Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 04-30-25_WEDNESDAY_6AM

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

04-30-25_WEDNESDAY_6AM

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Clauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at clauserdrilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. Good morning and how are things for you today? Join the conversation 7705633 like my voice guy Victor says. The email bill at BillMeyersShow.com. Facebook.com slash Bill Meyer Show is up.

It's not a fancy set set but it is me and we are glad to have you either watching and or listening on 106 3 in KMED in Jackson County 106 7 in South Jackson County Ashland area Phoenix talent that sort of area comes in best and 105 9 in Grants Pass what and also 99 3 for Greater Josephine County during the morning show. We appreciate you listening wherever you happen to be and on KMED.com. Hey, it's 12 minutes after six. A big deal yesterday, of course,

Trump had his huge rally in Michigan. It was kind of like one of those campaign rallies. He ended up doing some tariff changes to try to help out the automobile industry. Well attended, everything is going well. And I think the takeaway was that you ain't seen nothing yet, and we'll see about that. We'll talk more about some concerns that I have about the tariffs and how things are headed out a little bit later.

Now one thing I think President Trump, though, has been hitting home runs on has been border enforcement. And one of the announcements that he made yesterday or the other day was an executive order going after sanctuary states. Remember when I was talking about Trumpy Claus having a little fun with that, you know, you better be good, you better be nice. You know, he's making a list and checking it twice. Going to find out who's not helping ICE, you know, that sort of thing. And this is going to be turning out to be a big deal because we are a sanctuary state. We're idiotic about that.

That's just been something. And you know how Oregon is when it comes to Democrats, pathologically altruistic to criminals. That's essentially what the state of Oregon is all about. And this is a big win that Trump has been working so well. In fact, I think that's really the biggest success that he has had. He has been getting control of the border. That's it. Economy, I have more squishy on, and I'll talk about that here in just a little bit. But I've invited federal prosecutor John Deegan on and I have never had the opportunity to talk with him. He's a new guest I'm

adding to my portfolio if you want to call it. And we're going to be talking about that executive order going after the sanctuary cities and sanctuary states. And I said this could be actually hurting us in some ways and stopping grant stream funding. But as far as I'm concerned, good, because the criminal pathological altruism of the Democrats has been papered over a lot by the federal government's largesse, all the money that they will ship to Democrats to go do their thing. And we're going to talk about the legalities of it, how that could actually work. And naturally, the state attorney generals, you know that Ray Field is going to be joining. Oh, you can't stop.

You have to keep sending us money no matter how much we fight you. You know, that's in essence where Dan Ray Field will be. We'll talk with this gentleman with, we'll talk with this former federal prosecutor next hour. We'll do that, okay? And it'll be a good talk. Eric Peters joins me here in about 20 minutes. Wheels Up Wednesday, always a lot of fun. And we're going to be digging into, I want to talk a bit about that Amazon, that Amazon truck, or that one that's being kind of backed by Amazon, the one that's slate, that you could get the electric truck for about $20,000. It's kind of a real stripped down bare bones thing. Eric wrote about that. I'd like to find out more about it because we've been talking

about the need for real practical stripped down transportation. Now this one being an electric vehicle and they're so expensive to manufacture in the first place, being stripped down and getting it down to about 20 grand, it's not bad. Of course, if you want a radio or something like that in it, you better find an old boom box over at the Goodwill and bring it in, apparently. That's how it works. You probably just use your phone anyway, I guess is how they would work that. But I don't know, does it have a USB plug so you can plug the phone in?

I don't know. We'll talk with Eric about that here in the next few minutes. I was looking at an article this morning on the Daily Courier. Oregon tourism industry warns of damage from Trump's cuts. And what Vicki writes this morning, tourism industry and business groups from throughout Oregon, including Josephine and Jackson counties, are sounding the alarm that Trump administration cuts to public lands could impact outdoor recreation and hurt local economies. In a letter to Oregon's Democratic and Republican-elected leaders, more than 50 organizations urging the senators and representatives, Vicki writes, to reach out to the administration and share

the group's concerns about the impact to the state's outdoor recreation industry. Spending on outdoor recreation in Oregon exceeded $16 billion. $16 billion, really? $16 billion with a B? That could be. And supported 192,000 jobs in 2022. That number sounds a little high. Yeah, I wonder if that's 16 million. But anyway, national forests and parks in Oregon attracted millions of visitors,

