The Best of Car Talk - #2567: Someone is Going to Pay Dearly for This

Episode Date: August 23, 2025

Among the many reasons the Saab car division went belly up years ago were little things like putting the transmission drain plug so close to the engine oil drain plug that they were practically daring you not to mistakenly open the wrong one. Oops, someone did it again on this episode of the Best of Car Talk.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from the Kresgey Foundation. Established 100 years ago, the Kresge Foundation works to expand equity and opportunity in cities across America. A century of impact, a future of opportunity. More at Kresge.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 Center for Creativity, Bravado, and Natural Selection here at Carataw Plaza. Well, I think that's appropriate, but to tell you the truth, I'm not sure because I haven't read this yet. You know what people love about our show, the preparation that goes to the preparation, but I could tell, I could tell just from the first paragraph that it was something that I wanted to read.

I'll read you the note. I listen to your show at work. I love your show. My husband gets Flying Magazine and showed me this story. Thought you would get a boost from this, from Val Stalius, from St. Flaco, Florida. St. Something, I don't know.

You've heard of Rick and Backer and Lindberg and Doolittle. But have you heard of Larry Walters? Probably not. Yet Walters was made of that special stuff that separates aviation legends from the common run of folk. In 1982, Walters, this is what got me, this next paragraph, in 1982, Walters, a truck driver by trade,

bought a bunch of weather balloons. Some sources say 42, some 45. He filled them with helium and tied them to a lawn chair. Were they packed in Cosmoline? When I got to this point, I said, this is got to be good. So he ties 45 weather balloons to a lawn chair. He provided himself with a two-ray radio, a parachute, some jugs of water, and a rifle, and then cut his conveyance loose from the bumper of his car, which was anchoring it to the ground.

Take a moment to imagine the thrill and terror of that ascent, transforming a man surrounded by the normal appurtenances of life, garden, house, sport utility, terra firma, into a speck floating in an infinite space. Had he rigged up some sort of seatbelt? Did the chair tip and wobble? Did he call out to the ant-like figures below? We don't know. We don't know.

We don't know. It is clear, however, that he violated F-A-Rs. I don't know what that means. It's all caps. Just don't forget this is in Flying Magazine. Federal Aviation Regulations. That's oath. I love it.

By passing through the Los Angeles TCA, we don't know what that is either, without a transponder or a clearance. Two passing jet liners reported to control. that they had seen a man with a gun seated on a deck chair at 11,000 feet. A helicopter went up to take a look. Walters had planned to descend. I got it by shooting out one balloon at the time. You got it, man.

I couldn't figure out the gun until now. I couldn't figure out the gun either. Walters had planned to descend by shooting out the balloons with his gun. One at the time. He had deflated ten of them this way When he accidentally Dropped the gun He accidentally dropped the gun

I told you this is going to be good What were the first two words He uttered When he dropped When he was like When he accidentally dropped the gun Wait I can't read now Evidently, 10 was enough.

After being carried out to sea and back on the vagrant coastal breezes, he was snagged by power lines in Long Beach and led away in handcuffs. Ooh. He's reported to have said by way of explanation of his exploit, A man can't just sit around. I guess not. Walter subsequently fell on hard times, became bankrupt, and died by his own hand in 1993. But his memory survives as a model of those qualities of independence, vision, and disregard for common caution, without which aviation would never have come into being.

Exactly. I mean, what if the powers that were went and arrested the Wright brothers for doing something reckless? Exactly. Exactly. It takes vision. He had deflated ten of them when he accidentally dropped. I love it. Oh, boy.

Anyway, if you'd like to talk to us about your car, or maybe an upcoming flight in a helium. In a luncheon. The number to call is 1-888-8-8-8-28-8-2-7-8-25-5. Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hi, guys. Mindy. How are you? I'm great.

How are you guys? What part of New York are you from? I'm not from New York. I'm in San Francisco. No kidding. Yeah. I'm actually not from San Francisco. I'm from Canada, but I'm living here right now.

No kidding. Yeah. Do you know when the Canadian national anthem, at least the first two words of it? Oh, Canada. You must watch hockey. When was that adopted? Oh, I have no idea. Canadians don't know anything about their history.

