The Mechanic

Yesterday's hot email topic.

Working on the boat, shop-vac-ed out the "rain water" from the engine compartment bilge yesterday. Many projects, you all are welcome to working vacation, free lodging on the boat! One of the local millionaires has two nice boats near mine, after replacing the 4 new looking batteries, one of the 2 - 465 HP engines starters hung.... 2 days later a Mercruiser mechanic thinks that a cylinder is filled with water not allowing the engine to cycle. Those big engines are accessed via a automatic hydraulic hatch, clean and bright, but appears engine has to be pulled to access starter....not sure about the plugs. Lucky for you (me) my 160HP Mercruiser is fully accessible in its 10' x 6' x 4' compartment.

Andy

Your story about the millionaire and the boat motor that won't start got me started on a wild goose chase that lasted longer than I care to admit.

Some weeks ago I read a story by a millionaire yacht owner about a speed problem he was having with his 50 odd foot yacht. I remember reading the story and thinking this guy was an idiot and deliberating not bookmarking it because the last thing I need is another example of stupidity. Or so I thought.

This is the story as I recall it. Guy buys a brand new 50 foot yacht with twin Volvo engines. It will get up and plane at 22 or 23 knots. It works fine for a while and then one day it won't go over 18 knots. So he starts looking for the problem. He has the boat hauled out of the water. He has it weighed. They can't find anything wrong. The factory recommends that he change the pitch of the props, so has them flattened. Lots of fooling around and nothing helps. Finally they get some expert Volvo mechanic to come take a look and he finds an air pressure sensor (manifold pressure, I think) and there is water in the tube connecting the sensor to the engine.

That was the whole problem. Sensor was not reading the pressure right, so the computer wasn't giving the engine enough boost, it wasn't generating enough power and it wasn't going as fast. Guy spends thousands of dollars trying to find the problem, and the problem wasn't he didn't have the right person working on it. And after all was said and done, he had to buy a new pair of propellers, 3 foot in diameter, bronze.

Of course, we don't know what kind of jerk he was, or how smart he was, or how smart the people he was dealing with. Still, it bothers me. I don't know whether it bothers me because they were dumb and did all the wrong things, or because I suspect if it had been fixed easily right off, he would not have been willing to pay the same amount of money. And how much should he have had to pay to get it fixed?

All this reminds me of a story I heard about Panovision motion picture cameras. Some people were making a film and one of the cameras got a scratch on the platen that sits behind the lens that the film slides over. Who knows how the scratch got there. They had to fly in a Panoflex camera repair man at some exorbitant price to polish the platen and make the camera all better. At the time I heard this, the price seemed astronomical. I don't remember what it was, but now I understand. Motion picture film cameras cost tens of thousands of dollars. If it breaks, it could easily cost five grand to get it fixed, and it would be well worth it. One of those cameras can probably consume ten thousand dollars of film in a day.

As for your millionaire. If they can pull the plugs, they might be able to get the water out of cylinders and get it started, but how did the water get in there in the first place? Might be freeze damage from the winter. Pulling it out and tearing it down might be the best thing.

ccp

Yes exactly same sort of phenomena: Wealth-holder experiences technical problem, hoping to get rid of it, he throws money at it, experts are summoned, perplexed at description of problem, much futile complicated work is performed, problem is finally resolved simply and easily. I experienced this once with my 1986 Mazda B2000 PU, mysteriously misfiring, somehow I thought carburetor, started a complicated dissection of that, stopped and rebuilt before losing parts. Still misfiring, replaced plugs, problem solved. Big-boat-simple-problem just another example of check the simple most-probable things first.

Big boat problem update: Yes, removing the plugs to allow the uncompressible water out sounds like the right course. The aircraft mechanic friend didn't want to pursue that because of the awkward working angles. They were bringing a expert Mercruiser mechanic up, whom I think resolved the issue because I saw the boat out yesterday.

I have been sleeping soundly since working on my boat.

Andy

I see that millionaire boat situation somewhat differently.

