To all you Beamers out there, thought you might enjoy the following.
You never know who has driven an Alpine.
-Roger
__________________________________________________
By Todd Halvorson
FLORIDA TODAY
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - "Car Talk" auto repair gurus Tom and Ray
Magliozzi
got a puzzler Thursday that they just couldn't figure out for this
weekend's show on National Public Radio.
Seems a caller named "John from Houston" was having a problem with his
vehicle. And the two Boston-based grease-monkeys were just plain
stumped.
"I occasionally drive this government vehicle...and twice it's done a
very
funny thing, and I thought maybe you guys could help me with it," the
caller told the Magliozzi's, also known to a nationwide audience as
"Click
and Clack, the Tappet Brothers."
"When I first start it up, it starts great. It accelerates really,
really
well. Then it runs incredibly rough, though, for about two minutes," the
caller said.
"Then after the first two minutes - after this really rough ride -
there's
kind of a jolt. And then it runs smooth, but only for about
six-and-a-half
more minutes. And at that point the engine dies. It stops completely."
What the Magliozzi's didn't know was that the guy on the other end of
the
line was NASA astronaut John Grunsfeld, who just happened to be calling
in
from shuttle Atlantis, which is linked up to Russia's space station Mir
some 242 miles above Earth.
The vehicle in question, of course, was Atlantis, which bolted off its
launch pad last Sunday and gave its crew a shake-and-rattle ride for two
minutes - until the shuttle's twin solid rocket boosters were jettisoned
into the Atlantic Ocean.
The remainder of the supersonic ride in space was smooth as glass until
the shuttle's three liquid-fueled main engines shut down as scheduled
six-and-a-half minutes later.
Grunsfeld was flying high above Hawaii, at 17,500 mph, as the surprise
call was relayed to the "Car Talk" show through a NASA communications
satellite 22,300 miles above Earth.
The radio show hosts finally put the puzzler together when Grunsfeld
reminded the pair that they used to work on his Sunbeam Alpine in their
auto repair shop when the astronaut was attending Massachusetts
Institute
of Technology in 1977
*snip*
Grunsfeld's surprise call to National Public Radio's "Car Talk" will be
aired on this weekend's show.
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