Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 07-16-25_WEDNESDAY_6AM

Episode Date: July 16, 2025

Into the news and Wheels Up Wednesday calls and Eric Peters, automotive journalist, joins me later in the hour, MAZDA Mx50 review, now a PEDAL MISUSE warning on cars? Many questions and comments from listeners, too.

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 Clauser Drilling dot com. Here's Bill Meyer. 11 minutes after six. Join the conversation 7705633 for Wheels Up Wednesday. Let me tell you who's coming up this morning. Going to have some really great conversation.

Eric Peters. Eric Peters has found a unicorn out there. It's actually an SUV that has the standard conventional geared transmission rather than the fragile ready-to-blow up CVT, which is the compliance transmission out there. And I was reading about it and I thought it was actually darn interesting, interesting review. We'll also talk about some other politics and more. Of course, he's the libertarian car guy and on the libertarian site there is ephonest.com. They do a lot of political talk there too. Oh yeah, oh yeah, they're talking a lot about the Epstein sort of situation. Although President Trump said, he was telling the news people that nobody cares about the Epstein thing.

All right, that would be nice if that were the case for the Trump administration, but no, I don't think it's going away. In fact, the new American, the John Burchers, you know, the real hard, tidy-righty types there, the John Burchers out there are talking about, in fact, this is an article they had there. As much as the president wants the MAGA faithful to stop demanding transparency over the Jeffrey Epstein saga, there seems to be no let-up. One week after DOJ releases a memo many found simply unbelievable, the MAGA backlash continues, some major influencers turning on the president. And there is speculation now that just the Epstein backlash single-handedly dropped the president's approval rating. In fact, it's dropped in two polls as he's facing criticism here.

Now that could be just a polling noise, but yeah, no doubt the left is going to make a big deal about that. All I would just remind everybody is that the President Trump, you know, our President Trump campaigned on transparency. Transparency, transparency. Now if you're trying to be transparent about the fact that there are just people who are too big to make uncomfortable in this country, well then we're getting that. Just like we got that with the Biden administration too. There are just some people that are just too important, too key to what is going on in the world, key on national security to okay let's be honest what it really means is that we got entitled perverts on both sides of the aisle that need to be protected isn't that really what we're talking

about this morning it could be all right I'm not gonna focus a whole lot on that one but it just crack you know the more they talk the more President Trump talks about this I think the worse it gets in my head. Quit asking questions. You don't need to talk about that. And the whole aspect of the of the mega personality in the first place is, no, you're not going to sit down there and urinate on me and then claim that I'm being reigned upon. Right? You know, that's kind of mega got that through Obama, mega got that with Biden and all the rest of it. They're not going to take it from their own people. That's kind of how I see it, at least, all right?

Whether right or not about that. Another interesting story here. Damien Mann has it in the Rogue Valley Times. Metford swings big. $500 million redevelopment project could draw the minor league club. You were wondering where the Metford City Council was going to be on this attracting of the Eugene Emeralds. Bill London dropped me a note this morning, a news guy, and of course he was all over the story in Eugene because in Eugene the taxpayers turned down the bond measure to build a new

stadium for the Eugene Emeralds there. They said not just no, but hell no. And then Eugene Emeralds says, well, we need a $90 million, they asked for a $100 million stadium up in Eugene. They're asking for a $90 million taxpayer-funded stadium here. And the question is, how do you pay it? How do you pull a rabbit out of a hat? Because everybody knows that nothing says economic impact like getting people spending

money for stupid stuff. I mean, you know what I mean? In other words, nothing important but entertainment. Taxpayers are here to pay for entertainment, pay for people's breads and circuses I guess. That's I don't know how else to put this but this has been a big focus. So how are they going to do it? How are they going to do it? Just pull this rabbit out of a hat. I'm going to call up Nick Card today, counselor Nick Card, and ask him to come on the show tomorrow and see if he can do this and one way or the other.

They're going to vote on a package tonight. MedFrid is going to consider asking voters this November to raise the lodging taxes on hotels from 11 to 13 percent. That's a big tax increase. Now, I know the way that they're trying to sell this to the sheep, though, is that, this was going to be done by the tourism industry. Kind of like how the tourism industry will then be used to pay for Rogue X. Remember that? That's the last time we heard them talking to us about

raising taxes. And we're going to get our aquatic warehouse by, you know, I think it was raising the, wasn't it the rental car tax? We're going to take money from that and some other things and we're going to put it in there. That's right, tourism is going to help build rog-x. And then it's like, oh yeah, and 60, 70 bucks a year on your utility fee, but that came later. There was a little bit of a bait and switch, I thought. They were trying to convince you that it was going to be paid for by those those grubby tourists that you're all hoping I'm just kidding because it's great to have tourism come to town don't get me wrong you know about this so now how do we move forward so what they want to do is

it almost feels like the the rogue X plan again which were you know will raise it on the tourists and then will we need a utility fee increase in the future? Oh yeah, probably. But this is all part of a half billion dollar Medford downtown redevelopment project taking shape that Damian writes here, could attract a minor league baseball team. Oh no, the development is not about attracting the minor league baseball team here, Damien. The minor league baseball team is attracted to Medford because they're thinking that

we have enough people who are pliable enough and can be persuaded to tax themselves to bring them here. That has nothing to do with that particular development. But anyway, Damien writes, tonight, the Medford City Council will consider asking voters to approve raising lodging taxes on hotels from 11 to 13 percent to provide some of the seed money to spark private development in what's being called Creekside Quarter. The increase would provide just over one million dollars a year according to city officials and the project would be around Hawthorne Park from

