The Best of Car Talk - #2608: Where Engines Never Warm Up

Episode Date: January 27, 2026

A lot of cars don’t like operating in the cold of a normal winter and Matt and his Delorean are having a tough go of it… at the South Pole. ‘Penguin in the tailpipe?’ Perhaps. Find out on this episode of the Best of Car Talk.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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 gender-based procurement division here at Caratalk Plaza, i.e. Gifts for Men. We figure that some of you are faced with this very dilemma at this time of year, what to buy for the man in your life. And Richard Pullman from ufell.edu, is that University of Florida or is an unidentified flying educator, sent us this treatise on the subject. What it says is gifts for men. Buying gifts for men is not nearly as complicated as it is for women.

Follow these rules and you should have no problems. And then there are three pages of rules. But I'll just give you a couple of rules. I like. Rule number one. When in doubt, buy him a cordless drill. It does not matter if he already has one. I have a friend who owns 17 cordless drills and he has yet to complain.

As a man, you can never have too many cordless drills. No one knows why. That's true. Isn't it the truth? I bought my nephew three of them. That's what you did. Oh, well. I mean, the second time it was excusable, but the third time.

Come on. I ran out of ideas. Rule seven. Buy a man a label maker. Almost as good as a quarterst drill. Within a couple of weeks, there will be labels absolutely everywhere. Sox, shorts, cups, sauces, sink. Labels.

No one knows why. Jeez, it's true. Rule 9. Good places to shop for men include Northwest Ironworks, Par lumber, Home Depot, John Deere, Valley RV Center, and Les Schwab tire. Napa Auto Parts and Sears clearance centers are also excellent men stores. It doesn't matter if he doesn't know what it is. Ah, it's from Napa Auto.

Must be something I need. Hey, isn't that a starter for a 68 Ford Fair? Wow, thanks. I mean, isn't it true? Pretty much. Here's the last one. Rope. Men love rope.

It takes us back to our cowboy origins, or at least the Boy Scouts. Nothing says love like a hundred feet of three-eighths-inch manila rope. No one knows why. Whoever put that together, and there are many others, they'll all be on the website, the cart talk section of cars. I think this is the kind of stuff that's helpful, especially in these times when women are trying to buy gifts for us. Yes.

I wish there was such a list for men. The other way around. Oh, man. Well, I'm sure. How many pairs of earrings are I going to buy? I don't know. Help me out. It is complicated.

It is complicated. It gets harder and harder every year. Yes. Net, don't? Well, you know, part of the reason it gets harder is because over the years, you learn more about your failures. like buying lingerie. I mean, how did I know that was a mistake?

It took me 15, 20 years to figure out that that wasn't a gift for her. Yeah. That was a gift for me. Yeah. We need help. If you have any help for us, right, soon. Man, if you'd like to talk to us about your car,

the number is 8888-Cart Talk. That's 888-227825. Hello, you're on car talk. Hi. Hi. How are you? Good. I'm glad to hear that because I need

your help. Well, what kind of gifts do you like for Christmas or New Year's or, or whatever? What do you give to a woman? You are a woman, right? I think so. My husband thinks so. He does, excellent. What does he give you? And are you thrilled with the things he gives you, or so thank you, hona, just to make him feel good? Actually, it has much better taste than I do, so I love everything he gets me. And we've only been married for eight months, so we're still in that newlywood phase. So he could get me wrench and I would probably jump up and down. I'd be really happy. Or he could get you something

from that victorious secret catalog. Well, like you said, that would be more for him. Yeah, maybe, but this may be a different zoo is for. As long as it's wrapped up in a box or a river, as long as it works. All right. What's your name? Sylvia. Sylvia, where you're from, Sylvia? I'm up here in Seattle. Oh, everyone knows what Seattle is now. Oh, yeah. didn't know. Who to thunk it, huh? I always think of everyone sitting around casually drinking cappuccino.

That's what did it. That's what incited all those riots. All that caffeine, man. You said we have to help you. Why? Well, because we have a car that's in bad shape. We bought it right before we got married because we had a car before that that was just a complete death trap.

So we thought, okay, we'll buy an Accura. It was in 1990 Accura, Integra GS. We bought it down in Utah, drove a lot. it all over the country for receptions and stuff. And then we came up to Seattle, and within a month, it started running really rough. So I took it to the little guys at Precision Tune, and they ran an engine check on it, and they said cylinder number two is operating at 25 PSI. Oh, bummer.

