The Best of Car Talk - #2569: Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Episode Date: August 30, 2025

Sean from Montreal is hearing otherworldly noises from his Dodge Caravan and Mark from New York wants to transplant the heart and lungs of his Chevy Suburban into a fresh corpse. Click and Clack are stuck in a 1950s B-Movie on this episode of the Best of Car Talk.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

I'm Peter Sagle. NPR is very serious, mostly. It treats newsmakers with all due respect, almost all the time. It brings you the most important information about the issues that really matter, usually, and it never asks famous people about things they don't know anything about, except once in a while. Join us for the great exception. Listen to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the news quiz from NPR. Hello and welcome to Car Talk from National Public Radio with us, Click and Clack to Tapert Brothers, and we're broadcasting this week from the Athletic Support Center here at Car Talk Plaza. If you can't be an athlete, then you should at least become an athletic support. Absolutely. These are sent to us by Neil Jackson NPR's Legal Beagle. Oh, yes, Legal Beagle.

This is what he does when he's not defending us from Daimler-K Chrysler's lawyers. These are more allegedly true statements that made by people involved in the sports industry, so to speak. Sure, go ahead. Here's one out. It's pages and pages. I picked out a few of my favorites. Are you going to identify the people who say these things? Yeah, well, I mean, as it's here.

This one is not identified simply as a senior basketball player at the University of Pittsburgh who said, I'm going to graduate on time no matter how long it takes me. And Bill Peterson, Florida State football coach. You guys line up alphabetically by height. I like that. Stu Grimson's Chicago Blackhawks left wing explaining why he keeps a color photo of himself above his locker. That's so when I forget how to spell my name, I can still find my clothes. I like that one.

This is my favorite, too. My very favorite. Shelby Metcalf, basketball coaches Texas A&M, recounting what he told a player who received four Fs and one D. Son, it looks to me like you're spending too much time on one subject. That's good. And which subject would that be? If you'd like to suspend time on your subject,

You can call us at 1-88-8-8-8-28-8-2-27-8-255. We're getting ready. My brother is removing his sweater. That means this is... Now he's going to remove his headset. We're not ready yet. The headset's back on. What happened to your hair today?

Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hi, guys. How are you? We're great. What's it to you? No, there's only one of me. Who's this? My name's Betsy, and I'm from Connecticut.

Hi, Betsy. Connecticut. Connecticut. You don't want to divulge the town. I live in Sanford and Fairfield County. So you could probably guess what kind of car I drive. Yeah, Mercedes. No, I don't.

Oh, you should. I don't. No, I have three children. Ah, Dodge Caravan. Chrysler County Country. There you go. There you go. Sure.

I used to have a caravan, but I've moved up. But you moved up. You moved up. I love it. So here's the question. Yeah. Every year when the weather gets cold, my Shocks starts squeaking. I think it's my shock. And I take it into my friendly local mechanic,

who I think is wonderful, and I really like him a lot. And I say to him, Cola is doing it again. His name is Cola. Colca. Cola? Yeah, I think he's like from Poland. I'm not sure. But I say it's doing it again, and he says, oh, yeah, I know, it's squeaking. And I say, yeah, it's squeaking. And he says, don't worry about it. Should I worry about it? What are the conditions under which you hear the squeak? When it's cold. And you do what?

And I drive over bumpy areas. When you hit a bump, you hear er. Yeah. Just one time, or maybe a couple of times. Yeah. And if the road is washed, board, you get, er, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh. No, no, the first. Er, uh.

Uh, uh. You sound like a cockatiel, my kids said. How many miles are on this town and country? 50,000. and it's 96. Not that that helps any. I don't know why I asked. Well, because you're curious.

It's the equivalent of small talk at a party. Hi, how are you? How many miles are on your car? Come here often? No one does that with me because I'm a therapist, so nobody makes small talk. Oh, no. So how are you related to the host? So do you work with Sally or what?

No. Oh, really? Oh, there used to be the neighbor. That's right. That's right. I can't talk to you about her. I said. Sally, who's Sally?

I just walked in. Well, I... Talk to me about my car. Well, I think you may have noisy bushings, noisy suspension bushings, you know, control arm bushings and the like. Mm-hmm. It should be easy enough for him to reproduce this by bouncing on the bumper. Right.

