Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 01-14-26_WEDNESDAY_6AM

Episode Date: January 14, 2026

Morning news and opinion, into Wheels Up with auto journalist Eric Peters, update on his project car, reviews, answering listener questions...even MORE airbags to come?

This hour of the Bill Meyer Show podcast is proudly sponsored by Klauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for more than 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausor drilling.com. That's 770 KMED. Now more with Bill Meyer. So, great to have you here on Wheels Up Wednesday, 12 minutes after six. If you want to join the conversation, 7705-633-770 KMED. Interesting President Trump saying to Iran that help is on the way.

We don't know what help is looking at right now or looking like at the moment. Details are a little sparse at the moment. Is it just going to be helping tip things over or whatever it is? But a lot of people haven't been talking about actually why Iran finds itself in this particular trouble. No doubt our trying to freeze them out has strained. them. They had a bank collapse a few days ago is what really ended up driving this. Inflation running at about 40 to 50 percent. Wow. So, and I don't know if it's per month, maybe per year. Whatever it is, it is just insane. No matter what you get paid, it's not going to stretch to make that happen.

I mean, you think we had it bad during the COVID time when they were just printing, printing, printing. Yeah, that's what's really going on. And when people's bellies are not being filled and you have a whole bunch of mulls around keeping you down at the same time and, well, according to low estimations, 4 to 5,000, maybe 12 to 20,000 have been murdered or shot by their own troops and executed and everything like that. It does look like it's pretty much on the way to its end. But you know, it is a reminder when you see what's going on in Iran is that the people there in Iran are for the most part disarmed. They're disarmed. This is what you want to call a teachable moment. One of the reasons why our founders enshrined the

Second Amendment. This is also a reason why our governments today are trying to do everything they can to get rid of the Second Amendment, especially in these blue hive mine areas like Oregon, because they're always talking about safety or is the problem or this then or suicide. We're worried about you committing suicide with your firearm. That's a big one here in Oregon, which is kind of rich given that they're perfectly happy in the state of Oregon with suicide. As long as you have an official medical professional do the suing siding for you. But you know, you do it with your own gun or something. Then that's bad thing, right?

You know, that's illegal. event that we need to get rid of guns. But ultimately, that's what the Second Amendment is about. It's about when the government agent is coming to pull you off or take you off to the gulog, you shoot them. You're able to defend them, defend yourself. Now, that doesn't mean you pull out the firearm to shoot the ICE agent who is coming to take you away as an illegal immigrant. I wanted to make it, you know, we are talking about perfectly lawful actions, I think, that ICE agents are doing around here. But ultimately, that is the purpose of the Second Amendment,

not duck hunting, not punching holes in paper, ultimately to defend yourself and your people when the government decides to get too big for its britches. And, of course, I would argue that our government's been too big for its bridges for a long, long time. But what was it? I always remember there was a famous quote from a blogger, What's her name? Gosh, I can't, she said it's, it's too late to work within the system,

but too late to shoot the bastards, I think is Claire Wolf. Claire Wolf, yeah, she famously wrote that about 20 or 30 years. Well, I would imagine that the Iranians are thinking that, yeah, too late to work within the system. And no, it's not too late to shoot the government agents, at least in Iran at that point. But yeah, I don't know where that's going. Nobody does at this point, but we'll keep you up on the story for sure. Kevin Sterran and I are going to be talking about the Second Amendment around 730 or so, and I think that's going to be an important talk because a lot of people have been wondering there was a law passed in the last year's special session, the special session, which was going to be giving a date for implementing measure 114 restrictions.

These are the ones that all of a sudden, if you have a magazine with more than 10 rounds in it, She can't leave the house with it, these sort of things. Now do I think that our local police and sheriffs are going to be looking for those? No, I don't think there's any chance of that. But Kevin was telling me it is not being implemented at this point. It is still in the courts, but we're going to kind of dig into this because a lot of people were thinking, well, this law was passed. Does this override what happened with the court challenges on Measure 114?

No, it doesn't. But we'll go into the details about that. and also how former Republican Casey Jama is now putting out something else, going after the police officers, wanting to do this in the short session coming up early February. Remember, he's a former Republican. He was never a real Republican to start with, as far as I was concerned. Then we had what happened yesterday in the Supreme Court. The SCOTUS arguments on transgender.

Supreme Court looks like it's likely, likely to let Stan law. protecting women's sports. West Virginia was one of the states that ended up doing this. Sam Alito ended up having a conversation with one of the attorneys and had to do with this biological sex thing again. What does it mean to be a boy or a girl or a man or a woman? We do not have a definition for the court. And we don't take issue with the, we're not disputing the definition here.

