The Best of Car Talk - #2581: Hapless Hubby or Hero?

Episode Date: October 11, 2025

Amy’s husband went out and bought a jalopy that needed a new rack and pinion that he was sure he could install. And he did! But Amy is beside herself with worry that her previously klutzy beau is going to start buying more junkers to fix. A spirited defense of amateur driveway mechanics on this episode of the Best of Car Talk.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

We all wonder about life's big questions. Why are we here? What are we to do and how to make sense of it all? On Ye' Gods with Scott Carter, I talk with Politico's priests, actors, and atheists on how they wrestle with life's mysteries. Their stories will spark reflection, challenge assumptions, and maybe even bring you some clarity on your own journey. Listen to Ye gods, part of the NPR network wherever you get your podcasts. 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 irresistible targets here at Car Talk Plaza. Now, you know... Well, irresistible targets means we couldn't help ourselves.

Couldn't help ourselves. You know, sometimes someone is not only bending over, but they're also wearing the sign that says, kick me. Hard. Well, this happened to be the case with Ford Motor Company. Ford has just introduced a brand new vehicle, the Ford Excursion. Now, its claim to fame is that it's bigger than any other sport utility on the road. In fact, there's a curb weight, depending upon the engine you get, of somewhere around 7,000 pounds. That's without the people. Without the people. And it's got a gross vehicle weight of up to 9,200 pounds with the people. It seats 9. It seats 9. It's 19 feet long, and it has what Ford describes as a commanding road presence.

Duh! Well, anyway, Ford makes a number of claims about this vehicle in its press release, but because it's all in marketing speak, we ask some experts on our staff to help us translate. Now, this stuff is all up on the website, but here are a few examples that we'll give you so you can... Yeah, I mean, we ask some experts to sort of translate what Ford has said. For example, Ford, Ford says, the customer came first in developing this all-new Ford excursion. The customer came first. And we asked the experts, well, what do they mean by that?

And the experts said, well, what they mean is they had about 50 million tons of extra sheet metal laying around and they didn't know what to do it. Here's another. Ford says, the new Ford Beltbinder system will help remind most excursion occupants to buckle up. translation we added a buzzer is one of my favorites large towing capacity up to 10,000 pounds

translation that's two fully loaded explorers you could drag around behind you in case you want to zip into town with something easier to park and Ford says this vehicle will produce up to 43% less tailpipe emissions than permitted

by law and the translation said, that law certainly needs updating. Well, it is true. It is then permitted by law. And that's the reason it weighs so much because it doesn't, it isn't subjected hardly to any laws. Because it's like a, I think it's, it falls under the same laws as 300 foot yachts. And the amount of emissions that they can put out on state highways. And that's the law that covers excursions.

We don't mean to beat up on that. I mean, come on, what are you thinking? Do we need this? The world doesn't need this. I don't think we need it. The biggest SUV, the biggest SUV and the smallest brains in Detroit, perhaps. Whoa, boy. Well, I, it's all a matter of.

Sorry. Well, you know, on the other hand, I can't see that there's a certain method to their madness. After all, the sooner we get rid of our dependence. on fossil fuels. Oh, this has been your theory for many. The shooter will develop an alternative that's much more eco-friendly. That's right.

And all of this business of trying to increase cafe standards and all that stuff? Improved mileage, conserved gasoline? Why? Why? Let's get rid of it. You're absolutely right.

Let's find out if this so-called 12-year reserve thing is really true. I mean, we've had a 12-year reserve. Well, these are going to put a dent on that reserve. Look, if you want to talk to us about your car. The number is 1-888-8-8-8-2-27-8-255. Hello, you're on car talk. Hello, Tom and Ray. Yes, who's this? Mike Havrety in Palis Heights. How are you?

Palace Heights? Yes. That sounds like it's in Illinois someplace. It is in Illinois. I think it stands for Indian, or it's Indian for, now that we know that we're at, how do we get out of here? What's the name of the place? Palace, Palace Heights. It's Palace? Palis Heights. Palis Heights. It's not Palis Heights. No, Palis. Oh, Palis. How you spell it? Right.

P-A-L-O-S. Payless Heights. And it is in Illinois. It is in Illinois. It's a suburb of Chicago. Cool. So what's on your mind, Michael? Well, I've got a 1989 Honda Accord with about 130,000 miles on it.

