Thursday, January 19, 2012

Signs I Married a Combat Vet, #82

His entire summary of the truck dumping all its transmission fluid as I was commuting to work: "Hey, it's not like you hit a land mine. I don't care about the truck, as long as you're fine."

...

Signs he married a pilot, #152

The mechanic says I saved the gearbox by stopping as soon as the transmission started malfunctioning. (I didn't; I got the truck out of the intersection first. Close enough.) He complimented Calmer Half by saying "Most people don't have the sense to stop right away, and end up trashing their vehicles. You've got a good wife."

I just blinked at Calmer Half when he told me this, vaguely offended and startled, and replied, "Of course I pulled over! First thing you always do when you get a strange engine noise is nose on the horizon and check your gauges, throttle and mixture, mags and carb heat. And if you can't fix it, you land as soon as practical!"

8 comments:

  1. Sounds like wisdom to me (stopping as soon as trouble is evident), regardless of the reason. Glad you & the truck are both okay.

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  2. Wisdom on both parts. Good fit. That bites about the truck though.

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  3. @RauĆ°bjorn: Fortunately the truck's fine. Just needed a transmission fluid line replaced and the gearbox refilled. We dodged a bullet on this one!

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  4. Good for you. I took this student pilot candidate on an intro flight years ago. Old beater flying club airplane. As we throttled back to come in to the airport, there was a loud popp popp popp popp noise and the engine quit. It didn't sound like anything carb heat would fix but we did the drill. throttle, mixture, mags, carb heat. The student pulls the c.h. knob and it comes out, about 3 feet attached to something I'd never seen before. He looked at me and said "is it supposed to do that?".

    We had enough altitude to make the field. Needless to say he never came back for another lesson (turned out the owner, not an A & P, had put in his own spark plugs and didn't torque them)

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  5. Carb heat cable coming out

    BT,DT on a rental 152. Only it was on runup. When I brought the keys and clipboard back to the desk, along with the carb head knob, I said: "I trust that you're not going to charge me for the tenth of an hour that I put on the Hobbs."

    They didn't.

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