The Best of Car Talk - #2563: Flaming Bugs from Hell

Episode Date: August 9, 2025

Ok, perhaps we exaggerate a bit, but Doug from Oklahoma really does have black smoke coming out of his vents which are filled with dead bugs. Find out what’s cookin’ on this episode of the Best of Car Talk.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Walton Family Foundation, working to create access to opportunity for people and communities by tackling tough social and environmental problems. More information is at waltonfamilyfoundation.org. Hello, and welcome to Car Talk from National Public Radio with us, Click and Clack to Tappert Brothers, and we're broadcasting this week from the Aeronautical Engineering Division. Boy, we are diversified, aren't we? Wouldn't you get a million dollars? Car Talk Plaza, yes, I would.

To be able to play the guitar like that. Yeah. Especially since it wasn't the guitar. I'd give my right hand. To play the banjo like that. We're from the Aeronautical Engineering Department, and thanks to somebody, let me figure this out now, Richard McKenna, who sent us this. He said, what follows is a short synopsis of a grant application I'm thinking of submitting to the government.

And what is, an approach to explaining how aircraft really are able to fly. Yeah, because we know that all that alone is a lie. Most aeronautical engineers and the general public associate the lift generator by a wing with the differential pressure between the upper and lower surfaces of the wing. Nothing could be further from the truth. And God knows, we know that. Yes, we do. true. In reality, the lift required to travel in a commercial aircraft is furnished by the

passengers. Now, it isn't. Okay. I love. Was it quite what I was thinking? I love theories that just shock you. You know, when you hear the premise, you say, holy cow, here it is. Further, the lift is inversely proportional to both the wing size and the distance to be traveled. Farther, the distance to be traveled has a non-linear relationship. ship to lift as will become clear in the following explanations. Isn't anything further farther? How passengers provide lift for commercial aircraft. The lift required to cause an aircraft to take off is furnished by the passengers pulling up on the armrests of their seats.

I knew it. Now, it's one of those when you think about it, you say, why didn't I read? How takeoff lift is initiated by the pilot. After the aircraft reaches the end of the runway, preparatory to take off, the captain will advance the throttles on the engines. This action has two purposes. A, to provide horizontal thrust to propel the aircraft down the runway, and two, by raising the noise level in the cabin, the passenger aggregate fear level, P-A-F-L, is increased. The consequent rise in PAFL, passenger aggregate fear level, causes the passengers to strenuously lift up on their seat armrest, imparting lift to the aircraft. As we can readily see, the engines have two purposes.

One, to move the aircraft horizontally, and two, to scare the bejabbers out of the glass. How the duration and degree of lift are not. modulated by the pilot. Once cruising altitude is reached, the pilot will throttle the engines back. This lowers the noise level. The reduction in noise level results in reduction in passenger aggregate feel level. Oh, plan levels off. With a consequent decrease in lift.

It is only necessary for the pilot to make minor changes in noise level to maintain straight and level flight. In some instances where the PAFL does not decrease sufficiently to prevent further climbing, the captain may order free drinks be passed around, thus further relaxing the passengers and lowering the fear level. Shit, I love it. Wow. Boy.

While the airline industry will never admit it, passenger seating assignment is governed by national characteristics. Oh, this is important for us. Of course. For instance, Italian males are almost never upgraded to first class, since they're too easily excitable. Oh, they cost too much nose lift. And they respond very quickly to outside stimuli and provide almost.

almost immediate changes in lift. Clearly, one would not want to get the Italians drunk. One difficulty associated with using Italians in this manner is their clannish nature getting them evenly destroyed and left and right within the cabin. They all want to sit together. Oof. McKenna, whoever you are? Picaboo Street directs our intensive care unit,

which is known as the Piccaboo ICA. What is the ALEG on? No, it just seemed that way. Well, another brilliant theory, And one to which... Well, I always knew that differential pressure differential thing was bogus. I mean, come on.

Of course it's bogus. How can the plane fly upside down? Exactly. Can't. Can't fly upside down. You spill your drink. No, I mean, it's like a lot of other things that the scientific community is foisted on us,

which we know deep down inside, like fossil fuels. Come on. Come on. I mean, come on. Fossil fuels. Dinosaurus. billions of years ago?

