Apport???

A few weeks ago someone posted about wanting to do some research on 'apports'. I don't recall whether I responded or not, but I do recall thinking it'd be a hard thing to research, unless you intended hanging around some Indian swami with a history of apport appearance.
I know they have been reported in relation to some Western mediums, but it's not a subject which I've researched and I wasn't particularly interested in doing so personally.

I'm now forced to rethink my position, due to a recent experience.

It's left me with the feeling that this was a genuine 'apport experience', and the implications are that whatever was responsible has a puckish sense of humour.......

Basically, what happened is that while rebuilding a set of four vintage Keihin motorcycle CV carburettors, which I'd bought recently to replace a set on a 1976 Honda GL1000, a piece which I'd noticed was missing when I opened the new to me carbs initially 'reappeared' in a way which is completely inexplicable under normal terms.

The job of rebuilding these carb sets is extremely tricky, requiring unbroken attention to detail, and rigid organisation. All the tiny parts of each carb go into numbered boxes one for each carb.....I used a masterclass DVD by Randall Washington to make sense of the job, as all the workshop manuals leave things out or explain it so badly it's easy to mess up.

I'd done the job before, but watched the DVD again just in case, such is the level of trickiness.

Here's the sequence of events as posted on a specialist GL1000 website today.

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I'm posting this here as you guys will have some insight into the 'oddity' of the event...assuming you've ever taken a Wing Keihin carb to bits!

I rebuilt the original 1976 carbs for our yellow rig last year, using a Randakk kit, and his excellent DVD. They worked brilliantly after the rebuild, the only slight problem being an intermittently sticking right-side choke mechanism.

After using the rig I realised it had an iffy head gasket, which then blew completely after a long trial run.

I then decided that as I had to strip the thing to do the heads, I might as well upgrade iit to '78 spec, and eventually I got all the bits together....both cams, the 78 carb rack, and the 78 ATU which as we all know goes under the points set on the back of the left cam, and advances & retards the ignition to suit the cam profile.

SO.....the heads are back on the rig, and I turned my attention to the carb rack. I'd already checked the float columns were all present and correct, as were all the bowl screws, which is a good sign.

I had hoped I could avoid rebuilding these carbs as it is a bit of a faff, so I ran a vacuum test on them, and both air and fuel circuits were leaking.....so I had to do a full rebuild. Luckily I had a spare Randakk rebuild kit.

On Tuesday 17th, my birthday, I took the float bowls off, and immediately noticed something was wrong.....I had one float which appeared to have no needle valve! I then realised that the fuel shut-off needle valve WAS there, but it wasn't attached to the little brass tongue on the float, and after removing the float by carefully drifting the hinge pin out, in two stages, I realised that the spring clip which attaches the needle valve to the float was missing.

Three carbs had the spring clip, one had no clip.

I removed all of the floats and compared the valve needles. I couldn't understand how the spring clip could have fallen off, as it seems unclear how it's attached to the valve....I tried removing the spring clip from another valve and couldn't get it off at all.

I put the 'naked' needle-valve in my large plastic parts tub, used specifically for this carb job, and empty at the beginning of the job, and went to the barn to retrieve my 1977 carb rack, which was on a top shelf needing ladder access. I brought the rack into the house, removed a needle valve from one carb and put it into the small parts tub for the carb with the problem, returning the 77 rack to the barn.

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Yesterday I finished the reassembly, so all the bits were on the 78 rack and the big plastic bin was almost empty except for some tools and baggies, and I found, in the corner, a cutoff valve needle......WITH SPRING!!!! :shock: :shock: :shock:

I had seen this in the box on Tuesday but hadn't realised its significance, as I assumed it was one of the pieces still to go back in the last two carbs......but it isn't, it appears to be the 'naked' valve I'd put in the box earlier, which has by some mysterious means 'found' a spring clip!

