Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 04-08-26_WEDNESDAY_6AM

Episode Date: April 8, 2026

Morning news and a talk with former FI agent WAYNE BARNES about his new book TRAITOR IN THE FBI, great talk with Eric Peters from EP Autos, more EV fires, sweet review of the Mazda 3, your calls and more.

This hour of the Bill Myers Show podcast is proudly sponsored by Klauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for more than 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausurrilling.com. So if you've been listening to me, talk about Relief Factor for a while, this is your moment. Or if you're already taking it, you're now going to get the enhanced formula designed to work even smarter. Start with a three-week quickstarts, 1995 at Relieffactor.com or call 804 relief. How will it feel to be out of pain? Relieffactor.com.

Republicans will keep a house seat that was vacant, red. Clay Fuller, endorsed by President Trump, won a special runoff election in Georgia to replace Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green who resigned after falling out with the president. I think it's incredibly important to make sure that we're fighting for the president's agenda. Fuller beat Democrat Sean Harris by about 12 points.

This will give Republicans 218 house seats with an independent caucusing with them, keeping a slim majority over the 214 Democrats. in another election a win for the left. Liberal judge Chris Taylor has won a seat on the state Supreme Court, expanding the court's liberal majority to five to two. Taylor, a former Democratic lawmaker and current appellate judge to feed a conservative challenger Maria Lizar in a race

that Republicans had largely written off in its final days. Liberals have now dominated recent Wisconsin Supreme Court races cementing control that could last through the end of the decade. Ted Lindner, Fox News. Now an update on the most infamous deportee in the Trump crackdown in illegal immigration. Kilmar Abrago-Garcia. He's still facing human trafficking charges and fighting attempts to kick him out of the U.S. again. Kilmar Abrago-Garcia's lawyers are fighting DHS efforts to deportes to deportation to support the Salvadorian National to Liberia.

But U.S. attorneys told a judge Tuesday they still intend to send him to the West African nation. Abrago-Garcia's defense says they have an agreement with Costa Rica to accept deportees who cannot legally return to their home countries. The U.S. government, though, has spent resources with Liberia to accept third country nationals, regardless of where they're originally from. Abrago Garcia's case has become a lightning rod for debate over the Trump administration's immigration policies ever since he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador last year. He's since been brought back to the U.S. Tom Graham, Fox News.

We mentioned oil prices plunging this morning, but gas is up to more sense. AAA's national average for regular, now at 416. per gallon. I'm Dave Anthony and this is Fox News. It's tax season and by now I know you're a bit tired of the numbers but here's an important one you need to hear $16 billion. That's how much money in refunds the IRS flagged for possible identity fraud. Not all grim news, Lifelock monitors millions of data points per second for your personal information and alerts you to threats that you could easily miss on your own. If your identity is stolen, LifeLock's U.S.-based restoration specialist is going to fix it. Save up to 40 percent of

off your first year with a promo code back. 1-800 LifeLock or LifeLock.com. Terms to apply. As the season changes, shoppers across southern Oregon begin looking for fresh ideas, unique finds, and small ways to update their homes and routines.

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discover, and buy. To find a lot of, out more, visit kmED.com and click on the contact us page. Do you have shady friends? I have lots of them. This is Jeff with Quality Tree Service. As a certified arborist, I consider myself a bit of a tree whisper. I can tell most of them just need a proper pruning to get them shaped up and going in a positive direction. Some frankly are destined for firewood, wood chips, and mulch. Call me and I'll come talk to your trees, then provide a free quote that's guaranteed. Find us at QualityTreeServisMedford.com or call.

Call 541-821-8594. Morning weather is sponsored by Advanced Air and Bryant, doing whatever it takes to deliver intelligent heating and cooling solutions and award-winning service. Visit MyAdvancedair.com. For the Rogue Valley, a new pattern develops today that keeps the threat of thunderstorms in the forecast from this afternoon through Friday. Today, increasing clouds chance of afternoon storms high as 75. Tonight, chance of storms this evening, then clearing low of 49, and tomorrow,

thunderstorms, high as 73. This is Kevin Lulles for NBC 5 News, your place. At Two Dogs Fabricating, we're woofing about our new iron bull dump trailers with new features, including enhanced sidearmored 10 gate steel sides with seven gate steel floors, three-way spreader gates, and retractable tarp systems. Choose from bumper pull or goose necks with telescopic or scissor lifts, and contractors love the horizon and iron bull roll-off trailers with a bin you can easily drop and pick up. Most customers buy extra bins, too. Stop by the doghouse on Brianway off Sage Road and visit two dogs fab.com. This is Bill Meyer with KMED.

Programming note that if you miss one of my shows or you want to go back and listen again, I always archive about three months of my show at Bill Myershow.com and KMED.com. You can search by Dayton Topping. Download the hour of your choice and you can share them too. Bill Meyer Show podcasts are made possible by Klauser Drilling. So please visit Bill Myershow.com and KMED.com for podcasts. And to find out more about our sponsor, Klausur drilling, that's simple. Visit Klauserdrilling.com.

I'm Nicole Murray with your money now. Reuters reports TikTok plans to invest more than $1.1 billion to build a second data center in Finland. The announcement comes as European nations ratchet up pressure on social media companies to protect children from their addictive algorithms. Now to the topic on top of everyone's minds, oil prices are way down after President Trump agreed to suspend attacks on Iran for two weeks and, exchange for Tehran, allowing safe passage to the Strait of Hormuz. West Texas Intermediate is down by more than 16 percent, sitting at roughly $94 per barrel.

Brenda's down by more than 14 percent, hovering at $93 per barrel. The Wall Street Journal reports the U.S. government has so far rejected requests from Ford Motor and other U.S. automakers for relief from aluminum tariffs after fires at a Novellis plant, created supply bottlenecks for vehicles. Last week, Ford petitioned the Trump administration for assistance. Futures are sharply higher with the Dow up by more than 1100 points. That's your money now.

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Once again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash free. The Phil Myers Show on Southern Oregon's home for conservative talk. News Talk 1063, KMED. Call Bill at 541-770-5633. That's 770 KMED. Now more with Bill Meyer. All right. Sorry about that.

