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Dismantled or Broken?

To: british-cars@hoosier
Subject: Dismantled or Broken?
From: paisley@cme.nist.gov (Scotty Paisley)
Date: Wed, 20 May 92 10:25:23 EDT
Cognitive Dissonance On-A-Stick writes:

... On-A-Stick?

 > increased the value of the second term of the equation for
 > me (that is, grease/knuckle).  This reflection caused me to
 > remember the difficulty I've occasionally had explaining to

What about the grease/underwear stain variable?  I mean why is it,
every time I get my hands covered with the lube from the british
homeland, the ale kicks in, and I have to make a decision. 1) Keep
sworking and ignore the urge.  2) Wash my hands (only to get dirty
again) and take care of business.  3) Just ignore the fact that my
hands are dirty and take a trip to the water closet.  I usually pick
number 3, and when laundry day rolls around, there's that thumb print
on the band of the underwear.  I think that should increase the LBCQ
by one!  Let's face it, I worked on the car long enough that I had to
take a trip to the porcelain convenience.  That amount of attention on
a british carriage should increase the LBCQ.  You all know what I'm
talking about - right?

 > because the car is apart doesn't mean it's broken.
[...]
 > But I'm having a hard time getting my non-car-enthusiast friends
 > to understand that no, the car isn't BROKEN.  I just have it APART.
 > There's a DIFFERENCE.

Ask your friends to live with you for a while.  My wife understands...
She understands that I need to see a head doctor.  She understands
that I have that car apart - *again*.  She just smiles, and hands me
the monkey wrench, er, I mean adjustable spanner.  I'll let you know
when I can convince her that it is just APART and not BRokEn...

 > the side of the track (or even more extreme, when the cam hops out
 > of the block, one lobe at a time, as happened to Andy last weekend).

That's a clear definition of broken...

 > to the air outside the engine, or when the fuel pump developed 
 > narcolepsy and had to be awakened, repeatedly, with sharp blows of
 > a hammer on the appropriate panel of the trunk.

Hey, don't stretch the truth now, that is just normal operational
maintenance.  We all know that they just left that page out of the
owners manual.

 > My car is just APART.  That is, it was working quite serviceably,
 > it merely had some pieces that were in less than ideal condition,
 > as is to be expected from a 21-year-old sports car.  And unfortunately,
 > removing this particular less-than-ideal part requires disassembling
 > the engine to a large degree.  That's the price I pay for my fun.

Well, let me put it this way.  Last year, my TR6 was *burning* a quart
of oil every 200 miles.  It ran great.  It started right up, had
decent power, and just ran like a nursing kitten.  I told my wife that
the car needed to have the engine rebuilt.  Now, how do you convience
someone who doesn't work on cars, that a car with a great running
engine needs to be completely overhauled?  Somehow, she understood.

Anyway, I overhauled the engine, and detailed the engine compartment
while it was APART.  The car really has never been broken...  Well
there was that waterpump incident... Oh yeah, and the steering rack
did start sliding back-and-forth once...  And there was the time......

> Sigh.  So *you* folks know what I'm talking about, right?

What was the question again?

---
"All the parts falling off this car are of the very finest British
manufacture"

-Scott (the other one)


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