Criminal who stole fortune from American taxpayer blows it on Volvo powered penile implant, and it doesn't work right. Whines to normal working guys, who REALLY care about his problem. Guy escalates problem to corporate level, who REALLY care about his problem. They decide to take a look and suggest a way for guy to spend more of his money, keeping a serious face. Guy spends money. "Gee, didn't that fix it? Sorry. We were sure that was it. Let's try something else. It'll be cheaper."

Guy parts with more of his ill-gotten money. Used props go onto secondary market and get sold for profit to normal working guys. Boat awaits next whiny complaint.

"Screw him", says boat, mechanics, and corporation. All laugh.

Oh, and I remember a problem with the Mazda. It was the vacuum advance.

MP

Yes there is a screw-the-rich-guy mind-set out there. I saw it at Maaco, Corvette repairs/painting, automatically 50% higher. Rationalized by "corvette owners are more particular, and we will more issues with them, besides they have too much money. I see it at our house, "big brick house, clay tiles, I can replace your 200 linear feet of gutters for $20,000". I see it for child support "you used to make a good salary, you have money, pay child support like your making $60K even though your not"

Andy

So isn't it the trend to be capitlized on, especially in these pinched times? Or is it somehow more Christian in the freakish Reaganesque manner, to continue to worship the wealthy? All I hear here is sympathy for the difficulty of the wealthy, or some twisted empathatic self-identification as such. Isn't that self-defeating, or do you truly believe you depend on the wealthy or will be wealthy yourself?

MP

No, it's not sympathy for the wealthy you are hearing, though I am not sure what it is.

Rich man with broken boat is willing to pay huge sums to get it fixed. If the problem is a tiny technical failure, a smart mechanic can sometimes track down problem and locate culprit for a relative pittance.

Sometimes tracking down the problem can take a long time. I remember trying to diagnose a reset problem with a CPU board at Intel. If memory serves it took about a month of hair pulling to finally track down the culprit.In this case it wasn't because the board had failed. There was a design flaw that affected all of this particular model of board.

Finding a mechanic who can diagnose the problem can be more difficult than finding and/or fixing the problem.

Straight forward mechanical repairs are relatively easy to deal with. People have done these repairs before, they know how long it is going to take, they know how much it is going to cost. They can compare that with the value of whatever is broken and decide whether to proceed with the repair or not.

Broken complex systems can be much more problematic.Hard to determine what the problem is without lots of information, most of which needs to be contained in the head of whoever is searching for the problem, and some people have a problem with paying for that kind of information.

All of which reminds me of this story (found on WPI):

EXPERTISE --There was an engineer who had an exceptional gift for fixing all things mechanical. After serving his company loyally for over 30 years, he happily retired. Several years later the company contacted him regarding a seemingly impossible problem they were having with one of their multimillion dollar machines. They had tried everything and everyone else to get the machine to work but to no avail. In desperation, they called on the retired engineer who had solved so many of their problems in the past. The engineer reluctantly took the challenge. He spent a day studying the huge machine. At the end of the day, he marked a small "x" in chalk on a particular component of the machine and stated, "This is where your problem is". The part was replaced and the machine worked perfectly again. The company received a bill for $50,000 from the engineer for his service. They demanded an itemized accounting of his charges. The engineer responded briefly:
One chalk mark $1
Knowing where to put it $49,999
It was paid in full and the engineer retired again in peace.

I suspect this story is more of a fairy tale.

As systems get more complicated, the diagnostician becomes more specialized. As systems become more reliable, the demand for good technicians goes down. Only a few companies with wide reach can afford to keep a smart guy on staff to track down these weirdo problems. Companies without the expertise make do with what they have.

Problem is figuring out which technicians really know what they are doing, and which ones only look like it. Makes it hard for business people to figure out how much to pay them. Business people are generally not that bright, so asking them to figure out which technician is more smarter than they are is a waste of time. They couldn't do it if they tried. This is where certification comes in, but I am pretty sure that all certification does is set some low minimum, like they can tie their shoes. Complex system diagnoses require someone with a specialized brain, and I am not sure anyone knows how to accurately determine what kind of brain someone has.

ccp