The Best of Car Talk - #2617: Definitely Not OK

Episode Date: February 28, 2026

What’s worse: a screaming clutch, an oil leak, an engine fire or a Tommy Puzzler? You be the judge on this episode of the Best of Car Talk.To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, investing in creative thinkers and problem solvers who help people, communities, and the planet flourish. More information is available at Hewlett.org. Hello and welcome to Car Talk from National Public Radio with us Click and Clack, the Tappert Brothers, and we're broadcasting this week from the more better English department here at Car Talk Plaza. Now, we don't know who sent this to us, and as the case with email, the last, The last person to send it, of course, takes credit for it. But this is a list of alternative definitions you may not be aware of.

Flabbergasted. You know what that means? Appalled over how much weight you have gained. Flabbergasted. All right, I got the idea now. You got it? How about this? Flatulance.

A flatulence is the emergency vehicle that picks you up after you've been run over by a steamroller. Lymph. Lymph. Lymph. To walk with a lisp. This is one of my favorites. Macadam. McCatum.

Okay, go ahead. The first man on earth, according to the Scottish Bible. Here's one. Abdicate. To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach. These are brilliant. And Bustard. A very rude bus driver.

You're no good bus start. That's it. Those are a lot of fun. If you want to call us and talk about your car or offer new definitions for any word that might be in the lexicon, our number is 888 Car Talk. That's 888-227-8255. Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hello, this is Brother Roger calling from Christ in the Desert Monastery in Abacu, New Mexico.

Wait, wait, start again. Brother who? Roger. Brother Roger from Christ in the desert. Monastery. In Abacue, New Mexico. Christ in the Desert Monastery. I got it. Well, it's a...

That's coal. Yeah, it is. It's really nice. And we're way up here in the wilderness of northern New Mexico. So how long have you been a brother, brother? Well, I'm actually a lay brother, and I've been here for seven years. And I'm responsible for taking care of the community's cars.

We have, like, seven four-wheel drive vehicles. Ah, four-wheel drive for the desert? Well, we have a 13-mile clay surface road that gets wet, and we really have to fight our way through grease to get to the main road. Oh, that gets pretty slick, I imagine. Very slick. It's like black ice. Yeah. And that's what leads me into this question, because we have four-wheel-drive vehicles,

summer SUV, summer pickup trucks. Well, let me get this straight. Now, this is a question that prayers have not helped to answer, I presume. Not so far, no. Okay. Not so far. Does that mean we couldn't recommend further praying? If we don't know any other answers. You could.

That would be okay with you. That would be your last ditch effort. We frequently pray ourselves when we give an answer. Okay. Okay, well, this is really a generic question about the four-wheel drive vehicles, but what triggered it was when I took our Dodge Ram, four-wheel-drive truck, into the Dodge dealer and the service advisor, and I use that word very loosely, said that on a four-wheel-drive vehicle in order to avoid damage to the four-wheel-drive system,

you should have four exactly matching tires. Now, not only in terms of size, but also tread pattern. And shape. And shape, exactly. Don't mix a firestone with a Michelin or a good year with a Dunlop, because you'll wreck the four-wheel-drive system. That sounds like hogwash to me, bro. Having the same diameter tire is essential to,

almost any vehicle that has a differential. Right. And because you have a differential in the front and the back on these things, it's important that you don't have an odd ball-sized tire on either front or rear. Right. If you never use the four-wheel drive, it wouldn't matter what you had in the front. The front wheels wouldn't care. But the back would.

Because the front wheels would turn independently of one another. Right. But because the back tires, or back wheels rather, are linked by the gears and the differential. if you have two different size tires, you will be spinning what's called the spider gears. And they will be spinning all the time, and they're not designed to spin all the time. They're only designed to spin when you take turns.

Because when you take turns, the two rear wheels obviously of necessity turn at different speeds. Right. And so are the front ones, but the front ones aren't connected to one another unless you have four-wheel drive. Unless we throw the transfer case in. Right, correct.

So his heart may be in the right place. But his mouth wasn't. Now, the only variation I heard on this was when I talked to our tire man, and he said, no, that's not true, unless the vehicle is an all-wheel drive vehicle like a Subaru, for example, where the four-wheel drive is engaged all the time. Well, in fact, in a vehicle like a Subaru, it's more important. Yes. So the tire guy was correct. the dealer was full of baloney. Oh, is that something new?