it says in 2023, generated nearly 235 million in spending in communities around those public lands, the letter said. Okay, this very one may be true. And Doge has been cutting staff and reworking stuff, you know, in various parks and people who are working for them, Rangers, etc., etc. I don't know, the one thing that I think really should be looked at here is that public lands right now don't make money. Public lands are an expense on the taxpayer. DOGE, of course, is doing everything possible to reduce the expenses on the taxpayers. What have we done with public lands over the last 30, 40 years? Not supposed to do any timber, right? No timber, no saws, no nothing, just burn them every summer and then build a taxpayer

for that. That's essentially how we've been managing public lands. Part of me wonders if, you know, when President Trump also puts out this order, the executive order, that we're going to be opening up at least half of our forests to more commercial logging, is part about taking that off the taxpayers' back. Instead of billing the taxpayers to put people up at Crater Lake and all the rest of it, find a way of working the wealth. Actually get into the wealth. And maybe the environmental minds that have done everything to lock up this place into this burn the forest every summer and

then build the taxpayers kind of forest model public lands model which is really what we've been living under. Maybe Trump trimming back what's going on at the national parks and people going in there is a bit of encouragement. Listen. You've locked up all these federal lands. You can't mine. You can't log. You can't do anything else. It takes years to do it. No oil, no nothing like that. And then you expect the taxpayers to pay for your tourist attractions on the public lands. That's essentially the way we do it here in Southern Oregon. Remember sustainable tourism. All the left-wing eco nuts are

always talking about sustainable tourism we're supposed to have. You know, the federal government just needs to pay for the sustainable tourism and then we'll be able to reap the wealth benefits from it. And then Trump, wisely, is probably looking at this and going, hey listen, this stuff is costing us money. There's all this wealth on these public lands. These public lands need to be paying for their own keep. You want to have these public lands? That's great. You're either going to pay 80 bucks ahead to go into Crater Lake or maybe you better find a way for these public lands to start generating some more wealth. Do you think that's a reasonable assumption that might be going on here? That all of this threatening of sustainable tourism from

the eco nuts that have locked everything up and say, come here and view our forest fires as we burn the grass in the forest every summer. I'm being a little sarcastic. Okay, more than a little sarcastic there. I'm thinking that what this is about is encouraging people to be a little more open to real wealth development and to not have these lands be a burden on the people, because they are. Like I said, the public lands are a burden on the people right now. We're not supposed to do much of anything productive on them other than burn them and then build a taxpayer for the firefighting. That's essentially what we've been doing now for decades, ever since Spotted Owl decision. And of course, that Spotted Owl decision apparently

was a big freaking lie of immense proportions too. Maybe this is how the Trump administration gets the attention of the insane eco nuts that have decided that we're going to just burn the forest and build a taxpayer. Maybe it's going to be a little carrot, little carrot, instead of just stick and saying, hey, maybe you should be a little carrot instead of just a stick and saying, hey, maybe you should be a little more realistic at developing wealth on the land, and then maybe we'll hire back your people. Maybe then we'll use wealth developed from the lands, this immense amount of land here in the state of Oregon,

and then we have that help pay for the Parks Department too, Parks and Recreation on federal land. In other words, you could have your cake, but you have to have us, you know, you have to give the federal government something in here to be able to monetize this out. I think that would be reasonable. Now that's not talked about at all within Vicki's story because this is probably not in the Econut left-wing and maybe even in the journalistic world, not a very popular way of looking at this.

But this idea that the federal government is going to keep supplying states like Oregon with tourism, with public land tourism, and yet public lands are locked up by environmental policy, that doesn't pencil, does it? We could talk about that if you wish, and I think that's a reasonable assumption that something might be going on. Sour the National Park milk a little bit to encourage people to say, okay, maybe we actually should be generating some wealth and help the parks generate income too. Now, there's not just going to give it to you. In fact, I'm thinking about this for a lot of things. I was reading another article, guess what it was, Oregon Tourism Industry Warns of of damage from Trump.

Here we go. Federal cancellation of grant programs, this is in the world by the way, federal cancellation of grant program impedes Oregon's ability to prepare for disasters. OEM has outlined the impact of the April 4 announcement from FEMA canceling the Fiscal Year 2024 Building Resilience Infrastructure and Communities grant program that it has in Oregon. Projects that were selected but not yet awarded won't get funding. Now what are some of these projects? Well, it includes the Medford Water Commission.