What we're saying is that the way it applies in practice is to exclude birth sex males categorically from women's teams and that there's a subset of those birth sex males where it doesn't make sense to do so according to the state's own interest. Well, how can a court determine whether there's discrimination on the basis of sex without knowing what sex means for equal protection purposes? At certain points, liberal justices mold whether biological males even really do have a physical advantage. Yeah, advantage.

That's where they went with it. That clip was from Fox News, by the way. we thank Fox News for that. Just wanted to make sure you knew. So anyway, that was the conversation. So how can you even go there unless you can define this? Ah, it's all right. Okay.

If the Supreme Court can't even get this one right, this one which seems to be so obvious on its face and start tamping down the nonsense, I'm thinking we're done. Don't you? I mean, if you can't even get this particular case, this obviousness of keeping boys off of girls' sports teams because of the obvious advantage and the obvious unfairness of it all,

especially after all this time and money and court time and lawmakers, and this is that, title nine, title nine, we're going to make sure that girls have equal opportunity. And then you have fake girls, you know, competing on the team because they win. That's why they win. They'll win more. They'll be able to beat all the other girls or the real bio girls. Now, there are some rare exceptions.

There are some rare exceptions of female athletes that go out there and kick the butt of the male equivalent. But it's not often. It's not often. There's a reason why we separated this in the first place because it's smart. Okay? And it's just dealing with the biological realities. Speaking of biological realities, where is it? Do I have this here?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I had a, let me see if I, oh yeah, I do have the story here. I had someone who emailed me last night. Not a name just says the de-engineered. De-engineered writes me and says, hey, Bill, for an effective detox of America, target the multi-billion dollar cultural exemplifiers of porn and small-timers will self-censor while many leftists will die on that hill of pornography, I guess, huh?

and the engineer saying this will remove much of the win from their sales. I thought that was interesting. Are you thinking that if you end up going after the porn providers, you know, the porn providers which are replacing a girl friends, I guess, for young men today in America, and then the country improves. It just so happens that there is a candidate running for governor in Florida who wants to do exactly that. I was reading this on TMZ. I mean, I never read TMZ, but this headline caught my eye.

TMZ is usually a celebrity gossip rag. I don't normally go there a bunch here. But TMZ has this story here. James Fishback, a candidate running for governor of the Sunshine State, running for a Florida governor, he's proposing a 50% tax on income brought in by OnlyFan stars. Now, if you don't know what OnlyFan is, OnlyFand essentially is the social media deal where lots of people, mostly women, I think it's mostly women. I don't know. I've never really gone to, I've not gone to OnlyFans, so I couldn't tell you for sure.

But they essentially do their naked pictures, their sexy pictures, or whatever it is, or, you know, online sex shows, whatever the thing might be. And a lot of them make a lot of money on that. So Fishback is proposing a 50% tax on what they do. And he's saying that his proposed sin tax is meant to deter young women from selling their body. online, which he says is something they're compelled to do by society's objectification of them, not as a choice. Do you think that women don't have a choice to go in there? In fact, he's, so ultimately he says, we're going to do a syntax on only fan horrors.

That's essentially what he called. He called them whores in some of his campaign. Interesting campaign strategy, but what do you think about that? But this whole idea that what, do you honestly think, that people become hoers on OnlyFans, as Fishback is talking about, because they have no other choice? Do you think that's true? Or maybe they like it?

I don't know. What do you think? Maybe we talk about that this morning. But that's going to be an interesting race. I can't wait to see the debates in the Florida gubernatorial election. But, yeah, I wonder how he'll do with that. And, of course, some people are wondering, well, what happens if Florida loses all of these Only fans people and they moved to other states.

Okay, well, I guess that's a real cultural loss, I guess, huh? It's 623 at KMED. This is the Bill Myers show. When was the last time you had your well-watered? A straightforward and personalized approach is what you'll get when you choose me, Megan McPherson, as your insurance agent. Hi, I'm Charlene, owner of American Industrial Door, and I'm on 106.7 KMED. 624.

I haven't checked the price of gold or silver lately. and just soaring. Maybe a give back. I mean, maybe up one day a little bit, maybe down a little bit another day. But one way or the other, it is definitely indicating that inflation, in spite of what the Trump administration and everybody else is talking about, inflation probably here to stay. A lot of what the Trump administration and what Congress proposes is inflationary in nature.