So let's pray. He was the service advisor. Service advisor. Well, he was giving bad advice. Well, he was not advising you on service. He was advising you on tires. Yes. Yeah, well.

Your advice would be matched them as closely as he can, but no worry if they're not. Right. But the size you want to match perfectly. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That I understood. You know, that I always do. But we sometimes get them from different sources, or sometimes you go to the same source

and you discover two years later, they've, change the pattern. Yeah. And Brother Roger, pray for us. We need it. Long and hard. See you later. Okay. Bye-bye. 1-888-car talk. That's 888-225. A lawyer on car talk. This is K

from Colorado. K with an A-Y? Yeah. K with an A-Y. From Colorado. You know, a lot of people from Colorado simply identify themselves as being from the state of Colorado. And I guess That must mean something.

Well, because the state of Colorado is a state of mind. State of mind, and it doesn't matter where in Colorado, you could be on the top of a mountain or in one of the oceans that are out there. Right. And you would be the same. It doesn't matter where you are. Well, actually, I'm on the western slope in a little town called Montrose. Do you know where that is?

Never heard of it. Of course not. Well, see, what difference would it have made if I said I'm from Montrose? I don't even know where Colorado is. Oh, you've missed life. My brother is such a Yahoo. that I couldn't get him to Colorado if my life or his life depended on it. I've never been west of Pennsylvania.

Well, that's okay. We don't let Yahoo's in the state. Yeah, I know that. Well, we'd have to sneak him in. Maybe there's hope for him. I don't know. Anyway, Kay, why are you calling us? Well, I'm calling you because I think I have a problem.

I have a 1993 Ford Explorer with 120,000 miles on it. My daughter, who lives next door, is, And if 38 years old, it's important, I tell you her age, borrowed my car one evening to take her boys home. They live about a quarter of a mile if you have to walk, and it was dark, and we have coyotes and mountain lions. Oh, yeah, you don't walk at night if you don't have to. We let her borrow the car.

She brought it back, and I kept saying, I hear a car, and my husband kept saying, no, you don't. Well, in the morning, at 5 o'clock, when he went out to feed our animals, the car was in the driveway, and it was still running. They got out of the car and forgot to shut the ignition off. Really? Yeah, but she's not a Yahoo. She's a little preoccupied, perhaps.

So the car idled for seven hours or more. Yeah. And I'm wondering if we need to take the compressor and blow out the engine or if carbon builds up or something. Why is her age important to this? Because she's old enough to know better. Oh, I don't know. I thought she's having some kind of midlife crisis or something. I won't tell her that.

But she's a little too young for a midlife crisis. I know. I'm not sure with women when it happens. These kind of things are happening an awful lot lately. Yeah. And does the car run fine now? Well, yeah, but I don't, I'm not going to drive it very far or very fast because I don't want something to happen to me. And I don't know if there's a bunch of carbon in there.

No, there's forget about it. Just forget about it. As they say in Boston's North End, forget about it. But my dad used to say if the car had sat a while, he had to get it out on the highway and open it up. Yeah, and he was right. Because his car had a carburetor in it. Oh. And this thing is fuel injected, and it has many devices which are designed to keep the fuel air mixture exactly right and to change it when it goes astray.

Did it go astray? It may have, but you wouldn't have known it because. You were sleeping. And the computer kept everything going perfectly all night long. You mean those cars now? I don't have to worry about them. You don't have to worry about that anymore. Just drive it.

Just drive it. Forget about it and tell your daughter that she didn't do anything wrong. But not to do it ever again. Okay, I'll try it. I mean, if something had happened in the night, for example, if the fan belt had broken and rendering the water pump inactive. Yeah. Then, in fact, the thing could have overheated and it could have ruined the engine.

Okay. But there are millions of engines the world over that run unsupervised for hours at a time, including how God knows how many police cars. Yeah. In front of a donut shop and you see a police car, they've got it locked up. They don't even lock. Who would steal a police car? The windows are down. The heat's on.

The things have been running for four hours while they're running. They're in there investigating the latest donut felony. And nothing happens to those things. And there are stationary engines that literally run all day and all night. But they do have shutdown mechanisms, which your car doesn't have. For example, if the oil pressure drops off, the engine would shut down for those stationary engines. Your explorer doesn't have that.