$34 million. Well, it includes the Medford Water Commission. Thirty-four million dollars. The project would conduct critical infrastructure improvements and four systems as part of the Rogue Valley Water Supply Resiliency Program. The goal is to enhance the resilience of the water systems against seismic events, wildfires, and droughts caused by extreme weather conditions. All right, we have that. We have the City of Grants Pass water treatment plant. The federal share of that was 50 million dollars. And I know it's an expensive thing. New rules, gotta have better water treatment

plants. Same with City of Medford. City of Medford's gonna have to roll up their sleeves. 300 million dollars. Can anybody explain to me why anybody outside of the state of Oregon should be paying for our water treatment plants and our flood resiliency programs? Doesn't that really indicate, though, how bat guano crazy we've become in Oregon. We're all worried about that gender-affirming care surgeries and do things like that. You know, there's a lot of stupidity that the Oregon State Legislature is able to do via the fact that it's been backfilled for years by the federal government. The federal government would backfill, do this grant stream funding for the serious infrastructure projects, those sort of things.

And then the state legislature gets around here and figures out, okay, how can we disarm citizens and then how can we get all of our boys to chop off their genitalia and girls to chop off their breasts? That kind of thing, right? That's the sort of stupidity that having Uncle Sugar paying a lot of the backfill for the important stuff, I think, has really hurt us. And maybe what is going to be happening with the Trump administration is that because they've been borrowing $2 for every six that gets spent, you know, $6 trillion, $2 trillion of that is spent, is borrowed, they can't, two trillion of that is spent is borrowed,

they can't do this anymore. But then I want to ask ourselves, why did we ever get to the point that we had to sit around here and beg, that we had to be beggars to take care of our own infrastructure down here? It never made sense to me. Now one could say that, yeah, taxes and regulations are high and a lot of these reasons why we had to get a new water plan are because of federal clean water regulations. Yeah, that's certainly part of that.

Maybe President Trump can do something about that too. But yeah, we're going to have to fly on our... Isn't Oregon's motto, she flies with her own wings? Well, Oregon flies with her own wings. Maybe they're two left wings, I think. That's why we have trouble flying. We're always flying in a circle because we have two left wings. But truth be told, isn't there a good chance that what we're looking at here is that with the gravy train over, with the federal government being forced to really trim its sails, we're going to have to count and depend on and work on what really matters rather than what the Kami ideologues in Salem would like us to pay attention to.

We can talk about that if you wish to. 7705633 770 KMED. This is the Bill Meyer Show. The big three-day meat sale is this Friday through Sunday at your local raised food place. Stock up your freezer with beef, chicken, and pork including these specials. Value-packed ground beef. Regular grind only $3.99 a pound. Boneless beef ribeye just $7.99 sold whole in the bag. Value Pack boneless skinless chicken breast, $2.99 a pound sold in a 10 pound bag. These and many other specials this Friday through Sunday at your local Race Food Place. Proud to be your local employee owned grocery store. It's time to run to

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was just talking about the, you know, the cutbacks coming from the Trump administration. And they need to happen. And is there a possibility that when we're looking at the public lands that this is going to be part of the encouragement to actually open up wealth generation on these public lands rather than burn the forests and build the taxpayers every year? And yet we're still going to send lots of people over to Crater Lake so that they can be smoked in in the summertime.

See what I'm getting at? Tom, you have a way in on that? What are you thinking? Of course you could. Go to Crater Lake to be smoked in. Well, yeah, you know, it really is kind of silly. You know, they're complaining how the Trump cuts will cause problems on the sustainable tourism.

Well, sustainable tourism is at this point based on sending people to Crater Lake and then have them stay at the lodge, I guess, and be smoked in during the summertime because of insane wildfire policy that we have here because we don't want to do anything about forests. Just saying, you know, it's kind of how we're... Can you disagree with me on that, which is the policy? No, no, we're dealing with major insanity. Well, you asked the question about why does Medford or any place in Oregon have to go begging to the federal government.

Well, you know, you've got to understand, most of our tax money is going to blow up the planet. And we've got a, there's a lot of dependent billionaires out there that need our tax dollars and so forth. Is there really a trillion dollars worth of defense needed in this country? Well of course there is. I mean there's a lot of needy billionaires out there that really need tax support so that that's where most of our tax money so if we don't have enough money to keep the potholes out of our roads and the sewer system going and the water flowing and so forth, I mean, you've got to really connect

that. I mean, we've got to help these dependent billionaires out there that want to blow up the planet. So that's where most of our tax money is going. Well, I can't say it's most of it, but it's a pretty darn healthy chunk of it. In fact, I think the Trump administration even just expanded that more yesterday and is talking about doing this. So more than a trillion dollars.

