Gears and Steam

Preparations

Jules

"How do the goggles feel?" Edmund asked.

I blinked at him through the smudged lenses. "Well, the lenses need a good clean and this strap needs to be tightened," I muttered, tugging on the elastic strap.

Edmund reached up and tightened the strap for me. He then tossed me a rag to wipe off the lenses.

We still hadn't cleaned up the sludge, but we were now in fresh clothes. I had put on my other black work shirt, and Edmund was in a light grey shirt that was otherwise identical to his white one. The mechanic seemed to favor light colors; whites, greys, and browns. Not such a good choice for a mechanic, but it wasn't like I was going to say anything to him about it.

My view through the goggles was slightly less foggy after I wiped them off with the rag. I would clean them off properly later; they just had to keep stuff out of my eyes for now. Edmund's goggles were modified for his work, I had an old, much simpler pair that he didn't wear anymore.

Edmund started rummaging through various cabinets, pulling out random rags that he apparently kept everywhere. "Can you see now?"

"Yes," I chuckled. "Much better."

"Good, go find that pipe." Edmund grabbed his pile of rags (there had to have been at least a dozen of them) and made his way over to the car to clean up the mess we'd made.

I started searching through the piles of parts spread throughout the shop for a pipe that would fit in place of the one that had been broken. There were a lot of parts scattered around, but most of them seemed in need of repair. I knew that there was some sort of order to this mess, but I couldn't make sense of it.

As I was searching for the pipe, I tripped over a large pile of sheet metal. "Hey, Edmund, what are these?"

Edmund perked up from his cleaning to see what I was looking at. "Aluminum. It's what the car's frame was made from. It's much lighter, but it's too flimsy. The only thing that can hold up under the pressure of the races is steel. It's strong but heavy. In short, it's not ideal."

"Everything on the car is made from steel?"

"Almost, why?"

I understood that aluminum would be too flimsy for the frame but maybe not for everything...I had an idea. "Does that include the exhaust pipes?"

"Yes?"

"Well, it's just that...I could be completely wrong on this by the way, but do the exhaust pipes have to be particularly strong?"

It was hard to read Edmund's expression under his goggles, but I could basically see the gears turning in his head. "No, not really..."

"So, is there any reason why we can't replace the exhaust pipes with aluminum rather than steel?"

"No, there is not, and how did I not think of this before?"

"You would have thought of it at some point," I said, grinning at him.

I could have sworn that Edmund smiled back at me. "Find the part we need, and I'll finish cleaning up. We have a few hours to execute your idea." He turned away from me to finish cleaning up while I continued looking for the pipe we needed.

Eventually, I found a small pile of different sized pipes. What size did I need? Six centimeters in diameter and half a meter long, that's what he said. I didn't have anything to measure the parts with so I just had to play it by eye. I found one that looked about right and brought it over to Edmund

"Perfect," he said, throwing the last of the now filthy rags into a pile. He took the part and his wrench and slid under the car on his back. It took him a minute at most to replace the pipe.