Following on from my brilliant piece of work with the EA mystery beep that didn't exist, why don't we put up some motoring and mechanical funnies or disasters or oddities for a bit of a laugh. Here's a few to start off.
Years ago, on what must have been the "it seemed like a good idea at the time" principle, I decided that an old motor mower would benefit from a bit of petrol straight into the cylinder and few tugs on the rope to clean it out. Gave it a big pull. Fuel and vapor shot out of the plug hole over the spark plug, which was arcing onto the deck or something, and was nicely ignited by the time it hit the paint on the garage door and set fire to it. Only scorched it, really.
This comes from a mate of mine who says he got it from someone involved at the time. Back when manual chokes were common, an old dear bought a new car and had endless problems with poor running and lousy fuel economy. It went into the dealership time after time and was checked, many times, for every possible problem, but it always ran perfectly. Ultimately the service manager suggested that she take him for a drive, to see if it related to her driving. He got into the passenger seat. She got into the driver's seat, then pulled out the manual choke and hung her handbag on it. Turned out she had no idea what a choke was and thought this was a handy little gadget put in by a thoughtful manufacturer for people to hang things on. (For those who haven't encountered a manual choke - or maybe even a carburettor - a manual choke was a knob on the dash connected by cable to the carburettor to give a richer mixture to assist cold starting and early running. The choke was operating when the knob was out and of no effect when it was in.)
My local Bursons has a ventilated brake rotor on the counter, which has lost about 75% of one of the faces and exposed the vanes underneath, which have been scored by the pads, or whatever was left of them. The rotor came off a car that was in regular use until it was written off in a prang.
Years ago, on what must have been the "it seemed like a good idea at the time" principle, I decided that an old motor mower would benefit from a bit of petrol straight into the cylinder and few tugs on the rope to clean it out. Gave it a big pull. Fuel and vapor shot out of the plug hole over the spark plug, which was arcing onto the deck or something, and was nicely ignited by the time it hit the paint on the garage door and set fire to it. Only scorched it, really.
This comes from a mate of mine who says he got it from someone involved at the time. Back when manual chokes were common, an old dear bought a new car and had endless problems with poor running and lousy fuel economy. It went into the dealership time after time and was checked, many times, for every possible problem, but it always ran perfectly. Ultimately the service manager suggested that she take him for a drive, to see if it related to her driving. He got into the passenger seat. She got into the driver's seat, then pulled out the manual choke and hung her handbag on it. Turned out she had no idea what a choke was and thought this was a handy little gadget put in by a thoughtful manufacturer for people to hang things on. (For those who haven't encountered a manual choke - or maybe even a carburettor - a manual choke was a knob on the dash connected by cable to the carburettor to give a richer mixture to assist cold starting and early running. The choke was operating when the knob was out and of no effect when it was in.)
My local Bursons has a ventilated brake rotor on the counter, which has lost about 75% of one of the faces and exposed the vanes underneath, which have been scored by the pads, or whatever was left of them. The rotor came off a car that was in regular use until it was written off in a prang.