Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 02-05-25_WEDNESDAY_6AM

Episode Date: February 6, 2025

News, power, the weather, how are we all holding up. Wheels Up with Eric Peters, automotive journalist, we talk the weakness of bitcoin, the push for us to go cashless, Ram 1500 review and much more.

The Bill Myers Show podcast is sponsored by Clouser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at clouserdrilling.com. Here's Bill Myers. Good morning. It is a frosty, icy, bumper car kind of driving wheels up Wednesday we have here in Southern Oregon. Join the conversation at 770-5633, 770-KMED. My email is bill at billmyershow.com. And by the way, we have open phones here for the first 10, 15, 20 minutes of the program there. Eric Peters will be joining me.

We're also going to talk with State Representative Dwayne Yunker, as I affectionately nicknamed the junkyard dog. You know, going after it and certainly suffering no fools in salem and there are a lot of fools to suffer apparently we'll get the latest on that legislative update uh mr outdoors greg roberts will join us for a quick one just kind of updating on where things are going to be going on the weather and the climb over the next uh a couple of days and uh then we're also gosh who do i also forget oh yeah rob schlaffer and so many people coming in today we're going to be going on the phones instead uh people that might have come in instead and rob schlaffer putting on a meeting this weekend hopefully the snow and things should

be cleared out at this point but he's still really working hard to uh to get education reformed and speaking of education well that's all shut down here in southern Oregon, like most things. Most sensible people, unlike me, stayed home. But I was able to get through everything. But I have to tell you, the roads are worse today than they were yesterday. Yesterday it was all mushy and smooshy. And then overnight, yeah, we got a little more snow.

And then it ended up just freezing thick as a brick out there. And it's just, it's very, very slippery. I took the station vehicle home yesterday, the 4Runner, because the PT Cruiser, great car, but kind of close to the ground. And I didn't feel like driving around on the chains. But even then, you go around some of the curves here. You turn out by the airport, and I'm on the way in from my particular neighborhood, and going around where Lithia Body and Paint is located. And you get a really – it looks deceptively dry on the pavement, but it's not.

Black ice, and then not-so-black pavement, but it's not. Black ice and then not so black ice. It's just all there. Take your time. Really, if you're going faster than about 25, you're really watching it. It's not a matter of starting up. It's the ability to stop. That's all I'm going to get at here. Snowplow is still working it, but everything is frozen into a hard, solid lump.

What's it like at your home this morning, huh? 770-5633. We can talk about your experience. Now, as far as power outages, we've had a few more outages develop overnight. Out in Jacksonville in the Applegate, they had some relief around midnight. A lot of power ended up coming back down to the 1,200 to 1,300 customers. And now we're looking at about 400 customers in that neighborhood in the Jacksonville through Williams area that are without power this morning. Then you get to South County of Jackson County seems to be taking the brunt of it at the moment here.

We got anywhere about 1,200 customers from phoenix talon ashland areas east of ashland are out of power got about 60 people who are out of power over in butte falls gold hill still has uh some missing power about 100 customers or so missing it about 60 in eagle point 60 in shady cove uh you head out what is it, the Trail neighborhood has a couple hundred out there too. And Grants Pass, not all that bad. Just some scattered shower, some scattered rather outages. Maybe a couple of dozen people in Grants Pass without power this morning and a few more in Cave Junction.

But Josephine County seems to have been escaping the brunt of what's been going on with the power, at least this time. Now, you may remember last winter where it's just like every time you turned around, City of Grants Pass and parts west out there were just getting killed with power outages, and that hasn't been the case this time around. Jackson County's turn. Yay, Jackson County. But you know what's going on.

It's the standard thing. Pacific Power sends in the pictures to us in the news releases, and you just see all sorts of tree branches that big limb fall on the roof of his house. And, gosh, he had his garage, his, like, outdoor garage-type thing for his toys ended up collapsing from the weight of the snow and the ice. And we'll probably be seeing more of that kind of stuff. Brad Bennington was talking about the weight of the snow and the ice on the roofs could become a problem because they're designed for about 20 pounds per square foot. And by the time you have all of this stuff frozen on the roof and then, you know, you get a little bit of rain and more snow on top of that, you could be going to 30 or 40.

So just keep an eye on that. No doubt the Stephen West Falls and the roof rescue teams and everybody else are going to be pretty busy. Pretty busy over the next few days, along with, I would imagine, plumbers. I would imagine plumbers could be having some problems, especially when we're in the mid-20s right now. 7705633, I think we got Miner Dave. Hey, Dave, how you doing? How are things this Wheels Up Wednesday, huh? It's really good.

You know, I like listening to your mechanic friend. He's full of great knowledge on vehicles. Well, he's not a mechanic, but he's an automotive journalist. But you know the mechanic who does call every now and then is David. David calls in. He's a mechanic. He's a great guy.

Young man. Well, my dad was a mechanic, but not so much me. I was more into building things i liked you know building uh towers and stuff for the power company that was fun work to me you know that is so interesting that they're different because my father uh i became more of a mechanic and electronics guy my father was more of those building of he loved working with wood amazing woodworker and that was just uh he he had astounding skills he could have done that for a profession instead of the hobby like he did but uh i still got his uh playing around with tools it was just a

just a different kind yeah a different kind of tool except that dave i would say back when i was a kid and i would take a car apart i was such a good mechanic i always had extra parts that's not a good thing you know i know the feeling yeah i wanted to say is uh in montague they have uh now this time of year they're not running irrigation but the irrigation ditch is overflowing. They've issued a flood warning in Montague. And a pond that isn't all the way dug out here at my place is filled up with water, but with snow over it. And of course, it's frozen right now. And I got about six to eight inches of snow that hasn't melted off. It's surprising that we're getting reports of a lot of areas that could be at risk to some flooding after the incredibly heavy rain, and then you end up getting the snow on top of that.