Bear Creek to Riverside. And they've been talking about this kind of development, doing something better with Hawthorne Park. I mean, it would be great to have something for Hawthorne Park other than being a bum facility and also a place where you drop your stolen bird scooter into Bear Creek and let it sit there until somebody comes and retrieves it. Yeah, you ever walked across the bridge down and then you see, oh look at all those, look at all those bird scooters, you know, down in the water or near the water, right? But anyway, roughly half of Hawthorne Park would be the site of this ballpark hosting the Eugene Emeralds, a high-a minor league affiliate.

All right. One of the goals is to keep the south end of Hawthorne Park as a park. Blah, blah, blah, baseball stadium would face the Medford Centre on 4th Street East Jackson Street. Would have a shaded area for spectators, but the ball field itself would not be covered. And there would also be a pedestrian bridge over Bear Creek that would connect the park and stadium with businesses along Riverside. That once again gives the drug-addled homeless an easier way to cross the creek. So that's good. That'll be good. The $500 million number based on the build-out of the entire project with hotels, business

centers, the ballpark, oh, convention center, this is, oh, they've been wanting their convention center too, even though the convention center thing has been a losing business model for a long time unless you're in Vegas or someplace like that. But anyway, Kevin Stein says we're making every good-faith effort to bring the Emeralds to Medford and so this would be seed money, how you would end up getting the other 45-50 million needed. Well, we don't know about that yet, but It'll be curious to see what they have to say about this so the Medford City Council is going to vote on this tonight and tonight's session and

I guess this is part of the seed money That's the seed money and I'm sure they're thinking all of the voters will be fooled by this just like they were for rogex because everybody's paying was on the hook for a thousand twelve hundred bucks I think total if I recall correctly to pay for the for rogex over the the years of the life lifespan of the bond whether you ever go to rogex or not not saying that rogex isn't a great facility very nice facility but once again taxing people to pay for other people's entertainment. And if that's our business model, I guess that is our business model. Medford City Council may give it to us good and hard. They'll say, this is seed money, we're just gonna see how this works, and then okay, where would the rest of it

come from? Probably raising parks fees. Just a, you know, going to go out on a ledge there, on, you know, on the ledge just to see that's probably what they'll try to plum next. And maybe they'll try to avoid it. I don't know. Nick Card has been great to talk to you about this. Nick, expect my call a little bit later. Hopefully we get you on the show tomorrow. Okay. 21 minutes after six. A lot of things going on. I don't know. I head to the phones too since it is Wheels Up Wednesday. Good morning. Who's this?

This is Vicki from the Applegate. Oh, Vicki. What's going on with you today? Not much. Just trying to water and cool my house down. Good for you. Like sizzling out there. Just a few points.

Epstein. It seems to me like... Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Why are you talking about Epstein, it seems to me like... Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Why are you talking about Epstein? President Trump says nobody... Listen, President Trump told the news people this morning nobody cares about Epstein. You don't care about that. Okay, well, but my opinion is whether I care about it or not... Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Wait a minute. Your opinion is President Trump's opinion. President Trump gave you the order. Nobody cares about this, Vicki.

Okay. Well, I'm still an American and I still am able to say my opinion. No, you're not. Vicki, no, you're not. Trump told the news people nobody cares about this Epstein thing. You can't care about... I'm kidding. You know that, right? I totally know that. You should know me by now, Bill. I'm gonna say what I'm gonna say, regardless of who says I can't. Go ahead. Okay, so first of all, Epstein. It's turned more into about the people on the list, supposed list. I don't know that there's a list. You would be an idiot to keep a list, but you know, I digress. It's more about catching those people than it is the raping of all those girls, which is totally wrong. Second of all, as far as the stadium, they

say it's for tourism. Well, everybody knows tourism only usually lasts from spring to fall and then they're gone. I don't feel like it's a good investment if they want to really bring in people to the Rogue Valley like you know more they should have more like everybody's into football, me personally I don't like football but everybody's into football do a football team for the Ducks, for the, you know, for the, what's the other one, the Oregon Ducks and the Oregon Beavers or whatever. Okay. Now, why would we, well, there, well, I don't think we're going to be building college football

stadiums down here. That doesn't particularly make sense. Well, no, but I mean, if you're going to talk about that much money, wouldn't it make sense to get something in here that more people are really going... Well, looking at it this way though, it's going to be open air, right? And we know we're still going to have the homelessness problem because legislature won't let you do anything about any of this. So you have an open airair baseball stadium, maybe through the winter, and ends up being the winter shelter for, you know, the homelessness community. How about that? Well, okay. I mean, if they're willing to let them go on that property... That might be, you know, that absolutely might be... we could almost treat it like a zoo exhibit, right? And then you invite the tourists to come to the Downtown Convention Center and then view

the homelessness community from the safety of your seats. Oh my god. Well, children's eyes, first of all. And then just the other point I had was about the hotels. It's so expensive right now, as you probably know, because you do some traveling. I don't know if you have a travel trailer or if you stay in motels, but it's so expensive just to get into a motel each night that if they raise that, people are not, I mean that's not going to promote tourism, not even for the local people that live here that want to go to the coast or want to go you know. So you're thinking that raising the cost of the rooms, which of course is what they would do for everyone, will ultimately...you think it's getting to that comfort where it starts really hurting, where you start eating your seed coins, your seed corn, pardon me, seed corn on that.