I don't think it takes a trillion, more than a trillion dollars to defend the United States. However, to patrol the rest of the world, yeah, it probably is part of why it's so expensive. Military bases do we have around the planet right now. The last I heard is180 or something like that. You know, defending freedom is an expensive business, Tom. By the way, you make me smile, but thank you for the call, all right? Okay. Vicki, you wanted to talk about the public lands issue of this and

how public lands in essence have been a burden on the taxpayer rather than a benefit. But what are you thinking? Well, you know, I moved here in 1980 and public lands were actually public lands. We were able to go up to the mountains wherever we didn't have to pay. There wasn't designated areas that you had to stay in. And I just feel like if they're so wrapped up in tourism that those people that are coming here should be the ones that are contributing to staying in the parks, keeping the parks maintained. Well, technically they do that right now through their

user fees, but you have brought up a very salient point though. I came here in Southern Oregon in 1991, is when I moved to our area, not as long ago as you did, okay? And you are correct in which there was a much more free and open way of the way it was feeling even 30, 40 years ago. Part of that though, is because the public lands were still somewhat productive at that point.

That's true. They were doing logging when we first... That's right. That's what the valley was built on. That's what everybody had a job at the mill. And now we're finding that to go to some of our favorite spots, it's gated. Yeah, if it's not gated, then of of course there's don't go up here, you must go into the improved campsite, etc. etc. And we have to do this and you can't go there, you can't walk there. Oh, there's the the lily marbled murrel that's you know feather sucker or something you know over in this thing. As the lands have become less productive all they have done is place more

restrictions on them and then they wonder why there's no money from the federal till to end up, well, encouraging this sustainable tourism. I'm going to slightly say that term again. All right? Yeah. And everything is...they have designated trails that you need to stay on. They have designated campsites you need to go to. They have designated trails that you need to stay on. They have designated campsites you need to go to. It's like your most controlling helicopter mom and dad is with you everywhere you go out in those areas.

I mean, you can't they say enjoy the nature, enjoy the beauty. Well, all I see when I go up to Applegate is broken bottles, dirty diapers, broken, you know, people something stuff, you know, and I'm not saying that that's people around here. What we bring in, we take out. Yeah, yeah, I agree. Hey, Vicki, I appreciate the take on it. All right, Eric's going to be standing by. We're going to talk cars here, but thanks for giving us your take on it. All right, 634. And we'll catch up with the rest of the news here with Bill London in just a moment. Eric Peters wheels up Wednesday and maybe call and talk about cars with Eric too. 770-5633. We've heard it all.

A wind gust blew me off the road. I suppose yield can take on several meanings. My hood got karate chopped by a railroad crossing gate. I need to have a... Westfall Roofing Inc. Call today to get an estimate tomorrow. 541-941-3736. CCP number 250730. Good morning. This is Newt Starr. to Today we talk cars, transportation, politics. It's all sort of combined with the monetary system.

It's there. Eric Peters, automotive journalist and genius from epautos.com. Eric, welcome back. I guess the big one is a huge, huge recall in the General Motors side of things this day, huh? Yeah, this has been percolating for some time and now it's official. GM is recalling about 600,000 vehicles, and s u b's that are equipped with the uh... the ls series v eight engine

because of catastrophic engine failures in the character i think that's this allocation to the loss of propulsion being total engine failure within uh... days of having purchased the vehicle actually know somebody that had this happen to them they they bought a brand-new catalytic escalate this was i guess about eight months ago and within a week of driving it, the engine just completely granated itself. And they went through this horrendous process with General Motors, whereby

initially the dealer slash GM offered them a rebuilt slash replacement engine, which of course, you know, I mean, there goes a third of the value of your vehicle. Sure. Decided to trade the thing in. Yeah. They ended up getting a buyback, but it took months and months and months for this to happen. So now GM probably is going to have to do the same with something like 600,000 vehicles. And it's just a measure of the advancing decrepitude of this country that it seems like nothing works anymore,

whether it's vehicles or airplanes or any other thing that has moving parts. Now let's dig into this. Has there been a cause of this? Because I remember all automobile manufacturers have had some kind of major problem from one time or another. There's one particular engine that came out and said boy was the best of intentions and boy was it a turkey. Even Toyota has had some problems with with with stuff in the past year what is it about this ls engine which has been causing many many problems and

by the way what what range of years are we talking about for some of these gm vehicles roughly the last several years three four years and it's not that the engine is bad in fact the engine is very good it's one of the best engines on the market it's the overhead valve v8 engine that GM has been gradually improving for many, many decades, that really traces its ancestry back to 1955 and the first modern overhead valve V8 that was mass produced.