I think I was reading yesterday that, you know, Linda and I would go out to the hot springs over in Cedarville, past Alturas in eastern california eastern northern california and uh pit river that pit river on the pit river reservation is is looking pretty high right now too a lot of places this is going to be have to have to be something that we uh we watch out for and uh and you can you can imagine what the clemens river is going to do uh you know where the former lakes are. Yeah, yeah. Well, I'll be curious to see what happens here. I know a lot of people were worried about the Applegate Reservoir being drawn down so low.

But the thought process behind this, I'll talk with Greg about this next hour, the thought process is that it is a very narrow, very deep reservoir, but it fills up very quickly. It's not a very small reservoir. So don't worry too much. And given the rain and snow we've been experiencing lately, we'll probably see that rising pretty rapidly. You got carberry flown into it, and you got, you know, Sturgis running into that. That's high snow country.

That gets 8 or 10 feet a year there on average. And it's up where they have a weather station. The guy's got a NOAA guy and the Air Force guy. He's all one guy. Has to hike up in there, do the measurements, and manage the Doppler system. It's all underground except for one building in what looks like a 1950s weather station, but it's actually an advanced one. It's just all underground, and it's also part of the early warning system.

Hey, well, thanks for letting me know. I didn't know that's what that was. If I ever get up in that neighborhood and see it, then I'll know, okay? Yeah, it's up off of Sturgis. It's about 10 miles from my old plane. All right. Hey, well, you take care. Stay warm and dry today.

All right, Dave? Appreciate that. Yeah, I will. All right. Okay. 20 minutes after 6. 7705633. How are things in your world this morning?

This is the Bill Myers Show. President Trump ends uh talking about wanting to take over gaza i'm not a fan of this one but we'll talk about it maybe take your uh opinion on it uh i'm concerned that um well i well to kind of go through the story and meanwhile the rest of washington dc is still in histrionics and hissy fits over everything else he's been doing that has been quite positive, in my opinion. You're on the Bill Myers Show, 770-5633 for Wheels Up Wednesday. If your home computer has issues, call MED.

22 minutes after 6, join the conversation at 770-5633. One of the catch-you-up with the main story around here is strictly everybody just kind of hunkering down and getting through the snow and the ice and schools are closed and a lot of delays in the local governments? I haven't checked that recently, but I imagine if state governments are open, it's probably going to be something in the neighborhood of a 10 o'clock thing. Let me see. Let me just check. Usually they pop me stuff overnight here. Da-da-da-da-da. Oregon Public Defense Commission closed but operating remotely.

Oh, great. If you got that, let's see. South Atlanta school buses. Da-da-da-da-da. Yeah, just about anybody that has anything is closed this morning, okay? That's pretty much the way that is. It's kind of funny, though. I came home from the station yesterday and was uh getting a few things uh done and i show up and there's a six-year-old a next-door

year old a next-door boy uh six-year-old ended up showing up and he's over there and uh and and he's one of these guys that uh always coming over and picking my brain on things. It's like, I'm Mr. Wilson to him being Dennis the menace, but he's not a bad kid. He's just, he just asks a lot of questions and I really enjoy his company. And he came over and he was saying, Hey, you know, Linda has, has hired me to do the, the sidewalk. I said, Oh really? Okay. I was thinking I was going to have to dig the sidewalk out and get things cleared up. But

Linda told me this story afterwards, and it just cheered my heart. I loved it because it was great to see a six-year-old. He's like six or seven years old, I think, is all he is. And just a good kid. And so he's digging out the sidewalk and getting it all. He's throwing the snow into the yard. Everything's looking fine. And I talked with Linda about this after I got inside, got my soaked shoes and coat off. And I'm talking to her about it.

I said, oh, so you hired Shiloh to do this? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, did this. He came and knocked on the door, and then he told me all about this. And he said that I told my mom this is what the the kid said he says i told my mom that i'm going to go out and i'm going to move snow for money and i just love that and she loved it too i'm gonna move snow for money and so he did and so he gave him some bucks for the sidewalk job, and that was fine, something I didn't have to do last night. But it cheered my heart to have a six-, seven-year-old like that, just ambitious, wanting to make money, and he's not going to wait for it to come to him.

He started going around the neighborhood and just knocking on doors and finding people. And I didn't even know if kids did that any longer. Is there anybody in your neighborhood that still will do things like shovel snow and or, you know, mow lawns? I did stuff like that all the time when I was a kid, but that seemed to have gone away. I'm also wondering if part of it is liability because at one point the next-door neighbor kid said, well, do you have a snow shovel?

And then Linda said, oh, no, I wasn't going to go there because you know how litigious some people can be. And you hate to be that way, but you have to think about this if a little kid is using your tools and then ends up getting hurt. And, you know, I don't know, maybe nobody does that anymore because of liability. But I thought it was great. And it just cheered my heart. And it was great to see someone. I'm saying, hey, kid, keep it up. You're going to do okay because part of the job is just showing up and asking for it, you know?

And he did. Good for him. 7705633, let me go to first line here on Wheels Up Wednesday. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Good morning, Bill. This is David here in Phoenix. Hey, David, how are you doing today? How's it holding up now?

