Earl Stewart on Cars - 08.16.2025 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Vera Cadillac of Hollywood, FL.

Episode Date: August 16, 2025

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning visits a local Cadillac dealer in the Ft. Lauderdale area to see how much they will charge for a new 2025 Cadillac Optiq on their car lot. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. To purchase Earl’s book, “Confessions of a Recovering Car Dealer”, go to www.earlsbook.com. This will forward to Earl’s Amazon page to complete your purchase. All proceeds from the book go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. For more information or to adopt the dog you have seen today or any of their other dogs, please visit their website at www.bdrr.org. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

Hello, I'm Earl Stewart. I welcome you to Earl Stewart on Cars, a live talk show all about how to buy, lease, maintain, or repair your car without being ripped off by a car dealer. With me in the studio is Nancy Stewart, my wife, co-host, and a strong consumer advocate, especially for our female listeners. We also have Rick Kearney, an expert on how to keep your car running right. I dare you to ask a question that Rick can't answer about the mechanics or electronics of your car. Also with us is my son, Stu Stewart, our link to cyberspace through Facebook, YouTube, text messaging, and our encrypted anonymous feedback service. Stu is also the spymaster director of our mystery shopping report. He dispatches our secret shopper weekly to an unsuspecting the car dealership. And now, on with the show.

Good morning, everybody. We are back. And every week, it gets better and better. We're entering the cyber age We're already there in the cyber age But this is really just an old-fashioned radio show And we respect that It's a legacy kind of a thing

I think we're going to have radio for a long time And in addition to radio We'll have all the other cool stuff And you know we've got it right here We got Shatche BT right alongside of us And we're streaming this to YouTube. We're streaming it to Facebook. So we got it all.

We're especially fond of radio. And that's because, well, we've been doing this so long. We've been doing it for 20 plus years. In fact, today, this morning, we'll be presenting a plaque to one of the original listeners to Earl Sturt on Cars. We refer to him lovingly as John from Palm City. and a little later in the show, probably around 9 o'clock. Actually, Stu, my son will be here about 9 o'clock. He'll bring the plaque.

We're going to do a presentation just for you, the viewing audience. And then we're going to give the plaque to John from Palm City in person at a later date in our dealership. So, a special show. We're embracing the old, and we're right in the middle. of the new and it's just crazy out there with the developments in artificial intelligence with autonomy autonomous cars autonomous taxis it's just a lot of fun but you're the most fun and i want to give a number out which we encourage you to write down because statistics show

that people listen for about 15 minutes and then they go somewhere else they might come back they might not, but we have a huge audience if you look at it by those that are in and out over two hours because we start about now, which is 8 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, and we're on the air for two hours until 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. So whenever you hear us, if you have a number jot it down somewhere. You can write it on the palm of your hand if you want to. And that number is 877-9-60-99-60-9-6-0. 877-9-6-0. And that phone will be answered probably very promptly. And we get a lot of calls and sometimes we honestly don't get to the phone as quick as we should. But most of the time we do. And in charge of our

that phone is Nancy Stewart, who is my co-host and my wife. She's a co-founder of this show many, many years ago. And she'll interrupt Rick or me or my son, Stu, or anybody that's yakking because we want to hear your call. That telephone call is special. And the personality of your voice comes through very strongly. And we have friends we've made over the years. And a lot of them call back in we have fresh people that call back in we encourage the ladies if you're a female and you happen to be listening to the show right now and you say what did he just say if you're a female you haven't called the show before stay tuned just for about five minutes because nancy stewart will tell you about an extremely lucrative offer well i won't say extremely but it's a lucrative offer for you if you call the show for the first time, and you're a woman. We're trying to build our female following. It's just about there.

We're at 50-50 now. I think Nancy wants to go for 75-25. That's okay with me. The ladies are smart. They're not know-it-all. Us guys, you know, we got all the answers. I mean, but the women aren't afraid to ask questions, and the women aren't afraid to identify,

certain flaws in the system that we're working to straighten down. And they tell some stories about their misadventures with car dealerships that help you and me and all the listeners be safer when we buy a car. So I always forget to say this. I've got to remember because a lot of people just listen to this show because of our mystery shopping report. and that if you haven't heard before it's just when it sounds like

a mystery shopping report we sent an undercover undercover agent her name is Agent Lightning that's her code name we don't announce her real name and every week

she goes into a car dealership out of the state within the state we're located in South Florida we're in North Bond Beach Florida which is South Florida and we should chop a lot of car dealerships around here,

which is justifiable because this is the worst area for car dealers. They're just, every make is represented down here. You name a car. It was manufactured it's sold in South Florida. Wall-to-wall

car dealers. And they are incredibly competitive, and competition with the commission system breeds danger for you, the car buyer. And that's That's what the show is all about to prevent you from being ripped off by a car dealer, pure and simple.

So if you haven't listened to the show before, you'll enjoy and you'll learn. We try to entertain. I mean, if you can't have fun, what's the point? This isn't school. You don't have to worry about taking notes. There won't be any testing. But enjoy yourself, and while you're enjoying yourself, listen and learn. and if you have an experience to contribute,

we'd love to hear it, because you really do make the show. I'll give that number out again. 877-960-9-6-0. 877-9-60-9-6-0. If you want to text us because you don't like to call and be live on radio, and most of us feel that way, I mean, I don't anymore. Nancy and Rick, I mean, we're used to it.

But the text us. Text us at 772-497-65-30. 772-497-6-5-30. We have an anonymous feedback line, and that is to protect your privacy. And for you folks that like to say things, you'd rather not say any person? I mean, we all know that.

I mean, if you want to call us a name, if you don't like what we're saying, that's your God-given and American-given right. You get free speech. You say anything you want to, short of violence. No violence. You know, we don't want you to threaten us in that way, but you can threaten us with anything else you want to. And if that's the way you feel, hey, more power to you. And that anonymous feedback source is Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Y-O-U-R-A-N-O-N-Y-M-O-U-S feedback, just the way it sounds.

F-E-E-E-D, B-A-C-K dot com, Your Anonymous Feedback.com. You know, as an aside, I'm working on setting up a escrow account for $100,000. dollars. I'm going to set up with an attorney that is not going to be my attorney because that would be suspect. We will have an attorney set up on escrow fund of a thousand dollars payable to anyone that can prove that we revealed your identity anonymous feedback. First of all, we don't know your identity because the link we use is a company called incognito and their guarantee is that if you subscribe to this, they'll provide you.

this link that we cannot find out so when we get a whatever you call a message on your anonymous feedback.com we don't know who you are but if you if I'm lying to you and you can show me that we are lying to you you'll get a hundred thousand dollars that's about as far as we could go to encourage you if you don't want to be heard and identified car dealers you know car salespeople, employees of dealerships that we mystery shop, a lot of you out there

I've got to say, boy, that guy, I'd like to give him a piece of my mind, but if I'm afraid, if I do, I'll have problems. You won't have problems.

Your anonymous feedback.com. Write it down. Y-O-U-R-A-N-Y-M-O-U-S-F-E-E-D, B-A-C-K-K-com. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Okay, I've been yacking long enough. I'm going to turn the microphone over to Nancy Stewart, as I said, and she's got a very special offer here for you ladies out there. Listen carefully.

It sounds too good to be true, but it is true. Nancy, the microphone is all yours. Good morning, everyone, and welcome. Welcome to another fabulous show. and I want to make sure that you did jot that number down. 877-960-99-60, and you can text us at 772-497-6530, and you can, as I will said, take advantage of your anonymous feedback.com. We have a whole lot to get to this morning. First of all, let me remind the ladies that you can be.

If you are the first two new lady callers, you can be, you know, a great gift. It's $50 for each one, each one. And $50, that goes pretty long way today. Well, kind of. Anyway, we have a great mystery shopping report. It kind of hits home for me. And it is from Vera Cadillac of Hollywood. and what I call the rags to riches story.

And it really tugs at your heart. And just to give you a little bit of information, you know, they fled the Cuban Revolution. And what a time it was, and how frightening it must have been for them to come to the United States. But here we are 2025. And they're in Miami in the 50s with a coffee stand. And here we are, again, like I said, 20, 25.

And it's just an amazing journey. It was about 1980 when they started buying car dealerships. And what a story. What a family. And what strength, not giving up on hope. So stay tuned for all of them. that and we're also going to talk about the cyber truck the cyber truck there's so much to be said about the cyber truck we don't have time during our two-hour show but the air force is

buying yes they're buying Tesla cyber trucks to use as missile targets and there you go that's another exciting story and I was just you know focused on the fact that we were bulletproof in the cyber truck, but there's so many factors on the weight and the length of it, the width of the truck, things that most people don't know about. So we're going to get to all of that, too. Our number, again, is 877-960-9960, and you can text us at 772-4976530. And don't forget your anonymous feedback.com. I think Rick has something to add to this.

Did you hear about the cyber truck that went on the Rubicon Trail out in California this year, Nevada's Mountains? It's a Jeep trail, an off-road trail, and the truck, unfortunately, got stuck, and it went into shutdown mode in the middle of the trail. And it took them two days before they could actually get it moved so that they didn't have a choke point there, and they got it moved off to the street. side and it was there for almost a week before they could get it towed back out of the mountains what is it what is shutdown mode i it basically apparently something happened and the system just literally shut off and they had no internet access at that point there to try to get the truck restarted oh so apparently for some reason the computers decided nope we're turning off and you've got to get to a dealership to have this thing you know to a tesla

place to have it restarted. Yeah, that voice, as you're listening to, is Rick Kearney, which I missed announcing this morning, which is stupid to me, because he really is the most interesting part of the show. We, Nancy and I tend to get excited about the crazy stuff that goes on with the car business, but the nuts and bolts of the show are still with, I got to fix my car. We can talk about electric vehicles. We can talk about autonomous vehicles.

