8pm and the phone rang
It was Dave, a mate of mine from days of crawling and scrambling round the local limestone caves. His old Datsun 180B which he'd just bought cheaply had conked out near the local theatre and he'd phoned from there. It had been coughing and sputtering a bit after turning right but usually came good after a few seconds. This time it didn't. Could I come down and give him a hand. It was only about a kilometre from my place. Dave was a semi-professional photographer, had his own darkroom and enlarger, knew a lot about radio and TV but was clueless about cars.

Got there a few minutes later and checked the spark. That seemed to be OK so the next thing was the fuel. The car had a carburettor with a sight glass on the side and sure enough the bowl was empty. Dirty or jammed needle valve I thought and we took the air cleaner off. One of the screws holding the top of the carby on was absent without leave and one was loose.

There wasn't anything wrong with the needle valve but the float was up and would not go down. I lifted it out and there was a tiny bolt which had replaced one of the missing screws, rolling about in the float bowl. When Dave turned right, it rolled under the float bowl, the engine coughed and it skittered out of the way, and things went back to normal. But this time it did not.

Some moron had wrecked the screw thread in the carby body and somehow managed to use this bolt from the inside of the float bowl with a nut outside. Of course the nut had vibrated off and the bolt dropped into the float bowl.
(Redemption blamed it on the Bossa Nova since, Sun 13 Mar 2011, 23:00, 1 reply)

Of course

( Geoff the Clownfish You know Myra, some people might think you're cute, Mon 14 Mar 2011, 9:30, closed)