I'm sorry. Well, you don't really have any history to speak off up there in Canada. Oh, don't start. Oh, God. What has ever happened there that the rest of the world would know about? The referendum in Quebec. That's about it. I was going to say the only thing that people in the future will remember is when Quebec seceded.

When was that, anyway? Oh, please don't ask me that. See, she forgot that, too. We'll let you off the hook on all counts. What do you want? Okay, I have a 1990 Miata. 90, Miata. Yes.

When I started in the morning, it has a tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, noise. Yeah, and it seems to last for about 15, 20 minutes, and I don't pay attention to when it goes away, but it just, it's last. It's loud enough that it bugs me, and I've just moved to the city, and I'm a woman, and I'm driving this convertible, and I don't want to get suckered when I take it in somewhere, so I want your opinion to see what it is. Are you suggesting that blonde women in convertibles don't have the respect that other people might demand? I am more than suggesting it.

I'm confirming it. Confirming it, okay. Yes. I'm glad to hear it. Yes. No, I trust you guys. You have the classic Mazda syndrome. Okay, what is it?

Tick, tick, tick, tick. You don't want to told us. You have a, I'm pretty sure this vehicle has self-adjusting hydraulic valves. Okay. And you have a lifter that is not pumping up fully. Okay. And it may be that you need new lifters or you may have low oil pressure or you may have nothing to worry about. And there are some, there are some people who think that that noise is coming not from lifters but from a sticky valve.

Okay. Which is another possibility. Well, my dad thought it was the oil filter. What? I think the oil filters plugged up. Is he Canadian? Yeah. Yeah, he is, and he doesn't get car talk there, so he won't hear me say all this.

Is he blonde? No. He is. Yes, he is. The oil filter. Yeah. Well, I know what he's thinking. Okay.

No, it's not the oil. Well, I don't think so either, because I'm sure this has been. going on through many oil changes. Okay. Is it worse in the colder weather? Yes, it is. Sure. Yes, it is.

And it's a new car to me. I've only had it for three months, not even. Oh, so you bought it used in the warm weather when it typically doesn't make the noise. Yes, and I bought it in Canada. Yeah. I would take it to the dealership, and I would tell them that you wanted to investigate a sticky lifter. Okay.

Or stuck valves. Okay. I think it's lifters. Could be the oil filter. That's what I said. See you, Mindy. Good luck. Okay, thanks.

Bye-bye. 1-888-8-8-8-8-8-2-7-8-25-5. Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hello, this is Jerry in Kearney, Arizona. Jerry, with a G or a J? With a G. No, kidding. I'm surprised you ask.

In Kearney, Arizona. Kearney, Arizona. It's hard to find on a map. We're eight miles north of Winkleman. That narrows it, and if you'll wink, you'll miss Winkleman. That narrows it right up. That's great. So what's going on, Jerry, with a G?

Well, I've got a car. We've got a 1972 Pontiac, Grandville convertible. No kidding. The guy who originally bought it was trying to outfit it to pull an airstream trailer. So it's got this 455 cubic inch V8 and the towing package for the, you know, the high, Yeah. High dissipation radiator and all that other goodies. But anyway, we bought the car in 1985.

Just tell me one thing. Have you ever gotten mileage in two digits? Yes. Have you? Downhill? In fact, it averages about 11 miles to a gallon. Just made it. That's good.

So our assumption when we bought the car was, gee, this huge engine, big cooling system at auto run nearly forever. But now we've got a problem where we're thinking maybe we've reached nearly forever. Yeah. But here's the problem. We've got several really steep mountain divides that we have to go through when we go someplace. Yeah. And the car starts going ping, ping, ping, ping, and then it's a steeper the hill gets, it goes.

But they be, bing, b, b, b, b, b, and then pretty soon, it sounds like Yotsie dice. Oh, you're prepared for this one. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, well, all of the local mechanics here in Kearney I've talked with, which is Butch and Sister. Yeah, Bich and Sister. Sister's opinion is that the quality of fuel we currently get from the different gasoline companies has slowly but steadily been declining. Yeah, it's possible.

