The Bicycling World, Vol 54, No 17
Articles in this issue
- D. P. Harris, manufacturers' agent, is back in New York after a sweep of jobbing houses from Memphis south to California, Oregon, Washington, Minneapolis and Duluth, reporting jobbers clear of old stock and his own 1906 business up 25 per cent into six figures.
- B. F. Horsting of Chicago becomes secretary-treasurer of the Armac Motor Co., E. W. Keller remains president and takes over as factory superintendent, and gas engine expert Albert Szabelski is engaged; the 1907 Armac gets detail refinements only.
- Thomas Midgley, president of the Hartford Rubber Works Co., adds the new post of general consulting engineer over Hartford, Morgan & Wright and the G & J Tire Co., all units of the Rubber Goods Mfg. Co.
- The James Bailey Co. of Portland, Maine, has cast out both carriages and automobiles and will devote itself wholly to bicycles and cycle and motor supplies.
- The Cycle Dealers Association of Northern California holds its annual meeting at Fresno on January 21, 22 and 23, with officer elections and a closing banquet.
- Meeting at Hotel Knickerbocker on January 16th, the Cycle Manufacturers' Association and the Cycle Parts and Accessories Association appointed committees under C. A. Persons, Alex. Smith and W. H. Graham to probe a New York cycle and motorcycle show for 1908; George N. Pierce resigned the C. M. A. presidency and was succeeded by his son Percy P. Pierce.
- George W. Sherman has tendered his resignation as sales manager of the Reading Standard Cycle Mfg. Co., to take effect February 1st.
- D. P. Harris has annexed the Evertight pump nipple, a threaded barrel with a knurled thumb screw that forces the pump hose into a seat within, guaranteeing a tight joint while inflating with a foot pump.
- The Scientific American describes a small portable air or steam blast apparatus, fitted with a hood and file rack, that reclaims ninety per cent of a shop's discarded files at trifling cost and can resharpen each four to six times.
- The Persons Mfg. Co., Worcester, Mass., has prepared a 1907 renewal set of tension spring, tension plate, truss block, trusses and clamp that converts an old motorcycle saddle to the latest pattern and lets the seat be lowered considerably.
- An untrue wheel makes the load vary on the tire, thumping the tread with a series of hammer blows rather than carrying weight uniformly, so truing matters more to tire maintenance than riders appreciate.
- The Harley Davidson Motor Co. of Milwaukee has taken possession of its new factory and, as the only American machine employing a clutch, purposes an aggressive bid for motorcycle orders this year.
- The Norwich Belt Mfg. Co. of Chicago, belt-making specialists, are making ready to market a belt for motorcycles.
- How a stranded motorcyclist can straighten a bent connecting rod by hammering it on an anvil, then verify the big and little end bearings are in the same plane and parallel using two 12-inch steel test rods, a surface plate and a straight edge.
- A motor bicycle's coaster brake sees far more service than one on an ordinary machine, so it should be cleaned, kept properly adjusted and inspected for breaks or wear at the very first sign of trouble.
- Gasolene feed-pipe leaks are prevented by designing in a coil or liberal bend to allow slack, and by jointing with a flake graphite and oil paste rather than red lead, since the graphite joint never sets and can be opened again.
- Overloading and overspeeding are the greatest sources of tire trouble, and persistent "tire luck" is usually chargeable to the rider's own handling of the machine.
- Leader welcoming the joint Cycle Manufacturers' and Cycle Parts and Accessories inquiry into a 1908 show, arguing that the coaster brake, the two-speed gear and the return of truss frames have all arrived since the last exhibition worthy of the term.
- The runabout and other small cars have been dropped by a score of older makers, and that retreat pushes the public which cannot afford touring cars toward the motorcycle in its two or three wheel form.
- British trade delight at an American motor bicycle maker substituting cast iron cylinders for steel in its 1907 product is misplaced: gas engine cylinders have always been cast iron the world over, and even the Napier used a steel-lined compromise.
- S. R. Bottone, writing in the Motor Trader, explains how to localize magneto failure — washing fouled contacts in benzoline or petrol, testing magnet strength by the weight of soft iron it will lift, and re-magnetizing either against a dynamo or with a home-made horseshoe electro-magnet wound with No. 18 cotton-covered copper wire.
- C. H. Veeder, president of the Veeder Mfg. Co., Hartford, Conn., prefers his chainless bicycle to either of his two motor cars and carries two of his own cyclometers on it — one on the front fork, one geared to the crank — so the difference between the readings shows how far he has coasted.