How many dinosaurs could there have been? I want to die so I can provide some fuel for Tommy's Dodge Dark two billion years from now. Yeah, sure. The sacrifice to the oil gods. Yeah, sacrifice to OPEC. And we still believe it. Anyway, yeah, we bought that.

How about carbon dating? Is that another one? Carbon date. Yeah, sure. Well, how about the core of the earth being molten metal? It's been like that for four and a half billion years? It hasn't cooled off? No.

well it's insulated baloney there's stuff going on in there that they don't want us to know about are you writing a book no I know I know what's going on in there that core isn't molten from day one I see our next book

is bogus scientific theories I'm working up a sweat you want to talk to us about your car the number is 1 888 car talk that's 888 2278-82-5 Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hi, this is Rebecca from Memphis.

Hey, Rebecca, do you believe in fossil fuel? Not at all. Not at all. No, it's bogus, isn't it? Completely. Completely. Yes. All right, Rebecca, I'm from Memphis.

What's up? Well, I've got a 1996 cheap Cherokee to standard transmission, and I was given this car for my 19th birthday, which was two years ago, but I only drove it for a year. Then I moved to France for school for a year, and my parents drove the car. The sorbon? The sorbonne? No. The hembonne?

No, where'd you go to school in Paris? No, it wasn't in Paris. Paris. You went to the Riviera. Oh, that's where I'd want to go to school. I went to school in the cafes, actually. Cafe, yes. Cafe you.

And you must have a degree in what? Well, actually, in English fiction writing. Oh, so I could see with that year in France. That makes sense. I mean, if you want to learn English, go to France. Exactly. Yeah. Good for you, Rebecca.

talk somebody into that. Your parents, they must be real dumb. Well, you know, I got student loans to pay for it. So I talked the government into it. Oh, the government, if we know they're dumb. Exactly. Yeah. So what's up? Well, the problem is that when I got my car back, I noticed that the oil pressure runs consistently high. None of the others, nothing else is running high. The temperature isn't high. You know, I'm still getting good gas mileage on it. Well, where was the vehicle for the year that you were away?

It was in Batoners, Louisiana, being driven. Being driven? Yeah, being driven. Okay. I know that my dad used this car to pull a bath boat a few times, and I know how my dad drives, and I know he wasn't driving less than 70 miles an hour. Ah, so let's blame him. Well, you see, I'm trying to do that because they gave me this car telling me this is the last car we're buying you.

If this one breaks, you're buying the next one. So you think he sabotaged it. Exactly. Why would you do that? I'm wondering, but I'm also wondering, can I get him to buy me a new one if this one's screws up. Of course not. He bought you one. That was one too many. Well, unfortunately, if he had driven the thing harshly, it wouldn't have affected the oil pressure in this way. In fact, it would have been just the opposite. Your oil pressure would now be low. It's very unlikely for oil pressure

to be high. Okay. It's possible. For example, someone could have put in the wrong grade of oil. If this thing is supposed to use 5W30, which is probably what the manufacturer recommends, and somebody, either by mistake or on purpose, or by cheapness, put in 20W50, then the oil pressure gauge would read higher. Okay. Okay. Now, is it all the way up? I mean, is it like pegged?

No, it's running about, it hasn't crossed like the 60 mark. So 80 is the high mark on the gauge? Yeah, 80's the high mark. 40's the middle. And it's running. It's pretty much staying at about 60. All the time. Pretty much all the time.

I assume that when you've turned the key off that the gauge retreats to zero. Yes. And then when it comes, as soon as you started, it shoots right up to 60. Yeah, pretty much. And then it stays there. You could have a faulty oil pressure switch, which is the most likely thing. Okay. But I don't think your oil pressure is really too high, but you might want to have the sending unit changed.

Okay. And at the same time, the shop can test the oil pressure to see if it really is bad, because if it is too high, you might have a faulty oil filter or a faulty oil pressure relief valve. Okay. But have someone put a new switch in there and test the oil pressure, and you're going to be stuck with this for the next five years. Okay. Good luck, Rebecca. All right. Thank you. See you.

Bye. Okay, tell me, quick. What was last week's puzzle? The marbles. The black and white marbles. No, you're missing a few marbles. It's about the farmer and the stone weight. I'll have the answer in just a minute.