First of all, what does that even mean? How many PSI is it supposed to run at? Well, it's supposed to have at least 125. So 25 is 150 even. What that number actually means is the number of pounds per squareage. of compression that's generated when each piston comes up on its compression stroke and compresses the gas and air in the cylinder. And, you know, the minimum is pretty much 125, but your car might be 150 or 160.

But 25 ain't good. It's basically not working. That cylinder is out. Yeah. It's gone so. But it's not the end of the world necessarily. Well, what I was going to ask you is that somebody who shall remain nameless unless you decide that this is a good idea, said that maybe we'd try shutting down that cylinder and just

running on three cylinders. He's got to be your husband. Is it your father? No. Your husband. Of course not. That knucklehead. Yeah, no, that's a silly idea.

Okay. You can't do it, and even if you could, it would be terrible. Well, I mean, you could do it. No. But it depends on how much long you expect to keep the car. If you wanted to live for the long... It's like less than a week. Right.

Time frame is a week or two, then you would simply unplug that fuel injector and just drive the car. At the very least, you would prevent that unburned gas from getting into the converter and fouling it and the air that we all have to breathe. If they thought that that was going to make it run better, duh. Oh, no, it's not going to make it run better. Because then the compression is going to be zero. So the effect of that cylinder is going to be even less than it is now. So it's going to run worse. you know, you'd say, well, if it runs on four cylinders, why not three, but it doesn't work that way.

Did you get a price to fix this, Sylvia? Well, we're thinking that it's a ring problem. No. We're not sure what we're going to do. We're thinking about getting a used engine, but that we might spend $1,000 and have it last for another two months. And then someone said that if we get just one cylinder fixed and the other three are going to go bad pretty soon. Whoever your friends are, they are full of platitudes and old wives' tales. And misinformation.

Completely bogus information. It's unlikely to be a ring. Okay. What it is is valves. Oh, yeah? When you do a valve job, you do all the valves, of course. You don't just do the one that's burned. You may notice it burns a little more oil afterwards,

but I would certainly take the cylinder head off. And I think I'd do a valve job on it. I would, too. It's going to cost you a thousand bucks. It is. Yeah. Well, we thought it might be rings because it's burning oil and it's got a lot of blue smoke.

Oh. Oh, you didn't mention that, Sylvia? I mean, was it doing this when you bought it? No. It just started around probably late August. We started noticing that it was burning oil a lot, and then all of a sudden we were driving back from his parents' house, and it started running really rough.

Well, there were a lot of reasons why it could be burning oil. But you could have broken rings, but the fact that you're burning oil certainly adds another dimension to the problem, which is going to require us to run. recommend a used engine. Yeah. Or a rebuilt engine. Because you don't want to do a valve job if you're already burning excessive oil.

If you're going to spend the money, then I would definitely, as my brother suggested, go for a used engine. All right. You should find someone to do the work and have that person buy the engine. That'd be great. Good luck, Sylvia. Thanks a lot. See you later.

Okay, kid. One 8888 car talk. That's 8888-227. 8255. Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hi, guys, this is Russell from Hartford, Connecticut. How you doing? Good, Russell.

What's happening? Oh, I got a 1996 Chevy Cavalier, and now that the mercury is falling and the temperatures are going down here in the northeast, my heater blower has decided to only work on high. Bummer. That's the only thing it works on, which I guess is better than nothing. Better than low. All better than no. Exactly.

But it pretty much drones out any conversation. So I get to take all the people that I don't really like out on rides now, and I won't have to talk to them. But that's it. I can't figure it out. It doesn't work on the first, second or third setting, but it only works on high. So you haven't tried anything, but you are interested in affecting this repair yourself? I'd like to because I've been told by a friend that it's something that the dealer would have to deal with, and I'd rather not deal with it. Well, that's not true.

It's not something that the dealer has to do. Okay. No, you could take this to your local repair shop. He may have to buy the part from the dealer, but that's no big deal. Does it sound like something I can do myself? Sure. I mean, I'm fairly competent with tools, but I don't know if it's a mystery to me. Well, I think you can do this yourself.

