Alioth's Journal: Grumblesmurf

So I got into my car this morning, turned the key, it started to fire up as normal, then didn't.

Now it won't even fire, and what's more it's turning over a little unevenly and much /faster/ than it should. This sounds like loss of compression on at least one or more cylinders. The engine management system also starts bleating part the way thorough cranking.

The good news is I've checked what I can, things like the cam belt is still in one piece, and when it did this, it made no "catastrophic" sounds - so I doubt it's done anything like swallowed one of the 20 valves, and there are no big holes where there shouldn't be big holes. The bad news is, lacking a garage, I can't exactly start disassembling the engine to find out what's wrong, so it's probably going to have to be towed to the shop, where the mechanic (who we actually know very well, he's a sidecar racer friend of my Dad's) will suck the air through his teeth and tell me there will be at least two zeros in the price to fix.

Bummer

[damn_registrars]

What kind of vehicle are you talking about? How many miles, what kind of fuel, what kind of environment? When was the last time you changed out your spark plugs (gasoline) or glow plugs (diesel)? Pulling the plugs can often tell you quite a bit about the conditions inside the cylinders, without having to do intense dissection.

tighten ze spurkz plugz

[Profane MuthaFucka]

zey ist loosey maybeez?