And they're fun to talk about. But most of us are driving just ordinary cars. And when I say that, combustion engine, hybrid, a lot of hybrids. Electric vehicles, very, very few. Autonomous vehicles, practically none. So we're talking to millions of people out there that would have. a potential problem and the reason Rick is so important is the guy is a he's a certified diagnostic master technician he's been doing this most of his life

he has stayed on top of his train which is difficult because what's what we looked at 25 years ago as being a car and what we look at 25 years hence today is not a car anymore it's a computer so he's gone from, you know, coils and pistons and, you know, transmissions to cyber vehicles, which are autonomous in some cases, electric in a lot of cases, and he can still tell you how to fix them, whether it's got a carburetor or it's got a battery. And it's not easy. I mean, he spends a good amount of his time in school because the technology is faster than a speeding bullet. I mean, if you haven't checked in the past week,

you're behind on the way technology is literally exploding. So you call Rick at 877-9-60-99-60. That's 877-9-60-9-60. Or YouTube is the really, he's kind of a follow. a whole bunch of folks on YouTube. YouTube.com for slash your loancars. YouTube.com

for slash Reloen cars. An intelligent group of guys mainly. Did you have any gals there? Quite a few, actually. Oh, really? That's great. So he's got gals and guys

that really follow him. And you got a couple calls coming in an hour? Well, as a matter of fact, Donovan, Donovan, who, Donovan Lewis, our star the guy is I Donovan one of these days we got to meet because man I want to talk with you because this guy is incredible

but he says the cyber truck got stuck on the trail because the owner did not properly charge the truck and he used it for camping and the owner spoke out about it and said it's really his own fault he didn't manage the power properly or leave with a 100% charge before he got up there See, this is a reason I love Donovan. When Rick was talking about the cyber truck, and that was a news article,

and he was repeating what he read. But the anti-electric vehicle, the anti-Tesla, it's almost like politics. You can almost tell whether you like electric vehicles or not by who you vote for. So it becomes a political issue. We try to deal with facts here. I mean, whether you're a Republican, a Democrat, whether you're an independent, whether you're a liberal, whether you're a conservative, we don't care. We just talk about vehicles. And for some reason, people are really down on electric vehicles and autonomous vehicles and the cyber truck, because it's like an in-your-face kind of a vehicle.

Because when you look at a cyber truck, it's like waving the flag saying, here is an autonomous electric vehicle. and it's ugly. What are you going to do about it? And that's the reason they get us to attack. But yeah, we got the fact from Donovan. It wasn't the vehicle. It was a dumb driver that lets his battery expire in the middle of the desert. If you're not going to charge your battery, don't forget to do it when you're in the middle of the desert. Yeah. And to what you just said and Donovan, let me tell you, I'll remind our audience how important it is for Earl and I to make sure that our electric vehicles are charged. We never, ever miss a beat because the same thing could happen to us that Rick just shared with the audience on the cyber truck.

And then you add to this mix, this cyber truck is so heavy. How heavy is it? What's the length? What's the width? Let me talk. Let's go to the weight. Let's go to the curb weight, and we're looking at 6,900 pounds. Let's call it 7,000.

And also, the cyber truck is about 223.7 inches in length. The width of the truck is 79.9 inches. So, you know, there's a lot of stainless steel on the side of the road that just stopped. and the reason I'll re-enterate is the fact that he didn't charge his truck. Well, it's interesting because when hybrids first came to the U.S., one of the first questions everybody would ask me about a Prius, well, when it runs out of gas, how far can you drive it? And my answer every single time was, why would you run your car out of gas? That makes no sense, folks.

That's not the whole point of having a hybrid. The idea of a hybrid is to get better fuel economy and to be better for the ecology and everything else. But don't run it out of gas. Exactly. And the same thing with an electric vehicle, you know, you've got to prepare for the future and make sure you keep it charged up.

And there's maintenance on everything. And if you don't take care of your vehicle, your vehicle will not take care of you. Well, now, the fun part, too, about this particular unit, I saw the pictures of this truck, the cyber truck, and yours, the back end slopes down. They had the modification on it where it had like a camper bed almost, so the roof of it stayed totally vertical, totally horizontal. And I'm assuming that these folks could actually sleep inside the cyber truck for camping. I mean, it was, that's versatility.

I love that. Okay, this is multifunctional. Okay. Let me get. I just love the technology is all. You know, it's so interesting. It's so amazing. Things that I just didn't know.

Okay, folks, again, 877960, text us at 772-4976530. And ladies, waiting for your call. First, two new lady callers. You win yourself $50 this morning. So take advantage of that. We're going to be on the air for the next two hours. We're going to go right to the phone.

where we have Bob waiting in Lake Park. Good morning, Bob. Welcome. Hey, Bob. Good morning, everyone. How's everybody today? I got a question for Rick. Good morning, Rick.

Hello. Good morning. My AC compressor seized up on me on Thursday, on my Mustang. The car is going to be 11 years old in December. I only got 55,000 miles, so I took it over to the mechanic. I have somebody that works on it. Mm-hmm. And he said something about crack now.

And then he also mentioned something about the monocula. So when this thing ceases up, apparently there's shaving that can go through the system. And I'm just wondering how to approach it. I'm doing my due diligence. boards suggest that when you replace the compressor, you also replace the condenser. And I think the condenser comes with the evaporator, the dryer. I'm not sure. I have to do some more checking on that.

You know, but I went online. I looked at the Parts Geek. I looked at Rock Auto. I looked on Amazon. My mechanic suggested that I don't buy anything from Amazon because it's stuffed off from China, and it's pretty not very good. My question to you is, how do I go about doing this properly without having to come into a situation where the new compressor gets fouled up by something that's in the system? He said he would try to vacuum it out as much as possible, but he couldn't guarantee they would get everything. So how would you go about, you know, if I decide to even do it, I don't really use the air conditioning that much.

As a matter of fact, I just had it recharge seven weeks ago for the first time, and the cars, you know, at that time it's over 10 years old. That's how I use it. But I have been using. It's been hot, and so I've been using the AC, which I usually do in July and August. The rest of the year around, it's dropped the windows down. What? What would you suggest be the best way about going to do it without having to have the compressor replaced again?

I don't want to do it and have something come through and I have to go through the hole. I think Rick's got an answer for you. Here's the quick rundown. You will have to replace the compressor. Now, the compressor in the AC is generally the only thing with moving parts. So when it gets damaged, pieces of metal can travel through the AC. So they've got to make sure that you get that cleaned out.

Now, for yours, the dryer filter assembly is part of the condenser, which is the little radiator up in the front of the car. so that's going to need to be replaced as well. Right, that's a parallel flow condensual. Yep. And when they do that, your technician should also need to blow out the lines. Basically, he's going to use a chemical flush that he will spray through the lines that will clean out the evaporator core and hopefully get any debris out of the fixed orifice tube as well,

which is what Ford uses to control the Frionflow through the system. Once they clean those out, then they'll put in a new compressor with a proper amount of oil, vacuum the whole system down and recharge it, and everything should be fine for you. Right. So what's the probability of them going through that? He knows what he's doing. So, I mean, he'll do that procedure that you just mentioned. And what's the probability that something still gets?

through that they don't get everything out is there a chance that that can happen there there's a tiny chance but not very much more if it's done if he does the job properly and properly cleans the lines you won't have any problem at all oh okay I just wanted you know I you know I just don't want to now I've I've replaced a thousand compressors and blasted out these lines and basically we use a high-pressure air with this chemical so it washes everything out and then we recharge the system

properly with the new components and you'll be just fine. Bob, let me ask you a question. You said something earlier that really caught my attention. You said you don't use your air conditioning very much much. And here we are in South Florida.

I believe you're down here with us. Yeah, I am. It's got to be, as we speak, 100 degrees outside. do you just put the windows down? I mean, how do you not use your air conditioner when you live in South Florida? Well, I'm retired professional golfer.

So I'm outstores all the time. Uh-huh. You know, so I'm acclimated to the heat. It doesn't really bother me. I'll be darned. This is a question for Rick. The fact that he doesn't use the air conditioner, can that work against him?

No, not really. because air conditioning systems will, they will naturally let the oil will go through the system. And even if you don't use it very much, if you only use it once or twice a month, even, or four or five times a year, it's still going to be fine. I see. I mean, you got a lot of folks up in the northern states,

Pacific Northwest, in that, and areas like that, they don't run the AC much at all. True, yeah. I only use it in July and August, basically, when I use it. You know, and that's only, you know, really oppressive. But I'm used to the heat. I'm outdoors all the time, so it doesn't really go. I'm just want to make sure I don't have to, you know, put something in there,

and then it's the new compressor gets fouled up, and I have to go through the whole process. I don't have to repeat the process. That's my only concern. So just replace the condenser and the compressor and have them blow out the lines, basically. That's all going to do. And the compressor, would, that comes with the, it wasn't quite clear. You know, you can't buy, there's a couple of those sites that sell kits. But motorcraft, if you want the motorcraft, which is more expensive, which are the OEM parts,

you have to buy everything separately, and they're much more expensive. So I think about maybe getting the kit, but it wasn't clear that the condenser came with the dryer. Would that all be together, would you know, when you buy something like that? Yeah, what they've done is they've moved away from having a separate dryer, and the dryer is actually part of the condenser now. Okay. So that dryer unit with the filter, that's all part of the condenser. Right.

