The Best of Car Talk - #25102: Happy Camper

Episode Date: December 23, 2025

Katie is a hiker and camper but she called the least ‘outdoorsy’ guys possible to find out if it’s safe to pour her old camp stove fuel into her car’s gas tank. Click and Clack the Wilderness Brothers ‘break camp’(and a few other things) on this episode of the Best of Car Talk.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

It's been a fantastic year for movies, and we know you can't see them all. So we're recommending some great films that might have flown under the radar to add to your watch list. Listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to Car Talk from National Public Radio with us Click and Clack the Tapper Brothers, and we're broadcasting this week from the Career Development Center here at Caratalk Plaza. Now, we always figured that someday NPR is going to wise up and throw us off the air. I mean, it's got to happen, right? Any day, no.

I mean, they were in Washington, so it might take them another 30 years, but eventually they'll catch on to us and tell us to get lost. And when that happens, I guess it happens. I mean, we're not worried really about ourselves. After all, we're all guys. We can always go back to the garage or our jobs at the 7-Eleven. You haven't given up your job. Oh, I still keep a hand in, so to speak, in the register. They caught me twice.

That's tough of them to close the draw. But we have been concerned about Dougie because... What is he going to do? What is Dougie going to do? I mean, if he lost his job with us, he'd be a bum. Who would hire him? But there comes across the wire, as luck would have it. I have it right here.

A little article that gives us hope. A glimmer. A glimmer of hope for Berman. Monroe, Michigan. Mike Pixley can work up a sweat just by sitting down on the job. You might say he's the lazy boy of the lazy boy chair company. A senior studying aeronautical engineering at the University of Michigan, Pixley is paid $6 an hour to test a variety of lazy boy chair.

It's a buck more now than Berman's making. In other words, he comes to work, sits down, leans back, and then relaxes forward all day. Really? That's what he does. His quote, I think a lot of people think this is a lot easier than it actually is. Sure we do. We do. Yes, Mike, we do.

Finding the right slacker for the job wasn't easy, said the test lab supervisor. Judy, Faye, whose ideal higher weighs 180 to 200 pounds and stands at least 6 feet tall. I want someone who's self-motivated, who won't get bored, and who sets his own personal goals. No, he's out.

Self-motivated, no. Six feet tall, 200 and 200 pounds. No, you have to pork out. He can pork out. Yeah, he's been doing that. Well, okay, forget it. Sounds like, yeah. We made a mistake.

All right. So he's still unemployed. But we'll keep looking. If anyone has it, ideas about how Dougie could become employable. He can't change. I mean, he is what he is. So we're just

looking for the right job. We're not trying to change him into something. He isn't. And what he is is unemployable. But if you think there's hope for Dougie, if you have a position for him, preferably horizontal, the number is

1888 mattress tester. 1-88-car talk that's 888-226. 7, 8255, Foutons. I can see it now. Foutons is good. Hello, you're on Car Talk. This is Christo Jackson and Beaufort. This is Tom and Ray?

Yeah. Yeah. Christo. Yes, sir. In Beaufort? Buford, what? South Carolina. Of course.

South Carolina. Crystal. So what's going on? I've got an 86 VW golf that I've had for about five years. It's only got 32,000 miles on it. And after I'd headed for two years, it started to not start in the morning, and then I had a mechanic look at it, and he put a new fuel pump. Right.

And he kept on putting in fuel pumps, and each time he put one in, it would work well for about four or five months, and then it would start to not stop, and it would commence to not start, and what I would have to do is to get underneath the car with a hammer, hit the fuel pump, which, as you probably know, is right next to the gas tank, two or three times, run back, jump in the driver's seat, and crank it, and it would start right up. That needs to work. But what happens now is that that doesn't work. What I have to do is I have to get somebody else to sit in the driver's v.

Oh, so while you're cranking. No, no, no, while he's cranking. Well, he's cranking. Well, so you get it wrong. You should be cranking. No, no, no. It's his car. No stranger is going to lie on his back to do this.