Well, yeah, in this economy, people already have to save up to be able to take a little mini vacation, even for a weekend. And you start raising that, you got to add in the gas, the travel time, the food they're going to be eating, the drinks they might be drinking, the activities they might be going to. You might as well just make it Disneyland. I mean, it's so expensive nowadays that you just can't afford it. Okay. I appreciate the opinion on that. And don't call me with any more unauthorized opinions though about Jeffrey Epstein. You know I'm going to, Bill.

No, you can't do that. President Trump says no. You know I'm going to, Bill. No. You can't do it. You have to take your marching orders. Remember. And by law, you have to take my call because I'm an American. Alright, that's the first time I've had anybody say that I'm required to take your call, but you know, I'm going to have fun with you anyway. Thank you, Vicki. All right. All right. Actually, I'm not required to take your call, but I enjoy the give and take anyway. But remember,

there is no authorized... anything that we talk about when it comes to the Epstein situation is unauthorized and is not approved by Donald Trump. Got to have a little fun with it. How can you not? I heard that on town hall this morning. I'm going, oh my gosh, what do you mean nobody cares about it? You would like nobody to care about it. The transparency presidency. All right. It is 626 at KMED.

When you're talking about transparency and just getting a good fair deal in helping protect your wealth, talk with the folks at J. Austin and company, Gold and Silver Buyers, one of my longest sponsors. And one of my longest sponsors because, A, I've been trading with them off and on for years and I've always had just a great treatment from them. But I love talking with them about these gold and silver markets, which have just been exploding as of late. I think it may have given back a little bit yesterday, but I always look at the givebacks as the potential to maybe stack a little bit more right now.

Silver seems to be joining the party. I mean, gold's up like 30% just in the first six months or so of 2025. And big money, including central banks, are continuing to buy it because of continuing iffiness in trust in the financial system. So maybe you think like the big boys in this particular case. Might not be a bad idea. Or if you're looking at 33, $3,400 gold and saying, hey, I bought it when it was 500, I'm selling it. Great. Talk to Jay Austin. They'll help you out with this one. And if you also have an estate, estate items that you're taking care of here, they help get those kind of specialized items sold too. Items with

precious metals and stones in it, things like that, scrap gold, scrap silver, they'll take care of it all. 1632 Ashland Street in Ashland, 6th and G in downtown Grants Pass, fortunereserve.com on the web, Jay Austin, the recognized experts. During this lunchtime episode of Roof Rescue with Fontana Roofing, the fellas' views about the future of roofing. Let's listen in. Look at that drive-through menu. So much variety. Kind of like our menu. How so? Well, we offer composite roofing, tile, metal, woodshake.

Huh. Maybe someday Fontana Roofing will offer drive-thru service. I can picture it now. You roll up and she's like, hi, welcome to Fontana Roofing. What kind of roof can we build for you today? have a special on our metal roofing and you say tempting but i'd like a composite roof and she says what size and you say 2 000 square feet please and then she asks would you like that in black or would you like to try one of our wonderful earth tones don't forget the sides would you like gutters with that and then it's delivered by giant drone with a big Fontana logo on it and then robots come out. For now, just give Fontana roofing an old fashioned phone call or visit Fontana roofing services

dot com. Hi, this is Lisa, the Hughes Lumber Girl, and I'm on 106.7 KMEB. I appreciate you waking up here. This Wheel's Up Wednesday. Eric Peters going to join me here after the news. And it is just such a great conversation. His latest review I'm really loving because there's actually a real transmission left out there on the car lot. We'll have a conversation about that. There aren't many of them.

Also some people sending in some questions that I'm going to pepper Eric with them too and you can also call him, 770-5633, when we get this rolling in the next few minutes. Also going to talk with Louise Valdez, spokesperson for the Gun Owners of America. They have joined in a lawsuit to allow you to mail firearms in the U.S. mail. We haven't been able to do that for about 100 years. And it's kind of a stupid rule. And anytime you have to get something serviced or. And it's kind of a stupid rule and anytime you have to get something serviced or whatever it's a real pain in the butt. And we'll talk about the aspect of that particular lawsuit. And we have

economist Christian Briggs who's going to join me. The Genius Act, all about cryptocurrency, recently passed. Yes, there is a series of three bills sort of in this and a lot of implications for U.S. money. And I'll talk with him about that after 7 30. Mr. X, big old researcher type, and he's the one that first told me about the let it burn policy several years ago. Yeah, he's the one that got me into that one, that 1995 let it burn policy, you know, the lightning strike comes and then, well, anyway, he was frothing at the mouth in a good way after I ended up talking with George Sexton, the conservation guy from KS Wild yesterday, because about every other word...