But had anything like that happened, the engine would have been melted. The fact that it didn't melt, that everything worked okay, and you can just forget about forget that it ever happened. Okay. Fortunately, and fortunately, it was my daughter and not our son-in-law that did it. Oh, better yet, not you. Because you already think he's a dope, right? Because she'd have accused you of having a senior moment.

See you, Kay. Thanks, guys. Good luck. Bye. Bye. We'll be right back with the answer to the puzzler right after these messages. Support for NPR and the following message come from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Investing in creative thinkers and problem solvers who help people.

communities and the planet flourish. More information is available at Hewlett.org. Hi, we're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us, click and clack the Tapper Brothers, and we're here to talk about cars, car repair, and the answer to last week's puzzler. This came in from a listener named the Scott Krasse.

You ready? I actually remember the puzzler. I know you do. Yeah. Yeah. You've been placed on a medication regime in which you are to take the following medications once a day.

You ought to take one tablet of medicine A and one tablet of medicine B. That would be like Valium and Prozac. There you go. It's in your case, right. In my case. So you've got two, you know, little boxes of pills, and you must be careful

because taking two or more Bs can have unpleasant side effects, like severe hemorrhoidal flare-ups. And taking an A and not a B or vice versa can also be very serious. So in order for B-to-B effect, It must be accompanied by the A pill, so you must take exactly one A and one B. Got it?

I'm with you. So you open up the A bottle, and you tap it, and one A pill falls into your hand. Got it. You put that bottle aside. You take the B bottle, and you do the same, but by mistake, two Bs fall into your hands. Now, here's the problem. The pills look identical. Oh, bummer!

Same size, same weight, same color, same everything. And they don't have A's and Bs written on them, and they're both, you know, identical. So what are you going to do? You can't tell which is which. But if you could go iny, me, me, me, ma'y moll. You could throw them away and start over again. But they're a hundred bucks a piece. Did I mention that?

You can throw them away and start over again. So here's the question. How do you get your daily dose of exactly 1A and exactly 1B without wasting any of the pills? Wow. And here's how you do it. You know that you have 1A and 2Bs. You just can't tell which or which. So let's add another A to the mix.

So now you have two A's and two Bs. So you lay the four pills out in a row, but you don't know which or which. No. Now you can again go iny, me, me, man,imo, and your chances are getting the right thing are improved by having done this,

but not good enough. No, because you might die. You could die. However, if you take each pill and cut it in half, and without mixing up the halves, in other words, the first pill you cut in half, you leave those two halves

near each other. Yeah. And the same thing with the second, the third, and the fourth pill. And then you take one from each

of the cut pills. A half a pill from each of the pairs. So by definition, because you know you have two A's and two Bs in the mix, you'll take a half an A

from one of the cut pills and a half a B, and then another half an A and then another half a B. And you'll have two half Bs and two half A's making one A

and one B. And then the remaining pills, the cut pieces will be tomorrow. dose. Man, who's our winner, Tommy? I have to say that that is not intuitively obvious. No? No. Well, the only thing that that made me a little bit discouraged about the puzzle was that Berman got it. He did, huh? He did, yeah. Anyway, do we have a winner? Yeah, we have a winner. The winner is Tom Mellon from Santa Clara, California. Tom, for having your answer selected at random.

From among the thousands of correct answers that we got, you're going to get a $25 gift certificate to the Car Talk Shameless Commerce Division. And with that $25, you can buy about five-eighths of a car-talk tour jacket. Which five-eighths will yet?

Maybe he's got a short torso. It might work out for him. Hey, spend it any way you want, Tommy, baby. All right, we will have a new non-automotive puzzler if I can remember it in the third half of today's show. So stay tuned for that.

Sounds fishy to me. Yeah, it's a fish. It's a fish puzzler. It is? Oh, it was. I don't remember. Well, you better work on it, man. You've been giving me such a hard time about...

I got till the third half of the show to think about it. I'm getting such grief about my puzzles as I figured I'll let you take over from my. I'm not doing any more puzzles. In the meantime, you can call us and ask us questions about your car at 1. 8888-8-8-2-278-5-8-2-7. Five. Hello, you're on car talk. This is Jared Rockwood from Salt Lake City.

