At various intervals, I've been the recipient of Cragin family memorabilia, photographs and tantalizing paper and other ephemera. There's a small spirit level that's probably 100 years old, along with my father's Boy Scout compass (I truly can't imagine him in the Boy Scouts for long, and I would love to know the circumstances of his membership, but the compass was definitely his). Some objects disappeared. I remember as a child finding and marveling at a small multi-barred pin celebrating five years of perfect attendance in Sunday School at the Unitarian Church in Leominster. It was the most unlikely object my father ever owned.
Lately, a slim volume surfaced during my rummaging. Bound in green vinyl, the cover is an old lick'em style rectangular label that reads:
GASOLINE TESTS
on MODEL 'T' FORD
by H.A. Cragin
WPI—1923
The first page, which is a carbon tissue elaborates:
Road Tests of a Ford Automobile
A Thesis
Submitted to the Faculty
of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute
for the Degree of Bachelor of Science
in
Mechanical Engineering
by Howard A. Cragin and Donald McAllister
June 1, 1923
Howard A(lger) Cragin was my grandfather. I am grateful to have dozens of notes and letters from my grandmother, Bertha Beth Church Cragin, but this is the first evidence of my grandfather's writing I have ever seen. And it's actually a really great problem:
“Introduction:
Much is said regarding the fuel consumption of Fords, but no one seems to know at what speed a Ford should be run to get the most miles per gallon. Some people have said to drive between twenty five and thirty miles per hour while others have said between twenty and twenty five miles per hour but there has been no definite speed set to get the best mileage.”
Back then, Popular Mechanics was being published, and anyone with a smidge of mechanical aptitude could work on their own car (unlike today). I like the dismissive “some people” and the declaration of the thesis which amounts to: How cheaply can you run a Ford? (That's not the only thesis, as you'll see).
"As far as we know there had been no published data on the matter, and since we had a Ford which was at our disposal and wished to know what the most economical speed was, we decided to take it for a thesis subject. Since nearly one-half of the automobiles in the United States are Fords, a great saving in gasoline would result if they were driven at the most economical speed.”
I love it! It's Green before Green! And that's amazing that nearly one-half the automobiles are Fords – I would have thought, in these post-war years, that Tin Lizzies cornered the market.
To continue: “Of course this is more than one can expect to ever happen, but if there had been some published data on such a subject and it was kept before the public's eye, there are many who would try to drive at that speed. The matter of gasoline consumption is getting to be a foremost question at the present time as it has been estimated that with the present use and increase, we have only enough gasoline to last for from fifteen to twenty years, after which some substitute will have to be used.”
Don't you love it? The sky was already falling, and people had just gotten a radio into their homes. They could toast their bread, but they had to shovel coal into the furnace to stay warm at night. And my grandfather was musing about when the horseless carriage would need a horse again.
“After we had started work on this thesis subject a suggestion was made to us that we also try to find out if oil could be tested by putting a certain amount in the crank case and using a gallon of gasoline, thus seeing with which oil the car went the farthest. This was kind of a novel method of testing oil, but when it was thought over we figured that the oil which made the car run the easiest would be the oil having the best lubricating properties for that particular type of work, thus better mileage. If the oil which showed up the best in these result were used there would not only be the saving in gasoline, but there would also be less friction in the engine tending to wear out parts.”
This is another simple proposition, and I love the use of the word “crank case,” which I still hear. Howard's son, my father Donald was a bit of a car snob and during my childhood always had a Morgan sports car he was repairing. These cars were built by hand and were champions at various rallies through the decades, including LeMans. In the photobooks my father kept that preceded my arrival in 1960 there are a number of square, brittle snaps of rallies in New Hampshire with lovingly scrawled notations about the cars. My dad routinely used the words crank case, gear box, glove box, and windscreen, also “boot” (for the trunk behind the car, versus the storage space in front of a VW, a 1957 model of which was also in our barn, parked forlornly on cinderblocks, growing ever dustier. This VW eventually went to LA, where it was lovingly restored by my relatives).
But I digress. Howard's thesis must continue! “The best place to have made these tests would have been on a track, where there would have been no hills and the wind resistance would have equallised itself while changing direction in going around the track. We tried to obtain the track at the exposition grounds in Worester, but were unsuccessful, so a road had to be used.”
Here, I must interject again to say WOWIE WOW!!!! They wanted to drive their tin lizzie REALLY FAST around a track and no one would let them do that!! How disappointing!! But wait --- there's a solution.
“We overcame the difficulties of hills by making the tests all over the same road, and for one set of results all in the same direction with the same driver. This would make a set of comparative results, but of course would not be the true mileage per gallon at the speed which we were running a would have been found on a level track.
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
The problem was to determine on ordinary roads the most ecomnomical speed of a Ford automobile, and to determine whether oil could be tested by the difference in the mileage per gallon of gasoline, using a gallon of different oil in the crank-case for each test, also using the same kind and grade of gasoline.
DESCRIPTION OF APPARATUS
The automobile used in these tests was an ordinary 1917 Ford roadster with nothing but standard equipment. The carburator was a Holley, as furnished with Fords at that time.