Now, I'm well aware that this is a very peculiar situation, I had mentioned to my wife that I had a spring clip missing when I stripped the carbs on 14th and 15th, and she recalled this, but when I told her a spring had appeared from nowhere on the naked valve she couldn't accept the implications, and preferred to assume that I had made a mistake when I had seen one carb with no clip.....even though I'd removed the valve and examined it closely, and tried to remove the clip from another valve, concluding that it was beyond simple manipulation to get the thing off.

I realised the only "normal" explanation was that I'd removed TWO valves from the 77 rack, instead of the one single one which I recalled having removed, had fitted four into the 78, leaving one in the bin with the clip on it, and tossing the naked one into the kitchen rubbish bin.

If this was the explanation, then I should find one valve missing on the 77 rack in the barn, so this morning, to clarify this odd situation, I recovered the 77 rack from the top shelf of the barn racking, and removed all four float bowls.

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As you can see, I found all four valves and springs intact!

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I know what I saw, a spring was missing from a rack I'd bought off the internet, and now it's back on the needle valve.

To make 100% sure this is either the same naked valve which has 'found' a spring,, or to see if it's a NEW valve and spring, and to be 100% certain I didn't toss the naked valve into the bin, I did a full forensic examination of the bin, removing every particle of hair, broken crockery, tea-leaves, cat food, plastic bags, bits of carb I had deliberately tossed like the float gaskets and the kidney shaped seals, jet O rings and runner O rings....a nasty job, but I wanted to be 100% clear what has happened and cover all the bases.

There was no naked valve in the bin.

Anyone on here removed the spring clip from a Keihin GL1000 fuel shutoff needle valve?

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Here's the valve with spring....looks as if it's easy enough to get the spring off, in fact, but the point is, mine was mising....it had been reassembled without the spring.
 
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This account sounds somehow familiar to me. I've vague memories of experiences which I've dismissed as being simply my own mistaken observation. But based upon your story, perhaps I should not have been so casual in ignoring such events.

The scenario, building or repairing something and noting that some part was missing, broken or displaced from its correct position. I'd hold whatever it was in my hands, examine it from all angles, and then in disappointment that it was beyond repair set it aside. After at least one night's sleep, perhaps more, I'd return to the project, find everything in order and finish the task.

But for me these incidents have never been quite clear enough in my mind, I'd be deeply puzzled for a while, and then basically dismiss it as one more of life's little unsolved mysteries. I don't think I've ever had anything that I'd put in the category of "evidence", simply because there was no record, for example no photograph, drawing or written account of the initial problem. For me, the only thing which remains is the final state, after the problem is gone away.
 
Thanks for the comment, Typoz. I'm glad I'm not the only one to have had this happen......
Could this be the sort of event which triggered the old stories about "the fairies" finishing work in the house overnight?

If you look for "apports" on wiki, you get the usual pseudoskep list of fraud 'explanations', nothing of any interest. Why would someone want to fraudulently produce apports if there was no rare but nonetheless real basis for the idea?

Not subscribing to the concept of 'The Carburettor Fairies' I am left with a strong feeling that something very interesting genuinely happened here, a small thing in size, but really somewhat huge in import.

I was highly amused by the event!
 
I wonder whether the process of sleeping plays some part here. If I read your account correctly, there was a couple of days elapsed between the initial problem and the solution. I take it for granted that a good night's sleep can help solve many of life's problems, but usually in the form of arriving at a fresh viewpoint or a new idea. I hadn't previously considered that there might be physical changes too (though some illness can improve dramatically overnight). If so - and I'm really not sure, this is just a suggested idea, perhaps we ourselves bring about the desired result in some way, while asleep. Certainly in my case there would have been a strong mental focus on the intended result, followed by a period of relaxing and "switching off". this sounds a little bit like the state described in the spoon-bending thread.
 
I was thinkin' when I saw the thread, that the dude in your avatah doesn't need an apport, what he needs is to put the wheels on the bottom side fust!
 
On Monday evening I went shopping and bought some carrots and a swede at the same time. On Tuesday evening I thought I would make some Carrot and Swede mash, nice winter vegetables smothered in butter and black pepper.

