English and (heaven forbid) Alfa Romeo stuff

[Joe Elliott <jelliott@domain.elided>]

  John Fielding provided us with a handy list of American automotive idioms
versus their British counterparts, but I've got a few questions, like
"Where the heck did you find your Americans?"  Now I'm familiar with
hood/bonnet, fender/wing, roof/hood, trunk/boot, sedan/saloon, (station)
wagon/estate, gas/petrol, etc, and enjoyed some of your other examples, but
three caught my eye as being quite weird.  Now it's entirely possible that
it's me that's quite weird, but I'm pretty American (lived in California
and Ohio all my life), and I've never heard of snap rings, axleshafts, or
recap tires.  I'm familiar with circlips, halfshafts, and retreads, which
are apparently British.  Granted, there are many dialects across the USA,
but I found that pretty interesting.  Now maybe this is also has to do with
me being weird, but I always used "exhaust headers" and "exhaust manifold"
to refer to two different treatments of exhaust coming out of the engine.

  On a more Alfa-related note:

>Meanwhile, about the plenum launching:  A wise old racer and former >dealer
>service manager once told me that you must slightly back off the >screws
>holding the air ducting that leads into the plenum because if these >are too
>tight, an event like you had causes the plenum to blow, and with it >the
>plastic panel (which is there just for that purpose, and not to keep >pizza
>warm at bocce matches as is sometimes mistakenly reported).  If you >slightly
>back off the screws instead of keeping them dead tight, the ducting >will
>more
>likely separate, and that's much less of a bother to put back >together and
>can also be less embarrassing.
>
>Charlie
>AROSC
>LA, CA, USA

The first time my car backfired the plenum stayed on and the airflow meter
got damaged.  So I was instructed by a mechanic to loosen the screws on the
intake runners to MAKE the plenum pop off to relieve pressure so as not to
damage airflow meters, et cetera.  In the twice that it's backfired since
then the plenum has popped and no expensive FI parts have been damaged.
I'm not sure what Charlie means about the ducting separating and the plenum
staying in place, and it sure doesn't sound easy to repair :).  As for the
pizza warmer/tea tray gag, that gives me a good idea.  I had been planning
to turn the cubby under the glovebox into a burrito warmer using the nearby
heater core and the wires for the former glovebox light, but maybe it would
make more sense to put a popcorn popper in the center of the hood since my
tea tray is wrecked anyway--but I'm not sure whether it would get hot
enough without my having to do something fancy.

In honor of all this talk about being informal on the digest, I'll use my
informal sig today.



                       oOOOb.
                      dOP `Vb
                     dOP   OO  ,dOOb.  ,dOOb
                     VOb   OO,dOP  VOb,OP  Vb
           XXXXXXX   VOb  OOP'Ol  lO`VOOAAY'
                         dOO  Ob  dO  VA
                       ,dPOO  `VOOP'  `VOOY'
                      .dP OO
                      vq  yp
                      `VwwP'

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