Yeah. And doesn't that function also the capture, wouldn't that capture a lot of this stuff that savings came off of that thing? Wouldn't that catch a lot of it? Yes. If any little tiny particles that are left in there will get caught by that, but you still want to clean it out really well because if too much stuff gets caught in that filter, it can plug it up, and then your AC doesn't work until you get that replaced.

But then you would only have to replace the condensual. Oh, you just the dryer. I don't know if you could. Well, the dryer filter, some of them, you can't get that separate. You have to replace the condenser itself. Right. Now, when he was saying something about the muffler, what was he talking about? A total different system. That's talking about the exhaust on the car. So if you have a- How would the shrapnel get in there?

It wouldn't. There's no correlation between the two, unless there's some part on Ford ACs that they're referring to as a muffler, but I've never heard that. It surprised me when he mentioned, when he said the shrapnel would go all over. You know, I said, then he said something about the Muffa. I thought the way he expressed it, I thought that somehow that some of the savings could get into the exhaust system. But I'm not quite sure how that would happen. He may be using that term, like for the fixed orifice tube or some other part on the condenser. Just using different terminology as all. Right.

Okay. All right. Well, thank you very much for your help. You're welcome, Bob. I appreciate it. And I hope everybody has a wonderful date. I'm waiting for Stu to come back. Thank you.

He'll be in this morning. Bob, thank you so much for the call. Please stay in touch. Thank you. Our number here is 877-960. You can text us at 772-99. Oh, I just forgot the number. Did you doze off?

Not a chance. I don't have time. I don't have time. 9-960. Thank you. And our text number. number is 772-4976530. That's what happens when you, you know, taken, you have it in your memory bank, but then all of a sudden you have that fog. Ladies, you know that, you know, in the auto industry,

you know, for these crazy people that are in charge, as the whole voice club, I call it, they're making a financial, a financial mistake. They really need to. to recognize the ladies and their impact on the auto industry because, you know, for the dealers to ignore that, it's a financial disaster. So please, ladies, give us a call this morning at 877-0-09-9-6-67. And you can also win yourself $50 this morning, the first two new lady callers. We're going to go to Roger. is calling us from

he's calling us from Green Acres welcome how are you Roger I'm very good good morning how is everybody my question today is about my son and I have been working on his car

it's a a Dodge Charger 2010 but before we move over to that I just wanted to back up I called quite a few weeks ago regarding my Nissan Quest I don't know if you remember the question Rick it was about

about me starting up in the morning and driving from point A to B and it drives perfect and then it starts up and go from B to C it starts up and when I get to point D it won't start up for 45 minutes I don't know if you remember I was talking about it so I replaced all kinds of parts

ran all kinds of diagnostics and finally I reasoned out that it might be a filter that was causing the problem, but I don't understand what heating up would have to do with that. But anyhow, I found out that the fuel pump for the Nissan Quest, it's a 2017, the fuel filters built into the fuel pump. So I went ahead and bit the bullet and bought the fuel pump because there's quite a bit of work exchange in those things. And I replaced it, solved the problem. I haven't had any issues since, and I thought I would share that.

Excellent. That's great news. Yeah. But, you know, sometimes when you're fixing a car, you reason out all the different components. You take a chance and buy it, and sometimes it solves a problem. Okay, getting back to the dog's door. Process of elimination, yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, if parts cost $5, $10, $15, you have no problems.

But when they start talking $200, you begin thinking, should I really do it or not? Absolutely. I hear you. Yeah. Where did you buy that part on the curiosity? This particular part, I bought it from, I got it through Amazon. Yeah. The reason I ask is a previous caller mentioned Rock Auto, and I haven't mentioned their name recently,

but they are very, very good. I tend to get hung up on Amazon. They're great, but Rockotto.com has got every part ever imagined by anybody with a car. Rock Auto, and their prices are extremely good. So a guy like you would do it yourself or rockato.com is a good place to check along with Amazon. Well, I got some good news for you. I tried them first, and they didn't have what I was looking for.

And they said keep trying. Okay. But, yes, I like using them. I think they're excellent. Yeah. Well, thank you very much. get into the Dodge Charger, it's a 2010. I think it's a, well, it's a 2010.

So what the problem is is with the starter. So when you start off in the morning, hit the key, the starter has a good turnover, and it starts up the engine rather quickly as it should. Once the temperature gets above, my son's got a way to check the temperature of the engine. once the temperature gets above 115 degrees, the starter will not start up the engine again,

and generally what will happen is it'll do a drag right there, and I like that to start up. So the first thing you generally think of, well, maybe the battery just don't have the charging strength to turn over the starter. So we replaced the battery. We've got a brand new battery. And so it's very consistent.

And after you drive the car and the temperature goes up, it will not start. And until the temperature drops below that, 115 degrees. So we took the starter out and took it to one of these auto parts houses where they could run diagnostics on the starter. And they said the starter was fine. So we cleaned up all the connections and everything and put it back in the engine and it worked for about two weeks. Now it's back to the same situation it is.

So I guess the million-dollar question I got for Rick is, do you think that that's actually the starter itself from the heat of the engine being so close to the starter? Basically, you've got two possibilities there. Either the starter motor, when it gets hot, is breaking down, losing the power, basically. As it heats up, it's getting resistance in the circuit. so you're not getting that electric force to turn that starter motor properly or now I hate to put it this way but there is a potential that when your engine is getting hot it may make the engine more difficult to turn on however I would

think you would see a lot of other symptoms if that were the case so myself is a mechanic the first thing I'd be doing is I'd be putting a new starter in there Okay. I think you've solved my, you know, the real question is, should I go ahead and give that a try or not? And I guess we finally reached that point. And I just wanted to get a little confirmation. Well, the fact that when you cleaned up the contacts and everything and you had it out and it worked better for a couple weeks, that almost tells me, yeah, it's that starter motor. And what's happening is maybe the windings are starting to break down or maybe the contacts for the solenoid when it pulls in the solenoid to turn on the, the big current to turn that motor, maybe those contacts aren't any good anymore, and it's starting to lose its connection. Because back in the day, back in the 90s and 2000s, we used to be able to take Toyota starters out

and replace just the contacts in them for like $20 worth of parts as opposed to a $400 starter. And then they changed the design and made it, no, you can't do that anymore, and kind of aggravated me because I could get a lot more labor to put those contacts in and still save the customer a lot of money. And it made that starter just fine again for years and years and years. And it was a win-win all the way around. But Toyota didn't like it because they weren't selling those $400 starters. So they changed it to where you can't service it.

And then they started charging $600 for the new starter. Oh, my God. Yeah, it's big corporations just, destroying us little people all the way around. But, yeah, I would start with a new starter. Go through Rock Auto or Amazon, and as long as you stick with a good known name brand, you'll be just fine with that. Okay, thank you very much.

By the way, I really enjoyed that air conditioning talk you had just before I got on. That was very good occasion. Thank you, Roger. All right, have a great day. Thank you. You know, I have to say that, you know, Rick and all of his information he shares week in and week out, and by the way, that's free information. And it goes without saying that it's no wonder that Rick is at the top of his game

and that now that mechanics are recognized as being at the top of their profession, For what? Honesty and Transparency. And Rick is a leader of the pack. Give us a call toll free this morning at 877-960. You can also text us at 772-497-6-5-3-0. Ladies, you're running out of time. Give us a call toll-free.

When you're sell $50, the first two lady callers. We're going to go to Barry. Barry's a regular caller from Tampa. Good morning, Barry. Good morning. This is a follow-up to last week's discussion of OEM versus aftermarket. When it comes time for service, the average Joe drives in, hands over the keys, and then parts, weighs with the car. And what happens next is a big matter of trust.

Well, Ronald Reagan used to say trust but verify. So what's the best way for customers to verify? that a shop has used quality parts and fluids as opposed to cheap junk, especially if the good stuff has been requested specifically up front? I think that the best guarantee is to ask up front, because you're absolutely right. If a repair or a dealer repairer is going to try to take advantage of you, and let's face it, most of them do, they'll do it.

in the parts department and the service department. And OEM part, original equipment manufacturer made by Chevrolet or Ford or Toyota, cost a lot more money to the dealer. And when they mark it up to you, it's gonna sound like a whole lot of money. I'm not saying that dealers do this. I mean, some do, but how many I don't know,

but they could buy remanufactured, They could buy aftermarket parts, they will shop around for the lowest price part. Now, there's nothing wrong with buying the lower price part if the quality is there. So if I were a customer and I were going into any car dealership, I would ask them if they are using original equipment manufacture parts. And that's not to say they can't lie to you and do it anyway, but it compounds the felony. In other words, if they put that on your repair order and saying these are original equipment manufacturing parts, they are really in serious trouble if they try to cheat. Okay.