At quarter of seven in the morning, when I leave for work, if the car doesn't start and I have to inflict myself on some poor passer-by. Right, right. I can't ask him to get under the car. car. I have him crank it while I hit the fuel pump, and it works perfectly. But this is not the way I want to run my life. And, you know, it's enough to make the good humor man angry. Well, you've come to expect too much, Christo. I mean, which is true of all of us. I mean, we complain about everything. If the TV, I notice the other, we have cable TV in the town where I live. And it has

this wonderful feature. You turn on TV and you press the information button. And at the bottom of the screen, you get a little typing, typed up thing that tells you what's on. If it's a movie, it tells you who's in it. It tells you it starts at seven and it ends at nine. It goes by so quickly that you can't really tell. So you have to press the info button four or five times. In any event, it seems as though whoever produces these little subtitles and and information dialogue, doesn't want to work on the weekends. So that starting Friday, it doesn't work anymore. I'm sitting there on my sofa with this little device in my hand,

and I'm pressing little buttons, and I'm changing stations, and I'm changing volume, and I'm doing all kinds of stuff, and I'm bent out of shape because one of the little features that they offered me doesn't work. Whereas I used to get only one station, and I had to get up from the seat and go over and turn a dial to get it. Now I've got all this wonderful luxury, and I don't appreciate it, because I have come to expect it, and more. And you, the same way.

I mean, so what? You get underneath. What if it was a horse? So what you're saying is that unrealistic expectations are premeditated resentments. You got it, man. Are you a psychiatrist? What do I do? How do you fix it?

There's no VW dealer in Buford, and I've now put in four of these things, and the mechanics has been very nice. Is he replacing them with original equipment pumps, Bosch pumps? He's replacing it with things that are certified as being approved by VW. Okay, well, that means the connections match up. Well, it comes to mind that he's putting in inferior pumps. There are many companies that make a fuel pump for this car, which is a... up to snuff, and it may take exactly that amount of time, whatever it is, a hundred days

or whatever, for the thing to begin to fail. The other possibility, and the more likely one, is that you have a severe case of fuel system crudification. Whitchification? Crudification. Could you spell that? CRUD. Oh, crudification.

And what's happening is that rust and other contaminants, mostly rust, in the gas tank, are ultimately finding their way to the pump. Aha. And clogging up the pump, and that's why it requires that you bang on it, perhaps, that it's just plugged up with debris. Maybe if they cleaned out the gas tank. Exactly. Okay.

So that might be your next step to take out the gas tank and either clean it or replace it. Boy, that's a great suggestion. And I think the way to find this out, too, is to take a sample of the gasoline and see how many rocks and screwdrivers and fish hooks and whatever you find at the bottom and the bottom. And fish! Okay, that's a great suggestion, Tom and Ray. I thank you very, very much. All right, Tristow. I really enjoy your show.

Thanks. Nice talking to you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. He was very thankful. He was. Until he tries it. It doesn't work. It's amazing how adoration can turn to hate with one piece of bad advice. But hey, it's a chance you take. See, but we're using the very the reverse of the very the very incident that I just described here,

people don't expect much when they tune into the show. No, and any little morsel they get. Any little morsel, they're eternally grateful. Yeah, because... We've come to expect too much because the automobile manufacturers, especially GM, have given us too much. They have.

Absolutely. That's right. And we've had too much, and it's time to come back to Earth. Time to come back to Earth. All right, do you remember last week's puzzler? All right, just give me a hint. I remember in the old days,

used to give me hints. to help me remember. All right, here it is. It had to do with a double anchovy pepperoni pizza. And I'll have the interesting answer in just a minute. This message comes from Wise, the app for using money around the globe. When you manage your money with Wise, you'll always get the mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Join millions of customers and visit Wise.com. T's and C's Apply. What if Public Radio stopped sounding like this. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Nora Rom.

And started sounding like this. NPR is doing everything possible to keep this trusted and free public service going. With your support, we will not be silent. Please give today at donate.npr.org. Thanks. As we say goodbye to 2025, our reporters are looking back at some of the most memorable international stories they covered in the last year. From a city in Africa emerging from war to resilient Indian turtles, liberated refugees to defiant Austrian nuns. Global favorites from the last year, listen to State of the World on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, for you, T-shirt wearers out there, all relatives of T-shirtwearers. We just got a veritable shipload, that shipload with a P of new Cart-Talk T-shirts at the Shameless Commerce Division. The folks there made a great series of t-shirts out of their favorite car talk quotes. So in addition to the classics, you know, don't drive like my brother, Dewey Cheathman, how you can now get car talk t-shirts. Let's say, for instance, if money can fix it, it's not a problem. Life is too short to drive boring cars. Do it while you're young.

