Used a zip tie on a 37 once too, cleared a stuck inlet valve in five seconds flat.

Man I've been there... that same exact feeling when you swing down and see that chip fly off. Those cast iron things are just painted junk half the time. Pretty sure they pour them out of old engine blocks.

Hold on, why are we so quick to call old man wrong? I let my 95 civic idle for like 5 or 6 minutes every morning when it's below freezing, and that thing has 280k miles on the original automatic. The oil gets thick when it's cold, it doesn't circulate right until it warms up a bit, and driving off instantly just sends cold sludge through the engine. Plus, the transmission fluid needs to get moving too, especially in a CVT or a slushbox, those things hate cold starts. Maybe your dad was right about his specific car even if yours is different.

Well that's frustrating. I had the same thing with a dryer, re-seated the plug and it worked.

Read this thing the other day in a vintage camera blog about how repair shops used to train apprentices by blindfolding them and having them cycle through shutter speeds on different cameras. They had to learn to hear the difference between a 1/500 and a 1/1000 just by the pitch and duration of the click. That kind of training builds a whole other level of awareness. The digital readouts are great for catching a stuck blade or a slow curtain, but they don't tell you if the camera feels tired or if the damping is acting up. I mean, a graph can show you a clean 1/125th but your ear can tell you the spring is getting weak because the sound is just a little flatter. It's like listening to a musician tune by ear versus using a tuner app, you lose that muscle memory for what's actually right.