I don't know exactly where this piece is located, but when you go to the dealer to buy it, because the dealer is the only one from whom you can get it, you can ask them to tell you where it is, and you'll have the added advantage of having the new piece in your hand, and then you can scout around, so to speak, until you find the broken one. The thing that looks just like it. Okay. And what you want is a blower motor resistor. Okay.

The way the thing works and the way you get four speeds is you don't have four motors in there. You have one motor. And the way they get the four speeds is by cutting the voltage to the motor down. By passing it through a resistance. So in one case, you're passing it through one series of resistors that makes it go at the lower speed. So you're supplying like seven volts of the motor. and then you turn it to speed number two, and you make it go through another path of resistors,

which is giving you like nine volts. You get the picture. Every time you do that, the motor speed increases until finally... There's no resistance. Which is why it works on high all the time. Okay. Which is great because that's the default mode. And wouldn't you want it to work on high as opposed to anything else?

Yeah, I'm thankful for what I got. So stop you complaining. So, I mean, it's a simple thing. It's inexpensive, but it might be. Be buried. Well, it's either going to be under the dash or it's under the hood. Where else could it be? Okay.

On the roof. It'll be in the trunk. And in all likelihood, it's pretty easy to get at it. It'll be held on by a couple of screws. You unplug the new one, pop the new one in, and your friends and loved ones will think you're a bleeding genius. Well, that's great. Good luck, Russell. Thank you, guys.

See, Russell. Bye-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. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Nutrafol, the first and only hair growth supplement to be NSF certified for sport.

For a limited time, receive $10 off your first month subscription and free shipping. Visit Nutraful.com and enter the promo code NPR. Hi, we're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack for Tappert Brothers, and we're here to talk about cars, car repair, and da, the answer to last week's puzzler, and here it is. I vaguely remember it. You went to the bank. You saw these markings on the door or something. What was it?

Yeah, well, I know I didn't know the answer. Some months ago, I read an Elmore Leonard novel called Out of Sight. And he mentioned this in the book, and I had never noticed it before, but here it is. Oh. Last weekend, I was doing a little shopping, and I was doing my errands in our Fair City. And as you might expect, I was going from one business establishment to another, you know, opening doors, closing, doors getting thrown out of places, transacting business. You know, the usual routine. And at one of the places I entered, I was surprised to see something affixed to the door that I had just opened.

Attached to that door with three horizontal brass strips. Each was about four inches long, about a half an inch wide, and they were nice and shiny. And each was affixed with two little screws. You got it? I mean, it's pretty descriptive, right? It is. It didn't matter what kind of a door it was. No.

So I opened the door to this establishment, and one of these little horizontal strips is right at eye level for me. One was six inches higher than that, and one was six inches below it. I went to another place of business and saw no such little bars. So I went back to this first place, and I looked at several doors in that same building, and they all had these three little strips. So here's the question, what building had I entered? And I had entered the bank. I figured that, but I still don't know what it means.

Oh, you don't? Why wouldn't the hardware store have these things? What significance could these things have? What did Willie Sutton say? That's where the money is. You rob banks. When bank robbers are making their escape, it is easy because these things are situated so that one is five feet above the ground. The next thing is five and a half feet.

And the highest one is six feet high. So when the guy is making his escape with the bags of money, the teller can say, and he was over six feet tall. That little runt was under five feet. Excellent. Who's our winner this week? The winner is Steve Wagner, or Wagner, from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, and for having his correct answer, selected from among the thousands of correct answers that we have. Steve is going to get a $25 gift certificate to the Cart Talk, Shameless Commerce Division.

Yeah. Okay. Now, Steve Wagner from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, when you get this $25 gift certificate, you can pick up our brand-new CD, why you should never listen to you. to your father when it comes to cars. And if you don't want anything from the Shamedless Commerce Division, you can use the gift certificate as kindling since it's made of paper. You just roll it up and you put it in the fireplace and put a match to it and that baby will go right up and help all that wood to burn. So thanks very much. Anyway, we'll have a new, I believe, automotive puzzler.

We haven't had an automotive puzzler in a while. And that will be coming up in the third half of today's show, so stay tuned for that. In the meantime, of course, you can call us at 1-888-8-88-28-2-7-8-25-a-lawyer-on car talk. Hi. Hi. I'm Grace from Pleasanton, California. How you doing? Hi, Grace. I'm fine.