And, you know, George is passionate about his stuff, but if you're listening to that, pretty much every other word is burn. Burn baby burn. And not a disco inferno, but every year we got to be just burning and burning and burning and burning. Native American burning, burning, burning. And Ed has an interesting take on that, which is all this thing about, well, 10,000 years ago they were burning. No, they were not just burning everything on the landscape.

They would burn for a specific purpose and it was a very different time and climate and also situation that we have around here. When it comes right down to it, this whole idea of the prescribed fire in some ways is like a friend of mine kind of said, well, actually it's George, George, my boss, and he said, it's kind of like the equivalent of, all right, we have a 55 gallon drum of gasoline, and we're going to burn this little drop of gasoline in here, and we're going to keep the fire from spreading to all the other gasoline around it. And I think George is absolutely right. You know, that's the whole thing about this. Can they do enough of that burning in the shoulder season to make up for the fact that A. we don't have herbivory and B. we're not doing much harvest either. We're not doing anything. So anyway, we'll talk with Mr. X about that in more coming up.

And we have some great contests. There'll be a Diner 62 quiz you can win. And I have two pair of Kansas tickets, reserve seats for Kansas tomorrow night at the Jackson County Expo, Jackson County Fair. And today we're going to be playing the game, Know Your Kansas. And the way this works is that I'll play a part of one of their famous songs, and then you just have to tell me what are the next lines in the lyric. So if you've been singing, if you were drunk or high back in the 70s, or just at the concert and singing along on the radio, you'll be able to do this.

All right? Hang on, I'll tell you what to call. Hi, I'm Matt with the Bill Meyers Show. Eric Peters, wheels up. Eric Peters, automotive journalist genius and the Libertarian Car Guide at epautos.com. It is great having you back here, Eric. And by the way, I just wanted to warn you because Vicki from the Alphagate called in one of the talk about the Epstein thing and I insisted President

Trump says nobody cares about that. Nobody cares about that. Don't talk about it. Only bad people, only bad greedy people, selfish Yes, they're the same people that wanted Granny to die when they didn't wear a mask. Yep, I know, I know. That part is not being handled well. I'm going to set that aside here at the moment. I've been talking about that a lot here as of late, but I wanted to talk with you first about the review that you had on the Mazda CX-50. And I was thrilled about this and because we're at the point now that it is a luxury feature to go down to the car lot and see something which actually has a geared conventional multi-speed transmission rather than the... and I'm sorry to say this but I... my friend at dusty's transmission say yet the the constant velocity transmissions the CVs are

Much more fragile than the conventional transmissions even after lines transmission. Yeah The transmission in the Mazda is a six-speed not a 10-speed. Yeah another boon Yeah, and oddly enough you were talking to me about how it is great to look at vehicles which have not been completely redesigned to all of the latest compliance stuff, like the 10 to 12 speed. I mean, next we're going to have just a derailleur, a derailleur, a derailleur rather, put on the, yeah, with three speeds in the front and then, well, it's actually not all that different from one of those old trucks, those old Detroit diesel kind of trucks they'd have the twin sticks on them right transfer case that you know gears up and overdrive for each one of

the gears yeah yeah and you have to shift every half a second or so to keep the the vehicle moving properly but the CX-50 give me your review first and then and then the latest article kind of keying off on that very funny but weird it's bizarre it's a compact crossover so, there's a whole lot to talk about there. I know. But, you know, there actually is a lot to talk about in that it is different in a number of key ways relative to pretty much all of the other ones on there. We just finished talking about the transmission issue, which is a big one. Another big one is it has a big enough four-cylinder engine that the base engine in it does not need a turbo. I mean, it's astounding how our perspective has changed, but nowadays a 2.5-liter four

is practically a big block Chevy at this point. Yeah, it really is. And frankly, the power output from that is what, about 170 horsepower, if I recall? No, no, close to 190. Close to 190. And just to put that in some context, one of this Mazda's chief rivals is the Honda CR-V, about the same size and everything else. And that one comes with a 1.5 liter, so an engine that's almost half as small, half the

size. And it has to have a turbo to make essentially the same horsepower. Honda says it makes 190, Mazda says its engine makes 187. And you were talking about how the base price of this, and this is the non-turbo, even though you can get a turbocharged version of it, but about $30,000, $30,000 and a half, $30,500 I think. Yeah, in that ballpark. Yeah, and they'll probably deal with you. So it's a decent option for a family vehicle at a somewhat affordable price in the context

of today's market. Yeah, but the thing that it actually has a six-speed transmission, conventional transmission, this is a good thing, not a bad thing, because the less complex of a transmission, probably the more durable it ultimately ends up being. Sure, and ultimately the less, if it ever comes to it, replacement and repair costs. CVTs can be very expensive to replace, and these 8, 9, 10-speed transmissions can be as or more expensive to replace. $5,000, $6,000 expensive.