Yeah, so this is a very stout, kind of an old design refined over the years here. It's very tried and true. So what happened that we have so many of these blowing up though? There's two potential sources for it. One is a manufacturing problem and the other is a supplier, i.e. parts problem. There's apparently something wrong with the bottom end, meaning bearings or machining of the bottom end crank, crankshaft and so on that causes a failure of the bottom end and that of course results in a causes a failure of the bottom end. And that, of course, results in a catastrophic global failure of the entire engine.

So somebody cheaped out somewhere, or somebody just put together a shoddy manufacturing process. And it's got really bad consequences. I can tell you again, that person that I know will never buy another General Motors product. And this is somebody who was willing to give them $100,000 for a new Escalade and the experience so soured of them that they'll just never be a customer of General

Motors again. So this is going to have really big repercussions. What is General Motors offering for the people in this recall? Are they going to replace it with new proper engines or are they going to be remanufactured? How is this working right now? Well, yeah. The best that they can do is put a new crate engine in it, but in my opinion, that really doesn't solve the problem because you now have a

vehicle with a record that it had its engine replaced, and even if the new engine is trouble free, a lot of buyers down the road, if you trade your vehicle in or want to sell it, they might shy away from a vehicle that's had its engine replaced. Also, it's inherently problematic to take an engine out of a modern vehicle because of all the myriad connections. And so you have to disconnect everything, all those wiring harnesses, everything, and put everything back together manually by hand, not on a production line, but in a cramped engine compartment, which again increases the chances that after they do this, something's not going to work right.

So you end up having a vehicle that has ongoing serial problems and you know it's a double kick in the butt to think I paid a hundred thousand dollars for that no thank you yeah all right so have they figured out the problem and have they repaired it for the current batch of LS engines moving forward this is what I'm trying to find out it's one thing to say we're going because you remember Hyundai Hyundai had some problems with with some of their four cylinder models for a This is what I'm trying to find out. It's one thing to say we're going... Because you remember Hyundai. Hyundai had some problems with some of their four cylinder models for a number of years. And it had to do with casting problems and there would be like sometimes sand in the

casting that would then get into it. There were just some flaws. They eventually got it fixed. But yeah, for a lot of years, Hyundai, Kia had some issues too, right? Yeah. I mean, I don't know because they've not made it official yet. I assume that they know and I assume they have taken steps to fix whatever the problem is, whether it was some issue during manufacturing or more

than likely in my opinion, they got bad parts from somewhere. They got a bid on a part that was lower cost than a higher quality part. They figured they'd save some money, they bought the part and now they're getting the bill for that. Yeah, you save a few bucks on on main bearings and then look what happens, right? Well, that's the way it kind of works. What is this going to do to General Motors bottom line? Just curious. Well, yeah, it's a good question. It potentially could be catastrophic for General Motors because the trucks and SUVs, you know, models like the Tahoe and then because the trucks and SUVs, you know, models like the Tahoe and then the GMC equivalent of that, and of course the Cadillac Escalade and the 1500 series pickups all use that engine.

And it may result in a reduction in sales of those vehicles because, you know, people are looking at it and thinking, you know, do I really want to risk $50,000 on the low end for one of these things and potentially get left holding the bag for mechanical problems and More rapid depreciation because of the poor reputation. Maybe this time I'm going to go get a Ford or a Ram instead Yeah, and and of course everyone boy everyone's under pressure right now, too This is this is not a great development really sorry to hear that yeah, especially with a V8 like you had mentioned This is going back way to the 1950s. This engine has been around forever and ever, amen.

It's a proven design. It's very different than the recent problems that Toyota had with its new 3.5 liter twin turbo V6 in models like the Tundra and the equivalent Lexuses that are based on that model and they had to recall all the engines in that for some other related problem. But that was a highly complicated engine that replaced their very durable 5.7-liter V8 that was one of the best engines on the market. So it's a different story, but it's really got the same punchline. There's another article you have up on the EP Autos today, which I think is just great.

