Well,
It seems my friend Heather is something of an automotive idiot savant.
At Chryslers at Carlisle, my car was losing power slowly. She insisted
it was the distributor. When I asked her why she thought this was the
case, she replied, "It's the only thing I can name under the hood."
As it turns out, she was right. The points were loose and closing
slowly, thus giving me a week spark. I fixed them with the poor man's
points feeler gauge. (For reference, a matchbook is a handy thing to
have around. The cover on a matchbook is usually around .017" --
roughly the right amount of spacing for your average set of points. A
paper match is usually around the size where you want to gap the average
spark plug, too.)
Now when I talked to Heather recently and complained about my leaky
radiator, her response was to ask me, "Have you ever tried asking the
car nicely not to give you any more problems? That's what women do when
their cars don't work..."
If it were only that simple, right?
So, while trying to start my car up on Friday, she simply wouldn't kick
over. I asked the car nicely to stop giving me so many problems.
That's all it took -- a nice request (and a little starter fluid) and
she started right up.
However, Heather's 'magic words' may have had another effect. My
habitually sluggish transmission has suddenly started working
beautifully. No more waiting five minutes in reverse to get the forward
gears to engage. I now have them immediately, and my kickdown has
started working again.
Now, some may say it was my two bottles of Trans-X that finally kicked
in. After all, the directions say that within 500 miles, proper
operation would be restored, and I've driven about 600 miles this
summer... However, I'm firmly convinced that it was those 'magic
words'. "Have you ever tried asking the car nicely not to give you any
more problems?" Well, now I have.
Now I wonder if those same magic words would work on Heather. =))
-Dave
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