What do you think about getting an itemized estimate? Does that help kind of spell it out better? Absolutely, absolutely. That's in Florida, and I don't know about all the other states, but in Florida, you have the right to add. for an itemized estimate and they cannot exceed that estimate by more than 10% so if for no other reason to protect yourself get that estimate and including in that estimate as you mentioned the parts and find out if these are they're going to be used the oil I mean anything that goes into your car if they want to use

another oil or another transmission fluid or another part let them make their case as to why and if If they make their case and say the warranty is this is good, the parts just is good, and we're going to save you the money over the original equipment part, then you can make that decision. You might want to say, look, I'll pay the extra money. I want an OEM part. But that discussion should take place whenever you're especially talking about on major repair.

Okay. All right. And then one other thing before I let you go, and I think sometimes, mechanics will probably take a dim view of this. But what about where the customer supplies the parts? That's usually a gray area, depending on the shop. And the main reason being, the shop has to warranty the repair that they do. So as a technician, if I'm putting parts on a car and I'm saying, okay, the shop says this

is warrantied for one year unlimited mileage, which is pretty much what most of them do, If we put that part on and we're warrantying that part, we know where that part came from me, we know what the quality is. If you bring a part to us and we install it and that part fails, our shop didn't make any money on the part, and now if it fails, we have to replace that part for no charge. So we don't make any money then on that failure, and now it hurts the technical. and the shop. So that's why a lot of places will not install customer-supplied parts, or if they do, they'll say, all right, but there's going to be no warranty on it because we don't know where it came from, and we're not going to get reimbursed by that parts company for the

warrantied labor to replace the new part. Okay, that's understandable. All right, well, thank you very much. Appreciate the information. Sure. Thanks, Barry. And one thing I would always be cautious of, anything. you're going to get a repair done on your car ask for in writing what is the warranty on the

parts they're replacing and the time and mileage for that warranty because there are some places to have a very limited warranty on what they're replacing and other shops they will give you a full warranty they'll say yes it's it's one year unlimited mileage i don't care if you go out drive a hundred thousand miles in the next year that part is still under warranty for it okay great great information and by the way stew is in the studio and stew has the plaque uh for uh our very special listener and i nancy can tell you all about that there's so much to say about john and his journey with us from the very beginning and he has been so shall I say respectful dedicated to his cause and most of all our cause John from Palm City that's the way we affectionately refer to him yeah John from

Palm City and as I said you know during this journey that at times has been difficult because There's, you know, listeners, callers, whomever, who, you know, sometimes disagree with us, but we love it. We love disagreement in the competition and all of it. And John from Palm City Falls under all of that, and with his information, you know, from the past to right now and representing us and pointing out our transparency and so much more, it just makes. makes John from Palm City, well, this plaque will speak for itself, and you can take a look at the beauty of this, and is this amazing? And we will present this to John at the dealership in due time, but this represents who John is. And I think Jonathan can get that up on the camera, if he would. Can you read that? I will indeed.

Do we have it, Jonathan? Very good. Okay, presented to John Linnhart, John from Palm City. This is from Earl and Nancy Stewart. In heartfelt recognition of your unwavering loyalty, insightful contributions, and decades of support for Earl Stewart on cars, as one of our very finest callers and most faithful listeners, you have become a cherish, member of our extended radio family your wisdom encouragement enthusiasm has helped shape has helped shape our show into what it is today with deep appreciation earl and nancy stewart that was 20 some odd years ago when we were a half-hour show and it was the reason we we love John so much is back of those days we didn't get very many calls nobody knew who we were or what we were doing and John started calling and he was

he was kind of like planting the seed and once he started calling more people started calling and he could sit right here and be part of the show because he does know a whole lot about what he's when he calls he's actually more of a contributor than a question asker because he knows one hell of a lot about cars so we'll be giving in this plaque in person and we just wanted to show it to you before we did okay we're going to go to maybe some texts we're going to go to your anonymous feedback maybe to what Rick has over here because we have a lull in the phone calls 877 960 9960 or you can text us at 772-4976530.

Going to mention it again, ladies, $50. First two new lady callers. Okay, guys. I'm going to volunteer Rick because I'm trying to get on the Wi-Fi here. Okay, Rick, what do you have for us? We have Anne-Marie's text for the morning. Good morning, Anne-Marie. She says, good morning.

In the old days, changing a burned-out halogen headlight was a simple matter. Apparently, changing out the new headlights are not so simple anymore. Motor1.com has a website or has a story about a guy with a 22 Corolla with a burned out headlight. Much to his dismay, it's not a bulb anymore. It's a sealed unit that requires replacing the bumper, removing the bumper and replacing the entire headlight assembly. Instead of a $20 part and a few minutes time, the guy is looking at $1,000.

or more. Is this story accurate or is it clickbait? If the story is accurate, are sealed headlight units that require the bumper to be removed in order to replace the headlight unit common on Toyota's nowadays. And if not, which models cost the most to replace a headlight? Thanks. A lot of cars now have gone to an LED system for the headlights and you don't have a bulb that can be replaced. Generally, yeah, unfortunately, the headlight unit requires removing the front

bumper, but that's actually not the biggest part of the job. That's usually pretty simple. Five or six screws, a few plastic clips, and that plastic bumper cover comes right loose, and replacing that headlight unit then can be done. The big cost

is the part of the price of the part. And unfortunately, like all manufacturers to it, is very proud of their parts, and they charge a good amount for it. As to which car would be the most expensive headlights, I could only guess, but I will say Bougatis. Yeah, well, supercars, yeah. But here's an interesting one. There are a lot of those Porsche Maycans on the road.

Yes. Different Porsche models. We see those all over here in Palm Beach County. did you know that removing the headlight on a Porsche can be done with a plastic butter knife and just basically unplug the headlight that assembly comes out in about two minutes time so if you're out having lunch today somewhere

like at Dune Dogs see if you can grab a couple of plastic butter knives to go head out to the parking lot and that pair of headlights for that Porsche are somewhere in the neighborhood of five thousand dollars it's like they're four light four LEDs right yeah and it's it's it was one of these that went on reddit just recently a while back i read this that it is insane how simple it is to yank those headlights loose on a lot of cars and they're big money so i just check a chat gbt

and on that Porsche matrix uh the cost ranges from 6 000 up to 30 thousand dollars each Wow, you better get some super glue in there. Interesting. And a quick note here from Donovan, he says, every car within five years will have this because Matrix LED lights are now legal in the U.S. It'll end up better for us all because you won't be blinded by the oncoming car

because the headlights now are going to be adjustable. The computers will simply change the angle and the brightness of the headlights as it detects another car, approaching. So it's a great evolution. Here's a surprise, and I love Anne-Marie because of her questions. 2022, Toyota Corolla, XSE, cost from $1,100 to $1,100 just for the driver's side, even though it's a compact sedan. So it is crazy.

I mean, just, I mean, you buy a, you know, a million-dollar Porsche. You don't care, and you know, and you expect it. You buy a Corolla and someone says, yeah, I'll replace that one headlight. It's going to cost you $1,100. I wouldn't want to be the one that told that person that costs that much. Right. Now, the one advantage you do have is unlike older cars where the headlights burn out within every couple of years, you're replacing headlights every few years. You don't touch these.

Some of these LED lights will last 10, 12, 15, 20 years, and a couple hundred thousand miles and still just keep right on going. but like anything sometimes parts do fail yeah yeah like the LED lights in our showroom after after 10 years we got to deal with them again yeah the same thing at home yeah the LED lights that they put up in the in the shop they put in one set they turn purple that they turn blue bluish purple and suddenly as we're walking in trying to work on a car everybody's teeth is glow yeah everything is blueish purple in the whole shop made real fun to figure out wire diagrams. Yeah. It's crazy. Absolutely.

But yeah, it's technology, folks. I think that there's something to be said about stealing these parts from different vehicles, and it definitely has become an occupation, very lucrative, as a matter of fact. So with that said, we are going to skip back to the phones, and we are going to get to a couple of ladies. Oh, boy. Yeah, a couple of ladies. and so happy to hear from them and so many in the weeks past.

So thank you for that. Good morning, Kathy. Kathy is calling us from Coral Springs and she is a first-time caller. Good morning, Kathy. Good morning, Nancy, and Earl and everybody else. Hey. Hello.

Good morning. Thank you for tuning in and being a first-time caller, Kathy. you have just won yourself $50 this morning. So be sure you get that information, contact information to me, and you can pass it along to Jeremy. Okay, great. Okay.

Just a couple questions for you. We are in the market now for our forever car. We're retired, and we're going to look to replace our Ford F-150. She is a 2001, so we're looking to get a more versatile car that I can handle because my husband is vision impaired. And my question is we're looking for, we're thinking about a Honda DRV. Is that still a good car on the market? And is it wise to go ahead and finance the vehicle or pay cash right out front for it? I would say that depending on your credit and your interest rate, you need to look at that before you make a decision.

You're probably not a speculator, but the way I look at things sometimes, if I have to borrow $1,000 and pay 5% interest, or I could take that $1,000 because if I took it out of the market, I'd be losing 10%. The stock market over the past, ever since there was a stock market, is average 10%. But anytime I can borrow money for less than what I could get for my investments, I would borrow it. So if you're an investor and you're not afraid to push your money in some conservative investments in the stock market, I would leave the money in the market and pay cash for the car. Okay. That makes sense. Or finance the car.

or finance. I'm sorry for finance it, yeah. You finance the car, you borrow the money and put it in the market. So you're borrowing the money for 6% and you're getting 10% in the market. Now, a new CRV, I don't know what any current programs are, but if they're on anything like Toyota, they have some special interest rate programs. Good point. So you get a pretty good low rate, even though rates aren't so great these days. Yeah, sometimes they've got 0% or 1.9%.