Every time I'm looking at car ads, and I do a lot because I've been thinking about maybe selling the Vanigator, doing something and getting one newer vehicle for the duration, so to speak, and just about every new vehicle now has the CVT, almost everything, until you start getting into some of the bigger trucks, I guess. Yeah, they really ought to call it the compliance transmission. If I were a major vehicle manufacturer, that's how I would advertise it, because that's what it is. There's no reason for these things in cars other than compliance. They offer you a slight, well they offer the manufacturer a slight mileage gain that helps them with the corporate average

fuel economy stuff, which they just have to deal with. It's either that or the federal government hits them with fines and punishes them for making vehicles that don't quite make the current cafe quota, whatever it happens to be. It's currently about 35.5 miles per gallon. Yeah. Now there's nothing wrong in concept with a CVT, constantly variable transmission. There are no gears in essence. There's a couple of pulleys and they're hydraulically controlled and they change diameters to change the gear ratio on a continuous basis. It works great in a lawnmower or chainsaw. Yeah, and the thing is there's a metal, a multiple part metal belt that rides in these, usually is the way they have these designed. And from everything I'm hearing

is that you have to maintain them much more, change the fluid much more often than the manufacturers are recommending, and even then they still just have a propensity of being fragile. There's just no way to get around it. Most of them have a band or a belt that is in between those two pulleys and metal fatigue inevitably sets in no matter how gently you drive it, no matter well you serve it, eventually that's going to fail. And when it fails, it usually will fail of course when the vehicle is being driven and so the thing

is operating and so the stuff just gets thrown all over the interior of the transmission and it gets done. You just replace it at that point. Yeah, it's pretty much granated. I can go on YouTube and find video after video after video of transmission people that are saying okay well what killed this one right and and and that's just the reality that's what we're finding now and I'm wondering if these are just you know time bombs you know time bombs on the lot so to speak just waiting to they are certainly in relative terms you know if we went back to the era the before time

before when cars generally had, if you had an automatic, had one overdrive gear, so were typically four or five speed automatics, I'm talking about the era of the late 90s, all the way through up about 2010-ish or before that, transmissions lasted the life of the vehicle. You never had to worry about it. It was uncommon for a transmission to fail before about 200,000 miles as a general rule. Yeah, and if you were getting to that point, maybe you were going to keep the vehicle, you rebuilt the engine, then you rebuilt the transmission, and you drove it for another 15 years. That kind of thing, right? Yep. Again, to reiterate and circle back to where we were before,

these are fundamentally compliance transmissions. The general public isn't aware of that. They just say, oh, CVT, wow, look at that. It doesn't shift, no shift truck. The only reason these are being put in the vehicles is because of compliance. The same with things like variable displacement, cylinder deactivation, ASS, our favorite thing, micro engines with turbos in place of adequately powerful V6 engines without turbos. Yeah. And by the way, had they finally gotten rid of those engines out there that were causing problems because they were running the timing belt in the engine oil?

You remember that? Oh, you're talking about that delightful Ford engine. I'm not sure whether it's still in production. Oh, okay. I'm hoping they got away from this one because that's another...just like, okay, all right, you want to have a timing belt and you're going to put it not only hidden away so it's hard to change, but you're going to have it run through the engine oil. What could possibly go wrong? I don't get that. Well, yeah, it's great until it stops

working. And generally speaking, it'll stop working after the warranty runs out so it's no longer the manufacturer's problem. It's your problem. That's what they mean then when, like, my wife bought the the 20, I think she has 2010 Passat, right? And they said it has a lifetime transmission. Yes. Lifetime transmission meaning the lifetime of the car as they would see it if you don't change the transmission fluid which you're hard to do. Yeah, always. Look at the asterisks and read the fine print. You can't trust anything these people say anymore. When they say lifetime, you say, oh, that means essentially forever.

Okay, now... It means for as long as they decide the warranty coverage is going to last after which point you lose But Eric you have to tell me though What is happening though with this latest here because you have a story up on EP autos pedal misuse alert Why don't you hold on and then I want you to get to that story next okay? Because everything it's it's all about safety Eric

Safety all right so the latest in safety technology We'll tell you about that next for per net Welcome to the Bill Meyers show on one oh six three KMED give Bill a call at five four one seven seven Oh five six three three that's seven seven. Oh, okay MPD this is the time you can talk and ask questions of Eric Peters at EP Auto's automotive journalist. He has forgotten more about this stuff than I'll ever know. And before we get to the pedal misuse story, Eric we have Lee. Lee is here in town and Lee you had a question about Dodge trucks. Are you looking for a

particular type of Dodge truck? What was your story story your question for him huh go ahead well I'm wanting to buy a Dodge truck in a near future. Is there a particular year that I should stay away from or there's a year that would be better than another say from 2000 on up to present? Well yeah I would I would draw finally uh... there are engines you want to avoid dot began doing something called on e-torque with both the uh... standard v six in the ram and the optional and you'd be a and that's essentially a kind of a mild hybrid system as they call it as it has a battery pack and has this