So what's up, Gracie? I've got this Toyota Tercell. It's a 1987, and it's an automatic. It's just dripping oil all over the place. And it's time for me to take it in, I'm sure. But I want to have a little bit more information than just, hey, guy, my car is dripping oil. Well, how long has it been dripping oil, like a year or two? Just recently. The past three weeks. Well, is that too bad?

And have you been keeping an eye on the oil level to make sure you don't run out of oil and therefore destroy the engine? Yes, definitely. And how much oil have you had to replace? A couple of bottles. I still selling bottles out there in California. To deliver it to your house in the morning and a little truck with a horse? A couple of bottles over what period of time or how many miles? I put one in last Saturday, and then I had to put one in the Saturday before.

And how much did you drive it that week? Probably about 100, maybe 110. Oh, you got troubles. I don't quite far. And it sits a lot. The car just sits. And is it leak, whether it sits or it's driven? In other words, if you would let it sit in the same spot for days and days,

would the stain on the ground get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger? That's funny because it does not. Good. That's all right. That's an acceptable answer. You don't have to be embarrassed or ashamed about that answer, Grace. It's a perfectly good answer. What's your budget?

What can you afford? Because that will determine the answer we give you. Yeah. I mean, you're driving a 25-year-old car here. No. So, I mean, is your budget more like $50 or is it up to, say, 500? Because I have answers for all of those, you know, and everything in between. Well, I could probably afford, you know, maybe 500, yeah.

500. Oh, you could? Really? Then we can give you the real answers. Oh, no. Well, you can give you all the answers, that. I mean, the most likely thing for it to be on this car is something called the oil pressure switch. The Upsu.

And that device is what's responsible for turning the idiot light on on the dashboard to alert you when you run out of oil. Right. And it's a metal and plastic switch, which has pressure behind it when the engine is running. And when the bond between the metal and the plastic gives out after, like, like 13 years, it will leak oil. And it will leak oil pretty fast because there's pressure behind it. Uh-huh. And it will leak out much, much faster, of course, when you're driving.

I see. And it won't leak at all hardly when you stopped. Okay, because that's what's going on. I mean, that's a possibility. And on this car, it's located right behind the alternator. Uh-huh. So if you know where your alternator is, you can look at this thing, and you might even see oil just pouring right out of it.

Is this fixable? Yeah, oh, yeah. It's very fixable. It's not only fixable, but cheap as dirt. Yeah, I mean, that's the $50 solution. Fantastic. Now, the other possibilities are... As your blue rear main seal is blown, or the front seal, or the oil pump, or the oil pan is leaking.

There's a gas in the oil pan. I mean, who knows? Those are all the $500 ones. The head gasket is leaking oil. Any one of those things could be wrong, and they're all pretty expensive. So you have to really hope for the $50 solution because everything else starts to get expensive. And it's the sort of thing that if you take it to your mechanic, he's going to be able to figure it out probably easily. Oh, good.

Especially if you suggest, say, gee, somebody told me that my oil switch might be leaking. All right. I would make that post-hypnotic suggestion. Because if you suggest that, first of all, it's going to steer him toward that. All right. And he'll stick his hand right on it and say, my God, it's floating in oil here. All right. Yeah.

And it does take away the option of spending a lot of your money. Right. When you sound like you know what you're talking about. He's not going to try to sell you the rear main seal for $500. Great. Because you know what the oil pressure sending unit is, and that's going to be... Write it down, Grace, so you don't forget. Oil pressure sending unit.

All right. See you, Grace. Write it in Latin, really screw them up. All right. Thank you so much, car guys. Bye, bye. Thanks, Grace. Bye.

1-888-488-Cart talk. That's 888-227-8-255. Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hi, this is Matt Newcomb, and I'm calling you from the one-and-only-eminson-Sk South Pole Station. in Antarctica. No. Really? Whoa.

How are you? I'm doing just fine. I'm trying to stay warm down here. It's a nice and balmy minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit. The wind chills a little high. It's down in the minus 60s today. But summer's coming. So, hey, I'm hoping.