So he can do that in the shop. Mm-hmm. And it sounds like it's coming from the front, I assume. No, it doesn't sound like it's coming from the front. Oh, Betsy! Come on! It sounds like it's only coming from the back. It's only coming from the back, scratch, just about everything we said.

You don't have any... Let's start over. My name's Betsy. Hi, Betsy. Where are you from? I bet you have a Chrysla Town and country. How long have you known, Sally? Do you work with her?

You work with Sally? No, I don't even know where she is. Jeez, all right. It comes from the back. It's only coming from the back, I think. Well, there are bushings in the back over. There are suspension bushings. and it could be those that are making noise.

So he's going to have to figure it out by pushing on the rear bumper then. Yeah. And he's going to have to reproduce the noise. But if it's coming only when it's cold, I wouldn't be surprised if it's bushing. If it's bushings. And it may even be a shock absorber bushing, in which case you replace the shocks. Okay. And if it's bushings, am I in any danger while I'm driving this car?

No. No, wheels are not going to fall off or anything like that. Okay. Absolutely not. What are bushings? Bushings are rubber and steel devices, which allow one piece to pivot against another piece. Okay. You understood that?

Vaguely. Well, I mean, like, if you had two pieces of metal and they had to pivot against each other, if it was just metal against metal, it would hurt. Right. And everything would wear out. And it would squeak a lot. It would make horrible noise? In the colds, would it squeak a lot?

Especially in the cold. Yeah. Okay. But the bushing is the thing that's between those two pieces of metal. The bushing is the buffer, so to speak. And it also allows movement. And when it gets rusted or when it gets worn out, it can make a squeaking nose. noise. Okay. Okay. All right. Thanks, guys.

Good luck, Betsy. Say a load of Pepsi for us. See you later. Have fun, guys. Bye, bye. Bye. 1-888-88-Kart talk. That's 888-227-8-25-5. A lawyer on Car Talk. This is Elliot Hill calling from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Hi, Elliot. Milwaukee, Elliot. It has come to my attention that there are at least four different ways to spell Elliot, and maybe more. Well, I spelled with two ls and that's it.

And what? And an I and O and a T, and E. Well, T.S. I mean, I mean, T S. T S, one L. With one L and one T. Well, I know that, but I, I chose two L. L. Thompson has two Ls and two T's.

How do you spell it, Elliot? Two L's and two T's. Really? And I and O and an E. Okay. Excellent. Yeah. So, I have a problem.

I have an 88 Thunderbird TurboCoop 2.3 EFI. and it has some sort, once it heats up, it has some sort of like a, what I'd call like a pulsation, whether it be forward lateral or backwards lateral, whatever. It's a pulsation. Even before you move, you're sitting there in the car? Well, I'm sitting in a car, but I notice it's more prevalent when I'm driving the vehicle. So if you, when you started up, what are you actually feeling, you feel, when the car sitting, it does kind of lope a little bit from 1,000 to 1,100 RPM, and then sometimes

it even drops down from 1,000 to 800 and then back up to 1,000. So you feel a very slight, like someone's giving you a little kick in the rear end. Yeah, kind of like, you know, bucking transmission. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's called trailer hitching. Uh-huh. Is that a good description of it? It's perfect. Yeah.

Yeah. It's sort of like the trailer is dragging your back. Exactly. It has that feel. Yeah. Yeah. We've been trying to figure this out for so long. So many people have this problem.

Well, yes. And if we could solve your problem, we would help millions. We could help about 135 million Americans. That's right. There are a lot of things that could be caused by, one of which is a vacuum leak. Ah, yes. It happens also to be the only thing that I know of. I know you've got five other things.

Are you kidding me? I got vacuum leak. That's it. I should have left. I should have let you have that one. No, no. No, I don't want it. That's fine.

Your house must be pretty dusty with all those vacuum cakes. Yeah. Well, it could also be a lazy or a sticky exhaust gas recirculation valve. Yeah. Or a leaky one. Or a leaky one. Yeah, that could also be the source of your vacuum leak, but you could also be the source of too much exhaust getting into the stream of fresh combustibles.

Could it possibly have anything to do with the oxygen sensor? Sure, it could, but it's unlikely. Unlakely. Unlakely. Well, does this happen? You can experiment with it. You can unplug the oxygen sensor. Okay.