Just text messaging Eric Peters saying, hey, we'll be ready in about 20 minutes. Wheels up Wednesday. Taking care of business, that's for sure. Lots to talk about this morning. And even before Eric, I have a guest coming up this morning, who I think is going to be fascinating. I have a few minutes with Wayne Barnes. He's a former FBI counterintelligence agent.

And the FBI's wiretap network was just hacked, just hacked recently. And given that he was involved in counter espionage and such, it should be an interesting guy. He has a book out there talking about his time. Well, it was actually the hunt for a Russian mole back in the 1990s. He was the one that was tasked with this. And boy, I'll tell you, they treated him badly. He still thinks that the major problem with the FBI is the goal to protect itself.

The institutional deal says, hey, we're worried more about protecting the FBI. And I wonder if he thinks it's even that way now. We'll talk with him for a few minutes in about eight or nine from now. Join the conversation, though, at 7705-633-770 KMED. Some good gun news. Kevin Sterrett is going to join me about that. Dr. John Lott with some other gun news this morning. and your calls at opinion. And I know that State Representative Dwayne Yonker is asking or is calling for an investigation of Portland State University.

Portland State University says that a book that they're pushing in the faculty is all about having teachers or faculty treating people differently according to their race. And he says this is wrong. We should just be treating everybody fairly, equally, and not saying, oh, because someone is a sort of. certain race, you have to treat them a certain way. We'll talk with him about that a little bit later on in the program. I hope I explained it properly. The release came out last night. I thought that was pretty interesting. Other news besides the fact that the destruction of civilization or the end of the Iranian civilization, which was talked about yesterday from President Trump, has been put on hold for at least a couple of weeks. Ceasefire. There's 10 points from the

Iranians and what they're saying that they want in order to keep this going. One of them is to continue enriching uranium, which is a non-starter for the United States. And they're saying, hey, don't attack us anymore. President Trump has 15 points that they're tossing into the Iranian deal. One of them is to open up the Strait of Hormuz. Rumor has it. Not rumor has it. But the story is, though, that some tankers are starting to go through.

Now, another part of the demand from the Iranians is that they retain control of the state of the Strait of Hormuz. And, you know, they're talking about like charging a million or $2 million for every tanker to go through. I guess they've been doing that recently. Their friends have gotten through. Their non-friends have not. Price of oil sinking like a stone at the moment, 10, 15, 16 percent. Yeah. Now, Iranian oil is still trading at a premium, according to investors' observers.

So there's a lot of dust in the air right now trying to figure out where this is going to settle. The stock market, gosh, Dow futures up 1,100, a little earlier is up to 1,200 points. So investors are going to be giddy in dancing. I'm not an investment guy, but I do tend to like to watch. watch Warren Buffett and see what he's doing. Warren Buffett's been selling. In fact, he recently sold $6.8 billion in stocks. When Warren Buffett is looking at selling instead of buying right now, I take that as a clue.

So I don't know if we're going to have a nice little happy dance. Maybe, you know, if you're a trader on the side, maybe sell a few of your weaklings into a strong day or two here. because who knows where it's going to go over the next couple of weeks. That's the way I would tend to look at this, right? You know, because the overall challenges are still not fixed. They just aren't. It could be like United States' irresistible force meets Iran immovable object. Both sides are claiming victory right now, as you could imagine.

And Iran still says we're going to control the Strait of Hormuz. I would imagine President Trump is not in for that. and the devil will be in the details as it goes. But for right now, mostly a ceasefire, but Iran's still hitting some of the Gulf nations. And they're not like a mad. So some of the surrounding Gulf countries are still getting hit. And, oh, by the way, Lebanon.

They also want, this is Iran wanting Israel to stop going to war with Lebanon. And Israel's kind of like, okay, whatever. No, we're going to keep hitting. you'll have to keep hitting Hamas and Lebanon. So that's where we are at the moment. And like I said, do we really know? I don't know. But markets are happy about it.

Maybe it's a good time to sell into some strength for a while. I think it's what Warren Buffett is looking to do. And kind of the way I look at it, somebody who got smart enough to the point where they had $6.8 billion worth of stocks that they could actually sell, it's worth paying attention to. Of course, he's an older guy, too. Maybe it's just about the retirement fund. All right.

Speaking of money, we've got some big money going into Kingsley Field. Congressman Cliff Ben's making that announcement yesterday. 80 million to build a new F-35 formal training unit for the academic training center in there because they're going to be switching over to the F-35A Lightning 2 from the F-15C. Now, this has just been put into the budget for 2027. So the money's not there yet, but chances are this will safely make it through. I think it's a reasonable request here. And something else I thought was interesting.

That Far East Restaurant in Medford, the Far East Restaurant in Medford's been shut down for like four, you know, three, four years now. And that was back during the COVID time that they ended up shutting down. It's going to be a new Foodplex, Rhode Valley Times reporting on that one. Yeah, foodplex like Jay's on fourth. Look at a courtyard. I don't know.

This is going to be like a food cart or food. court kind of thing. I'm not exactly sure about it. They had a hearing last night. And maybe if you, if you know, let me know about that. Other stories here. Oh, did you catch that story just a few minutes ago on this morning with Gordon Deal? They were talking about how the median Oregon household is paying about 24% of their income for the state and local taxes here. And that it's really high, that we're really high compared with many other states. And Florida, by comparison, is 15%. 15% versus like about 24%.

So no wonder! No wonder we're all cranky in this state. We know. Man, 15%. Well, of course, they don't have income tax in Florida. I don't think, yeah. No income tax. But they do have high property taxes.

I know that. I was talking with my daughter, Sarah, a while back. and she moved from Portland and yeah she went to Portland State University was working for OHSU in a biology lab is what she's been doing she's now working for them still in Florida she's able to do her job remotely

and she was telling me about dad I can't believe it I'm getting the same paycheck from Oregon and I'm getting 500 extra dollars per paycheck and I said welcome to Florida honey don't screw it up with your politics That's what I told her back because I'm thinking about her, her progressivism. I mean, oh, gosh, she's so far to the left. Oh, you know, it's like that standard millennial, young, female, liberal.