Although the Swede was in the fridge, the carrots were nowhere to be seen. I could remember packing them into my shopping backs at the supermarket, but couldn't remember what I had done with them after that. After searching everywhere, I decided that the last place I could look was the car boot, in case they had fallen out of the bag whilst driving home, and I had not noticed. I got changed, went downstairs to the car, nothing in the car boot either.

I came back inside, and checked everywhere again, only one place remained... the freezer. Although I had no doubt they were not in the freezer, as I couldn't conceive myself putting fresh carrots in the freezer. Low and behold, in the freezer I found my missing bag of now frozen carrots. I have absolutely no recollection of putting them in the freezer, yet it appears I had clearly done so. Consciousness and memory are very funny things...
 
Low and behold, in the freezer I found my missing bag of now frozen carrots. I have absolutely no recollection of putting them in the freezer, yet it appears I had clearly done so. Consciousness and memory are very funny things...
Though an interesting topic in its own right, finding things which have been mislaid is a separate subject and is off topic in this thread.
 
My parents had their own experience relating to an apport... and they were definitely not into the "New Agey" way of thinking... they didn't even know what Apports were.

To cut a long story short, basically when they were travelling overseas they went to get the passport out of their filing cabinet for my dad. It is filed under "P" and they are very anal when it comes to where they file everything.

Well for weeks they could not find the passport anywhere. They literally turned the cabinet inside out... and when I say literally I mean they took every single file, paper and manilla folder out until the cabinet was bare and refiled everything back again from scratch. Still they couldn't find his passport.... so they bit the bullet and paid up for a new passport.

The new passport arrived... so my mum went to go put it in the filing cabinet.. under "P"... and to her amazement out of thin air was the original passport that had been lost... and it was exactly where it should have been all along.

They both swear black and blue that there was no possible way it could have been there all along... and since have had several other "paranormal" type events such as TV's turning on and off randomly... Air conditioners turning on randomly in the middle of the night. All of this seems have happened since my grandfather (My mums father) died... and he had his own psychic ability.

I evne had a case myself where a fire alarm in my house started screaming in the middle of the night and there was nothing I could do to turn it off. Only me telling my grandfather that I "got the message" stopped it... and for remote control cars to drive themselves off my kitchen bench even though there were no batteries inside!

Try explaining that shit as random chance events!
 
Just saw the "wheels on wrong side" comment....tee-hee!

Not presbyopia, I have 20/20 vision and am a marksman, read close up without difficulty, and anyway I use a jewellers large diameter magnifying glass loupe for this work so I can read the tiny numbers stamped on the little brass jets and needles.

I'd taken that naked valve out, and examined it, it was obviously minus the spring clip.

Typoz posits an interesting idea, which would have been described (possibly) as unconscious conjuration.....in this model 'I' would have somehow conjured up the apport while asleep.

My personal feeling was that this was not caused by myself, after all I had already corrected the problem by immediately retrieving a spare from the spare carb set.....I felt it was a sort of 'message' from 'the Universe' or something.

It would have been very easy to take the easy way out and dismiss this as 'error' on my part, but it would also have been intellectually dishonest, and lazy.
I feel it wasn't 'caused' by me, but obviously I was involved (as observer) which implies an intelligence other than mine was operating, and one with a quirky sense of humour.

As for Frank's post, I can relate to this, I've also had my damned passport vanish from a steel filing cabinet, with 3 years left to run, and been obliged to replace it with first a temporary one shot passport, then a new full one.

Mine never reappeared, so not in the same category. You can see how the idea of puckish, trick-playing 'fairies' might arise from this sort of incident.
 
Just saw the "wheels on wrong side" comment....tee-hee!

Not presbyopia, I have 20/20 vision and am a marksman, read close up without difficulty, and anyway I use a jewellers large diameter magnifying glass loupe for this work so I can read the tiny numbers stamped on the little brass jets and needles.

I'd taken that naked valve out, and examined it, it was obviously minus the spring clip.

