The Short
Puzzler time. Here we go.
This one is automotive, from something that happened in the shop many years ago.
A customer came in to the garage a while back. Back many years ago now.
Anyway, she came in and she was complaining that she had a short circuit in her vehicle. She said that the fuse was blowing repeatedly. It was the fuse that ran like the tail lights, the dash lights, the courtesy lights...
She put a new fuse in, and sometimes five minutes later, it would blow, or an hour later, or whatever. She had been through this a few times, so finally decided to bring it in.
So I assigned this task to a kid named Manny, a young guy. He's got a little experience in electrical work, and I told him to hook it up to the short tester.
Now basically, the short tester is a device which is nothing more than a circuit breaker that resets, that you put in place of the fuse, and then the other piece of it is an ammeter that you go around and you try to find the weak part of the circuit.
So I go over after a few minutes, I had given him a chance to hook the thing up, and I asked him how he's doing. And he says, "Well, I know where the short is, but I didn't have to use this meter thingy to figure it out."
And I said, "Oh really?"
And he says, "There's something on her dashboard that tells me that the short is nearby, something sitting on her dashboard."
And I said, "Really?"
And here is the hint. Her vehicle was filled with stuff to go camping. Tents and gear, coolers full of beer. Stuff like that.
So what was it?
Good luck.
