The Third Mechanic

Apr 30, 2024

New puzzler time again. 

Here we go. 

Several years ago, many many years ago actually, we discovered a nifty way for detecting blown cylinder head gaskets. We used to use a dye that would change color when you remove the vapors out of the cooling system through the radiator cap. When you take the radiator cap off, we discovered that we could pick up those same vapors with our emissions tester, and in fact check for the presence of hydrocarbons in the coolant.

So you take the radiator cap off and get the engine up to operating temperature and you'd bring the tester over and place it near the radiator and if the thing didn't read zero, you knew you had a problem. 

The reason this works is that when you have a blown head gasket, the products of combustion are going right from the combustion chamber into the cooling system, and pretty soon after that they get to the radiator and then come out. And at that point, the machine that you use to test it can smell when this happens. We can't smell it, but the machine can. 

So one time, one of our mechanics was doing this test on a car and he turns to another mechanic and he says, "This guy's in trouble. He's got a blown head gasket."

Another mechanic doing a tune up nearby hears them talking. He hears them say, "I can see he's got like 60 or 70 parts per million of hydrocarbons when I do the test at the radiator here."

And without even lifting his head, the third mechanic says to the first two, "I don't think so..." 

So the puzzler is, what did the third mechanic know that allowed him to say, "I don't think so..." with such conviction? 

Good luck.
 

Answer: 

So what did the third mechanic know that caused him to say, "I don't think so..." with so much certainty? How did he know that the other mechanic was about to misdiagnose the car, without even looking at it?

Here is the answer. 

The third mechanic, he was doing a tune up on his own car. And one of the things you do when you do a tune up frequently is you change a gas filter, and in doing so, you spill gasoline. So at that exact moment, he knew that the reading from the emissions tester was not just reading the first mechanics car, it was reading the ambient reading from the air around the two cars in the garage. 

If you spill a quarter of a cup of gasoline on the ground, you will have 70 or 80 parts per million of hydrocarbons all around you. So unless the first mechanic had cleared the garage and made sure no one was doing any other work that might spill hydrocarbons in the air, he could not know for sure that the reading he was getting was accurate. 

Love that one. 


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