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PREFACE:

I still remember the time when, as a boy, I was given my first ballpoint pen. It was one of those with a knob on top that, when pressed, made the nib emerge and when pressed again made it retract. 

Like most small boys, I amused myself by clicking it in and out for a while. The clicking, I recall, seemed much more fun than writing. It wasn’t long, though, before that novelty wore off – and not much longer before my new pen had ‘come to bits’ as I tried to find out how it worked. 

I suppose most of us have done much the same thing, and I’m quite convinced that the outcome of that experience determines our future attitude to all things mechanical. If you are one of those for whom the pen never clicked again, take heart. Remember that for all their apparent complexity, engines depend on a sequence of simple processes.

 They don’t have souls, or wills of their own, so if you can make sure that those processes go on happening in the right order, your engine just has to keep on running.

 The flip side of the coin is that if you don’t, your engine can’t keep going out of any sense of affection, loyalty, or self-preservation! That much, at least, applies to all engines, whether you’re talking about the electric motor of a vacuum cleaner or the jet engines of an airliner.

Every type of engine, however, has its own strengths and weaknesses that make it more suitable for some purposes than others. That’s why you don’t find jet-powered vacuum cleaners or  electrically powered aircraft, and why you’re more likely to have a diesel engine powering your boat than your lawnmower. 

Even a diesel engine, however, will deteriorate if it is neglected, and could ultimately corrode away to become a useless lump of rusty metal. To take advantage of its reliability and long life expectancy it needs to be looked after. Of course you can pay someone else to do the work for you, but that eats away at the advantage of low running costs.

 The aim of this book is to help you get the most out of the capital invested in your engine, by making the most of the advantages you’ve already paid for – reliability, longevity and economy. A fringe benefit of doing your own maintenance will be familiarity with your engine and the tools you use to work on it.

 Then, if things do go wrong, you have a sporting chance of either being able to solve the problem yourself, or of giving a professional mechanic something more to go on than ‘it just sort of stopped’.