Chapter 3
Scootaloo Finds a Truck in the Everfree Forest
Chapter 3
Admiral Biscuit
“Dom’f woffy, I’f gof ya sfirt!” Rainbow jumped back—really, more straight up—and the wagon shot out from under the pair, aimlessly roaring across the park. The pair of pegasi watched as it bounded across small hillocks, bounced off a rock, and dove into a gully. Its glowing red hind lights vanished over the edge.
As soon as she felt ground under hooves, the grip on her mane loosened, and she twisted her head around to look into the concerned magenta eyes of Dash.
The pegasus spit out a mouthful of purple hair before speaking. “What was that monster?”
Scootaloo sighed. It was really awesome how Rainbow had rescued her—it was just like something from Daring Do. But at the same time, she’d lost her new toy.
“I dunno.” She looked back to where it had fallen over the ravine—and suddenly saw its lights beam up at the bottom of Rainbow’s house. The light wavered across the cloud, until it suddenly swept away like a spotlight. Just then, she saw it crest the other side of the ravine, now splattered with mud and trailing cattails. It almost made it over, but when the front wheels broke over the embankment, its belly dragged along the edge and it jerked to a stop. Scootaloo held her breath as it slid back a foot before finally settling into a resting position, its rear wheels still spinning uselessly against the soft dirt of the ravine. “It’s not dangerous, though! It’s just the same as the parade float!”
Rainbow looked at her dubiously. “The parade float that went out of control, careened off a cliff and crashed into a lake?”
“Well. . . .” Scootaloo scuffed her hoof against the ground awkwardly. “Yeah?”
“Wait right here.” Rainbow flew over the gulley, darting around the strange metal wagon. The angry growling it was making was disconcerting; the unicorn-powered parade floats had been mostly silent. A foul odor emanated from under the tailgate—it was almost like flying around the ceiling in Ponyville’s only dive bar, where the fumes from the guttering oil lamps collected and stayed. She’d only been there once, unwisely choosing to perform a stunt after a dozen glasses of cider . . . on her third loop she’d gotten really dizzy and crash-landed across Snowflake’s table, whereupon he’d promptly ejected her through the front window. She absently rubbed her side—he’d planted one hoof on her shoulder muscle and the other on her thigh. When she tried to stand up, neither of her right legs had worked, and she’d just fallen flat on her face again.
“See?” Scootaloo was standing on the opposite edge of the ravine, having forgotten Rainbow’s earlier instruction. “It’s not dangerous at all. It’s just a machine.”
“I dunno.” Rainbow looked back down at it dubiously. “As much as I hate to say this, I’ve been, like, everywhere in Equestria, and I’ve never seen anything like this before. We’re going to have to have an expert look at it.”
“Aww.” Her ears flattened. Visions of driving this thing around Ponyville vanished like a sandcastle in a tornado. Twilight was going to take one look at this thing, levitate it back to her treehouse, toss it in the basement, and analyze the heck out of it. She’d be lucky to ever see a single part of it again.
“So, what do you think?”
The mare put down the magnifying glass. “I think it’s a super-awesome wagon! Ooh, we should throw it a party! A welcome to Ponyville party.”
“No.” Rainbow crossed her forelegs. “No offense, but your parties for inanimate objects are kinda creepy.”
Pinkie’s mane deflated a little bit. “Yeah.” She brightened back up. “Okay, let’s just throw a party for Scootaloo, for finding such an awesome thing!”
"Much cooler.”
Rainbow boosted Scootaloo back up into the cabin so she could turn it off. Because of the angle, she had to push her hind legs against the back of the driver’s couch to reach the key, but after a few fumbles she finally managed, causing the needles on all the gauges to drop to zero. She remembered to push in the switch for the lights, too, and move the directional lever all the way back to its resting position. The crusaders had learned an important lesson about operating machinery during their brief foray into locomotive engineers yay! Always make sure the machine is secured before you leave it unattended.