Just for a brief test period, you know, not permanently. Okay. Well, you can try unhooking the EGR, too. Remove the vacuum source from it. If it has an electrical connector, pull that off too. Hold that off. Pull everything off. Disconnect everything.

Yeah. But do one thing at a time, otherwise you won't know what fixed it. But unplug the EGR or try the oxygen sensor for us. I don't think that's going to do it. The next thing would be. the EGR. Okay. So unplug the EGR and then take it for a spin?

Yeah. And that should, I should notice... Oh, you notice an immediate difference. It should be all gone. And if that doesn't do it, don't call back because we don't have any other ideas. I hear that one. Good luck, Elliot. Thank you very much.

Pleasure talking to you. Take care. Thanks for calling, man. Bye, bye. Bye. Hey, don't go anywhere because we've got a lot more calls, well, a few anyway. And the puzzler answer coming up right after this. There's a lot of news happening.

You want to understand it better, but let's be honest. You don't want it to be your entire life either. Well, that's sort of like our show, here and now anytime. Every weekday on our podcast, we talk to people all over the country about everything from political analysis to climate resilience, video games. We even talk about dumpster diving on this show. Check out Here and now anytime, a daily podcast from NPR and WBUR. Here at Life Kit, we take advice. seriously. We bring you evidence-based recommendations. And to do that, we talk with researchers and

experts on all sorts of topics. Because we have the same questions you do. Like, what's really in my shampoo? Or should I let my kid quit soccer? Or what should I do with my savings in uncertain economic times? You can listen to NPR's Life Kit in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. It's that time of gear again. Planet Money Summer School is back. This semester with help from professors, policy experts, and yes, even a Nobel laureate, we're diving into how government and the economy mix, and asking the big questions like, what role should government play in our economy? Does government intervention help or hurt, and how big should the government be? That's on Planet Money Summer School from NPR, wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, we're back. We're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clock the Tappert Brothers, and we're here to talk about cars, car repair, and of course the answer to last week's. Very interesting puzzle. Martin Gardner, division, and magic numbers. Oh, this requires a pencil. Get your pencil out. I've got one. Okay.

I think last week I asked you to pick out a three-digit number. I remember this? Yes, I did. Okay, what's your number? One, two, three. It's very unimaginative. One, three, too. Okay, one, two, three is your number.

One, two, three, it is. Then I asked you to repeat those same digits, so you had the number one? Oh, yeah, I had the number one, two three. Twenty-three thousand one hundred and twenty-three. Then I asked you to divide that number by seven. Right. Which I did. You did that.

And I said, also, if you have a remainder, put it to one side. And you lied about that because I had no remainder when I picked the number last week. And I got no remainder when I picked a number this week. Different number. Different number. Yeah, you'll have no remainder no matter what. So I did lie about that. So then I asked to divide the number by 11.

Yeah. And again, you'll get a quotient. And you said, is anything left over? Put it to one side. And then I said, divide that now by what remains by 13. And if you have a remainder, put that to one side. Mm-hmm. Okay?

Take this number that you wind up with, this final quotient, and add it to the three remainders that you had, whatever they were. Which were all zero. All zero. And you're going to wind up with the original number. And I asked why that happens. Yeah. And the reason it happens is that when you take a number like one, two, three, or four, five, six,

or seven, two, one, and multiply it by a thousand and one. you wind up with the same number repeated. So if you start up with four, five, six, and multiply that by a thousand one, you get four, five, six, four, five six, don't you? Oh, and then all you're doing now is dividing it by the factors of a thousand and one. Which happened to be, some of which happened to be seven, eleven, and thirteen. So I knew you weren't going to come out with any remainders. You little devil. And that's the reason it works, no matter what the three numbers are.

Do we have a winner? Wow. I can see it. Mathematics professors all over the country, giving their little students this problem. Boy, oh, boy, oh boy. And by, have I got a rant and rave about mathematics. I'll discuss it with you later. But yes, we do have a winner.