Jared? Jared. Jared, yep. Jared, J-E-R-R-O-D? Close, J-A-R-E-D. Ah, that, Jared. Jared. From where?

From Salt Lake. Salt Lake City. Got it. That's west of here. You're a little bit. So what's up, Jared? Well, actually, I have an old truck. It's an 82 Toyota.

It's four-wheel drive. and basically I had a really bad problem with my throwout bearing. Yeah. One day I went out to drive, and whenever I put in the clutch, it would just start screaming, really, really loud. Yeah. And so I have a mechanic buddy that is your throwout bearing. It is bad. Yeah, could be.

Okay. And so I also had an oil leak. It's kind of two existing problems. The oil leak steadily was getting really bad. Where was the oil leak? It's towards the back of the pan gasket. Oh, perfect opportunity to kill two birds of one stone. Oh, yeah.

Exactly. And so this is exactly what we do. We go buy a clutch kit. Good. And we buy a gasket. We put both of those on. I smell an unhappy ending here. I'm not sure, you know.

Why would he be calling us? Just a hunch. Would he be calling us just to relay to us a very pleasant experience? Well, I thought about it. Yeah. Yeah. That was originally my plan. So what did you replace, just to throw-out barrel?

No, the whole clutch. We decided as long as we're taking the whole transmission part, we might as well put a clutch in. Good thinking. So we put in the whole clutch kit with the throw-out bearing and the pressure plate in the clutch. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like it. Okay, so I'm driving home, and sure enough, that loud squill has gone away. It's been replaced with a slight chirp. That sounds very similar to the squill, but just a chirpy sound.

And the chirp occurs when you have your foot on the clutch and you're moving? Well, yeah, it only happens while I'm taking the clutch out or while I'm pushing it in. If it's to the floor, it doesn't make the noise. So once your pedal stops moving, then the chirp is gone. Turp is gone. I don't think it's the thrall bearing. I don't think it's the clutch. Okay.

What do you think? Well, I think I've got a problem because one, my oil week didn't go away. And, too, I still have the chirp. I don't know exactly what it is. I had a few friends who have given me an idea, but I haven't got around to. Well, I have one. Would you like the simple, inexpensive answer, or would you like the, the simple answer? No, definitely the simple answer.

The expensive junk the truck. No, no, he wants this truck. He's had this truck for two decades, and we're going to give you the simple answer. You're getting both answers whether you like it or not. Okay, good, good. The simple answer is that... Forget about it. Well, that's the third answer.

The simple answer is that the little ball, if you remember when you had the transmission out, there is a fork to which the throw-up bearing attaches, and there's a ball that that fork pivots on. Okay. Okay, made of steel, and it's held in by a little spring. You remember that? It was a long time ago, huh? You didn't do this part. You were getting the sandwiches?

You're on a beer and sandwich run, right? That's right. Okay. Well, your buddy will remember it. You can see that little ball. There's a little rubber boot on the side of the transmission where that fork enters the bell housing. If you pull that rubber boot off, you can see that ball. You might be able to just get in there with a little brush and put some grease on that.

And you might, might ever, might be able to get that squeak to go away. I would squirt it with the little WD40 first and then put the grease on it. Okay. You can do both of those things. And I honestly think that the little chirp is going to go away when you do that. Okay. So it's not a big deal then. Well, unless you listen to my brother's answer B.

Okay. His answer B incorporates the chirp and the oil leak, too. Yeah. I got to ask you one question. Do you ever have any trouble shifting it? No, not really. Good. That's good.

That's a good answer, man. answer B might be gone. The answer that I was going to give you that would be disastrous is that something called the thrust bearing in your engine is worn out. And if that's the case, as you're stepping on the clutch, you're moving the whole crankshaft towards the front of the car. Okay. And don't say okay because this is like, this is, this is end of the world stuff, Jared. Okay for me. This is an okay. Okay. He just said, okay, I hear you.

Oh, okay. Like Roger. Roger, yeah. Over and out. Yeah, we're out all right. So hope it isn't that. Try the grease. And if it isn't that, get yourself a real good sound system.

Okay. I mean, in almost, I mean, except for the little squirt of WD40 and the grease, I would say there is nothing you should be thinking about in the way of doing something. Yeah, certainly not the thrust bearing. No, you just forget about it. Okay. And just keep driving, and it'll get to drive forever. Good, good. That's good to hear.