Are you part of the power outages, or are you still okay? Either way, it's fine with me. This is my weather. Oh, okay. I'm a bad guy. Cry for me, Argentina, when it's over 80. Oh, okay. I'm a heat baby. I'm a wimp in the heat. You're a wimp in the heat. It gets cold. You don't care, right? I love the cold.

I could never have lived in Barstow for a day. Oh, well, you need to live in Barstow in the wintertime because it's dreadfully cold there in the winter. Oh, that'd be perfect, but I couldn't have been there in the summertime. I really don't think I could have done it. I get it. I get it. So what else is on your mind, huh? Well, I'm it. I get it. So what else is on your mind, huh? Well, I'm just, I'm nervous.

There's so much in the news, and you have a show that's, you're the smorgasbord of radio. I mean, do I want some meatballs today, or do I want some shrimp? You know what I mean? Yeah, we kind of dance around different topics. Don't want to just focus on any one thing. No, and that's wonderful. That's great. You're the Golden Corral, and I love it. You're the Golden Corral we're going to have, man. Okay. As long as I don't have any listeria, that's okay, all right?

I want the giant ice cream thing with the fountain of chocolate and stuff. I want one of those in my house. That would be like my fantasy house to have that. What do you think? You'd never go anywhere i know what you wouldn't need to i got ice cream sundaes anytime but anyway but anyway what is concerning you though about the serious note i really am concerned i think about high school where we did have to do a uh paper it

was due at the end of the session and And we had two weeks with no homework, no note-taking. It was just kind of, no, there was lecture and talking, but it was, you know, this kind of thing, just sit and listen to what the teacher talking about different things, just trying to, you know, make connection and that sort of thing. The very next class, like a week later, one student came up and turned in a little folder. And I remember because I like to sit in the front. And the teacher said, oh, what's this? She said, this is my paper. Oh, that was one. At the end of the term or the semester, there were plenty of people, can I have more time? I didn't get mine done.

You know, well, you had all semester. You gave those two weeks with no homework thinking that somebody wanted to just bang this thing out. By the way, it turned out he never read any of them. I found this out. It was an exercise. Get it done. See if you're going to take advantage and just get this damn thing turned in. So the reason I bring that up to procrastinators is Monday, the 8th of March,

seems like a long ways away when we're busy. Oh, you're talking about the appeal, the appeal deadline, right? Yeah, but it's not a real appeal. It's the notice. It's giving notice to appeal. Yeah. I'm getting scared that most people who got that packet are not going to get their thing turned in. I went to both meetings. I went to the meeting at the Josephine County Fairgrounds.

It was packed. And then I went Saturday to the Republican get-together with everybody. Everybody kept trying to explain to these people, I don't think anybody's going to do their homework for them. Well, that is a challenge, and I know that people are kind of hoping that someone will spoon-feed them everything to do. It's not going to happen. That's not how it's going to happen.

No. I'll give you an example. I had a guy call from Selma here yesterday. And he said, hey, Bill, I'm back. I've been gone for a while. Hey, can you explain everything about this fire map thing? It's just like, oh, my gosh, we've only been talking about this for the last two months, right? He's been out of town.

He says, you've got a lot of catching up to do. Right. He's been out of town. He says, you've got a lot of catching up to do. Right, but can I add this? If it's your home, if it's your house, if you can go out, if you can go to your county and find out what your tax lot is, this is about not your farm, it's not your house. I mean, you're... Okay, we lost you there for just a second. So you go to the county, and then what? Because you have to appeal, though.

Do you know your tax lot? That's what they want. They don't want your farmland that's 50 miles away and 1,000 acres or whatever. They only want where you live. This affects you and your home. And you've got to be able to say this point. And they gave points. There's little dots and it says a sentence, you know, and there's like five or eight points. This affects me negatively or adversely because or this may cause me harm because or this may cause me harm because, or this will cause

me harm because. In other words, you better be prepared with a plan on how to defend your wildfire rating, right? No, you've got to say to the rating, to this thing, what the issue is for you. You've got to- Well, that's what I'm getting at, though, okay? But it's not, no, there's way, this isn't going to be the end of this they're not going to oh no i i agree no this is not the end if you think that this is going to be the magic bullet everybody appeals

no it's buying time is all it is david that's all it's doing right now but also but also i'm really we had people one lady very nice lady asking this well, why can't you do this for us? Well, I'd have to hire 50 people. I'd have to get a staff, you know, blah, blah, blah. David, I can't tell you how many times I hear this type of stuff. Well, why isn't the county going to fight this for me? Well, why isn't someone else going to fight me for you? Is there somebody else that has formed a group that's going to do it no you're going to have to do it okay right but no but no okay but the county has to act for the county as a whole that's right the county the county get if the county did something just for me can you imagine how much trouble what kind of

lawsuit no i and i agree but you're going to have to do the work, in other words, okay? But here's the thing. Wrap it up, though, David, okay? I'm just telling you. Okay, I'm sorry. No, no, I'm just saying just wrap it up because, you know, I have other things to do, too. If you don't do it right, just do it. Get it turned in, and don't wait till Monday the 10th. Don't wait. Make your deadline be March the 1st. All right. I would even go earlier than that, possibly. All right.

David, that's a good point. And see, now you have served humanity with that comment in a long, roundabout way. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Good to have you on. It's Jerry. Jerry, the bull. How are you?

I'm doing well, Bill. What's going on? Hey, your comment regarding your six-year-old neighbor. Yes. Well, you know, I called my son the other day, yesterday. He's more than six. He was at a buddy's house, and he was doing homework for his EMT class. Yes.

