The Bicycling World, Vol 54, No 9
Articles in this issue
- The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. of Akron, Ohio, brings out the first mechanically-fastened motorcycle tire, held not by inflation but by a removable rim flange locked with a spring steel ring that lets the tire be freed by slipping a finger under the taper of the ring.
- F. A. Baker & Co. of New York take the Yale-California agency for Greater New York and all Long Island, completing their 1907 line beside the chain-driven Indian; Edward Buffum and F. C. Cornish came on from Toledo to close the deal.
- The Leyland Birmingham Rubber Co., which has an office in the Board of Trade building in Montreal, has lost no time putting a G & J type tire on the Dominion market now that the Canadian G & J patent has expired.
- J. W. Grady & Co. of Worcester, Mass., have acquired the selling agency of the Crouch motor bicycle and will market the 1907 output; the Crouch Motor Co. quietly made and disposed of about 100 machines this year.
- The Relay Manufacturing Co. is incorporated at Charlotte, N. C., with $125,000 capital to make bicycles, parts and accessories, beginning business with $4,000; the incorporators are G. V. Keller, M. F. Trotter and Morris E. Trotter.
- George C. Smith, who previously covered territory for the Pope Mfg. Co., has been added to the traveling staff of the Reading Standard Cycle Mfg. Co.
- The Denver Bicycle Cement Co. is incorporated in Denver, Col., with $5,000 capital by Harry E. Gougar, George F. Fridwell and J. F. Jones.
- In the elevator of Chicago's Auditorium Annex during the Cycle Manufacturers' Association meeting, A. G. Spalding — first president of the 1898 American Bicycle Co. trust — was introduced, unrecognised, to four makers who had refused to join it, and preached dividing a man's life into three periods and living simply.
- The Reading Standard's Model A tandem for 1907 will use the new R-S three horsepower mechanically-operated motor and a convertible front diamond with removable top tube for lady's use, on a 74 1/2-inch wheel base, listed at $275.
- Lamps of all sorts burn best nearly horizontal, so the rider must weigh the advantage of directing the beam onto the track close at hand against swinging the lamp low and inclining it to an extreme degree.
- The Consolidated Mfg. Co. of Toledo refines rather than redesigns the Yale-California for 1907: a one-piece drop-forged crankshaft with counter-balance weights, a larger float chamber, a round 5 1/2-quart tank, a disc-strainer silencer and a cushioned truss front fork; price rises from $175 to $185.
- Yale traveler A. B. Coffman, writing from Terre Haute, Ind., reports an exceptionally fine fall, wheels selling right along, and dealers who work together in more harmony than in any other town he has visited.
- Consolidated Mfg. Co. will add a $50 cushion frame model to the Yale line for 1907, using Sager helical spring construction in the forks with two plates of saw steel forming the cushion at the crank hanger.
- How to remove and refit cast-iron piston rings using thin strips of tin plate to hold them clear of the groove, the scarf joint versus the slantwise 45 to 60 degree cut, and the carbon-silicon-sulphur-manganese mix that yields an elastic close-grained casting.
- Amateur electricians can drive the small dynamos used for wireless telegraph station batteries far more effectively than by hand crank: remove the rear tire, pass a round belt from the rim to the dynamo pulley, and brace or jack up the bicycle.
- Leader urging dealers to advertise now, stock juvenile machines, velocipedes and other pedal-propelled toys along with accessories, and dress the shop window, since it is by the show window that the public learns the holidays are at hand.
- Leader answering one of the largest handlers of bicycles, who wants "something new — even if it is nothing more than a new sprocket": novelty gives the dealer something to talk about and sells wheels, though the constant shifting of designs was the ban of the manufacturing end of the trade.
- The New York Motorcycle Club's twice-postponed open century from New York to Bedford, N. Y., and return on Nov. 18 brought two checkers arrested for scorching on Broadway, mud shower baths, a rural sheriff's trap and bent cranks; 15 of 25 starters finished within 6-8 hours, W. F. Mann leading.
- The new 666-metre (728.3-yard) track at Munich, where Paul Guignard rode 59 miles 30 1/2 yards in the hour, is built almost round with no plunge into the banking and was designed to hold speeds of more than sixty miles an hour.
- The Brower Wheelmen's thirty-mile road race from Bedford Rest to Valley Stream, L. I., and return is the section's sole Thanksgiving fixture; Cameron, Sherwood, Weintz, Mock, the Eiflers, Fisher, Wilcox, Raleigh, MacDonald and George Wiley of Syracuse are entered.
- Petit-Breton, Carlo Vanoni, Emil and Leon Georget and Walter Rutt sailed from Havre on La Lorraine with "Bobby" Walthour; Stol and the Salt Lake bunch of Hardy Downing, Norman Hopper, W. E. Samuelson, Cyrus Hollister and McFarland follow, all to train at the Vailsburg board track.
- American jockey O'Connor, having taken up motor pacing at Berlin, challenged Thaddeus Robl on condition the German use no wind-shields; Robl covered 50 kilometres in 34 minutes 12 seconds and the jockey-cyclist quit at 30 kilometres.
- "Bobby" Walthour beat world champion Darragon and Nat Butler in a 60 kilometre paced race without windshields at the Velodrome d'Hiver, Paris, on Nov. 12, riding 30 kilometres in 22:57 1/5 and the full distance in 45:55 2/5, with Butler 21 laps down.
- In the Century Road Club Association's five mile road race, outsiders Reese Hughes and William Voehringer of the Edgecombe Wheelmen beat the Eiflers and Duester, Hughes winning by eight seconds in 13:20 after the committee halved the advertised ten mile distance.
