Gus Wilson started it by remarking that
the bass search would open the next morning, and that he was going up to the
lake to have a try at those odd bronze-backs.
That started off George Knowles, whose
number-one conversational favorite is fishing.
"I just got back from a fishing trip up in
Maine," he told the little group of Gus's
customers and friends who had drifted into the shop of the Model Garage for
the laudable purpose of killing a late afternoon hour.
"Did I tell you about the - "
"Yes, you did!" the group chorused.
They had heard plenty about George's fishing adventures since he got
back home.
Knowles grinned at them.
"All right," he accorded, "I won't make you sunfish catcher jokes by
telling you about the twelve pound blue backed salmon that it took me forty
minutes to get into the boat...This is something different.
I've been saving it for Gus - it's about a queer experience I had
with my car.
"One day while I was up there in
Maine, a couple of other fellows and I
took a trip to a little lake 'way back in the woods.
We fished all day, and didn't have any luck at all.
Then, just about sunset, they started biting.
Oh, boy! Result was that
it was after dark when we got ashore, and about
nine o'clock by the time we'd
finished supper at the guide's house and got started for the hotel in my
car. We had a thirty-five-mile
drive ahead of us - fifteen
miles of it over as rough a woods road as I've ever seen.
"We hadn't gone far when it started to
rain. But we bumped along all
right for maybe a half hour.
Then we blew out a tire. While
we were changing it one of the fellows let out a yell:
"Holy Mackerel! The gas
tank's gone!" And it was gone -
jarred right off the car!
"That was sweet.
We walked back half a mile looking for it - I had a flash light, of
course - but we couldn't find it.
Then the flash light began to go dim, so we went back to the car.
"We sat there for a while, wondering what
the devil we should do. I
remembered that where we'd turned off from the main highway there was a
settlement and I'd noticed a gas pump in front of a little hick garage.
We figured that we couldn't be very far
from that place - that maybe we were close enough to it for the gas left in
the vacuum tank to take us there.
If it didn't - well, we wouldn't be any worse off than we were.
So we started.
"Just as we got over the crest of a low
hill, a little way along the road, I saw dim lights down in the dip ahead,
and just then the engine coughed and quit.
But I let the car coast down in the hill, and we just, made it to the
little garage I'd noticed that morning - our head lights picked up its gas
pump at the side of the road.
The place was dark, but after we had hammered on the door for a while an
upstairs window was opened, and a woman stuck out her head and said she'd be
down in a minute. When she
came down she said that her husband, who ran the garage, had gone to
Portland and wouldn't be back for a couple
of days. She knew how to work
the gas pump, but that's all she did know.
Naturally, she couldn't be any help to us in replacing our lost gas
tank.
"There didn't seem to be anything to do
but stay where we were until morning.
The woman told us that the proprietor of the little general store
across the road let rooms to tourists.
When we got over there, he was locking up for the night, but he let
us in. I noticed that he had a
display of oil cans in his window, and they gave me an idea.
"I want to buy a five-gallon oil can and
a three-root length of rubber hose.'
I told him. While he was
getting them for me, I said to the other fellows:
"Don't bother about rooms.
We won't need them. I'll
get you back to the hotel tonight."
They looked as if they thought I was screwy, but they didn't say
anything, and went back to the car with me.
"After some more pounding on the garage
door, I got the woman to come down and fill the oil can with gasoline.
Then I got into the car and worked the free end of the gasoline feed
pipe up through a hole in one of the floor boards.
Next, I connected one end of the length of rubber hose I'd bought to
the pipe, and dropped the other end into the can of gasoline.
The engine wouldn't start until I'd poured some gasoline into the
empty vacuum tank, but after that we rolled right back to the hotel.
Pretty good, hey? That
was the queerest case of car trouble I've ever had."
Young Jack Simpson, looking disgusted,
had come in while his father-in-law was talking.
"You call that queer - and you call it trouble!" he said.