But I told him, and one of his buddies was near listening. I said, hey, why don't you get a shovel and go out to some of these properties nearby you there? And I said, you know what? I'll bet you money that people will be enthused to see some young kids come by and say, hey, do you need any snow shovels? Anyway, they didn't take me up on the offer. They didn't, huh? Okay. Well, like I said, Linda was tickled when he showed up there because it was just like, oh, my gosh, somebody still does this.

There is still some life left in the younger generations. It hasn't been completely beaten out of them yet. And so as far as I'm concerned, this needs to be encouraged. Okay? Oh, yeah, definitely. My short philosophy here, Bill, regarding this matter and other matters, if people are unwilling to do what most people would not do, they'll have a job. Indeed. Great quote. Thanks for that.

Jerry the Bull, 635 at KMED. We'll catch up on the rest of the news. Then we're into Wheels Up Wednesday, maybe with a few tire chains on, or maybe studded tires, maybe studded tires today latest news brought to you by locally owned in obbert this is the bill meyer show on 1063 km ed call bill now 541-770-5633 that's 770 km ed wheels up wednesday with some tire chains here, at least in southern Oregon. I don't know what it's like over in Virginia where Eric Peters is hanging out this morning. Now, how's the storm been treating you recently here? I mean, we're just all frozen into a big block of ice and mushy frozen snow now.

It's been quite thick around us. What about you? Well, hey, Bill, I wish I could get my voice up into a high register so i could do a good don adams from get smart imitation but would you believe that it was 75 degrees here yesterday really 75 wow yeah that sounds like what we were doing the other week when we were up in the 50s and the rest of the nation was in the in the ice bucket yeah that kind of thing yeah these erratic swings seem to be the new normal yeah i guess so all right kind of like bitcoin you know that's interesting i really enjoyed that article uh

because uh i know i was one of those people that had some bitcoin a few years ago and i got rid of most of it it was because it was incredibly volatile that everyone would say no hold on to it it's going to go to the moon and of, of course, those people seem to have done okay. But I have tended to look at more favorably on other ways of preserving wealth, physical gold, silver, things like that. It's not nearly as exciting. But I think that's the whole point of trying to tuck away something. It's not necessarily exciting, but it's always there for you, too, is another way of looking at it, right?

You know, Warren Buffett had some excellent advice, which was don't invest in something you don't understand. Yeah. And most of us have no idea what Bitcoin is, you know, other than the most vague and general terms. It's opaque, and that's troubling. It seems to be an inherently speculative instrument. Not that there's anything wrong with gambling.

You know, if you want to go to Vegas for the weekend and play some slot machines, and if you win some money, that's great. But that's generally, in the long run, not a good way to increase your capital for the most part. Yeah. Now, you have, what, about $400 or $500 worth of Bitcoin that you've hung on to over the years? I have. And I keep it just because it allows me to keep track of the volatility, which is just, it's crazy. And we complain rightly about inflation, the devaluation of money, that the dollar that we have this year, next year, it's going to take $1.50 or $1.75 to buy the same amount of stuff. That's understood. But with Bitcoin, the value of whatever your holdings are can vary as much as 10 or 20 percent in a space of 24 hours.

And that unsettles me. Yeah, and that also makes it very difficult to say, hey, I'm going to store wealth in this. And the other thing I looked at Bitcoin, like I said, to have some Bitcoin, nothing wrong with that. But I just don't know if I would want to have all of my wealth in the electronic realm. And it is in the electronic realm yeah yeah it is a uh it is something which requires functioning internet functioning computer servers etc etc in order to be able to uh to access it and i've always thought that was a a weakness of the cryptocurrency situation of course other people would say hey that's kind of a bug in the system or a feature of the system. So if they want to do a great reset, they just wipe you out.

You know, sure. I agree with you on that. And the other thing is that I do not buy the assertion that many people make that it's anonymous, that it's blockchained and, you know, secure. I don't believe anything that's on the Internet is secure from the government corporate nexus. I think that they have the capacity to know to the minutest detail every transaction that you make with this cryptocurrency. And as you say, they would have the ability to potentially micromanage it in real time, you know, as via social credit scores. If you're not a good boy, you have more of your mask, you know,

you said something mean on X, they won't let you buy things. And a few more credits are coming your way if you're a good boy, and a few credits are taken away or don't exist if you're not. I think the reason all of this is being pushed, and I do think it's being pushed, is to normalize and habituate people to it, the same way that they always

do these sorts of things, to get people used to the idea of getting rid of physical money and using, as you say, a device, having to carry your phone with you everywhere you go. And you scan your QR code. They want to get people into that frame of mind so that when they really go hard and push it, well, this is what we do anyway.

Yeah, you're already used to this. And so the war on cash and the war against physicality. But you see, the thing is that the war against the physical money is a war on, well, frankly, that's the true war on anonymity. It really is. That's the war on anonymity and privacy to go against the physical. You know, during the mass panic event that they like to call the pandemic, I point out to people that if you had cash, you could transact business, you know, even in situations where they might have tried to prevent you from doing it. If you found a like-minded person who owned a store, let's say, didn't agree with all the political ideological stuff that they were forcing on you, well, you could transact

business and nobody would know about it except the two of you. That's not possible with electronic money. And keep that in mind. And this is something that I've also had a criticism of. Now, I have an endorsement of a local gold and silver company here, a coin place, Jay Austin. Great people have been supporting me very early in the game in talk radio, so I have great affection for what they do. But they and others I have talked to in that business, you'll hear the national firms that are on all the national shows and the cable news.

