gun smoke – hey, it’s friday!

the things i do to entertain you people…

….and yeah, i said it:

on the upside this gave me an excuse to smoke a cigar at nine in the morning. not the brightest move with a sore throat and all, but all in the name of science, automotive diagnosis, and whore research…so sacrifices must be made. for the record me doing all this for you has made miss copper kinda pissed at me.

again, the things i do for…well…you know. budnik ain’t happy, either.

so why did i do this? simple, really – the check engine light has been on in my car for the better part of a month or so, and the theory is it’s a vacuum leak – which most diagnose by spraying the area with carb cleaner and when you car chokes out you know you found the spot…but that didn’t work with mine.

so i went with “plan b”, which we might as well call “plan c” with the “c” standing for “cigar”.

see, to me a “vacuum leak” says the car is sucking where it ain’t supposed to suck (kinda like most girls their sophomore year in college) and so i figured if it sucked in “air” where i could actually SEE it i might could find it – and while you can’t see “air” disappear, you sure as hell can see “smoke” do it!

hence, the cigar – exhale over the engine, see where it appears to go, then hold said cigar (which smolder forever once you get ’em going – at least the good ones do) close to where you saw the air go in and bingo, you know where your leak is…mine appears to be high up on the intake, near the throttle body…so i guess that’s next on the diagnostic. first i’m gonna go get the codes RE-run to make sure it still reads as that. i saved ’em all in my phone.

as for the gun part:

how cool is that? a bottle opener made out of a genuine .50 caliber shell. be-lated shane b-day gift? yeah, i think it might have to be…

(and yes, shane, i know it hasn’t passed yet but i’m pretty strapped right now…)