"I've go some queerer trouble that's a whole lot worse, and I didn't
have to go away up to the Maine woods to get it.
It's parked right down in front of our house."
He turned to Gus Wilson.
"It's that new bus of mine, Gus.
I've got about twenty-five hundred on the clock, and I've never had a
bit of trouble until now."
"What's the trouble now?"
Gus wanted to know.
"You can search me," Simpson said.
"The engine just won't turn over, that's all.
I drove down to the city this morning, and coming back everything was
jake. I stopped at the house,
just to leave some stuff that
Alice asked me to buy, and as I didn't
expect to be more than a minute I left the engine idling.
But Alice and I started talking, so I was longer than I'd thought I'd
be - maybe seven or eight minutes.
"When I got into the car I noticed that
the engine had stopped. I
didn't think anything of that, until I stepped on the starter and nothing
happened. I tried everything I
knew, but I couldn't get a single kick out of the engine - couldn't get it
to turn over. The starter seemed
to be all right, but it was like - like kicking at the
Washington
Monument!
"After I'd been fooling around for a half
hour, George Nelson came along in that '31 coupe of his.
He happened to have a piece of old rope in the rumble, and said that
maybe I could get started if he towed me a way and then I let in the clutch.
We tried it, but that darned engine felt as if it was frozen solid.
Soon as I cased in the clutch, the rope broke.
So we pushed the car back to the curb, and I left it there.
That was an hour ago, I had to do some errands on the way out here.
What had I better do, Gus?
That engine sure is a sticker!"
"A sticker," Gus repeated thoughtfully.
"I think maybe you've got something there, Jack.
Well, first thing to do is get your car up here to the stop where we
can work on it."
Simpson nodded agreement, and handed over
his keys. "Hey, Speedball!"
Gus said to Harry, the grease monkey, who had been listening in on
the conversation. "Take
the wrecker down to Mr. Simpson's house and tow his car back here, will you?
Here are the keys, but as the engine won't start you probably won't
need them."
Fifteen minutes later a horn tooted
outside the door and Gus and Jack Simpson looked up to see Harry drive
Simpson's car into the shop.
He got out, grinning widely.
"When I got there," he explained, "I thought I'd give the starter a
kick, just for luck. Darned if
she didn't buzz off without a struggle, and she ran all right all the way
back here, except that she's a little stiff.
Now I'll ride down on my motor bike, and bring back the wrecker."
Gus looked after him, and shook his head.
"What a brain!" he said.
"That kid's a real genius at making two trips when one would do.
Never misses on it!"
"Huh?" grunted Simpson, who was staring
at his car. "Oh, yes - good
excuse to get a little ride on that motor cycle of his.
Say, Gus, I feel like a fool!
I don't know much about cars, but I'll swear that an hour ago that
engine just wouldn't start!"
"Of course it wouldn't," Gus agreed.
"And it wouldn't have started for Harry, or for me, or for anyone
else, any more than it would for you."
He got into the car, and ran the engine
at varying speeds for a minute.
Then he got out, and raised the hood.
"The first thing to do," he decided, "is
to get the cylinder head off.
I'll tell you what we'll find, if the trouble is what I think it is.
We'll find the pistons and piston rings and maybe the valves covered
with a brown stain that looks and feels like varnish.
Now, let's see how near I've come to guessing right."
When the cylinder head was off, there
wasn't the slightest doubt that Gus had guessed right - again.
The pistons and all the other smooth internal surfaces of he engine
that were visible were covered with an amber-colored stain.
So were the valves and tappets.
"What the deuce is it?"
Simpson demanded,, poking a valve with his forefinger, and finding the brown
stain slightly sticky.
"Well," Gus told him, "we used to call it
burnt off. Now, automotive
engineers usually call it 'varnish.'
To tell the truth, I didn't think anyone knows exactly what it is -
yet. Until recently, they didn't
even know what caused it. Some
said that it came from the gasoline, and others said that it came from the
lubricating off. But, not long
ago, the research men of one of the big manufacturers took a lot of
photographs of the pistons of engines which had been run on the same fuel,
but with different lubricants.
