The Fuse Issue
Years ago, a customer shows up at the garage, an elderly gentleman who's got an old car. A really old car.
He says, "Hey guys, my car is really running lousy. I need some of that fuel system additive that you guys sell."
We had this stuff at the time, I don't know what was in it. Just a bunch of random stuff. So I sell him a can of this stuff, which he's going to put into his gas tank.
And I'm not really listening. He says, "The car is really running lousy. It's getting terrible mileage. I need to do something. So, what do I do with this stuff I just bought?"
And I said, "Well, you put it in and you fill the tank up with gas, and then you drive it."
So he does it. He says, "Is this going to help my terrible mileage? I can't afford to really fix it, but I need to do something. Will this stuff work to make it run better?"
And I was honest and said, "No, I don't think so." But he buys it anyway, and off he goes.
Several hours later, he calls me up. He says, "I've been driving the car all day. As luck would have it, I had a bunch of errands to run, but I've been in stop and go traffic on the highway for the last hour or two."
And I said, "Oh, so the car is fixed then?"
And he says, "Not really. I don't have any brakes now. The pedal went down to the floor. It's being towed in. It won't get there before you close, but you'll find it there tomorrow morning."
Anyway, we arrive the next morning to find his car with the keys under the mat. And I tell one of my guys, "Check out this car, pull the thing in to the garage. But be careful, because I think he blew a brake line or something."
About 20 minutes later, the guy hands me the keys, and he says, "It's all fixed."
I said, "What did you do?"
He said, "I replaced the fuse."
And I said, "What? He said he had no brakes!"
And he said, "I repeat. I replaced a fuse, and the car is fixed."
And indeed, it was fixed.
So the puzzler is how did replacing a fuse fix the car?