- The Hicksville (L. I.) Athletic Club is looking for boneshakers and ordinaries lying in cellars and attics for an "antique" race at its Thanksgiving afternoon meet, which will also carry a half-hour bicycle team race and a boys' "pushmobile" race.
- The Federation of American Motorcyclists has begun a campaign against the Pennsylvania law, never designed to apply to motorcycles, which imposes a $3 annual fee on residents and non-residents alike and requires big cast-iron tags front and rear.
- Nat Butler won the 50 kilometre race at the Velodrome d'Hiver, Paris, on Nov. 1st in 44:11 2/5, defeating Bruni by only 16 yards and Rugere by 14 laps.
- Home trainer races on a platform in the centre of Madison Square Garden will run each evening of the six-day week of Dec. 10-15; Victor J. Lind of the Century Road Club of America's racing committee arranged an inter-club two-mile championship and a one-mile individual event.
- T. W. Pennington and Joseph Thole reached LaCrosse, Wis., en route from Seattle, Wash., to Benton Harbor, Mich. — about 2,500 miles — carrying tents, bedding and cooking utensils on their bicycles and meaning to join a religious sect called the Benjamins or Sons of Israel.
- Tom Cooper of Detroit, who took up racing in 1893, tied E. C. Bald at 65 points for the 1896 circuit championship and won the national championship in 1899, was killed instantly in an automobile accident in Central Park after midnight on Monday, Nov. 19; a review of his career against Bald, Sanger, Gardiner and "Major" Taylor.
- Fred Schudt of the Roy Wheelmen won the five mile open at the Sixty-fifth Regiment armory meet in Buffalo on Nov. 16 from Al. Mercer and W. E. Bauman; McCracken and Robertson fell in the two mile handicap and had to be separated, the race going to Gus Gurn.
- The Prospect Park Cork Pullers shifted their final ten mile championship race from Twenty-second avenue to King's Highway, Brooklyn, on Nov. 18 to dodge the police; "Sir" Walter Raleigh won in 25:27 3/5 from Fred Warner, but Louis J. Weintz of the New York A. C. had already taken the championship on 14 points.
- William Vanden Dries of the New York A. C. won the two mile handicap at the Letter Carriers' Association games in the Ninth Regiment Armory on Nov. 17; Charles Nerent of the Roy Wheelmen fell and brought down George Cameron and Weintz, who recovered to beat Cameron for second in 5:22 2/5.
- At the Thirteenth Regiment armory in Brooklyn on Nov. 17, Gus Perden captured the one mile handicap from 60 yards and Wallace Charlton the two mile from 75 yards, with the newly returned Owen J. Devine second in both.
- How Hardy K. Downing of San Jose, Cal., went from a green country boy in borrowed knickerbockers at an Oakland meet under Colonel "Jack" Dermody to amateur champion of the State, and how he faced down a "South of Market" tough at the old nine lap San Francisco indoor track.
- R. G. Betts, president of the Federation of American Motorcyclists, was elected to the board of governors of the Amateur Athletic Union at its annual meeting in New York on Nov. 19, an alliance that strengthens the bond between the two bodies.
- Thomas W. Davis of Peoria, Ill., now in his eightieth year, covered "only" 5,191 miles this season for a lifetime total of 121,579, attributing his reduced mileage to bad luck with tires he thinks inferior to those of several seasons since.
- Noble C. Tarbell's Century Road Club of America report for the ten months to Oct. 31 puts Herman H. Hintze of New York ahead of Harry Early of Bayonne in both the century and mileage competitions; members rode 528 centuries and 59,916 miles in the period.
- Walter Bardgett, the crack Buffalo sprinter known as "Bridget," is sojourning in Harlem after living the simple life on Cad Neidner's Kentucky farm since the Salt Lake City season closed, and may stay for the six-day race if a partner can be found.
- George E. Holt and Lester R. Creutz write from Wolverhampton on Oct. 23 after 800 miles awheel and two channel crossings, describing the Liverpool-to-London road through Chester's walls and Roodee, Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Coventry and Kenilworth Castle, with English mud and the knee-long rubber cape.
- Cosmos of Paris explains that tires go flat without puncture because compressed air filters through the enlarging pores of the rubber and oxidises it, and argues for nitrogen inflation from pressure bottles, now preferred by chauffeurs after recent automobile tests.
- John H. Hull, a dealer of Mount Hope, Pa., lettered an R-S motorcycle advertisement across a large boulder facing the main road on a mountain top above his town; the paper commends the stones and fences of every locality to progressive cycle dealers.
- Too small a port area starves a motor of gas or chokes the exhaust, and a carbon deposit on the exhaust port walls breeds the same weakness in an old motor; the piston and cylinder head are easy to clean once the machine is dismantled, but the exhaust ports seldom need it.
- How to lay up a bicycle or motor bicycle: flush the lubricating oil ducts and cylinder thoroughly with kerosene, empty and dismount the oil cup, drain and wash the crankcase, wipe the wrist pin, connecting rod and flywheels, then smear the interior with fresh oil as a rust preventative.
- With magnetos gaining ground, this explains that low tension ignition makes its spark by movable electrodes struck, wiped or snapped apart inside the cylinder and needs only a single-winding magneto, while the high tension magneto carries the secondary winding over the low tension one and requires no external coil.
- The planetary gear — the epicyclic or crypto gear abroad — is the only change speed gear that suits the motorcycle; illustrated by a vertical section of the two-speed gear on the German N. S. U. machine, whose friction clutch, flanged ring 13 and tapered fork give about 35 per cent reduction.