this big belt that uh... used to constantly cycle the engine off on and on restarted you know to save you lots of gas money. Avoid those. You know, the V6, the 3.6 V6 in the Ram is a great engine. The Hemi V8 is a great engine too. So by and large, it's just a matter of condition. You know, when you're dealing with any used vehicle, you want to make sure you really look at it carefully. And if you feel that you're not competent to do that, then find somebody that you can trust who is to have them do that for you before you buy it. Yeah, for Lee's edification here, Eric,

how can you tell if it has the E-torque? Is there a badge on it or somewhere where you can- The Cummins motor is what I'm looking for. Okay, what was that, Lee? I'm sorry, we were talking over each other there. The Cummins motor is what I'm looking for, the diesel. Ah, oh, okay, well, all right. Then you're mainly going to be dealing with the particulate trap in the DEF system that I think they pretty much all came with from the factory. However,

you didn't hear it from me. It's possible to, as they say, defeat or delete that. Okay, Lee? Okay. So it doesn't sound like you're having any problems with that. I have seen that if you do have a used truck, you're looking at a used truck probably from the sounds of it? Yeah. All right.

Eric, would you agree that one of the things that I think a lot of places have to deal with, and it's not just the Dodges, but sometimes the plugged catalytic converter issues if they have any problems with the DEF or anything else going on. Isn't that right? Well, yeah. I mean, it's essentially a particulate trap. And all that stuff, all the parts that are associated with HED are a ton of money.

So yeah, you want to make sure everything is copacetic, because if not, you could be on the hook for a lot of money. And the same goes with gas-powered vehicles. A lot of these new cars have as many as four catalytic converters, if you can believe it. And if the owner ran it when it, say, had a bad coil pack or something and it was running rich and it was putting a lot of soot through the exhaust, that'll clog up those converters. And sometimes those converters can cost four or five hundred dollars a piece. So, you know, add

it up four converters plus the labor to put them on the car. So the suggestion here, Lee, is definitely have a good mechanic before you pull the trigger on that to make sure and do a good inspection on those kind of systems to make sure you're cool. But other than that, great engines, okay? Okay. All right. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Lee. 7705633, this is Bill. Hi, good morning. Who's this? You're with Eric. Oh my God, Bill. Please don't hang up on me. This is... Okay, a real quick one because I talked to you just a few minutes ago, okay? Okay. Eric, I have a 76 El Camino 3 on the floor and we're having an issue with the distributor cap.

And my husband replaced the distributor, the coil, the plugs, and the spark plugs, and the wires. And it runs for about 10 minutes and then it dies. So I'm just wondering, should we replace like the whole distributor that goes all the way down? Well, you've got it diagnosed. I'm assuming that you probably, if you have the original distributor in it, it's a GM HEI unit. Uh-huh. A GM HEI. You have that? Yeah. Does it have a high energy ignition system? I'm pretty sure that does at that point. Probably. I think it's a 289 engine, so I'm not sure exactly. They came out with those from the factory, General Motors vehicles for 1975. So if your car still has the original unit, that's what

it would have. And it sounds to me like perhaps the ignition module, which is the main electrical part, and that thing, the rest of it is mechanical. That might be your issue. That would be the first thing I would check. Ignition module. Yeah. Okay, wonderful. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you, Vicki. Yeah, I had a 1977 Chevy Impala that had the ignition module go out. I think that's what you were talking about, that same era car. And I'm basically still keeping that running. Good for her. Well, yeah, those HDIs are really great. I should have asked her, if she ever decides they want to sell that thing, to please give me dibs on it.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. By the way, there is another question that came in. Jim, road mate, says, Bill, I bought a 2000, this is a question for you Eric, bought a 2008 Toyota Sienna in 2007. It has 81,000 miles, 3.8 liter V6, no turbo, and the first summer I had it, started pre-ignition firing or on startup like the timing is off. And I took it to the dealership several times because of warranty. And they always say no fault codes, no issues, took it to other places, they said the same thing. It only does it in hot weather. It's like you'll start it up and then have trouble with restarts later on and yet it doesn't blow any error codes and that almost sounds like a

heat soak kind of problem. I don't know if you... Yeah, it could be that. It could be some, I don't know, on and off issue with the fuel injection system too. It's just, again, it's one of these things you have to diagnose it piece by piece in order to find out what it is. But it is very well worth doing. That Sienna is a great van. They should be able to get at least another hundred thousand miles out of it. Okay. So what would you even you suggest because everybody, all the mechanics seem to be kind of thrown up, hey I don't see any codes. That's just it. They say I don't see any error codes. Or they happen to actually checking things out.