And check on that before you make a decision. I check. Go ahead. I'm sorry, Nancy. I checked consumer reports just to see if there's anything about the 2025 CRV that's notable. It continues to be a recommended vehicle by consumer reports. It has a lot of good things to say about it. So as far as the car, you know, I think intuitively we all knew here that the Honda would be a good car.

Honda makes an incredible product. they are fantastic and Kim appreciates life on YouTube she had asked are they made in the U.S. to avoid the tariffs and so I looked it up and as a matter of fact

Donovan is confirming this most of them are made in the U.S. with some being made in Canada but I think that may be just parts issues but yeah so you probably will not have a tariff issue on that and Donovan also says

if you have to get one that was made in japan it'll have a lower tariff amount anyways but most of them are here in the u.s and yeah honda in my opinion you can't go wrong they're a great car yeah i have to agree with uh rick and stew and kathy uh you know what makes this a you know it's it's very you know telling when you start to look at a vehicle to purchase or a house these are two very very uh big in your life, but most of all, you, what I picked up from you, you said this would be the last vehicle, and there's so much to take into consideration before you even go into the dealership. Going into the dealership is the last thing on the list, and that's to pick your vehicle up and

drive it away. But it is just most important for you to do your homework before, you know, all this takes place and deciding not only, I think it's just the two of you that would be in this vehicle. Is that correct? Right, yes. Okay, and Honda is great

competition for us. You can't go wrong with that decision. So there's a lot of factors that you take into consideration and as I said deciding on that vehicle and then doing the research is so important. Yes, too?

Yeah, I just want to, I, Earl had mentioned earlier, you deciding between financing it. So I looked it up right now. So there are especially APR, you know, lower interest rates through Honda is like 2.99% I think is the lowest. So yeah, right now, at least for now, the market is doing better in that. So it would kind of make sense just to do a, you know, very like a no down payment or and then just keep that. in your IRA, wherever you have it, and let it grow. But there's another thing to consider, and that's Honda pre-owned, certified pre-owned.

So you can get a 2024 or 2025 certified pre-owned Honda, and they have a special through Honda for 0.99% APR. I've never heard about that with a used vehicle. Uh, these are certified pre-owned, uh, uh, uh, hondas. Um, it's not from the Honda certified website. So I jump on, I jump on that. Yeah, so you're going to save, um, quite a bit, hopefully, um, or you'll save something at least, get going to a very late model, um, CRV. Have you considered a, uh, certified used, uh, Kathy?

You know, I didn't think about that until, uh, until right now, which I will. Yeah. So if you go to a Honda dealership, you can tell them, you'd like to see, um, compare the new and the used. You know, there's some benefits for getting the new, but I'm pretty sure if you're going to get a used 2025 or a new one, all the features

are going to be the same. Everything's going to be the same. You're just going to have just a little bit less to pay for it. Yeah, and what's great is that, you know, if you purchase a vehicle, a used certified vehicle, and you have all the safety features on it because it

isn't a really old vehicle, your way ahead of the because as Stu just pointed out you're going to be paying a lot less and and the warranty itself it'll be bumper-to-bumper the certified programs at least match the the the new core warranty most of them will have a large portion of the new factory warranty or remaining so if you get a you know if you get to use 2025 you're still going to have a majority depending how many miles are on it, of the, they have a three-year, I think, bumper-to-bumper warranty,

then a five-year, I think the power train warranty. So you can have most of that, but then they enhance it. So they'll have something because it's used. I'm just going to compare it to what I know pretty intimately. That's the Toyota program, but yeah, there's going to be a everything is covered, no matter what happens for, say, 30 days or a few months, and then it will also extend it up to a higher power train warranty. and then they're going to offer you for sale something to extend the bumper-to-bumper warranty up.

And, you know, that's something you just kind of have to do the math on when you're in the box. No, when they present it to you, you know, how much you're going to pay. I would look for them with low miles, and I think that's what you're going to find. So it shouldn't be too hard. Yeah, you're going to be right in the driver's seat. Kathy, whenever you take into consideration, you know, a personal lifestyle needs. comfort. There's so many things to do, as I said, as far as homework is concerned, in order for you to, you know, purchase the right vehicle, again, that fits your personal lifestyle and your needs. Kathy, have we answered all of your questions?

No, I just had one other one. When we were talking about headlights, it kind of sparked a question. Okay. A lot of the vehicles on the road today, as soon as you start your car, your lights come on. And those lights stay on. Is there a way that you can actually turn those headlights out when you're driving during the day? You really don't need them on. Well, basically the lights are on for safety. So it makes your car more visible to other vehicles.

And there are two types of systems for that. One is automatic headlights where when you look at, look on the headlights switch you'll see the the you've got a setting for parking lights headlights and then auto and when you set it to auto there's a light sensor up on the dash that will turn on your headlights for full power when it gets dark enough so even if you get heavy rain clouds over you and it starts to rain your headlights will normally come on because lights on in the rain is good safety factor the other system is what's called daytime running lights and they usually have

a separate switch somewhere to turn those off if you want to and what they are is every time you start the car up if your daytime running lights are on your headlights will come on about half brightness again for safety so other car other drivers can see you easier but with daytime running lights normally your taillights are not illuminated at all so what happens unfortunately is a lot of folks will start the car up at night they'll see okay I I see light out there, my headlights are on, but it's actually just the daytime running lights, and they have no lights in the back of the car, which makes for a dangerous situation. So myself, I have my wife's car, hers are set for auto, so her lights will come on when needed.

But my own vehicle, I don't have daytime running lights or auto headlights, but I just leave my headlights on all the time, simply for the idea that my tail, lights are then on. My headlights are on 24-7 if I'm driving and people can see my truck much more easily and I've never had an accident in that truck. My fault or

anyone's fault. So... I've got a question for you, Rick. On the dashboard, the indicator it tells your lights on because all I ever drive is Toyota's little green circle with little green rays. Is that a universal symbol

or is it a Toyota only? Most cars now will have an indicator to tell you that you have headlights on. I rely on that. Especially if you have automatic headlights, they'll have that little indicator, which, again, it's, and because it's green, obviously green is the universal symbol of, this is a good thing, this is on, this is go. Because I keep mine in the automatic position, which I think is the easiest, I don't think about it. But occasionally, it gets turned off accidentally. And I've noticed that, you know, my lights are. are on but they might they don't quite seem as bright as they normally do and i realize it's just

the daytime lights i look at the dash i don't see the little green symbol so then i twist the knob and then i'm good yep i don't know stew i think that might be a wally problem you know what um wali has learned to operate certain things in the car like the rear window opener and it was by he just by trial and he's just pawing it and eventually he gets it and he's a pretty big dog well well for those listening wallie is a dog yeah that's not my Not my son. What's Walley's weight? He's close to 100 pounds.

Okay. We'll take Charlie, our Yorkie, who has since passed away. He's probably about 7 pounds, and he was able to operate all of the features inside the car. I digress. Hey, Kathy, back to your headlight question. You know, for me, with all of the distracted drivers that are on the road, I really depend on my lights being on. It is a great safety feature because, you know, it sounds insane, but there are people out there that don't even see you. So it's a personal decision on your part.

Okay, great. I appreciate all the information. Thank you. You're so welcome, Kathy. It was great to hear from you. And I want to thank you for helping me build a platform here for the ladies. It's an important journey for me. Have a wonderful weekend.

You've got a great show. Keep it up. Thank you so much. We are going to go to Mary, and she, too, is a first-time caller, and we welcome her from, I believe she's from West. No, she's from Del Rey. Good morning, Mary. Good morning. Thank you for waiting.

First one caller here. Yes, you are, and we're excited for you. You've won yourself $50 this morning as a first-time female caller. Awesome. And leave your contact information with Jeremy, and he'll pass it along to me. I'll write that check and get it out to you. What can we do for you? Oh, you're quite welcome.

What can we do for you this morning? Well, I have a couple of calls. I have a new car question like the previous caller, but my first question would be, I have a 2010 CRV. And God bless her, I'm almost at 300,000 miles. Wow. And, of course, I've had to replace things. And recently, I had to replace my original starter, original.

It's amazing that it lasted that long. And ever since then, I'm having an idling problem now. So I had the starter replaced by a reputable shop here in Del Rey about a week and a half ago. And ever since then, I'm having an idling issue where when I go to apply the brake, the tack will jump a little bit and go up and then it will come back down. And when I start the car in the morning, it tends to idle a little bit faster. And of course, then when I turn the air conditioning on, so it's about at a thousand, but it will go up and down depending on the situation, whether I apply the brake, whether I'm sitting in a light, and it will actually

kind of move the car a little bit. It will try to move the car a little bit. And I don't know what that is. I've not contacted the shop, but listening to your show, I figured that I would throw this at you. Okay. No check engine light, right? Well, I do have a check engine light, and it's been the catalytic converter. We all know that, but I'm going to get rid of the car. I don't really want to replace that whole system. Right. I understand. Yep.

