And here is where I want to insist that you teach
your ear to be your guide. You ought to be able to detect the slightest
sound that is unnatural to your engine. Your eyes may be deceived, but a
well trained ear can not be fooled.
I was once invited by an engineer to come out and see how nice his
engine was running. I went, and found that the engine itself was
running very smooth, in fact almost noiseless, but he looked very much
disappointed when I asked him why he was doing all his work with one end
of cylinder. He asked me what I meant, and I had some difficulty in
getting him to detect the difference in the exhaust of the two ends, in
fact the engine was only making one exhaust to a revolution. He was one
of those engineers who never discovered anything wrong until he could
see it. Did you know that there are people in the world whose mental
capacity can only grasp one idea at a time. That is when their minds
are on any one object or principle they can not see or observe anything
else. That was the case with this engineer, his mind had been
thoroughly occupied in getting all the reciprocating (moving) parts
perfectly adjusted, and if the exhaust had made all sorts of peculiar
noises, he would not have discovered it.
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