Her point is that we have to start using octane booster or something like that in this car. And we're putting premium gas in it to begin with. And to put another $3 to fill up in on octane booster, it's starting to get to the point where maybe we need to find an alternative mediance of transportation. How high is the octane of the stuff you're buying? Well, it says 92 on the pump. Yeah. And we've noticed that if we put octane booster from STPN, it reduces the pinging, but not completely. And this, did this start happening gradually? Yeah, just in the last three or four months, it started happening. And Sister and Butch haven't done anything in the way of timing to the vehicle during that time? They have, but there's a compromise. They

have to make. I guess if they time it so it doesn't ping, then it idles really rough. Right. Okay. Well, in a nutshell, here's the deal. Okay. First of all, your sister is right. This car was designed to run on 97 plus octane. Okay. And you can't buy that anymore, except if you buy the octane boost. But even that, at six bucks a pop doesn't actually do the trick. They can retard the timing, but they should, first of all, check to see if, for example, you have a stuck centrifugal advance. A what? Well, you may have a... stuck centrifugal advance in the distributor.

But I suspect you don't. Okay. And I'm going to cut right to the chase. What you need to do is you need to have somebody fashioned for you a water injection system for this car. Oh, what? I like it. What you have is excessive buildup of carbon and crud on your pistons.

Mm-hmm. And I think what's happening is because you have this buildup of carbon on the pistons, your compression ratio is even higher than the manufacturer. ever intended it to be. Uh-oh. And that's causing additional pinging. Okay. I like it.

Now, if I ask Butcher's sister about a water injection... They will certainly know. They won't know what they... They might. Diesel engines use it, and they might be able to fashion something. Alternatively, you could try to find a manifold, an intake manifold, from a later model, uh, Grandville, or whatever they... Later model 455, rather.

Mm-hmm. That has an EGR valve. E-G-R valve. Yes. Ross gas recirculation. And you want to retrofit this engine so it has EGR, and that will reduce the pinging. Okay. If we don't do anything to stop the ping, does it start to burn the valve at all?

It will burn the pistons. It will burn holes in the piston. Right. And so you've got to do something about it. A little pinging is okay on the steeper hills, but if it's pinging as badly as you represent it with your shaking of the Yiazzi dice, then that's bad, and that'll wreck your engine. Oh, okay. So you can try, retarding the time in which they've done.

You can try water injection to clean out the things. You can try other chemicals introduced into the gasoline to clean off the pistons. Try getting a manifold that has an EGR system. And ask sister to make sure that all the advanced mechanisms are working. Well, it runs fine on the freeway at 70. I suspect that that stuff is okay. All right. Good luck, Jerry.

Well, thanks, Chuck. See you. Bye, bye, bye, bye-bye. All right, it's time to help you. remember last week's puzzler, and once again, I'm going to try some word association to jog your memory. You ready? Yeah, okay. Throne. Um, porcelain. I was looking for king. Oh. Head. Head. Porsland. I was looking for hat. Yeah. Me. Um, porcelain. I was looking for wise man. King, hat, and wise man.

Ah! I remember the puzzler, as a matter of fact. It was about the king and the wise men. And the what? And the porcel. 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.

Hi, we're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack the Tapper Brothers. Here to talk about cars, car repair, and the answer to the last week's puzzle. Here it is, and this was submitted by Snail Mail. Once upon a time, there lived a king who wished to find the wisest man in the kingdom to become his assistant. He summons three of the wisest men he knows to his court, and he administers the following test. You paying attention? Yeah.

He sits them in a circle. facing each other, and he says, I'm going to put either a red hat or a white hat on each of your heads. He then proceeds to put a red hat on everybody's head. Okay. Now, they can see each other, but they can't see themselves. There are no mirrors or anything, and they can't look in their shoes, you know, and... I got it. They can see their wrist watches. They can see just each other. In fact... And they can't see the three white hats that the king is holding in his left hand. Right. All right. Then the king says... He's got them in a bag, Probably.

Maybe. He reaches into the bag and takes out the hat. There you go. Otherwise, as he walked away from them, they'd see the hats. They would see the white hats and they would know that he, yeah. He says, if you can see a red hat, raise your hand. We know that they obviously all raise their hands because they're all wearing what?

Red hats. Got it. Then he says, if you can tell what color hat you have on, stand up. Time goes by. One guy nods off. They look at each other. They stare at the floor, that, et cetera, et cetera.

