- Location
- Ontario, Canada
It's not ski related but really important info for future reference. I won't bore y'all with the fun write up I did on my fb page but just a very wild story that happened to me at work yesterday. I was just getting started on some equipment maintenance when a sailboat owner's wife ran over to me frantically "we need help! we started our motor and it revved way up, it won't shut off!" I bolted for the boat, jumped in and could smell this potent strong odor and heard a hissing noise. The motor is a 4 cylinder diesel and is peaked! I go for the fuel shut off, no dice, I go for the ignition, nothing, I quickly think 'I need to get this under control, this thing is going to blow up! I jump down into the cabin of the boat and rip the staircase off exposing the motor thinking it needs a blast of cooler air, it's on a lean runaway. The motor in a matter of seconds starts to settle down and quickly comes back to idle. I allowed it to settle down then shut it off to cool. I stick my face into the engine bay to see if there's a leaking coolant hose or something and that odor just burns the lungs right out of me. I could still hear the hissing noise so I get looking around for what it is....peeps, you wouldn't believe it. I found a can of WD40 fallen over and somehow the nozzle got depressed releasing ALL of the can's contents into the engine bay. The motor was running hard on WD40 vapors alone. One rogue spark could have sent that boat up in flames. Lesson of the day, if you use the WD on your engine after a salt water ride, maybe reconsider that and don't. The owner writes articles for a sailing magazine and said he's going to put that incident into his next article. Wild times friends...wild times 
