Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 01-21-26_WEDNESDAY_6AM

Episode Date: January 21, 2026

01-21-26_WEDNESDAY_6AM

This hour of the Bill Meyer Show podcast is proudly sponsored by Klausur drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for more than 50 years. Find out more about them at Klauserdrilling.com. Now more with Bill Meyer. Great to have you here on Wheels Up Wednesday, 7705633. Heard all over southern Oregon. Of course, KBD.com. Anytime wherever you happen to be from your computer or mobile device, as it were.

and 106-3 in Jackson County, 1067 in South Jackson County, 105-9 in North Jackson County and into Josephine County in Grants Pass at 993 KBXG for the morning shows, 6 to 9, and then it's the jukebox, great oldies, you know, other than when I'm on there. I guess I'm getting more older as time goes on, okay? Anyway, it's great to have you here. Wheels up Wednesday with Eric Peters are going to be talking with him after the 630 news. and we're going to be getting into all sorts of stuff.

And I guess General Motors, I mean, first they got rid of, they killed what the Camaro a few years ago, and now apparently Eric's breaking the news, that they're bringing the Camero back now. And I'm kind of wondering what it is going to look like because they're saying that, or at least the head over at General Motors is saying that, well, we're going to make the Camero fun. Well, there are many ways of looking at the last iteration

of the Camaro, I thought that Camero was fun. Man, it was absolutely impractical, but I thought it was just loads of fun, but I would have taken one. I don't think I could have fit in one. But boy, I tell you, I thought it was a great car. But then I ended up going away. I'm sure it went away because of carbon or something like that. But we'll have a talk with Eric about that and see what he's thinking about this and some of the recalls and other things going on. All right. And we'll also be talking. with James Herson. James Herson, I haven't had a chance to talk with him for several years, several years. And I think there's a real spiritual battle going on in our world when it comes to surveillance and the cameraizing of everything, whether we're being tracked on our license plates. By the way, the state started to dig more into the license plate camera regulation deal. and I'll share a story or two about that. But James has been writing pretty deeply on this. He's New York Times bestselling author. And I used to talk to him all the time.

And then he got to the point where he was only talking to Christian shows or religious shows. And now I said, you know, hey, I really miss him. Could I talk with him? You know, I'm not an anti-Christian guy at all. I just wanted to talk to him, but I'm not a religious show, you know, that kind of thing. And so he agreed to come on. and we're going to be digging into one of the most, well, it's the seldomly talked about aspect of surveillance, and that is retail surveillance in which the monitoring, databasing, tracking, selling of information of what happens when you go into stores.

And James wrote a great piece on that. I'm going to talk with him after 8 o'clock this morning and kind of see where it goes. And naturally, your calls and opinion too. President Trump was late to Davos this morning, and he's, let me just go into, I think he's talking about Greenland right now, just dive into the speech. In one month, the month before it was 27,000, the month before that it was 28,000, the month before that it was 25,000. It's a bloodbath over there. And that's what I want to stop. It doesn't help the United States, but these are souls.

These are young people look like you. Look like some of you right in the front row. They go to war. Their parents are so proud. Oh, there he goes. Come back. Okay, he's talking about Ukraine. All right.

That's what he's getting into. Well, earlier he was talking about Venezuela. And I say a little bit of the talk on Venezuela, and I think it's an interesting take on it, at least. Venezuela has been an amazing place for so many years, but then they went bad with their policies. 20 years ago, it was a great country, and now it's got problems, but we're helping them. And those 50 million barrels, we're going to be splitting up with them, and they'll be making more money. They've made it a long time. Venezuela is going to do fantastically well. We appreciate all of the cooperation.

we've been giving great cooperation. Once the attack ended, the attack ended, and they said, let's make a deal. More people should do that. Of course. But Venezuela is going to make more money in the next six months than they've made in the last 20 years. Every major oil company is coming in with us.

It's amazing. It's a beautiful thing to see. The leadership of the country has been very, very good. They've been very, very smart. The price of gasoline is now below $2.50 a gallon in many states. $2.30 a gallon in most states. Then we'll soon be averaging less than $2 a gallon.

In many places, it's already down, even lower $1.95 a gallon. Numerous states are at $1.99, numbers that nobody has heard for years. actually since my last administration we got it down to around those numbers I've signed an order directing and approval of many new nuclear reactors we're going heavy into nuclear I was not a big fan because I didn't like the risk the danger but they have what the progress they've made with nuclear is unbelievable and the safety progress they've made is incredible he talked a lot about the energy in the early part of the speech and you know and and

Frankly, he was doing a lot of saying how great the economy was, et cetera. You know, the affordability thing working out pretty well. Sounds like he has a cold. Sounds like he has a cold. And I know that they were reporting he was late for the speech to Davos because they had to turn around because there was an electrical problem on Air Force One. Hopefully it wasn't because they were having to crank up the AI version of Trump to complete the speech. I know it's not conspiracy theory Thursday, but just had to have a little fun with that.

