The Big Bang Theory : The Locomoton Reverbation - the engine in apartment in 4B

There is no way that that engine got into the apartment without a functioning elevator. Doesn't matter how strong two guys are, they aren't carrying an engine that big and heavy up four flights of stairs, especially with how the stairs wrap around the elevator shaft. Then there's the issue of getting it through the door to the apartment and down the stairs when he's done working on it. The building should have a freight elevator for moving furniture and large appliances but apparently it doesn't or else the broken passenger elevator would be less of an issue and Leonard & Sheldon would have used it to get Penny's furniture to the fourth floor in The Big Bran Hypothesis. Yeah, I know it's a comedy show and Sheldon working on an engine in his apartment was for comedic effect but it was complete BS. They should have just had him working on it in one of the university labs or shops.



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and Sheldon can tell when someone takes milk for coffee from a carton and when someone moves an onion ring on his plate, but he doesn't notice Howard refilling his water

"Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong." J.J. Rousseau

Secretly refilling his water also shouldn't make him drink more of it. Would've made more sense to slip him salt so he drinks and them urinates more, or simply a diuretic.



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monkeyalien wrote:

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They should have just had him working on it in one of the university labs or shops.

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But then they would not have had the line about having to get the engine out of there before Amy comes home.

The writers will always choose a joke over being realistic.

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Yeah, I know it's a comedy show and Sheldon working on an engine in his apartment was for comedic effect

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I think you just answered your own question.


"Sometimes the nerd gets the girl."Chuck

I totally agree with you about it getting carried upstairs. If there is a freight elevator perhaps they need a key from a janitor to use it, but we've never seen a janitor either, which is odd. I think they could have had fun with a janitor.

This post amused me because we brought a sofa bed into our house through the deck door opening when we built our house and then they put the deck door on. Now we can't get the damned thing out. I have a guy coming with a saw Wednesday to cut it up so I can get rid of it and I can only get new furniture that is not that big.

In The Friendship Contraction Penny mentioned a building manager. There should be a maintenance person or building superintendent/manager there full-time, perhaps living in the building, to tend to such things in a 5+ story apartment building.

How big is the deck door? Is it a sliding door with stationary section? If so, I would think that it and the door could be removed to make a wider opening. Not to go off on a tangent, but I've moved enough large things in, out, and around homes to learn what not to do when building a house. Have as wide of an entry door as you can and make sure a fridge, standing freezer, or couch can go through it. Same goes for corridors that a large carpet will eventually go through or interior doors to wherever the washer & dryer are. It helps to have a openings & doorways across from each other in a corridor when moving carpets & mattresses. Always have a straight enough path from the exterior door through a breezeway/porch to outside. This also helps in the event someone needs to be taken out in a stretcher. If you have to move something outside and back in through another door just to move it from one room to another then there's something wrong with your floor plan. A stairway leading down to the front door makes it easier to move a mattress upstairs but can make it much harder to move through the door into or out of the same level. Straight stairways are your friend, every other configuration is not.


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I've never lived in Pasadena but I have visited a fair number of apartment buildings and very few have freight elevators. You usually see a freight elevator in a luxury apartment complex where people will have all kinds of fancy and expensive furnishings that they do not want scratched or dented in a regular elevator due to the small door. I think that Sheldon's building does not have one or they would not have broken their backs and risked a hernia moving the time machine. I agree with the OP that such an engine could not be brought up the stairs as it probably weighs in excess of 3,000 pounds which I question whether the staircase would hold up to that much weight. I question whether the electrical power would be available in the apartment to run that welder to boot. I know that it is only a show but seriously they are not even trying anymore. It's like back in the 1980's where a US car maker would import a product from Eastern Europe and throw their decal on it and try to make people that the quality is just as good as domestic because of a sticker. In this case the sticker would say "The Big Bang Theory."

Maybe they brought it in in pieces and Sheldon put it together in the apartment.





WE GOT MOVIE SIIIIIGN!

I have a friend who repairs tractors for a living, most with an engine that size or bigger. They're not something that someone without experience (like Sheldon) and maybe a detail shop manual would/should take apart and put back together. It would be a laborious to dismantle an engine like that only to soon reassemble it in the apartment and eventually dismantle again to remove it. Maybe you'd work on pieces in an apartment, but why reassemble it there?

At least they did have Sheldon using a small MIG welder that could run on 120VAC as opposed to a rig that runs on 220VAC which wouldn't be readily available in an apartment without an electric dryer unless it's drawn from two circuits on opposite legs.





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