As promised, I offer this draft of the Physical Laws and Natural
Forces attendent to auto maintenance. This list is of course
optimistically short, and only a few of the Great Mysteries are
herein illuminated.
The Law of Conservation of Wretchedness: The time and expense
required to keep a car running is directly proportional to the
enjoyment one derives from driving it.
(submitted by Roger Casanova)
The Law of Conservation of Defects: Every car has a preferred
fault equilibrium which it strives to maintain. If for example
a car has a defect stability level of 3, then there are always
three things that don't work. As long as you don't fix any of
them, the system will remain stable. Fix one, and another thing
will instantly break the next time you drive it.
The Tool Centering Field: A magnetic field that forces a
dropped tool to roll to a point directly beneath the exact
geometric center of the car. A special case obtains when
you're actually working under the car at the time: The
presence of your body distorts the field, causing the tool
to roll outward towards your left foot just a few inches
beyond the reach of your fingers. Trying to kick the tool
with your heel back to where you can grab it only makes you
look foolish, and the field will fight you. SOL physicists
are currently striving for that holy grail, The Unified Tool
Repulsion Theory, which will explain all conditions of tools
evading their wielders.
The Little Widget Black Hole: The force that guides a dropped
nut, screw or washer directly into the most inaccessible nook
in the engine bay. This is a spot you have never seen before,
and if you ever retrieve the object, the little nook will
disappear by the next time you look under the hood. It is a
gravitic anomaly distantly related to a cosmic wormhole.
The good news is that no natural phenomenon will ever remove
the object, and you can still find it there after driving
the car for another 20-30 years. This is not true of any
actual component.
Structural Stress Rust Attraction, that concentrates rust
in areas of the chassis most responsible for maintaining
the shape of the car against gravity. Also known as the
For Dust Thou Art Effect.
The Urgent Errand Fuel Starvation Syndrome. This is the
condition that causes fuel not to actually show up at the
carburettor when the wife has the beater and you really
need to go somewhere. Possibly caused by the special way
you pump the accelerator when trying to start an LBC for
a _reason_, rather than for a fun day out.
Similar to the Attractive Passenger Ignition Failure
Syndrome, also known as "Electrical Dysfunction".
The Jackpoint Ablation Phenomenon. When it left the factory,
your car had specially reinforced sections of the chassis where
a jack could be safely placed to raise it. These were burned
away by exposure to the fast-moving diesel exhaust experienced
on the back of the delivery truck. There is now no safe way
to raise your car. Don't try.
The LMA-Paintwork Tropism: The tendency for brake fluid to
flow towards good paint. This force laughs at a hastily
interposed paper towel. The only way to stop it is to quickly
turn the car upside down.
The Off-Horizontal Reality Distortion: The phenomenon that causes
doors to jam when the front wheels are on ramps. Even though the
weight is still properly on the suspension and it should be no
different than parking on a hill, your car _knows_ something is
up and insists on flexing in the middle anyway.
The Kryptonite Fuse Effect: At the exact moment of electrical
overload, the constants governing the molecular bonds within a
fuse jump by several orders of magnitude. In that instant the
fuse is the most indestructible thing in the universe. Studies
are under way to harness this effect in the construction of
nuclear reactors.
The last major phenomenon, why an assistant will _always_ put
a tool in your hand oriented the wrong way for use, is properly
deferred to the SOL Psychology course.
(Thanks to S. Fisher, I. Woolf, D. Bourland and T.J. Higgins for
ideas.)
- djp@alpha.sunquest.com
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