The Ticking Valve

Are you ready for the new puzzler?

There was this fellow. And this fellow had let's say a 1985 Nissan Sentra. The car is unimportant. It just happened to be a Nissan Sentra, but it could be anything. And his problem was that he had a noisy valve. So being a do-it-yourselfer of sorts, he decided to adjust his valves. And he removed the valve covers and he adjusted the valves. So he puts the valve cover back on. And with great anticipation, he starts the engine and it's still clicking and ticking.

So the next day he takes it to his mechanic. His mechanic says, "You obviously screwed it up. You need a valve adjustment." So the mechanic adjusts the valves. They start up the engine and tick tick tick tick. Kind of like a time bomb.

So the mechanics says, "Oh, you just need a camshaft." And the fellow says, "No, I'm not going to do the camshaft and I'm going to wait until it gets worse. What's the worst that can happen? It chews up the camshaft even more. In which case I'll still need a new camshaft."

So the noise goes along like this for several months. Three months later, he takes the car for a tune-up. They tune the car up. He drives it home and he realizes halfway home that the noise is gone. It just took him a while to realize it.

What happened?

He called them up. In fact, he said, "What did you do to my car? Did you adjust my valves?"

And they said, "We didn't adjust no stinking valves!"

So the question is, how did a tuneup solve this problem?

Answer the Puzzler »

Remember last week's puzzler?

Mort's Tune-Up

This is the right season for this puzzler, and that's a hint actually. So pay attention. This particular car, I think can be a lot of different cars, but for the sake of this puzzler, it is a 1980 Chevy Malibu. Okay? And here's what happened. A fellow had the car tuned up at his local filling station. They had Mort tune it up.

"Hey Mort, throw a tune-up into this!"

So Mort tunes it up. And a few weeks later that the customer comes back and complains to Mort. He said, "Gee, since you tuned up my car, the brakes don't work." He says, "What do you mean the brakes don't work?"
"Oh, I don't know. There's something funny going on here. I step on the brakes especially now that there's a little snow on the ground, I stepped on the brakes and the car doesn't want to stop."

And of course, Mort says that it's impossible. "What could I possibly have done in tuning it up that would affect the brakes like this?"

So they take it out for a test drive. And of course, it's a nice dry day, the roads are dry. And Mort says, "there's nothing wrong with the brakes, you're nuts! Nothing wrong with the car at all!"

And sure enough, a few weeks or days or months or years go by, and the customer takes the car back in again on a slippery day. And Mort drives the car again and he says, "Oh, that's it."

So sure enough, Mort did something wrong. But the question is, what? What did he do wrong? And for extra credit, why didn't he notice it the first time?