“What is it?” Scootaloo asked. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I don’t know.” Pinkie began to study the nose of the truck. “It’s hot in front, so that’s probably where the engine is. It might be steam powered, ‘cause it’s heavy and metal.”
“I didn’t see anywhere to shovel fuel into it.”
Rainbow sniffed the wheels of the truck. “Don’t rubber wheels seem kind of flimsy? They’re okay for wagons and prams and stuff, but a real wagon ought to have steel wheels.”
“Maybe there are instructions in it.” Pinkie jumped up in the bed of the truck and stuck her head through the back window. “My gyrocopter came with all sorts of instruction. ‘Do not operate before reading and understanding all the instructions. Do not operate while inebriated. Do not operate over populated areas. Do not operate without proper personal protective equipment. Manufacturer assumes no liability for death or dismemberment. Warning: All machines—’”
“I think we get the idea,” Rainbow muttered to Pinkie’s poofy tail—the only part of her body still visible. She’d managed to jam herself into the operator’s cabin muzzle-first and was rummaging around with her forehooves.
“Aha! I think I found it!” She triumphantly slid a thin glossy book from under the seat. “Can somepony pull me back out?”
“I’m on it. Stay over here, squirt.” Rainbow flapped up into the back of the truck and grabbed Pinkie’s tail in her teeth. Bracing against the front of the cargo box, she tugged the earth pony back out of the window. “Ya know, you should lay off the cupcakes.”
“I’ll have you know I’m a perfectly healthy weight for an earth pony,” Pinkie snarled. “I’m just big-boned in the hips. Some stallions like that, you know. A good—”
“Ixnay on the allionstay.” Rainbow muttered, pointing towards Scootaloo.
“Oopsie! So, I think I found the instructions.” She flipped the booklet open. A foldout dropped of its own volition and the two mares stared at it intently.
Rainbow spoke first. “I give. What the hay is that?”
“It looks like a shaved Diamond Dog, but curvier.”
“That’s a lot of cutie-marks. Maybe it has cutie-pox.”
“Yeah.” Pinkie folded the page back in and closed the booklet. “This isn’t helpful at all. Maybe there’s another instruction booklet in here.” She started jamming herself back through the window again and then thought better of it. “You know, maybe you and Scoots can look through it. I can find some ponies to help pull it out of the ravine. Scootaloo figured out how to make it go, after all. It can’t be all that complicated.”
Pinkie looked over the edge of the bed at a beaming pegasus filly. “You wanna look through your new toy with Rainbow?”
Scootaloo nodded eagerly.
“Ok. I’m gonna get some ponies to pull it back onto level ground. You see if you can find the instructions.” Pinkie stretched out her neck and began whispering. “And I’m gonna bring back some super-special cake, too!”
“Nopony’s gonna take it away from me, are they?”
Pinkie jumped back down to the ground and pulled the filly close. “I don’t know. If it belongs to somepony else, you’ll have to give it back. I can put up lost-and-found posters around town. I keep pre-written forms stashed all around, just in case of emergency. But if nopony claims it, it’s yours.”
“Yay!” Scootaloo jumped out of Pinkie’s embrace. “Cutie Mark Crusaders . . . um Self-Powered Wagon Drivers!”
“I’ll be right back!” Pinkie waved a hoof before pronking back towards town.
Scootaloo struggled to pull herself up over the tailboard. “Uh, a little help?”
“Heh, sorry squirt.” Rainbow hooked a pastern around her foreleg and yanked her up into the back of the truck. “I’ve got to admit, this thing is kind of cool.”
Scootaloo beamed. As Dash helped her into the operator’s cabin, she wondered if the day could get any better.
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1. fixed
Would put Yay! in parentheses or "Locomotive engineers yay!" in quotes, and add a colon before "Always."
What's a sallion?
...Which reminds me, that emote may have been all too accurate if she wasn't yanked out.
3498878
Much cooler fixed, thank you.
Left the ".. . . yay! Always . . . " as it was. I know it's not right, but heck, I just like it like that.
