The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-08-25
HEARD ABOUT AUTOMOBILES HERE AND THERE

1 Here. I think. is the principal source of waste. Just remember that the modern
 automobile engine will run on a mixture
 anywhere between seven parts of air 10
 one of gasoline and F parts of air to
 one of gas. As a matter of fact, the
 leaner the mixture, within the limits noted, the better the engine will run. On the heavy mixture the engine is slug gish, carbonizes rapidly and lacks the snap that we want to feel but it will run. But car running on a mixture of seven parts air to one of gasoline is consuming almost twice as much gaso- line as one operating on the F to one | fuel. There you have case in nutshell It is not too much to say that it today the patriotic duty of every Amer: can motorist to see to it that his car bureter is adjusted to feed the leanest
 mixture on which the engine will run.
 By doing this all of us will benefit our selves and in addition many of us will cut our fuel bills nearly in haf.
 Within the past year or so there have been placed on the market number of devices taking the form of air valves for installation in such position that ac may be admitted to the manifold Tn general these devices were so designed that air was admitted as the speed of the car increased. Now, all these are based on the simple understanding by their manufacturers of the almost uni versal habit of car owners of running on too rich a mixture In practically every modern carhureter this same con- dition that is produced by these extra valves may be obtained by adjustment of the instrument. The fact is that the average car owner does not understand his carbureter, but in the present po- tential fuel crisis it is his duty either to learn it so that he may make adjust ments himself, or else take it to the near est service station and have it adjusted. In some of the older carbureter designs the air range is not wide enough and then the installation of an auxiliary valve is not only advisable but imperative.
 KEROSENE MAY BE ADDED
 With the carbureter properly adjusted, it is possible, particularly during hot
 weather, to use certain proportion of kerosene, mixed with the conventional
 gasoline as fuel. In some cases the en- zines may do very well on a mixture of one third kerosene to two-thirds gasoline. Tn other instances, onequarter of the heavier oil is all that can be handled. This may seem like trivial saving but remember that if all the 5,000,00O mo- torists in the country made similar. one-quarter or one-haf of our gasoline supply would be saved, not to mention
 
 from the use of a proportion of the heavier and cheaper fuel.
 The second serious waste of gasoline comes, I think, from the failure of the average car owner to get all the power out of the fuel that he does use. When the fuel goes to the combustion cham bers poorly or partly vaporized, it does not deliver all the power of which it is capable and that is nothing but waste
 Every carburetion system ought to have some method of applying heat to the fuel, to secure complete vaporzation and com plete delivery of it's power bv the fuel
 LEAKS ARE EXPENSIVE
 On the subject of leaks, there are many things to be said. Some of these may be actual leaks. During the warm weather | tiny leak in the gasoline line is very hard to detect as the escaping liquid evaporates so rapidly that there is no tell-tale moisture. A very small leak in
 the gasoline may be enough to account for an abnormal increase ill gasoline con- ssumption if you have noticed such 6