You may never have a chance to do anything this stupid again. Reality often astonishes theory or happiness equals reality minus expectation. How about this one? Lousy car at first. since 1977, and many, many more. If you'd like one or want one to ship to a friend or relative, you don't really like. Just head over to shameless commerce.com.

That's shameless commerce.com. Hi, we're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us. Click and Clack to Tappert Brothers. And we're here to talk about cars, car repair, and the answer to last week's puzzler. And here it is. I'm sure my brother will remember it in a minute.

Do remember it now. The other night, I had a gastrointestinal attack in the middle of the night. They always come in the middle of the night. It may have had something to do with that double-inchovy pepperoni pizza I had at 11 o'clock. I think the pineapples you put on it. Anyway, in the middle of the night, I wake up moaning and groaning, clutching my stomach, and I find myself at the medicine chest in the bathroom looking for relief. And I find the tummy ache medicine that I recognize by the shape and color of the bottle.

But lo and behold, I can't read. the little print on the back of the bottle. So clutching my stomach, I make my way back to the bedroom to find my glasses on the dresser. On the way there, I stub my toe, I yell and pay, my wife tells me to shut up, she's trying to sleep. I limp back to the bathroom, but even with my glasses, I still can't read the dosage information.

Well, it's written in one point type, that's why. Right, and I don't know whether these things are supposed to take two of these tablets or if they're suppository. So it's important that you're going to be... You're going to know. Now I'm ready to die, my toe is throbbing, and to add insult to injury. I bend over to clutch my stomach, and my glasses fall off my head, hit the tile floor, and they break in half. And I think, geez, I'm going to have it a good day.

Die here on the bathroom floor. And yet a minute later, I was tucked in bed having taken exactly the proper dosage. And it wasn't administered by my wife or any of my kids. How did I do it? Well, I think I mentioned when I broke the glasses that they broke in half so that I had two, how would they break in half? Two monocles. Two monocles, exactly. Instead of one.

So I had one lens with a... One diabolical. I had one lens with a stick attached to it and another lens of a stick attached to it. And lo and behold, if you gang the lenses, that is put one in front of the other, you, I think, essentially double the magnification. So there I was unable to read the dosage.

And with these two pieces in my hand, these two lenses back to back, so to speak. Yeah. I was able to read the bottle. and it said take two of these and stick them down your throat and next thing I know I'm in bed

and all's right with the world Yeah Now I there is another answer to this Which I'm not going to delve into right now No I think you should You should mention it at least Because we don't understand any of this Let's face it

This was part of 801 Was it not optics? No not when I No They didn't have optics We didn't have that we had No Optics was

optics was brand new when you were there. Benjamin Franklin just invented the bifocal. Well, here's the other answer that I happen to like better. Let's assume I didn't break my glasses, but in fact, I had small print that I couldn't read. Now, when you're trying to read something that's too small, when your eyesight is good, what do you do? You bring it closer to your eye, do you not? Yeah. But then it goes out of focus.

And even people with good eyesight can bring something so close that they can no longer read it. Right. Except that if it's small, I mean, da, you don't need a genius to tell you that if it's small, you ain't going to move it farther away from you because you've got less of a chance of seeing it. So if you were trying to look at the legs of a flea, you would try to bring that flea as close to your eye as possible. But in doing so, you would put it out of focus. Yeah, I'm with you. So if you take your index finger, I'm wearing my glasses now, but I'm steering at the bottle, unable to look at the print.

Yeah. Unable to read the print because it's blurred. I'm doing this right now, but it's close enough so that I can see it. Take your index finger and curl it so that your fingernail now touches the point where your thumb joins your hand, and in doing so, is that an apt description? Yeah, you make a little teeny hole with your index finger. You're going to make a little teeny hole, and you could accomplish the same thing by taking a piece of paper and punching a hole in it. Oh, man, this works like a dream. If you then look through that hole, you are in fact unfuzzying the image.

It is like you are bringing it into focus Because the whole Acts to Acts to What's the word? I don't know I have no idea how this works It doesn't

Well maybe it does magnify But maybe it doesn't magnify But if nothing else It brings it into focus So it's something that was close enough So that you could read it if you had good eyes Is now readable Because you have fixed the image

by unfuzzying it. Wow. So that is one other solution to this problem, and I don't know exactly why it works. I don't remember. It would be nice to, no, who cares? If it works, it works. I don't really care how it works.