I've had it in storage for about two years waiting for a couple of teenagers to get a hold of it, because I sure is all didn't want I'm driving my car. Are these teenagers, are they related to you in any way? Yes, they are. Are they male or female? One of each. Okay. Okay.

I happen to be expert in this area. As you know, my son has now totaled three vehicles in 12 months. That's a scary thought in itself. Isn't it right? Yeah, it's especially scary since Guinness just called. Yeah. So you put this car in storage, didn't want them to wreck your car. Exactly.

And now they're getting up to be 60 or whatever number of years old it takes. to drive. Exactly. One's got their license, and the other one's getting it soon. Cool. So I'm going to pull it out of storage. I've been starting it out every so often. It runs pretty well, and I kept it up in oil and fresh gas and stuff.

But the last time I started, I found out that the alternator bearings froze. So if you're okay, it's no big deal, I just go ahead and replace the alternator until I popped the hood and took a look at where it's at. The inside of the engine, underneath the brake cylinder. Yeah. This is like, where's Waldo? Well, I was wondering. Where's the alternator? Um, do I need a trained rat with a wrench to get in there and get this thing out or...

That hasn't been tried. That has not been tried yet. I'm wondering you have to drop the engine out of the car or pull the fenders off to do it. No. You have to get under the car. Okay. First thing you have to do is disconnect the battery. Okay.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. When in doubt. Yes. Disconnect the battery. And then you're going to get underneath the car.

And you're going to see a little bit more than you can see. You know, you're going to see the bottom of the all-year-old. There are actually two bolts that hold the alternator in. And when you get underneath the car, I mean, I don't know if you've done this before. You're going to jack it up, and you're going to put a real good jack stand under there. A couple jack stands up underneath it. You got it. Okay.

Right. So you put your blanket on the ground so you can lie down under the air or you get on your creeper or whatever. You've got his own creeper. And then you're going to find that there's one bolt that holds the alternator to a bracket. Okay. Okay. And then there's another bolt that holds the alternated to the slide mechanism up at the top. which is used to adjust the tension on the belt.

And you're going to take off those bolts, and then you're going to realize that the alternator doesn't come out. Okay. And sometimes on some hondas, you can sneak the alternator out by, if you were good at solid geometry when you were in school. It's disconnected. It's not connected to anything, but it won't come out from where it is. You may have to leave it there and put the new one in next to it.

Okay, well, if I go over some railroad tracks, it should bounce it out then. Well, if you're clever and you twist and turn and move things around, you may be able to get it out. But if you can't, you may have to pull out the axle. Oh, geez, forget it. I didn't bargain for this. Take the axle out?

You may have to take out the driver's side axle, but I think you can sneak this out without pulling the axle. Alternatively, you could do it all from the top by removing the master cylinder and the booster and the cylinder head and the dashboard. or I could just get a torch and cut the fender off from the side and go in that way. You could do that, or you could take it someplace and have it done. Okay, that's the other alternative. But I would try to get it out from underneath because I think you can sneak it out

and have the new one at the ready because when you've turned and twisted and rotated and done everything you have to do to get that one out, you want to be able to reproduce your steps in reverse. Okay. And put that new one right in there because don't break for a lot. lunch when you get it out because you'll never get the other one back in. Fair enough. I was afraid that if this thing gets locked up in there forever, I'll just give the kids a couple

of hammers and let them beat the car to death where it's parked. There you go. Save myself for trouble. Good luck, Mike. Thank you. See you later. Bye, bye-bye. Maybe you could, like, put some plastic explosive on it and blow it up right there.

Then take all the pieces out. Oh, blow the alternator up. And how do you get the new one in? Huh? Never mind. Same way. I thought so. Okay.

Do you remember last week's puzzler? I'll give you a hint. It involves string and a zippo lighter. It sounds like that's going to hurt. I hope so. This message comes from Rince. Who knows that mastering the perfect house party table spread takes time? But so does laundry. So Rinse takes your laundry and hand delivers it to your door, expertly cleaned. And you can take the time once spent sorting and waiting, folding, and queuing,

to finally pursue your real passion. Rolling delicate roses of capicola alongside meandering ribbons of Amon Serrano, transforming a humble plank of weathered barnwood into a show-stopping charcutory spread. Rinse, it's time to be great. In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.

Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors. On our new show, sources and methods, NPR reporters on the ground bring use stories of real people helping you understand why distant events matter here at home. Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. On NPR's TED Radio Hour, investigative journalist Hilka Shelman digs into how companies are using AI for hiring and what it means for your job search. We are at a tipping point. We have AI tools generating your resumes. We have avatars interviewing other avatars for jobs.

I was like, you know, it's AI versus AI. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, we're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us. Click and Clack the Tappert Brothers. And we're here to talk about cars, car repair. And, of course, the answer to last week's puzzler, which my brother couldn't remember. Here's the further hint.

This is the first in my series of string puzzlers. I remember it now. Oh, sure. Now I remember it. A lot of good it does this now. The string. There's a series of string puzzlers? Well, two constitutes a series.

Certainly it does. This one was marvelous. You didn't like the other one? Well, I don't remember the other one. I didn't even remember this one, but now I do. And this one is fantabulous. This is going in the next book of great puzzles we have known. We have a book.

We have a book. Anyway, you have in your possession. It's going to be called Haircut and String Town. You have in your possession. Two pieces of string. Let's say that each is a couple of feet long, but it doesn't really matter. And they can both be different lengths. It doesn't matter either.

And they're burnable, like the fuses that they use to, you know, night dynamite. Now, you could light either end of either string, and it would burn. And in fact, if you lit one end of a string, it would burn in exactly an hour. You're with me so far? I've got it. So you light a string with what? The zippo lighter. The zippo lighter.

So if you light one end of one of the strings. And it's lying on the table or on the floor. It would burn right along, and it would take one hour to be gone. But here's the wrinkle. The strings do not burn at a constant rate. For example, the string might burn for two minutes and then go crazy and burn like mad and then slow down and da-da-da. You don't know what rate the string is burning at any specific time. All you know is that in an hour's time, the whole string is burned.

It's not linear. Gotcha. And not predictable. Gotcha. All right, you got it? You got it. So the question very simply is, with the Zippo lighter in these two strings, how would you measure 15 minutes of time? Wow.

And I did mention, I think, that there were two answers to this. I'm only going to give you one answer this week. Oh, you are? Yes, because the other answer is next week's puzzler. Well, no, it's in the future. Yeah. Light three ends at once with the Zippo lighter. Wow.

Okay? Yeah. So you take string A. light both of its ends. You take string two and light one end. Yeah. Well, what's going to happen? Because you lit both ends of the first string, in a half an hour's time, that string is going to burn up completely.

It's going to be gone on. So, you know, a half an hour has gone by. A half an hour has gone by. And similarly, the other string you lit is going to burn for half an hour's time, right? Yeah. At which point, as soon as the first string has burned up completely, you'll light the remaining end. Of string two. Of string two.

And because the first part of that string, your lid is continuing to burn, it's going to take 15 minutes before those two flame fronts meet, and you'll have measured exactly 15 minutes. Berman says, no, you'll measure 15 minutes from the time that you lit. The second string. Exactly. So the question could have been, how would you measure 45 minutes or 15 minutes, and it would be the same answer?

So we can use that for the puzzle. Yeah, that's the puzzle next minute. How would you measure 45 minutes? This is a brilliant. I mean, people are going to have to think about it. I can hear people now saying, that's not going to work. Well, there are going to be people that will complain because they say, well, how do you know when you like both ends?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you think about it. Right. Don't forget, this is all hypothetical. You couldn't really do this. This is a good dunk and string. No, it's possible to do it. Of course you could do it.

And it works. And if you don't like it, tough. Who's our winner this week? Oh, winner. The winner this week is Calvin Cunin from Columbus, Ohio. Did I mention you were wearing a watch when you'd lit these strings? You've got to be wearing a watch. Oh, how would you know?

How would you know in 15 minutes, one by? Oh, yeah, you've got to be wearing a watch. Oh, you could have a pocket watch would be all right. Pocket watch would be like the street. Oh, you could just have access to the clock on the wall. You look at the IBM wall clock. And that would work. Fifteen minutes is up.

