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The Power of Optimism and Pi |
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Written by Felix Wong - View Profile
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Wednesday, 23 May 2007 |
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The other day, my friend Nick came over in his Isuzu Rodeo, all while being thankful that he was able to make it despite having almost no gas in the tank. How little gas was in the tank? Nick had no idea as the fuel gage sender was dead.
Actually, this is why he had come over in the first place: to enlist my help in swapping it out with a new one. The night before, he had emailed me a procedure he found on the internet and the job seemed simple enough. "No problem," we agreed, "jack up the car, undo four bolts, drop the gas tank, and pull out the old fuel gage sender. Installation is the reverse of disassembly. We'll do it in the morning and then have breakfast."
Meanwhile, Nick's wife Dana speculated the job would take us all day. We laughed. No, shouldn't take more than one-and-a-half hours, we assured her. Piece of cake!
Needless to say, we weren't quite laughing as much when it was time to tackle the job.
First, we spent 30 minutes just trying to figure out how to remove the under-the-car spare tire, which was obscuring the gas tank. Apparently, Nick had never gotten a flat tire before and never had to fumble with the spare.
Next, it seemingly took forever just to remove the four bolts. One bolt was seemingly seized, and I had to bust out an 18"-torque wrench all while repeatedly working my right tricep just to turn the bolt 20 degrees at a time. Repeat, oh, a hundred times.
Then, we had the hardest time removing the fuel-filler hose, squandering about an hour trying to remove a bastardly hose clamp that we Ultimately Did Not Have to Remove. Whoops. With much exhortations such as "bugger" and "crap!", we finally got the hose off.
With the tank now on the ground, we fairly easily swapped out the fuel gage sender. Now it was time to reassemble everything, which I had confidently proclaimed "should go A LOT smoother than disassembly." Wrong! Especially since we had problems aligning the gas tank after bench pressing it in place.
But we did get the job done and afterwards did get to enjoy the breakfast Dana had prepared for us; never mind that by this time, lunch was more appropriate. Total elapsed time: 4 hours 40 minutes. About 3.1 times our initial estimate. It made me remember a simple rule of thumb I had formulated many years ago when estimating the amount of time to do something:
Take your best guess as to how long a job would take, then multiply by pi. For optimism doesn't often trump Murphy's Law. | Only registered users can write comments.
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A Breath of Fresh Air (60)
writen by: felix
Felix Wong is an outdoor enthusiast living in Fort Collins. A mechanical engineer by day, he is especially passionate about bicycling, running, and backpacking. |
|  | "Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is Alchemy's first law of Equivalent Exchange. In those days, we really believed that to be the world's one, and only truth." | |
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We call it insight, you call it what you will. | |
| | Felix Wong is an outdoor enthusiast living in Fort Collins. A mechanical engineer by day, he is especially passionate about bicycling, running, and backpacking. | |
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| | My name is Michelle Turley and I'm 28 years old. I live in Severance with my hubbie, Brandon. We have 2 dogs and a cat. We enjoy camping, four-wheeling, and just being in the mountains. I like to cook, clean (go figure), flea market, and play poker. I have so much to say about poker... | |
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