Jared, a pleasure talk. Do you have a good attitude. Take care. Okay, die you later. Bye, bye. We'll be right back with more calls and the new puzzler after these messages. We're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack the Tap of the Brothers, and we are here to discuss cars, car repair, and my new puzzler, which I stole out of a book.

I can't remember what book it was. So you don't know the answer. I know the answer. But you know the question. I think I know the question. That's as good as I can ever do. Here's the question. Three guys go out fishing.

They decide in advance that whatever they catch, they're going to divvy it up. Was this a motorized boat or a sailboat? This was a sailboat because this is a non-automotive question. Okay. Don't forget. It was just during the week? Stop interrupting.

Is this what you have to? Right? Go ahead. What a pain in the butt this is. I'm sorry, I'll try to be good. So they decide in advance that whatever fish they catch, they're going to divvy them up three ways evenly. As they catch them? No.

Okay. When they get back to port. So they finish fishing for the day. They pull back into port and they're going to sleep on the boat overnight. Get up in the morning, divvy up the fish to go home. In the middle of the night, however, one of the guys has a severe hemorrhoidal flare-up. And he's got to get a. get to the drugstore right away to buy some stuff, preparation, whatever it is.

Yeah. G, B. So he goes to take his third of the fish, and he notices that the number that they caught is not divisible by three. Unless he throws one of the fish overboard. So he does. He throws one of the fish overboard, takes his third. So like that for a hundred fish, he threw one away.

And took 33. It took 33. I got it. Leaving 66. Got it. But it's not the right answer. No? No. So he takes his third and he leaves. Somehow a few hours later in the middle of the night, another guy wakes up with horrible stomach pains. Gotta have the kale pectate. Gotta have it. So they're gonna bump into each other at the drugstore. He says, I'll take my third of the fish and then I'll go home because I can't stay here like this. So he goes to take his third and he notices, interestingly, the same thing, that he can't take a third unless he throws one fish overboard. So he goes. He goes to take his third and he notices, interestingly, the same thing, that he can't take a third unless he throws one fish overboard. So he goes, He throws one fish overboard, takes his third, and goes home.

Got it. Third guy, who's stomach is fine, whose hemorrhoids have not flared up, he gets up in the morning, and he realizes that he hasn't taken his third of fish, but he's got to go home anyway. He figures the other guys are still sleeping. Got it. Got it. So he says, I'll just take my third and I'll go. When they wake up, they can take their third.

And they'll get stuck paying the fuel bill. Right. Right. However, he realizes that he can't take a third. Let me guess. Not divisible by three. Sonia Henney's two-two. What are the chances of that? He throws one fish overboard, takes his third, and leaves. Got it. Question. What is the smallest number of fish by which this little scenario could have taken place?

Not the smallest fish. That would be like minnows. The smallest number that they started out with. caught that they started with when they pulled into port. That's it, man. If you think you know the answer to this puzzle, you write it on the back of a $20 bill or an aging corn muffin. And you send it to Puzzler Tower, Khartok Plaza, Box 3,500, Harvard Square, Cambridge, Our Fair City. Excellent.

Perfectly done. Massachusetts 02238. All you can email your answer from the Cart Talk section of. cars.com and the phone number is 1-888-car talk if you want to talk to us. That's 8.882-278-25-5. Hello, you're on a car talk. Well done. So next week, I'm the one that has to forget the answer to the puzzle. You have to forget the question. I'll try to remember that. I'll try to remember to forget. I have to figure out the answer between now and then. Good luck. Hello, you're on car talk. Hi, I'm Dorothea, and I'm calling from Bolsburg, Pennsylvania.

Hi, Dorothea. Bolsburg? Bolsburg. We're three miles outside of State College, home of the Nidney Lions. Got it. Centrally isolated. Centrally isolated. Which is how I feel.

I like it, man. I didn't grow up here. I've only been here a year. Oh, when is your sentence over? I'm not sure. I think it's long term. Long term. I'm settling in.

What did you do? Who'd you marry to deserve this? An engineer. Oh, yeah. We're not going anywhere, ain't. All right, Dorothy. Sorry about that. Maybe we can help you play in your getaway.

