I recall the time that I did my first major upgrade to my first car. I junked the old 2-barrel carb and intake and replaced it with a 4-barrel system. I had my how-to book out and followed the pictures (since big words like torque and manifold confuse me). When I got everything back together, the damn thing would not stay running. It would cough and puke and finally stall. I looked at the picture in the book and then compared it to the engine compartment. Ditto - same, same, same. Checked the plug wires. Good. Checked for gas. Good. Checked for spark (NOT at the same time as I was checking for gas - I do have my bright moments). Good. Now my head hurt from thinking so hard.
At last I called my buddy and fellow partner in automotive crime to come over and see if he could figure this one out. He did, after all, have a much larger head than I. After much huffing and puffing and crawling around the car, he announced that this mystery was beyond him. Everything appeared as it should. Unlike me, he could actually read the captions to the pictures in the book so he had a much better understanding of what should be going on. He asked me if it would run long enough to get it to his house so that his dad could look at it. A little explanation here - his father was a Lt. Colonel in the Air Force and an expert mechanic. Well, as long as it was a VW. A VW bug that is - he had like 10 of them and forced them on his children to drive, what a nightmare. Anyway, I told him that sure, it could make it the half block to his house, he could push and I would steer. Picture a frowny face here.
We did manage to get it in his driveway (his house was thankfully downhill) and explained to his dad what was going on. His dad repeated our investigations without turning up anything obvious. He didn't even need the book - what a master! By this time, he was fiddling around with the brand spanking new carb I had just put on the engine. He had actually crawled up on top of the engine and was moving the throttle back and forth to see if the carb was working the way it should. I was sitting in the driver's seat hunched down peering at him through the gap between the open hood and the cowling. He looked at me through the same opening with his big military issue glasses and commanded me to try to start the car. Well, okay, but nothing good can come of this I thought. I turned the key to start and just let it crank, then looked back to see what he was doing. The engine coughed and sputtered like it had been and he leaned toward the carb to get a better look. Just at that moment a huge gout of flame erupted from the engine bay and his whole head disappeared in fire. The accompanying sound was like a train whistle going off. Horrified, I quickly released the key to stop cranking the engine and stared back at him.
He had not moved a muscle. Not a twitch. He was still staring down into the carb. Smoke was wafting from his eyebrows and hair. He slowly clambered down from the engine bay and sat down in the lawn chair in front of my car. Still smoking. Not a word. My buddy and I looked at each other open-mouthed and then back to him. He had a little flash burn on his face too - sort of an inverted raccoon thing because of his glasses. "Get me a beer" he said softly, followed by "I know what your problem is". Silence from both of us. Well, me, because my buddy had already made his escape on the pretense of beer-fetching. "Your distributor is in backwards". I'll be damned. I hadn't thought of that. More to the point, there was no picture in the book that would have lead me down that path. My buddy returned with the beer and handed it to his dad, who was still quietly smoking.
We popped the distributor out and righted the issue in about five minutes. I left. Quickly. That man never again helped me on any of my other cars, never did figure out why.