It's kind of going down this same kind of deal in which, well, the stuff which is hidden that you don't know about. And you're going through the differences between having a timing chain, which used to be the standard way. You would either have timing chains or in some cases you'd have timing gears that would actually be running everything versus the timing belt. Could you break down a little bit of that? Yeah, sure. You know, a lot of people find out about this the hard way. It was once the case that the majority of the cars that were available in this country were American brand cars, and the American brand cars of that period, and I'm talking about 1980s and earlier,

tended to have V8 and V6 engines and even straight six engines that had timing chains. And timing chains essentially last the life of the engine and the vehicle vehicle They may stretch a little bit, but they almost never break So it's one of those things you don't have to worry about ever having to spend money on Then along came the import cars and a lot of the import cars have overhead cam type engines and most of those Have the timing belt and American cars are now a lot like that and that yes to them also have The timing belt the thing about a timing belt is that it's a service item, like brakes, because it's made out of a belt. And eventually that belt fatigues and breaks.

And if you don't spend the money to have that thing replaced at the specified interval, you essentially are taking the risk that it's going to snap. And it will, inevitably. Every one of my cars that I have in my driveway, the two Volkswagens, the old Vanagon and the Passat, and the Chrysler PT, they have overhead valves and they have timing belts. It used to be that before this kind of design became popular, the timing chain or the timing gear was usually pretty much there. Now did they do the timing belt because they were quieter?

I read something about that. They think that's one of the reasons that they're a lot quieter than a chain. Well, that's part of it. It's just the nature of the design. The overhead cam engines, which are more efficient in a lot of ways, in some ways, than the overhead valve engines. Typically, they will have four valves per cylinder head and things like that, which helps them get more power out of less engine and also better mileage.

So that's part of the reason for it. But now you're looking potentially having to spend on the low end about $1,500 to get that belt replaced per the recommended service interval, which is typically around 75,000 miles or so. If you don't do it, the belt snaps and when it does, your engine is at best case going to stop running and you're going to be stuck wherever you happen to be at the time. Worst case, if you happen to have what's called an interference engine, the reciprocating assembly is going to mesh and then you're going to have a ruined engine and instead of replacing the timing belt you're going to end up having to replace the engine.

Yeah, now the Passat and the PT are not interference. If it breaks it doesn't cause, you know, grenade-ing of the engine, that sort of thing. Now the diesel, as you well know, it would. It would. That would destroy it. So let me tell you, you know how often I replace the timing belt on that Vanagon? About every 20,000 miles I do. I replace that way more often than what they would suggest. And I can do that by myself though. Most people can't. That's why. Sure. I mean, most people can't because they haven't got the mechanical aptitude and sometimes the specialized tools.

You know, with newer vehicles, with late model vehicles, this is a really elaborate and highly delicate procedure. And if you don't know what you're doing and don't have the specialized tools, it's really not something to try yourself. And you might want to look into what the replacement cost of one of these things is on a vehicle that you're considering buying, because in some cases you're looking at $3,000 or more because of the degree of work that's involved. Yeah, keep it up. It's one of those things where it's not a bad idea to combine that with a lot of other service you can do with the vehicle at the same time. What we did

with the Passat as an example, we replaced the timing belt at a certain time and also while we were there, replaced the water pump and all sorts of other rotating parts that you just know we're going to be tending to wear after 15-16 years of being on the road. Sure, I mean the craziest thing of all to do is to keep a water pump that costs $50 for the part in there because it's working at the time, do the timing belt and then 20,000 miles later you have to replace the water pump for another $1,500 or $3,000. Yeah, we weren't going there Eric, we certainly weren't. Hey, we're talking cars this morning and transportation. We could talk about the timing belt versus timing chain issue, what's happening with this LS8 for the Cadillac and the other General Motors V8s and a bunch more. 7705633, this is the best part about Wheels Up Wednesday.

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.com. This is the Bill Meyer Show on 1063 KMED. Call Bill now. 541-770-5633. That's 770-KMED. We're talking whatever's on your mind with Eric Peters, automotive journalist at epautos.com. And Jim, you used to work at a Chevy dealer here around town, and tell us about your experience with the LS. I guess they're grenading and now General Motors is recalling them. What was your experience there? Yes, how you guys doing this morning? I'm doing fine. I worked for the Chevrolet dealership here in town back in the 90s and we had a pickup truck, like, and I can't remember what year it was now, but anyway, we had one of their pickups that came through, it had the V8 in it, and the motor just scattered itself. So of course it was under warranty, so you know, we pulled it out, or I pulled it out, put another one in, went down the road, but oh I don't know, a couple days later

came back again, it was all scattered. It blew up again, really? And then we thought, well, that's pretty strange. It was under warranty, we didn't tear it down and do anything with it. So got another motor, put it in there, and it scattered itself right there on the left. And when I was done. Did you ever find out what was doing it to that VA? Yeah, I kept