Fixed the "allionsay." It originally read "Ixnay on the exsay," but I thought that was kinda pushing an "everyone" tag.
Cuti Mark Crusader Stunt Drivers?
Do a Barrel Roll.
3498970
There was a moment where "Cutie Mark Crusaders Race Car Drivers" crossed my mind.
But it's too silly.
3498974
Not for the Cutie Mark crusaders, as taught by Discord.
3499006
They've only got one truck and the remains of a parade float. Not enough for a race, yet.
Now, can Quick Fix and Pinkie and maybe Twilight reverse-engineer a Chevy truck? If so. . . .
3499017
You are thinking of only the one example of origional unique non Equestrian build. How quickly could the various artificers of magical constructs scan that thing down to the nuts and bolts, pointing out the extreme similarity to the steam locomotive, in that you could say the coal is thrown into the cylinders, bypassing the firebox boiler loop entirely. Others would try to build the compact piston block then try and add a blacksmiths blown forge fire and boiler etc. that gets your turbines, and everything that goes with it.
Others can look at the battery and starter motor, and try and make electric vehicles. Others will point out Tanks magic flying harness and try and go direct for magic drive hubs, etc etc.
Theres lots of messy fun to be done with something just to start giving you ideas.
3499047
Quite true. The Equestrians already have the concept of the steam engine down, and the Flim Flam brothers have their self-powered cider machine, so the internal combustion engine is marginally reverse-engineerable by the ponies. There's some metallurgy that's probably beyond them (although for all we know Phillydelphia is home to the largest Basic Oxygen Furnace in all of Equestria). I doubt the ponies are advanced enough to build a duplicate of a '69 Chevy truck, but they'd likely be able to build a functional equivalent.
And you're right; there's no reason why a pony tinkerer couldn't look at a single part of the truck, scoff, and say, "I can do that better." With some magitech . . they might really have something.
I can't think of a specific example right now, but I'm sure history is full of examples where someone built something, and then someone else built a much better version of the same thing--and that's just using examples of existing tech; imagine how we might be able to adapt a piece of alien tech.
3499116
As far as I can tell, an awful lot of the Chevy isnt all that advanced in material science. I thought large portions were mild steel, the gearbox isnt that far off cast iron, maybe the crank and con rods would give them pause for a few minutes, but nothing a minerological assey spell couldnt sort given the material is bulk, and shaped by standard drop hammer. They have optical lenses, so the idea of polishing to a finish for bearings, well, the steam locos either use white metal or pressure fed oil filled sintered bronze. The carburetta is essentially a pipe carrying hydrocarbon fuel into the larger pipe carrying air, of which only the geometry really counts, etc.
Ok.. time for me to go sit in the corner with the traffic cone on my head so I dont seriously annoy the people who Actually know how these things work any further.
Sorry bout that.
3499147
You're essentially right, honestly. Still, there was a fair bit of advancement from teens metallurgy to sixties. Bushing and seal technology advanced; the carb is slightly more complicated than a tube, valve, and venturi. The epoxy in the coil is better, there are plastics used in the interior. Bushings have improved, and the coil springs are progressive windings rather than simple coil springs. All the bearings are likely made of better quality steel, and the gears are helical cut rather than straight-cut. There's probably a zillion things I'm not thinking of.
All that having been said, since they have a steam locomotive, the engine of the truck is not beyond their understanding, and while they might not have the industrial techology required to exactly replicate it, a bunch of pony scientists could probably come up with a duplicate that was 3/4 as good as the original on a first try . . . and then use the lessons they learned from the first attempt to quickly improve to nearly 100%. I'd figure it would take them a decade or two of R&D to make an exact copy.
3499247
I dunno about a decade. then again, depends how desperate they were. After all, the best example for technology advancement from nothing in a decade, is Sputnik, or I cant remember the US version, Vanguard? to Apollo. What is even more intresting is that given an existing F1 engine, apparently its going to take modern technology to reverse engineer it to create a duplicate, if not an improvement.
