Engine

Everywhere I go I see it.

I’d like to make a movie of it. Start with a cutaway diagram of the Travco that slowly rotates in my head as it zooms into the gas tank in the rear and then follows the gas down the line toward the front to the right of the engine, drawn up into the fuel pump, pushed out and up, under the alternator to the top of the engine, through the fuel filter and into the carburetor where it mixes with air and dives down until it ignites with a spark.

This little movie runs on a loop in my head. It invades everything I do. I see it sitting at stoplights, a similar path of electricity out of the breaker, up the light pole and to the switch which sends it to the top lens, which happens to be red.

I see it doing the dishes. The water leaving the tower, flowing down increasingly narrower pipes, off the main street line and into my hot water tank where it sits until a flick of the faucet calls it up through more pipes and out onto my hands.

Everything flows like this. Every system around us, when it works, does something similar.

Right now the Travco does not work. I can see it in my head and yet I cannot make it work. It has to be the fuel pump. I have spark, I have compression, the missing ingredient in the basic trifecta of the internal combustion engines is fuel.

But seeing it and understanding it are different than actually solving the problem, making it work. This is basic difference between architects and builders. Builders have to solve problems in the real world that architects will never encounter.

Days pass. I continue to fail with the bus. The real world of by time constraints, pay checks that don’t arrive, other commitments, weather. I work on other things. Hang wall panels, sand and apply finish. I do things I know I know how to do. More days pass. Still the bus doesn’t start. I get sullen. My wife thinks I’m mad all the time. I’m not. I’m thinking about the engine, I can’t get it out of my head. It reminds me of the first time I tried to write some code. It was fun, but it also was not.

Problem solving seems fun after the problem is solved. During the actual solving it’s less fun. Food, sleep, these things seem unimportant when I have a problem that needs solving stuck in my head. I tend to get obsessed about things. Even when I don’t want to. It’s one of the reasons I don’t do much programming anymore. I never let things go until I solve the problem to my satisfaction. Of course breaking a web server doesn’t cost much relative to damaging an engine, so with the bus the stakes are much higher, the sullen thinking phase I pass through is correspondingly more sullen and requires more concentration.

I consult my friend Jimmy, double check with him that my plan is sane. He says it is and assures me that there’s little chance I’ll screw anything up. So I crawl back under the bus for another soaking of gasoline and, after much swearing and muscle cramping, somehow manage to get the new fuel pump properly seated under the eccentric on the camshaft and anchored into place. Then I replace all the fuel lines and filter for good measure. Everything from the fuel pump to the carburetor is now my doing.

I step back and get the gasoline soaked clothes off and take a shower. I want these ten minutes of thinking I fixed it to last, which turn out to be a good thing because when I get back in the bus and fire it up and… it still won’t start. Damnit.

The is the most demoralizing thing I know of for anyone trying to DIY something. That moment when it should work, but it doesn’t. Damnit. I go back to the internet and do some more searching. I message Jimmy again. On a whim I decided maybe I didn’t crank it enough to get all the air out of the new lines. So I go back and instead of starter fluid in the carb I go straight gasoline, which, predictably, starts the engine. And then it dies when that gas is consumed. Goddammit.

I decide try one last time, with enough gasoline to possibly set the whole engine on fire. But that doesn’t happen. Instead it starts and then it keeps running. This is when it would nice if life had a sound effects choir to ring out something triumphant. But there’s nothing. Just me, sitting in the driver’s seat enjoying the smell of gasoline and the roar of the engine. And it’s a damn fine roar. For now.