Same thing happened to my little brother on his Honda ATV , He was a heavy equipment mechanic and supervisor he ask me to bring my VOM to his house since his was 30 miles away at the shop. when I got there he had the body panels off and was inspecting the harness , he wanted to ohm out the coil , he already changed the spark plug. Right away I saw the kill switch was off , I ask him to start it , he tried and of course it didn't fire . I told him he didn't know a damn thing about wrenching . I slyly turned the kill switch on when he wasn't looking and said ," Since you can't handle starting an ATV would he mind if I started it for him ? He smirked and said sure , start it if you're so damn smart. I hit the key it cranked for 3 seconds and fired right up . The look on his face was priceless. After we had a couple beers I told him what I had done. It was a brother thing !
Sometimes you are too close to the problem and need another set of eyes. I had to do an 'emergency' trip to Connecticut to look at a machine that couldn't get out of its own way or move up an incline. I knew the mechanic, Billy, as well as the GM, Tom. The GM was breathing down the mechanics neck, and mine, to get it fixed. I won't go over the words exchanged between the GM and myself other than to say they were 'colorful'. I went through the same tests as the mechanic and everything was spot on. It should be working. I decided to take the machine for a ride around the yard. This thing had a hydrostatic drive with an air shifter for high and low range. I pushed the low range button and the low range light went on. I stepped on the travel pedal to back out of the barn and listened. I stopped right away and thought, "Billy, you fucked up. Tom's gonna kill you".
I pushed another button and took the machine out into the yard and was climbing over tie piles and rail with no problem. Also had some acceleration. I had the operator get in it but not touch anything. He does a lap around the yard. While I'm watching the operator, our sales rep sees me out there with a shit eating grin on my face and asks me if it's bad or good. "Good for us, bad for Billy". I told him that Billy had replaced the air shifter and crossed the hoses. When things showed low range, it was actually in high range. He goes,"Shit! Tom's gonna kill him".
Brought the machine back into the barn, vented the tanks, and had Billy crawl under with me as I swapped the air hoses on the shifter. "That was it? Fuck. Tom's gonna kill me". Tom comes out, doing his bit of yelling in Tom style. I just say it's fixed and made up some bullshit about adjusting cross reliefs, for Billy's sake. Tom's happy, Billy's happy. Sale's rep and I are happy, though both of us are trying not to lose it and start laughing.
Tom's so happy that he takes all of us to lunch. While ordering dessert, Tom looks at me and says, "Cut the cross relief bullshit. What was the real problem?" I look over at Billy and he nodded, so I told Tom what really happened. Surprisingly, Tom just shook his head and said, "That was it? Something stupid? Sorry to make you come all the way out here. We'll talk later, Billy."
Tom later apologized to Billy for climbing all over him. Billy got promoted to GM when Tom retired. Billy and I still talk about that incident.
