Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/685

 Popular Science MoNfhl//

���California produce peddlers are nothing if not enterpris- ing, and the automobile has, with them, replaced the horse

��The Vegetable Peddler Adopts the Fast Motor-Truck

THE motor-truck is being used in Southern California as a vegetable store on wheels. For some time prior to the use of the truck for this purpose the lowly horse had been used to draw the vegetable wagon up one street and down the next, but so much more efficient is the truck for this pur- pose that it is being rapidly taken up by C alif ornia produce peddle rs.

Upon the regular truck plat- iorm special- ly-designed vegetable- carrying

bodies are being constructed, the lower deck being the salesroom, while the upper floor is intended to hold the reserve supply. More than thirty per cent more can be covered by one of these vege- table-trucks in a day than by the old horse-drawn ve- hicle. The result is increased profits, a neater appearance and much time saved.

The bodies are of the "quick detach- able" variety, so that it is a common sight to see a vege- table vendor and his family touring on Sundays and holidays.

In fact, the money invested in su:;h a motor-truck is con- sidered well-spent by the peddler.

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Automobile Muffler Works on Vacuum Principle

automobile engineers have ad- mitted that the present type of muffler in which the gases are allowed to expand from a small pipe into the muffler and are then carried back and forth through passageways, is inefficient be- cause it in- creases the engine back- pressure and prevents a rapid exit of the burned exhaust gases. The new muffler is a noise- d e a d e n er because it prevents the sudden ex- pansion of t Ii e com- pressed gases to the lower at- mospheric pressure. The exhaust gases enter the muffler perpendicularly and strike against a small conical surface which divides them up into numerous

6s5e5 in

��Cone for deflecting

��Small strean^ between adjacent radial fins

���Details and general appearance of the new principle, disk-shaped automobile silencer

��small streams by means of two sets of radial fins. These little discharges are delivered to the muf- fler exit one by one, since the paths to the opening are of dif- ferent lengths, thus avoiding the noise caused by the ex- plosion of a larger volume of gas. Each small discharge stream is also in con- tact with the muffler walls, so that it is cooled and its volume decreased on the way out. With this muf- fler, the gas engine is able to produce more power and efficiency.

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