Fixed to Fail

“… so there I was, crawling under my truck in a Wal-Mart parking lot on a Sunday afternoon, trying find this creaking noise…”

I was rudely interrupted by Tooner blowing his nose into a dirty handkerchief. “Skip the details, Boss, just get to the point.”

“Yeah,” said Beanie looking at his watch. “I’ve gotta finish putting the stock order away.”

“Fine,” I groused. Nobody appreciates a good detective story anymore. “It turns out the stereo shop used two inch screws to mount my CD stacker under the seat. The screws were rubbing on the frame.”

Tooner was on his feet. “Right. Gotta go change somebody’s oil. Coming Basil?”

“Right behind you.” Even Basil had heard enough. I sipped my cold coffee. Had I been talking that long?

“So-o-o, I see Murray has just pulled in.” Quigley checked his daytimer in relief. “A rough- running problem.”

Murray’s 1986 Nissan Multi showed up at least once every month or two with some new problem. Fortunately, Murray took everything in stride. “What can I expect?” he’d say. “At 300,000 kilometres, it’s bound to need some little adjustment now and then.”

Everybody else was occupied (though I’m sure it doesn’t take three guys to change oil in a Honda) so I took the Multi for a test drive. It ran great, until I hit a bump in the road. Then it bogged down, belching black smoke out the tailpipe. I turned around to go back to the shop, when it suddenly cleared and ran perfect again.

“Basil!” I parked inside an empty bay. “Take a look at this and see what you can find.” To his relief, I only gave him the short version of my road test.

I was busy with phone calls and paperwork for the rest of the morning, but I noticed lots of commotion around the Multi, and lots of equipment being connected and removed. Ignition systems were probed, injectors were flow tested, sensors were monitored, and by mid-afternoon, some new words were being added to the English language.

But at coffee time, Basil arrived in the lunchroom with a big smile on his face. He poured himself a large mug of coffee and pulled two donuts from his lunch kit. This had all the makings of a long story.

“I came, I probed, and I conquered,” he began.

But I cut him off. “Look, Basil, I’m running a little late. What’s the short version?”

Basil’s face fell. He had been looking forward to this. “Er, well, the bottom line is that the body shop did it.”

Tooner looked up from a tool catalogue. “Huh? Run that by me again?”

“Gladly!” Basil cheered right up. “Every so often the Oxygen Sensor would ground out and send a lean signal to the computer. Of course, then the injector would load up the fuel, and the car would run rich.”

“A bad O2 Sensor?” asked Beanie.

Basil reached into his pocket. “No, it was this piece of wire in the sensor circuit that was shorting to ground.”

“Oh.” Tooner went back to his catalogue. “Rubbed through on the frame or engine, right?”

“Wrong again,” said Basil. “Murray’s car had once been in a small fender bender, and the O2 Sensor wire had been cut. So the body shop repaired it with a crimp-style connector.”

“What’s wrong with that?” I asked, gritting my teeth. This story was getting longer by the minute.

“The O2 sensor wire on this car is wrapped with a fine wire mesh coating to shield it from electrical interference, and the crimp connector had caught some of the shielding and brought it into contact with the wire core.” He passed around the wire for us to see. “Every so often the shielding would touch some metal on the car and, voila, the sensor would ground out.”

I took a sip of Java. “So what took you so long to find it?”

Basil licked some donut crumbs off his fingers. “The repair was hidden underneath the radiator support. In fact, there’s quite a story in how I found the problem.” He rubbed his hands with glee. “First, I was scanning the O2 sensor voltage with the lab scope when…”

Tooner pulled out his dirty handkerchief and blew his nose. “Well, I’d love to hear it, Basil, but I gotta go change a taillight bulb. Anybody care to join me?”

Within seconds Basil was talking to an empty room. I know it was mean, but it felt good to be on the other end of the stick. Now I can’t wait until Tooner or Beanie have a juicy tale to tell.

(Thanks to John Cornett-Ching of Summerland Auto-Tech in Summerland, BC, for this month’s technical problem. If you’ve got a good story to tell, e-mail Rick at r_cogbill@telus.net)

About The Writer

Rick Cogbill is a freelance writer living in the Okanagan valley of Southern British Columbia. A licensed technician with over 25 years in the automotive repair industry, including ten years as a shop owner, Cogbill creates his comic scenarios with Slim, Basil, Tooner, and The Bean out of actual case histories. “What you have just read is true,” drawls Slim Shambles. “Only the names have been changed to protect my hide!”