What is a crank sensor?
Let's ask Wikipedia:
A crank sensor is a component used in an internal combustion engine to monitor the position or rotational speed of the crankshaft. This information is used by engine management systems to control ignition system timing and other engine parameters. Before electronic crank sensors were available, the distributor would have to be manually adjusted to a timing mark on the engine....
That sure clears it up for me!
What is Crankshaft?
Crankshaft is a spin-off from the popular Funky Winkerbean comic by Tom Batiuk and Chuck Ayers.
Does my Skylark have a crank sensor?
Does a 1994 Buick Skylark have a throttle position sensor or a crank sensor?
It has both.
Does my Buick have a Crank censor?
Only if it gets really crabby!
Why does my car need one?
A good question. Maybe to eat up finances. Possibly to deal with objectionable, harmful or sensitive situations when it fails to start. [See censorship]
Does my car have Spell Check???
From the web: Has anybody had any experience with the crank position censor? I have herd from somewhere that when it goes out, the Jeep will not move. The motor will just keep cranking over and will not start. Where can I get one online that is cheeper than a dealer?
Or as one parakeet cheeped to another, "Y'know what I herd? .... "Sheep!"
What is a censor?
As any of June Williams' former Greco-Roman History students will tell you, a censor is a Roman magistrate in charge of the census, finances, and public morality.
Or from the Online Etymology Dictionary:
censor (n.) 1531, Roman magistrate who took censuses and oversaw public morals, from L. censere "to appraise, value, judge," from PIE base *kens- "speak solemnly, announce." Transferred sense of "officious judge of morals and conduct" is from 1592; of books, plays, later films, etc., 1644. The verb is from 1882.
[Is "officious censuses" the same as that time the Oklahoma allergist asked my kids to sneeze on a piece of Reynolds Wrap for lab analysis? Or was that offensive sinuses?]
What is a crank? For that we must search the Online Etymology Dictionary:
O.E. cranc- preserved only in crancstæf "a weaver's instrument," from P.Gmc. base *krank-, and related to crincan "to bend, yield." Eng. retains the literal sense of the ancient root, while Ger. and Du. krank "sick," formerly "weak, small," is a figurative use. The sense of "an eccentric person," especially one who is irrationally fixated, is first recorded 1833, said to be from the crank of a barrel organ, which makes it play the same tune over and over, but more likely a back-formation from cranky "cross-tempered, irritable" (1821), and evolving from earlier senses of "a twist or fanciful turn of speech" (1594) or "inaccessible hole or crevice" (1562). Popularized 1881 when it was applied to Horace Greeley during Guiteau's trial. The verb meaning "turning a crank" is first attested 1908, with reference to automobile engines.
Guiteau, as we all know, assassinated President James A. Garfield.
What is a sensor?
This noun dates from circa 1928:
a device that responds to a physical stimulus (as heat, light, sound, pressure, magnetism, or a particular motion) and transmits a resulting impulse (as for measurement or operating a control)
How is a censer used in the Greek Orthodox Church?
I was really amazed the first time I visited the Greek Orthodox Church in Lincoln with my junior high Sunday School class. The use of burning incense in the swinging metal censers was so different from my Congregational-UCC church experience. Incense is the symbol of prayers rising to heaven, and we all know the Buick could use some divine intervention!
Bonus question
Who was James Ensor?
He was that Belgian symbolist painter of grotesque masks, skulls, and corpses. The mechanics look more like Edvard Munch's "Scream" when they see me drive up in the Buick.
© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder
1 comment:
Nancy, maybe you should give Click and Clack a call. Who knows? They might have a good idea. And if they don't, well, you can chalk it up to cheap entertainment.
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