Mar 30, 2024
Puzzler time.
Here we go.
This was many years ago. It was a cold and dreary day in Wisconsin. A young nursing student pulled out of the university parking lot. She was driving a 1972 Ford Galaxie 500, and it was a jalopy, to be sure. Her dad had put patches on the holes in the body work, and welded the bumper back on when it had fallen off, but it was reliable transportation, and her meager student budget would not allow for anything else.
She came to a stoplight on the way home and she began to slow down, she applied the brakes to slow down. All of a sudden, they locked up. She skidded to a stop, heads turned, and she knew that obviously something was wrong. She was embarrassed and perplexed and obviously afraid. She proceeded down the road slowly. At the next light, even after applying the brakes very cautiously and slowly again, something locked up and the car skidded, even with the gentlest touch of the brake pedal. It was scary for her.
So she takes the car to the repair shop, and they pull the wheels off, and they check the calipers, and they check the wheel cylinders, and the brake spring hardware, and they check the brake hoses and they pronounce everything with the brake system is A Okay.
And in fact, they were right, everything with the brake system is A Okay.
So, the puzzler question is, what is wrong with her car?
Good luck.
Okay answer time.
Everything was fine with her brake system, yet something locks up and the car skids when she comes to stop lights.
So, what was wrong with her car?
The clue was that the car was a complete jalopy!
And here is why.
When the mechanics test drove the car, it did the same thing, the skidding and locking up. They pulled apart the whole brake system and couldn't find anything wrong with it at all. So they had to keep looking.
So remember, this was a jalopy. It was an old crappy car. And it was a crappy car that had a lot of rust, like older cars do.
Since the brake system and tires were fine, they had to look at the next closest thing, the frame.
The frame of this old car had rusted away by one of the rear wheels. The frame was no longer the shape it was supposed to be, so it was coming into contact with suspension components and the emergency brake cable, which was then locking up the wheel causing all this trouble.
And that is what was wrong with the car.
Good one.