It's like I hope she's not the one going out there with the pink hats and everything else. She doesn't talk to me much about that kind of stuff. But yeah, she and her and her live in Jake are living in Florida. they're loving it. I'm just hoping that they don't destroy it for the rest of us and everybody else who might want to move there at some point. 19 after 8, I make that 19 after 6 rather. This is the Bill Meyer show, KMED, and here in just a matter of seconds, Wayne Barnes, former FBI agent, counterintelligence. We'll talk with him about his latest. When it comes time to build your dream home, your top of the hill masterpiece with style, luxury,

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On Cradle Lake Highway in Medford or online at hueslumber.com. You know what I like about Freddy's diner? Ha, who am I kidding? I like everything about Freddy's. But in particular, it's Burger Heaven. There's the double cheese. the bacon cheese and the Ortega Pepper Jack, the Western, the mushroom onion Swiss, avocado bacon cheese, pastrami Swiss, jalapeno jack, and oh, the brisket burger, the main event burger,

and the classic Brownsboro Tavern burger. Time is short, but next time I'll get you up to speed on the sides. See you at Freddy's Diner in Old Town Eagle Point. Hi, I'm Amber Rose with Siskiu Pump Service, and I'm on KMED. 20 after 6. Wayne Barnes is here. Wayne Barnes is, well, former undercover operator and was actually tasked with finding the KGB's mole in the FBI. His book is now out there, a traitor in the FBI.

How you doing this morning, Wayne? Welcome to the program. I'm doing very well. Thank you for the invitation. Boy, what a fascinating story from your time back there in the late 1990s. And they didn't really treat you real well during that time. Would that be fair? When they said, hey, we want you to go find the mole? that's messing with the FBI?

Well, they already knew it was an impossible task. We had a traitor in the FBI, and we knew that. But identifying was going to be tricky. They did learn that there are certain Russians in Moscow who had been assigned to their Soviet embassy in the 80s, and one of them was going to come to a film festival in Los Angeles in 1998. So three agents from Washington, who I had known for years, again, I was now in San Diego.

They flew out literally under cover of darkness to pitch me. me to make this case work. They said there was a spy in the FBI and a man was coming who could identify him. The mission was to go to the film festival, find this man, meet him, befriend him, recruit him, and show him photos of a dozen senior FBI agents suspected of being the traitor in the FBI. And you know Tom Cruise's movie's Mission Impossible where he jumps out of planes and scales buildings, they were physical obstacles. Mine was a psychological obstacle. There were two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the U.S., and they thought theirs was the better superpower. So, Why would this guy want to talk to me?

So we had to use all the profiling and all the estimates we could of his psyche that would make him work and enable us to get to him so he would point out a photo for us, which he eventually did. Yeah, and it sounds like I was reading your book yet, and it sounds like it is because he liked strong women, right? Wasn't that the chink in the armor, so to speak? Yeah, so to speak. He just hadn't dealt very much with men in his life, and he was even traveling to the film festival with a lady. who was a producer from Armenia. It was her translator. But he really liked the milieu of women, whether they were larger, small, or pretty or not.

They had to have some kind of position of authority and strength. He just admired that, his, so-de-speak as chink. I always find this espionage world fascinating. I don't know. How do you actually conduct yourself psychologically in something like this when you're having to play different parts and almost lie effortlessly? I guess, in some cases, in order to get what you need. What does that like?

Well, that's interesting because the FBI hires people are straight arrows and honest, no bad records, no bad anything. And then it's not that you're lying. It's forgotten country. Let's just say it that way. You have a role, and when I was in Washington, I was meeting as many as two or three KGB and GRU military officers at the same time with different identities. So there it was really a trick. I had two wallets in my back pockets. Half of each wallet was a different person with driver's license and credit cards.

In case I met one in the mall, I would be that person. But in this particular case, I had an identity which would be needed to get into the film festival. So it would appear as though I belong there. And I had a lady who was Polly Platt. She was a member of the academy. Voting member of the academy had been nominated for Academy Awards. She was literally my figly for the one that's helped support me in the operation. because I needed someone who would, you know, show that I knew who I was and what I was doing,

and everybody went along with it from there. So the cover was really strong. Great story. It's a traitor in the FBI, The Hunt for a Russian Mole. If you were dealing with Russian intelligence today, would you say they are just as competent today or less competent as they were back in the former Soviet Union days? Well, when the Berlin Wall came down, they liked to have us think that it was a changed place. but it's not a changed place.

For instance, the Russian was involved in this case, Ivan, he needed authority and permission from everybody in town, anybody in the administrative structure in Russia to get out, to get a visa to get out, even though he had a whole family being left behind. They don't want you to defect. So the wall came down, and in America, they called this the peace dividend, and they took away some of the financing for the budgets for the FBI for counterintelligence, which was really a mistake because, as you can tell, even from this case, the spying went on and on and on, and it always will. Yeah.

I'm kind of curious, why did the FBI leadership bury the result of your case there for a while, and actually accusing someone who didn't do the crime? Was there a reason where they stringing this person along, you think, or trying to find out more? No, they covered all the leads, which they had. I was covering a lead. It was a great lead, and it just had to be covered, that we knew this particular fellow had seen the bad guy. You cover your leads as they have. I always like to say if you don't have any more leads, you walk up the stream, splashing around, turning over rocks until you find something which is worth covering.

In this situation, they did have the wrong person in their sights. The fellow was in the CIA, which was just a terrible thing. And then even when it was learned what the identity was of the actual spy, morally, it sounds like a terrible thing, but we couldn't let the actual bad guy know we were onto him because we had to catch him in the act of passing documents. U.S. Attorney's Office. Okay. And just say, oh, Russian point in him out, he's the bad guy. He has to have evidence that he committed the crime of espionage, and you have to catch him passing documents.

So that, it just had to be that way in order to catch him. If he knew we were coming after him, he would have, you know, going to ground, going dark, and never done another document stash of any source. So he would never have caught him. Yeah, to keep letting it play out there. Okay, that makes sense here. Wayne Barnes, once again, the FBI's wiretap network was just hacked, just a few days ago. And this is more than just

Cash Patel's emails. You know, that happened a little bit earlier on here. What do you, what are you thinking about that sort of situation right now? Any thoughts? Well, it'll always be live spies. Live spies are important because I know what's going on, like the guy was in the FBI. Now you're talking technology. And while I retired, you know, 26 years ago and technology has advanced, there are cyber people who take care of and deal with such things.