Oh it doesn't have a code. I've got a scan tool too. You're at it like a monkey and look, oh there's a code. Mechanics used to actually diagnose problems, like you know check individual systems to see whether they were working correctly and nothing really has changed. You know it's air, fuel, spark. And if any one of those things isn't working properly, then you have a problem. Yeah. I did read that sometimes those Siennas did have some problems with a heat build up at the engine compartment. And maybe that is what he's talking about. You know, maybe a little kind of a vapor lock sort of thing. Would that be something to look

at? You know, I don't know. Did fuel injection systems ever have problems with that? I mean, that was typically a problem with open to the atmosphere carburetors. Yeah, okay. All right, well, I'll write back to him that maybe I can get David, that mechanic friend of the show, to call us and maybe help us. Maybe he's dealt with something like that. All right, now let us pivot here to the brake pedal safety issue. This is an article up on AP

Autos right now. It's called about pedal misuse. I have never heard the term pedal misuse, but bring it to us, Eric. Well, Nor had I. Let me preface this by saying that I'm not giving you the latest lead story from the Onion. This is real. The Mazda CX-50 that we've been test driving. Well, the first thing I do with any vehicle that I test drive is to disable or Defeat if possible every single driver assistance technology So I go through the menu on the touchscreen and check off off off and as I'm doing that I come across this new menu item that I've never seen before

pedal misuse alert What is a pedal misuse alert in this new car you were testing, Eric? Well, okay, some people drive two-footed. They'll have their left foot on the brake and their right foot on the gas. I personally don't do that. Some people do. Anyway, apparently that constitutes pedal misuse. At first, I thought maybe it was, oh, I pushed the gas pedal down too hard.

That's misusing the gas pedal. Okay. If you're driving two-footed then, the car will yell at you? Well, it won't yell at you. It'll ding at you with a little icon, another one, that pops up in the dashboard. It's as if we're on a clown car now, and you drive around in a clown car with buzzers and lights constantly going off. And there's no end to it. Once you start down this road of safety is a move or all this, there ain't no end to being safe, is there? Yeah. The Union Cavalry officer said in the outlaw

Josie Wales. Okay, now I'll remember that, and now I remember there have been times that they don't recommend driving two-footed. There are times though that driving two-footed is probably a good idea if you're trying to rock, let's say, sir, you're using brake and pedal and you're trying to do a little bit of that kind of stuff. Or maybe sometimes on a hill, if you're on a hill and trying to hold it and keep it from rolling backwards, that might be another time you do it, wouldn't it? Well now there's a button, you know. Now a lot of these cars have what's called auto hold. So there's a little button on the center console, like if you're

talking about, you know, it's being at the crest of a hill and it stops on a red light. You push that button, you see, and that electronically does the job for you. Until it doesn't work and you roll back into the guy behind you and smash into him. How about that? Yeah, but it just gets progressively sillier and sillier and sillier. And I wonder how long it's going to be before we start getting warning icons of, oh, it's too early to drive.

Have you had your coffee yet? Yeah. Well, it's a great article. I've never heard of pedal misuse, so just know. Now that was in the Mazda, otherwise a weird addition to a pretty good car from what you were talking about in the review. Yeah, I mean that was pretty much all I could find, and it's a little thing. You can turn it off, otherwise, you know, good vehicle, particularly in my opinion with the standard 2.5 engine. I've got nothing against the turbo, but

the turbo does add another element of complexity and pressure, opinion, with the standard 2.5 engine. I've got nothing against the turbo, but the turbo does add another element of complexity and pressure literally to the vehicle and a lot more expense. I think it's about a $10,000 jump to go from the base and very well equipped. That term is really ridiculous in our time. Yeah. A version of it all the way to the first turbo model, the turbo meridian, which is like, gosh, it's like 40,000 bucks for that thing. But still, pedal misuse alert.

Now I'm trying to think about this now you know the Vanagon is a stick shift you know I've talked to you about this very underpowered and everything else my my hill hold is called being very very fast and very skilled with getting a foot off the brake onto the gas and letting the clutch up. Silly me. Wasn't that remember that used to be like the test that they gave to kids who were getting their first driver's license. They bring them to the steepest hill in town. Yep. And make them stop on the hill and then start without rolling back into the car behind them.

Yep, that was a test. I guess now we're supposed to have a button and or pedal misuse alert warning. Well, that, and I blame Subaru for the hill holder clutch. You know, they came out with that, I don't know, 30 or 40 years ago, and I blame Subaru for the Hillholder clutch. They came out with that, I don't know, 30 or 40 years ago, and that was the precedent that was set. Hey, man, you can't drive a stick, but drive a stick. All right. 7705633. We have maybe a minute or two left before we can turn into a pumpkin with Eric today. But what is this? I haven't had a chance to read this. What's the take on talk to the A to the AI hand? And you have like a matrix kind of looking, you know, picture that goes with that.

Arnold from I think the Terminator sequel. Anyway, I came across a news item about how car dealers, lots of them, are replacing their service personnel and particularly the people that you call and talk to if you have an issue to schedule appointments, even to negotiate the sale of a car, with AI. So, you know, instead of talking to the phone tree, which is kind of like the low IQ version of AI. Yeah, so we go from the, okay, yeah, I find the phone trees are irritating, we know about this, but now AI... Well, it's like every time you pull up to a McDonald's now though, are you going to use your mobile app? And then you say no, and you always have to say no, and then...