The winner is Jim Hanlon from where? Anchorage, Alaska. Wow. Jim, for having your correct answer chosen at random this week, you are going to get a $25 gift certificate to the Car Talk, shameless commerce division. with which you can get to yourself. I mean, you go to the shameless commerce division either by telephone at 1 888 car junk or Car Talk at the Cars.com's website

and you either buy yourself a CD like men are from GM women or from Ford or you can get the Car Talk video which has got the Smothers Brothers, the Flying Caramontsoff brothers, Dr. Joyce Brothers, or you can get our brand new puzzler book. You will notice none of these things cost $20,000,

$5, Jim, that means that you will have money left over. So when you buy like the $15 puzzle a book, there'll be $10 left over. There isn't anything you can buy for $10. You'll have to buy something else. You're going to buy two books. See, so you're going to owe us money.

Even though we are giving you a gift certificate, you will end up giving us money. And this is, this Ponzi had nothing on us. I mean, Uncle Ponzi had nothing on us. Uncle Charlie. Look at the Charlie once.

Anyway, we'll have a puzzler coming up that is excerpted from our new book because I figured this is the time of year to plug the book, right? If you're going to steal. Steal from yourself. There you go. Can't get in trouble for that.

It's double stealing because we already stole the ones that we put in the book. So now if you're stealing them... Yeah, but that's like double jeopardy. Double indemnity. Yeah. I mean, you can't go to jail twice for the same crime, right? You can steal them all you want.

That's what I'm planning to do. Excellent. Anyway, we'll have that puzzle. on the show. If you'd like to call us, the number is 1-888-8-8-8-8-8-2-7-8-25-5. Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hi, guys. This is Sean up in Montreal.

Sean, with age. As in Sean Conry? No, the American way. S-H-A-W-N. That's it. And where you're calling from? Really? Montreal.

Yeah, heard of it. What are you doing there? My wife works for a company up here. Draft dog. So she, that's right, with a beard and a ponytail. Yeah. So what's up? So how's your French?

if you found that you can't exist in Montreal without speaking French? Oh, you can get by if you want, but it's certainly knowing French makes sense. If you don't want to speak to anyone, you can get by. I found that my most recent visit to Montreal was rather unpleasant. I don't know why. The people up here are fantastic. They've been great to me, and you must have just got, I bet you got a transplanted Frenchman. That's possible, too.

There's a lot of them up here. Boy, they can be really rub you the wrong way. I wouldn't even let them touch me. So what's going on, Sean? What kind of a GM car do you drive? I have a 93 Dodge Caravan. Hey, you know, I knew it. But when I turn on my blower motor for the defrost,

I'm getting a strange mystery sound. And it doesn't matter what speed I put the blower motor on. In the background, there is this sound here. Nice. I love it. And it only occurs when I have the blower motor on the defrost or when I've engaged the air conditioner. That's it. And then every once in a while I get one of these.

And that's your wife in the back seat. That's right. You're laughing at me. You're your mother-in-law. That's right. As I beat against the dashboard. Wait. In other words, if you turn on the blower and you just have heat coming out of the floor vents.

Either heat or no heat, if I'm using it just to blow cool air in from the outside. Yeah, it doesn't do it. It doesn't do it for the floor vents or the ones on the dash in the middle there. Yeah. It doesn't do it. Yeah. What you don't realize is that when you put the defroster on, you are turning on the air conditioner. Aha.

Well, let me just tell you one more thing that happened a couple of weeks ago. Well, I'm satisfied just getting this far. My air conditioner lost its charge. Yeah. So the compressor is engaging, but no more cold air is coming out. And I don't know if this is related. Yeah, it is. It is.

What you are hearing is the slow and soon-to-be painful death of the air-conditioner compressor. Oh, excellent. Just what you wanted to hear. I wanted you to tell me there was a mean Frenchman living in my... No, I think what you're hearing is the air-conditioner compressor trying to work. Really? But it's probably lost, not only it's free on, but maybe it's oil. So you're hearing the thing, or maybe it's just lost its oil.

Who knows? Yeah. Well, I mean, you can sort of confirm this by next time it happens, opened up the hood. You know what that is, that thing out front. The thing in the front? Yeah, with the Pentagon on it. And you know where the air conditioner compressor is. There's a belt wrapped around it.