I understand it was through a third party contractor who had access to the FBI's computer system that the hack actually took place not hitting the FBI itself, but through someone else, which was their back door in, so to speak. But once you see them, you put up the firewall, you change things around to make it as tight as you can. Once they have the information, there's not anything you can do about it. All of us have information which is stored by bad guys on the dark web, they call it. And I don't know what they would plan to do with your medical information, your property information. But cases we have, if the Russians are the ones who learn about an undercover operation work against one of their people, they've hackneyed at that.

That would be very bad. But it compromises the operation. Then you just pick up your pieces and start again and do the next one. You just have to keep doing it. That's the job of the FBI. Catch the bad guys. What is your opinion of today's FBI culture compared with the time that you were in there, Wayne? you know, there's been a lot of reasons why if an FBI agent were to call me up today and want me to talk,

I would want to make sure and have an attorney present. What do you think? I don't think that's necessary. You know, and not you personally, a subject of an investigation of the person being interviewed. 99% interviews we do are not with the subject of the case. It's learning about the case, how certain things work with it, espionage, or almost any other white-collar crime, whatever it might be. And they have to gain information, have to learn information. If you have something to hide, who are at an attorney, but I recommend not doing that. The FBI is really, really good at what they do, the best ever. Well, the reason I was always concerned, though, just to your point, though,

was that, you know, there was the famous case of a celebrity who ended up going to prison for lying about a crime she didn't create, Martha Stewart, right? Lying to the FBI agent about a crime she didn't commit, you know? And so I always wonder about those kind of things where you end up, getting taken in on process. You know what I'm getting at? That sort of thing, a process crime. Yeah, I don't know the details of that case,

but there is a statute that you can't lie to FBI agents. It's punishable. You can't pretend to be an FBI agent. Say you are. That's what we called a 10-and-10 offense, which was earlier a $10,000 fine in 10 years in jail. Yeah. Because they have to get the best information they can.

And for follow-up for that, they're polygraphs. And if she lied about something which didn't make any big difference in her life, I'm not sure why she did that. I don't know the facts of that case. But the Bureau needs to get the truth. And if you pass the polygraph, if there's any question what you've done, then you know, then you win. But lying to the Bureau, you're trying to get the facts. It's not trying to hurt anybody along the way.

But we need to know what took place for the investigation. I hate to reinvestigate something again and again because people have been deceptive. All right, very good. A traitor in the FBI, Great Reade, the hunt for a Russian mole. Wayne Barnes. Wayne, a pleasure having you on. few minutes, okay? Be well. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Thank you. 629, KMEDE, 993, KBXG, the Bill Myers Show. Wheels up Wednesday. Eric Peters, he joins me here in just a couple. Fontana Roofing keeps rolling out new products, constantly challenging their in-house creative marketing team. You know, we really need to let people know we have gutters covered. From start to finish. Funds are limited, so if your well is running low or you're noticing changes, give us a call. 4660-scusump.com.

This is the Bill Myers Show on 1063 KMED. Call Bill now. 541-770-5633. That's 770 KMED. Eric Peters wheels up Wednesday. Welcome to the show, buddy. Great to have you back. Thanks, Bill.

It looks like we're going to actually have a chance to do the show as opposed to picking ourselves out of the ruins. Yeah, I suppose. Well, I guess, what was it being called? The Civilizational Destruction, been delayed for at least a couple of weeks. And what do we know about this? What can we know for sure? The answer is nobody knows. We don't know. We know what we're being told at this point, though. But if there's a way that this can be solved without further destruction on either side,

I guess we'll take that, right? That's all we're saying. I guess we will definitely take that. Hey, I've got a little update on the Trans-Am that doesn't pertain so much to the transmission, but something you might be interested in. Okay. And what would that be? What happened? Well, a long time ago, probably about 20 years ago, I sent out my original Delco AMFM stereo, two-speaker radio, to get restored. And then I just put it in a drawer and forgot about it. And I realized, wow, I ought to put that back in the car. And I just finished doing that.

So the original AM-FM, man, that was probably a pricey option at the time, right? It was a fairly pricey option at the time. Now, you know, the time passes. You know, I had previously had what was back in the 90s a high-end AMFM taped stereo in the car. It's been in there for all these years. And I got to thinking, you know, who needs that? I don't even have tapes anymore.

Nobody plays tapes. I might as well go back to the 70s all out. So I went ahead and put the thing back in. You know, a great thing about those older radios from the 1970s for your Trans Am, is that, especially if you ever listen to AAM for Talk Radio, the A. radio's on those older radios far superior to any of the stuff that came in later. Just want to let you know that. That's fascinating.

I wasn't aware of that, but it makes complete sense because, as you say, back in those days, pretty much everybody did listen to AM radio. Yeah. And you'll find that there's much higher fidelity on the older ones. They have a wider past man, I think, is what they call that or whatever. But still, great news. So you're like original, original, right? That's what we're looking for.

Yeah, you close the door for now, and it says, if you were back in the malaise era, which is actually a not bad thing. The malaise era looks pretty good at points at time. Hey, I wanted to talk with you about something you have in there. You have a story which is up because it's about the cases. In this particular cases, it's not the cases of COVID. It's the cases of self-immolation from the EV world. What is going on with that one, Eric?

Well, you know, summoning my best Maxwell smart voice, Would you believe that electric vehicles have been catching fire again? In this case, it's Nissan lease. The interesting thing about it is these are brand new vehicles. They were catching fire before they were even delivered. So Nissan tried to get ahead of it and has been pulling the things back, and there's now a recall involving them. But, you know, once again, here we go.

