The Mysterious Push Start

It's time for the new puzzler. This is a real life puzzler. A customer came in with an old car.

I don't remember the make or year of the car or the customer's name, or even if it really happened, the names and places have been changed to protect the innocent. This fellow came in with an older BMW something like a '74 or '75 2002.

And he said, "Gee, I have this problem. I go out in the morning to crank the thing to start it up. And I crank it. And it goes RhuhuRhuhRRHHuhrrHuRRHHuh but it doesn't start.

And he says, "However, I sometimes have the advantage of parking on a very slight hill. And I roll the thing three feet down the hill with the key on, and I pop the clutch and it starts right up. He said, "And as long as I do that, it seems to run pretty decently, and but it's getting worse and worse. And I don't know what it is and I want you to figure it out." So he leaves the car and off he goes.

And there are no hills at the garage so we pushed it in. And one of the guys at the garages says to me, "Gee, what do you think it is?" I said "Well, must be cranking too slowly. That's why it doesn't start!"

So he goes and checks it out and turns the key and it cranks over great. He says, "Ah, I know what it is. Must be low compression." Sure. So he takes the plugs out to see if they're wet and does a compression test. No. That's another Mickey Mouse answer. "Low compression my foot," he says!

The compression is great. And it's cranking fast enough. And yet a push start starts it but a crank start won't. So what's going on?

Answer the Puzzler »

Remember last week's puzzler?

The Missing Thermostat

Are you ready to get a new puzzler? Here it is.

A customer came in the other day. And he said, "Hey, guys," he said, "I was looking under the hood of my car. And I noticed something interesting."

He said, "I decided it was time to flush the cooling system and all that. And I've done this in other cars and when I usually do it, I take the thermostat out and I put a can of fast flush in there. And I let the environmentally unsound ingredients from the flush and antifreeze go down the sewer."

But he said, "Here I am, ready to take the thermostat out and I can't find the thermostat!"

Now for about a millennium or maybe a little longer, thermostats have always been located right where the top hose attaches to the engine, the top radiator hose. So if you wanted to find the thermostat, you'd find the radiator, which is that big black thing in the front of the car. And you would find the hose that attaches to the top of that. And you would follow it to the engine and voila, under that little water outlet, or thermostat housing as it's sometimes called, there is the thermostat.

(That's why it's called the thermostat housing--it houses what the thermostat.)

He finally does find it but it is located in the bottom hose. He follows the bottom hose to the engine and there is the thermostat.

So after saying, "Sonja Henie's Tutu!" he wonders: why is the thermostat in this car (and this there are many cars that have it like this I mean all Hondas and many Toyotas and there are many, many cars on the road, modern cars that have the thermostat located in the bottom hose and not the top hose) why this change? I mean for so many years it was the other way around. Why did they change? And there were two reasons.

Reason 1 and reason B, and we want both of them!