And when it's making the noise, if you put your ear near it, make sure you're not wearing a necktie that will fall down in the fan, you'll hear the noise. And that's loud and clear. Uh-huh. Actually, if you want to try something even more scientific, you can find there is a wire that connects to the air conditioner clutch. It's the only wire that connects to the compressor at all. Oh, okay.

Pull it off. You can pull that off. If the sound immediately goes away, you're in Fat City. Uh-huh. You're dead. You're not in Fat City. You know what's wrong. That's right.

And it's going to cost you a bundle. Promise? Yeah. Promise. But I think you need a compressor. Good luck, Sean. Thanks, guys. All right, see.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye. 1-88-8-8-8-8-2-7-82-5. A lawyer on Car Talk. My name is Erica, and I'm from Boone, Iowa, and I need you guys to settle a disagreement between my husband and myself. Boon, Iowa, so there is absolutely no question that your name does not have a K in it. No, it doesn't.

It has a C in it. Of course it does. Okay. All right, what's the question, Erica? My husband and I, up until very recently, both drove manual transmissions. He still does. And as he drives, he rests his foot on the clutch. And I was taught growing up when I was driving, you take that foot off the clutch.

And so I was getting to the point where I can't even stand driving with the poor man because I have to keep telling him to get his foot off the clutch. And I want to know who's right. Well, first of all, before my brother launches into the proper scientific explanation. No, I wasn't going to do that. This is just the tip of the iceberg. noticing that pedal on the clutch is the first thing you've noticed about him

that you hate. We've only been married two years, so it's early. Only two years. Oh, you're done for it. So run away and join the circus. Probably should. What I was going to ask is what kind of cars do each of you drive

and how frequently has each of you replaced the clutch? He drives a 94 Ford Ranger. He doesn't drive very often. Yeah. So he's never had to replace the clutch. Never had to replace. How many miles on the vehicle?

There's 100,000. A hundred K? Is it mostly highway? Of course, it's in Iowa. There's nothing but highways. And he's not resting his foot on that clutch the whole time he's on the highway. No, he just rested until he gets to fifth gear and then he'll take his foot off of there. Right, which is basically three minutes in Boone, Iowa.

So he goes first, second, third, fourth, fifth. Or maybe first, third, fifth, if he does the odd shifting pattern. Right. The Monday Wednesday, Friday, right. The Monday Wednesday, Friday pattern. So he gets the fifth gear, then his first, then his foot goes on the floor. That's okay.

Okay. If you were to transplant him to New York City, he'd burn a claim. He'd be on the clutch of month club. Okay. Yeah, so, I mean, it's not a great thing to do, and you are absolutely right, and your father taught you correctly

that you shouldn't do that. But in the grand scheme of things, like many other things, not much matters. It hardly makes a difference. Hardly makes a difference. Yeah. Well, my father's probably listening.

He's probably going, well, good. I didn't tell her correctly. Well, good, I told her. Unless, of course, if you're not, You lived in, as my brother says, if you lived in Manhattan, you'd be on the Clutch of Month Club. Right. Your husband would. But in Iowa...

What else about him, don't you like? I mean, you might as well... Actually, he's wonderful. What about those plaid pants? Let's talk about that. He doesn't wear any, so I can't... Doesn't wear any pants. That's even better.

What's not to like? Well, don't let this interfere with your happiness. It's not a big thing. I won't. Don't even mention it to him anymore. I wouldn't call him on the carpet for it either. I mean, I would just... Let it go by.

Let it go by because men don't like to be nagged. You know, I mean, we are very patient little creatures here, and we take an awful lot of abuse. Some of us aren't nagged at all. From you's women. I have to say, I mean, we take an awful lot of abuse. Do you wonder why you're nagged? Does it surprise you?

I mean, the abuse we take mostly is undeserved, and we take it patiently. You're using the wrong pronoun, isn't we? It should be I. Of course, we all project, don't we? Well, don't project this way, pal. I don't want to get in hot water. I'm on good terms with my wife.

I ain't sleeping in the garage anymore. I was on good terms, too. Until now. See what you did, Erica? Yes, I see. I create more problems. You've created a monster. Way off, your poor husband.

He's not nagged about much, so I guess it's the way he drives is the only thing. We'll keep him. All right. Thank you so much. See you later. Bye-bye. Another night in the garage. Night, you'd be so lucky.

