Yesterday I opened the hood of my car to pour in some windshield washer fluid, and got a surprise. Crammed on top of my engine were about a dozen pine cones, sandwhiched in between the closed hood and the wee 4 cylinder powerplant.
My car is a little Japanese econo sedan, so there's not much room anywhere in the engine bay for things to move about, and I have never before had any foreign objects become lodged in there of their own accord. I've had this car for years and driven it about 140,000 kms. Somebody definitely placed them there and then closed the hood on top of them, and it wasn't me.
The cones were about the size of my fist, and squashed in right around the fuel lines where they enter the head. The cones were bone dry because of engine heat and the extremely high outside temps we've been having, they would've made perfect kindling for a campfire and I'm sure would've burst into flame if I had applied a match. I drive about an hour to an hour and a half (roundtrip) to get to work and back everyday, so there's lots of engine heat.
If they did ignite they would've melted the fuel lines and caused an engine fire, wrecking the car. Some of them were blackened already with the high heat. I think the reason they didn't catch fire is that I have quite a bit of orgonite in the car, and a few tb's stuffed into nooks and crannies in the engine bay, and probably I was receiving some "Operator assistance"
I'm actually a little impressed with the simplicity and cleverness of the ploy. The cones would have burned to nothing and left no evidence of any accelerant or tampering, and everyone would have thought it was just natural causes. If I had cried "sabotage" I would have been pegged as crazy.
If any of you gifters are a bit lax in checking under your hood (like me), you might want to take a peek in case I'm not the only one they're trying this on.
To add insult to near injury, the rear brakes on my work truck sprung a massive leak today and I had to get towed back to the yard, after losing so much pressure that I had only minimal stopping power left. If I had kept driving the brakes would have failed altogether. Admittedly this truck is old and has had it's share of problems, so it might be a coincidence, but the timing sure is fishy...
Mike