Trainee Mechanic Changing Timing Belt Transported Back to 1993

9th Sep 2015

A trainee mechanic at a third level institute in Cork who attempted to change the timing belt on a car has been accidentally transported back to 1993.

18 year old Fintan Hartnett from Bandon, Co. Cork made the catastrophic mistake when changing the timing belt on a ‘93 C Ford Fiesta and was transported back to that year for over three days before being rescued by the course’s head mechanic Finbarr Walsh-O’Brien.
 

Fintan went back to 1993 but didnt go to Sir Henrys

“New timing belts can be a disaster if they are set up incorrectly”, said his instructor, “if you get positioning wrong the belt and engine can create a small tear in the fabric of space-time when you start it up and it opens a vortex back to the year the car was made.”

During his unexpected period of time travel the trainee suffered a minor leg injury when he walked into a Roches Stores trolley left outside Cash’s on Patrick Street (he claimed he was distracted at the time by the large number of cars parked down the centre of the city’s main thoroughfare) is recovering in hospital and said to be slightly traumatised after his ordeal - particularly as he was unable to use his smart phone to Whatsapp pictures of people in very baggy and luminous coloured clothing to his friends in 2015.

“My older brother is really disappointed that I didn’t go to Sir Henry’s when I was back there”, said Fintan, “he was looking for a mixtape from that year and all and I could have picked it up for him in Fish Records in the market or in Comet on Washington Street. I can’t believe I forgot to go that club though ‘cos he absolutely never shuts up about it.”

The young student also said that he ate his breakfast in The Victoria Hotel, had lunch at Mandy’s on Daunt Square and went out for dinner in Burgerland on Patrick Street before whiling away the evenings drinking £1.10 happy-hour pints at The Left Bank bar on Pope’s Quay.

The student’s city centre based college have confirmed that they are taking precautions to ensure trainee mechanics do not abuse timing belt replacement training to experience time-travel. It has been reported that many students have been suggesting that instructors carry out practical work on vintage vehicles but the board have decreed that all cars destined for student labour should now have their timing belts removed.

It is thought that several students have been using the internet websites to track down and purchase cars from 1990. College authorities believe that many young people born after that year desire to experience the hysteria of Italia ’90 when Irish people changed religion from Catholicism to football en masse during the World Cup in which the Republic of Ireland under Jack Charlton got to the quarter final stage.

“We also had one lad last week who snuck into the workshop at night and removed the timing belt on a 141-C Ford Focus”, said a college spokesperson,”we believe he was trying to go back to last year to re-sit his exams which he failed but he predictably made a mess of it and only went back quarter of an hour so our security guard nabbed him as he hadn’t gone on his break by then”. 

Staff at the college have also denied that they are planning to hold this year’s Christmas party at the once crazy-popular Arcadia Ballroom which once stood opposite Kent railway station on the Lower Glanmire Road. Time travel back to the early seventies would involve ensuring that all staff members are seated on a large coach, or ‘chicken chaser’, from that era and perfectly replicating Fintan Hartnett’s mistake with the timing belt on the ’93 Ford Fiesta.

Cork showband oldies ‘The Dixies’ have also refuted suggestions that they have been booked for the event. When quizzed about the alleged time travel plans The Dixies’s legendary drummer Joe Mac said that the only time travel he knew about was when he dropped his watch. He added that he’d be open to the possibility of returning to the Arcadia to play a gig but only if a meal was served – so that he could ‘come back four seconds’.

He then pressed his bass drum pedal twice. Boom! Boom!

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