The gasoline to be used during a test was carried in two one gallon tanks mounted on the dash as shown in this photograph. A copper tube led from the bottom of each of these in which was a petcock so that gasoline could be drawn from either or both tanks at once. The two tubes cme together a short distance below in a Y-connection from where it went to the carburetor. Each tank contained a float which was attached to a piece of wire, that went up thru the top of the can, therefore giving us an idea of the amount of gasoline left in the tank.”
Readers: There is no way a carbon of a photostat from nearly a century ago is going to have the crispness we want of this TOTALLY HORRIFYING UNSAFE SET-UP. Suffice it to say, having the tanks between driver and engine didn't seem to obstruct the view through the windscreen.
“A Stewart speedometer was also mounted on the dash to determine the speed at which we were running.” (this means a speedometer probably wasn't part of the basic equipment of a 1917 Ford roadster). Before making any tests this speedometer was calibrated so that we know our true mileage and true speed. A description of the calibration of this instrument will be given later.”
He goes on to describe how they carried EVEN MORE GAS in a can in the car and that two kinds of oils were purchased: Mobiloil “E” and Crew Levick. (Gee, where can ya get some Crew Levick for the crank case these days??) “Neither of these were obtained from a salesman, but were bought in the city from a retailer so that no special oil would be given us in order to give extra good results.” (I love this – this means that the two lads either assumed that their experiment was widely known to the public, or, more likely, that they chatted about their plan while buying their oil).
“It was desired by the man who suggested the oil testing that we take temperature readings of the water in the radiator before starting a run and try to have the temperature very nearly the same at the beginning of each test. An ordinary thermometer was used for this.”
The thesis describes the selection of the test site: “a road in East Brookfild that is made of cement and is pradctically level and absolutely straight for over a mile. We went out to this road equipped with a one hundred foot steel tape, selected a prominent marker then measured off a mile. The mile happened to end where there was another marker.”
They then started cruising at speeds “ranging from ten to 35 miles per hour and obtained a calibration curve which came out when plotted, as a straight line.. . . Two sets of these runs were made and the results averaged.
They guessed the most economical speed of a Ford would be found between 25 and 30 miles an hour, and then made further “runs” on a state road between Worcester and Fitchburg, by Leominster (I'm thinking this might be 140, but could be wrong). They had some troubles with some tests, like a piece of wood getting into the gasoline and going through to the carburetor. They changed roads and selected one recently “tarred and sanded” so high speeds weren't possible.
The remainder of the thesis is charts and graphs on what the actual miles per gallon were. I am in awe of my grandfather's expertise (and that of his partner). He also plotted what the carburetor settings were, and what weight of oil was used. I thought about typing all this up – and I may well in the future – but I went online to see what a 1917 Model T looked like and . . .
I fell in love. I once owned a 1964 Volvo which I drove in LA for my time there. Bakelite dashboard, radium green illuminators, rich smell of mold in the horse-hair seats. It was LOUD and a car that was cool to drive except when you were stuck in traffic because that little box got hot.
But a 1917 Model T is adorable. With its crank in the front, and it's squeeze-style gear shifter, plus the in-your-face windscreen (which I believe you can take down), this is the next car I want. They seem to go for around $10 grand, although my experience with vintage cars and owners motivated to sell is that a fist full of hundreds is usually convincing enough.
Anyway, back to the ...
CONCLUSION
This thesis really did bring out some results as to the most economical speed of a Ford automobile. We did not expect to get such a variation in the mileage per gallon as is seen from the curves at twenty and at 30 miles per hour. The ordinary way for a man to run a Ford when he wants fuel economy is to adjust the carburetor all the time. In this way wonderful results have been obtained. We did not do this because we wanted to get the results as an ordinary man would drive who never thought about the carburetor. To do this we adjusted it before making a set of runs and left it that way without touching it even for starting. It would have been interesting to determine the direction of th curves beyond the limits which we set, but this is beyond our power as we had to comply with traffic conditions and could not use an excessive speed. If any one takes this subject for a thesis again, we recommend that he try to obtain the use of the Narragansett Speedway in Providence. That has been used for thesis before and would bring results much more accurate than we obtained.
The main object of our oil testing was to see if such a method would show results. As we have stated previuosly, we obtained results which showed a difference for different oils and they are consistent. It would be quite a problem to carry this along further and to see to what extent this method might be relied upon. This method does not determine whether an oil will stand up under running conditions, but it does determine what oil is the best for the first hundred miles. Oil is usually used in a car for from five hundred to one thousand miles. Therefore, to really learn about an oil by this method, we should take two samples, one new sample and one which has actually seen service in an automobile crank-case. If an oil was then shown to be better by these tests we should make some standard test for lubricating qualities to see if the oil thus determined to be the best is the one which would really cause the least friction and wear on the engine parts, as that is the main object of lubrication.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The writers wish to acknowledge the assistance and advice offered by Prof. C.A. Read.
I went onto the WPI web site and was happy to see there are a variety of female professors in the sciences. But no information on Prof. C.A. Read.
This entry is in honor of my brother Harold Jonathan Krikor Cragin's birthday! Happy birthday Hal!
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