Mort's Tune-Up
This is the right season for this puzzler, and that's a hint actually. So pay attention. This particular car, I think can be a lot of different cars, but for the sake of this puzzler, it is a 1980 Chevy Malibu. Okay? And here's what happened. A fellow had the car tuned up at his local filling station. They had Mort tune it up.
"Hey Mort, throw a tune-up into this!"
So Mort tunes it up. And a few weeks later that the customer comes back and complains to Mort. He said, "Gee, since you tuned up my car, the brakes don't work." He says, "What do you mean the brakes don't work?"
"Oh, I don't know. There's something funny going on here. I step on the brakes especially now that there's a little snow on the ground, I stepped on the brakes and the car doesn't want to stop."
And of course, Mort says that it's impossible. "What could I possibly have done in tuning it up that would affect the brakes like this?"
So they take it out for a test drive. And of course, it's a nice dry day, the roads are dry. And Mort says, "there's nothing wrong with the brakes, you're nuts! Nothing wrong with the car at all!"
And sure enough, a few weeks or days or months or years go by, and the customer takes the car back in again on a slippery day. And Mort drives the car again and he says, "Oh, that's it."
So sure enough, Mort did something wrong. But the question is, what? What did he do wrong? And for extra credit, why didn't he notice it the first time?