And finally, one guy stands up and he says, Can I leave the room? To go to the bathroom. To take a haircut. Your highness. Your holiness. He obviously says,

I'm wearing a red hat. How did he know? When he stood up, there was a mirror. The hat fell off. Right, the hat fell off, and that's how we go. Well, let's call our winner, Wise Man Number One. Wise Man Number One.

And the other two guys are Wise Men, Two, and Three. Wiseenheimer, two, and three. Yeah. Let's assume he uses the following logic. If I'm wearing a white hat, he says, then Wise Man number, who am I? Am I number one? Did I say it was number one? You said your number one.

Wise Man number two raises his hand to the first question because he sees a white hat on me and a red hat. on number three on the other guy number three let's call him Tom Dick and Harry who's Tom the wise

the wisest one of course all right so you get me confused already similarly the other guy right

he sees a white hat on me and a red hat on the other guy and he's going to know that he has a red hat on because he he wouldn't have been the other number two guy

wouldn't have been able to raise his hand hand unless he saw a red hat on the third guy. Exactly. And he didn't raise his hand. And why didn't he raise his hand? Because he didn't know what color had he had on, because he doesn't know, he doesn't see a white hat on me. And if he doesn't see a white hat on me, it must mean that I must have a red hat. Exactly. Who's our winner? That's a great puzzler. Isn't it? Our winner of this Puzzler is Rich Luchette from Eldersburg, Maryland. And for having his correct answer chosen at random this week, Rich is going to get, this is a great price, a $25 gift certificate to the

Car Talk Shameless Commerce Division, with which he can procure our brand new video, which features us and other famous brothers. This is real. It was recorded at our 10th and a half anniversary celebration. It's got the Smothers Brothers, the Flying Karamazov brothers. The Flying Karamazov brothers. Dr. Joyce brothers, and not to mention that we have us singing with the Car Talk Symphony Orchestra. And it also features, I might add, John Bugsy Lawler in a tutu, again. It's worth every sense just there. In a tutu. That's it.

I mean, does it get any better than that? And if you don't want that, you can have a brand new book of puzzlers, which just came out this fall, called A Haircut in Hors Town and Other Great Car Talk Puzzlers. It's excellent bathroom reading. that's what the New York Times says. Just call the shameless commerce division at 888 car junk or visit it at the Car Talk section of Cars.com and you pick whatever you want.

Rich. Rich, you lucky devil. What a guy. Lucky guy. Later on the show, we'll have a puzzler coming from our Car Talk Puzzler book. Really? Yes. This is a great source of puzzles, isn't it?

It is. You don't have to come up with puzzles every week. That's it. I'm off the hook. If you'd like to call us, our number is 1-88-Cart talk, That's 888-227-8-25-5. Hello, you are on Car Talk. Yeah, hi, this is Tom from Chicago.

Hey, Tom. How are you? Oh, it's pretty good. I got my hands on an 85 Caprice Classic couchmobile, the big station wagon. Yes. And I got it on a trade deal. I made some teeth for a guy and I end up with this nice, beautiful caprice-class. What did you make the teeth out of oak?

Not quite. I have a theory I'd like to propose from my mechanic who, after telling me this, I think he may not have vented when he did the emission test. The car's been running fabulous. And just recently, from a cold start, that means maybe two hours or longer, there is a knock, a metallic type of knock in the front left side of the car. and it seems to be directly related to the revolutions of the engine if you speed it up or put it in gear and move away it'll knock briefly and disappear

and it won't do it all the time my mechanic who's in love with the car and had an 86 of his own he thinks the flywheel has a crack and as the engine warms up the crack sort of seals up with the expansion of the metal

and then the noise goes away and I was wondering if that makes any sense to you guys. It's a one-time noise, or it's a continuous noise. It doesn't always happen. It's a tuk-t-t-tok-tok-tok-tok-tok-tok. Well, more of a metallic knock. You'd think like there was a loose tailpipe. But is there a one knock?

No, but you said it was, it increases with the speed of the engine. Correct. And then it'll dissipate. It'll get quiet and they'll be gone. And you don't have to be moving to get the noise. No. No, you don't. Both ways.