Summer's coming. That'll mean that's going to go up to like 20 below. Wow, maybe. How long have you been down there, Matt? I've just been down here since beginning of November. Oh. I'm just one of the summer-type people. Oh, so you still have toes?

Yeah, well, I'm looking forward, though, to get back to the place when someone says, oh, it's 40 degrees out. They mean positive 40 degrees. Exactly. So what actually are you doing there? I'm here with a group called Kara. It's Center for Out. astrophysical research in Antarctica, working on a two-meter microwave telescope named Viper.

So, do you have a vehicle problem? Is that why you called us? Or you just had squat to do? No, no, we actually do have a vehicle problem. It's got tracks, not tires. It doesn't matter. We don't care. We've got an LMC-1200. It's an old vehicle made by a subsidiary of the Delorean Motor Company. It's got a four-six-cylinder engine in it, and it works fine when it's warmer than minus 40 outside. But when it gets colder, you can only drive it slow. If you start driving it quickly, it eventually starts bogging down, losing speed, losing speed, and then just stall, and you can't start it again. And you end up having to call the mechanics to come pull it off with a big caterpillar tractor.

How old is it? It's probably close to 20 years old It has a carburetor, doesn't it? Yeah, it's got a carburetor That's it Take that carburetor right off, Matt And Yeah, replace it with a polar bear

What's it going to do? I think you have carburetor icing I'm surprised it doesn't happen sooner Okay, so I'll carry a heat gun Next time I take this thing out Well, exactly And when the guys tow it back to the shop And they warm it up to like, you know, zero

It may be that enough of that ice melts that the thing will start and run again. And, of course, they can't find anything wrong with it. They can have it in the shop where I'm sure it's heated and probably 40 or 50 degrees above zero. And they rev the thing up and check all its vital signs and everything is okay. But out in the road, so to speak, it just can't take the weather. Alternatively, it could have low compression. See, the trouble with the solutions to the carburetor icing problem are that you say that you take a hairdry or something with you.

But that's not really going to work because that will only work when you stop and you may be able to get it restarted, but as soon as you start to drive again, it's going to ice right up again because of something called the nozzle effect. Every time the air goes pouring through the carburetor, it gets colder.

So as soon as you try to drive it, it's going to keep stalling out unless you put some kind of a permanent heater around the carburetor. Yeah, actually, you might want to have them rig up a pipe that runs from the exhaust, from the vicinity of the exhaust manifold up to the air cleaners

so that the air cleaner can suck in hot air through that conduit and it's warmed up by the proximity of the exhaust manifold and that might be enough to keep the thing from freezing up. How much longer is your stint in Antarctica? I'm just down here for another two or three days. Two or three days! I'm just down here for the weekend, you know? Well, live it up and make sure to put on your sunblock.

Good luck, Matt. Thanks for calling. Thank you. Bye, bye. Bye. All right, look, it's time to take a short break. Yeah, and when we come back, my brother will regale us with this week's literate, challenging new puzzler. Ha, we're back.

You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack the Tappert Brothers, and we're here to discuss cars, car repair, and the new puzzler. And I've got to say that I like this one because it's automotive. We haven't had an automotive puzzler in a while. I've heard the clamoring about that. And more than that, this is actually... sent to us pretty recently. This year? Decade. Decade. This comes from someone named Brad Hamill. Here it is. I really can't improve it much, so I'll just read it, and you guys will have to figure it out. All right. This fellow takes his Volvo to the shop. Now, it could be any car and complains of a strong

pulsing in his brake pedal when he applies the brakes. The mechanic looks over the car and finds it, sure enough, the front disc brake, you know, rotors are warped. He installs new ones and sends the fellow off on his way. Five thousand miles later, the same car owner comes back to the shop and complains that the pulsing is back. Suspicious and yet confident that his work was perfect. The mechanic asks the owner a few questions. Do you ride the brake?

Have you tightened your lug nuts with a high-powered air wrench? Or has anyone done that? Etcetera. If you bought new tires, the owner answers no to all questions. In fact, answers no all the time to everything. the mechanic is at a loss and replaces the warped rotors a thousand miles later the guy comes back and guess what has an oil leak this time

but a thousand miles after that he comes back with the same problem this time the mechanic asked straight up what the heck he's doing to the car that could be causing this problem knowing that there's nothing wrong with the parts and nothing wrong with the installation the fellow says I don't know

he says I go on a lot of long car trips and it's always the day after I arrive home from these trips that I start feeling the pulsing but never, never during the trip. This is great. The mechanic asks him one question and he knows the answer to the puzzle. What question did he ask him?

