Gus Wilson, proprietor of the Model
Garage, poked a forefinger at young Tommy Tibbet, one of his favorite
customers. "If you want to coach the Central High track team," he said
sternly, "you've got to fight for it."
Outside, the rain poured down and Gus
recalled how it had rained for three weeks when he first opened up. And how
Tommy's grandfather, Judge Tibbett, had rolled up in his Reo one soggy
afternoon, surveyed the all but deserted premises and said, "Don't be
discouraged, Gus. With a little luck, things will work out."
After that the courthouse crowd had begun to bring in their cars.
Tommy, who had grown up around the
garage, was the town's newest teacher of physical education. Now he
wanted to move up the ladder. "But I'm licked before I start," he told
Gus. "They've brought in this new man, Boggs, to head the department.
He makes the assignments and he's a track coach himself."
"Have you told him how you've trained
your boys?"
"We've got a date for tomorrow noon."
"Tell him how you've worked with them
through junior high school and the town recreation program. Tell him that."
A 1967 Oldsmobile rolled to the front
of the garage. "You tell him," Tommy said. "Here he is now."
A car door slammed and a burly,
middle-aged man sloshed through the rain. "Hello Tom," he said, then offered
his hand to Gus. "I'm Horatio Boggs. My radiator hose collapsed.
I've got to get to Reedsville right away to make a dinner talk. Can I
rent a car here?" Reedsville was across a range of hills and the road
was treacherous.
"Why not change your hose?" asked Gus.
"No time. Besides, my bad luck
runs in threes. Sure as fate, I'd have another breakdown in those
hills."
Gus saw Tommy's Plymouth beyond the
gas pump. The tank was full and the '64 car had been recently tuned.
Tommy saw it too. "You take my
car, Mr. Boggs," he offered. "Gus can have your car ready in the
morning."
"Pick it up on the way to school," Gus
suggested.
You could see Boggs' mind working.
This would save a half hour, click. He'd buy it, click! "You got
a deal. Much obliged," he rumbled.
Tommy and Gus walked him out to the
Plymouth and watched him head for the hills. Silently the two shook
hands.
Gus replaced the faulty hose the next
morning. When Tom walked in, Gus said, "I've got a hunch that today is
your big day."
Almost at once they heard the awful
noise. Tommy's Plymouth was limping in, one cylinder skipping each
compression cycle. Horatio Boggs braked to a stop and jumped out.
"Young man, your car's a lemon," he told Tom. Maybe your intentions
were good but you wrecked my evening."
"But it was running smooth as butter,"
Tom exclaimed.
"Up in those hills, all at once, that
cylinder cut out and stayed out. Drove me nuts!" Like I told
you, my luck runs in threes. That's two in a row. Well I'll
survive. Is my car ready?"
Gus said, "Sure, but I'd like to know
what happened."
The big man shrugged. "She
simply started to miss. Well, forget it." He leaped into his
Olds and took off.
Gus could feel the pain of Tom's
disappointment.
Stan Hicks, Gus's assistant, started
the Plymouth, and its jarring rhythm filled the air. He turned to Tom.
"Come on, I'll drive you to school and then try her on a hill."
Gus sighed, wishing he knew as much
about the inside of a man's skull as he did about the inside of an engine.
That afternoon, a long-faced Tom
Tibbett walked back toward the garage. Boggs had firmly rejected his
application. Turning the corner, he was surprised to see Boggs himself
standing in the door of the garage, his arms waving. Tom jogged the
last block.
Boggs was shouting at Stan.
"What kind of shop is this? I drive a car you've tuned and it turns
into a clunker. I get a new hose and it collapses like a wet pretzel.
And where's Gus Wilson?"
Gus's voice rose from the oil pit.
Let's find out what's wrong, first. Then maybe we can call each other
names."
"Okay, you find out if you can," Boggs
agreed. "I've got to make a phone call. Somebody lend me a
dime."
Gus lifted the hood of the Olds.
The hose was plump but a little soft.
"What's he yelling about?" asked Stan.
"It's like new."
"Maybe not," Gus said, unscrewing the
radiator cap. A soundless whistle escaped from his lips as he examined
it. "This is a 1968 cap. How come it's on a 1967 Olds?" He
got a parts catalog.
"I was right. The 68 cap takes
2-1/2 pounds of vacuum to vent it; the 67 cap only a half pound. You
get the right cap out of stock and put it on. And one of those
spring-reinforced hoses, too.
"Can a cap make that much difference?"
Tommy asked.
"Cooling systems operate under
pressure. The higher the pressure, the hotter the coolant can get without
boiling away. A hot engine develops more power. So radiators
have caps with double seals to hold the pressure. Trouble is, they
cool off slow. Take the cap off a hot radiator and it'll spray you and
you lose your coolant."