The strings are extinguished. I'm done. You did mention that. I think you did, yeah. The winner is Calvin Cunin from Columbus, Ohio, and for having his correct answer chosen from among the thousands to correct answers that we got this week, our pal Calvin is going to get a $25 gift certificate to the Car Talk, shameless commerce division, with which he can pick up our new puzzler book,

a string town in horse hair, oh, a haircut in horse town, or a 12-pack of paper towels, whichever he thinks would be more enjoyable to own. Congratulations to Calvin Cunin from Columbus, Ohio. Anyway, we'll have a new puzzler coming up in the third half of today's show. This is for the kids in the audience. Oh. Yes, I think this is a kid's puzzler. Well, and it's also for all the wimps that's going to claim they never can solve one of our puzzles.

You can work on this tour if you've had trouble in the past. Yeah. Because I think this is. Is it mathematical? Yes, it is quasi-mathematical in nature. Quasi? Yes, so you'll like it. Thank you, Master.

In the meantime, we'll take your calls at 1-888-8-8-8-8-8-2-5-5. Hello, you're on car talk. Hey, there, this is Ted from Ithaca, New York. Hey, Ted, what's happening? Not much. How are you guys doing? All right. You sound familiar, Ted.

Do I? Yeah. I've never called in before. No, why not? We probably met somewhere on a train going west. Yeah, right. So what's going on, man? Well, I am getting married in June.

Man, that's great. We're going to be a June bride. That's beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. Yep, that's that. So we're getting married in June, and I'm transferring schools, and I'm driving to Alaska from Ithaca, New York. Transferring schools, are you a faculty person or a student?

No, I'm a student. I'm going to school at Ithaca College now. Uh-huh. And what are you studying? Outdoor recreation. Outdoor recreation. Yep. Just give us a short overview.

view of some of the courses. What courses you might take and what your career options would be when you've completed this course of study? Well, let's see, you start out taking leadership 101. Ah, that's course? It's a very good

course. It's like when you... Tennis, anyone? When you're doing a hike, follow me. It's a bunch of one-liners so you can get the people interested in the outdoor recreation. It's very, very true. A lot of it is

Poor shoes, or what? Don't any of you nuts want to watch the World Series? I love it. All right. Yeah, okay, so that's Leadership 101. Oh, you go into lots of other things, skills courses, backpacking, snowshoeing. You know, you name it. They've got it outside.

Oh, man. It doesn't get any better. No, it doesn't. Now, your bride to be. Yes. She's heard about this Alaska plan? Oh, oh, yeah. She actually was the one who got me started on this home.

No kidding. Is she from Alaska? No, she went there two years ago for a month or so in the summer. Well, there's a contradiction that there's a month for a month in the summer. No, there is no month of summer. For a week. She must have gone back about seven or eight times to get a month of summer. No, no.

I mean, it's 24-hour sun. Everything's relative. Yeah. And she said, hey, Ted. I've got an idea, and you said, hon, count me in. So here you are. You're ready to embark for Alaska. Yeah.

And what's the problem? Well, it's not really a problem. It's more of a question and concern. I inherited a 1987 Dodge Ram van, 150, eight-passen passenger van. Whoa. And it got 183,000 miles on it. And that's what we're going to take. Why not?

But the thing is, I'm concerned about the altitude and the elevation going out there. And I was wondering, what should I do to the van, if anything, to adjust it and make it, make the trip. You think you're going to make it to the mountains? What are you nuts? Oh, no. You're only going to make it to Washington with this thing. Oh, yeah. Oh, no. Well, there aren't the mountains between the way you are in Chicago.

And where you're going to make it to. You just don't get to Chicago. Right. The Adirondacks is going to be your biggest challenge. Hey, it's been to the Adirondack. No, you should do nothing. No, do nothing. Do nothing, really?

Well, I mean, in all honesty, I mean, you should make sure that the thing is got a chance of making it to Alaska. I would take it to a mechanic and make sure let him check things. Make sure the front end is okay. Breaks and tie rod ends, ball joints, belts and hoses and whatever. All that stuff. All that stuff. Yeah. Because you don't want wheels falling off.

That's very true. You should ask them to install a block heater. I would do that in Alaska. There's a lot more selection up there. Oh, maybe, yeah. You can go to the block heater mall. Right, they must have a whole mall dedicated to block heater. One store after another.