Well, I think what happens is all the light that was going all over the place now has to go through that little pinhole which you've made with your finger. And so you could, that would say, though, if that theory is correct, that would say that you could produce

the same effect with more light. And I don't think that's true. Oh, yeah. That is. If you put this right up here so you can't read it, right in front of your face. And brighter light. If I put a thousand watts points of light, thanks to George Bush, on that, they would clear it up? Yeah.

Impossible. Well, the third solution was I turned on the bathroom light. And that song. Anyway, do we have a winner? Yeah. We have winners. Winners this week are Pete and Barbara Van Curen, I believe it is, from Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. Love it.

Concha Huckin, Pennsylvania, and for having their answers selected at random from among all the correct answers, Pete and Barbara, will share. We're not going to give them each, but they will share a $25 gift certificate to the Car Talk, shameless commerce division, with which they can get our wonderful new puzzle book, or one of our best of CDs, or they can have my brother as their personal slave for a month. That's less than $25, right? Anyway, we will have a new automotive puzzler. Really? Equally challenging coming up in the third half of today's show, so stay tuned for that. We did receive some emails stating that we couldn't possibly have three halves to our show. I saved it because I didn't believe that the person was serious.

Well, no, I mean... Geez, I mean, someone wrote and said, gee, you guys are really stupid. Don't you know that there can't be three halves? Well, no, we didn't know. No, they can be three halves. Anyway, you can call us and ask us questions if you'd like. The number is 1-888-8-288-2-27-8-8-25-a. Hello, you're on Car Talk.

Hi, this is Jody. I'm calling from Minneapolis. Hi, Jody. With an I or a Y? With a Y. Jody. Thank you for asking. Minneapolis.

Yeah, I know Minneapolis. It's beautiful here. We've got fall color. Do you? Yes, we do. Yeah, fall color is always beautiful, but it's always a, Depred of a bittersweet kind of thing, you know, because you know what's coming next, don't you, Jody?

Yes, we do. Yeah, no color, dark winter. Dark, no leaves on the trees, no grass, no flowers, no sky, no sun. No happiness, no joy, no laughter, no life. But other than that, it's great. So what's happening? I'm hoping for winter. It gets a lot slower around here in the winter.

Oh, you know, it happens, yeah, ice fishing, it happens there. Oh, you just sit around and drink beer. I have to take up ice fishing. Ice fishing. Yeah, not for the fish. I think the cigar smoking part of it, I'm going to like. Yeah, that's the deal there, yeah. All right.

So what can we do for you today? Well, I need help. I have this 1989, Toyota Corolla, and this is my very first car that I bought brand new. Yeah. And it's not wanting to start very well. And it's been doing this for two years, and I've taken it into the shop four times.

How many miles on it? It has under 100. 20,000. Okay. And when it doesn't start, what does it do? Exactly. You sound just like my car. Or does it do this?

No, no, the first one. First one. Ah. Yeah. And when it ultimately starts, what? It's pitiful. It's pitiful. It's just this little.

Oh, it just barely gets going. And then this huge kind of. kind of fart, black smoke. Comes pouring out the tailpipe. Yes. Really? Really? It's kind of blue-black.

Yeah. So what have, you've been in there four times with this problem, and what have they done? They did the valve cover gasket. They said it was leaking, and they replaced it. Yeah, would have nothing to do with the starting. What else did they do? And then they said, suspect the valve seals are getting hard and leaking. I mean, you described the problem as you described it to us,

the car doesn't start, it goes and they replace the valve cover gasket? Yeah, and they cleaned out the carburetor. You have a carburetor? I don't know, that's what they said. They cleaned it out. Oh, you may have the last of the car, the last one in captivity.

Oh, is that a good thing or bad thing? Is it a collector's item? It would be, yeah. This might be Bobo. Oh, no. We might have to send in Bubba to continue the speech. God. Oh, now I'm really worried.

