A kink in the line

My friend Jack Stenner came over and discovered a kink in the fuel line. He knows everything about VW's and German cars in general. The kink seemed a minor thing, but it occupied my mind. Can I drive with this thing, having a kink in the fuel line? Comfortably?

Two days later I pulled out the transparent, newly installed Viton fuel line from its "toothed nipple". It looked easy to put back, but I feared another frustrating series of events, which of course came true. I cut off the kinked, or folded, part and attempted to push the hose/line back onto the nipple. It didn't fit. I had a vague memory that you need to heat a hose to get it to fit and stick. I checked the manual that the biodiesl Viton hoses came with and they mentioned using a blowdryer. That made sense to me. But then I thought: "I'll be using a blowdryer on a fuel line still connected to fuel, and this isn't oily biofuel, but real Diesel. Words like flashpoint, ignition came to my mind. I was able to heat the tip of the hose enough to get about two teeth up the nipple, but not more. 

I called Smitty in frustration, didn't want to bother him, but had little choice. I also emailed Jack, but didn't feel comfortable doing that either, as it is such a minor thing. But for me it was major. I couldn't drive the truck knowing the fuel line was interrupted, which meant we couldn't go buy hay for the donkeys. I know this is irrational, but for me the plan was to get a pickup for certain purposes. I need to follow that plan, otherwise I get very depressed. The kink would have stopped me from following the plan, and using the other car to ge the hay would have symbolized a defeat. This really stressed me out. I know it's silly, but that's how I tick sometimes. Anyway, after I got the transparent hose on, I added a cut ring from a leftover black hose, and put a metal ring around everything. It now actually looks very solid.

This brings me to a question I've had all along regarding motors, cars, planes — well any system in general. When a part fails, how much of the chain is effected, and to what extent? Let's call this the weak chain effect. In computers, for example, there's very little tolerance for this. If one part fails, an entire component needs to be replaced. There's no fixing just a bit of it, not realistically. In cars, there seems to be a lot of tolerance, as if there's a spectrum of disfunction. Gradually, in a car, things fail. Or, failing is gradual. This is bad, in that the car is always failing to some extend, but also good in that in most cases a partial or even a complete failure doesn't collapse the whole system. Right now, my transmission is making some funny noises, like a belt whirring around a post, but everything still works. I have a clue that something is off, but can go on. This leads to the next impulse of thinking either: "panic" or "it'll go away". So far I've decided to opt for the second, but I know deep down this can't last. Again, instead of a binary concern pattern, I'm faced with a gradualistic one. My panic is stretched out over time, with occasional feedback signals. Is this better?