Fuel, air, and spark

“Fuel, air, and spark are all it needs to run. Which one isn’t it getting?” was something my dad would say when we’d confront a car that wouldn’t start. It’s an oversimplification, but an excellent starting point. From here, you start checking if enough air is getting in (usually is). You might pull a spark plug and see crank it over while grounding against the engine block to see if it sparks. Or make sure you do indeed have gasoline, and then check if the fuel pump is functioning. I’ve successfully used the formula to get my old motorcycle going by discovering a spark plug cable was shorting out, meaning no spark inside the cylinder, where I need it.

Recently, my girlfriend’s Honda was having some problems. Subtle problems, like the check engine light intermittently coming on and occasional hesitations. It was a thorn in her side, so needless to say it was a thorn in mine, too. I looked around for any obvious problems and found none of the usual suspects. The spark plugs had a lot of soot on them, figured I might as well change them. Despite shiny new plugs, the problem remained and this did not impress the lady friend.

Rather than considering myself a shitty mechanic, I imagine myself as House, the tortured, pill popping, TV doctor who tries to figure out what’s wrong with people. Engines aren’t so different from people-they take in fuel (air and gas vs air, water, and food in humans) and produce work. Still, there’s a lot of complicated things going on inside that we don’t see.

The fuel we run on needs to be balanced. For humans, this means that the insulin and blood sugar levels need to be, as Goldilocks said, “just right”. Gasoline engines are the same. In fact, the stoichiometric ratio that an engine likes is 14.7 parts air to 1 part fuel. This is pretty precise, and if it’s off be even a little, it usually becomes apparent. On top of that, on car engines with 4-8 cylinders, it should be the exact same between all the different cylinders.

Let’s go back to 1947, when the Japanese economy was in reconstruction after WWII. The U.S. was still occupying the islands, and sent over an expert in statistics and planning named W. Edwards Deming to help. The gist of Deming’s story in Japan is that he helped institute a practice known as “statistical process control” which helped Japanese manufacturers improve the precision of their output. By improving precision, they could cut down on cost by making consistently making fewer mistakes that needed rework. Statistical process control had not yet gained wide acceptance in the U.S., so it was a novel move for Japanese manufacturers. In fact, it wasn’t until the 1980’s that Deming began to be recognized as an expert in the U.S.. Meanwhile, the precision and quality of Japanese products skyrocketed. By the early 1970’s, Japanese car makers used this newfound ability to create engines that both used less gas and lowered emissions. When the oil crisis of 1973 struck, new fuel efficiency regulations were imposed and American car companies were caught with their pants down. They couldn’t make small engines that balanced both fuel economy and power. As a result, the American car consumers flocked to buy the Japanese brands, and Detroit has been in decline since. Kaizen is a Japanese word that describes a philosophy of continuous improvement in business, engineering, or manufacturing. Japanese car makers have taken it to heart and continue to lead the pack in regards to quality. This is all well and good for my girlfriend and her Honda. Unfortunately for me, I drive a German car.

While my dad’s assertion that “all an engine needs is air, gas, and spark” is still correct, it doesn’t tell me how much each of those it needs. Learning the stoichiometric ratio needed doesn’t really help me either, as I don’t have the tools to measure what the engine is getting anyway. We gave up and took it to a dealer, who suggested checking the valve clearances, luckily not exploratory open thoracic surgery. With adjustments as small as one or two thousandths of an inch, things were back as they came from the Honda factory within a few hours. And yup, the check engine light has stayed off. The subtle, precise balance of air to fuel across the 4 cylinders has been restored. House brilliantly saved another patient. And my girlfriend has finally stopped bitching about her car.

Tow Truck Envy

I only own shitty cars. Ones that have things wrong with them. I’m brave and stupid enough to drive them despite the fact that they break down. Unfortunately, on this occasion, I was three hours from home for a job interview. The car wasn’t going to do me well anywhere around there, and I usually do my own car work, so I figured I’d have it towed it home. The second place I called gave me a $500 deal and we made it happen. The tow truck driver (who we’ll call Rod because I forgot his name) showed up, dragged my car’s corpse the up ramp of a greasy wrecker, and we took off.

Rod was a talker. Before I could feign fatigue and pretend to sleep, I knew all about his love of Duke basketball, bass fishing hobby, two kids (a girl and a boy), and political affiliation. I didn’t talk much, just enough to be polite and keep the conversation going.

The majority of Americans would never share their yearly earnings with a stranger, but Rod did just that. Weirdly enough, I shared my salary with him as well. The kicker- we made the same amount. Why did this give me pause? For the past 4 years of college, 2 years of engineering experience at an international company at the top of the industry, and being interviewed for a job with the title of “consultant”, I was leading myself to believe I was doing better than I am.

Rod was older than and had more relevant job experience than I did, but not by much. He didn’t own his company, just drove one of the trucks for a small towing business. He worked the day shift, so no special pay for slaving through the night picking up dead cars and their bored and stressed owners.

Over the three hour conversation, he completely casually mentioned that he owned his own modest home in an area not far from a major metro area, which he had saved up and bought owned outright with cash. His wife enjoyed working on her tan on the days he went fishing on his boat.

“God damn,” I thought, “does this guy have life figured out?” What was my life missing that made me jealous?

Rod had something I wanted, an autonomy that didn’t depend on some grey-haired suit above him. It wasn’t until just recently that I realized he has another distinct advantage that I didn’t. Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s most recent book is called Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder. He posits that workers in a large corporate enterprise are actually at a less stable position than those who ‘work for themselves’ or similar situations. Consider people who work on a commission or piece work basis, such as taxi drivers, artists, and yes, tow truck drivers; they have immediate feedback about the worth they create and are able to notice patterns and therefore adapt to maximise their profits.

According to Taleb, a cog in a gigantic corporate machine receives the same paycheck every other week, so they feel awfully secure about their financial position. That same accountant, customer service representative, engineer, assembly line worker, etc, may hear that the company is about to go down in flames, or they may not. In the end, if it makes sense for the whole, or at least for the board of directors, that worker may be cut loose. Suddenly, the corporate worker goes from having steady income, to none at all.

Considering the other view, a prostitute would only see that the economy is in recession via more clients seeking services during the nine-to-five hours they had previously been working. Eventually the johns would become fewer and farther between, but, noticing the decline, the courtesan could move onto greener pastures. There had been no rumors of a layoff at my job - yet.

It seemed that I’d worked hard on setting up a life that had been nothing more than ticking off boxes of a to-do list. High school graduation with honors, a college degree, corporate job, and moving up to something new within a few years in order to ‘keep climbing’. I was pretty well set up for life, and pretty happy, but I wasn’t really much more steady than I had been as an 18 year old, working as an apprentice for a guy with his heating business.

I got the job I was interviewing for. Still, boring moments staring at Excel spreadsheets make me ponder the conversation with the tow truck driver, Rod, and his bass boat on a lake. Coincidentally, I’ve also searched for used tow trucks for sale.