Like when President Trump ended up talking about, let's increase the military budget from a trillion a year, which is just a tiny amount of money, just kidding, to one of the half trillion dollars a year. That wouldn't be inflationary, right? Because remember, for about every two dollars that we spend, we borrow another dollar so we can spend three dollars. That's about what we do right now. And gold and silver prices, I think, have been reflecting this. Talk to Jay Austin and Company over in Grants Pass, Sixth and G in Downtown Grants Pass, and 1632 Ashland Street in Ashland, and they'll talk to you about maybe how you can add to your stack and protect. your wealth. And of course, a lot of people are selling it right now, too, at $4,600 last time I checked

for gold in about $70 something, whatever it is. It's silver a little more volatile. It's kind of like the, it's been the ugly stepchild of gold for a few years. And boy, it's just taken off, taken off, a lot of industrial uses. But anyway, where to do it when you're talking about trading and or buying? I'm more of a stacker. I'm just hanging on to mine, but maybe you want to sell yours or whatever you do. Go to Jay Austin. call 482 3715, 482-375. All right. Some of the other news that is going on this morning.

I'll talk with a stare at about this, too. Facing a $25 million request, Oregon lawmakers again are talking about delaying their historic campaign finance law. You know, we always like to kid ourselves in Oregon about, you know, how clean our campaigns are and how clean our election system is. but multiple Oregon lawmakers of both parties, this according to Oregon Live, expressing support for delaying implementing the historic law that will limit political contributions, because we don't have any in Oregon right now, that will limit political contributions and increase the transparency of spending in Oregon politics. Secretary of State's office has less than a year to get some of the key provisions of the law in,

and legislators did pass that last year, like I mentioned, but they haven't looked at it since, and they wanted to make some technical fixes. And so they're giving the Secretary of State some more time. Some lawmakers say would help the state avoid a disastrous rollout of a revitalized system to limit, monitor, and track political contributions. I think what the translation for this is, because anytime I get news from the Portland, Salem area, I have to translate it as to what the reality is. They're concerned that if they have this campaign finance rule in which there are limits,

and then you have to, you know, have some more transparency on where the money comes from. That might get in the way of lots of union money and or out of state money coming in and getting Governor Kotech reelected. That's my impression of what they mean when we need a little more time to get this campaign finance law put in place because it, well, you know, it might get in the way of tens and tens of millions of dollars to get a very unpopular Tina Kotech dragged across the finish line again. That's kind of how I'm looking at it. I don't know if you do, but that's sort of a way, you know, let's do it after Tina Kotech is reelected.

Then we'll get serious about election reform. Yeah, once we get past the midterms. I could be wrong about that, but I think my gut feeling about this particular situation is pretty much on target, okay? Lori Chavez-Daremer. Remember that kind of almost Republican? Yeah, she was a kind of squishy Republican,

but she's a member of the Trump cabinet accused of workplace drinking, improper relationship, and travel fraud, this according to reports. U.S. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-Deremer used to represent Oregon's fifth congressional district, according to O-Live, under investigation by the agency's inspector

General and allegations that this married cabinet member has had an inappropriate relationship with the subordinate spent taxpayer money on personal travel and kept champagne, bourbon, and Kaluah in her office where she drank during the workday. I got to tell you, if I was working in Washington, D.C. these days, I'd be drinking too. We'll just leave that alone. Anyway, we'll catch up on the rest of the news here in just a moment. I have no conclusions on where it's going to go. They're still investigating right now. But anyway, this is the Bill Myers show on KM. 8, KBD, 993 KBXG.

Wheels Up Wednesday. Talk continues with autojournalist Eric Peters. Give me a few minutes on that, okay? Need a roof that performs and lasts. Stephen Westfall roofing. Install SNAP-deals.com and start saving today. Good morning. This is News Talk 1063. KMED.

You're waking up with the Bill Myers Show. Wheels up Wednesday, hit the open road. and, well, I guess we're not going to see any more plugged-in jeeps. We'll talk by Eric Peters about that. Automotive journalist, he's here on the Zoom call this morning. Eric, welcome back from EP. Great to have you on. Morning.

Oh, likewise, Bill. We didn't see those plug-in jeeps anyhow because you had to drive by a cheap dealer to see them sitting in the lot. You didn't tend to see too many of them out on the road. Yeah, they sold very few. Wasn't that the case? Very few. Yeah, boy, big surprise,

because they were trying to convince people that it was worth $20,000 above what you pay for a standard Jeep with the 3.6 liter V6 to get one with a hybrid electric drive train that will allow you to drive 20 miles on a fully charged battery. They had trouble selling that apparently. So it was 20,000 extra for a hybrid, not just a pure electric. Wow, that's a plug-in hybrid, which, you know, we've talked about this many times, fundamentally a compliance vehicle. And, you know, Stalantis, which is the parent company of Dodge Ram Jeep, Chrysler, like all the other manufacturers, they anticipate. This is going back about three, four years ago,

they anticipated having to operate in a world where the federal government would require them to average, for their fleets to average 50 miles per gallon. That was on deck. That was coming. So three, four years ago, they started designing these plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles and getting them on the market.