This message comes from Wise, the app for using money around the globe. When you manage your money with money. 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. Support for NPR and the following message come from the Walton Family Foundation, working to create access to opportunity for people and communities by tackling tough social and environmental problems. More information is at walton family foundation.org. Hi, we're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack the Tapper Brothers,

and we're here to talk about cars, car repair, and the answer to last week's puzzler. You don't remember this, huh? Well, I remember something about the stone, but I'm always going to break the stone up into pieces. I'll repeat. Yeah, give it to me, yeah. A farmer had a 40-pound stone that he used to weigh 40 pounds of feed with. You know, he had a balanced scale, put the stone on one side and pile the feed on the other side. When it balanced, he knew he had 40 pounds of feed on one side.

Got it? You with me? Yeah. If it wasn't 40 pounds of feed, then the cows would get mad, mad cow disease. Oh, yeah. And say, hey, it's only 38 pounds. What the hell is going on here? McDonald.

A neighbor of his, Frank Staples, I think, borrows a stone. And when he returns it, he says, I'm terribly sorry, I dropped the stone and it broke into four pieces. Oh. The farmer says, don't worry. You actually did me a favor. And he explains that the pieces of the broken stone could now be used to weigh any item, assuming those items were one pound increments from one pound to 40 pounds. So if he wants to weigh something, this, one pound, two pounds, three pounds, four pounds,

five pounds, that, that. He can do it with these four stones. Four pieces and the balance scale. And the sum of which, obviously, is 40 pounds. So he obviously, he can't weigh anything heavier than 40 pounds because when he puts the stones all together, they weigh one. Well, he can stand on it. He put his thumb on the thing.

So the question is, what are the weights of the four individual stones, and how does the farmer's system work? And I think the hint I gave is how would you weigh two pounds? Yeah, that was the hint that you gave. Clearly, one of the pieces has to be one pound. I think we'll all agree on that. And I think the next one will be three. That's good.

Why do you think so? Put one on one side and three on the other, and that's two. Huh? Yeah, you'd put the one pound weight on one side to weigh a two-pound piece, the two-pound thing on that same side and the three-pound weight on the other side. Exactly. Three pounds is obvious now because he's got the three-pound thing, right? Right. Four pounds? Four pounds is easy. He puts the two together. He's got three and one. And now we're in a lot of trouble.

Well, you're not. And the only way I came to the answer. Well, I'm going to go one, three, five, and whatever's left, 29 or something. Well, that's close, but it's wrong. No, we don't need five because we can play around to get five. Yeah. With a bigger number. Yeah. Like we could have, we could have an eight and we could do five. Oh, you're so close. And we could have a six and we could have.

Well, the way, I stumbled upon the answer by figuring this, there has to be, this has to be. He stumbled by tripping over the book that the answer is in. That's what it was. That's what it was. It was in the math. That somehow I figured out it had to be powers of three, because if it broke into four pieces, there are, there are four powers of three between one and 40, three to the zero, which is one, turn to the one, which is three, three squared, which is nine, and three cubed, which is 27.

They don't add up to 40 by any chance. They do. Oh, my God. So they do. And that's what they are. Nine. One, three, nine, and 27. Well, nine, if you put four on one side and nine on the other, that gives you the five.

Yeah, oh, yeah. Trust me, it works. And it works. It works. And you're willing to play. I don't think there are any other four sizes that will allow you to do this, but I know one, three, nine, and 27. do, and I think those are the only ones that work.

This is like the Lou Gehrig thing. Well, actually, this is similar to the, uh, uh, similar to, but not quite like the puzzle we had about the necklace some time ago, taking pieces of a necklace. Oh, yes, it's very similar. It's very similar. It is very similar. It is very similar. It requires the same kind of thought process, except this required turning to page 18

where the answer was. And who's our winner this week, Tommy? Oh, we got a winner? Yeah. Let me look on this little piece of paper. The winner is John Hengisbach from Winner. from Wyndham, New Hampshire. And for having his correct answer chosen at random this week,

