[TR] A Triumph, but not the LBC type

[Mark Hooper]

Another fine Victor Meldrew moment yesterday.

I've been re-fitting a 1970s motorboat I haven't used in years. It's got a
Ford 351 V-8 attached by a most unlikely set of mechanical and electrical
linkages to a nice soft aluminium propeller. Not the most felicitous
arrangement, although it is quite common. With the angular momentum of that
big crankshaft behind it, I can break the prop on rocks, sand, ropes, edges of
docks, underwater weeds, passing fish, in fact just about anything the boat
comes near. It's most efficient, and at $200 a prop for repairs, quite
expensive to operate. I'm going to have to investigate a harder prop, or a
softer lakebed. But I digress...

Anyway, the motor hasn't turned in about 5 years, so I conceived a cunning
plan to spray a little WD-40 in each cylinder, just to be sure that the rings
wouldn't scrape too much when I turned the crankshaft to align things. I
unscrewed all 8 spark plugs and took my spray can with its attached little
tube and applied it to the closest cylinder. Unfortunately, instead of the
expected "pssshhh" sound of spraying, I heard a sort of "Pffpppt!" as the
little tube popped off the can and vanished into the dark depths of the
cylinder. The cylinder that happened to have a piston at bottom, leaving
plenty of room for a 5" tube to disappear completely.

Also leaving me with little to cry/shout/scream but Victor Meldrew's famous "I
don't believe it!", followed by other words and phrases designed to
communicate more fully the depths of my feelings about not believing it.

I gave serious thought to leaving the tube in there to hopefully burn off, but
visions of valves gummed shut with burning plastic brought me to my senses. A
bit of careful crankshaft rotation brought the offending article into partial
view and gave hope. Finally, after practically braiding my fingers together
holding an LED flashlight, garbage bag tie and needle nose pliers while
delicately rotating the engine with a socket and foot setup, I succeeded in
extracting the thing. Great relief. If I hadn't already had the exhaust
manifolds off and the engine on the shop floor instead of mounted in the
bottom of the boat, I should never have succeeded without enormous effort.

So, the moral of the story is; don't put anything near an open spark plug hole
that is narrower than the hole and conceivably shorter than its associated
cylinder is deep. There is a mysterious attractive force that you will learn
of to your dismay.

Mark Hooper
1972 TR6