And now that they're on the market, well, the regulatory environment has changed pretty dramatically. So, you know, the government can force manufacturers to make these things, but so far, But so far, they have not forced people to buy them, and therein lies the rub. Okay. Now, there was something else you had mentioned before. Pardon me.

Haddled a cough a little bit of the night out of me here. What about that situation with the tiny cars? You were writing about that on E.P. Because a few weeks ago, President Trump was talking about, hey, I'm going to allow the tiny cars to be manufactured here, like or over in Japan, places like that. and they're very reasonably costs, very reasonable compared to what we're normally seeing on most dealerships. Well, you know, like with so many things that Trump says, there's just a lot of disingenuousness involved. In the first place, it was never illegal for any manufacturer to manufacture these so-called tiny cars in the United States.

The problem was that you couldn't sell them here because they're not compliant. So unless you get rid of the underlying regulation that says you can't sell them here, what's the point? It's just open. Yeah, and so it occurred to me before I wrote that article, hmm, whatever happened to that tiny car stuff, I think it kind of went the same way of our $5,000 Doge refund checks. You remember that? Yeah. It's a talking point, in other words.

It sounded good when Trump said it, but nothing concrete has been done. And there isn't a single vehicle manufacturer that I'm aware of, and I'm pretty plugged into this stuff, that has any plans at all to bring tiny cars to this country for sale because they can't sell them, not until the laws changed. The laws have not changed. So for Trump to say, yeah, they can build them here. Sure, of course they can build them here. But why would they build them here when they can't sell them here?

they would have to build them here and then export them, I guess, is essentially what they would have to do. And yet, you know, you would think, I think of all the vehicles that the Europeans and the Asians and the Chinese, you know, Japanese and the Chinese have, all the vehicles they have that we have no access to because of these compliance rules, much stricter. It's like you can still buy a car, lots of cars with very clean, small diesel engines, can't you over in Europe? Sure, you can. And you can even buy cars with no air. bags. Imagine that in Europe. In Europe. Yeah, they have enough. And those are the people that we call the nanny state, Europe, right? The European Union, right? Isn't it interesting? You know,

Trump has kind of painted himself into a corner here because even if hypothetically, let's say by the wave of his executive order wand, he grants an exemption from some of these requirements for the small cars. Well, what position does that leave the rest of the vehicle manufacturers in with regard to their cars that have six to eight to 11? airbags and have all these other things that have added thousands and thousands of dollars to the cost of the car. What's that going to do? Well, it's going to put them at a massive competitive disadvantage, and they'll be squealing like pigs understandably about it. So it would have to be a blanket amnesty. They would have to somehow eliminate entirely the airbag mandate and pretty much everything that's

in the federal motor vehicle safety standards book, which I doubt Trump is even aware exists. I doubt he could tell you what FMVSS even stands for. Well, I couldn't either. But that's That's one of those things. It's one thing to say that out on the economic meetings and on the stumps, but I guess it is just to kind of placate wee rubs, I guess, for the time. I mean, the devil's in the details. You know, Trump has a tendency to paint with a broad brush and to say things that on a very superficial level sound really good. And then you get into the details. Like, what's going on in Venezuela? Okay, so you pull Maduro out of there. What now? Well, the travisistas are still in, the travisters, by the way, are still in charge.

You know, the main government is still there. Yeah. Right. It's a huge country. What are we going to do? How are you going to control and govern that? Are they going to send Rubio in as the vice-roy? And is he going to run the country for the next however many years? What are the details? I just want to let you know that he cannot be viceroy. He says he already has four jobs. He did talk about that over the weekend.

Right. You mentioned that. The one thing I'll say about Rubio, man, he's the overachiever of that administration. I can't believe how many jobs that guy has. And no one can say he's a slacker, if nothing else. All right. I would really like it if Trump would come out with regard to this car business and just make the case to the American people about why the government is involved in telling us at all.

What sort of whether our car should have, have one, zero or 15 airbags. Why can't that be something that is determined by the market, by buyers expressing their interest and manufacturers responding to that interest? And getting some real freedom out there in the motoring arena. Like I said, you can buy all sorts of vehicles overseas that we can't even touch here. I don't know. Can you even buy them in Canada? some of these things. Can you buy them in Canada and you can't buy them here in the United States? Gosh, I'm not sure. You know, in Canada, the regulatory app rat is similar. And of course,

General Motors and a number of other manufacturers make vehicles over there and sell them over there as well. It's been quite similar for a long time. So I don't think so. I don't know that for certain, but I don't think so. Now, there is one article I was laughing about yesterday on EP. And it was the one in which now the talk is that we're going to have even more airbags. What's for more airbags coming to the vehicle? We already do. We already do. Mercedes is putting a rear seat center airbag in some of their models. And you can just bet that a lot of the other manufacturers are going to emulate that because the logic is inelectable, isn't it?