John, you are going to get a $25 gift certificate to the Car Talk Shameless Commerce Division. Isn't that great? And with that $25 a gift certificate, you can get our new book of puzzles called A Haircut and Horsetown and other great Car Talk puzzlesers, or you can get the first-ever car talk video, which my mother doesn't even have a copy of yet,

and she's called me every single day again this morning. She's making me nuts. The car talk video is called Faces Made for Radio. It features us with our guest, The Smothers Brothers, the Flying Karamatoff brothers, and our buddy, Dr. Joyce Brothers. Your choice, John. You just call the Seamus Commerce Division

or you visit us at the Cart Talk section of Cars.com. Buy whatever you want, man. Up to $25. Knock yourself out. Knock yourself out, is right. Anyway, we'll have another new automotive puzzler coming up later in the show. In the meantime, we'll take your calls

at 1-88-car talk. 888-227-825, a lawyer on car talk. Hello, this is Tom Jones in Topeka, Kansas. How are you? Tom Jones, I love your music. Hey, listen, if I was Tom Jones, if I was the real-time Jones, you'd be paying me not to sing. So what's up, man? You've got a problem, believe it or not. It's my wife's car.

It's a 1990 clematist acclaim, you know, a four-sylinder. Yeah. And what it's doing is that when it gets up to about five, ten minutes, into driving, when the engine is warmed up, it starts to buck, and it lugs a little bit, and I thought it was anything from, I started out by putting some gas treatment into it, thinking that was going to solve it, and then it went from there to saying, well, gee, maybe it's a fuel pump problem. Right.

And then I went from there to new parts, new plugs, and tune-up. That didn't solve it. And then I was fascinated listening to one of your shows about something called the, oh, God, It's a throttle control sensor. And I don't know whether that's it, but it does it only when it's warm. And only, actually, I'm not sure I want to fix it because it's kind of a neat sensation. It kind of, you know, with it being like Tom Jones, it's kind of exotic, it's kind of erotic, and it's kind of box the shape. It gives you the gyrations.

Yeah. Boom. Bo bo bo bo bo bo bo bo bo bo bo bo bo bo bo bo bo bo bo bo i'm waiting for a cop to pull me over and then I'll tell him who I am. I can't believe it's not unusual to be loved by anyone. Now, if you try to go faster, Tom... Yes, sir. Will it do 50, 60, 70 miles an hour? Yes, sir.

Yeah. And if you drove at a steady 50 miles an hour, you wouldn't feel any funny stuff going on. Exactly. It seems... It's only this mid-range operation. Exactly. See, I knew you guys have the answer.

I've gone through all my people here, and I've told them what my name is, and they said, well, we don't care about that. I think of my supper, and they said, still, we don't care about that. It's unlikely it's the fuel pump or the filter or anything like that because that problem would be worse at higher speed. Okay. And it would, in fact, it would bog down terribly if you tried to make it go 60 as opposed

to 30, obviously, because the demand for fuel is greater. Exactly. It's unlikely to be an ignition system problem because if you had, for example, a bad spark plug wire or a bad distributor cap, that problem would be worsened under extreme load conditions. Yeah. And it's very likely, since you're having this mid-range problem, that it's the throttle position sensor, which is the thing that you refer

to. Okay, well, that's what I'm thinking that it is too, and that's a simple thing that's right up on the air intake. That's right, you can do that. I mean, it's probably 30 or 40 bucks to buy one wholesale. Yeah. And you just put it in, and if that doesn't fix it, then I suggest you take it someplace and have it

looked at. Well, I ascribe to the old U.S. philosophy that if it, the U.S. government says, if it ain't broke, fix it till it is. You're heading in that direction. Yeah. That's probably right, too. So do you know any Tom Jones songs? I mean, you must...

Oh, yeah. Well, send us off with a little tune. It's not unusual to be loved by clicking clack. It's not unusual that you'll get the right answer to. Okay, don't give up your day, John, Tom. Happy jirating. Hey, thanks for calling. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. Hey, you know what it's time for? Time to unveil car talk Visa and MasterC? No, no. The FTC wouldn't go for our 90% APR. It's time to place! Stump the Chumps! Stumpter Chumps is our modest effort to impose some kind of quality control in the show here.

It's the part of the show where we invite a previous caller back onto the show to find out if our advice was any good. Well, tell me, how can you have quality control when you don't have quality to begin with? Well, what do you want us to have? Shortiness control. Anyway, who is our chump stumper this week? It's Sylvia from Long Island. Right. Sylvia called us because she had a hard time

seeing at night in her 95 Subaru wagon. She could see fine during the day, but at night it wasn't so easy. Big problem. It's dark at night. Sounds good to see. Okay. You can go to your Subaru dealer and ask them if they can install some driving lights for you. Driving lights. Any particular strength

you want to recommend or... You want full strength. Yeah. Whatever the game laws will allow. Okay. And I get those put on the bottom or the top or the top or all four or what. Well, they're usually mounted. In your case, they'll probably mount them above or below the bumper wherever it's appropriate.

