Posted by David Sherman on Monday, November 05, 2007 at 23:38:33 :
In Reply to: Strange discovery posted by Jesse on Monday, November 05, 2007 at 21:34:33 :
Thinking of potentially-melted plastic on an engine, reminds me of my dad's lucky escape from a stuck throttle in our '60 T-bird. The car didn't get driven much, and a pack rat had built its nest on the exhaust manifold. One day he decided to take it out on the freeway just for fun. Along the way, he smelled smoke for a brief time but assumed it was somebody burning brush nearby. After cruising along at 70 mph he pulled off at the exit, took his foot off the gas, and the engine didn't slow down. Turned off the ignition and it still kept running. It had an automatic transmission, so he couldn't kill it by braking in high gear either. Eventually he did get it slowed down, and once it was running slow enough, the ignition-less engine finally quit. The smoke had been the burning rat nest. The heat had melted the plastic lining inside the sheath for the throttle cable. When the rat's nest had burned away, the plastic congealed and held the cable in the wide-open position. That experience also proved that a gas engine will run quite fine without a spark once the RPMs are up high enough.