You know, if one airbag, it started with one airbag in front of the driver is necessary for safety, well, implicit in that is we need two. Now, if the driver in front seat passenger have airbags, well, what about the people in the back? Okay. And then what about the side impacts? And then, well, what about, well, I guess the one that they're talking about this Mercedes introduction, though, is to keep the passengers from striking each other in a collision, right? Sure. And it's gotten so preposterous that they're even developing.

I'm not making this up. External airbags so that, you know, hypothetically, if you, for example, hit a guy on a bicycle, an airbag will deploy from the cow area at the base of the windshield to cushion the bike rider that you just hit. Could you imagine a time in which three-fourths of the car that we buy is just to pay for all the airbags? Yeah. I know. And, you know, we pay in so many ways.

You pay more for insurance. Remember when they said that safer cars were going to cost you less? Not true. Saper cars cost more because they cost more to repair and oftentimes they get thrown away. I had a couple of readers respond to the column that we're talking about, having had their perfectly repairable otherwise, except for the airbags, vehicles totaled by the insurance company because their older vehicles are not worth a whole lot except to their owners. But you get into a relatively minor accident where just one airbag goes off. And it's a couple thousand bucks. And, you know, if your vehicle is only worth four or five thousand dollars, insurance company's not going to pay to fix it. Yeah, they'll just write the check to you. And then, well, I suppose, well, they'll write the check to you, but then they require that you give or hand over the vehicle, right?

Is that what they do? Yes, exactly. You can buy it back from them. You know, and the dilemma for people who own older vehicles, I'm one of them. You know, my truck may have a small book value, but it's worth a lot to me. And I know that vehicle. I've taken excellent care of it, but it doesn't matter because what you'll end up getting the check for is whatever the insurance company says is the quote unquote book value, which is almost though is a lot less than the, the equivalent replacement cost would be.

And when you live in Virginia like you do, one of the challenges, let's say if you bought back your old car, which was in a wreck, let's say, that was still worthy of repairing the body, if you didn't fix the airbag, then the state inspection would catch you and then you couldn't drive it, right? That's what would happen? Sure. And that's actually true. And I think all states that have these state safety inspections, if they see that the bag is no

longer there, you know, if there's just a hole in the steering wheel or whatever, it would fail. And then there are laws that will essentially prohibit you from reselling it. So your resale value is worthless unless you can document that all of the components were replaced by correct factory-specified parts, and you can prove that they were installed by a certified technician. Man, here we are, the land of the free. We have so much compliance that we have to jump through, to be able to have the freedom to tramble in the United States of America. You've got to love that. Eric, I'm going to take a break. We'll take some more calls if people wanted to ask a question or comment on this and various other things.

And I want to talk about these rumblings of class action lawsuits about the blowing up engines. You want to dig into that a little bit too? Just for fun. Absolutely. All right. 770563-770 KMED wheels up with Eric Peters on KMED. We'll also have the latest review coming up too. Your generator works hardest when the weather turns rough.

So protect it before the next to the promo code back. Terms apply. This is the Bill Myers Show on. 1063 KMED. Call Bill now. 541-770-5-633. That's 720 KMED. And on the Zoom, we have Eric Peters, Master of Automotive Technology and Opinionaging.

I guess I don't know if that's a degree or not, but you would certainly have it. By the way, before we get to the calls, Eric, how are you doing on that putting a clutch in the great big orange pumpkin, your Trans-Am, your vintage Trans-Am? What's the story there? I'm glad you asked about it. I'm the master of analog. The master of analog. Okay, great. I'm like Commander Adama in the old Battlestar Galactica series. You know, give me a hard line. Anyway, yeah, the UPS guy showed up yesterday with my brand new flywheel, and it's just glorious to look at it. So that goes in today, assuming I can get time this afternoon. And then I'm just going to have to earn some more shakles because I have to do that before I can order the clutch pressure plate and the bell housing. That's the next step. Yeah, but you were, you sent me some pictures over the weekend, and you're just showing how you're getting these linkages put in. And what was great about the

Those great old general motor cars, they do have, they're all tapped. You just have to tap those holes and then, boy, there you go. You can make it. Yeah, it's literally bolt in. It's entirely mechanical. You know, modern cars with manual transmissions have a hydraulic circuit and it's a lot more complicated. This is, I mean, it's actually kind of fun. It's almost like one of those Rube Goldberg cartoons where you've got the little levers

and pulleys and springs that move things. That's basically what it is. You know, there's a ball stud that's on the engine block and then there's a rod with levers on it. and that rotates when you push down on the clutch, which pushes a rod that makes that turn, that in turn pushes the clutch fork in and out. That's basically how it works. All right. And you're going to have that to All the Road. I guess at some point, I can't wait to see the video for that. Meanwhile, though, oh, sorry, go ahead and complete the thought. I didn't mean to interrupt you. Go ahead.