This is unfortunate. Yeah. If I rev the engine or if I put it in gear and move, goes away. Did you give them uppers and lowers for the car or what? Well, this was, it was like, it was a trade deal we did with a trade association. What business are you and you make? I have a, yeah, I make teeth. I have a dental laboratory. Dental laboratory.

So, I mean, did you make like just a tooth or two or an entire set? This one required for what I spent on it, probably about 10 teeth. 10 teeth. Oh, so this would be like a bridge, as they call. Yeah, crown. Yeah, crown. Yeah. Oh, crown. Yeah. Right.

And like a tiara. You should have got a Crown Victoria. Not a Caprice Classic. I have to say, it's been a fabulous car other than this recent occurrence. I mean... How many miles on it, Tom? About 1.30? Well, I believe that your mechanic could be right.

It could also be that the bolts that hold the flex plate to the torque converter are loose. Ah. But if the thing is, if in fact the flywheel or the... Is that plausible that a cracker flywheel with enough heat would... And expect that the metal would actually dissipate the noise? Sure. Wow. Sure.

I thought he was sniffing the pipe. I think he is too. Well, it's easy enough. You can pull the inspection cover down and look. Okay. In fact, on this car, I believe it's a plastic pan underneath the flywheel. Okay. You can actually see where the starter bolts up.

You can see all the teeth on the flywheel. You can see quite a bit of it. Okay. And you can, there's a little tool, which you can buy a call the screwdriver. That's actually a real tool for it, but you can do it. with a screw diver. I put a chalk mark on the thing so you know when you've rotated it 360 degrees. Otherwise, you could spend the whole day under there looking at the same teeth

over and over and over again. So you put a chalk mark and you'll want to rotate. We got guys in the shop that are still doing it. I think it was like 1994 when we asked Peter. Check the teeth of that fly, Will he'll be still under there. How do I know when I'm done? I mean, we should at least give Tom the possibility that it's something worse. Oh, no, I don't think so.

It's the holiday season and all that. It is the holiday season. It's been running too well. I'm expecting a disaster. No, I don't think you want to know this. I mean, at least you should do the following. Whenever the noise is happening, open the hood and stick your head down there

and have somebody rev it up so that it makes noise. And try to determine whether or not the noise is, in fact, coming from the tranny or from the engine itself. Okay That's going to tell everything You don't want to take out the transmission If the noise isn't in there Exactly

Okay Because it could be pissed and slap You know, it could be Nah, no I didn't hear it No I didn't hear it No

Didn't hear a thing Must have a bad connection Bad connection Good luck Tom I appreciate it See later Thank you Bye bye

Bye He's in trouble All right It's time to take another short break We have to go powder Our noses don't we Yeah we use gunpowder In my brother's case

We'll be back in just a minute. Ha! We're back, listening to Car Talk with us. Click and Clack the Tappert Brothers, and we're here to discuss cars, car repair, and, of course, the new old puzzler. Yeah. As many of you may know, we have a new book out, Volume 1 of...

Well, we've mentioned it enough times in the last half hour. I know. I know. We're almost as bad as Dawn Imus. Well, yeah, it is a million-seller. This is a compilation of 25 years of mediocre puzzlers. Yeah. And we have excerpted from all those, enough to fill up almost. Of course, we had to put it about 50 or 60 photographs and cartoons, whatever. A substantial book, I would say.

I think it's actually pretty nice. If nothing else, on very nice paper. Very nice. Very nice paper. And nice colors. Yes. And I thought I would use the puzzle. from which we got the name of the book.

The book is called A Haircut in Hors Town, and I'm going to go to that puzzler, which could be found, for those of you reading along at home, on page 64. Follow the bouncing ball. Here it is. Imagine the scene. A fellow's driving across the desert in Nevada

when all of a sudden he finds himself in urgent need of a haircut. He says, I've got to take a wicked haircut. I'll never make it to the next exit. So he finds himself in desperate need of a haircut. He takes the next exit, Exit 411, A little one-hors town named... Horsetown.

One horse. Nevada. And as luck would have it, in one-horse, Nevada, there are two barbershops. So he has to decide which one to go to for his haircut. Our traveler goes to barbershop number one and looks in the window. There are no customers in the barbershop. The barbershop is kind of messy. And even the barber, who is the only one in the place, is kind of messy too.

