Encore Puzzler Answer, 7/19/97: Lucky Butch
RAY: We have a Puzzler answer. Remember the puzzler?
TOM: The Puzzler.
RAY: Package of Camels rolled up in the T-shirt sleeve butch, the gas station?
TOM: I remember those details. Butch, the gas station.
RAY: I'll bering it all back. I'll just snap you right into this. Watch this watch.
TOM: I'm ready.
RAY: You have an old heap, like a nice 1974 Chevy Caprice and it's starting to burn oil at an alarming rate. You go to the gas station. Every time you go in you say check the gas and fill up the oil. At any rate you go in this one time --
TOM: So far everything's OK. I mean I don't see anything puzzling about any of this yet.
RAY: And Butch, the chief mechanic at the gas station says --
TOM: Butch.
RAY: -- no wonder you're burning oil. You've got this wimpy little 10W-30 motor oil in here --
TOM: I remember this one.
RAY: You need the oil that conquered Mt. Kilamanjaro. You need this 10W-50 or 20-50. You need some nice thick stuff because the oil pump is pumping the oil past the rings. So you say gee, I guess --
TOM: Sounds reasonable to me.
RAY: -- anyone that has a package of Luckies rolled up in his T-shirt sleeve must know what he's talking about so --
TOM: Knuckles all scraped.
RAY: No, no, no. Manicured. Anyway, Butch changes your oil and puts in 20W-50 and you drive away and you notice that you can't see Butch in the rear view mirror for the cloud of smoke that's behind you, but you're not worried, you figure it'll take a while for everything to catch on.
TOM: It's got to work in.
RAY: Got to work in, so to speak. Anyway, many weeks go by and you notice that you are burning oil at about twice the rate that you were before and we wanted to know, what happened? Well, putting 20W-50 in there won't necessarily slow down your oil consumption if it's getting by the rings because what's happening is the rings -- there are three rings in every piston like --
TOM: Just like Barnum and Bailey.
RAY: Just like a circus, right. And the bottom ring is called the oil control ring and it's supposed to scrape the oil off the cylinder as each piston descends. Except if that film of oil is thicker because you're using what?
TOM: Heavier oil.
RAY: Heavier oil and it doesn't scrape it off because that's what's wrong with the engine in the first place, that oil scraper ring isn't working, then there's a thicker film of oil on the cylinder wall and it's burning up that oil just as it would the thinner film and it's burning it up at twice the rate because the film is probably twice as thick.
TOM: Twice as dense certainly because it's thicker.
RAY: Butch is twice as dense and that's why sometimes using heavier oil, although it seems intuitively like it should reduce your consumption, will in fact increase the consumption because it's leaving that thicker film on the cylinder walls, it isn't getting scraped off and then when the combustion hits that film of oil that should be in the oil pan but is not, it gets burned up and comes off the tail pipe as these pretty billowy blue clouds that, it's so lovely.
TOM: It's kind of pretty, isn't it? Especially when it's sunset and the sun is coming down through those clouds into your cloud of blue smoke.
RAY: Yes, it is.
TOM: I think it's rather nice --
RAY: Poetic actually.
TOM: You don't see that anymore.
RAY: Thank god.
[ Car Talk Puzzler ]