These vehicles just seem to have a propensity for auto ignition, which as if EVs didn't have enough troubles right now, this is adding to them. because, you know, a lot of people are kind of off put by the idea of being roasted to death in their EV. And you had mentioned that there have been a whole bunch. Have they actually kept track on how many EVs have set themselves on fire? I'm not talking about setting themselves on fire in a wreck. You can almost understand any time you get into a wreck and you bash up the battery,

which tends to be built into the body, that there is a real problem with this. But the issue has been EVs just sitting outside, sitting in the, the garage, just sitting there, mining its own business, so to speak, and then just catching on fire. Correct, exactly. You know, I dredged up the old Ford Pinto, which a lot of people will remember because it had a reputation for cashing fire. But the reputation that it had for cashing fire really is more of an urban legend than a reality. Ford made millions of those things. And guess what the grand whopping total was of Pintoes that actually caught fire, according to Netsu. How many? About 35. 35. Okay. And as you, you know, as you, you know, as you

No, and as he just said, you had to hit the thing first in the rear really hard in order to sever the fuel filler the fuel filler neck from the gas tank, which did two things. It let the gas spill, first of all. And secondly, the metal shearing created the spark that caused the fire. You know, so if you think about it, these gas powered vehicles, even pentos are a whole lot safer inherently than these EVs, which, as you pointed out, they sometimes catch fire just sitting there. There's literally nothing you can do to prevent that from happening. Has NHTSA kept track of that or actually have, okay, we know that there have been, let's say, 100 so far in the country here? Because like I said, people just went nuts back of the 1970s with the Pinto deal.

It was actually relatively, you know, a few cars out of many, well, many hundreds of thousands of Pintoes that were sold over that time, right? Millions. And, well, I think the reason is, of course, lawyers got hold of the Pinto. And, you know, there was this big class action lawsuit, very, very, very. public. And, you know, the press jumped on board of that, too. Whereas today, for whatever reason, you know, there doesn't seem to be any class action litigation that I'm aware of with regard to the electric vehicles. And of course, the press, generally speaking, has gone over, bent over backwards to apologize for EVs and to shove under the rug all of the problems that they have. All right. So what are we doing here next with Nissan Leaf? What's going to happen with Nissan?

because I think they were, weren't they going to disconnect, continue the leaf because they were having trouble with it or was that a different car? Well, they discontinued their, you know, their next, they had another model called the Araya. Remember, and it was being hawked on TV ads by, what's her name, Bree Larson, that the chick that's in the, some of the superhero movies. I can't remember what she does. Okay. All right.

Now I vaguely recall that. All right. Okay. So we have this recall on the leaf then. What about Tesla? Is Tesla any better? I know they've gotten out of this EV world here, too. Now it's going to be time to have, now it's time to have the IPO for SpaceX, right?

Yeah, I mean, fundamentally, they're all bad in that they have this inherent problem. That's the thing. There's nothing that you can do to eliminate the problem of a lithium ion battery potentially catching fire as a result of what they call thermal runaway, which is basically a short circuit. And one of the things that I get into in my article on this topic is the fact that over time, things tend to degrade. battery packs, like everything else. So even if the thing has a relatively small fire risk when it's brand new, think about, say, you know, after 10 years of hitting potholes, vibrating, having to sit outside and when it's minus five degrees outside. I hadn't considered that because you're right. You know, we have squeaks and rattles in a conventional gas or diesel powered car over the years

that develop from things being shaken up. Well, what happens when you're shaking up the battery years after year after year, right? That kind of thing. Yeah, so, you know, the possibility of a crack happening in the lattice, you know, a lot of people refer to a battery pack as if it were a singular thing. And as you know, it's not. No. It's essentially thousands of individual cells, if you think about that.

And all it takes is for one of those or a hairline crack or something like that. And then poof, the whole thing happens. And it's a cascading chain reaction. and it happens very quickly, and the fires are extremely hot and very difficult to put out. And that's why you have things like those two container ships that caught fire and sank because an EV, singular, one of them, spontaneously combusted, and the fire was so furious, it caught everything else on fire. And before you know it, the ships had to be abandoned.

Eric, are different battery chemistries perhaps safer than the original lithium ion? I'm thinking of the ones that I see right now. I have one of those jackery, one of those jackery little power packs, you know, big power generator. You charge it up there and keep it there for emergencies. And it has a lithium iron phosphate battery. And the claim is that that is considerably safer. Would you agree with that? Have you?

Yeah, sure. And heck, you never heard about, sure. And you never, if you go back in history, go back 100 years to when the first generation of electrics were out, models like the Baker electric. that used deep cycle 12-volt lead acid batteries. No, 24-volt, I think, if I'm remembering correctly. And they never caught fire. The problem is the chemistry with lithium ion. And, you know, it's been resorted to because it works in other ways.

You know, you can pack high-energy density into it, but you have this problem. You know, solid-state batteries supposedly are less fire-prone, but, you know, you still have all these other problems. They just keep trying to push the square peg in the round hole is the fun. fundamental problem here. Eric Peters with me, E.P.O.com. You have a question or comment on this or anything else involving the road.

Please jump on. 7705633. 770 KMED. Well, we have plenty of other stories to talk about other than 51 new cases of cars burning themselves up, okay? We'll dig into the other one. The speed limiter story,

got to dig into that, okay? We'll do that when we return, all right? 7705-633 on Wheels Up Wednesday for KMED. For precision and performance, Choose KMED. Join the show at 77056633. The Wheels Up Wednesday segment every Wednesday with Eric Peters, automotive journalist and genius at E.P.otos.com.

Hey, Eric, Leno's Law, you wrote about that on EP. And, of course, you know, Jay Leno, very wealthy guy, big car guy, and is able to get some juice legislatively, I suppose. What's the status of his situation right now? Well, they're bringing it back. You might remember, I think we talked about this, I guess, about a year ago. Leno, you know, as you say, he's a rich celebrity and he's a car guy. And because he's got such a prominent public profile, he's been putting his weight behind efforts to rescind the onerous, obnoxious requirement that antique vehicles be subjected to annual smog checks in California. And his point is very well taken. In the first place, less than 1% of vehicles in daily use in California are older than 35. years, which is what the law would exempt. So it's immaterial as far as air quality. It's just punitive, in other words. They're not, they're not doing this because, oh, if we don't do this,

the skies are going to darken and we're going to have acid rain and we're going to be caught. They just want to be mean and get you off the road. We want you into the electric vehicle or a bus, right? That's essentially. You know, the thing I think I found most interesting about and about this and I wrote about it is that I think the whole thing is ridiculous. Vehicles made, as you know, since the late 80s, 90s, all have computer-controlled fuel-injected engines that constantly adjust the air fuel ratio. They do not pollute. Vehicles made since the early 2000s, for the most part, are zero-emissions vehicles, or partial zero-emissions vehicles, I should say, which the EPA says are just this close to being zero emissions like an electric car. So it's fatuous. It's ridiculous.