Yeah, maybe. Sorry, I lost my head. It would be silly to put a block heater in now, and you don't even know if you're going to make it there. That's true. That would be wishful thinking. Wishful thinking, and it might anger the gods. Just make sure. sure that the thing is safe and worry

about everything else if you make it. As it happens. Because don't forget you're going to be with your bride. I mean, what could be better than breaking down? That's it, man. It will be something to tell your kids about. That's true. Yeah. And you might have four or five kids by the time

you make it to a last. Say it, Ted. You're a good sport. He might fill up that band. That ain't bad. That's why you got it. Hey, good luck, Ted. All right, thank you, Matt.

See you later. Bye-bye. Well, Ted wins the price for giving me those laughs. All right. It's time. It's my brother's turn to refill the coffees. I'm going to go get the coffees. Oh, good.

I'm glad you volunteered. Listen, while you're out, can you get me one, too? And when we come back, I'll have this week's exciting, challenging for being. Floric and historic. New Puzzler. With a major shift in our politics underway in this country, 1A is drilling down on what's at stake for you and our democracy. In our weekly series, If You Can Keep It,

we put these changes into focus and answer your questions about the impact of the Trump administration on the U.S. Join us every Monday for If You Can Keep It on the 1A podcast from NPR and WAMU. Ha! We're back. Don't scare me like that. You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack the Tapper Brothers.

And we're here to discuss cars, car repair, and the new puzzler. Now, this was sent in by, I can only assume, a young man whose name is Christopher from Atlanta. I can't tell anything else. No last name or anything like that, but he's somewhere out in cyberspace.

Yeah. Sent by email. Even though I don't accept email puzzlers, I accepted this because it was, grammatically correct and no spelling mistakes. Good. Here it is. It says, in honor of President's Day, and don't forget, this is for the kids in the group.

Honor of President's Day, which was, what, five or six months ago? Hey, no, this is a year old. Oh, okay. It's the next year's President's Day. In honor of President's Day, okay. He writes, my friend Max says to me, I just read that three of the first five presidents of the United States died.

Ready for this? on the 4th of July. Did you know that? It was the fireworks that did it, I think. What do you think the odds of that happening are? I reply, no idea. But I'll give you 10 to 1 odds that I can name at least one of the three. Now, I don't know anything he writes about the first five presidents,

except that their names are Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe. row in that order. Four more than I knew. Yeah, me too. Well, I knew Lincoln and Reagan. Yeah. How am I justified in offering my friend 10 to one odds when guessing randomly, I have only a three and five chance?

That's the question. Now, if you think you know the answer, write it on the back of a nice new $20 bill and send it to Christopher at... Puzzler Tower, Car Talk Plaza, box 3,500, Harvard Square, Cambridge. Our Fair City. M. 2-2-3-8. Or you can email your answer to us from the Car Talk section of Cars.com.

If you'd like to call us, the number is 1-888-8-8-2-2-8-2-5. Hello, you're on Car Talk. This is Helen Johnson. Hi, Helen. Hi, Helen. How are you guys doing? Where are you from? I'm from Dillon, Colorado.

As in Matt Dillon? Sure. Colorado. Or Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan is better. We're with you, Helen. Yeah. So what's going on, Helen?

Well, this is a deal. Yeah. I own a 78 Volkswagen bus. Go ahead and laugh. And it's not only my car, it's also my home. I live in this thing. Do you? With my boyfriend.

Excellent. Yes, it's lots of fun. We live out there in Dillon, Colorado. We're snowboard fools. Wait a minute now. Are you 18 years old or 15? 48 years old. 25.

25. And you haven't got a care in the world, do you? Pretty well. I got a couple cares. My car's not working very well. Yeah. But you don't really care, do you? Oh, I care.

If you fix it, you fix it. No, no, you know why snowboarding season is almost over? They're going to have to move on. Yes. You need to go to where the ocean is now. Arizona, maybe. There's no ocean there, but it's nice there. Okay, okay.

Good. Whatever. Yeah. So what's wrong with the bus? Well, there's two problems. It seemed to start at the same time, but I don't know if they're related. All right. So I'm going to lay them all out.

Go ahead. The first one is a power problem. We can be driving along the road, and the car catches its breath. It kind of lags for a moment, and if I keep my foot on the gas, it'll start up again in a couple seconds. It sort of like stops accelerating. Yeah. And then zhpicks up again. Exactly.