He's unshaven. He has a lousy shirt on. There's hair on the floor. and even his hair cut is lousy. This guy says himself, maybe I should check out the other barbershop in One Horse. He moses along, which is what you're doing, One Horse, Nevada. If you were there, you'd have to mosey because there's nothing else to do.

He arrives at Barbershop number two. Looks in the window. Looks terrific. It's nice and neat and clean. The mirrors are clean and shine, no hair on the floor. Even the barber himself looks neat and well-groomed, and he has a great haircut. And does he have a white little jacket on?

Of course, with the comb and the scissors in the pocket. Name wasn't Mr. Gigi, though. Anyway, the question very simply is, based on the information that you have, which barbershop do you think he goes to? And why? There you go. And if you think you know the answer, write it on the back of one of those nice new spacious $20 bills and send it to us at Puzzler Tower, Car Talk Plaza, Box 3,500, Harvard Square, Cambridge.

Oh, a fair city. Matt, 02238, or you can send money electronically, although we prefer this method, by writing your answer on a $20 bill and emailing it to the car talk section of cars.com. We have said for many years, write it on the back of a $20 bill, and we get in the mail the other day. Look at this. A $20 bill. A real $20 bill. You sure? And Daniel Trey from Emmitsburg, Maryland.

I know it's him because he put a little stick-um on the corner with his return address. And right over Andrew Jackson's face, he writes, Click and Clock the Tappert Brothers, Post Office, Box, Harvard's Square, da-da-da-da-da-da. And in the right corner, he puts a 32-cent stamp right on to the $20 bill and on the back the answer to the puzzler. Now, the magic of this is that, is not that he sent it. He said nobody stole it. It said Ken Rogers didn't steal it.

And it's miraculous enough that it made it all the way from Maryland to Cambridge, Massachusetts. But to have made it through the offices of Dewey Cheever and Howe, that's an even bigger miracle than anything. Just to let you know, it can be done. Yes. And for all those companies that say don't send cash, you know, they say, you can pay by check. Only cash. We accept only cash. So if you want to do this, it is possible.

and if everyone within the sound of my voice sends us a $20 bill in this way. Forget about the puzzler. The puzzle has got nothing to do with it. You want a t-shirt. We'll send you a lousy t-shirt. You send us to 20. We'll send you the t-shirt.

That's a deal. Won't we make out that way? No, I don't think so. No. No, just send us to 20. Just send us to 20. I don't want to make any promises. I don't want to have the responsibility of finding all those t-shirt.

I'll use this as a bookmark. If you'd like to call us the numbers 1-888-8-8. Car Talk, that's 888-227-8-8-25-5-0. Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hello, how you doing? Great, great. Who's this? Lauren.

Lauren. L-O? L-O-R-I-N, the male version. Yeah, okay. Many of us. And the E-N is the female version? The L-A-U. L-A-U version.

A lot of those. Where are you from? I'm actually from East Hampton, New York out here on the island. Long Island. Yeah, Long Island. In fact, I'm not out here now. I'm working in New Jersey, but I'm from East Hampton. Cool.

So what's up, Lenthampton? Lauren. I got a 93 sob, and I brought it in for an oil change, a plain old oil change. Mm-hmm. This is a 900. A 900 S, yeah. And a manual five-speed. And it turns out that when I brought the car back, it started seizing up on me on a trip. Started doing what? It seized it. The front wouldn't go. It was like somebody was locking my brakes, and I couldn't drive it. It's almost like shortstop. No kidding. Did it swerve left or right when this happened? It just sort of died right And it was both front wheels doing it Front wheels

And it came to a stop, actually? It actually came to a stop And what did you do then? I steered it into a shop Yeah And turns out that To make a long story short Is the transmission they said

Locked on me And that the fluid Apparently was gone Oh Oh And I never saw a light go on You wouldn't No, I know no lights

No Well, you know, manual transmissions, they're just laying out there waiting to fall apart, and they have no contact with the outside world, so to speak. Especially if someone drains the oil out of it. He's thinking he's draining the crankcase oil. That's really why I caught. Which could happen. Real specific, what happened is I brought it in.

