2O ROUGH-AND-TUMBLE ENGINEERING 



Never bother an engine until it bothers y,,u. Jf y,,;; 

 you will make lots of grief for yourself. 



I have mentioned the bad habits of a poor engineer so 

 that you may avoid them. If you carefully avoid all the 

 bad habits connected with the running of an engine, you 

 will be certain to fall into good habits and will become a 

 good engineer. 



TINKERING ENGINEERS 



After carelessness, meddling with an engine comes 

 next in the list of bad habits. The tinkering engineer 

 never knows whether his engine is in good shape or not, 

 and the chances are that if he should get it in good shape 

 he would not know enough to let it alone. If anything 

 does actually go wrong with your engine, do not be 

 afraid to take hold of it, for something must be done, 

 and you are the one to do it, but before you do anything 

 be certain that you know what is wrong. For instance, 

 should the valve become disarranged on the valve stem 

 or in any other way, do not try to remedy the trouble by 

 changing the eccentric, or if the eccentric slips do not go 

 to the valve to mend the trouble. I am well aware that 

 among young engineers the impression prevails that a 

 valve is a wonderful piece of mechanism liable to kick out 

 of place and play smash generally. Now let me tell you 

 right here that a valve (I mean the ordinary slide valve, 

 such as is used on traction and portable engines), is one 