- The Auto Cycle Club of Great Britain will hold a muffler competition next month, testing every device on a 3 1/2 horsepower machine under standard conditions and judging back pressure, noise, weight, strength and ease of cleaning.
- Roland Douglas has sanctioned the three motorcycle events of the Ormond beach speed carnival, January 22-26, for 110-pound machines only, with a special match for the "big fellows" — among them Curtiss's eight-cylinder V machine of 40 horsepower and 275 pounds, and two four-cylinder M-M machines.
- Floyd McFarland succumbed to Jacquelin in a three heat match in Paris on the 13th inst., the Frenchman taking 1,000 metres in 1 minute 43 3/5 seconds and 2,000 metres in 3 minutes 40 3/5 seconds.
- At the 74th Regiment games in Buffalo on Saturday, January 12th, Louis J. Weintz of the 22nd Regiment took a tangent off the flat floor in the mile handicap and ran into the crowd, breaking his bicycle; T. Burke beat J. Gittere in the mile handicap and Fred Schudt took the two-mile lap race from "Eddie" Delling.
- A Good Roads Magazine writer cites a Kentucky breeder's statistics that tubercular and hoof diseases among horses have almost disappeared on the oiled roads of Fayette County — an argument for dustless highways aimed at the horseman.
- The Chattanooga (Tenn.) Electric Light and Power Company is installing three motorcycles for its "trouble" men, supplanting five teams and their drivers and keeping a man on duty around the clock.
- D. D. Adee of Brooklyn, son of the Century Road Club Association's president, wins the 1906 mileage contest with 9,938 miles and 22 centuries for 12,538 points, ahead of H. Heldman's 8,574 miles and 35 centuries; the full list runs to 92,791 miles and 342 centuries.
- At the National Athletic Club of Brooklyn's weekly home trainer races on the 16th inst., Eddie Root caught Joe Fogler at 3 1-16 miles in an unlimited pursuit for a $50 side bet, and Owen J. Devine beat Walter Goerke by three inches in a mile match.
- Louis Darragon of Paris beat Thaddeus Robl and Parent in a sixty kilometre paced match at the Velodrome d'Hiver on December 27, Parent finishing a poor third a week after lowering the colors of both Hall and Robl.
- An Irish court awarded a cyclist $75 after he was thrown by colliding with a wandering pig, the law against letting live stock roam the highways being so rarely applied that the case caused comment.
- "Eddie" Root and Joe Fogler claim promoter Patrick T. Powers promised them $1,500 not to gain a lap in the Madison Square Garden six-day race; Powers denounces the story as a lie, produces $1,225 receipts signed by each rider, and has abandoned a projected sprint week in New York and two in Chicago.
- The French Union forbids amateurs to let their names appear in advertising, and suspended a rider whose name a bicycle manufacturer used; he was reinstated only after suing the maker and winning.
- Franz Hoffman, the German, claims the title of world's champion pacemaker, having led riders to victory thirty times in thirty-four starts at the Parc des Princes and paced Darragon, Walthour, Robl, Tommy Hall, Albert Champion and the late Harry Elkes and Jimmy Michael.
- A Washington rider recommends the Georgetown canal towpath to Great Falls, Md., 16 or 17 miles out, and recounts a June run in which four bolting tow mules dragged their harness into the canal and he had to rescue a drowning boy and chase the runaway mule.
- The Phoenix Republican reports Mesa gripped by a motorcycle craze, with Dr. Palmer claiming forty miles an hour on the desert road as a tonic and A. V. Redewill riding over from Phoenix on a tandem machine.
- W. F. Miles, who carries the United States mail on the California star route, is fitting a larger rear sprocket to gear his new motorcycle down to about six miles an hour so as to keep his contracted three-mile-an-hour running time and still hunt bear and deer along the road.
- Part V, the concluding instalment of Stanley Bowmar's motorcycle ride to the Pacific Coast: Ogden across the Lucin cut-off and the Nevada deserts to Winnemucca and Reno, then over the Kingsbury grade and past Lake Tahoe to Placerville, Sacramento and the Golden Gate on November 10th.
- A sticking float that only misbehaves part of the time gives an over-rich mixture, a tendency to flooding and difficulty in starting, and can confuse the rider with conflicting symptoms for a long time.
- A tourist-motorcyclist quoted from a Western print rates the pig the only sensible animal on the road, since dogs race straight at the wheel, cows dither, sheep are as fussy as women and horses bolt ahead throwing mud.