Sometimes something already existing slows down innovation, creation?
3499267
It wasn't nothing, though. True, there wasn't a space program and then there was. The underlying developments across all fields of technology were firmly in place, though. It was a matter of application. Based on the show, the ponies are unlikely to have developed an efficient process for extracting aluminum from bauxite (to give just one example), making a Ford Tri-motor out of their reach even if somebody gave them a complete set of blueprints accompanied with a functioning engine, a sufficient fuel supply, and a complete avionics package.
3499387
I actually had a look up on the origional method of Aluminum extraction, just for space use, to avoid the need for the horribly low efficincy of solar PV compared to solar sail mirror concentrators and freefall smelting. Carbon, Silicon, Magnesium, Sodium, Aluminium. Fortunately all fairly available in rock, though the carbon is the trick. Things I havent got yet is the various yields at each stage etc, such as Alumina plus Sodium gives Aluminium and Soda.
Seems a recent advancement of Magnesium extraction is to boil it off in vaccuum, low pressure, and condense on sheets.
3499410
And that gets to the heart of the matter: some industrial processes are heavily reliant on other technology (like extracting aluminum) that in the space of only two centuries, aluminum has gone from a higher value than gold to being disposable. Just the manufacturing technology to make fuel and brake lines is probably out of reach for the ponies.
3499494
Heh, the flexible pipes I can get my head round, but Ive prodded at some of the rigid parts off a Landrover and I can see how you would have fun drawing high tensile tube without it splintering etc.
Im going to have to dig out my encyclopedias again, its been a couple decades at least and so theres a shed load of modern stuff I know little to nothing about. Im just glad I did at least the first two years on that Polymer degree at the time Buckyballs and Plant Gel was discovered, so I can follow some of the names if not all the new chemistry since.
3499525
For what it's worth, here's a link to a PDF that covers verious pipe-making processes:
Pipe Making My experience in metal manufacturing has been limited; but I've worked in an extrusion-molding plastics plant.
In the automotive world, besides the obvious computer integration, there's been a large upsurge of more exotic metals used for weight-savings, many more plastics are used (intakes and fuel tanks, to name a few), and gaskets have improved from cork to neoprene.
You know, this chapter and the fire truck pic reminds me of the song "The Truck Got Stuck"
Damn! My story Drive is no longer one of a kind! Ah well the more the merrier
3845909
Well, they say great minds think alike.
Yeah, this was funny!
If they refine their lamp oil from crude oil pumped from the ground, they'll probably have gasoline available. If I recall this correctly... Gasoline was originally an unwanted byproduct from refining kerosene, back when kerosene became a popular substitute for whale oil. It was too dangerous and volatile for any practical use, until someone designed an engine to run on it. Funny how that went.
3872833
I'm not sure where they'd be getting their lamp oil from. You're right about gasoline initially being an unwanted byproduct, though.
If they can't get gasoline, they could tweak the carb to handle other fuels, alcohol being the most obvious. An internal combustion engine of that era can fairly easily be modified to run propane, methane, or even carbon monoxide.
In Pilot's Story by Jersey Lightning (which I think has been taken down for major revisions), Twilight was able to use a spell to copy the avgas that the plane had, and--given what we've seen on the show--it'd say it's feasible. After all, if she can turn a frog into an orange and mice into horses, water to gasoline shouldn't be all that hard.
3499247 wrote : "All that having been said, since they have a steam locomotive, the engine of the truck is not beyond their understanding, and while they might not have the industrial techology required to exactly replicate it, a bunch of pony scientists could probably come up with a duplicate that was 3/4 as good as the original on a first try . . . and then use the lessons they learned from the first attempt to quickly improve to nearly 100%. I'd figure it would take them a decade or two of R&D to make an exact copy."
Ah.
But you're forgetting their game breaker, magic.
Why would they need an exact copy when they can use magical substitutes for it.