Typoz posits an interesting idea, which would have been described (possibly) as unconscious conjuration.....in this model 'I' would have somehow conjured up the apport while asleep.

My personal feeling was that this was not caused by myself, after all I had already corrected the problem by immediately retrieving a spare from the spare carb set.....I felt it was a sort of 'message' from 'the Universe' or something.

It would have been very easy to take the easy way out and dismiss this as 'error' on my part, but it would also have been intellectually dishonest, and lazy.
I feel it wasn't 'caused' by me, but obviously I was involved (as observer) which implies an intelligence other than mine was operating, and one with a quirky sense of humour.

As for Frank's post, I can relate to this, I've also had my damned passport vanish from a steel filing cabinet, with 3 years left to run, and been obliged to replace it with first a temporary one shot passport, then a new full one.

Mine never reappeared, so not in the same category. You can see how the idea of puckish, trick-playing 'fairies' might arise from this sort of incident.

Sir, I really want to thank you for posting this - that is - the manner in which you posted it : without motive, hyperbole, or self-doubt. I do lots of repair work myself; and this kind of crap, these bizarre incongruities, happen to me frequently, and though I end up with the same feeling as you : that a unique and tantalizing mystery has just occurred - I never have anyone to share it with; I mean, no-one who can appreciate the beauty of it, the way you just did. I'm no brain trust, but I'm no idiot, either : my job requires me to step in and take charge of situations where there are no maps or instructions, and often-times, not even a definition of the problem - but I always manage to get by. Also, just like everybody else, I experience all the normal occassions where I or someone with me will misplace or simply lose something -
or someone or something from outside the situation will lie or cheat . . . and that's all part of ordinary life. There is always a first logical explanation for every mystery - except when there isn't.
It's an inside running joke, with my children, about these "messages from the universe", (and, strangely, those are the exact same words I use to describe these things!) What all these messages seem to have in common is, as with yours, they are completely TRIVIAL, meaning they aren't associated with anything life and death or something critical to success or anything related to personal wishes and desires. Second, they're NEVER PROVABLE.
I love your notion that the universe is showing it has a sense of humor. To me, at least, that is a much more hopeful interpretation of the message, than an interpretation that inferred a benevolent God, or a relativistic block-time destiny, because it gives me both the COMFORT of knowing that there is "something else out there" while at the same time allowing me the FREEDOM to create my own meaning for it all.
When you think about it, like life was a common novel or an ordinary television program, could you imagine a better method than this kind of message, to keep someone "tuned-in", without giving away the ending ?
 
Liberty, thanks for that, glad to see people who do this sort of thing understand the implications......

Your comment about 'self-doubt' is important. It's the critical point for me.....if I had any doubt about what happened, I wouldn't have bothered posting about it.

This sort of incident will resonate with people who have had similar experience, while I'm sure the majority response would be "he's mistaken, lying, or deluded", as the alternative is so outré.

I actually think this response is wholly understandable and normal, after all, why would any rational person feel obliged to accept a report like this at face value? It'd require an 'act of faith', and an act of faith in an unknown person, a cyber-identity encountered only on the internet.....I myself have always held the idea of apports at arms length , 'to think about later' ie when some evidence turns up in my own life.

I'm glad we have both interpreted these events in the same way, even using the same phrase.....in fact I have several other incidents which had led me to believe the 'perpetrator' displays a sense of humour.

Whether you use this model of an intelligent, external 'universal force' which very occasionally amuses itself by performing this sort of trivial, (but very significant) little acts, or whether you prefer the model in which they are somehow conjured by us as individuals, reaching out into the space-time lattices and manipulating matter and energy in such a way as to have the effect of keeping ourselves and others 'tuned in' to the potential and mystery of existence 'without giving away the end' as you put it so well, I really don't know.

Either it's an 'heuristic device' from some universal 'force', or it's evidence for our rather random ability to, unconsciously, create our own effects which mimic a heuristic device as described.

For me, it was a very worthwhile intervention, and I posted it here and on the GL1000 forum I sometimes inhabit to see what others would make of it.
 
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