Picks up right again. I've never really had to pull over to the side of the road or anything. Okay. It usually happens in second gear, although it's happened in other gears, but generally is second gear. It usually happens when I'm going uphill under. load? Sure. This has been going on since January. January. Okay. And there's another, this is perhaps completely circumstantial. But about a week ago, I drove up to Leadville, which is a lot higher. It's like 10,000 feet. We're at 8,000 feet there in Dylan. It happened, I don't know, five or six

times in Leadville. All right. So that's problem number one. Yeah. What's number two? Number two is we have, obviously, these vehicles are really cold. So we have, we have, install the heater, take care of that problem. A gas heater? The propane-verting heater. A propane, good. Yeah. We put a second battery in the car in order to facilitate going all the way through the night, not having to deal with waking up in the morning and not being able to go.

Snowboarding. Yeah. The heater, at some point, sometime around January, didn't make it all the way through the night. The battery ran so low. So we thought, well, that's interesting. Maybe we just haven't been driving enough because there are two batteries. They're actually, my primary battery, my auxiliary battery,

are hooked up through a relay that is hooked in through the coil. So when the car is running, both batteries are recharging. When the car is off, the batteries are separate, and the heater only runs off the auxiliary. Got it. Who wired this up? You had this done professionally?

Oh, no, I did it. Cool. Very good. So the heater didn't make it through the night. We tried driving. We drove a long ways. It almost made it through the night. So there was obviously a power problem.

Mm-hmm. When I hooked up a meter to the battery, when I turned on the heater, the vault dropped. I know, what is that, a thousandth of a volt every couple of seconds, which is pretty fast, it seems. Well, no, that's, no, that's good. It's got to drop. It's got to drop.

And you're using up energy from it. But if it drops at that rate, I wouldn't make it through the night ever, and I usually make it through the night. Oh, I mean, it's not continuing to drop at that rate. It's just that the heater is asking for power. Okay. I mean, the same thing would happen if you try to start the vehicle. If you put that same volt meter on it and you turn it to the crank position, you would see the Volts drop from 13.2 down to 9.

Oh, and then it comes back up. Yeah, yeah, it comes back up. Comes back up. When you start cranking the engine. I think your two problems are related. Wow. Yeah, let's hear it. Yeah.

Well, I think that somehow the relay system you hooked up to the coil is somehow shorting out occasionally and making the coil short out, and that's why you get the missing. You think? Yeah, I think. Yeah. I think. That is interesting.

It is, and it's the only answer I have, so we're flying with it. Yeah. It definitely sounds like an electrical problem. Yeah, and what's censored for me, and I don't mean this as any personal kind of assault, but the fact that you... You hooked it up yourself? Oh, come on. What do you mean? But I got my instructions from a very reputable mechanic.

No, I'm not... I'm only kidding. Giving you a hard time. That's not nice. But it could be that you have a bad relay in this circuit, and that's what's causing the intermittent shorting of the course. coil. And of course, if anything's going wrong, of course, it could be just the coil is no good, too. But any kind of problem like that is going to give you its symptom under the most

extreme load. Okay. And the worst load is trying to climb a hill. And then even worse than that is trying to climb a hill when there's no air. Right. And then it's worse than that is trying to climb a hill with no air and no gas. Luckily, we've never had that problem. Never had that yet. But I would disconnect all that stuff. Disconnect the propane heater and try to drive the thing without that in the circuit. Okay. Try that because the only way my brother is right is if the problem completely

goes away. Right. And if it doesn't completely go away, I think it would be the coil. So how can I check the coil? You need an oom meter. I got that. She's got an ome meter. It's the other side of her volt meter. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you're going to look up the spec. You must have the book on this car. Oh, yeah.

I got all the books. All right. Yeah. Yeah, you're going to start with the simple diagnostic steps. But I would disconnect the stuff, then test the coil, then test the fuel pressure, and then call us back in the morning. Take two aspirin to it. Hey, good luck to you, Helen. Okay. Well, I hope you make it to Arizona, and if you don't, call us next week.

Okay. We'll be right here. We'll be here, and you'll probably be there. All righty. See you later. Thanks a lot, folks. Bye. Bye-bye.

How many hippies are there? Well, I'm envious. I mean... Not of the bus. No, but the very fact... That you're right. I mean, there they are. They're going to go to Arizona.