But what's interesting is when he talks about all these things, okay, we're making a deal. We're making it. It almost sounds like foreign policy is very much a transactional kind of thing. It's like, all right, it doesn't matter if their country, if it's their country, doesn't matter if it's Greenland's country, or if it's Denmark's country, you know, that sort of thing. You know, they have stuff. We have an interest there. we want it, that kind of seems where things are going. And that, of course, has the undies in a bunch of a bunch of people overseas. So I'll be curious to see how the reaction is to this speech today

over at Davos. But President Trump, the 800-pound gorilla, is sitting on a mall this morning. All right. One of our top stories here, I want to make sure you knew about. And it is about Michael J. Urban, Medford Doctor. He was indicted. And this was in the... The Rogue Valley Times, Buffy Pollock had that story, and that broke late. And he was indicted on felony charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. In fact, there has been a warrant issued for his arrest. And remember, this was the story about the death of the routine cataract surgery patient in Colorado. Remember that story?

There was a civil lawsuit three years ago. They broke out. Now, Urban was the anesthesiologist for that procedure. and there was testimony from the people in the operating room that the anesthesiologist, of course, Dr. Urban, and another surgeon that was the original part of the lawsuit. They were playing this game called Bingo, musical Bingo. And because of that, they had silenced the alarms on the equipment that was monitoring this patient. This patient went into the cardiac arrest and ended up dying. And so apparently there's a warrant out for his arrest.

And he was indicted by a Douglas County Colorado grand jury last week. So, yeah, rough time for Dr. Michael Urban. So he's been indicted on felony charges there. Another story going on. We had Senator Merckley. Senator Jeff Murphy was on NBC 5 yesterday. I was watching that show. And I didn't realize that, well, you know, Congress, more than a month ago,

passed this law. The Epstein the Epstein or the Epstein Files Transparency Act and this was a law that Jeff Merkley ended up writing too.

He was part of the authorship of this and it mandated the full release of the Epstein-related documents by December 19th and President Trump signed it into law

more than a month ago and so it's been more than a month and maybe one percent of what is left there in the files has been released. Only one document

out of a hundred has been put out there. And Merkley's claiming that the deadline has passed. Very little action. He's demanding the transparency actually come up there. And, you know, I don't, I'm trying to figure out why there hasn't really been much of an explanation of why there hasn't been more noise about this. Because for the longest time, now, the funny thing is that I know that Jeff Merkley didn't care about Epstein one whit, you know, when, when Biden was president, you know,

that didn't matter. And then President Trump ran on it. Then he didn't want to run on it, saying, well, it's just a conspiracy thing. It's just a, you know, it's a fake news kind of thing. And then his base ended up saying, no, you ran on this. We would like to see it. And so they passed this law. And now they seem to be slow walking it. And there's a great article in Politico that's called No Longer in My Hands, How Hill Republicans stopped caring about the DOJ releasing the Epstein files. One month after the mandated deadline, and this is once again, this is law, this is not like a suggestion, this is actually the law to release all the files on Jeffrey Epstein.

Justice Department has made only a fraction of a public and is completely silent to fully comply with the law. and also keeping quiet about the DOJ delays, according to Politico, are congressional Republicans, almost all of whom voted in November to release the records. So they vote to release the records. And so President Trump signs it. And now some of them are openly admitting it's no longer a priority. I don't give a rip about Epstein, Representative Lauren Bober from Colorado said last week when she was asked to take stock of the month since the December 19th.

She says there are so many other things we need to be working on. Yeah, I would agree. There's lots of other things to working on. I think you can just rub your tummy and pat your head at the same time in Washington, D.C. I'm sure the DOG, you know, the thing is, you're just supposed to release it. You release the documents. You knew it was coming. You released the documents.

So I'm kind of scratching my head over that one. Because everybody agreed first. It was a conspiracy. Okay, all right, we're going to prove that it's not a conspiracy theory. We're going to pass this law. Everybody's online. They passed the law. The president signs it.

And then crickets. Really weird. No, I can't explain it. I cannot. I cannot explain it unless that once again, it's, well, remember, Jeffrey Epstein was government intelligence. Remember that guy that was told to hands off? Maybe it's hotter than they think.

I don't know. But I can't explain. either. 624 at KMED. You're on the Bill Myers show. Start with the foundation. Myllite construction. Hi, I'm Corey with Patriot Electric, and I'm on KMED. Good morning at 626. Not nearly as cold as yesterday, but still a little chilly, right around freezing or so. Only had just a little smear of ice on the windshield. No freezing fog in my neighborhood. Maybe yours is different.

