This "strange thing" starts about 15 years ago, found me again about 6 months later, and then happened again yesterday.
The
"first event" was a Camry 4-cylinder that would sometimes start misfiring while idling at a stop light. When the lady driver pressed on the throttle for the green light, smoke came out of the side of the hood, and the transmission had no gears. She tried shifting to Low, or 2nd, but nothing worked (not even Reverse). If she turned the car off, restarted it, and put it in gear it drove away normally.
The service manager at her dealer was (still is) a very good friend and he called me to come up to Ventura and look at the problem. They had duplicated the condition multiple times. He and I worked late into the night trying to figure out what was going on and got to see the smoke coming out of the air filter when it happened. When I put a timing light on it, I could see the pulley reverse because the engine was running backwards. It was an igniter problem!
My
"second time" was a phone call from one of the Toyota managers whose daughter was have trouble with her V6 Camry. I told him to replace the igniter because it was running backwards. He didn't go for that idea....for a while. Finally, after a transmission replace didn't fix it, they put an igniter in.
Yesterday my
"third time" a lady friend asked me to look at her Honda 15 HP outboard (2-cylinder, SOHC 4-stroke). It would start running rough, with a lot of choke needed and then bang a couple times. It would then smooth out, with smoke coming out of the carb and run for about 5 seconds. As it died it sounded like it was running out of gas. I could watch the cam sprocket change directions while the engine ran on air-fuel coming out of the big lower unit "muffler". We have a new igniter on the way.
So...the laugh is "three times in the same lifetime" I have tangled with a 4-stroke running backwards.
This is the strangest planet I have ever lived on!
