Feb 11, 2023
It is finally time for the new puzzler. This one is a true automotive puzzler. I think we owe the crowd an actual automotive puzzler, at this point.
Here's one from the old days. A customer came into the shop a while back. This customer had various problems with his car, one of which was a problem that he had taken to several shops and nobody was able to figure out. It was that when he went on long drives, he would frequently lose his brakes. In other words, the pedal would feel very mushy and would just sink to the floor, and the brakes would be completely ineffective. He had taken the car to several shops over the course of several months and nobody had been able to figure it out. Including us. We couldn't figure it out either.
Parts had been replaced, master cylinders, calipers... This guy had spent so much on this, and he still had the problem. No one knew what was wrong.
Anyway, he comes in and says, "Hey, I need an oil change, I need to pass state inspection, tires rotated and I have some lights that don't work... If you're interested, you can look at that brake problem again."
And we said, "No, no. We don't know what's wrong with the brakes."
So, we fixed all the other problems, including his brake lights, which were not working. We fixed it by putting a new brake light switch in, but we didn't even look at the actual brakes. We didn't have time for going over that again. We changed the oil and did everything else he asked.
And then, about a week or two later he called us and said, "How did you fix my brakes?"
And we said, "What do you mean, how did we fix your brakes? We didn't fix your brakes."
And he said, "Well, that problem I had where the brakes would just disappear, it's gone. it isn't a problem anymore. What did you do?"
And we said, "We did nothing!"
So, he drives the car for several more weeks, and indeed, the problem is fixed. The problem never returned.
So the puzzler question is, what did we do that day that accidentally fixed his brakes?
Time for the answer to this week's automotive puzzler.
You remember it. Guy with the mushy brakes. We fix other stuff on his car, including oil change, tire rotations and brake light switch, but we don't touch his brakes. He comes back in and says they are fixed. He said they no longer get mushy on long trips anymore, so we must have done something that fixed them.
So, what happened? What did we do that accidentally fixed his brakes?
We accidentally fixed his brake problem that day, even though we never touched the actual brakes.
So the answer involves our fix for the brake light switch. Here is what happened.
His brake light switch was broken because somewhere down the line, something happened to it where it was pushing on the brake pedal itself. Most people don't realize that the brake pedal has the brake light switch right behind it, so that when you press the brakes, it causes the switch to close and the light comes on, right? And the switch is installed in little brackets so that when the pedal returns to its rest position, the switch gets turned off. So these switches are adjustable, so they are at different locations depending on the make of the car. So whoever adjusted the brake light switch before us had it positioned so it was not close enough, and the brake light never came on. The switch never closed. He could never move the pedal far enough to close the switch and turn the light on.
But more importantly, when his foot was off the brake pedal that switch was pushing on that brake pedal, keeping the brakes on. Now it would not make any difference around town. However on a longer trip when you are driving with a condition that's tantamount to having your foot resting on the brake pedal, the brakes would get hotter and hotter and hotter. And the brake fluid would begin to boil, and pretty soon the pedal will get mushy and you'd lose your brakes altogther.
So fixing the brake light switch accidentally fixed the issue with his brakes!