They're always talking about having a gold-backed IRA, right? Take your gold and put it in a gold-backed IRA. Well, the whole problem with the IRA is that the IRA is something that FedGov and everybody else knows about and knows where it is. And the whole idea of having wealth protection is to take it out of their eyes, you know, take it out of their realm and have something which is actually truly private. And the gold-backed IRA, as an example, even though it sounds great in theory, that gets rid of the whole reason of having gold, in my opinion. Well, I agree. It's not physical. It's paper. It's ephemeral.

You know, you have this so-called IRA. Well, what if tomorrow you wake up and it doesn't exist anymore because they canceled it or they nationalized it? And remember what happened with the Jeffrey David Webb's book, The Great Taking? I did, yes. Yeah. You can think, you can see how if things are spinning out of control at some point, I'm not saying it's under Orange Man, under President Trump or anything like that, but ultimately that is a pretty valid scenario that David has spelled out, though, having years of financial expertise in there,

that everything is pledged in the financial world to everything else, you know, one way or the other. It's like an interlocking Jenga piece, you know? It's kind of like, you know, if you've stored away food for just in case, you physically possess that food. And that is something that makes one feel good, I think, right? Yes, indeed. You know you're not going to starve. You've got food in the cupboard. Well, if you've got some hard money, gold and silver, you know you have some actual hard money. And it's not just going to be disappeared when you wake up the next day. It's still wherever you put it.

And just like you wouldn't want to build your emergency food pantry with a certificate to be able to go to somebody else and get food. That doesn't work. That's a great way to put it. Okay. Now, speaking of the gold and silver and all the rest of it, it's interesting. Now, the reason people are going to the Bitcoin and looking at everything else, they're hungry for some kind of return. I get it. Because interest rates were artificially held down for the longest time. Savers were punished, Eric.

We know that, right? That's been what's been going on for quite some time. And now, though, the inflation, which is still rotting underneath the surface of the United States economy, is still there. Mr. Gold is still talking about this. And I'm looking at gold at 2867 now. We're making new highs over the last few days, all-time highs with respect to dollars. And by the way, the dollar is incredibly strong right now. The dollar's had great strength. So by the way, the dollar is incredibly strong right now. The dollar's had great strength, so it's not about the inflation thing.

It's about the uncertainty and the lack of trust in the banking institutions, I think, is what's going on right now. Well, sure, there's chaos everywhere, and I think people crave stability. I think that's one of the reasons why people voted for Trump, because at least he seemed to promise some return to normalcy and stability. And he's done a lot of work on that. Today's an example, signing the orders that say, no, men are not going to be beating up women in women's sports teams. OK, thank you.

All right. On the other hand, saying we're going to make Gaza great again, I don't see that being our our our bailiwick or it's in our wheelhouse. But a lot of people will likely disagree with me. We shall see. We'll see, I guess, for better or for worse, and probably for worse. Yeah, I just don't see how making Gaza great is going to help the United States of America. And that's all I'm focusing on just to the United States of America.

So let's set that aside. Let's talk about some other things you've been covering on epautos.com. And you did touch on the Bitcoin thing it's called my bitcoin and you've had the uh the ram 1500 so you've been test driving then over the last week and what has this been like is this uh still like the last of the mohicans or what has changed what's good what else well you know it's the same truck with one important difference as you and i've talked about before, Ram got rid of the previously available Hemi V8, which was formerly the optional engine in this truck, and they had to do that out of compliance concerns, compliance reasons.

So it's the same truck with a much smaller engine now, and there are pros and there are cons to it. Of course, the big con is that this isn't a natural market evolution. It wasn't as if the people who buy this truck were craving and wanting a 3.6 liter rather than a 5.7 V8. Although it's a great engine, as you have mentioned in past reviews, right? It's a good engine. Yeah, it's lemonade made out of lemons. They managed to take this much smaller engine.

It's almost half the size of the outgoing V8. And through the miracle of turbocharging, two turbochargers, by the way. Two turbochargers. Now, is it a twin stage, or do they have a turbocharger on one three-cylinder and then another turbocharger in the other three? Yes. And they're all what they call close-coupled, which means they're very snugged up against the exhaust ports. And that's. In order to make the boost happen almost immediately, so you don't have the sense that you're driving a turbo engine, which, by the way, I think they ought to do,

in the sense that I wish they'd let the whistle come through, because you don't have the rumble that you get with a V8. Yeah. So why not let that cool turbo whistle emanate? I love that turbo whistle on the cars. Now, is this a six-cylinder diesel or a gas engine? Oh, it's a gas. It's gas, okay.

It's a six-cylinder engine, yeah. All right. Gas engine. Yeah, most of the turbo whistle on the big trucks I would hear were usually on the diesels, on the diesel versions of it. But I love them one way or the other. That whine is just beautiful. Sure, and some wastegate pop. It would give people something to listen to.