that motor out and I pulled it apart, found out that every one of the bearings caps on the pistons or the rods were just finger loose. They had a run of them. I don't know if there was ever a recall. I don't remember that. Yeah, so nothing new I guess is what you're saying. Hey Jim? Yeah. Alright, hey thanks. Boy, that nothing new I guess is what you're saying. Hey Jim? Yeah. All right, hey thanks. Boy, that's interesting someone that worked at the dealership, Eric. Oh yeah, you know, it's nice to have a pipeline into that as well as to repair shops. I've got two friends who run repair shops and so I get the skinny from the front lines because they're seeing this stuff

before it comes, before it gets into the news. Yeah yeah in other words back when it's a conspiracy theory right? That sort of thing. Hey now David you work on cars all the time great to have you here from the mechanics perspective. You're on with Eric go ahead. Hey I was gonna say you know Eric's right that when the GM LS motor came out the first or maybe second generations of them were really reliable but I have a a service I pay for and it's compiled data from tens of thousands of shops across America. So I always read about cars when they come in, especially, you know, I work on cars that are about 10 years old.

And so what I will say is from about the last 10 years old, about approximately 2015 on, I've been reading when I research jobs, I've been reading about the LS motors having significant hard parts failure, as low as 40,000 miles, and then a lot more on 80 to maybe 120. But Eric's right, when they came out with that motor, you still see those first generation LS motors with 200 or even 300,000, but these new ones, from about the last 10 years, they have significantly changed either the manufacturing process or the quality of the components.

But we have things like the camshafts losing the finish and spreading metal through the motor and the rocker arm failures and bottom end failures. And so I would no longer say, I just had to call because I don't really want them having that reputation anymore as being that Refiable engine because it's just not the case anymore. I'm kind of curious here. Do you know David and and and Maybe Eric you could concur with this

Do you know if maybe the thinning out of the oil and changing of? Viscosities may have had something to do with perhaps more wear on some of these hard parts like camshafts and various other end lifters? Well, it's probably not helping. You've got a thinner layer of oil in between these friction parts. So that increases, in my opinion, the probability that if anything is awry, anything is not right, the chances of something failing go up. That's my opinion on that. All right. What about your opinion on that, David?

Anything on that? Well, I mean, it's the same part, right? You have the same cleat. I mean, this is the same part, right? You have the same, I mean, this is a common sense and I explain this to people all the time. If you've got the same part and there's 3,000s of clearance between the two parts

and a certain amount of oil has to go in there and provide this layer, and you've got the same part you've been using since the year 2000, and now it's 2015, but your oil cap now says 020 or 520. That can't help. But I will say, I suspect it really is the finish on the metals. I think it's just been deliberately cheapened

to make the engine have less durability and longevity. All right, hey, thank you for the call, David. You know, Eric, I remember I had a 77 Cadillac, or not Cadillac, a 77 Chevy Impala that I bought. And I never had any problems with it. I put about a hundred and a quarter on it before I sold it. But I know that General Motors back then had some problems with that 305 eating camshafts. And I'm just wondering if we're looking at another one of those kind of situations, you

know, poor finishing, poor hardening on metal in some cases. Well, I wouldn't be surprised because the manufacturers, and I'm not defending them, I'm just saying that this could explain it, they are under a lot of pressure to increase their profit margins and reduce costs both in terms of parts and supplies and manufacturing processes. And so they figured maybe we can do X at slightly less expense and that'll increase our bottom line. And so there's incentive, perversely on their part, short-term thinking to do these things. Long-term though, it doesn't occur to them apparently that, well, if we do this and we

wind up having a really embarrassing public debacle that makes people look at our brand and think, you know, that's garbage and I don't want to spend $50,000 or $100,000 on it, probably not a good idea to do that. Yeah, well, let's hope they get this figured out and figured out quickly because these are the kind of recalls when you're talking about hundreds of thousands and you've got to figure what, every one of those engines being replaced is at least going to be what $15,000 expense probably by the time you're all done right sure absolutely but you know I again I reiterate I think the bigger problem

isn't the monetary cost per se it's the cost to the reputation of General Motors exactly these vehicles all right let me grab another call here for Eric hi good morning this is Bill who's this hey good morning. This is Bill. Who's this? Hey, good morning, Bill. This is Michael. Hey, Michael. Go ahead. What's on your mind?

