Spark plugs away

Got a call from my son yesterday. Daaaad. The long emphasis on the "A" in Dad means he's got a problem. Would you help my wife. Sure, I'll always help our favorite daughter-in-law. Her car won't start.

Thanks to the people on this site. I've been reading all the good stuff so have a tendency to forget I've got the PM. Grab the jumper cables, make a call and I'm on my way.

Car in garage. Temperature is 6 degrees Fahrenheit which is -14 C. Cold for the central Ohio region of the USA. Pull in my vehicle, jump out, start attaching jumper cables, battery to battery. Start my car, jump out, lean over engine and help her start hers. No joy on the first four attempts. Leaning over engine compartment. Grabbing wires (with insulation) attached to battery, etc. Have to shoehorn myself into her driver's seat as she is a good foot shorter than me. Finally get the car running. Guess what?

Zilch, nichts, nada, nothing. Didn't think a thing about it until I was relating the story to someone this morning. Gosh! I'm not supposed to be leaning over a running car engine with a PM! Completely forgot about it.

So I guess we'll be able to ignore another PM warning. Granted, I never got closer than a foot with my PM to either the battery, alternator, or spark plugs and I didn't grab any wires where I would be shocked. My PM and leads are OK for a MRI so I guess their shielded a little better than some. But still, stray EMF didn't bother me.

However, I have found out, as guys with PM's, we should stay away from dishwashers, vacuum cleaners, toilet and floor scrubbing, being over a hot stove, and other things that fall into that domestic routine. Corrodes the leads on our PM's. Now, if I can just convince my wife....

Theknotguy

7 Comments

Give it up on...

by donr - 2014-01-30 02:01:44

..the last para.

On the first part - congrats, you have just confirmed what a bunch of us know!

Now if you'd have been holding the cables next to your PM while the starter was being activated, it would be a horse that had just been walked through a paint spray booth & hit w/ purple paint. That MAY have laid you out on the floor.

With most Jumper Cables, the two conductors are very close to one another in bonded rubber. They have current flowing opposite directions, so they practically cancel one another. I still would not want them next to my PM.

My experience w/ 240 Volts, 30 Amps 60 Hz in the twisted pair of stranded # 6 copper wire at about 6 inches from my PM was that it flipped my PM into TEST mode. A true surprise when you are up an 8 ft step ladder & not expecting it.

A decent sized engine draws about 250 Amps while starting - especially when cold & the oil is like Gorilla Glue.

Otherwise, you cannot get close enough to anything carrying a current that will affect your PM w/o getting your shirt front sucked into a serpentine belt & having your face slapped by fan blades (OUCH!).

Don

My wife says

by Theknotguy - 2014-01-31 04:01:29

KAG:

My wife said, "Amen to that! And some men take longer than others!"

Guess she was talking about me. Been working on me for 40 years and still don't have it right. Must be a slow learner or somethin.

I think that's why she was so anxious when I was in the hospital. Didn't want to see all that work go down the drain.
Theknotguy

Depends on which...

by donr - 2014-01-31 06:01:19

...gender guys you are talking to.

Once upon a time in the East (NJ) my daughter was home for a weekend from school w/ a bunch of friends tagging along. I heard her say "C'mon Guys, let's go!" I turned around to look for a bunch of males & there was nothing there but women. From that point on, I figured that "Guys" was now a gender-neutral pronoun.

Don

Normally

by KAG - 2014-01-31 07:01:14

I use 'guys' all the time as a gender neutral pronoun.

However I think it's intuitively obvious that in this case 'guys' needing lots of OJT on domestic chores definitely refers to males. :-)

I once had a guy (male) tell me that I would be much better at operating a vacuum cleaner than him. I replied that I would be happy to teach him how to operate the On/Off switch and given enough time I was sure he could catch on how it works.

Kathy

Guys

by Grateful Heart - 2014-01-31 09:01:33

I use "guys" all the time too.

But then, I live with a bunch of guys so that's all I know.
It's true....only female in the house.......lots of testosterone and yes, they all know how to do household chores. They're just all too big and too busy now. :-(

Grateful Heart

You guys....

by KAG - 2014-01-31 11:01:46

You need to realize that as guys you need lots and lots of OJT especially when it comes to domestic jobs. It's only for your own benefit that you need to keep doing it until you get it right. :-)

Kathy: This could turn out funny...

by donr - 2014-02-01 01:02:53

...Our two sons earned how to cook - in the Boy Scouts. They also learned how the washer works & the vacuum operates. Not to mention how to load & unload the dishwasher.

Told them that someday they would need those skills when a wife was sick or worked or was away visiting her ill parents. Besides, Mom needed a bit of help cleaning up the messes they made.

So they learned.

ON to the female Guys in the family. They had to demonstrate that they could change a tire on our 75 Chevy station wagon. When they were 16, the wheels weighed more than they did. But they learned it & passed the family test. They also learned to hold a flashlight, operate a screwdriver, hammer, shovel, saw & the names of all the tools in the box - after all, you better know what they are if you are going to hand them to Dad, who is under the car.

Oh, yes - the female guys learned how to stick a squirming worm on a hook & take a fish off after the worm did its job.

When there are 6 of us going 6 different directions, everyone has to carry a share of the domestic load.

Don

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