Now then, it was a little more than a month ago that the city of Metaer's, By the way, there's a couple of city of Medford stories in there. Justin Evans, Chief Evans is retiring. He'll be quitting the end of June. The end of June. 30 years in law enforcement here in Southern Oregon. They're going to be looking for a new one, which usually means you have to promote someone within... What is the rule? What is the way it's supposed to go that everybody knows what you do? Everybody has to be police chief at least once, right? you boost your purse for the final three or four years. This is the way it always ends up working.

You have to get into upper management before you take off it. By the way it works, it works in fire, works in city manager, whatever it is might be. You know, this is the way it ends up working. But, yeah, so you do it for three, four years, and then you boost your purrs and then you retire. And Ivan's from all accounts, has done pretty good job. But he's going to be taken off. But the other thing I don't make sure you know about is that tonight, at the Metford City Council meeting, they're going to be voting on what they're going to do

with the Main Street deal. Every Main Street, the bollisters, the road diets, the bicycle bumways, you know, all that kind of stuff, everything which is ruined downtown Medford, you know, up to this point. Well, they had this, well, they had this survey. They ended up putting out the survey and saying, please tell us of these options that we have here, what would you choose? And so the public overwhelmingly chose put Main Street back to the way it was. Put it back to the way it was.

Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Well, the city is kind of thinking that they want to lean to the option that would keep the buffered bicycle lanes, which are still nonsense. It's still nonsense. Main Street doesn't need it. you know what they're trying to do, at least I think what they're trying to do, is to not have to pay back the several hundred thousand dollar grant

that they unwisely took to repave downtown Main Street in order to get that money in some transportation grant. They had to do the gangrene deal, that mess that we have right now. I'm hoping that the city of Medford actually listens to the survey and just bites the bullet and then decides, maybe we shouldn't take stupid grants again that make us do gang green things. But we'll see. We'll see what they say.

I guess tomorrow morning we'll be able to tell you whether or not the surveys matter or whether it's always about the money and the grant stream funding. I don't know. We'll see. Good morning. Hi, this is Bill. You're on KMED. Who's this?

Hello. Hello. Hi. You have no media auto. Audio. Oh, what do you mean? Oh, you're calling me about Facebook, huh? Yes.

Okay, what am I doing here? There we go. How about that? Is that better? Well, I'll check it out. I've actually patched through to you through the phone. Okay. Well, good.

I'm not going to show over the phone, but Facebook has no audio. Okay, well, you know, I don't sit around there and panic if Facebook has a problem because we got radio. We got our own stream. We got a lot of other things. But thank you for letting me know. Okay? Appreciate that. Thank you.

I appreciate it. Okay. Bye-bye. All right. So now I'm back on Facebook. And I know I make some equipment do some double duty here. It's a little inside baseball. Sometimes that happens.

So I'm going to end the Facebook feed and restart it so that way you don't have to look at all the blank stuff there for a little while. All right. There we go. Hey, at least you know them live. Okay? I try to check these things out. Occasionally I mess one up. This is the Bill Meyer show.

We're going to get things rolling, though. Wheels Up Wednesday with Eric Peters. A lot going on in the automotive world. He'll be joined to me here in about five. There's been a crew of roofers out there for nearly three decades. News Talk 1063, KMED. And you're waking up with the Bill Myers Show. It's another Wednesday, which means another Wheels Up Wednesday.

Crazy or not, it's Eric Peters, Automotive Journalist and Genius over at a EPiotto.com. Welcome back. The Camero, a comeback on a comeback trail now, huh? Amazing. Well, maybe. Yeah, we've actually got some good news to talk about this week. And I guess that's the first bit of good news. Now, it's not confirmed, but there are rumors percolating around the General Motors is reconsidering the Camaro's fate. People who are fans of the car will know that they stopped making them after the 2024 model year. And, you know, it's been missed since then. It's left the Mustang alone in that segment. There is no longer any other competitors to that car. The Challenger is obviously gone. So, you know, why leave that market entirely in Ford's hand seems to be the thinking.

And I agree with it. The question is, you know, how are they going to reboot it if they do? And if they do, are they going to fix the problem with the car, in my opinion, that led to its demise, which is that it had become a near exotic in terms of its price. Oh, okay. Now, I thought that maybe the problem with it was, you know, almost the non-existent backseat in the total impracticality of it. But it was a lot of fun, though.

Well, those were facets of it. You know, I've owned five F cars. That's GM speak for Camaros and Firebirds over the years. And they've never been a particularly practical car. They've always had tight back seats and small trunks. But they were affordable, just like the Mustang. They copied that formula. When the Mustang came out in 1964, it wasn't just the firebreeding hot rod 289 hypoes and GTs.

It was also the six-cylinder standard coupe that anybody could afford to buy. And for a time, almost anybody could afford to buy a Camero. back in 1978, which was a high watermark for these cars, GM sold something like 270,000 of them in a year, if you could imagine that. And that's because the base price of the car was only about $4,400, which in today's devalue dollars is equivalent to about $22,000. Well, you know, if you could buy a Camaro today for $22,000, I bet a lot of people would. The problem is that the last time it was on the market, the base price was close to $32,000. And if you wanted the SS, the one with the V8, you're looking at $40,000. So, you know, the market for that kind of car is young guys, you know, guys under 35 cheaply.