There just aren't that many vehicles out there that are causing any problem. It's just an excuse. It's a gaslighting way to compel. people to have to take their cars in once a year to get held up to hand over money and just go through all of this hassle. The whole thing, it's like the state safety thing, state safety inspections. You know, it sounds like it might be a good idea, but when you really dig into the nitty-gritty, it's just another hassle imposed on us by government that really produces no meaningful benefit to anybody. Yeah, now here in the state of Oregon, we don't have the safety inspections. We do have the smog, the I&M investigation or the, you know, and really all they do is interrogate the

computer, the car's computer, you know, when you go in. And unless you're in a rural rural Josephine County doesn't have it, but Jackson County does, you know, where I happen to live. And it only applies for, I think, 20 years. So we have a car that's a 2006 facade. That one's not going to have to be smocked when we go in there. And it hasn't been that – it hasn't been that big of a deal. It's only every four years when you get your taps, which is what you do here.

That's probably not quite so bad. But from what I understand in California, don't they make you, if you have an old classic car right now, you essentially have to rebuild the emission system to the way it was? Like if you had a 69 Cadillac, you better have an air pump on it, you know, from 1969 or else you can't get tabs for it. Is that the way that works there? It's even worse than that. It not only has to be functional in the sense that the exhaust emissions is measured by the equipment are at or below the required level. they have to have all the emissions components on the vehicle have to be CARB, California Air Resources approved, specific for that model. In other words, you can't use a generic aftermarket thing

like a catalytic converter that accomplishes the same purpose. You have to buy this very specific part. Yeah, but how many 1969 Cadillac converters might be around or early 70s, let's go, say 1970s. It's a way to push these vehicles off road because you're exactly right. You're talking about vehicles that, you know, 50 years old, 40 years old, you just can't find certain parts for these things. Now, you can find, you know, functionally equivalent replacement parts, but it's not the same thing and it's not approved. And this speaks to the, you know, the meanness of it because you bring your vehicle in and obviously you're trying to comply with the spirit of the law. You've got the, you know, components in. It passes the test. You're not polluting.

Nonetheless, they still fail you because the parts aren't exactly as specified by carb. So are they going to give Jay his law, so to speak, which will help everybody out in the Golden State? Well, according to what I've found out about this, this time it stands a better chance of passage because they're including this caveat that the vehicle has to be titled or registered as an antique vehicle. In other words, no daily plates, and that's fine. And I think they may even say that you have to have specialty or antique vehicle insurance on it as well. And most people who own vehicles that are 40-something years old are already in that box, so it really doesn't matter.

Okay, I get it. I had a listener question. Kevin Gill from Klauser Drilling is a well drilling company here in Southern Oregon, Eric. And he has a question for you. He says, Bill, we're having issues getting synthetic compressor oil for our drilling rigs and are having to stock it in plan three to four months in advance if we need it. It's designed for extreme heat and pressure, and we have to service the systems every year.

And I guess the capacity is 50 gallons of this specialized oil per one. well rig, and we've had this issue since COVID, but what he's wondering is, are you seeing any shortages or allocations on lubricants in your experience in the automotive world with all the people that you connect with around the country here? Yeah, absolutely. I can't say anything specifically about commercial grade lubricants because that's out of my wheelhouse, but I will tell you, and I think we talked about this on one of the other shows in the past, I'm noticing that certain weights are becoming difficult to find, at least on the shelves, and you have to go to online resource to get it. For example, just regular old 10W40, which a lot of older vehicles

specified. You know, my local auto parts stores don't stock it anymore. And of course, if you have an older, older vehicle that requires oils that were formulated for engines that have flat tappet, rather than roller camshafts that have higher levels of certain additives in it, you pretty much have to buy that stuff online. It's almost unavailable now over the counter. That's really interesting. flat tap it, that would include, oh, gosh, that would include by, well, the van again, of course, but that takes special diesel oil. You have to have the diesel oil. Any diesel oil ought to be fine for that, right? It should be. Yeah, though, again, they've been, and my understanding is that they're taking a lot of the sulfur out of the lubricants, and that is an issue for diesel vehicles.

The oils that you and I were just talking about a moment ago, particularly are required by most American cars with V8 engines that were made through the early 80s. From what I understand, I'm not an expert on this, Eric, but the additives that will work in those 1980s cars, 1970s cars, maybe even up to about 1990 or so, you really can't use those for more modern cars because doesn't it screw up the emission system like the catalytic converter? Doesn't it mess with them in some cases? It does. That's why they removed it from the motor oil because they tended to accelerate the fouling of the

interior lattice of the catalytic converter. And you don't need it if you have a modern vehicle with a roller tap it, a roller camshaft, I should say. But if you have an older vehicle that has the flat tappet, you absolutely need it. Now, the good news is you can get it. The additive is typically marketed as ZDDP, and you can get it from a variety of sources. Eastwood sells it. And if you just go into a search engine and type it in there, it's very easy to find. It's not expensive. It's about 12 bucks. Last time I checked for a bottle of it, I use it every time I've change the oil on my transam, and you can just add it to the high-quality oil of your choice that you bought. And before we go to the phones, I wanted to ask you, are people starting to throw in the towel

and not use that watery oil on all of these modern V6s and VH that seem to be blowing up because of thin oil and oiling problems? Well, yeah, the more you know, the more you know, right? And, you know, it used to be in the past that it was wise to go with whatever the factory recommendation was as far viscosity and things. But, you know, it's becoming evident that these ultra-altre-thin oils are accelerating wear and tear and that they're, you know, a compliance oil, just like the compliance engine and the compliance transmission. And once people realize that, they're recognizing that, hey, it would behoove me to go up to a slightly thicker grade of oil because it will increase the longevity and reliability of my engine.