Uh-huh. But don't stay home, whatever you do, Sylvia. I will not stay home. You sound like too much fun. And you have just lightened the life of any number of AARP type. Okay. Thanks for you all. So we told Sylvia to have an extra set of driving lights mounted in front.

Sylvia, are you there? Yes, I am. Okay, Sylvia, before you tell us what actually happened, we have to make sure that your answer has in no way been influenced by members of our staff, the staff of National Public Radio, are by promises of free orange-tinted wraparound sunglasses from the Long Island League of Ophthalmologists. Is all this true, Sylvia? Oh, that is absolutely true.

Not even any tootsie rope. Well, did the Clegg lights on your bumper help or what? I'll tell you. I didn't go to Subaru, but I went to my regular fellow, and he ordered a kit from Subaru. And I saw it. It's a regular kit, and I waited. I took a book, and I read, and I waited, and it was installed, and it really does help. So I help me handle it.

I'll tell you, I'll tell you what it is. It is kind of a double help. Am I talking too much? No, no. Don't say anything you want, so you talk, the less we have to embarrass ourselves. What they do is they clearly, it helps me define the dark spots. Yeah, light does that. Yeah.

That's, oh, by the way, the lights were put on the bottom. Yeah. And then the other thing it does, and this is subjective, is that it makes me feel better. I have anxiety. You know, when I sit out and I don't know if I'm going to quit in a traffic jam. I don't know what's going to happen. I don't care. Will I get home before dark?

I don't care. You don't care anymore. I don't care. It's giving you newfound freedom, joy, happiness. Live it up. That is really true. Good for you. By the way, watch out for those things in the winter because they have a nasty habit of getting broken off by ice and snow.

Oh, really? Because they're down low. Uh-huh. So what can you do? Cover them up or? Well, you should be careful. Don't drive into big snow piles. Oh, well, I won't do it.

You wouldn't do that because you'll be able to what, see them now. You'll leave the lights on all the time. Okay. Good luck, Sylvia. Stump. the chump, Sylvia. Take care. See you, Sylvia.

Take care yourself. Bye, bye, bye. I don't want to say anything, but I don't know that we really deserve any accolades. The woman calls us and she says, I can't see in the dark. We tell her to turn on the lights and we get a ta-da-da-da for that. I'm sorry. Yeah, no. Maybe we should have got just a ta.

It deserves just a ta. Yeah. I mean, was our average that long? Yeah, we'd done so miserably. Don't forget, this is all done by random, so. It's all done by random. Yeah. All right, it's time to take another short break.

A good old seventh inning stretch. Yeah, you get the penis. I'll get a bag of puzzles. We'll be back in a minute. Support for NPR and the following message come from the estate of Joan B. Kroc, whose bequest serves as an enduring investment in the future of public radio and seeks to help NPR be the model for high-quality journalism. and the 21st century.

We're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack the Tappert Brothers, and we're here to discuss cars, car repair, and the new puzzler. Which you said was going to be an automotive puzzle. You think I wasn't paying attention. This is automotive. Okay. Here it is. You've got to pay attention now. The other day in the shop, I had two Toyota Camrys, side by each, as we say, in the trade. One of them didn't run. It cranked, and he turned the key, but it wouldn't fire. up and the other one was in for an emissions test. So I say to Ralph, do these two cars. So he takes

the emissions tester probe. He sticks it in the tailpipe of the car in which he's supposed to do the emissions test. He opens the hood. Next thing I know, he's cranking this car. It won't start. It doesn't start. I sit there. I mean, I'm having breakfast. I like it already. I can't get up. No. He then takes the probe out of that tailpipe. sticks it in the other car. He gets into the car that didn't run. That wouldn't start. And he turns the key and, of course, it doesn't start. It does the same thing that the first car did. Ah. Ah. And I say to him, what the hell are you doing? He tells me. It's like catching a cold. You put the car's too close together. Exactly. Yeah. So you got it now? He put the emissions

tester in the first car. The guy drove the car in. Gotcha. He opens the hood. He does something. He gets inside, he turns the key, and the thing cranks and cranks, he does it for like a minute, and it doesn't start. Now he does seemingly the same thing to the car which didn't run, but he's trying to figure out why this car doesn't run. Right. And he's also trying to do, I presume, some kind of emissions test on the other car, but I can't figure out why. And he sticks the probe in the tailpipe. He must have assumed that he went to the wrong car. That's why he did.