I can't take it. All right, it's time to take another short break. And we'll be back with News, Weather, and the Cricket School right after this brief message. These days, there's so much news. It can be hard to keep up with what it all means for you, your family, and your community. The Consider This podcast from NPR features our award-winner. journalism. Six days a week, we bring you a deep dive on a news story and provide the context and analysis that helps you make sense of the news. We get behind the headlines. We get to the

truth. Listen to the Consider this podcast from NPR. Ha, we're back listening to Car Talk with Us Click and Click the Tapper Brothers, and we're here to discuss cars, car repair, and the new puzzler. Now, I thought I could hardly waste. Well, I thought I would use one again. from our book. How long are you going to do this? Well, it's about 75 puzzles in here. I figured this, I would milk this for a buddy.

No, well, it's, you know, it's the holiday season, and people may not realize how wonderful this book is. And when you hear these great puzzles emanating from this, you might be encouraged to go out and buy seven or eight copies. I mean, hand them out to, you know, I mean, we're counting on this. I mean, we're flat broke. If this doesn't fly, we're cooked. Here it is.

So you're going to steal another one from our. Well, in the spirit of Christmas, a young boy gets a bunch of money for Christmas and decides that he's going to go downtown and buy himself a fishing rod, a new fishing rod. So he takes the bus downtown. What page is this on? Page 93 and a half. He takes the bus downtown and goes to the sporting goods store, and he buys himself a fishing rod.

A while later, he stands at the bus stop. The bus comes. He goes to get on, and the bus driver says, whoa, oh, oh there, Sonny. Where are you going with that thing? And he says, pardon me? He says, I want to go home. And he says, not on this bus, you're not, kiddo. Not on this bus, sonny.

He said, how tall are you? And the kid says, I don't know, I'm like I'm four feet four. He said, and the fishing rod is taller than you. It looks to be pretty close to five feet. Don't you know there's a city ordinance that you can't carry anything on the bus if it's longer than four feet? The kid says, oh, I didn't know that. But I got to take the bus home because I have a meeting of the young existentialist this afternoon.

And if I'm late, they'll kill me. And he says, get out of the bus. And he throws the kid off. And the kid tries to, he goes to the sports, sporting goods store. And he tries to return the fishing rod. Yeah. And they throw them out, too. They say, no returns on fishing rods.

Kid, we're closed. Yeah. Top. We get your money, drop dead. So the kid stands there bewildered. He goes back into the sporting goods store, and he asks for something. Yeah. Five minutes later, he's riding the bus home with his fishing rod.

Now, he didn't ask for a saw, or he didn't ask for a string to bend the thing. He didn't puncture, mutilate, saw, or alter the fishing rod in any way. Exactly. And yet he legally got on the bus and rode it home. And he didn't hold the fishing rod out the window either. Oh, that was my back-up. Yeah, I knew that. I could see the wheels turning. I thought he had just like ducked.

He asked for duct tape, and he duct tape it to the side of the bus. No. He got on the bus. With the fishing rod. Legally. Legally. And rode home. How did he do it?

Now, if you think you know the answer. Did he ask for a quarter so we could call a lawyer? No. No. And if you don't have the book and you don't want the answer, you can go what? Buy the book. And you'll have the answer, right? Shameless commerce.

Yes. Aren't you ashamed of yourself? Not at all. The truest sense of the word. Now, if you think you know that answer, write it on the back of one of those nice new spacious, $20 bills, 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 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, the number is 1-888-8-28-8-2-7-82-5. Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hello? Hi, this is Mark from Hancock, New York. Hancock, New York. In the foothills of the Catskills.

And I am an organic farmer in the foothills of the Catskills. That's good. What do you grow? Anything that goes in a salad. Lettuce. Lots of lettuce, and I pay my car bills with lots of lettuce. Yeah. And you must have a question about your manure spreader, because we know you use a lot of that.

Yes, I do, but I don't have a question about my manure spreader. I have a question about my 1982 suburban with a question. quarter million miles on it, that I'm entirely dependent on trucking my vegetables to New York City in, and it's got a problem. We'll fix it. Okay. Well, I don't think you will, but you'll help me. We'll fix anything.