Yeah. OW20 versus 5W30. I'll stick with it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. We'll do that. with me, E.P.otos.com. Good morning, caller. Welcome. You're on with Eric Peters. Who's this? Morning, Bill. Steve. Steve, got a question for Eric. Go ahead. Well, I've got something to say about that California law. My dad bought a brand new 1968 Ford F-100 that he ordered from the factory with the 0200 engine and the heaviest suspension he could get on it. And it came without any in 1968 without any smog at all on it. Yet 20 years later, Ford did start putting smog on him later on that year,

California required him to have smog on it, which it never originally had. And Ford would not back him up, even though they had the specifications of the bill that he ordered. And he had to find the smog parts to put on that truck. Man. It is just... That's absolutely outrageous, because if it was compliant,

with federal law and California law at the time of its manufacture and sale, it should be exempted from any such requirement. It should have been, but it wasn't, and we had to find smog to put on that truck. I still have that truck. 68F100, great drug. Yeah, I would keep that truck if you can keep it in good shape, huh? Absolutely. All right.

Thanks for the call, Steve. Good hear from you, man. Insulty injury on that one. Good morning. KMED. Hi, who's this? You're on with Eric. James.

Hi, Jane. What's up? I'd like to ask her a question. Sure. Go ahead. Okay. Have you ever heard of a Henry J? I have heard of a Henry J. and I'm having a Biden moment. I can't remember what that is. Is it related to Kaiser Frazier? Yes, it is. I've heard of that, Gene. What's the point? Did you have one? Just curious, Jean.

I was wondering if he ever heard of a Henry J. and who made him. Bill, do you remember? I think it did have something to do. I'll tell you what, I'm going to consult Google right now, all right? Okay. And let's see what we come up with. We'll try to get an answer to your question right now, Gene. Henry J.

The Henry J. produced by Kaiser-Frasier, 1950 to 1954. There you go, Gene. Got the answer. In other words, they don't make them anymore. Oh, no. Not for a long guy. Hey, that was a great little car. Okay.

It was. They actually had a line of smaller cars. Great deal. Thank you for the car. Let me grab another one here on Wheels Up Wednesday. Hi, good morning. Who's this? This is Jim from Bufall.

Jim, in Bufels. What's going on? Hey, I got a quick question for Eric. Sure. Does oil have a shelf life? I bought some Royal Purple like eight years ago. I've got a brand new fresh-built motor, and I'm wondering, should I use that? That's a really great question.

That's a great question, though. If it's in a sealed container and it hasn't been stored in a place that's exposed to Sun. I wouldn't have any fear of using it. Okay. All right. All right. Thank you much. Good luck on that build. You know, there are, I think there are limits to that, though, Eric. I recall that I was watching some other person who was working on engines, and they had antique oil, you want to say antique oil, oil from the 1960s or 70s that they had bought. And they had kept on the shelf. They kept it in the, it had been stored well. but they opened it up and the ingredients had really started separating and deteriorating over the years.

Well, sure, that's 60 years. I really wouldn't worry about, you know, five, six, seven, eight years. That's, you know, not a big deal. And of course, back then they stored oil differently. Remember those oil cans that were like a paper material? Oh, yes. Yeah. So it's not like the containers that they use today are vastly better. And, you know, again, it's recent. I mean, I wouldn't put 20-year-old oil in a new build or even anything else. But something of recent vintage, not a problem. Yeah. All right. All right. I remember those paper, those cardboardy cans with the top, and you had to have the spout and you'd stick it in there, and it would always usually squirt on your hand or your shirt or something. And you couldn't pour it without spilling a third of the can everywhere. Pretty much. Yeah. I don't miss those cans. I really know. Me either.

All right. Let's see if we can grab another call before we go to the review of this week. I really liked your review. I want to get to that. Hi, KMEDE.D. You're on with Eric. Who's this? Good morning. Hello. Morning, Bill. Hey. Good morning, Eric. Morning. Morning. Your caller on the Royal Purple, there are, the additive packages will settle out into the bottom of that. So you do need to shake them up. Okay. And put them, you know, like upside down for a couple of weeks and keep shaking them periodically. Having been a Royal Purple Rep, I can tell you that. Okay.

We'll take it from us. Thank you, Jeff. All right. Appreciate that. Okay, before we take off, we always talk about what Eric's been driving lately. And in this particular case, it's the 2026 Mazda 3. Now, is this the only car that they're now offering? The most of the only car that has four doors or five in the case, because they sell it as a sedan and a hatchback.

The only other car Mazda sells right now is the Miata. The really interesting thing about it is it's the first experience that I've had so far this year of a car. that has been freed of some of its compliance technologies. Mazda no longer installs auto stop-start, our favorite thing, or cylinder deactivation in that car. Okay. Now, hold on just a second. Mazda, Real American Salute. We have to give them a salute for this particular one. This is because of the changes of the rules and regulations in the Trump administration, right?

Yep. Very good. Yep, absolutely. And the other thing about it that I'm a big fan of is it's got the modern analog of a big block engine in that it comes. Okay, okay, a big block engine. What is a big block engine in today's parlance, Eric? It's 2.5 liters, which is huge, you know, compared to the 1.5 liter engines you'll find in something like the current Honda Accord, which is a bigger car. You know, and generally speaking, even some of the luxury cars now come with little two-liter force as we talk about.

Well, the other ones have a 1.5 liter three cylinders. Don't ever get those. Correct. Or smaller than that. How about 1.2 liters? I've got motorcycles with bigger engines than that. Man. You know, so it's really refreshing to see a car, and this is a compact car now. You know, it's not a big car that has a standard 2.5 liter engine. And the real boon to that isn't just that it's bigger. It's that it doesn't need a turbo. So, you know, the standard engine makes adequate power, close to 200 horsepower without a turbo. Wow. And it's paired with a six-speed automatic, which doesn't have 10 speeds or nine speeds and it's not a CVT. And you can still get a manual, though unfortunately, for now at least, the manual is limited to

the hatchback version. You can't get that in the sedan. But still, it's available. I'm righty. I'm almost in tears here. Not a CVT and an manual available. It's actually a wonderful thing. How's it drive, though?