They can't afford that. And the point being, though, is that $32,000 base would probably be closer to knowing what's been going on here the last few years. It would probably be a $40,000 base right now if they were to bring that back. But is there a possibility that they gave it too much get up and go for the price or for the market? It almost seems like in many cases they were getting closer to that quarter. Corvette exotic car kind of power level, or was I wrong about that? Well, I mean, that's part of it. I don't think the power was the problem. I mean, if anything, it was an advantage. The base Camaro, when it was last available, 3.6-leader V6 that made more

horsepower than the original 67 Z28 Camaro did, more than 300 horsepower. The problem was that essentially every Camero was loaded. You know, this is a problem with every new vehicle. You had to get power windows, power locks, a good stereo, you know, big, all the stuff that has bloated the price of a car, in addition to the compliance costs that you and I have talked about many times, the point is you couldn't buy a base car. Back in 78, you could. You could buy a base Camaro that had manual roll-up windows, didn't have power locks, had a manual transmission, and that's part of the reason why the car was so affordable. And I see no reason why that couldn't be done again, even in the face of all of these compliance costs. You know, Howard, Chris DeGall, a syndicated show that was on before me,

He was talking with some energy guy, and they were kind of teething and going back and forth about the tiny car deal that President Trump was talking about, you know, allowing those tiny cars from overseas to be manufactured and sold here. We've talked about the challenges that that would bring on here. But the part that they still didn't seem to grasp, but I mean, Kristen, that guess, though, is that the affordability of a brand new car is really key right now. and it's not because they're large, it's because everything is stuffed to the gills with options and electronic gigas, aren't they? I mean, every single car, every single vehicle right now. Yeah, you know, if you go by historic standards, the so-called base trim of any new vehicle would qualify it as a luxury car by the standards of, you know, even 15 years ago. We're going to talk about, I guess, the Nissan kicks at some point. That's going to be the next car review. And, you know, this is a very, this is Nissan's least expensive model. It's about $22,000-ish to start. And it has this huge, you know, LCD flat screen display. It's got power everything.

You know, and imagine if they decontented it, that's the term that used to be used in the industry. Vehicle with a manual transmission, something like that could absolutely be put on the market and fully compliant with all the safety and emission stuff, you know, for I'm 15, 16,000 bucks. And I think that's what the market's crying for right now. Why is it that that market has been so ignored and that practically every car manufacturer just loads it? You can't go get a base pickup truck. You know, you have to go get a $60,000 pickup truck, you know, that sort of thing. And, you know, the debt slavery is not working out for a lot of people.

It's not penciling for many. No, well, there's a lag time built into it, as with so many other things. There was a time, you know, four or five years ago when most people could afford it in the sense that they could make the payments, you know. And so that drove this. People were willing to sign up for these payments. Now people are really feeling the pinch because the cost of everything has increased so substantially. that it's no longer within the budget, as you say, penciling in to deal with a $6, $700 car payment. So they just, you know, they can't afford it so they don't buy it.

So the Camero, when do we think it comes back? Which model year? Do we know? Well, there's nothing definitive at all. This is just talk. And it would potentially be built on the same platform that I think underlies the current Cadillac CT4. The question is whether they will decide to build it in a manner that's more congruent with what the Camero has always been historically, which I think is absolutely key, that they need to figure out something like,

do you remember back in the 80s when Ford sold the Mustang LX, just the base little Mustang? Yes. Yeah, I think it was what, a four-cylinder model, wasn't it? Yeah, it wasn't a hot rod, but it was a fun little car, and they sold gazillions of those things. They were everywhere. And, you know, the comparable Camero from that era, same thing. The base car had a four-cylinder engine. You could step up to a little V-6 if you wanted, and they sold a ton of those things. That's what the market needs, I think. So a little bit of back to the future. So, to speak in the marketing aspect of it. All right. And do you think that General Motors could make that pencil for them? Could they make money at it given their labor costs and the compliance cost

and everything else that American automobile manufacturers have to endure? Yeah, I think if they got the volume up, that's the problem. You know, they're trying to make money off each individual sale. I think it's contrary to Henry Ford's idea of selling a lot of vehicles and not worrying about how much money you're making on each one, but the cumulative profit that you're making by selling vast fleets of a given model of vehicle. And then vast fleets of a given model and then service parts, various other things, and you make it up on the back end, so to speak. Sure, and build the brand. You know, I mean, if you were a young guy today, you know, if you're 19, 20 years old and you'd just like to have something fun, you know, if that person could go out

