Legend?

[Will Owen <nashwill912@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Charlie said -

 "There was a similar legend when I was an autoshop student - if you ran 
an engine without the exhaust manifold or mufflers, you would damage the 
exhaust valves because cold air would creep back in after shutdown and
crack the valves from thermal shock (thermal shock from air diffusing
into the exhaust? nahhhhh!). I never believed that one either."

Knew a guy in Alaska who had a seriously hotrodded VW. He trailered it
to an ice-racing weekend at Big Lake, which was then 100+ miles by road
from Anchorage. Didn't have any mufflers at all, just a bigass megaphone
on each side, which he kept stuffed with rags between runs. Whenever he
ran the engine, whether the car moved or not, as soon as he shut it down
he'd shove those rags in as quickly as he could to keep the valves from
warping, and it seems to me that this was something he'd learned about
the hard way. Well, he got another lesson - when he pulled in from
racing on Saturday, his pit guy was nowhere to be seen, so Lyle jumped
out and stuffed the rags in himself. Unfortunately, the trumpets were a
whole bunch hotter than they'd ever been before, and he burnt the
bejeezus out of both hands and had to be hauled off to the hospital.
Which is why the pit guy wound up driving the tow car and trailer back
to Anchorage, and I wound up driving the pit guy's ancient Ford pickup,
the one with no kingpin bushings and concrete tires, over 100+ miles of
ice-covered road. In the company, I might add, of the pit guy's girl
friend, who decided during the journey that...okay, another story, not
for here.

Alfa content: there was a guy who lived near Big Lake, who commuted that
same 100+ miles to Anchorage in a lovely blue Giulietta Sprint. I'd
never had a look at it up close (he wasn't in the club) until I saw it
one day at Lou's, the really good Italian car shop in Anchorage. There
was something odd about the fenders...and when I got close enough, I saw
that they all looked like they had really bad acne. The rest of the
bodywork was nearly flawless, but the gravel from the roads had hammered
thousands of little dings from the inside of all four fenders. I was
speechless; Lou, who was never speechless, let me and everyone else know
what he thought of anyone who'd treat such a beautiful car like that,
backing it up with his stock of Serbian cusswords which sound SO much
nastier than anyone else's...

Will
--
to be removed from alfa, see /bin/digest-subs.cgi
or email "unsubscribe alfa" to majordomo@domain.elided