And I do think it's an intangible but an important thing when it comes to trucks. You know, guys who buy trucks like an engine that makes some authoritative sounds. If you can't have the authoritative sounds of a V8, why not have the cool whistle of the turbo and maybe some wastegate snap to go along with it? Now, on the upside, too, this engine is very powerful. It makes 420 horsepower, substantially more power than the old V8, and it gets a couple miles per gallon better. But, you know, the downside is you've got a much more complex engine with more parts, two turbos, intercoolers, all the plumbing, all the specialized exhaust work, et cetera, et cetera. And you've got to wonder, you know, 150,000 miles, 10 years, 15 years from now,

which is this engine going to be as or less reliable than the outgoing V8? I've talked to enough mechanics over the years that have been actually, no, they're actually in the trenches working on these vehicles. And the trend to smaller engines turbocharged to the nth degree has not been working out great over the long run. It's been happening long enough. We've even been talking about this long enough that we actually have a a track record for a lot of these of these uh

of these vehicles and look at how many of the gm and ford vehicles i don't know ford has them but the three-cylinder turbocharged vehicles shoving around all these crossover suvs they are just blowing up with impunity left and right everywhere everywhere you go. It doesn't matter how well you maintain them. Wet timing belts. This is the part that has the timing belt dipped in the motor oil, a rubber or neoprene timing belt in motor oil. Yes. Oh, that's a great idea. Whoever came up with that ought to be shot, you know?

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, with regard to turbos, there was a time when turbos were found almost exclusively in high-performance applications because they were seen as a way to get more power out of an already powerful engine, i.e. something like a Porsche 911 Turbo. And, you know, the tradeoff was for the buyer, hey, I want even more power than that 911 comes with. So I'm willing to pay a little extra, and I'm willing to accept that this engine probably is going to start blowing smoke sooner than it would have otherwise. But if you didn't have the turbocharger, you wouldn't be completely disappointed with the car's performance, right? Yes, exactly. So now they're being used as mass market power adders, or I think more accurately, they're being used as displacement replacers.

As you say, all these engines that are so small, they're almost literally about the same size as the engines that you'd find in a motorcycle. 1.3 liters, that's 1,300 cc. There are a lot of bikes that have engines that big. And they're putting these engines in cars that weigh 3,500 pounds. And it's a lot of strain and stress. And it's almost like it doesn't matter how often you change the oil on it, you were just asking a lot of a small amount of metal by comparison to something. Well, even the difference between, well, back in the late 90s, 80s, 90s, the difference between a four-cylinder and a six-cylinder, if you had an economy car. We have the six-cylinder in the radio station's Toyota 4Runner, right? A 2002 4Runner. Not incredibly powerful 2002 forerunner not incredibly powerful right

it's not incredibly powerful yeah you can't kill it the the thing just kind of loafs around no you're not going to get around fast but i think one of the reasons why these things go easily three to four hundred thousand miles is because of the fact that they are not overly stressed they're not always under pressure which is a good way to understand what turbocharging is and another thing in the past the amount of boost was considerably less it used to be the case that the typical street engine would have maybe six or so pounds of boost to it now they're routinely running 15 even 20 pounds of boost on these things so is this a deal Ram 1500, is this sort of like the

swan song, or you think this is going to be able to keep Ram alive for a little while longer, maybe under the hopes that Donald Trump's regulatory regime will take the tyrant's boot off of its neck? What do you think? Well, it's clearly not helping. Sales have not gone up since they took the Hemi out of production. And the fact that you can still get a V8 in at least two of this truck's rivals, the Silverado 1500 that Chevy makes and the Ford F-150, isn't doing Ram any favors. But the other aspect of this is that trucks are just getting too expensive. You're looking at like for the base, they call it the tradesman trim, the least expensive version of it that you can get. So the base truck, if you want four-wheel drive, you're looking at $44,000. $44,000, that's the base one. I think that

the base just a few years ago was more in the low to mid-30s, wasn't it? Yeah, absolutely. And to get back to what we were talking about a moment ago with regard to insurance and inflation, this is one of the reasons why everybody's car insurance has gone up. The price of vehicles has increased on average by about $15,000 over the course of the last three or four years. And if we were all driving $15,000 to $20,000 worth or value vehicles, then our collision coverage would be commensurately less than it is right now. Yeah, and not only are they expensive, but they're very expensive to repair because they're very fragile. Even this truck, because it's got a plastic front end that's designed to tear away in a minor impact. So, you know, you bump into something in a parking lot and what used to be a, you know, you pull out the metal bumper and it was basically free to do that.

Yeah. Now you're looking at a $3,000 bill. And even if you don't own one of these things, the fact that they're out there and the fact that you might bump into one of them is why you're paying more for insurance. But to be fair, to be fair to the reason for this, this was because of the safety, you know, the safety apparatchiks that would come out there and say everything had to be about safety. And it is crumple zones. I will say, if you've ever watched YouTube enough, and I'm sure we all go on there occasionally and watch some, they'll show crash tests of old vehicles that had heavy-duty, big, thick fenders and everything else. You know, the stuff that we always look at on the vintage car shows and go, man, that's when they knew how to make a car. Yep. Except that when you would crash them, they would tend to transfer more force into the driver.

And you would see... In a severe impact, they absolutely transferred most of that into the passenger compartment. But what we're dealing with fundamentally here is cross-purposes. You know, on the one hand, you've got the government decreeing that cars have to be built like Sherman tanks. Right. And then, on the other hand, decreeing that they also have to get 50 miles per gallon. So what you end up with is that the underlying structure is very heavy and very sturdy, but then they're so heavy, they get bad gas mileage. So how do we deal with that?

Well, we put plastic and paper thin metal panels on the outside. So you touch it. You literally could bend it with your hands. I'm not exaggerating. You literally could bend the hood of a modern car if you're a pretty strong guy with your bare hands. You bump into something at the shopping mall, and you're looking at $3,000 to repair it, and that's why your insurance bill is doubled. You're absolutely right about that. Eric Peters with me, epautos.com. Review of the Ram 1500.