What is your mother-in-law away? All right, he asks him two questions. Now, if you think you know the answer, write it on the back of a $10 bill or a stale gingerbread man, something that's been hanging on your tree for a few weeks. Oh, sure. Festive. And send it to Puzzler Tower, Car Talk Plaza, Box 3500, Harvard Square, Cambridge. Our Fair City.

Matt 02238. Or you can email your answer from the Car Talk section of Cars.com if you'd like to call us. You didn't ask any questions. the way. You felt it didn't require any... No, I thought it was perfectly clear. And there was very little obfuscation going on. Yeah, I didn't get a chance to obfuscate. I didn't feel it necessary

to what called you to task. Really? I didn't. Wow. See, how unfortunate. I'll remedy that by next week. Did you just meet something by me? I'm sure I did. 1-888-88-288-2-27-8-25. Hello, you're on car talk. Hello. Hello. My name is Evelyn.

Evelyn. Yes. Hi, Evelyn. And where are you from, pray tell? Virginia. Virginia. Yes. How nice.

Any place in particular in Virginia? No, the whole state. Well, there is a special place, but do I have to tell you that? No, you don't. There may be reasons why you shouldn't. If you would like to protect your anonymity, you feel free to do that because I'm surprised that others don't yet. What can we do for you? Well, I have a 96 Cadillac.

And every time I hit a bump in the road, I get this little switcheroo in the back, which, well, it looks like the back end of the car just swings to the right, and then back to the left. Yeah. And I'm wondering if what's wrong with it. I thought maybe you would know. Roughly how many miles are on this car? About 55,000. And have you driven it around your fair city most of the time? No, it's been in the country.

Country. Does that mean good roads or not so good roads? Well, it's been on good roads, surfaced roads. And when you first began to notice the problem, was it subtle and then got worse over time? Well, it's not any worse and it's not any better, but you just get this little switch every time you get a rough place in the road. So you bought it brand new? Yes. And it's always been this way. Yes.

What kind of a Cadillac is it? It's a DeVille. Yeah. So all the forces that the Cadillac dealership and the manufacturer have been able to muster, they've been unable to solve this to your satisfaction. Have they tried anything? like changing the shark absorbers or changing the springs or... Well, they put the stabilizers in the front, and I'm getting this little switcheroo in the rear end.

So maybe we need to put stabilizers in the back. Well, it probably has a re-stabilizer already, and it probably had a stabilizer in the front, too. They might have just painted the one you had in there. How fast do you drive, Evelyn? You sound like a sane person, but are you a wacko? No, I'm not a wacko, but I don't mind the speed, especially if I'm on in the state.

Yeah. Which is not that much over the speed limit. But on those, in the country roads, how fast do you drive? Well, maybe about 60. Yeah, I don't think there's anything wrong, meaning broken or worn out. I think something about it needs to be adjusted. I don't think so. I don't think so either.

I think there is one thing that needs to be adjusted down. Yeah. That's your speed. You mean lift up my foot a little bit? There you go. I think you're going too fast on roads that aren't as smooth as you think they are. Okay. And then when you hit these.

bumps. I mean, it's normal for any car, especially a front-wheel drive car that has very little weight in the back to kind of bounce around a little bit. You might be able to improve it by putting a couple of weights in the trunk. Okay. Here's what you do. You go on a trip. Don't ever take the luggage out of the trunk when you come home. Just leave the stuff right in there. That's right. Well, how do you do the laundry? You just throw the stuff away, buy new clothes. You don't throw it away. It's in the trunk. If you ever need it. You're out of underwear, open the trunk. This is a basic design feature of the Cadillac. Uh-huh.

Don't forget, Cadillacs are not designed like sports cars. Uh-huh. And so the result is that they're sort of mushy. Uh-huh. So you get a nice soft ride because many people who buy Cadillac's like a nice soft ride. The trouble with a nice soft ride is that the car will tend to bounce when you hit bumps.

