At our school before they became all politically correct, every spring for ten years or more we had the "brick test". The marginal students with D- and F+ grades were given the "Option to improve their grade by 1 letter grade". They would have to line up their cars and drain the oil and coolant, start them up and put a brick on the gas pedal. Last one running got the letter grade bump. Some years we had 4-5 cars in the contest. The smart students, (among the dummies), would intentionally have extra poor running engines that would not rev too high. Their were many memorable engine epic failures. One that just wouldn't die was an iron duke 4-cyl in a Sunbird. It must have run wide open, no oil, no coolant for 20 minutes then just slowly seized up and stalled. After cooling for an hour or so, it started right back up and ran another 10 minutes before finally tossing a connecting rod. Good times!!
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