Oh, you should be. Oh, well, that's good. That's good news. It's good news. What did they do in Visit 3? So we towed it in this spring, and then they put a new battery in it. These guys are beginning to worry me. It was beginning to worry me, too, but I thought, you know, I've been, I've

They know this car. They've taken care of it since birth. Well, they may have, but it may be time to move from the pediatrician onto a more adult doctor. Oh, that's an idea. Okay. Okay. And I think you may have to...

Wait, wait, wait. We have one more visit. We have number four. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. Visit number four. Visit number four. They removed the carburetor top, and they cleaned it out and blow out jets.

And they renew foul spark plugs. Oh. Mmm. Yeah. Very interesting. Well, if this indeed does have a carburetor, which they've alluded to twice now in repair slips. So it must actually be there.

There's an odds-on chance that it does have a carburetor. And it's the problem. It has what's called a variable Venturi carburetori carburetor, which is a very strange thing. The only ones I've ever seen are on this car. Mm-hmm. And in the Smithsonian Institute. And on some terseilles and on Ford cars of like 1985, Ford used, I think, in 84 or 85 for a year, before they decided that there was a stupid idea and they needed to actually make the plunge into fuel injection.

And you need probably to have the carburetor replaced. Oh, my God. Because it's running way too rich and it's flooding the thing. That's why it won't start. That's why it's blowing that huge fart of black smoke out the back. And that's why you're fouling the spark plugs. Well, that sounds really expensive. It is.

Yeah, it will be. It is expensive. But that's why I would say at the very least you ought to take this to a Toyota dealer. Okay. Because there may be some adjustments they can do if you can still find somebody living who knows how to work on these. Oh, no. So what you need to do, I think, is you have to call around to the various Toyota dealers and say, Does anyone there know Bobo?

Is anyone there variable Venturi carburetor literate? Okay. I'm writing this down. But if they tell you you need a new one, be prepared to bite the bullet for $1,000. Oh, my gosh. Oh, good luck, boy. What an awful thing. Bummer.

I feel for you. Well, thank you for helping to save my little. car here. Good luck, Jody. Thank you. See you. Bye-bye. Bye. Hey, stick around for more calls and the new puzzler coming right up. Hey, for you t-shirt wearers out there, all relatives of t-shirt wears. We just got a veritable shipload, that's shipload with a P of new Car Talk T-shirts at the Shameless Commerce Division. The folks there made a great series of T-shirts out of their favorite Car Talk quotes. So in addition to the classic, You know, don't drive like my brother, Dewey Cheathman, how.

You can now get Car Talk T-shirts, let's say, for instance, if money can fix it, it's not a problem. Life is too short to drive boring cars. Do it while you're young. You may never have a chance to do anything this stupid again. Reality often astonishes theory or happiness equals reality minus expectation. How about this one? Lousy car advice since 1977 and many, many more.

If you'd like one or want one to ship to a friend or relative, You don't really like, just head over to shamelesscommerce.com. That's shameless commerce.com. That's shameless commerce.com. How we're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack the Tapper Brothers, and we're here to discuss cars, car repair,

and the new puzzler. Now, I thought it being this early in the puzzler season that I ought to use an automotive puzzler of one kind or another. Ah! Because I haven't had one yet. I hadn't even noticed. that. I didn't think you would have, and here it is if I can remember it. Yes. A few months or weeks ago, one of my guys was under the hood of an old, I don't remember what it was,

it was an old Chevy pickup truck trying to find a vacuum leak. Now, what a vacuum leak is, is it's a leak which allows air to get into the engine when it shouldn't be getting into that spot. Specifically into the combustion chamber. Into the combustion chamber. All the air that enters an engine It should come either through the carburetor if the car has one or through the throttle body. And any air that comes in through any other source is called a vacuum leak, and it affects the way the thing runs. If the leak is sufficiently large, the thing won't run at all, or it certainly won't run it idle. And it'll stall out every time you take your foot off the gas. And that's exactly the problem that this thing had.

So there he is. And the way you find vacuum leaks is either you get lucky and you hear the hissing and you say, oh, there it is, and you put your finger on a hose that's broken or a pipe that's gotten disconnected. Or we use a little wand that shoots propane, and you go around with this thing attached to a way, the other end of which is attached to a propane tank, and you squirt this propane all over the place. And when the vacuum leak and the propane meet, you'll suck the propane in, and the engine will begin to run smoothly and, in fact, it will even idle, because now you're making the fuel air mixture correct.