All right. Except a broken heart. We have a problem with the body. The all. My mechanic says that because my drive train is intact and I've replaced everything in the car, except the body and the drive train, that I should look for a suburban with a shot drive train, but a good body, and do a full-body transplant. My sister-in-law's been trying to do that with her husband for quite a while.

Yeah, well, I mean, that's not bad. Have you done that before? I don't think you're going to find one. But there's a lot of years to choose from. I mean, there was 1982, I think 1982 they didn't change the body for a long time. You got 20 years to choose from, probably. So this is not a bad idea yet. Oh, no, it's not a bad idea.

Oh, it stinks. Oh, no, it's good, except you're not going to find one. Even if you were to find one, would you want to spend the money to extract the drive train from that vehicle? And then, a month later, have your transmission conk out. Well, I wouldn't want that, but I don't want to touch my drive train. I want to leave my drive train alone and throw the body away. What's so sacrosanct about your drive-train? First of all, you're operating on luck at this.

point. A wing and a prayer. A wing and a prayer. I mean, the fact that it hasn't broken down is a miracle. I've gone 200 times round-trip to New York without fail. Well, I mean, also, I mean, if you think about it, if I had a suburban that was in great shape except it needed an engine, would I just take it to the junkyard and throw it away? No, because I would go and I would spend a thousand bucks or whatever it is and I would throw an engine in it. I guess I'm looking for the suburban that lost its transmission and it's differential.

Yeah, that's why I said you're never going to find one. You want one that's got no engine, no transmission, and no differential. Well, alternatively, I mean, it may sound wacko, but you might be able to fix the frame on yours. Well, my mechanic, I asked my mechanic if he thought it could do it because he's done the welding on it before. Oh. And he said, it might be $5,000 later. He seems to think it's entirely shot. I mean, I think the thing to do is you go to a junkyard

and you get the closest thing you can. You try to find a suburban that has one of those three components no good. But you can't buy it from Hancock, New York junkyards because it's going to be as rusted as yours. Yeah. This is going to call for a vacation to Florida. Yeah, that would be nice. And I was about to go to Florida until Hurricane George took out my reservations.

Well, there you go. So it's time to go now. You hop on the train right there from the Hancock. Time to re-book. So this might be a good idea if I was lucky enough to find the body, but I probably won't find the body. I think it's worth a shot. Well, look, when do you start your seedlings?

My wife starts the seedlings in March. I don't have to get to work until April. All right. So you've got five months. You've got at least three months after the holidays. You've got three full months. Right. To go down south, I'd go for Mardi Gras and the whole big.

I mean it matters when we have some fun, right? I can see Mark now saying, hon, I am going in quest. I'm going on the quest for the body of a suburban. You're telling me that you grow organic lettuce. Mostly lettuce. And you subsist on driving a suburban-sized vehicle from your farm to New York City periodically. I go down every Tuesday for 26 weeks from the first week in June to Thanksgiving. Okay, so for once a week driving to New York with a truck full of lettuce.

A thousand pounds. A thousand pounds. I'd repeat, a truck full of lettuce. You managed to make a living on that. I do. What are you bringing back when you come? Cuban cigars. I knew it.

He makes nothing on the lettuce. Hey, Mark, best of luck to you. Thank you very much, gentlemen. I appreciate your advice. And send us a postcard from Mardi Gras, will you? Most deafers. He's making the reservation now, I can tell. He's got nothing to do.

I mean, why not, right? From Thanksgiving to April. Yeah, that's a tough racket, huh? She's, and they say farmers aren't making it. Yeah. Plus, he's driving practically brand-new 18-year-old vehicle. He's living the dream. He's living the dream.

While you've wasted him with a perfectly good hour listening to Car Talk, our esteemed producer is Doug the subway fugitive, not a slave to fashion Berman. Our associate producer is Ken, I want my job. minivan Rogers. Our assistant producer is Catherine Imelda Ray. Our engineer is Dennis de Menace Foley, and our technical, spiritual and menu advisor, and transportation advisor, too, is Mr. John Bugsy Lawler. Our customer care representative is Hayward Jabuzzoff. Collision repair is handled by Jesse the Body Shop Ventura, whose shop is called all things considered. Our French automotive liaison is Maurice Chevrolet. Our Swedish attorney is Beyond Liar. Pekabu Street directs our intensive care

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