter-ln" process In which a good deal of tho success depends on the dexterity of the operator and the caro with whicjv he proceeds. The babbit metal with which plain engine bearings are lined in compressible compres-sible to a certain extent, so that after the bearing surfaces have been hammered ham-mered by many thousands of explosions explo-sions they take a certain "set" with the result that they become measure-ably measure-ably larger. This being tho case, the factory very sensibly adjusts tho bearings bear-ings an close as possible, well knowing that the first lew hundred miles of road travel will open them to the proper prop-er fit. What the motoriBt should keep before him in tho first tew days of his -companionship with the new car is that within the initial five hundred miles the bearings may run hot; this applies with particular force to the main engine bearings, which, in case of damage cannot be reached except by tho expensive process of partially dismantling tho motor. Aside from the "sot" a babbitt-lined bearing gradually assumes a degree of class-like smoothness that comes only from actual service contact of the bearing and the shaft turning in it. Before that time the bearings retain a certain roughness which even the most careful scraping, spotting and fitting cannot eliminate, Even the most generous lubrication Is often unable un-able to reduce the friction thus set up to a point out Involving temporary danger. If you happen to be one of those who change their cars from season to seasons as you would change your 'spats, passing tho cast-off beauty to a jless affluent motorist, you probably needn't worry much about the manufacturer's manu-facturer's advice to give your autorao- one a cnance to walk boiore compelling compell-ing it to produce engine speed that is, unless you burn your bearings out some seventeen miles from anywhere and have to bo towed behind a mule, who inturn, is bossed by a more or less chocolate-colored gentleman whose time suddenly becomes worth a lot of money. If you are of that Ilk, the worrying probably will be done by the secondhand second-hand car dealer and ultimately by the chap who falls heir to your procrastinations. procrastin-ations. But if you are a member of that much larger motoring family, which is the mainstay and meal ticket of our American automobile industry, the kind that treats oven inanimate machinery with a consideration for the lack of which the most Ingeniously designed de-signed and built mechanism cannot live out its-allotted time, then you will not succumb to the temptation to make your butcher look "like a bum," just because he trips to pass you on the way to tho roadhouse where "Mumm" is the word. oo ' |