The Tricky Brakes
Time for the new puzzler. Well, the new old puzzler.
This one is from a while back. We had a guy come in to the shop.
He said, "Some time ago, I married a woman with a Datsun B-210. The honey bee, it was called small, noisy, reliable and fun. One day, a problem. I push on the brake pedal and it goes almost to the floor. I owned a VW where this happened all the time. So I didn't panic. I just pumped a little and the pedal came right back. I had the brakes checked out, stem to stern, but there were no leaks, no problems with the master cylinder. The calipers in the front were fine. The wheel cylinder was in the back were okay, but still, the problem persisted, but only occasionally.
"After much observation, I determined that it only happened after the car had been driven above 40 miles an hour for like 10 minutes or more. Around town, no problem. Quick trip on the freeway. No problem. Ten minutes on the freeway, and the first time you touch the brake the pedal goes to the floor.
"After that, if I did it again, the pedal would be okay, unless I continue to drive on the on the freeway, which case it would reoccur at maybe 10 minute intervals, or something like that.
"I took it to garages. They find no problem with the brakes whatsoever. No one can find anything wrong with the brakes.
"One day, I'm having a beer with an engineer friend of mine, and I tell him about this problem, and of course, all the gory details. He asked me one question and then told me what was wrong.
"And the question the engineer asked was, did you buy something recently for this car?
"And I said, why yes, I did. And this allowed the engineer to figure out the answer."
So, what did the guy buy that allowed the engineer to know what was wrong with his car?
Good luck.