and buy themselves a basic fun little Camero to knock around it, and, you know, they do develop brand loyalty. And then as that person earns more and is in a position to buy something fancier, they might move up the food chain. As it is now, a lot of people in that age bracket are just saying the heck with it. And they're opting out of buying new cars altogether. But maybe Mary Barra, is it still Mary Barra running GM? Yeah, she's the CEO. Mark Royce is the president. And he's more of a car guy. You know, there is some hope in him. I don't know whether he's able to, you know, put duct tape around Mary Barra, shove her in the closet and get this done. And there's another aspect of this that I get into in my article, which is, you know, now is the moment to strike,

because you've got an administration that seems to be at least neutral toward the enforcement of all this rigmarole, the federal regulatory rigmarole. And if GM or some other car company had the guts to just put something out there that maybe didn't have six airbags and see what happened, I don't think Trump is going to sick the government on a company that does that. So it's a golden opportunity to take advantage of a regulatory environment that, for the moment, is benign for the car industry. Boy, they could use that and strike while the iron is hot. 64 talking with Eric Peters, and he is automotive journalist at E.P.O.com. You have a question about a car? Maybe you're looking at something, maybe a project that you're working on, anything else involving being out in the open

road. We're happy to take your call. 770 KM.E. 770563. Want to talk about AI along for the ride here. Just a minute if you don't mind, Eric. Okay? Let's do that. Coming up, 770 KMED. Hi, it's Jeff with Quality tree sir. This is the Bill Myers Show on 1063 KMED. Call Bill now. 541-770-5-633. That's 770 KMED. And we're talking with Eric Peters,

automotive journalist at E.P.O.O.S.com. Well, we know that the Camaro is possibly coming back, possibly, and hopefully it will. I'd like to see some competition out there for the Mustang, too. Anything that keeps us, well, keeps our juices flowing, right, Eric? That's the basics. Yeah, sure. You know, it's just the idea of having fun cars that a lot of people could afford again.

It makes me smile. You know, I would like to see that happen again. Indeed. Now, Patrick is online here. And Patrick, you wanted to know, and people are still really curious about, well, he has a question about your project in which you're putting a stick shift into the end of the Trans Am, the big orange pumpkin. What do you say there? Patrick, go ahead. Well, good morning.

And thank you. and if you're going to, I'm picturing that firebird with a big fat tires on the back and Eric and the saddle hot rodding around with it when he gets a chance. And there's something, I guess it'll take a moment to explain to people that may not know. I know you know, but cars in that day with leaf spring rear ends had a little funny thing they would do when you get too much power. the rear end would twist, the rear end under a load, like if you had a drag race or something, would twist, and then the would twist, like, picture the rear end rolling backward. And then when it get to a point,

it would snap and go the other direction. People put traction bars on those to solve that. Are you going to plan to do that? That's not stock, but you might need it. No, no, don't need it. And, in fact, one of the great virtues of the 78, 81 firebirds and Camaros is they've got staggered shocks, which greatly helps to reduce that that hop that you're talking about. And, you know, if anything, I would have experienced that with the automatic. It's the same engine. And it's not a problem. And I'm not going to bracket race the car anyway. I'm just looking to drive it around for fun. So he's not worried about the hop, Patrick. Okay. And it'll look more stock if you don't have those on there. But,

but that's been i'm real curious i love that hearing about that project all right well i got the i got the clutch and pressure plate uPS guy came yesterday and i've got that sitting on my counter right now and if i have any time this afternoon i might try to install that so stay tuned for the uh for the next episode all right hey i really appreciate the call there patrick let me uh grab another one here it's wheels up wednesday with eric and hi good morning who's this welcome hello hello hi hi this is paul Hey, Paul. How are you this morning? Welcome. I'm doing good. I'm doing good. I was wondering if I could get you guys advice on something we're dealing with with my wife's 2016 Toyota forerunner.

She had brought that home one day from an oil change, and I had noticed some oil not long after on the garage floor. Oh, no. I had pulled the skid plate off and kind of, there was quite a bit of oil under there. I cleaned it all up. I ran it for a while. Couldn't get anything to come down. Just thought, okay, well, maybe they dropped the oil filter and made a mess on top of there. Maybe that was that. Anyhow, it happened again.

So we brought it back in there. They're telling her that there's a leak in the timing chain cover. And it's a $5,000 fix. Really? They're saying. They said you've got to pull the engine out. to get to that timing chain cover, which is like a $3 part. And so that was a shock to us.

The whole reason we own Toyota's is so this type of thing doesn't happen. We have two tunders in the driveway at Tacoma and a forerunner. And anyways, my question to you guys was, we've been contemplating, do we go ahead? It was advised to me to have that done at the dealership, because how involved it was. And I've never gone into a dealership to have work done just because I don't want to pay $200 an hour. And my question is, do you advise me just biting a bullet and having that done at the dealership?