You with me so far? And as soon as you take the propane wand away, All of a sudden, you've got far more air compared to the fuel than you're supposed to have, and it runs lousy again. Exactly. So there he is with the wand, and he's having lousy luck. He's underneath the vehicle? No, he's under the hood.

Under the hood, and the engine is running, but the leak is so big. The leak is so pervasive and yet so evasive that he can't seem to find it. Wow. So plus the fact, on a pickup truck, your feet are dangling in the air. You know, stuff is falling out of your pockets. It's a pain. So in desperation, he throws the stuff down and he shuts off the engine. And a few minutes later, I walk by and I see him doing something very interesting.

He's pulling off the spark plug wires and he's putting them back on, but on the wrong plugs. Oh. I say, what do I care? None of my business. Why should I care? Maybe it'll work better. And I walk away. Yeah.

Two minutes later, I hear him on the phone ordering. the part that he needs to correct the vacuum leak. How did he do it? Now, if you think you know the answer, write it on the back of a $20 bill or a piece of fresh fruit and send it to Puzzler Tower, Car Talk Plaza, Box 3,500, Harvard Square, Cambridge.

Our Fair City. Matt, 2,2238. Or, of course, you can email your answer from the Car Talk section of Cars.com. 1888 car talk. That's 888-227-8255. Hello, you're on car talk. Hi, this is Katie from South Deerfield, Massachusetts. South Deerfield. And I knew that, too. Because I've heard of Deerfield.

And that's like way out west, like near Texas. Not quite that far. No, no, it's near Tennessee. But it's near what? Deerfield Academy. Is it near Williamstown? Is it near Williamstown? No, we're about an hour east of Williamstown, on the other side of the mountains. The mountains?

The Rockies. Well, you're a small hill. The Rockies? Yeah, it's on this side of the continental divide. So you're like Denver. More like Lincoln, Nebraska. Anyway, Katie, it's been a real pleasure. Well, thank you.

So what's up? Well, I'm calling with a question about a piece of information that I was given. And I'm a little embarrassed because of the person. because the person who gave me this piece of information is actually standing outside of the door of the room that I'm speaking right now. Oh, really? I haven't told him that I'm calling,

so I may be getting myself in trouble right now. Let's not tell them. We'll make it quick. Okay. Well, here's the thing. I'm in an outdoor leadership program, and one of our days in school, we were talking about gear and about stoves

and about a different kinds of fuel you can use for stoves. And I have a camp stove that uses white gas. Yes. And I've had this stove and some gas for it for many years, like, I don't know, four years or something. And I can no longer use it in the stove because it's too old. One of my instructors told me that, standing outside the door, that told me that I could, I didn't want to throw the fuel away. And he said, well, you can just pour it into your gas tank and of your car. If it's not good enough for your crummy stove, you're going to put it in your $20,000 car?

Well, you get the idea, though. Yeah, I get the idea. That was what he told me. Now, I have to tell you, I talked to my father about this, and he told me to make sure to tell you that he said that I could go ahead and pour it into the tank of the car as long as I had a lot of marshmallows handy and ready to go when the car blew off. Well, that's my question. I don't know if I, I mean, I don't want to ruin my car. Why has this gasoline, this fuel, which is not gasoline, really. It's camp stove fuel.

Well. Comes out of the ground like you? No. No. It does. It's a little higher up with a distillation. There's a diesel, there's 89 octane, and there's camp stove fuel. But this comes in a container, if I'm not mistaken, sold by... Is it a little... Is it above whale blubber of a lot?

This comes in a container sold by somebody like Coleman. Yes, exactly. And it says camp stove fuel. It's also the same fuel you'd use in your Coleman Lantern. No, no. No? No. Colman Lantern, well, the ones I know, they use propane. which is like a pressurized fuel, and this is white gas, which is unpressurized, and it's just like a really clean burning fuel. Well, that's what this stuff is, too.

The Coleman Lantern that I have uses a liquid fuel that it forces that fuel onto a gas mantle, a little cloth thing. Yeah. Okay, and you accomplish that, and the reason you have to pressurize it is that the mantles above the tank. And it won't go uphill unless it goes up under pressure. So you'll pump on it. So you pump the thing. So this thing, however, works by gravity.

What, the stove? Yeah. Yeah, I suppose. But it's still a different kind of fuel. You sure? I'm positive. I think it's the same stuff. I think it's the same stuff.