That's going to be coming up a little bit later this morning, though. But overall, it's a good truck, though. But once again, it's the compromises that have been forced upon everybody these days, right? Yep, yep. All right. We'll be right back. If you have any questions, you want to make forced upon everybody these days, right? Yep, yep. All right. We'll be right back. If you have any questions, you want to make a comment on it all, 770-5633. Wheels Up Wednesday continues next.

Hi. You're hearing the Bill Myers Show on 106.3 KMED. Cracker, I hate my generation. I don't, but I thought it was a great song back in the day. Eric Peters is back with me, epautos.com, on KMED and KMED HD1, Eagle Point, Medford, KPXG, Grants Pass. Hey, Eric, before we get to the calls here, I wanted to, by the way, if you wanted to talk with Eric, 770-5633. Eric, I wanted to ask you about startup wear in the wintertime. I read a fascinating article,

and I think it was in a mechanics world or something like that. It said that no matter how often you change your oil, no matter what you do, that generally speaking, 90% of the wear in your car engine comes up from all the time that you're running it cold. And that's why the... It's true, sure. Yeah, so it's not the miles, but it's the time. Like for me, it's a three-mile trip back and forth to work all the time,

and that's why you end up getting a lot of wear. And even if you change your oil religiously, which I do, that there are still going to be problems just by the nature of an engine that's not allowed to heat, heat up to operating temperature all the time. Do you tend to agree with that evaluation? Back in the day, I don't know if you can still get these, but there used to be companies that would offer what are called pre-lube systems that would pressurize the engine's oiling system before you started it

so that the oil would be circulating already by the time you started to rotate the engine. Rather than letting it sit there with the oil light on for a few seconds each time, right? Yeah, and of course when it's really know, like you guys are dealing with, that oil is much thicker, and it's harder to pump because it's so cold. And so that's where wear increases. So, you know, things you can do to mitigate that somewhat, you can get one of those magnetic pans, or what do you call it, magnetic pads, that you, you know, you pop it onto the oil pan or put it through the dipstick,

and you plug an extension cord into it if you have to park your car outside. And that'll at least keep the engine somewhat warmer than it would have been if it had just sat outside all night. And that'll help a little bit. So instead you'll have a slightly warmer, at least tepid, motor oil going through it rather than cold, sludgy pancake syrup. Gotcha. Yep. And on the upside, too, modern cars, we complain about a lot of things about the modern cars, but because they are computer controlled and they have EFI, they tend to start immediately.

So you don't have that cranking routine that we had back in the day, right? Yep, indeed. So it fires up immediately and the mixture is just right and it'll warm up much sooner. So that has helped things considerably yeah i remember the days and i'm sure you do too before you put now you put fuel injection on the uh on the old trans am right oh never never never never no you know still carb oh good all right just a quadra jet you can't get rid of the quadra jet moan yeah but i remember the 71 pinto we actually admitted to having one of those when they came out it actually was a good car for what it was, we thought. Yeah, absolutely it was.

But still, in the middle of the winter, you'd start it up. Rrrr, rrrr, rrrr. And then kunk, kunk, kunk, kunk, kunk. And then kunk, kunk, kunk, kunk, kunk. And then kunk, kunk, kunk, kunk, kunk, kunk. And then finally all four would kick in after about four or five minutes. Sure. And all the while, too, over-rich fuel, raw gas was washing down the cylinder walls.

Getting rid of all the oil and accelerating. And getting into the oil, too. Yeah, you've got to love it. Yeah, so things have definitely gotten better in some ways. Tom is in talent. Tom, do you have power? I know Phoenix Talent, Ashlyn, having some problems this morning. Are you in the light or in the dark right now?

In the light, which is why I'm able to call you. Eric, I have a 99 Dodge Caravan that's in the shop right now. It needs a module between the engine and the transmission in order to talk with one another. And I was told by the mechanic that it's largely unavailable. He had a fellow New Yorker said, yeah, you can have it, but you have to fly to New York and pay $5,000 or something. Oh, my gosh. I mean, it was ridiculous. Anyway, so my question, oh, he also said that the attitude of the car dealers now is that if you have a 10-year-old car

and it needs one of these computer-type chips, it may not be available. So their attitude is, 10 years, it's time for you to buy a new car. Well, of course it's their attitude. It's a lot more profitable for them, isn't it? So my question is, I asked him this question, but I asked him, how far back do you have to go before you get rid of all this damn computer everything so that you have a reliable car? And he says the late 70s. What do you say?

What's a good car to have? I would say you can go back to the early, roughly-ish 2005, maybe up to 2010. Because up to that point, cars absolutely have computers, but they generally just control the operation of the fuel injection system. But this was a late 90s one for a transmission module that he's complaining about. Isn't that right, Tom? Yes, correct. I would get a second opinion on that before you proceed any farther. And there are a couple of other things I would recommend, too. If it is, in fact, that, that's the problem. Have you checked eBay Motors to see whether anybody has that part that you need available?