I did get a second opinion, and they did say that's what it was. Or would you go and have it done for maybe half the price? I don't have a mechanic that I trust. So that's my question to you guys. Yeah, boy, well, that's the dilemma. If it were my vehicle, I would seek out a competent, independent mechanic to try to get the repair done for less. You know, dealer may or may not be competent. You don't know. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't, but they're absolutely going to be expensive every time. So you're really, boy, you're in a pickle here. I mean, if you could ask around to people that you know for recommendations to see whether you can find somebody who can recommend a good independent mechanic who might be able to do the job for less. But I'm not surprised by the cost. It is an extremely involved job to do that. So, you know, this is one of the perils of owning a late model vehicle, unfortunately. You know, the part that just drives me nuts when I listen to this caller, what was your name?

It's Paul, right? Paul? Yeah. Okay. You know, Paul, you would think that wouldn't you want to grab some engineers that actually do designing of cars and smack them upside the head? Like, why would you take something which does have to be replaced every now and then, a gasket on a timing, on the timing area? I like that. And why would it take, why would you have to pull it out?

That just seems to be such nonsense. It just tried. It shocked me. And at first I kind of giggled when the service writer called me because he calls me and he doesn't, my wife just hasn't called me as if I know any more than my wife. You know, I don't. But, and I had heard about this type of thing, you know, with the old Ford pickup trucks, how they had to pull the cab on certain things to get to it.

And I thought that exact thing, how who engineers something like that? What in the world is happening? And I thought, why wouldn't they engineer something where you could pull a body panel off if you had to get to it rather than pulling an entire engine? Yeah, what was that, Eric? I was saying, Eric, in my opinion, this is deliberate. They're not stupid people. You know, they know what they're doing when they design these things and what's going to be involved in fixing them. And it drives business to the service department at the dealership.

I mean, they're potentially going to make five grand off of you. And in a lot of cases, you know, when people are faced with a bill that high, they will just go ahead and say, well, I'll buy a new car. You know, I can, you know, the interest rate on the new car loan is going to be less than the credit card interest I'm going to have to deal with putting this five grand on my credit card. It's really vicious. You know, I think it's a despicable thing that they do it. Paul, if you could, though. You're right.

Yeah. Okay. I'm sorry, Paul, go ahead and complete your thought. Then I'll give you a suggestion. I was going to say Eric is absolutely right because what we've been contemplating this week, not just where would we have a repaired, but it was, you know what? I looked up, we could get, they're going for about $25,000 of 2016 four-runner with about 115,000 miles on them.

And she loves those cars. We could upgrade to like a 2013 for about $45,000. And I said, well, I said, you could ask Toyota what they want to give you. you for it. You know, I'm not going to sell it to a private party with this having to be done because I just don't feel right about it. But I said you could tell, and I bet you they could probably fix that truck for about 500 bucks. Of course, because they don't have to worry about their, they're just paying their tech to do it. You know, it's just parts, it's parts for them, not labor. That's exactly right. I was told literally it was a $3 gasket. And so that we were

contemplating that. Like, do you, because if you, if it's worth 25,000 after you have it fixed, it could theoretically, it's worth 20 now. And maybe they give you that. Maybe they give you more. And it's not even worth doing it. You know, maybe that truck is worth more to them than it is to us because they can have it done so cheap. Um, so that was the whole other quandary. But, um, yeah. So, I guess your recommendation is go ahead and try to find someone a little bit less expensive. It's not so involved that you wouldn't trust another mechanic to do it. That's, yeah, that's the first thing that I would do. And once you've established your options,

then you can go to the next step and decide whether it's worth it to put the money into the vehicle. I mean, if you like it, if it is otherwise reliable, it might be worth it to you, depending on what, you know, what the independent mechanic, hopefully will want to do the job. Right. All right, Paul. I agree with you 100% that they do this intentionally. I agree with you 100%. All right. Paul, I just wanted to suggest, Paul, if you could email me, email me, Bill at Billmeyer's show.com.

I have dealt with numerous mechanics over the years, and I have a suggestion or two that I might be able to give you, okay, if you want to. At least people that I know that have done some pretty decent work, okay? All the best to you. Boy, that's just enraging when I hear these kind of stories, Eric. This makes my teeth hurt, as you say. Oh, and I get them all the time. I think I've mentioned I've got two good friends that are both professional mechanics, and they both own their own shops. And they tell me all the time, stories of this sort, all the time.

Let me go to next line here. Hi, good morning. You're on with Eric Peters. Who's this? Welcome. All right. This is John. Hi, John.

Hi, John. And Phoenix Auto Center takes care of all six of our cars. And I had one situation where I took a car to a dealership. And the price that they gave me, Phoenix Auto Center fixed it for less than a third of what they asked me to do it. and they do a great job. So you've had good experience then? That's great.

It's tremendous. And as for Jason, he's the manager, they're really good people, and they do great work. All right. Appreciate your suggestion, John. Thank you. Bye. Or the suggestion, okay. 770K.M.D.