Some of the pistons were class, and some of them were coated with varnish,
which proves that the varnish is formed by the lubricating oil, and not by
the fuel. But just how and why
the varnish forms is something that even the chemists are still hazy about.
They say that it is a synthetic resinous compound produced by
little-known chemical reactions - a sort of oxidation of all at high
temperatures. Whatever it is, it
can raise hob with a gas engine!"
"What will take it off?"
Simpson wanted to know.
"I've tried a lot of things at one time
and another," Gus told him. "I
know what won't take it off. It
is insoluble in mineral oil, gasoline, kerosene, turpentine, or water.
It is more or less soluble in alcohol, carbon tetrachloride, lacquer
thinner, and caustics. I'm
afraid we're going to have quite a job, Jack.
I'll have to take your engine pretty well apart, and do some
experimenting to see what works best in getting the danged stuff off.
If we leave it on, you'll have a lot more trouble."
"All right, Gus.
Do whatever you think is best," Simpson said.
"But I still can't see why the engine wouldn't start for me, but
would start for Harry."
"The answer to that puzzle," Gus told
him, "is that the engine cooled off for an hour or so between the time that
you couldn't start it and Harry did start it.
If varnish makes an engine stick so badly that you can't turn it over
with your starter or even by towing the car with the clutch engaged, it's
usually after you've left the engine idling at the end of a drive.
Why, I don't know. That's
just the condition you had when you left your engine running while you went
into your house. You got a
break when that old tow rope of George Nelson's parted.
I've seen engines stuck so tight that something busted when you used
enough force to turn them.
"After an engine that has stopped that way has stood for an hour or so, you
often can get it running without any trouble - and, again, no one means to
know exactly why. It may be that
the varnish loses some of its stickiness when it has cooled, or perhaps the
cooling of the engine results in contraction in some of the parts that
increases their clearance.
"Well, Jack, I'll get at your job first
thing in the morning, and I think I'm safe in promising to have your car
ready for you by this time tomorrow afternoon."
When Gus Wilson says "I think I'm safe in
promising" a job, it's as good as any man's guarantee, so Simpson's car was
ready for him to drive away when he called for it the following afternoon.
"I suppose that I'm in for plenty of
grief with this bus, now that that darned varnish has started forming," Gus
assured him. "But, if you don't
mind my saying so, you'll have to put a little more thought into your
driving than you usually do. As
a general thing, it is only in an almost new engine that enough varnish
forms to cause serious trouble.
I managed to get your engine pretty thoroughly cleaned out, but you'll have
to be on the lookout for warnings that varnish is forming again.
If you notice any symptoms of sticking valves, bring the car in right
away, so that I can clean them.
Probably I'll have to do that at intervals until the clearance of the engine
parts has been increased b wear."
"Somehow," Simpson said, "I feel guilty
about this thing. I don't know
what I did that was wrong, but I must have done something wrong.
There must be some reason for that varnish forming on some engines,
and not on others."
"There's a reason, of course; there's a
reason for everything," Gus said.
"But we don't know all the answers yet, and the reason for varnish
forming is one of the answers that we don't know.
But we do know that lubricating oil has something to do with it.
There's no reason for you to blame yourself - unless you have been
using oil of a type not recommended by your car's maker."
Jack Simpson looked as guilty as he said
he felt. "Hey, there!" Gus said.
"What about the oil you've been using?"
"To tell you the truth," Simpson
admitted, "I was out of town when my mileage got up to the thousand mark, so
I just drove into a service station and told the fellow there to drain her
out and fill her up again."
"Well after this," Gus said sternly, "you
come in here and we'll make sure that you get the type oil that is right for
your particular car. I'm
not saying that using oil of poor quality or of the wrong type made your
engine a sticker. But I am dead
certain that using good oil of the type recommended by a car's manufacturer
is your best safeguard against the formation of varnish that might make it
stick again!"
END
