David’s first car was a VW. You know that now very fashionable 1968 beetle that everyone thinks is so cool. Well, he called his car the “Bilious Bug”. Why? Sorry, you will have to ask him that question – but that was the name he detailed so professionally on the back engine cover of the car. That’s right folks – the ‘Vee Double You’ (as Tom would call it) had its engine in the back. Now it is this engine in David’s car that I became closer to than any other mechanical object then or since. See, ‘squelchy-toes’ salesman Sam was just not into David’s ‘mechanical engineering’ toys and possessions. Well, the combination of David’s tight income as an apprentice and his can-do attitude to fixing anything mechanical ensured that the problems with the VW’s engine were going to be fixed by him. Now this surly highlights a problem – to fix the engine he must first work on it in a raised position and must sometimes remove it from the vehicle so that he can work on it properly. David being David, soon devised a way of lifting the car up onto some raised supports by backing the car up onto them- easy! Now for the hard part – How do you get the engine out of the vehicle without an overhead engine hoist or an under car engine jack? I know, says David’s mind, get Sam to be one part of the engine jack. So, here was the plan. David would undo all the required bolts that connected the engine to the body of the vehicle. We would then both get under the raised car and by using a succession of knee and arm movements, we would jiggle the engine off the mounts and driveshaft until it dropped onto our jacked-up knees with supporting arms and chest. This part of the plan would only take a few minutes – but the challenge of extraditing oneself from under that 300klo metal monster was certainly the time consuming bit. Still, with the each other’s help we managed every time to achieve the impossible and found a way out from under the weight of the engine and tight confines of the area. Well, putting the engine back into the car involved much the same drama but it was obviously made lighter each time by the fact that there were always bolts and engine bits left over after each of David’s engine dismounts and remounts. In the end it is amazing that the car ran at all, with all those engine and mounting parts accumulating steadily in the special container under the house. I remember so well the final time that David called on my help to remove his now overworked engine by becoming his right hand jack once more. Everything look set up as before and the procedure was followed according to David’s unwritten manual on being a human car jack – only this time the engine dropped unexpectedly (probable something to do with those missing parts) and it caught David’s arm in an awkward position. SNAP! – That sound meant only one thing – David’s wrist was broken. The adrenaline rush that was released into his body at that moment saw him, in some superhuman way, lift his side of the engine off his body. I looked out from under the car with a contorted twisting of my neck and watched, with much concern, as he disappeared up the stairs to attend to his injury. Sure, I was concern for him – no doubt about it, “but what about me!!!”. Now I don’t know if you folks have ever been left alone with a metal monster weighing heavily on your chest – but I tell you now, it’s no fun. I still cannot tell you how I got out from under that greasy oppressive metal brute, but it certainly did one thing – it confirmed my career choice that day, of only pursuing pen-pushing accounting and paper-packing sales jobs.