No, no, no. Yeah, it's a work in progress. And assuming that we don't all go up and smoke, I hope to have the car running by early spring. All right, fair enough here. Keith from Cave Junction, Keith, you wanted to the way in on a, I don't know what it has to do with compliance or some other thing. Welcome to the show. You with Eric. It might. It might. Sometime back, I had been talking with you guys, and I was gushing about my Subaru's fill-folders system. And Eric made a comment that it was a really lousy idea, if I remember right. and about two weeks ago, my hillholder system failed.

And in getting to the mechanics shop, I probably destroyed, well, I did the rotor and calipers on the driver's side where this hillholder worked. Oh, did the hillholder lock up and it wouldn't let go of the brakes? Exactly. And it didn't completely lock it up, and I was able to drive about a mile and a half to where my mechanic buddies shopped at. I probably saved the toe, the cost of the toe, but I destroyed a rotor. Well, I really got it hot, are going to bypass the system, completely delete the hill holder. And my question, and my question, question to Eric, maybe two questions to Eric. Is this something that people have commented on social media? And is it going to make the government unhappy with me, which kind of dovetails with what you guys were just talking about? Well, I'll start with the government probably doesn't care. You know, nobody's going to know that you've disabled the hill holder clutch except for you and whoever happens to be driving your car. You know, that came around because there are people out there

who aren't particularly adept at driving a manual transmission car. Bill and I and probably you grew up in an era where you learned how to drive a stick, and it wasn't a problem. We didn't need a hill holder. And if you did, there was typically that pull up emergency brake lever in between the driver and front seat passenger if you were on a steep hill. And you could use that to keep the car from rolling back. It's just an example of, in my opinion, needlessly gratuitous technology that would be best dispensed with.

Just learn how to drive a stick and then you won't need a hill holder. Now, as far as the, well, you know, as far as complaints, have you heard much about that on your blogs? Yeah, a lot of people don't like it. It's particularly ironic that that system now is, you know, Subaru came up with it, I think. I think they were the first manufacturer to offer it. But now a lot of other manufacturers, I think, in fact, all of them that have manual transmission offerings, the few that still remain have it. And even in sports cars, I have driven a number of late model sports cars like Nissan and things like that that have it. You know, and I mean, my God, if you're buying a manual

transmission equipped sports car and you need a hill holder clutch, what's wrong with this picture? Okay. Point well taken. Hey, I appreciate the call there. Thank you, Keith, in Cave Junction. You know, I have a hill holder on my wife's 2006 Passat, and that's an automatic. I thought that was kind of weird that there's a hill holder on an automatic, don't you? Yeah, you know, I think I know what you're talking about that. I think Hyundai came out with that. There's this little button that you can push on the console. And it essentially does that same thing. I don't understand why either, because if you've gotten automatic, you just, you know, you're in drive, keep your foot on the brake. And it won't roll back, you know, until you let off the brake and push down on the gas. And if you're

pushing on the gas, there's no interval. There's no lag. It'll just go. All right. We're talking cars this morning with Eric Peters. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Good morning, gentlemen. Jeff and Selma. Hello, Jeff. Welcome. The highlight of my week. Good. Wheels up Wednesday.

Good. So, Eric, have you considered a five-speed or even possibly a T-6? I mean, after all, that particular year, 455 is a gutless dog? Well, mine isn't because it's no longer stock. Now, it's funny, I get this question a lot. I get this question a lot. And here's my reasoning. Objectively, you're right.

A five or six speed would give me overdrive gearing and make the car a lot more versatile, particularly on the highway. With the four speed, there's no overdrive. So once you get up to 60, 65 miles an hour, the engine's going to be spinning pretty fast. I don't care. I'm basically trying to recreate what the car would have been if it had been built with a factory four speed back in 1976. I've owned a car like that before, and I just want it. I enjoy the super T10.

I like the way it sounds. It has a particular gear wine. I like everything about it. I just want, you know, I knock around my country roads here. I don't take the thing out on long trips. So it works for me. And the other upside to it is that because everybody wants a five or six speed, the, those old Borg Warner Super T10s are a lot less expensive.

