Deep in the heart of every car, every Corvette or Maserati, every Kia or Peugeot, hundreds of tiny little pieces the size of pencils (or smaller) whirl and spin, bounce and tap, generating the power to drive to the grocery store, listen to the radio, run the heater. A high-end car like a BMW has more little pieces than most. But like every car, a BMW relies on the integrity of those little pieces, and when one fails, even a tiny one no bigger than a spoon, you notice. Think of the impact one little inch of restricted artery might have.
Saturday brought a BMW into the garage in a search for its heart ailment, and the photo here shows the result, after a long surgery that has left the patient in an incapacitated state for now. The fine 7-series BMW was suffering from missing a quarter-inch piece of a valve. (To see how the little pieces go round and round and the role a vale plays, check out the relevant page on How Stuff Works). Having identified the problem, the remedy is on its way.
4 comments:
Doesn't it just feel good to dig into the heart of an engine, get grease under the fingernails and fix a problem yourself rather than paying someone else to do it? Hopefully you can get the patient put back together and working again. I usually end up with an extra screw or two banging around my toolbox.
We just hope that the only thing left in our toolboxes from the beemer project is a little more confidence. Not too much, mind you, but a little more.
Indeed. we're not out of the woods yet. She'll go back together, but it's the EKG we're concerned about. We need someone experienced in pace-making :)
Let's just hope we don't need a lightning rod, a tower, and a woman with a white streak in her hair watching silently as we wait for sufficient voltage to lead us to cry, "it's alive, It's Alive, IT'S ALIVE!"
Post a Comment