3919687
The original discussion was about them building an exact duplicate of the truck, and I stand by my statement, magic or no. I don't believe that the ponies could use magic to make an entire functioning engine in one go, for example. I'd think they'd have to disassemble it, and then figure out how to cast, hone, and polish all the major parts. The idea of a unicorn being able to shape a pile of hematite into a functioning engine block--never mind a whole engine--seems outside what a spell ought to be able to do. As for their technology, I haven't seen enough complex machines to make me believe that they have much in the way of the advanced technology to build a truck--even one from the sixties--on their own.
Before you use the example of the Crystal Empire locomotive to say I'm wrong, let me remind you that these two locomotives are essentially the same; the top one is just covered in sheeting which makes it streamlined.
steamlocomotive.com/streamlined/scrapped/hiawatha-3.jpg
wheelsmuseum.org/images/00000470.jpg
Now, I have no trouble believing that they could yank the powertrain out of the truck and make it move with a come-to-life spell. I suspect that's what they used to make the parade floats go, and to make Tank's propeller work.
My first thought:
This inspired me to write my own fanfic, called The CMC's Honda.
3919794 In my story the characters do have to go through a process of restoration and rebuild. check it out.
Chapter 1
Smart little Scoots.
I'm confused by this.
First, I obviously defer to your superior automotive knowledge, also I should point out that, being from the UK, I wouldn't know an automatic transmission if it bit me on the arse. However, I don't understand how the gear shift on an automatic would employ a detent. I always assumed that the fascia surrounding the shifter that I've seen in US TV and film acted much like the 'gate' around a manual gearstick. I know what a detent is but clearly I don't 'get' automatics (or, possibly gearboxes in general).
Chapter 3
Anyway, another fave.
I'm working my way, chronologically, through your stories, and becoming a little alarmed at how many 'faves' I'm handing out, but to do otherwise would be to make myself a liar, and be somewhat churlish.
I think I like your stories because you portray character well, you capture a certain voice, if that makes sense.
EDIT:- I hope you continue this at some point. If not, that's fine and everything, I understand from my own (unposted) efforts how a story can park itself in a corner and refuse to move.
6647132
Back in the old days (in the US, anyway), an automatic shifter generally just followed a straight-line pattern. On the column shifters, you usually had to pull them back towards you to get out of Park, then it was straight down through the gears. Console shifts often had a button you had to push to release it from the Park position, but then after that, you could freely move it through the positions in a straight pattern.
Somewhere in the mechanism, there was usually a spring-loaded ball or something similar which went into little detents on a guide, so that it would positively go into gear. The downside was when this wore out, there was little to no resistance as you changed gears. In my dad's old station wagon, I would back out of the driveway, make the turn at the bottom, and then just slap the shifter, which made it drop into Drive (since the detent for neutral was completely worn out).
Usually, it's just there for looks. In its simplest form, a shifter is just a lever attached to a rod or cable. All the rest is cosmetics or safety features (so you can't bump it into reverse by mistake, for example).
As far as I know, the 'gates' in a manual transmission car or truck are just cosmetic as well. What limits the shifter is what's inside the transmission (or wherever the actual mechanism is), rather than a particular gate.
rennlist.com/forums/attachments/928-forum/890168d1417104237-928-manual-transmission-shift-knob-and-aluminum-gate-source-shift.png
Oops! Correction made.
Don't be alarmed at how many faves you're handing out. Embrace it!
It does. I've always thought of myself as a character writer than anything else.
The problem I had was that this was never meant to be a multi-chapter fic. It was supposed to just be the first chapter, and that was all. But then it got popular, and I thought I ought to continue it . . . but I didn't know how to end it.
I still don't.
I would like to finish it one day, and perhaps the inspiration will come to me, or perhaps it will not. If it does, I'll be happy to take the "Hiatus" tag off, and replace it with a new chapter or two, then "Complete."
6647865
Could this be continued?
9022406
Honestly, it's not very likely. I never really had an ending in mind for it, and it was only supposed to be one chapter.
Can't say for sure that inspiration won't strike, but there's not too much of a chance of it.
2013