So your light stays on. The check engine light stays on? Yes. I would go back to that shop and ask them to pull the codes just to make sure that they might have like accidentally left a vacuum hose disconnected or something. Because it almost sounds like the car's got, it's seeing an airflow extra air into the engine made. that might be causing this at times. There might be like a vacuum line that when they, in order to get down to the starter, sometimes you have to remove other parts. And if they accidentally forgot to put one of the little vacuum lines back on, or if maybe one of those

hoses split just a little bit and they didn't notice it, that can cause a similar issue. So that would be showing a false check engine light when it was really something else. Right. Well, her check engine light was on already because of the catalytic converter. Well, that's what I mean. But there may be an additional code that now has shown up. Well, how do we know when the check engine light came on in the first place, it was a catalytic converter? Well, apparently she'd already had that chested before. How did you know, Mary?

Well, I did have it checked because it's, I think probably at about 150,000 miles maybe. I can't remember exactly when the check engine light. And so I used to take it to Delray Honda, but I don't. don't now. I can't really trust them. They've made a few mistakes and then did not tell the truth about it. Oh, that's not good. Yeah, that is not good. I had one recently too because the radio didn't work because of the starter issue and I left the shop and I couldn't remember how to use put the code in, you know, disconnecting the battery cable. I had like a like a brain thing and I couldn't remember how to do it and I tried to take it into the shop and they told me I needed to.

a new radio it was crazy yeah it was crazy but that's working now good good yeah and now the other possibility um sometimes when older cars the throttle body in that will get a little gummed up with carbon over time and what happens is the engine computer learns to adjust the settings for the engine by you know over time it takes time for it to learn those settings and when you disconnect the which is a safety first you've got to do that if you're going to replace the starter the computer will forget those settings so it has to start all over so it may take it a little while to relearn those settings but in a week and a half it should have learned them by now but it's due to how many you know

unless you've driven a lot of miles it may just need some more time to learn those so I would either stop back in at that shop and ask them just to double check and maybe pull the codes and make sure they don't have something else going on there. And if not, just drive it for a little longer and see what happens. Or you could even stop in like at a local auto zone and ask them just to pull the codes. They'll do that for free. And do not let them sell you anything. Just say, I just want to know what the codes are and write them down.

And if it's just a catalytic converter, then I wouldn't worry about it. I'd wait and see. and while we got here one of my YouTubers Kim appreciates life she's asking would I please ask you what's the name of the shop in Del Rey

she's one that she lives in that area and I know she likes to know reputable, decent shops that she can take her cars to. Mary you would be helping so many ladies because it sure is a surprise to everyone the number of ladies that are listening to you

right now and I do have to tell you You sound like as if that you are an educated consumer. Congratulations on that. So, Mary, do you have an answer to Rick's question? I do. I have two shops after the conundrum at Del Rey Honda, and this is my third Honda. This is my third Honda. My original purpose was at Pompano Honda, which is now Hendrik Honda.

So now I've gone to Del Rey because it's closest to where I've. live. So the two other private shops are Del Rey Auto Repair. And what's their location, their address? Del Rey. Their address is Federal Highway and George Bush. Okay. The other shop that I've been doing more work because they seem to be more people, more bays, is flawless auto.

Flawless auto. Okay. Yes, flawless auto It's a little bit of a pickle Getting into their shop Because you have to go east to Linton And make a U-turn at Federal Highway And go back west

And turn just over the railroad tracks Turn, make a right turn And it's tucked in back there It's kind of tough to find Lawless Auto And they pride themselves And flawless repairs To the directions

you just shared with us. It's great that we have a, you know, navigation system, the GPS that will get us to our destination. It's amazing. Did you say that you have 300, over 300,000 miles on your vehicle? No, just I'm approaching 300,000. So I have a bet with my ex-husband that I'm not going to get to 300. But I'm going to. I'm going to get there.

I put in some, you know, I've replaced the radiator in January. and the starter now, you know, to be honest, it's been a really good car. It's been, the other two Hondas were kind of lemons, but this has been a good one. And I needed, you know, a bigger vehicle because I own a pet sitting company, so I needed to be able to transport pets from A to B. What's her name, Mary? You refer to her as a sheet. I'm sorry, what?

You love the car so much. I thought maybe you'd named her. Yes, she is, well, I don't want to, but it could be a racial thing, but her name is the white mama. Oh, there you go. Yeah, the white mama. The godmother of cars. I tapped the backboard every morning when I started up.

I'm like, you and me, girl, we're getting old, but you're not there yet. She's going to be at the Honda CRV Rainbow Bridge at some point. Nice. Oh, interesting. Also, before Rick goes on, let me repeat to everyone who's listening. That's Del Rey Auto Repair, and that is Flawless Auto, and that is Mary's recommendations. Rick? Yes.

Kim says the third one in Del Rey is Eric's Rensch, E-R-C-E-R-E-E-R-E-C. I've not gone there. Yes. Another mouthful. But that's three different places. So, folks, if you're looking for a good shop in Del Rey, Del Rey, I heard. Auto, Flawless Auto, and Eric's Wrench. Well, that's good information.

Mary, thank you so much for that information. As I said, you know, we have a lot of people listening, and it was great that you could share that information with us. Again, I'll repeat. That's Del Rey Auto Repair. We've got Eric's Wrench, and we also have Flawless Auto, and they're all in Del Rey. Mary, thank you so much for sharing. sharing with us this morning. Do you have any other questions?

Well, I do because I'm thinking about new vehicles now. So I was listening to the previous caller. And I need something with the most ground clearance, obviously, because I deal with pets. People aren't home. If it floods, if we're having a weather thing, I have to be able to get there. Subaru has the most ground clearance, the cross-track. but I'm scared to death about this CVT transmission, and it seems like all of the car manufacturers use that except for Mazda. We like the CVT.

Toyota Corollos have been running CVTs for over 10 years. No problems. And they've been incredible. They had one minor issue with a programming where we had to go back in and do some programming changes to the computer for it. Nothing but a thing. But they just keep going. I know Nissan had a problem with their CVT design,

and I would never recommend a Nissan to anyone because they've had engine problem and CVT problems. Has Subaru had known problems with theirs? I have not heard of any known issues with Subaru, CBTs. Now, bear in mind, Subaru just doesn't have the volume of cars out there that others have, so maybe we don't see it. a lot of things. But I've never heard much but good things about Subaru.

They make a great car. Yes, I agree. Well, one of the shops, one of the shops that I mentioned, I'm not going to say, told me to avoid the Subaru. They also did indicate that Toyota has the best CBT right now. Yeah, yeah. And that Nissan and Subaru run far and fast away. But Honda also uses the CVT. I do a lot of stopping and starting and, you know, acceleration because I drive locally.

I'm not a highway driver. I'm going from community to community to service their pets. So, you know, I could probably beat up a CVT transmission before an automatic. Well, a quick note here from Donovan on YouTube. He says, yes, Subaru has had issues with their CVTs, and you cannot just. get parts for them if something happens so so that chat gbt verifies that yeah all right i i get a rat for yeah that's really a good choice mary it's too big it's too big so here's my dilemma i don't transport dogs as much you know i'm in my 29th year in this in this business

so i don't do a lot of trans transportation now i'm looking at the cx 30 of the Mazda because the CX-5 is just, I don't want anything as big as my the RV. I want to get a little smaller. So the CX30 would accommodate you. Hey, Mary? It would accommodate. You might be willing to do this, but I'm going to ask.

Kim appreciates life. It's asking, if you're willing, she'd like to know the name of your business because she doesn't have a pet sitter for her cat and she's looking. Would you like to get a little free commercial and maybe put your business name out? I can do that. It just depends on my service area is limited. So I service Del Rey, some of Boca Raton, and the very southern part of Boynton. Okay.

And that's as far as I go. So my business name is Pet Nanny, Pet Sitting Service, Incorporated. Okay. Pet Nanny. There we go. Awesome. All social media. I'm on Facebook.

She can find me on Instagram if she wants to reach out. I need one in northern Bromwich County. And, you know, we really appreciate Kim's input this morning. Kim's, Kim appreciates life. Is that her handle? Yep. And Mary, who have shared so much. That's a great handle.

Isn't it? Yeah. You two ladies in a short amount of. time have shared a whole lot of information and again I reiterate there are so many women who are listening who need encouraged to call because not everyone is comfortable you know calling in or even talking through the microphone so Mary I can't thank you enough you've certainly been beneficial this morning to us and we hope that we've helped you absolutely thank you so much Yes, I hope to get into a new vehicle, you know, the beginning of the year or maybe towards the spring.

I'm hoping that nothing else goes wrong with this girl. And I can make it. You know, because the cars are so expensive now, the down payment in order to keep your monthly payment lower, the down payment has to be huge now. Yeah, pretty significant. It's unfortunate. I mean, to have anything lower than $500, you're going to need to put $10,000 to $15,000 down depending on the car. Yeah, yes. Today it's like a mortgage payment. And with the increase, you know, of car payments per month, it is just mind-boggling the information that I've read and how, you know, people, consumers out there are paying over $1,000 a month for a vehicle, you know, $1,700. You may as well move. into the vehicle.

Yeah, that is awful. Definitely. And I don't want to be in that position. No. So I've had to put some significant money in this in the last, you know, few years I needed shocks and struts and Del Rey Auto Repair did that for me, and they gave me the most fantastic price. You know, that's great.