Maybe. Well, you know, they're like hunter-gatherers. Exactly. They've got nothing to think about all day long except freezing the death at night and getting the bust. And starving to death during the day. And then he wiped out by a semi. Life is good, right? Life is good.

You'd like to call us the number 1-8-88-car talk. That's 888-227-8-25. Well, hello, you're on car talk. Hi, my name's Amy. Hi, Amy. I'm from Naperville, Illinois. Naperville, where's that? Oh, you know, it's kind of southwest of Chicago.

Got it. Cool. Okay, I got one for you. Yeah. My husband has, or he bought a $500-85 Nissan Maxima because he was convinced he could replace the Rack and Pinyon himself because it had no power steering whatsoever. I was very upset.

So... Why were you upset? Well, for one, One thing, you never buy a $500 car. And the other thing... What are you talking about? You only buy a $500 car. And the other thing is that he was absolutely convinced he could fix it himself.

Well, he can't. It's very doable. Well, exactly. So now it makes me a little nervous because he goes out and he buys a Chilton's handbook, a hammer, and a rack and pinion set from the junkyard. Excellent. What a man. What a man.

Not exactly A hammer He buys a hammer Because he fixed the car With the hammer And he I mean he just did this Like

I was like a nervous wreck I was pacing around the house Why he was doing it I see He doesn't have any wrenches or anything like that Very few Yeah My question is though

When we did have it quoted at the shop It was around $1,500, $2,000 to get this steering problem fixed, but he did it for like, I don't know, $500, $500 in my own garage. Yeah. And my question is, how can it be so different in terms of a professional mechanic doing it? Amy, you should be falling at his feet in adoration saying, what a guy I married, and instead, you're questioning everything. Well, I mean First of all, he bought a used one

Which cost him probably one fifth of what a new one cost Or maybe less even Secondly, he supplied all the labor At zero dollars per hour As opposed to whatever they charge in Naperville 50 or 60 bucks an hour It must have taken him seven or eight weekends, right? Well, you know, he worked on it for a whole week

After he came home from his job Excellent What a man! And did you ferry coffees out to him and, you know, keep him company? No, she just sits there and hailed. She paced in the living room, back and forth, back, oh, my God, what is he doing? So I did bake some cookies. For cookies?

Peanop butter cookies. You should have slaughtered the fatted calf. Oh, no. Well, I mean, here's... What you don't understand, Amy, is the magic of the markup. And you can, I mean, a $2,000 job. I mean, in fact, I'm a little surprised that it cost him as much as $500. It may not have.

I don't think it did. I think he's just telling you that. And the other $200 he's using for his own personal use that he doesn't want you to know about. Yeah, he's probably going to go out and buy another car. He probably is. This guy is a bona fide American hero. I'm so, there is no doubt in anyone's mind that the guy is a genius. For Amy.

Well, you know what they say, you know? You're a hero every place except in your own house. I know it. Well, no, I do admire him because now I'm convinced he can redo our basement if he can get a book with directions. Sure, and there's a Chiltern's book on basements, too. Sure. Yeah, buy him the basement book. Next time you go to home quarters or whatever.

Anything. Get him the brain surgery book. Who knows where he'll stop? This guy's abilities may be boundless. Well, I know his abilities are boundless already, but, Yeah. Good luck to you. You are married to a wonderful, brilliant guy. Well, thank you. Thank you so much. And don't ever ride in that car.

See you later. Bye-bye. Bye. No, those rocks have been known to just fall right out. Oh, yeah. Especially when installed by rank amateurs. Exactly. Well, it's happened again. You've vaporized. You're another hour listening to Car Talk.

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Don't drive like my brother. Don't drive like my sister. We'll be back next week. Bye-bye. And now here is Katak Plaza's customer care coordinator, Mr. Vinnie Gumbats. Out of the way, Chuck. Now, ladies and gentlemen, let me start out by apologize if any annoyance, Ms. Funuk has caused you during today's broadcast. But here at customer care, we appreciate your specifics, you know.

So in order to refine your complaint, you need a copy of today's show, which is number 15, and you can get up by calling 1-8-8-8-8-car junk. Hey, Vinny, you're not supposed to be soliciting complaints about me. You're supposed to be selling books and tapes. Okay, well, if you want a whole book or tape or this guy being annoying, we have those, too. Just call 888 Carjunk or visit the online, shameless commerce division at the Cart Talk section of Cars.com.

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