The Case of the Hairy Tailpipe: A Car Repair Mystery
In March 2018, I bought a second-hand Chevrolet Sail 2011. However, I crashed it around June 2018. I sold it to another local person. After several years, I bought it back.
But it had a serious problem: the speed was low, around 60 km per hour. Also, the speed was inconsistent, sometimes a little faster and sometimes slower. This was very weird.
I drove it from Guangzhou to Huizhou Shuangyuewan. The experience was really poor. When I arrived in Huizhou, I drove it to a repair shop.
The repair guy thought it was a problem with the exhaust port on top of the engine. So, he used some glue to try and fix it.
I tried it a bit and thought it was fine. But I was wrong. The problem continued.
In the evening, I drove to another car repair store. They told me it was a clutch problem.
I didn’t believe them and continued to use it for the next day. In a car repair shop near Huizhou Shuangyuewan, I gave the car to the owner, who seemed like an expert. After a full day of work, the mechanic believed the car was fixed. However, during the test drive, the issue persisted, so I left the car overnight.
The next day, around noon, the mechanic informed me that the problem was resolved. The culprit? The car’s tailpipe was clogged with hair. When accelerating, the hairs would accumulate and obstruct the engine’s air intake, limiting the engine to about half speed. When not accelerating, the hairs would shift slightly, allowing the car to go a bit faster.
The mechanic removed the hair and replaced some components.
This experience was a memorable lesson in the importance of identifying the root cause of a problem, a principle that applies equally to car repair and programming.