Well, that's what I assumed at first. I didn't know what he was doing, but he then explains to me what he's doing, and I say, aha! What's he doing? If you think you know the answer, write it on the back of a $20 bill and send it to, Puzzler Tower, Car Talk Plaza, Box 3,500, Harvard Square, Cambridge. Our Fair City. Matt, 2,2238, or you can do an electronic funds transfer. We love those, and email your answer on a $20 bill to us from the Car Talk section of Cars.com. If you'd like to call us, our number is 1-888-8-2-278-255.

Hello, you're on car talk. Hi, guys. This is Doug from Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City. Yeah. What's up, man? Well, I got two problems. Yeah.

The first one was with my truck, and the second one, well, the truck led to my second problem, which is a marital dispute. No wife. Yeah. It always happens. No matter what problem you have, you have two. This is true. Which one you want to stop?

Let's start with the truck. Let's start with the truck. It's an 85 Ford F-150. And last fall, I was going back to work after lunch, and it was the first cold day, so I had the defrost going. And all of a sudden, thick black smoke started pouring out of the de frost. So I panicked, pulled off to the side of the road, turned off the car, lifted the hood, nothing. No smoke, nothing. So I get back in, starter back up, and I had to get back to work, and I thought, well, I got insurance if it burns to the ground, they'll get a new one.

Not quite a new one, but you'll get something. Another one. Yeah. I'm in good hands. Yeah. Anyway, so I come back out after about three, four hours and start her up. It smells like crazy in there, but turn on the de-frost, drive home, nothing. Works great.

Works great. I get home. Tell my wife, oh, by the way, dear, guess what happened to me at work today? And she comes up with the solution, and this is where we had the marital dispute, because I said she was nuts. Yeah. Where she thinks the smoke came from. There were dried up

bugs and bug parts in there, and when I ran the de-frost for so long, they caught on fire. And that's what was burning. And I said she was nuts. You were right. But I hope you didn't tell her that. What, that she was nuts?

Yeah. Well, that would lead to a marital dispute. Yes. And remember the great words that I once heard, and I think I spoke them. Would you rather be right or would you rather be happy? And you chose in that case to be right. And now your wife ain't happy, you ain't happy. And you're sleeping in the pickup truck. And it smells bad in there. Well, I think she's wrong

because you'd be hard pressed to get enough bugs to make all that awkward black smoke. And secondly, there's nothing hot enough to set bugs on fire. Well, that's, That's what I said. And she said, fine. Take the dash apart. So I did. You found a whole bunch of bugs. Were they, as the French say, Carbonizze?

Were they burned up? No. No. They were there. Well, she says the ones that burnt up wouldn't be there. They were gone. Yeah. She's a smart little cookie, huh? Oh, yeah.

If I'm right, this would be the first time. Yeah. Well, I think you could open up anyone's. heater box and find bugs. I mean, after all, where else are going to go? Yeah. Oh, I think the smoke came from the blower motor. Yeah, the only thing down there that could cause that is the motor.

Is the insulation on the windings of the motor, melting because the motor is seizing up. But I ran the air conditioner all summer long, and it worked just fine. Well, here's a new... He didn't even have to tell us that, because don't forget, it worked fine. on his way home from work the day that it happened. Yeah. So whatever happened was a single episode, and it was over.

If anything caught fire, it was the blower motor. Okay. And I didn't even catch fire. The windings got so hot that the insulation started to melt, and that makes a very foul-smelling... But it's a very distinctive smell, accurate. But it wasn't electrical. It didn't smell like electrical smoke?

No, I know what that smells like. Why? What have you burned up? Well, I've wired my house. Oh, you wired your house. Oh, so you know what electrical fire smells like. Oh, yes, he says. All right, I've had the fire department out.