We're talking Wheels Up Wednesday with Eric Peters. Hi. Good morning. Who's this? Welcome. Good morning. Alan DeBore. How are you?

Alan, a pleasure. Welcome. I'm going to suggest that the guy go into the Toyota dealership. and ask them about warranty. You think that might work for a 2016, even a 2016 model? Toyota had a lot of problems with engines, not just a little, and their amazing company. I'd be real curious. There's nothing to lose by doing it.

What do you think, Gary? Well, I agree. What's to lose? You know, you could go in there and say, look, you know, I have been a loyal Toyota customer for many years. I love your vehicles, and I love this vehicle, but I'm just appalled by this, that this sort of repair for a trivial, trivially expensive small part is going to potentially cost me $5,000, and it's really souring me on the brand.

You know, just have a nice conversation with the dealer manager. And, you know, sometimes the squeaky wheel does get the grease. It's certainly worth a try. All right. Hey, now, Alan, which dealership are you involved with again? Just curious. We're involved with airport Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC, TC, Chevrolet, and Southern Oregon, Subaru. Yeah, very good.

Now, I would imagine that you might you be excited if the Camaro were to come back like Eric was talking about earlier. It wouldn't hurt. Oh, absolutely. We love cars in the United States. All right. Hey, thanks so much, Senator. Good hearing from you, okay? Be well.

Yeah, he's a former state senator, Eric, just so you know. And also a car dealer around here. Let me go to Line 4. Hi, good morning. You're on with Eric Peters. Who's this? Jeff and Selma. Hey, Jeff.

Talk about it. We'll throw some more of Paul and see if we can't thoroughly confuse him. Okay. So if he's, it's not a bad thing to sell it if that's what you want to do, if you fully disclose what it is, and you know how much it's going to cost. Because there's lots of people out there like you and me and Eric who would buy that at a particular cost and fix it ourselves. And if you go to the dealer and find out what their trade in value is going to be, you could probably sell it for at or maybe a little more. That makes it. That's an excellent suggestion.

They'll give you money on paper, right? Yeah. So the trade in value that they're going to give you is not actually on their end what they're giving you for the car. Good point. I appreciate the call there, and thanks for that. Go ahead and sell it if you feel okay, Paul, but just make sure in full disclosure, it's got the oil leak. And frankly, if you admit that, then people be pretty cool with you. They understand.

All right. Eric, you still there, buddy? I'm still there, oh, yeah, I'm sorry. Okay, good, I'm sorry. Sometimes, you know, with these digital phone calls and things, it gets so quiet. You don't know. Are they there? All right.

It's not like you hear the noise in the background of the cell phones and such, all right? Let's talk about what you are most recently reviewing. I'd love to hear about that. What do you got? Well, we were talking Chevy, so it's a good time to talk about the Chevy Colorado pickup, which is easier to shop for now because they've, they've completely, completely thinned down the configurations. It's now only crew cab and it only comes with a small, short, five-foot bed, and it only comes with the turbocharged four-cylinder engine now.

Just a few years ago, you used to be able to get it with a base non-turbo-charge four-cylinder. Then they had a V-6, and you could also get a turbo diesel. All those engine options are now off the table. So it's pretty much a one-size-fits-all truck, which is fine if it fits you, but it's unfortunate that there aren't more variations and configurations. It kind of almost pushes you up one size to get into the 1500 class if you want a regular cab, let's say, in a long bed, you know, or the type of engine that best suits your needs. I'm kind of curious, though, a five foot bed on a really big truck. It's not a small truck, but it's a five foot bed. Dimensionally, it's very interesting that dimensionally the current crop of mid-sized trucks, models like the Colorado and the Ford Ranger, are about the same overall.

length and in some cases longer than the half ton, 1,500 trucks of the 90s and early 2000s. It's really remarkable. And they have these little vestigial beds now. I've got an actually compact truck. I've got an O2 Nissan frontier. And it has a six foot bed. So you've got these big, pretty hulking big trucks with these little baby beds in the back. But it reflects the fact that most of the people who buy these trucks, they're not buying them for work. You know, they're buying them to drive around it and maybe put the dog groceries in the back. Okay. These are not just two-door trucks. These are four-door trucks, right? Yes.

Big crew cabs, you know, they're basically what they've become, you and I've talked about this. The trucks of today are not what they were once. They are now effectively the daily transportation that used to be encompassed by the big full-size sedans and wagons that we knew when we were growing up. Those are all gone now. So people who just want a big vehicle, they end up buying a truck because that's pretty much all there is. Okay. So you buy the truck and you got room in the back for the motorcycle and you can also take stuff to the dump, right? You know, that's that sort of thing. But I remember, I remember how the big thing

used to be, could you put a sheet of plywood in there? And I guess you could, but the gate would have to be down, right? Yeah, that's the thing. Yeah, a lot of it's going to be hanging off the back. And of course, it's not as wide. You know, that's another thing. A lot of, a lot of people buy a half ton because you can lay something a four by eight sheet flat. You know, it's not possible to do that in these beds because they're not wide enough to accommodate that. And now they're so short that you're going to have a good portion of it hanging out of the rear end. All right. So any new recalls or problems with vehicles out there that people may not have heard about yet? Anything going on? No major catastrophes that I'm aware of other than the ones that we've already been talking about, such as the problems GM's been having with their 6.2V8 and the problems that Toyota have been having with their 3.4-liter turbo v6.