You know, I can pick one up for around $2,000 as opposed to, I don't, I can't remember exactly what they go for now, but probably around four for a trimack five speed. Yeah, well, in the 80s, when I was going to G20s, training school, they were telling us that the reason for the five-speed, and like the Camaro's and such, it was because they dropped the rear-end ratio in order to make the engine feel like it had more power. But when they did that, the RPM were so high at cruising speed. They put the fifth in there for the overtrive to get the mileage back. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Like, you know, before, I used to have a 204R in the Transam. That's a four-speed overdrive. And I could drive the car at 70 miles an hour with the engine turning a fast idle. And it was remarkable, a 50-year-old car, and it drove very much like any new car. So, yeah, I mean, objectively, there are a lot of good reasons to have an overdrive. But I'm just trying to recreate the 70s muscle car experience. All right. Hey, Jeff, great hearing from me this morning.

We appreciate you calling the show on KMED. You go to the next call for Eric. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Hello. Hello. Hi. This is me?

Yes, it is. Go ahead. Hey, hi. I'm calling about an 89 Toyota pickup that for 25 years, of course, it's not my primary vehicle, but it has just consistently started and all that stuff. And now in the past couple years, oh, my God, I can't believe what a pain in the neck. It is. It consistently is inconsistent starting.

And I've actually taken it to a couple different people. And, you know, I spent more money than I like to admit on trying to track this down over, I think, four appointments now. Wow. And it's still working. And somebody said to me the other day, it's something to do with the ground. You've got to figure out the ground. And I, you know, and obviously nothing's changed. I wonder if there's anything about the way it sits in the harness or anything like that that could impact it.

Well, sure, you're dealing with a 40-year-old vehicle and a 40-year-old wiring harness and 40-year-old connections. So, you know, it's just a matter of tracing every wire, basically, until you figure out where you've got your problem. And the other problem you've got is your vehicle is one of those in-between years before OBD2, you know, where you have a diagnostic port on modern vehicles that you can plug a scan tool and get a lot of information. Yeah. It's much more difficult to diagnose. And, you know, finding a technician who really knows how to deal with those early electronic computer control. control systems is something of a challenge.

You know, Eric, what I would suggest for the caller too here is, and I know I would just do some searching on some Toyota blogs and posting, going on to some of those groups and posting it and telling them what kind of vehicle you have. Because they'll talk about where all the various grounds are, because I have to tell you, corroded grounds on older cars, I had to deal with that with a van again. I spent some money. It didn't cost a lot of money, but it was just an effort, and replaced most of the ground, like on the Volkswagen, we had these little carousel of terminals that were bolted to the body,

and then you'd push the terminals on them to get the ground for all the various accessories. The problem is they get corroded and just, oh, they just wear out from the corrosion there. And I replaced that, and it's amazing the difference. And it took work, though, but you trace it out with your Volt home meter and ask them how to do it. I may even be able to help you with that a little bit. And I think that could probably help them out, wouldn't you think, Eric, doing that? Oh, I think so. And, you know, there's also the nuclear button to push, which is worth considering and having in the back of your mind, which is that in your case, you know, the only electronics really are the electronics that govern your fuel injection system on that vehicle, I'm pretty sure. And I think you have a throttle body rather than a port fuel system, which means that let's say you start having all these gremlins and you just are exasperated by it.

There are aftermarket standalone fuel injection systems, throttle body systems, and you could just take out the factory stuff on that 89. and put in an all-new standalone throttle body system and have essentially an as-new fuel injection system. Yeah, and bolted on and not have to deal with trying to troubleshoot the stock. Yep. Yep. And what did you call? You called it a throttle body? Prottle body. That's the early form of fuel injection that started to come online in the 80s. And it's very much like a carbureted system. You have a conventional intake manifold with a throttle body. It's just a casting that sits on top of that like a carburetor, except it's got injectors in it that spray fuel down into the intake. You know, that's it. It's like a carburetic system.

Very simple, as opposed to having individual injectors that are mounted, you know, above each cylinder. And the other good thing about this, Eric, is that in Oregon, even if you had to get your car smog tested, 89 doesn't qualify. He can do whatever he wants to that vehicle. Yep. Exactly. All right.

Hallelujah. Thank you guys very much. All right. Good luck on that. Yeah. Chasing those electrical gremlins in an old vehicle. Boy, I don't envy anybody. That's the one real downside of these older vehicles.

Hi, good morning. You're on with Eric. Who's this? Welcome. Hi, good morning. This is Phil from Little River. How are you? I'm doing fine.

Hi. Now, is it Phil or Bill? All right. Bill, P.H.I. Hi, Phil. Go ahead. What's your question? Well, I thought we could help Eric out a little bit with his car, his rebuild.

And, you know, they're coming up with all kinds of these crazy things to start a GoFundMe page. and he said he needed some shackles. You know what that would be great. Hey, if anybody out there does want to help, we do have a donate button at EP Auto, so I'd be grateful for anything in that regard. Okay. Okay.

In fact, I'll do that. I donate to you every year anyway, Eric. I'll toss you a few bucks and help you get the clutch put in. Okay. We'll do that. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Thanks.