Wonderfully. You know, it's, you know, Mazda really does a good job of making all of its vehicles, even the crossovers. have some verve to them. You know, they understand that there are a lot of people out there who just love to have a meata. The problem is meata is a two-seater has no space for anything except the driver and a passenger. Lovely, but not practical for most people. Correct. You know, you've got a family. You need to have the extra seats. You need the room. So, you know, that's why they sell predominantly crossovers now. But nonetheless, why not let's make it at least fun to drive? So they do a

very good job of tuning the suspension of their other vehicles to have that really nice combination of of give and grip at the same time that makes it enjoyable to throw around in a corner. And, you know, they've got good performance because their engines and, you know, their transmissions aren't compliance engines and compliance transmissions. They've actually got some personality to them. And, you know, as you said, I cheer them for what they're doing. I have personally driven a Mazda 3, but it was spent a long time, probably about 10, 12 years back when I was looking for a new car at that time.

The part that I didn't like about it was that the front dashboard area to me felt claustrophobic. It was in really close to the driver. And I think it just had to do with the – but I love the way it drove. I really did. But I'm just kind of curious. Is the 2026 still like that or have they moved that back and giving you a little bit of breathing room in the front? Well, I didn't find it claustrophobic. And, you know, I like the way they've laid out the interior and the dashboard specifically because it's not a gigantic LCD touch.

You know, it's a conventional instrument cluster with analog gauges, except for the spenometer, but the rest of them are, you know, needles and dials, which I like. And while it does have a touchscreen, it's not off-putting. It's just up there off to the right on top of the dash. The only thing that I really don't like about the car, and it's a trivial thing, is that they've got this mouse, push, rotate, control thing on the center console that you have to use to access certain functions like change the stereo channel. And it's just a little, you know, how they make you so you have to do more.

multiple things to do something that you could just as easily do with turning a knob once. That's right. That's it. But still the fact that it doesn't have rather A-S-S or cylinder deactivation. That's great. Correct. And it has a big enough engine that it doesn't need a turbo. And it has a six-speed conventional automatic, which means durability would be pretty good. Yeah.

And more than likely that power train will go, you know, like we've been, you know, used to, 200, 250,000 miles easily before anything significant breaks if you take decent care of it. So, you know, that's not something a lot of people think about when they buy a car, but they ought to unless they're the kind of person who trades in a car every five or six years. If you're keeping it for, you wanting to keep it for 12, 15 years, you want a car that's simpler rather than more complex. All right, very good. Let's grab a couple calls for you take off, Eric, and go back to your day job. We always appreciate the time. Hi, you're on with Eric.

Who's this? Morning. Hey, good morning. Hey, this is Scott, EP, professional driver. He had a question for Eric. What if you think about the Mercedes-Benz, GLC, formatic, the 2026 model. Okay.

Or has he took in a review of that? I know. The GLCs? Well, you know, let's start with a general thing. You know, they're luxury vehicles. And luxury vehicles have become quite complicated and expensive, not only to buy, but to repair when things go wrong. There's not necessarily anything that stands out in my mind about it that's objectionable.

Mercedes formatic system is generally considered. to be pretty good. But you get inside the vehicle and you will be greeted by an enormous LCD touch screen and a lot of technology. A lot of people like that. And if you like that, that's great. On the other hand, if you don't like that, it might not be so great. All right. Let's grab another call. Thanks, Scott. Hi, good morning, KMED. You're on with Eric. Who's his? This is Terry. Terry, go ahead. Which question? I missed, I got on late. So you were just talking about oils. And I've got a 22-s. Subaru, should I go with what they recommend on that, or should I go a little higher on the

viscosity? Well, if they recommend the zero weight, yeah, like Bill and I were talking about, if it were my vehicle, I would go up a little bit to like a five or even a 15. Five or 15. What about, what about higher on the upper end? On the upper end, on the upper. That's the hot viscosity, isn't it, Aaron? 30 to 40.

Yeah, but generally they're okay. At least my understanding is they're okay on the upper end. It's the lower end that potentially calls. causes the accelerated wear. And a thing to think about with modern vehicles, you know, they're, they're much more finicky about oil than engines were in the past because they have a lot of systems that are pressure dependent that involve the oiling system in somewhere and other. Oh, yeah. Well, also the valve cams, right? What is that? Yes, exactly. Those adjusters, those pressure uses oil pressure to adjust the valve timing, right? That kind of thing.

Yeah, exactly. And you don't want to do anything that's going to cause problems with that. Yeah, not too radical. Maybe just up a notch on. the bottom in. Hi, KMED, you're on with Eric. You get the final call in. Who's this? Hey, Eric. Hey, Bill. It's Matt. Hey, Matt. Not that Mazda needs me to do a commercial for them. I'd never owned one, but in 2012,

about 2008, Mazda 3, hatchback, the 2.3 liter, I believe, no turbo. I had 20,000 miles when I bought it. My son took at the Florida three years plus ago, and it had 189,000, and he's still driving the wheels off. that thing. No kidding. It's a, it's a, what they, I think it's called the automatic stick. So it's not a true manual. But, uh, it's been an amazing, amazing car, almost no problems.

I think I replaced a thermostat and a couple of belts and that is it. Oh, got to love that. Matt, thanks for the story. We appreciate the experience. You know, Bill, you and I, we reached this, this great apotheosis in the late 90s, the early 2000s and into roughly about, you know, 25, 20, 10-ish when they just had built these brilliant engines and cars that if you took any kind of sensible care of them, they would last you for 15 or 20 years. And you could put 300,000 miles on them. And, you know, roughly around 2010 or so, that's when things started going in the opposite direction. I'd like us to see going back in that opposite direction again. All right, very good. We'll talk again next week. And thank you so much for the call on Zoom and beyond.

And E.P.Otos.com sign up and comment. A lot of good commentary goes on there, too. I think it's one of my favorite parts along with your journalism. Okay. Thank you, Bill. E.P.ottos.com on KMED and KMED HD1 Eagle Point Medford, KBXG grants pass. We'll catch up on the headlines next.