So it didn't smell like an electrical fire. Did it smell like rubber? No. To be honest, it smelled like burning paper almost. I was afraid you were going to say that. Is there paper around the... No, there isn't. But the highest temperature in there is about 200 degrees.

We all know that paper doesn't burn... 455. Did you get to $4.54? Right. Right. So you ain't got any temperatures that high. Wait. Hold it now.

What if we had a stage-wise progression? Oh, really? Yeah. What if we had a condition whereby something could ignite at a much, much lower temperature and in turn, ignite. Yeah, I see it. Some leaves that might have been in there. Like maybe bugs? What is the ignition point of a mosquito?

Oh, no, these aren't mosquitoes. These were, like, what were these like? Like Junebugs, right? Yeah, and dragonflies. I mean, somebody has obviously done a Ph.D. dissertation on... There's no question about it. Dragonfly and Junebug ignition points. Call Oklahoma University.

Okay. No, this is getting out of hand. We have no idea, Doug. No, no, I... I have no idea. Well, I have... The experiment that Doug has to do. Yeah.

He has to set fire to a bug and see if that smell jogs his memory. Ah. There you go. And if it does, you'll know your wife was right. I'm sure she was right. Yeah. Yeah, she's right. I have no other theory to account for this because that is a pretty isolated system.

Well, and you're hard-pressed to get smoke. Yeah, this is a lot of smoke. Yeah. With there smoke, there's fire. You've been burning up some bugs, Doug. Set a few bugs on fire And see if that smell Remind you of that incident

I'll give it a try Remember the words Hun, I want to apologize From the bottom of my heart I know the mantra See you Oh God love you All right

Thanks Bye bye Thanks guys Well it's happened again You've vaporized You're another hour Listening to Car Talk Our steam producer

is Doug the subway fugitive, not a slave to fashion, Berman. Our associate producer and Dean of the College of Auto Musicology is Ken Tucar Garages. Our assistant producer is Catherine Imelderet Marcos. Our engineer is Dennis DeMennis Foley and our technical, spiritual, and menu advisor. Completing the final

lap of the fall Grand National Free Lunch Tour is John Bugsy Lawler. Where is the Bugs? I miss him. Who knows? He's on the free lunch tour. I hope he gets back. We do, too. I do too. Car Talk's Poet Laureate is Robert DeFron. Our customer care representative is Hayward Jabuzzoff. Our document security expert from the island of Jamaica is Euripides Upman,

who is not related to our tailor, Euripides, I menadies, or to our staff bouncer Euripides, I break your face. Or to the proprietor of our men's clothing shop, Euripides. You own days. Peekaboo Street directs our intensive care unit, which is known as the Peekable ICU. Our anti-lock break expert is Heather Lockrear, and our Leo Tolstoy biography is one.

Warren Peace, author of Leo Tolstoy by Warren Peace. Our chief counsel from the law firm of Dewey Cheven Howe is Uly Lewis Dewey, known to the dogs in Harvard Square as Ui the Hydrant. Thanks so much for listening. We're clicking and clack to Taperties. Don't drive like my brother. Don't drive like my brother. We'll be back next week.

Bye-bye. And now, here is Car Talk Plaza's very own rapmaster, Mr. Vinnie Gumbaz. Hey, if you want a great program where there ain't no jive, then you order this week's Car Talk. 45. You can take it from me to a public radio hunk. You can get your taste

by calling 888 car junk. Hey, Vinnie, that's excellent. What about other car talk stuff? Hey, listen to them, chump. I ain't finished yet. If your girlfriend or your boyfriend just gave you the hook, you can spend your Saturday evening

and reading the puzzler book. And if complete strangers see your face and they say, whoa, you feel better when you see the car talk video. Take it from me to public radio hunk. You can get this stuff by calling 888 card junk.

Or you can visit the shameless commerce division at the Car Talk section of Cars.com. Thank you, Vinnie. I never knew you had such talent. Hey, talent this, pal. Car Talk is a production of Dewey Cheatheman Howe and WBUR in Boston. And even though Robert Siegel smacks himself in the forehead

every time he hears us saying, this is NPR National Public Radio. I can see him doing it. Support for NPR. and the following message come from the Walton Family Foundation, working to create access to opportunity for people and communities by tackling tough social and environmental problems. More information is at waltinfamilyfoundation.org.