Come, guys. Thanks for the call. Always appreciate the calls. Eric, what is your review for this week? And then tell us who you're going to or what you're going to take down the road next week, okay? Well, it's another anonymous and not very well-known crossover. The Accura ADX, are you familiar with it? Not really.

It's basically a reskinned Honda HRV. Now, the interesting thing about it is that, you know, normally in the past when you got the prestige brand, and Accura is the prestige brand relative to Honda, you generally got the bigger engine. Remember that? like in the GM hierarchy, if you bought a Cadillac, you've got the biggest engine that General Motors put into any passenger car and smaller engines as you went down the line like Oldsmobile, Buick, and Chevy. Well, in this case, the Accura comes with a 1.5-liter four-cylinder engine, whereas the HRV gets a two-liter engine, but you do get more power. The two-liter engine and the HRV is not turbocharged. The one in the ADX is it's basically the same engine that they use in the Integra and all.

also in the accord. So, you know, you get like 190-something horsepower versus 150-something horsepower. And you get a little better performance. And you get the prestige experience, I guess, that goes with going to the Accura store rather than the Honda store. Okay. Read up on that article on E.P.O.com, all the other ones, too, for that matter. And what are you going to have next week, huh?

Looks like it's going to be the Chevy Colorado pickup, which has gotten a lot easier to buy because they don't offer it any longer except in one configuration. They're all crew cabs. They all come standard with GM's 2.7 liter turbo engine. They used to offer three engines in that thing. They had a base regular four cylinder that wasn't turbocharged. Then they had the 3.6 liter V6. And then they had a turbo diesel.

Remember that? I do. I think they had the turbo diesel for what, about two hours? Exactly. Yeah. Which is a shame because it was ideally suited for a vehicle like that. You got really good towing capacity out of it. You also got tremendous highway driving range, about 650 miles on a full tank, which was the main advantage of having a diesel.

You know, if you're pulling an RV and you're headed on a long road trip, it's nice just to be able to set the cruise control and just go. Memories. But anyway, Eric will talk with us about that next Wednesday. It's a couple minutes after seven. We'll grab one more quick call and then cut Eric back to his automotive journalist's routes there. Go to work on that. Hi, who's this? Morning. Eric, this is Steve and Medford. Hi, Steve. When you're putting it manual transmission, and don't forget the pilot bearing that goes in the back of the crank shaft. Oh, yeah, that's very important.

If you don't remember that, you're going to have some fun when you first try to drive the car. Yeah, it's not going to work very good. But I did that on my first car of 57 Chevy, and I didn't know about that. And I finally dawned on me. So I got the bearing, and it's a bronze oil line. bearing and you have to drive it in there. I had a heck of a time. I had to get a sledgehammer and finally kind of ground around the edge of it. It's not an easy thing to put in, but I don't know about your car. Mine takes a roller bearing, but this brings up an important point that people

listening to me may want to know about that's very, very important. Now, I'm lucky because most Pontiac V8s, most cranks for Pontiac engines were drilled at the factory to accommodate the pilot pushing. But there are other vehicles, other manufactured, other brands of vehicles, where you have to be absolutely sure that the crank that came in that vehicle, if it originally came with an automatic, is machine to accept the bearing. Because if it's not, and you buy all these parts and start putting the car together and you find out, uh-oh, you're going to have to pull the engine and pull the crank and take it to a machine shop to get it able to accommodate the bearing.

Point well taken. Steve, I appreciate that. You'll be happy to know that Eric actually sent me a picture of the pilot bushel of the pilot bearing. So he showed that to me. Guaranteed, he's got it. He'll get it in there, okay? Okay. Just wanted to check. Thanks, guys. Thank you, Eric, thank you, and we will catch you next week on E.P.A.O.O.S.com. Of course, donations accepted if you wanted to help him finish his great. Now, do you call it the Great Pumpkin? What is the nickname? The Great Pumpkin, right?

It's the Great Pumpkin and also the Orange Barshetta, which is kind of a redneck version of the Rush song. You remember Red Bartchetta? Yep, where they were talking about a Ferrari. And since I'm too poor to afford a Ferrari, I've just got my orange transat. going to tell you. Well, I'm concerned that we're going to be moving into the subject of that Rush song, Red Barchetta, the motor laws. Remember the motor laws? That part of the lyrics there. Yeah, you know, and that's part of the reason why I decided to do this. It's something I've been contemplating for years. And I thought, you know, I'm going to really, really rule myself if I don't do this while I still can. So I decided to do it while I still can.

KMED and KMEDE HD-1 Eagle Point Mepford. KBXG grants passes where you are. Eric Peters, we'll have you back next week. Thank you so much. Thank you, Bill.