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Remembering An Old Story...
So I'm gonna ramble a bit here, as this is a story from late '66 early '67 when I was in my first stint at school, before my years in the US Navy. There was a guy named Fred Ott in my dorm who was from Little Rock, and as I recall his Dad owned a service station back when they knew what "service" meant so he'd grown up a gear head. Fred was a year or three ahead of me in school, and he had a righteous red '56 Chevy with a Muncie 4-speed and a nicely cammed SBC running a factory fuel injection system that he'd salvaged off of a wrecked car. It was a sweet, sweet ride, and listening to it run smoothly through the gears as he cruised away from the parking lot was just beautiful.
One day, perhaps after a few beers at the local drive-in hamburger joint that happened to offer cold brew for the college boys, Fred told the story that he'd been out one evening, cruising around and after romping on the throttle he smelled raw fuel, STRONG raw fuel so shut it down, coasted to the side of the road and popped the hood to find the passenger side of the engine dripping with raw gasoline. Now according to Fred, there was a metal plug that friction fit into the side of the injector that had popped out and was no where to be found! On the side of the road, stranded, Fred said he started looking closer and thought that the size of that plug looked almost like the size of a nickle, so he reached into his pocket and found that he had an old Buffalo Head nickle. Holding it up to the port he found it to be just a hair too big, but not much.... A bit of thought, out came the tool box, a right sized socket, a ball peen hammer and a short handled BFH and the nickle soon had a nice dish to it. Still a tiny bit too big, but one more precision tap and it slid in snug with the dish out. A sharp rap to the dished crown wedged it snugly in place, and - moment of truth - start it up and no leak! It was such a great story of innovation overcoming tragedy that we just HAD to believe!! Fred swore that the nickle was still in place - "Why take it out?", but I never laid eyes on it.
Now many times I have gazed down at factory FI units, looking for that plug, and I always thought that ol' Fred was maybe just pulling our legs way back then, but yesterday at Turkey Creek I'm looking at this very, very nice little '57 Corvette, and as I looked at the passenger side, there on the vertical surface of what I believe may be the regulator, just below the curved aluminum pipe that plug just seemed to be glowing! Fred Ott, I could just imagine a Buffalo Head nickle sitting in that spot, with a little peen mark on his cheek bone!
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Now there may be some here who will choose to berate this story, saying that it cannot be true or otherwise criticize the telling, but before you go there I choose to believe Fred Ott, based on seeing that plug calling my attention with a soft glow in the afternoon sun. Naysayers be damned!