So, yeah, I used to work for Chevrolet from 82 to 85, 86, something like that. My main job was the S10. They came out with a 2.8 V6 that had a rear main oil leak. Yeah, so I did a basically factory. Had to pull the motor out, pull the crank and everything and figure out what was wrong with it. Well, it came out with a two piece rope seal on the rear main so that was the issue. But main thing I wanted to get to is that pulled about probably hundred of those motors apart. Had to pull the crank and the

whole thing and put it all back together. Every single one of those motors that I pulled apart with multi-grade oil had to have new bearings replaced. The main bearings and the rod bearings. Every single engine that we we always use straight 30 weight no matter what unless the person brought their own oil even though the factory recommended multi-grade oil. That's really interesting. what unless the person brought their own oil even though the factory recommended multi-grade oil. That's really interesting. Interesting. So yeah. Brand new. Those bearings with no matter how many miles I even up to a hundred thousand miles the 30-way bearings look brand new. All right. Hey thanks for letting us know

about that. Hey Eric this will take us back not that we're experts on oil or anything like that. We were talking about the problems of the thinning. Is perhaps the multiple or the multi-viscosity kind of thing perhaps causing some problems in some of our vehicles these days? Well, I think the chief problem is that the main job of oil seems to no longer be to provide good lubrication for the engine, but rather to help these manufacturers achieve compliance with federal cafe fuel efficiency and so-called emissions, i.e. carbon dioxide regs, because the thinner the oil, the lighter the weight on the low end. If you

got a zero something like that, the viscosity, you reduce frictional losses in the engine and or you decrease friction in the engine, and hopefully that's the idea, and thereby achieve a fractional gain in mileage or a fractional reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Oil used to be about lubricating the engine, now it's become about complying with the government. Yeah, I see where you're going at. I'll give you one example. The 06 Passat that we have has taken about a quart of oil every 800 to 1,000 miles from the day it rolled off the assembly line. And so the dealership said, well, that's perfectly normal. And yeah, according to Volkswagen, that is. But I looked deeper into it and found out what was going on is that in order to once again eke out a few more miles per gallon or maybe a fraction of

a mile per gallon, they used oil control rings that actually scraped the oil off of the cylinder walls but they used low tension. They didn't have a lot of tension and so they tended to let more oil go by. But on the other hand there was less friction within the engine. One of those kind of things, right? Yeah, exactly. Now people might be scratching their heads listening to us and wondering, well what does it matter if there is a fractional increase in gas mileage? Well it matters when you're considering whole fleets of vehicles, which is how they calculate these corporate average fuel economy requirements. So if they can, you know, in

terms of fleet averages, increase the fleet's average by even one mile per gallon overall, then that matters in terms of compliance, and that's why they do these things. Yep, that's part of the reason. Not excusing it, but just explaining what's the rationale of doing this kind of stuff. All right, we'll keep an eye on this story for sure, and I'm sure you'll be writing more about this on epautos.com. What have you been reviewing?

What's your latest review you want us to know more about? Well, one of the last cars you can still buy, you can still buy new, the Mazda 3, which is available both as a sedan and a hatchback. And the really neat thing about it is you can still get a manual transmission in the hatchback version. And other things that are nice about it is you don't, as is the case with so many of the others in this class, have to spend a lot of money extra to get an engine that isn't underpowered. It comes standard with a 2.5 liter engine that makes nearly 200 horsepower. Which by the way is very close to what you had you would get in something like a Honda Civic SI which of course is the high

performance version of the Civic and you have to pay a lot more thousands more to get that. The base Honda Civic, it's a fine car I'm not slamming it in any way but it comes with a little pokey 150 horsepower engine and a CVT automatic. And the 2025 Mazda 3 does not. So it has a... Does not. Oh, it has a six-speed automatic, by the way. So it doesn't have an eight, nine or ten speed automatic either. Which makes it a little more simpler, a little easier to repair if that ever happens. Or it will never need to be repaired probably, because you know, remember back in the day when automatic transmissions pretty much lasted the life of the car. Yep, yes I do. All right, what are you going to review for next week? What do you have? Thank you Eric. It looks

like a BMW 5 sedan. I'm not 100% sure that it's coming and I apologize preemptively for not having made a note to myself to be sure. That's all right. We'll be here for you one way or the other next week Eric, okay? Thanks so much. Appreciate it. You bet. Thank you, Bill. epautos.com. Wheels Up Wednesday. We always talk cars, transportation and politics with Eric Peters.

This is KMED, KMED, HD1, Eagle Point, Medford, KBXG, Grants Pass. Town Hall News is coming up next. And then we're going to be talking about what is going to be the impact of the Trump administration making a list and checking it twice of all the people who are not going to help ICE. Yeah, the sanctuary cities. That's Oregon.