A funny story

[JHH]

After reading some stories on here I decided to give it a shot.

I am a Auto technician by trade, so this young kid tells me he is selling his car. I bought it but it doesn't run. I have to go get before he moves. So my brother and I go to get this car and me being the great technician I am think we can get it running and drive it home. So my brother and I are working on this car its about this time of year and leaves are everywhere. I am dumping gas down the carb trying to get it to fire when it backfires and sets leaves on fire. I yelled at brother to go the the house and get some water or garden hose. I am left to put out fire.

By this time all the leaves around and in car are on fire so I shuck my shirt off and am doing my best to get fire out. Brother hollers I cant find any hose. I yell well get something. I am continuing to beat out fire . It seems like an hour has went by but probably less than ten min. I have fire out, my shirt is same as ruined, I am exausted and my brother shows up with a old plastic bottle with water in it. I laugh and said what you want me to do with that drink it.

I take a trailer to get cars now. LOL He tells that story all the time.

 

[M5farm]

good story

 

[denvermartinfarms]

I have a kinda Similar fire story, I just don't know if I have the patients to type it all out.

 

[pdfangus]

thankfully I have never kidded myself that I was any kind of a mechanic.....
I can operate nearly any machine you put me on....a gift I learned or inherited from my dad.....
but the ability to repair that machine skipped a generation....
my dad was a fair mechanic.
my son is a very good mechanic...but he says he knows nothing about the new computerized stuff...
me...it is a half day project to change the blades on the lawn mower....

 

[cow pollinater]

I'm a good mechanic at around beer number three... Any less and I run out of patience real quick. Any more and I don't care if it gets fixed or not.
Good story JHH.

 

[bigbull338]

man i bet you was upset with yourself after you got the fire out an calmed down.

 

[greybeard]

I can remember my father buying a '46 Ford truck that had a bad fuel pump sometime in the late 50s. He bought from a guy that lived about 2 miles away and got it home by my mother driving while he rode sitting on the fender with a squirt can of gasoline, keeping that old flathead running just good enough to drive it down the road, by squirting gas right into the open carb. Just got into the driveway with it, when it backfired thru the carb in a mighty POW! and a puff of smoke and it shook him up so much he fell off the fender into the dirt, while Mom coasted it on into the drive, carburetor still belching fire. My uncle was down visiting and witnessed the whole thing from the front porch and about busted a gut laughing.
My father was an auto "tech" too--par excellence. I've seen as many as 8 cars in his shop at one time--with his "help" doing the dirty work as he supervised and did the 'finnesse' work. Brother and I, being the youngest of 4 kids pulled heads, cleaned 'em, scraped gaskets, changed plugs, while my older sisters ran the old Sioux valve grinding machine, and re-assembled the heads valve and springs--dad bolted them back down and did the valve adjustments. There was nothing about flatheads he didn't know.

About "changing plugs". Most people opted to just have plugs cleaned and put back in instead of buying new ones, but they always insisted on new points/condensors.
We had a spark plug cleaning machine back then and it just cleaned them with an abrasive blast, then it had a test wire. You stuck the plug down in a hole, blasted it as you rotated it, set the gap, put it back down in the hole, hooked a wire to it and pushed a button and looked at the spark thru a little mirror. Had a gage on it that showed good or bad as far as the spark quality went. BUZZZZZZTTTT! Sounded like a mad bumble bee. Looked like this one, but ours sat on a bench.

I never was smart enough back then to use it, but Dad also had one of these--he was a Ford man from the git go: (you may have to shrink your browser window to get the photo to fit)

I cleaned, gapped and put a set of plugs back in an old DeSoto one time--the car belonged to a friend of my father. A couple of weeks later, dad jumped all down my throat, saying that DeSoto had blown a plug out of the head while the guy was on a trip off up in Oklahoma somewhere and he had to take it to a shop to get a new one in--a new plug was about 75 cents back then--big money. "You must have missed tightening that one up or you crossthreaded it".
Chewed my butt out for 2 days over it, but when the guy got back home, found out the whole plug didn't blow out--just the center part--threads stayed in the head. Dad wasn't the kind to say "I'm sorry" tho. Heck, I figured I'd done something wrong somehow no matter what--I was 12--maybe 13.
That plug cleaner/tester looked just like this one

 

[JHH]

Havent worked on to many flat heads but have used spark plug cleaner jus like the one you used to use. I have also run the distributor machine to check for (point bounce) Had an old guy show me these things. I worked in a ford dealership for awhile and he showed me lotsof stuff that a lot of people have since forgotten.

To many parts replacers around in automotive field need some diagnosticians instead.