A Hunk of Burnin' Oil

Time for the puzzler. I have several puzzlers which I've been tempted to use. We have had a rash of non-automotive puzzles and I thought it'd be nice to have an automotive puzzler.
So I thought that I would use an automotive puzzle this week. And the dilemma is coming up with a good one.
But I got it. Here you go.

A fellow came into the shop. He was complaining about his car. I don't remember what kind of car it was. It could be any kind of car that burns gasoline. And he was complaining that all of a sudden, the car began to burn oil. The car had about 75,000 miles and until this moment had been perfect. He was changing the oil every 3 or 4 thousand miles, as we had suggested. He'd been doing this faithfully and all of a sudden, he's driving along one day and the oil light comes on.

He said, "Oh my god, I've run out of oil. I must have a leak of some kind." He pulls up the dipstick and... half his oil is gone. Out of the four quarts he had, only two were left. So he put two quarts of oil in. He immediately drove it to the shop and asked them to check for a leak, being sure that he had one.

They assured him that there was no leak. Two weeks later, the oil light comes on again. He is down two more quarts of oil and now, he's convinced that he's burning oil and he wants to know why. What happened? Why did this happened?

Well, you might say, "Well, some catastrophic thing occurred." But nothing catastrophic occurred. This thing didn't overheat. It wasn't abused. But what is the chain of events that occurred here that caused the car to go from no oil consumption to rapid oil consumption?

My brother had the very same thing happened to him with his wonderful '67 GMC Suburban. But the reason for it was he broke a ring. He went from burning no oil to burning all of it. However, nothing of that nature happen in this case.

So, what is going on here?

Answer the Puzzler »

Remember last week's puzzler?

Hanging Around

Time for the new puzzler! We had a mechanic named crusty about a police detective that was summoned to the scene of a crime. This crime took place in a locked gymnasium. A very large room, maybe 200 feet by 200 feet. The room was locked and deadbolted from the inside.

In the room is the victim who has been hanged by a rope hanging from the middle of the room. And there's no way for him to have gotten there because he is dangling with his feet about three feet from the floor. It's a rope hanging from the middle of the ceiling, in the middle of the room about 50 or 100 feet from any of the walls.

So the police detective, Lieutenant Columbo, was summoned to the scene of the crime of course they have to break the door. And this took place during Spring Break, so nobody was there. The students all come back after Spring Break, and they see this guy hanging from the ceiling.

I might add that in addition to the person, the victim, and the rope, the only other thing in the room? Three basketballs.

So, the dead guy hanging from the rope, the only other thing in the room, three basketballs.

The police detective comes in. He looks around and says, "This is suicide."

How did he know? And how was it done? Good luck!