I mean, they wouldn't make two different. What a pain in the butt that would be? We're going to have pack mules carrying this stuff in for you? This conversation bears a striking resemblance to the call we got about the cattle car and the electric brakes. I understand that, but I do have some small experience than this matter. In camping? Yes. You have experience in camping?

Well, I have experience. Just because you walk through the mule woods once? No, no. I do. I do own one of these Coleman lanterns for hurricanes and other such as that. Of course. And I have this container that Katie has, okay, with the same fuel, I believe, that you would use in either your lantern or the stove. I think it's the same stuff.

And it can also be substituted with white gas. Okay. That's what I have. White gas. The only reason I bring this up is I have had the same can of this stuff in my garage for about 25 years. And every time there's a hurricane, I fire it up? I open the can. I fill up the Coleman lantern.

I replace the two little mantles. And the thing works like a dream. Okay. So you're telling her that her instructor basically... His gut is what? I'm trying to find a delicate way to say this. And the only reason I haven't thrown this stuff away and replaced it is it seems to work all the time, number one. Number two, I wouldn't know where to throw it if I were going to throw it, and I certainly wouldn't throw it in my gas tank.

I think you just try it out and say, by the way, Mr. whatever your name is, Mr. Rogers or Mr. Smokey the Bear. I think you'll get your head up your keystone on this way. Gas issue. Well, see, I really trust his opinion on the camping stuff, though. Yeah, well, you may not trust... You may not be justified in trusting him about anything. Well, let me tell you that this is how it starts. My wife used to trust me on everything.

They catch you once or twice. Yeah, and then that's it. We happen to have in our presence, Mr. Doug Mayer, who just narrowly escaped, passing through the digestive system of a wolf, after taking a long trek for... Where did you go from? He walked from Boston to Canada.

Yeah, he took the long... Long trail in Vermont, if you're familiar with this, this goes from someplace in Vermont, which we don't really know the name of, to some place in Canada, which has no name, and back. But during this time, I mean, he's had a million times more camping experience than any of us has had. Okay. And he has used these stoves, and his opinion is, he says, you can say stuff lasts forever. Really? Yeah, worst that happens, he said, is you have to clean the stove.

And that's not so bad. If anything, I would certainly risk the stove and not my car. Yeah, I kind of feel the same way. Yeah, and I certainly wouldn't put it in my car. So I would say, stick with the stove. And like I said, I've had the same can of this stuff forever. And every time there's a power failure, I fire up my Coleman lantern. Why do I fire up my Coleman lantern?

Especially since you just bought that generator. Well. Wait, do you use white gas in the generator? No, you use Sonoco, don't you? Generator won't start. The gas gets old, you know. You can't leave the same gas in there all the time. It plugs up all those jets.

Yeah. Yeah, well, okay, well, Katie, it's been charming. Thank you very much. See you late. Okay, bye. Oh, God. Well, it's happened again. You've vaporized.

You're another hour listening to Car Talk. Our esteemed producer is Doug the subway fugitive, not a slave to fashion Berman. Our associate producer is Ken the Diaper Slayer Rogers. Our assistant producer is Frow Catherine Fenelosa. Our engineer is Dennis the Menace Foley. Our senior web lackey is Doug, make that two-sheep mayor. And our technical, spiritual and menu advisor is the bugster John Bugsy. Did somebody say free lunch, Lawler?

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And don't drive like my brother. That's what I said. We'll be back next week. Bye bye. And now here is Kar Talk Plaza's chief mechanic, Mr. Vinnie Gombats. Hey, thank you very much.

Now, if you just want a copy at this year's show, which is number 41, just pick up your phone and call this number 1-88-car junk. And, Vinnie, what if I wanted a car talk CD or a puzzle of a book, something like that? Would I call that same number?

No, you called the Dan Quail for President Campaign. You know, he's running again in 2001. Of course, you called the same number. You called the Shameless Commerce Division at 888 Card junk or visit it online at the Car Talk section of Cars.com. Got it? Thank you, Vinny. That was quite elucidating.

Hey, elucidate this. Car Talk is a production of Dewey Chiteman Howe and WBUR in Boston. And even though station managers feel a collective touch of Aja, whatever we say, this is NPR National Public Radio.