• Cyrus Draegur@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    my mechanic friend is telling me that if you want to fuck that truck to death right where it sits, like, absolutely total it and destroy its internals completely, all you have to do is shove a potato in its tailpipe. like, really deep in so you can’t see it from the outside. it will burst all its valves and destroy the engine :D

    of course you have to have a big enough potato that cramming it into the pipe will form a seal by shearing the sides flush to the interior of said pipe, and to create enough friction that the pressures produced by the engine will be unable to push it clear (or shoot it out like a pneumatic cannon).

    • jcs@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      I have a very hard time believing that an internal combustion engine would sustain significant damage prior to stalling. An engine could run, albeit very poorly, with extreme backpressure (say, an exhaust blockage but perhaps some leaks elsewhere in the exhaust system). If the exhaust was perfectly sealed, there would be so much backpressure that the mixture would be starved of air and there would simply not be any explosion in the cylinders. I have limited knowledge of diesel engines but would expect a similar result.

      Here’s a video where an exhaust pipe is plugged. You can see how quickly the car stalls (at 10:00): https://piped.video/watch?v=jnoW0skAChA