Well, I have to add my own here. Not square body related, but definitely "duh" related. A couple of years ago I was working on my JD tractor and pulled the radiator overflow bottle cap off of it, and then forgot to put it back on when I was done filling it. Now, hat could either be because the horses got out, or my wife called me for some "important" task, who knows, but it got left off. I seem to do this the most when I get interrupted and my one track mind jumps the track...
Tractor starts overheating in the over 100 degree weather, and I see steam from under the hood, and I jump off to see what it is. I discover it is actually coming from the overflow bottle due to the lack of cap and not the radiator or something important like that. I searched over. I searched under. I searched about, above, below, beneath, (insert any other applicable preposition here) and then I searched some more. I retraced steps where I had been mowing, thinking that even if I was lucky enough to find it, it would certainly be in pieces. I never did find it after over an hour of searching, and realizing that I was burning daylight, I did what any red blooded American would do, I improvised. I pulled out my nearly empty snuff can, dumped it out and then reached into the toolbox for some cable ties, and strapped that lid down on the overflow bottle tightly to keep the extraneous wind borne crap out of the overflow bottle. Hey, I pass by the tractor house twice a day, I'll just pick one up on my way home this week.
Two weeks go by, and I can't seem to get to the tractor parts place before they roll up the sidewalks at 5:30PM, because I commute nearly 80 miles each way, and by the time I get there they are closed (and we all know that MY tractor place near the house is the ONLY place that has them, they are sold no where else in the state!). Well, mowing season ends a couple of weeks later, and the tractor gets parked in the barn for the winter, and you know what happens next. Outta sight, outta mind right? Next season, I check the fluids, and hey, I have coolant under the radiator cap, so off I go.
All season long I have not a worry in the world on my mind about this tractor. It is particularly dusty this year, and I drag my air hose out after about a month of summer of mowing in these dry conditions. I need to blow out the dust generated throughout the season, which has found it's way into the fins in my radiator like a magnet attracts metal shavings. I start to blow it out and hear this banging sound of something hitting the radiator..... I look, and don't see a thing, so I keep at it. I keep hearing SOMETHING hitting the radiator, I don't know WHAT it is, and it doesn't sound normal....
And that is how I found my long lost overflow bottle cap, still attached to the overflow tube..... still attached to the radiator..... hanging right there in front of my face the whole time...for nearly a year...
