Rare Cars on the Job

[mgbinspect]

Thread drift spurned by memories of tinkering with cars. One time when I was tuning up that Pinto I owned, I broke a spark plug while trying to remove it. It was a resister plug, and when the ceramic broke, that spring fell out and nestled up against the base of the plug.

MISTAKE NUMBER ONE: Hey, I was young and dumb! I removed the base of the plug anyway and the spring rolled down through the spark plug port into the cylinder. DAMN IT!

MISTAKE NUMBER TWO: So, exercising very short sighted logic I reasoned I'd turn the engine over with the plug out and the spring would eventually pop out the port.... NEGATIVE!... It jambed a valve open... RATS!

So, I found myself undoing the timing chain and removing the head to get the spring out of the valve seat. It was a crash course in engine disassembly.

While a friend and I did all this through the night, we had ordered a pizza. It was behind us cooling as we continued to work on the engine. When we turned around to finally partake, my dad's fat spoiled beagle had eaten every piece but one, which she couldn't fit, but was ardently guarding - complete with ferocity. It was just one of those days...