The Elusive Vacuum Leak

RAY: A few months or weeks ago, one of my guys was under the hood of an old Chevy pickup truck,trying to find a vacuum leak. The way you find vacuum leaks is, we use a little wand that shoots propane. When the vacuum leak and the propane meet, you'll suck the propane in and the engine will begin to run smoothly, because now you're making the fuel-air mixture correct. Are you with me so far?

TOM: Right. And as soon as you take the propane wand away, all of a sudden, you've got far more air compared to the fuel than you're supposed to have, and it runs lousy again.

RAY: Exactly. So there he is under the hood with the wand, and he's having lousy luck. A few minutes later, I see him doing something very interesting. He's pulling off the spark-plug wires and he's putting them back on, but on the wrong plugs. Two minutes later, I hear him on the phone ordering the part that he needs to correct the vacuum leak. How did he do it?
 

Last week's Puzzler ---

Wingin' It

RAY: The other day, one of the neighbors and I were having a little conversation.

TOM: One of the few neighbors that still talks to you?

RAY: There's always the new guy on the street. He was asking about the radio show. It took him a while, but he finally got around to asking how much preparation we do in advance of every show. And, I had to tell him, we don't do much preparation at all.

He said, "Oh, in that case, every week, you're pretty much wingin' it." And, I said, "Well, not exactly."

Which, conveniently, leads me to this week's puzzler question. Where does the term "wingin' it" come from and what does it mean?

Wingin' It

TOM: It means you're doing it without any preparation.

RAY: Right. And, it turns out that actors who don't know their lines go on stage and rely on people in the wings to feed them their lines. They are, in other words, wingin’ it. Because we don't have any lines, we're not wingin' it. So who's our winner?

TOM: Congratulations to Jim Baldwin from Plymouth, Indiana!