May 13, 2023
So this puzzler is stolen. I know, big surprise. Lots of them are stolen!
Okay, here it is. A perfect automotive puzzler.
A student here at the college a while back owned a late model automobile, Chevy Cavalier. She took the car into the shop because in bitterly cold weather, the car would start very high. It would crank a long time before it would fire. You know, that cranking sound where it is trying to turn over, but it can't.
Also, the car would immediately die once she put it in drive or reverse, but only the first time she started the car each day. Subsequent starts were okay. So when the car sat overnight, in very cold weather, this would happened.
She told us this happened after every visit to her parents' home. Her parents live about 150 miles south. So after every trip home for the holidays or just a visit, this would happen when she gets back, if it was bitterly cold out. So after Thanksgiving, she gets home and the car acts up. After Christmas, the car acts up. You get the idea.
So she takes the car into the shop and has them check it out. They can't find anything wrong. They look for trouble codes and check over everything. The car is perfectly fine. They have no idea why this might be happening.
While this is going on, one of the student mechanics is going through the glove box, probably looking for loose change or the registration or something, and he finds a slip of paper.
And this slip of paper he found in the glove box solves the problem.
Since then, the problem has not returned. The small piece of paper he finds leads them all to the solution to the problem.
What is it?
Good luck.
Okay, time to answer this good little automotive puzzler for you all.
Bitterly cold, the car acts up after being at her parents' house. Our mechanic finds a slip of paper in the glove box that solves the issue. What is it?
On that paper was the exact clue he needed to answer the question.
What he found in the glove box was a charge slip from the gas station over by her parents' house. Whenever the woman went home to visit her parents, her father took the car and filled it up with gas for his daughter. But he was filling it with premium high-octane gasoline. And in bitterly cold weather, that high-octane gasoline has a harder time with combustion than the cheaper, lower-octane gasoline options. And this happens in very cold weather because it has a higher ignition point.
So premium high octane gasoline has a higher ignition point so it does not cause pinging or detonation. Now this girl's Chevy Cavalier requires the cheaper gas, in the bitterly cold weather. In the warmer weather, the premium gas would be fine. But not in the cold.