He's been in correspondence with the wrecking yards and so forth. Supposedly, there's some part coming down from Portland, a used one. Okay, yeah. I mean, if you have the name of the part, if you can get that from him, I would encourage you on your own to go to eBay Motors and look and see, just so you can confirm for your own due diligence and peace of mind, whether in fact that part is or is not available and what it might cost you. Okay, well, that's certainly good advice. And what should we do as consumers out here to get,

to have a reliable car? Is there any new modern car that's not going to be obsolete in 10 years? New, I would say probably not. You know, they are now so complicated and so, what's the right word, interconnected with so many things. There's so many potential failure points, including things like the touchscreens

that are now ubiquitous that they all have. And I draw the analogy with the cell phone. Most people understand that if they buy a brand new iPhone points, including things like the touchscreens that are now ubiquitous that they all have. And I draw the analogy with the cell phone. Most people understand that if they buy a brand new iPhone today, that three or four years from now, it's going to be obsolete. And, you know, it's not worth keeping because it's just not worth fixing. So you throw it away and get another one. Well, cars are becoming like that. If you really want a reliable car, frankly, I would go out and find yourself a good older car and just set some money aside to repair it when it needs to be repaired. Are you talking, now you don't mind fuel injection.

Fuel injection is the smart thing to have, right? Yeah, no, not at all. I'm not talking about something ancient from the 60s or the 70s or even the 80s. I'm talking about something that's modern, that's just like any other car that you buy today, except it doesn't have a touchscreen and it doesn't have all the data mining and all of the overdone electronics and all of the nannying stuff that the latest models do. My Nissan Frontier, for example, is a fully modern vehicle. It has poor fuel injection. It runs and drives as well or better than any new truck, but it's basically a simple vehicle, and it's absolutely a repairable vehicle.

But the other thing you want to do when you have these vehicles is that you have a funding source available because you're just going to have to, instead of putting money into the brand new vehicle, you're going to have to continue to repair this one. Just understand that. People get anxious because they worry that they're going to get hit with a $1,500 bill. And absolutely that can happen. But I say, well, look, sure. But how about contrasting that with the certainty of a $700 a month payment every month? How about just, you know, putting aside a thousand bucks or 1500 bucks and just putting it in the proverbial cookie jar for just in case. And then when something comes up, you've got the money to deal with it. Yeah, it makes sense to me. 7705633. Tom,

thank you for the call. Great call. Let me go to the next line here for Eric Peters. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Welcome. Hey, Bill, Brad here. Good morning the call. Great call. Let me go to the next line here for Eric Peters. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Welcome. Hey, Bill. Brad here. Good morning, Eric. Good morning. Morning.

So back in the day, back when I was a contractor and developer, we had a small fleet. We probably had a dozen vehicles. You know, what you're saying is so important for people to realize. The actual cost of the vehicle is not just the purchase price. It's what it takes to purchase it and maintain it and then what it's worth at the end of its duty cycle. That's the actual cost of the vehicle divided into the number of miles that you actually operate it in. Yeah.

And that's the thing that business people look at is, for instance, if you've got a field crew out there, that field crew is making somewhere between $1,000, $2,000 a day for the company. If that vehicle goes down, the cost of that vehicle just skyrocketed because you can't make any money from that vehicle when it's in the shop. So this reliability issue that you've been talking about is really incredibly important. It is. I agree. I thank you for making that comment there brad i'll uh i'll

grab one more call and then we're going to have to let eric get back to his uh 50 or what at 70 degree weather in virginia not quite yet today i don't know how warm it's going to get today it was in the 70s yesterday man wonderful you gotta love that uh hi caller good morning who's this you're on with eric peters hey Bill. It's David. Hey, David. Hey, so what people are going to start seeing more is you're going to see, you know, even a 20-year-old, 15-year-old car go into the dealer. Let's say you get a recall notice or you're having another repair done, and you're going to have them essentially installing malware in the car that you're not going to find out about until you go to another mechanic to have it worked on,

and they're going to say, hey, I can't work on your car because I'm locked out of all the essential features in the computer. And you're going to say, well, I have a 2008 Dodge Ram or I have a 2010 Mercedes. How did this get in there? And you're going to say, well, I went in for an airbag recall, and they must have put essentially this malware in the cars now. So your old cars that are going back to the dealer are all being retrofitted with stuff that's going to make them essentially, you're going to be locked

into the dealer and you're not even going to know if it was put in your car. Now, have you actually seen this happen? I know you're an independent mechanic. Big time.

Really? Big time. Oh, so bad. And the thing is, oh, and it's, yeah, I mean, I don't know how they're going to even

navigate it with class action lawsuits because it's very sneaky. It's very specific to the recall campaign. But definitely Chrysler Group is probably so far, in my opinion, the worst offender on this. All right. Well, Eric, maybe that's something to dig into for a future article. I know because I've had people tell me and I've seen this firsthand. Now, this is not as catastrophic, but some of the early Uconnect systems that are in those vehicles, meaning the interface for some of the secondary systems, the older ones are no longer supported. So, you know, effectively, they're no longer usable, which is just wonderful if you have one of those things.

This is the kind of information and conversation that's on EP Autos all the time, man. It's involving politics and so many other things and great commentary, too. And, David, thank you for the call. It's always good to hear it from a point of view of a mechanic. And it's 10 minutes after 7. Hey, Eric, I've run a little bit late here, but it was great. I'm glad you hung on and talked about this. And what do you think you're going to review for next week when we talk Wednesday?

Well, I know exactly what it's going to be. It's the aptly or inaptly named Nissan Rogue, which is a very popular vehicle. It's one of the few Nissans that's actually selling really well, but it's about the least roguish vehicle that I can imagine. In other words, hoist the black flag and slit throats. No, that's not the Nissan Rogue, right? No, it's just another little crossover. But Nissan sells a lot of them. It's too bad they tried selling so many Nissan Leafs, that EV. They should have focused on the Rogue because it is very popular.

All right. We'll hear all about it next week. Thanks, Eric. Be well. Thanks, Bill. ephotos.com. you