Puzzler Answer, 6/13/97: Of Fuses and Camping
RAY: OK, look. It's time to answer last week's puzzler and I know you remember it...
TOM: Well I do.
RAY: So I won't even ask.
TOM: But its getting so darn boring. It's getting so darn boring.
RAY: All right.
TOM: I mean I'm getting so sick of this -- it was much more fun when I didn't remember or when I could forget. If I only could lose a few of these brain cells but they're a plague to me -- they're a plague.
RAY: All right. Here it is. I'll make it brief. If possible. A customer came in a few months ago. Second one this year. Anyway she was complaining about a short circuit. She said that a fuse was blowing repeatedly. It was the fuse that ran, I think the tail lights and the dash lights, and the courtesy lights and whatever. Anyway she put a new fuse in and sometimes within five minutes it would blow -- sometimes an hour later -- it was completely random. So I assigned this task to Manny. He's a young guy who works for us and I said, "Look, get the short tester out of my toolbox and hook the thing up." And basically the short tester is – it’s two pieces. It's a circuit breaker that resets itself which you put in place of the fuse that blows and it's an ammeter -- a very sensitive little ammeter. You got the scenario?
TOM: So that you're really putting a fuse in and the fuse is, in fact, blowing, but it just resets itself.
RAY: It just resets itself.
TOM: So you don't have to keep putting these very expensive 20 cent fuses in...
RAY: Exactly.
TOM: It just keeps...
RAY: Right.
TOM: It stays there so you can keep walking around looking for the short.
RAY: And it's preferable to putting in a penny -- which has been known to set more than a few cars on fire.
TOM: Yes.
RAY: Anyway, so I give him a couple of minutes to do this and I go and I check up on him and I ask him how he's doing. And he says, "well, I know where the short is but I didn't have to use the meter." I said, "Oh! You smell something burning?" He said, "No, there's something on her dashboard that's telling me where the short is. It's nearby. It's near the dashboard. It's in the dash. And it’s something that's sitting on her dashboard that's telling me this."
TOM: Yeah. I got this one right away, you know.
RAY: You did. And the hint that I gave is that she's going on a camping trip.
TOM: Yeah. She's got one of them there compasses sitting on her...
RAY: She's got a compass. Because what's happening in the vicinity of the short you are creating an electro-magnetic field -- you're creating magnetism -- and that magnetism would affect the sensitive little ammeter which is nothing more than a little...
TOM: Compass.
RAY: Compass. And it's instead of affecting her compass -- and her compass was just spinning wildly every time the circuit breaker blew. So he air chiseled the dashboard open and he found the shorted wire. Pretty good, huh?
TOM: That is pretty good.
RAY: Well it wasn't that good. You got it.
TOM: I got it.
RAY: Who’s our winner?
TOM: The winner here -- just a minute -- is Jennifer Partin from Tucson, Arizona. And, for having her correct answer chosen, as we know, at random, from among the thousands of correct answers that we received, our pal Jennifer is going to win herself a free copy of The Second Best of Car Talk. All we ask, Jennifer is that you please dispose of this CD properly. Do not throw it into the street. Plastic is not biodegradable. If you get this and you scream just make sure you take it down to your local recycling center.
RAY: Dispose of it in an environmentally conscientious way.
TOM: Conscientious way.
RAY: That's all we ask. Anyway, we having a new puzzler coming during the...
TOM: But whatever you do, don't mail it back to us.
RAY: Unless it's accompanied by dead fish. We have a new puzzler coming up during the second half of Car Talk.
[ Car Talk Puzzler ]