It was unbelievable. And they replaced my back hatch also. It really bought you. It's buying you a whole lot more time. Mary, it's been a pleasure to. talking to you. Thank you so much for taking my call. Oh, you're so welcome. And remember to stay on the line, and Jeremy will get your information, pass it along to me. Have a wonderful weekend. Thank you. You do as well. Thank you, Mary. I want to let everyone know that a short time ago,

Jonathan turned the phones off, so you won't be able to get through. But we are going to take, I believe it was about 10 minutes ago, that the phone lines were shut down. So we're going to go to Marty, who's been holding patiently. Good morning, Marty. Good morning. I just wanted to make a point that probably Rick would realize. Everywhere you take your car to a car dealer anyways, and you go for an oil change,

they turn your headlights off position. And now when you drive, now usually you take your car in during the day, day and when you take it in during the day you don't even think about the headlights now at night you get in your car and you're going to drive off somewhere and now you have no headlights yeah so now i mean obviously i know that now but i think rick should instill something at least at earl stewart toyota that when they get through with the oil change they put your headlights back to the auto position we normally try to remember to do that myself I have I have three things that I do the instant I get in a

customer's car the first thing I do is when I get it in the shop that I turn the headlights off simply because as I'm raising it up on the lift those headlights will stay on for a minute to two minutes and they'll blind me but the number one thing I do is and I will say this flat out I turn the radio off unless I'm looking for a problem with your audio system I turn the radio off before I take your car out for its initial test drive, because if there's some squeak or rattle or some noise that you may not even be aware of, I want to be able to hear it, so I have the radio off.

I don't mess with the radios at all unless I'm looking for a problem with it. And the other thing I do is when I get your car in my bay, I drop the windows, usually just the front tube, but sometimes all of them, simply because I've seen cars with aftermarket alarms that suddenly put the windows up and lock the doors even with the key still in the car. So I try to avoid having those happen. Well, now we know you're completely safe, Frank,

but we've got 25 technicians. And this is why, as one of the senior techs, I try to teach these same habits to the younger techs. We try to string around the finger. Yeah, whatever we have to do to make sure we do the job properly, and make sure that your car is delivered back to you. And like I'll tell people always, when your car comes into my bay, it's not yours anymore.

It's mine. And when it leaves, in my mind, my wife or my daughter is going to be getting in that car to drive it down the road. So I want to try to return your car to you as safe as it can possibly be, because that way I make sure that I do my job correctly. Now, let me ask you, you do all that for an oil change? Every car. Okay. Every single car.

Again, my only point was the headlights. I hear you. I hear you. And it's something we're all forgetful of is turning those headlights back on. And we should be remembering that more often. Yeah. And Marty, it's a short checklist, and it's called being respectful also. So you want to leave, you know, you want to get your vehicle back in the same manner that it arrived.

And you don't want to get in your crown and hear blasting music or find that your headlights have been turned off or your seat has been adjusted. You just want everything back, you know, the way you left it. and it can be really detrimental if you're not going back out on the road until after dark. And like you said, your headlays aren't working. You know, this is a domino effect, and it's not a good one. Yeah, well, hopefully, I'm sure most of these mechanics, I guess the oil change guy is not the most experienced guy in the shop. so that that is very true that's what we strive for yes the most talented all right well have a good weekend everybody and uh we'll see you next week thanks marty it's so good to hear from you we love

hearing from you marty is a regular caller okay we are going to go to uh rick or we're going to go to stew is your wifi problem i'm good i'm good i was yeah lines down really oh well well If it's down, I already got it up on the screen. I don't know how far it goes back. We have some anonymous feedback. Here's one from the ninth. Does anybody remember? I'm all turned around.

Nope. Read it off. Let's go for it. All right. During COVID, car prices increased substantially. Supposedly, this was because cars were in short supply. From chat, GPT, dealers and manufacturers have seen customers accept higher prices for years. That anchor has shown.

shifted what buyers see as normal right now. So it seems that dealers and manufacturers just want to jerk the consumer around as much as they can. I feel your sentiment. It's kind of always been going on. It's why we have the show here. Right now, the buyer is got an advantage now. I mean, it's turned around. Dealers still are. Yeah, I mean, the dealers are still doing what they're going to do and you're going to see in our shopping report today I'm not going to give anything away but things look good things look bad there's there's just a there's a culture out there and but right now the dynamic is working against the dealers so they are cars are getting discounted and we'll see what happens next one that is spam you know we do get spam somehow in this

anonymous feedback thing okay from the 13th other than physical size, it never occurred to me that crash test dummies were male or female. In a crash, isn't it just physics of size and speed that matter? Now seatbelts and, well, I guess you can say breasts on there, that's where the departure comes in. And Earl and Nancy are much more well-versed in this, but I'm going to have to disagree with you substantially. Just the general proportions. The size of the trash chest dummies were sized historically

to male proportions. And weight distribution in a human body is different, whether you're a man or a woman. And this has been going on. It's for years and only some manufacturers, I believe, have. Yeah, it's amazing.

You know, I reported on this quite some time ago, gosh, didn't it take a long time for women and men to be recognized as apples and oranges. You simply can't say, look at one person, and that's a guy. Where men and women are, like I said, it's apples and oranges. So the research that was done recently, you know, addressed all of that. I'll turn it over to Earl.

look like you have a lot of information. It's just the fact that the person that asked a question, there's a huge difference between men and women other than size. And if you stop to think about it, if you look at all the differences between that, and we love the difference that we have that. I'm sure you do. In a crash, there's a lot of things that can hurt a woman,

no matter what her size is, that couldn't hurt a man, and vice versa. So it's very telling about the way the engineers and the authorities that safety tested vehicles started way back when, never thought about that. I mean, it should always have been women and men, but it never has been. Yeah, it was shocking to find out that that wasn't the case. And it was also shocking that it took so long for the features of apples. and oranges to be addressed.

Men and women are different in shape, size, mind, everything. Rick. In the words of the immortal, Pepe Le Pue, Vive le de France. Oh, Pepe, I love Pepe Lepe Lepeot. I've inherited his name in a long time. Okay, Stu. I'm caught up on all the secret stuff. If you could pass the shopping report, Derby.

I believe that Rick has passed that over. in the beginning of the show you know I want to take a minute again to thank Kim who appreciates life that's her handle for participating in the show as she did and I'm going to be reaching out to you later on today okay Rick go ahead every every week Kim is a regular here and lover yeah I just got great input yeah failed to recognize Kim and I love strong educated women. I had a text earlier from Bob who said he included a link and he called it the new Ford Model A for the EV world and it's the slate trucks that are coming out. Interesting. That are Jeff it's Jeff Bezos apparently sponsoring and supporting this it I confirmed on Google. They have got a factory that's a factory that's a an old printing shop, apparently, in Indiana, and these apparently are going to be on the road

very soon. They've already had a lot of people pre-ordering, and basically what we're talking about is it's a pickup truck with a lot of accessories that you can purchase when you buy the truck or even purchase afterwards to have added on, but the base price on this electric truck is going to be $30,000 They're right there In the pocket That is I mean the

Right now the average Toyota Tacoma Which I love Tacoma I love Tacoma I've had a couple of them now The average Tacoma Starts at 35 for the base And very quickly

You're up over 50-55,000 dollars A simple $30,000 EV truck Y'all When my old truck runs out, I may be looking at switching out of Toyota for me.

I may go buy me a slate. It'd be interesting model to see if other manufacturers making EVs do something similar because you can have the entry. It's 941. It's 941. Yes, it is. There's a mystery in the air. There's a mystery coming. It is time

for the mystery shopper report, and we'll continue with Rick next week. We're going to be going to Vera Cadillac in Hollywood. and your vote is extremely important. That vote can, you can go to 772-497-6530, and you can cast your vote. And you're going to hear about the Vera family.

And this is a pretty special mystery shopping report in light of the history of the Vera family. Yeah, very, very cool. So they're a Cuban family that came over during the crisis in Cuba in the 50s. In 1955, they fled Cuba, and they started a coffee stand in Miami. And they since acquired the Cadillac dealership and multiple other dealerships as other businesses. So kind of a cool story. I'd never heard of Vera Cadillac. Either at I.

I did a little research. I had a double check. It wasn't a typo. I thought it was Vero Cadillac. So here we go. Speaking of the first person is if I were Agent Lightning, I arrived late afternoon, was entering through the side door when I was greeted by a salesman named Nathan. He reached out, shook my hand, and handed me his business card.

Yes, are you here to see anyone today? I said, you, if you can possibly help me, figure out a price for a new. optic. That's what I've been looking for. God bless you to do. Thank you. I told them about my experience shopping for the optic. I had driven it a few times and tried the one pedal driving. I haven't heard that before, but one pedal driving. Let me interject. I'm pretty sure they're making a feature out of what you guys are used to having in the Tesla. Yeah. So you can basically, you said stop. I just

release. Yeah. Yeah. As I said, good idea, really. They're marketing it. I asked if I could simply get their best price. He said, most definitely, and had me follow him to his desk. He asked me a series of questions explaining up front that he was doing his best to save me as much money as possible. Nathan said, the $7,500 tax rebate credit ends September 30th, 2025, and you would get that when you follow your taxes this year.