"Caps look all the same to me."
Gus turned the removed cap over and
squeezed it, compressing the spring. "Watch that spring. It holds the
lower seal against the coolant's pressure.
The bottom of the cap had a dime size
disk cut into it. He pulled it out and then let it snap back.
That's the vacuum release. This '68 model takes 2-1/2 pounds of vacuum
before it'll vent, five times as much as the one the year before."
"Where does this vacuum come from?"
asked Tom.
"Hot coolant expands to fill the
radiator system. Turn off the engine and the coolant contracts.
The system is sealed, so the space left by contracting liquid has got to be
a vacuum. In this case, it wasn't strong enough to pop the cap.
Still, some vacuum did develop as the engine cooled and something had to
give-it was the hose."
When the Olds was ready to roll, Gus
remembered Tommy's problem. "Get that coaching job yet?"
"He turned me down."
Boggs came out of the office, his mood
softened. "Sorry I popped off. Got too much to do. Never
seem to catch up."
Gus said, "I guarantee no more
radiator trouble."
Boggs looked at his watch, jumped into
his car, and was gone.
Tom's Plymouth sat there shaking and
vibrating. "Wonder if this clunker will take me to the school?" he
asked.
Gus had a better idea. "Stan
will drive you out in the pickup. I'm going over that ignition again.
Could be that he missed something somewhere."
Gus reviewed the plugs, wires,
compression, the works. With a bench magnifier, he inspected every
plug for hairline cracks. Nothing. After making sure that all
the high-tension lines were okay, he pulled them off the distributor and
removed the cap to check its towers for leakage. He rubbed his finger
and thumb together, then grabbed his magnifying glass and peered into the
gap.
On the bottom, he saw a scattering of
almost invisible metal flakes. His forefinger stroked the aluminum
inserts. One of them might have retreated fractionally into the mount.
When Stan came back, Gus asked, "You
know where Tommy got this distributor cap? It's not one of ours."
"I bought it off the Ace Supply
station wagon when it was here. Something wrong with it?"
"I've been hearing about aluminum
inserts. Let's try a different cap." The replacement cap had
brass inserts. Gus snapped it into place, started the engine. It
rolled over as smooth as a millrace.
"That's it! Aluminum is touchy
stuff. When a spark jumpsoff it, it generates a gas containing
nitrogen. In wet air, this turns into weak nitric acid. The acid
forms a fungus that attacks the inserts. When the rotor spins and hits
this flaky stuff, it turns into a grinding wheel. An insert wears away and
you've got an instant miss." He slid behind the wheel. "You lock
up, Stan. I'm going out to see Tommy's young athletes."
At the athletic field, muscular youths
were swarming energetically over the track. Horatio Boggs was sitting
in his car, watching, and working at a pile of papers on his lap. As
Gus parked, Tom Tibbett and a quartet of cross-country runners passed
nearby.
"Mr. Boggs, you still trying to catch
up with your paperwork?" asked Gus.
"Some day, by golly, I'll do it."
Boggs looked at the Plymouth. "The way she sounds now you found the
trouble."
"The distributor was acting up."
Boggs lips tightened abruptly and he
winced. "So's my ulcer."
Gus's indecision fled. A little
meddling was called for. With an ulcer, a new department to run, too
much paperwork, and a heavy coaching load, this man would soon be in deep
trouble. For his own good, he needed to be told!
"Tell me something, Wilson. Are
you superstitious?" Boggs asked in a voice tight with anxiety.
Gus made a knock-on-wood gesture.
"Not in the least."
"I am. Things always happen to me in
threes. First it was that hose... then the Plymouth. What next?"
Gus took the '68 radiator cap from his
pocket. "How long have you been driving with this cap on your '67
car?"
"They sold it to me at a service
station the other night after my old one blew off and rolled into the
highway. A truck ran over it."
"It's what made your hose collapse.
Don't you know you have to match a cap with the car it's made for?"
Boggs looked very tired. "Of
course I knew-it slipped my mind."
"Sometimes we make our own hard luck,"
Gus said. "We try to do too much when there are young people around
raring to carry some of the load."
The educator glanced at the papers
heaped around him. Then his eyes roved the athletic field searching
out Tom Tibbett. You could almost see his mind work. He was
getting older; nature was warning him to ease up, click. Coaching
would interfere with his real work, click.
He scrambled out of the car and
trotted to the track, where he hailed a runner. "Hey you! Run over
there and tell Coack Tibbett I want to see him," he demanded.
"Coach who?"
"Coach Tibbett. Go get him."
Waiting, Gus watched Tommy cross the
field with that four-square walk that was so much like his grandfather's.
"A little something on a long-overdue
account, Judge," he muttered.
END