That mechanic who did it is here in New Jersey, actually, where I do all my work. He's not a sob. He's not a sob guy. He's not a sob guy. He's not a local guy. He's a real nice guy. I mean, I never used him before. He won't be nice when you go in. I'll tell you, this guy, I don't want to mention his name because I don't want to be problems.

No, you want to save that for the Attorney General. So my guy at Saab told me, gee, you've got to ask this guy, did he by chance change the gear oil along with the regular oil? Or instead off? Right, or instead of. And because when they looked at the undercarriage of the car underneath it, there was no leakage. So it pointed to this guy, having done my oil change, He most likely dropped the pan, they're telling me,

and he lifted out somehow the gear oil along with the regular oil. Well, they didn't drop the pan. There's a drain plug. Yeah, the plug. Ah. You have a manual shift, and on sobs, there's printed on the underside of the oil pan. Drain the oil here, stupid. Because it's easy to drain, because it's not obvious,

because the transmission and the engine kind of share the same pan. And there's one compartment for engine oil, and there's one compartment for transmission oil, and it's easy to drain the wrong thing out. But it means not touching the pan, but unscrewing the wrong drain plug. So there are then two different drain plugs, one belonging to the oil and one belonging to this. Right, and the one that belongs to the engine oil has this little note on it that says drain engine oil here, and they've left out the stupid part. They didn't highlight it, I think.

They didn't highlight it. But see, they put it just like your upper. puzzler one day. They put that in the wrong place. It should say... Don't drain this. Don't drain engine oil from here. Stupid. Could they have taken both down and not put one back? Yeah, I think what may have happened is he had a kid doing it. The kid drained the transmission and then he went to put oil in it. When he did that, he pulled a dipstick out and said, that's funny. It's got 12 quads of oil in it. It's still full. He put it up back on the lift

and found the oil drain plug and then forgot to fill up the transmission. Or he thought that when he filled up the crank case, it would also fill up the transmission. Yeah, someone made a horrible mistake. That's what I had a feeling like. And someone's going to pay dearly for this. I did already. I'm not $3,300 so far. I got my call back.

It's running like a charm. They put it, they gave me a brand new transmission, you know, and I'm happy with it. I'm just not happy with the bill. So now you've got to go back and see this guy. I did. And you did? I went back. I just asked a simple question.

Because I wanted to find out maybe you could tell me honestly. Was there a gear oil also taken out at the time that you did in my oil? And he said, let me ask the guy who did it. And, of course. Did you, Fred, did you drain that transmission? Forget to fill it up? And cost this guy $3,300, which he's about to sue your butt for? Exactly.

No, sir, that wasn't I. This is exactly the scenario. You hit the mail. Yeah. Couldn't be any harder on the head. Boy, oh, boy. you'd have an awfully hard time proving this. That's what I was worried about, too.

I said to you. The evidence you have is that the transmission has no leaks. Yep. There is no way for the stuff to get out unless someone has removed the drain plug. And he's the only one who had his hands and head under there. Right. He's trying to say to me, though, what I'm a little confused about,

he said, well, maybe it evaporated. In other words, here I'm owning this car for over 70 years. You should allow him to go to court and tell that to the judge. I'm the kind of guy. I've got to follow this through. I mean, it's just the right thing to do. I'm going to do myself, small claims, you know.

Sure, and you should do it. Well, I would tell him before you, you'll waste time going to small claims. You should tell him to call his insurance company because he probably has insurance that covers this. And it's only $3,300. And it's sad that they had to resort to lying for $3,300. Well, it's not that he, I don't even think the $3,300 was the issue. I think the kid was embarrassed. Oh, no.

Oh, no, he was embarrassed. There he was. No, he's afraid the boss is going to make him pay for it. He's going to lose his job. He's not going to be able to marry Donna, and she's not going to be able to make the payments on her Camaro. And a whole life is ruined because of your stinking transmission. And why did you own this stupid car in the first place? It's your fault in the first place, Lauren.

Hang your head in shame. Back off. Get rid of it. Get some slack. I never had it in the beginning. Good luck, Lauren. Wow, you guys are great. I really appreciate it.

Good luck. All right. Thanks a lot. Bye. Bye, bye. Well, it's happened again. You've squanded another perfectly good hour. We're listening to Car Talk.

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