So what's up? I'm going to make sure your cars run it every day. That's right. That's right. I have a 1990-740 turbo Volvo wagon. Really? We bought used just over three years ago. So it was in great shape with about 114,000 miles on it.

Well, about a year ago, I was in an accident. incident and the car plowed across the front of my car and did about $5,000 in damage, which with Volvo's everything's expensive, so I guess I should... Oh yeah, $5,000. That's two headlights on a wiper blade. Exactly, exactly. That's just the headlight cover. So ever since then, we've noticed, at least we're blaming it on this, I've had an oil leak.

And it seemed kind of subtle, and it's gotten a little worse. And my husband checked some bolts, and he wants to put it on a lift and clean the engine to locate the leak. And our old mechanic in Harrisburg, who we trusted, where we moved from, told me that I'd probably need to do a black light process, which he doesn't do. Whoa, well, sounds psychedelic, dude. Just find the leak. But my husband said if it turns out to be a rear seal, it's going to be expensive and maybe not worth. for the age of our car. Oh, so he doesn't want to blacklight it because he doesn't want to know the results.

Right. Now, I feel like if it happened since the accident, then if it's the place who fixed its fault. You can forget about that strategy. I don't think the accident caused the oil leak. No? And if it did, you'd never prove it. No, you can forget about that completely. Unless the block is cracked, for example.

Right. But it's unlikely. But your husband is unnecessarily alarmed. Because he has in his mind the words rear main seal, which is the absolute worst possible place that the oil could be leaking from. But there are dozens, if not more, other places the oil could be leaking from, which are far more innocuous and less expensive to fix. Okay. Yeah. And there are a few places that are likely candidates.

The valve cover and cams seal was one place. The front seals, the crank and cam seals are another place. the rear main seal is yet a third place, except in most cases the rear main seal hardly ever leaks on volvos. Oh, really? Unless something called... They get smashed in the front.

Right, by an accident. Unless something called the flame trap is plugged. Flame trap. Yeah. So have them check the flame. And it may be just coincidental. At least that's what we always tell our customers when they complain.

You're not going to believe it, but this is purely coincidental. I'm going to go in there with my list and say, This is what clicking clacks says. Ask them to check the flame trap. If they're not familiar with volvos, they won't know what the flame trap is. Okay. But if that is plugged up,

it will cause any of the seals to leak, but first it causes the rear main seal to leak. And we've had instances where we've replaced a plugged flame trap, and the leak has gone to zero. Oh, really? Pray for the valve cover gasket. The valve cover gasket. Or the flame trap.

Or the flame trap. Thank you. See it, Dorothy. you. Bye. Bye-bye. 1-88-8-8-8-2-7-8-25-5. Hello, you're on car talk. Oh, good. I'm actually on. Listen, I did a bad, bad thing last week. Yeah. I did a bad thing. How bad? They set my truck on fire. Oh, that's why you haven't given us your name, huh? Is there still an open investigation? Did you do this purposely? No, no, it's not that bad. Oh, do you have an alias? My name is Ben. I'm calling from King Beach, California.

Hi, Ben. So what kind of a vehicle did you sit on fire, and why? Well, I said on fire, one of those modern marvels of American engineering called a GMCS-15 pickup. Uh-huh. And I was trying to get it started and determine what was not making it start. Yeah. So I sprayed some of that lovely etherized starter fluid. Starting fluid.

Ah, yes. You know, took off the air filter covers, sprayed some of that in there and tried to start it up, and it turns over just fine. So I figured the ignition system is working quite well. But I go around to the front of the car and there's flames inside this central port injection assembly. Yeah, oh, sure. So I'm blowing like crazy. I blow all the flames out. Then I noticed that something was burning and dripping off the back of this whole assembly. Oh.

Okay. You sprayed the stuff everywhere. I truly tried not. You have to be very careful with that stuff. It's flammable, man. So I ran into the house and grabbed my fire extinguisher. Good. Okay, and put this stuff out.

But there's dry chemical fire extinguisher everywhere. And I know, and I have the cover off, so it's going straight down into the fuel injection port. Right into the cylinders, exactly. So, you know, I vacuumed out as much as I could. Well, that was dangerous. Well, I'll explain why in a minute. Yeah. But I'm wondering, have I done any permanent damage to my engine by having some dry chemical fire extinguisher down inside it?