and then someone... okay, this is... are you trying to tell me that you can't even sell a car now without running it through artificial intelligence first? Why should you? Think about the money to be safe. Think about the profits to be gleaned. You don't have to pay an AI commission on a car sale, do you? You know, McDonald's is in the process of getting rid of all their fry cooks and burger flippers and cash register jockeys, so you know, you'll be served by an AI terminator who absolutely never will stop until you are served. Yay, customer service. That's wonderful. All right, let's grab a couple more calls

before we take off, Eric. And hi, good morning. You're on with Eric. Who's this? Welcome. This is John. Yeah, the driving, putting home from town, you know, you've been in town, and you're not exactly tired. You're just unwinding, driving down the old country road, putting along. Well, when you put a putt along, you don't steer necessarily as straight

as when you're driving faster. So instantly it goes beep, you need a cup of coffee and the symbol comes up on the dash. Yep. That's the lane assist, right John? No, no. He's talking about the drowsy or distracted driver. What? He's talking about the drowsy slash distracted driver. Oh, that's the one you had? Very distracting. Okay. I wonder if anyone has ever done any testing on this kind of stuff if maybe all the bings and bongs and reminders and alarms, maybe John you'd comment on this too, but Eric actually causing more

problems than it solves because the car is always binging at you. Yeah I've got some friends who are pilots and so in aviation there actually has been a concerted effort to reduce the clutter, the noise clutter, in the cockpit of an airplane because a pilot who's constantly being pestered by lights and chimes and so on is distracted from the task of flying the airplane. It's just common sense. Yeah. And the same thing applies in a car. Yeah, so John, don't wander and meander. That's a bad thing. That's unsafe John Yeah, you might might be watching a deer crossing the road or something. Yeah, exactly. Thanks for the call

You grab another one wandering in meander. Yeah No, I mean the lining is infamously poor Yeah And so you know if you follow the lines like a moron even if the lines are like going off the road then the thing Beeps at you as opposed to staying in your lane. Seven o'clock. Let's go back to the phones. A couple more calls and then we'll wrap here.

Hi, caller, who's this? I'm Keith out of Cave Junction. You guys make me laugh right now. I am calling because of the Hillholder. I own three manual transmissions. That's all I will ever own. I like my Subaru's Hill holder. And I find it amusing when people behind me

coming off stop light always seem to just charge into my tailgate as I'm shifting because they're manual transmission versus an automatic. Right. I love my hill holder. Okay, well we're not going to criticize you for loving the hill holder, okay? It's all right. You guys have fun. Thanks, Keith. All right, but you know the thing is, Eric, you were right though. That used to be the test when you were driving a car back in the day, was that could you do this, get on a hill and not roll back?

And I know that there used to be a test for chauffeurs back with the old Rolls Royces, where they would do the same thing, like they put a match book or a match box behind the wheel, and if you crushed the match box, then you failed the chauffeur test. Yeah, and the point is, you know, if you haven't developed that skill and that that technology doesn't work what's gonna happen you know you're gonna be on this hill and you're gonna roll right back into somebody else's car if you know how to drive a clutch you'll never have to worry about that. All right hello caller you're on with Eric who's this good morning. Hey good morning fellas. Morning. So I was listening to that lady with the 75L Camino.

Yes. Oh, you know, I've had so many cars do the same thing, but it's usually a fuel filter issue. The fuel filter will start, it'll be all right at first, but once that debris starts to build up against the filter, it shuts off. And I've bought a lot of cars that that's all the problem. There was just a fuel filter and I you know. Yeah you know that's actually yeah that's a really

good observation particularly she probably has a quadrajet and it's got this inline filter that's in the body of the car and a lot of people just forget to ever look at that. And what will happen is that when the car is sitting you know the the debris falls away from the filter element and then you start it up and it starts pulling it in, right? That kind of thing? Yeah, also there's a pull piece inside the distributor, and there's two little wires that are really thin, and they come off of that, it moves a lot back and forth and those little wires will break on the inside of the insulate inside and it'll kind of like cut out at a higher RPM and it'll cut, it'll like, it'll at a certain RPM it'll cut out and those wires are usually broken on the inside.

And that's a tricky one to diagnose. I really appreciate your suggestion. Thank you very much. Yep. All right, Eric, great talk as always. And why don't you work it up for next week as far as what's gonna begin. Love this.

So the Mazda is still sitting in my driveway, but guess what they're bringing today if it actually can make it here. All right, a Mercedes of some sort, what? Oh, no, no, it's the ID Buzz. Oh, they got the Volkswagen bus! The electric Volkswagen bus! Oh! Apparently they corrected the glitch I was supposed to have gotten that last week and it was disabled for some

reason but they've fixed it, at least so they say, and it's gonna be here at some point later today. Nothing like vehicles that give you the blue screen of death before and they have to fix it before they leave. They can give you 234, I think it's 234 miles of range for $62,000. Well, I'll tell you what, I'm looking forward to the review and I'm sure it'll be a lot of fun. It's a great looking little vehicle. It looks cute.

Really does. Yeah, all it needs is an air-cooled Volkswagen engine underneath of it. By the way, are they still doing the air colds down in Mexico and Brazil? They used to for a long time. Well, not in the cars. They may be still manufacturing the engines, but VW, the old Beetle, production ceased I think in 2001 around that time. Yeah, all right. Eric, thank you so much. Keep up on it all, folks. epautos.com and we'll see you next Wednesday. Thanks again. Thanks, Bill. This is KMED, KMED HD1, Eagle Point, Medford. KPXG, Grants Pass, Town Hall