I mentioned the other place I went to said I could use that as part of a down payment. He responded, on a lease you can. I want to know the numbers they presented to you, but I prefer to wait until after I give you our offer. It's kind of refreshing. He said, I'm going to give you my best prize, and afterwards would you tell me their best price, which is a lot better than saying, I'm not going to be. to give you a price until you come back and tell me you're going to buy. I said, I like how you think.

Then he added, it sounds like you've already test driven it and are familiar with a one pedal driving. We don't really need to go on a test drive, but I'm happy to do that first if you want. So no push there to go on a test drive. I said, no, but once I know I'm moving forward, I want to drive the one I want before buying, the actual car.

Nathan then pointed to a display on his desk and said, this is one of the things I love most about working for the Vera family. And I thought this was kind of cool. I'll hold it up you folks streaming us. It's some of the things that they do that other dealers apparently in that market don't do. Kind of a family thing and fits into what they've done. He continued, we can do everything online and then deliver the car to you when it's finalized.

Now, that's really cool. Any services we provide work the same. We'll pick up your car. Now remember, this is a Cadillac dealership, a luxury dealership. So you think about most dealerships don't do this, but Cadillac, Mercedes, luxury dealerships do. We'll pick up your car and leave you a demo

while we service yours. That's really good. although with an electric car there is no whole lot of service unless a major problem arise and that's a true statement we said to discuss the entire time making small talk until excused himself to get the numbers he printed for me to take out with me their top line was MSRP 59 they took off a discount of forty seven hundred thirteen dollars and the Vira Cadillac price was 54,200.

A lump sum of 2089 was added to that price labeled estimated registration and fees. Now this is where it gets a little smoky, to be used a kind word. In the fine print, it was real, the fees included $999 documentation fee. a $4999 electronic filing fee. And 171882, $178.82 for stamp tax. And that's, yeah, that's a new name. We hear talk about junk fee names, stamp tax. I don't like that.

I believe one of the causes of the American Revolution. That was too, as a comment there. It is true. All of these were junk fees. that added another, I think it was actually $1,676.82 to the price. He then asked to see the numbers. The other place I shopped had given me and was quite happy that he beat them on the price.

He said the APR percentage is just against them. But if your credit score is 740 or higher, the APR will likely be less than what's showing. I thanked him, and he walked me to the door. No pressure at all. It was a very nice shopping experience. So that's considering the location in the heart of Sodom and Gomorra in South Florida,

given the fact that it was a Cadillac dealership and your luxury dealerships typically don't beat you to death like the mid-price and low-price car dealerships do. But there you have it. We need to vote. You can do that at 7.7. 272-497-676530, and might I add to this mystery shopping report that families like Vera, Vera Automotive Group, well, they're blending tradition and the next-gen retail, you might say, and that is so telling.

And let me tell you what, they do have a number of dealerships that could go from Toyota, Honda, Hyundai. Kia, Ford, Chevrolet, and more. We don't have time to go on. So let's get the votes in and let's see how you rate Vera Cadillac of Hollywood. Yeah, it's a separate story about the family, but it kind of tugs at my heartstrings do. It's kind of cool.

They probably came over on a little bitty boat and climbed ashore and started a coffee shop on Southwest 21st Street, probably. Back during the big crisis back then, 58, you know, that's how... It was a tough time. And fleeing from Castro and Patisus and... Transformative time. It was just amazing.

You know, it gives me chills. This past week, I was investigating my background, or I should say my grandmother and grandfather, Giuseppe and Brigida. And, you know, you think about the veras and, you know, the hope. that they clung to, and they didn't give up, not for a second, nor did my grandparents. They came from Palermo, Sicily, and they came to Ellis Island, and what did they do? They had, well, Earl calls it a big wooden house, I call it a small one, but that's where they started. And that was my foundation, along with my mother, my father, and my sister, and it gave us hope

and to, again, with the past and the future, and here we are. It's a good story. That said, I'm giving the vera as an F. I'm just kidding. Yeah, they're definitely better than where they are. I think they stand out. You know, because, you know, we talk about luxury dealerships. And, you know, I know Cadillac is technically, well,

but I'm just not sure anything really matters anymore. I mean, we've seen people get yanked around and BMW and Mercedes. Maybe it's a quaint old notion that we're clinging. to. But they did a little bit better. They came in with a nice discount. There wasn't any pressure. I'm not nuts about their worksheet. And we've seen this same style where it just kind of lumps all the fees together. And they also say they lump it with registration. So it gives it an error of a legitimacy. And then if you're not savvy enough to kind of look down the page and see what they're talking about, you might just say, sure. And you have

you should have another opportunity at that point to say let's talk about these add-ons which are just junk fees and you know that's a good point to uh whenever you use the word savvy um you know no discount uh you know or disrespect uh for the consumer but you know it's almost like as if you're exhausted at some point and to go through each and every one of those details you know is uh exhausting and what i would appreciate um and i don't want to belabor it but just you know the salesperson said some very honest sounding things like i'd like to show you mine before you show me yours um that's an offer of trust you know you're not he's not afraid of his price and that goes a long way but um if they had just said here's your discount now that discount is actually not quite that much because we're adding some fees in here so effectively you're

you're not getting a four thousand dollar discount you're getting a you're getting a two thousand discount, which is our price. It's all baked in. If they said something like that, then there's more transparency. But my grade for them is a C-plus. They're a step above South Florida, but they haven't quite reached the level of one of those special dealerships. Thank you, Sue.

Okay. We're going to start with South Florida Two-Step, and he says, this is another difficult one. The salesman was super nice and was non-confrontational, but the junk fees. I'll go with a B minus Mark Ryan says C minus Tom Steckle says D

the ride was great until they hit the junk fee speed bump 1750 in junk fees plus fraudulent dock stamps luxury dealers should follow the J.M. Lexus model Andrew Plosinski says

B for the V family Brian said LATCO says the final price is close to the MSRP B. Tim Gilliland says junk fees influenced and otherwise good grade, B minus. Johnny Z. Fradley says C. And let's see here we got Baby Boomer says B.

And Andrew is asking, consider a shop on Starling GMC in Stewart. Starling. So now we will go to, let's see, Jonathan in Palm Coast says, as soon as the junk fees appear, I know the dealership is not reputable. Without hearing any more, I'll give this dealership a cold, hard D. The nice shopping experience saved them from an F. Bob in Maryland says, it's a C for Vera Cadillac. And Roadrunner Steve says,

The math ain't mathin. I give them a C. I myself Again the junk fees Just put it in the price folks And just be done with it like JM does Simple straightforward It's the junk fee two step I'm gonna say a B minus because I don't like

They just you know tack on those junk fees Okay This is to correct one thing J.M. Lexus Does have a dealer fee And they don't include it in the advertised price. It's like $1.99 or $2.99?

It's like $4.99. It's getting up there. And creep it up there a little bit. But otherwise, we still give them a good score. And your grade? What was your grade? I'm going to go, I'm wavering between a B minus and a B. I'll go with a B minus.

B minus. Okay. I'm a little, you know, in between here. Everybody by now knows how I feel about fees. name them whatever you want they're just not a good thing in transparency you know it's something to behold and I think it's a good way to do business so for that I'm going to they would have gotten an A from me if it not were for the junk fees and I give them a B you know digress you a little bit on why they do what they do they're in the heart of a really rough and tumble competition.

Very much. And assuming they were strictly honest and they bought that Cadillac dealership, they would have had, how do you survive when your competition is advertising a price $2,000 less than yours? You're advertising, your honest price, your competition has hidden fees that they add on

when they come in response to their advertisement. So if you want to survive, sometimes you have to play the game. Most, the vast majority do. It's a hard choice to make because to do it, you have, you put yourself at a disadvantage. Oh, you can't hear me. I'm chilling out. Yeah, you put yourself at disadvantage competitively because you're going to have to put higher prices if you're going to be honest online. It's hard for the honest dealers.

So anyway There are some dealerships that operate on transparency And that generates a business in their direction By just being honest It makes up for not screwing the customer With all these fees Rick is smiling at me

I just wondered if you wanted to ask coach's opinion No Okay Okay that's a Cadillac Coach is having a meltdown He's not behaving themselves until we get Yeah, and he's in a time out.

And I've had problems with chatGBT, which is extremely unusual from the moment I walked in to the studio. Let me put this out here real quick. This here is about fees. And this is from a senator, and he says that as a longtime car dealer, who has fought for decades

to bring honesty and transparency to our industry, I vigorously oppose S, that's S as in Sam, B as in Baby, 791, proposed legislation in California that would raise the cap on dealer documentation fees from $85 to $350, a cap of $350. So...

What is this? California? Yeah. California. Three fifty. They're crazy out there. Okay, I think we're just about out of time. How about if you address the Russia, well, excuse me, not Russia, they're selling to Russia,

but how about the Air Force to buy the Tesla's, the Tesla's cyber trucks? I think that's very funny. Are we going to have to get a machine gun? Yeah. The Air Force is buying cyber trucks because they find that the enemy is now using them. Russia is providing them in Ukraine, and they're seeing how to kill a cyber truck, and they bought them for shooting missiles in cyber trucks. True story. Can we get you Air Force emblems for yours?

And what a great story it was. Folks, I see by the clock we've got one minute left, and I'm going to be. to thank everyone for tuning in to Earl Stewart on cars and I'll tell you you do make the show and it's just not words you do make the show and we enjoy your company every week and if John from Palm City didn't get through we apologize stay tuned next week we'll be right back here at 8 a.m. enjoy your football out there folks