No. No, as a matter of fact, it's a little known fact that that's what they put in the catalytic converters to reduce the emissions. So if anything, if anything, you've reduced. No, you haven't heard a thing. Does it start? Well, yeah, to the tune of $400, I did actually have the fuel pump replaced. Ah, okay. Right.

So what you did is you introduced a small amount of ether to replace the larger amount of gasoline that the fuel pump wasn't supplying. Correct. And that's why it backfired through the internet. intake. Oh, it backfired? Yeah, that's what set the stuff on fire. Ah. That when the valves opened, the presence of the ether in there caused an explosion to take place in the intake plenum. And it shot back through the intake, and it was burning up your fuel injectors.

And the fire extinguisher chemicals won't do it any harm. I shouldn't, like, go out and get it out of there. I can't tell you how many times we have had to spray those same chemicals on cars in our shop. I mean, it happens. It's an occupational hazard. Cars catch fire. And what choice do you have? You can either let the thing burn or you can introduce strange chemicals. And they're not harmful to the engine.

But vacuuming them could have been harmful. And needless to say, they will inhibit the combustion process as they get sucked in because that's what they do. But they will just get pushed right out the tailpipe. I cleaned it out. Change the air filter. But here's the danger. When you were vacuuming that thing, which is the throttle ball. you ran the risk of sucking gasoline and or ether vapors into the vacuum cleaner.

And when you do that, and those vapors come in contact with the electric motor of the vacuum cleaner, because the air gets exhausted through the motor, and that's what cools the motor down, you could explode the motor. You could have exploded your car in your vacuum cleaner on the same day, Ben. Well, you would have looked real stupid. That would have been quite spectacular. It's one of those plastic, fresh jobs you see on television. Yeah, you don't want to vacuum flammable things.

That's okay. I vacuumed it the next day. Well, that saved you. Good. That saved you. It's a good thing, yeah. Yeah, luck is good, isn't it? Luck works.

It's a fine thing. Yeah, well, now you're all set and drive it and don't worry about a thing. You haven't heard anything. All right. Good luck. All right, thanks, guys. See, Ben. Bye bye.

Well, it's happened again. You've squanded at another perfectly good hour listening to Car Talk. Our esteemed producer is Doug the subway fugitive, not a slave to fashion, punkin-lips, Berman. Our associate producers are frau, Catherine Fenalosa.

Thank you. And Louis Cronin, the barbarian. Our engineer is Dennis, take my dictation, please, Foley. Our senior web lackey is Doug the old gray mayor, and our technical, spiritual, and menu advisor is John Bugsie, free lunch lawler.

And everyone is here today. Wow, what a, what a gathering. Not that any of them helped us with the show, but they're all here. Our public opinion pollster is Paul Murky of Merkey Research. He's here. Assisted by statistician Marge in Overham. She's here. Our customer care representative is Haywood Jabuzov.

Our director of new product repair is warranty my foot. And our shop foreman is Luke Busy. Our pseudonym consultant is Norm Deplum. The head of our division of threat assessment is U.N. What Army? Our director of luxury car horns is Tony Blair. And our staff divorce. attorney is Carmine not yours. Car mine not yours. And of course, our Russian chauffeur is

Pekoff and Dropoff. Our chief counsel from the law firm of Dewey Cheeveramman Howe is you Louis Dewey, known to the obstreperous storekeepers in Harvard Square as Ui Louis Dewey. Thanks so much for listening. We're clicking clack to Tabard Brothers. And above all, don't drive like my brother. Don't drive like my brother. We'll be back next week. Bye bye. the studio is Car Talk Plaza's chief mechanic, Mr. Vinnie Gumbachs. Vinnie? Thank you very much now. If you just want to copy of this here show, which is number 9.000, in fact, just pick up your phone and call this number 1888 car junk. And what if I wanted something else like a Car Talk T-shirt, a jacket? Would I call that same

number, Vin? No, you call Leonardo DiCaprio's hairstylist, you dope. Of course you call the same number. There ain't no other number. You called the Shameless Commerce Division at 8888-88-88 car junk. Or, of course, visit it online at the Car Talk session of Cars.com, you know? Thank you, Vinny. That was inspirational. Hey, inspirate this. Car Talk is a production of Dewey Cheatham and Howe and WBUR in Boston. And even though NPR President Kevin Close opens his office window and starts to climb

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