Uh-huh. Because the springs are soft, so to speak. Okay. And if the shock absorbers are not really hard to make sure that they doesn't keep bouncing, then you're going to have the very symptom that you describe. You're going to hit a bump, and the back end is going to feel like it's flying around. In other words, you don't think my problem is very bad. It's bad because it's dangerous.

Uh-huh. Because if it's bouncing around like that, it means there are times when the back wheels aren't really on the ground. Uh-huh. I mean, they are physically on the ground, but there's no real heavy weight on them. Okay. But if you were on wet leaves or something, you could get into an accident. So I would say that the quickest solution is, as my brain, brother said, raise your foot just a little bit.

Well, thank you very much. All right, Evelyn. Appreciate your information. Good luck. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. She sounds like a sane. She sounded like a sane.

Normal. Well, so do you sometimes. Well, 1-8-888-Cardtok. That's 8-288-278-25. A lawyer on Car Talk. Hello, this is Kai Stott's calling from Lovelin, Colorado. How are you guys this morning? What's your name?

Kai, K-A-I. So what's going on, Kai? Well, I've got a Subaru hatchback, 1985. When it gets a tune-up, it runs great for about four, sometimes if I'm lucky, 5,000 miles. And then gradually it gets worse and worse. If I drive it for 15, 20 minutes, it starts lurching and hesitating under load or if I'm trying to pass somebody or go up a hill, which happens quite a bit here in Colorado. Yeah.

You shouldn't be climbing hills anymore with this car. Yeah. Hey, it's got 90% of the original compression still in the engine, so it's doing well. But what's strange is if I change the spark plug... It fixes it. I was just going to ask you that. Right. And when you take out those spark plugs, you find that they're all black, don't you?

Actually, I don't. That's the strange thing. You don't. I'm going to suggest that you find crud on one of them, deposits. I think there's a minor deposits on one or two of them, and my mechanics claim that it's never the same spark plug, Which is really odd because I was hoping it was a bad cylinder or something. I've never used that explanation.

Yeah. What would Perry Mason call it? Wandering. The case of the wandering spark. Case of the wandering crud. Wondering crud, that's it. They may just be getting confused. Maybe they're standing on the left side of the car one time and the right side of the car.

Like the hump. On Igor. Like Igor's hump, right. But what's happening is you have and. The car is certainly justified in having perhaps any ailment at once in its age. It's 20 years old here. You have bad valve guide seals, and you're sucking oil into the cylinders, and you are oil fouling one or more of the plugs, and one will do it.

I mean, this thing is so underpowered anyway. It may be meandering, because they may all be leaking, and the one that happens to get worse fastest is the one that causes him to change them. I just had all those seals replaced. And there's no oil loss and there's no smoke. This is adding a degree of difficulty. I'm wondering if it isn't electrical. Oh, Guy, will you give us a break?

The plugs are not black. The plugs are not fouled, but changing the plugs makes it get better. Yes, it does. And it only happens after it warms up for about 20 minutes. It runs great when I first turn it on. Well, there is one last possibility. What's that? And this is a desperate effort.

It could be. Alien intervention. Well, no, that was... No, we're saving that for later. It could be a weak ignition coil. Oh, I was just going to say, you're not going to go for the coil idea. I have to. No, I mean, when there were no rabbits left in the hat, you have to...

How can you explain the 5,000 miles of good running? I dismissed the coil idea 20 minutes ago. The coil is marginal. When the plugs are new, and they're perfect, there's enough voltage in the coil to fire off the plugs properly. Yes. As the electrodes begin to burn down, and I'm going to suggest something here. 5,000. In the interest of science, Kai, instead of replacing the plugs, you close up the gap.

You clean them and re-gap them. We'll just close up the gap, period. A little bit. You know, if they're supposed to be gaped, I think, at 30,000s. Right. Set them at 28. Okay, and see if that helps. And put the same old plugs back in.

Don't do anything to them. Just reset the gap at 28 and put it back in. And my brother's betting that it will work for another 3,000 miles. Right. I think you're on to something. And if that's true, then I can replace the coil. Is that correct? Yeah, I cost you about $9.

I mean, I presume someone has replaced the spark plug wires and all of this? Oh, of course. Oh, yeah, yeah. Just before the alien abductee theory. See you, Kai. Thank you. Well, it's happened again. You've squanded another perfectly good hour listening to Car Talk.

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