You had an article up there on bricked Porsches. What was that all about? Oh, yeah. Yeah, really interesting. In Russia, apparently all the Porsches that have, I think the acronym is VTS, it's an anti-theft system, have been disabled because the system believes that the cars are being stolen. The point is that they're connected. And it's not just Porsches. This is the thing, the canary and the coal mine for me, all of the cars that are connected, which is pretty much all cars made since roughly 2015-ish or so that can be updated over the year, that can receive instructions, if you will. potential to brick them, to shut them down, to tell the computer, don't let the car start, is inherent in these cars. And it really creeps me out. I would not want a car that could potentially be shut down remotely by forces not under my control. I'm sure police would like that, though. Hmm. Of course they'd like that. And it's not just the police, the government. How about, you know, under a president Newsom, they declare a climate emergency and they throw out the order to disable all the cars that are connected. So, you know, people don't drive. And, you know, that would pretty much shut down probably 70% of the nation's vehicle fleet. Well, I would be a rolling call in the 82 Vanagan diesel, slowly, but I'd still be rolling, okay? Yeah, and I'll be shifting my Super T-10, hopefully by then, and my 76 fans in. All right, we'll grab one more call before we take off here on Wheels Up Wednesday. Hi, good morning.

Who's this? Welcome. Yeah, good morning. This is Terry. Hi, Terry. I just want to know, what does he think about zero-weight motor oil and if it's good or bad for the engine or anything? I think it's terrible for the engine. I mean, the only reason they use these zero weights is to reduce,

is to lower frictional parasitic losses and increase mileage and decrease emissions for the purposes of compliance, you know, to score the best that they possibly can on these government tests. Now, the other weight usually is higher so that once the engine is warm, you know, you get that, you get that, you know, you get that additional coverage. But it can be really bad news, you know, this ultra, ultra thin oil. And I think it, I think it does correlate with some of the engine. failures and decreased reliability that we're seeing.

The point being, though, with the 0W20 or the 0W10, you know, I've seen this, do we have any ones that are negative? I'm just kind of curious, like negative 10? I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's coming next. Okay. Because from what I understand that in some of the General Motors recalls, weren't some of the fixes for some of these engines being that they said, oh, and by the way, we want you using 10 weight oil or like minimum 10.

weight, not the zero. So that seems to be letting the cat out of the bag that the ultra-thin, you know, fuel efficiency oils are causing problems. There have to be some connections. Absolutely. And I'm hopeful that general awareness will begin to dawn about the effect of all of these compliance measures, everything ranging from ASS to gas direct injection to CVT transmissions, all of that stuff and the cumulative cost that's being imposed on us for the sake of compliance. Now, I know that people will say, listen, the engineers that design this vehicle, they know what they were doing, so you should follow the instructions. But I don't know. If I was told I had a 015 or a 020 and whatever it is, I would probably just maybe just go up to 5W30 again. I mean, would there be a problem you make?

No, absolutely not. And yeah, they do know what they're doing. They're literally doing everything that they can think of to improve compliance with federal fuel efficiency and emissions wrecks. That's the bottom line. That's the problem is the primary customer of the car industry now is not us. It's the government. You know, they build the cars to suit the government. And then after the government says, okay, then we get to have them. Got it.

All right. Well, I appreciate the take as always, Eric. And we'll talk next week about whatever you're reviewing then. And is that going to be the kicks? Is that what you were talking about? It looks like. Yeah, looks like. Yep.

At Nissan. Nissan. Okay, I thought it was Nissan. So Nissan hasn't gone out of business. yet, right? Not yet. And I hope that they don't. You know, it's really, it makes me sad. I'm a Nissan guy. I've had a number of Nissan pickups and their fantastic vehicles. You know, I just, I don't like to see the consequences of all of this malinvestment, the money that they threw away on all this electric stuff, the leaf, you know, and the Araya, which had been canceled because they can't sell the things.

It's just really sad. All right, very good. Eric, thanks so much. And great articles, great comments and more EP autos.com. And always appreciate your time, Eric. Have a great week. Thanks, Bill. You See you next Wednesday. Eight minutes after seven, this is KMED, and KMED HD-1, Eagle Point, Medford, KBXG, Grants Pass. We'll check in with Fox News, get an update, more of your calls coming up, and a whole bunch more on the Bill Meyer show. For precision.