Oct 16, 2021
It's time for the new puzzler!
Now here's a puzzler that we have used before. And, as is often the case, we've given the incorrect answer before. So we're counting this as new because it'll be the first time people have an opportunity to hear the right answer. Here's the puzzler.
You go off to start your cars a cold wintery morning. You turn the key and the thing roars to life. It starts. The first sound you hear is YiYiYiYiYiYiYiYi! Now you know, from listening to our show that that is the unmistakable sound of a loose, noisy belt.
Now we have asked the question before which belt is it and why is it making the noise?
And when we used this puzzler the last three or four times we gave an answer, but it was an incomplete answer.
Okay, we admit we used a puzzler to which we didn't know the entirety of the answer. Now we know the rest of the story! Paul Harvey himself wrote to us.
So here it is. Which belt is it? Why is it making the noise? And why does it stop? That's the tricky part.
Even even within a few minutes of turning on the car, the noise disappears. Why?
It's most likely to be the alternator belt or the belt that goes around the alternator (and maybe other things as well) because the alternator is now being asked to recharge the battery. Because you've depleted the charge in the battery, the alternator is harder to turn and therefore the belt is more likely to slip. And that's why it's making the noise because it in fact is slipping.
Now here comes the hard part Why does the noise go away?
We gave the answer because eventually the alternator has charged up the battery that demand is not so great and the noise goes away but why doesn't it come back? Later on as you're driving for example if you turn 17 things on the rear window defogger the headlights the wipers, the tape player, et cetera et cetera isn't it in fact not possible that the alternator is being asked to produce enough current now to make the belt slip?
We successfully skirted that issue and never addressed it when we did the puzzler last time. But now, one of the descendants of William M. Jeffers (who was the it was the rubber king of America, the commissioner of rubber, the director of rubber, during the Great World War) has written to us to say that what happens is rubber, or at least the kind of rubber that they make belts out of actually shrinks when it heats up. So the rubber belt actually will get shorter. And that's why the noise goes away.
