The Best of Car Talk - #2618: Who, What or How but Never All Three

Episode Date: March 3, 2026

Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle states that position and momentum cannot simultaneously be known. Click and Clack’s uncertainty principle is that they may be able to figure out ‘Why’ or ‘What’ and sometimes ‘How’ your car has broken down, but never all three at once(because that’s too much work).  Lots of uncertainty 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 Tapper Brothers, and we're broadcasting this week from the center for a more utopian. Is it proper to say more utopian? If you're perfect. Like more perfect.

be more perfect. More utopian society here at Cartwrights. Maybe it's more. Sir Thomas Moore, Utopian Society. Anyway, here's an idea that has been proposed to us by a listener named Eric Schaefer. We would add that he sent it by email, so he might not be proposing it. He might be stealing the idea from someone else. How would we know?

Why would we care? Why would we care? It doesn't matter. You can steal everything. This is America. Here's Eric's idea. Go ahead. Here it is.

And it's, it knocks your socks off when you hear it. Stupid people should have to wear a sign that says, I'm stupid. That way, you wouldn't rely on them, would you? I mean, you wouldn't ask them anything. It would be like, excuse me, oops, never mind. I didn't see your sign. It's like before my wife and I moved from Texas to California, our house was full of boxes and there was a U-Haul truck in our driveway.

My neighbor comes over and says, hey, moving? No, we just pack up our stuff once or twice a week, see how many boxes it takes. and then we put it back in the house. Here's your sign. A couple of months ago, I went fishing with a buddy of mine. We pulled his boat into the dock. I lifted up this big old stringer of bass,

and the idiot on the dock says, hey, y'all catch them fish? No, I talked them into giving up. Here's your sign. Last time I had a flat tire, I pulled into one of those side-of-the-road gas stations. The attendant walks out, looks at my truck, looks at me, and says,

tire go flat. I couldn't resist. said, nope, I was driving around and the other three just swelled up. I don't know what happened. Here's your sign. I'm stupid. It's so simple. Yeah. Well, I would, however, have to wear one. Yeah. I think. Yeah. I mean, and how would you select people? Would they have to be like nominated or it's just a self-selection thing? No, I think everyone's given a supply of signs. And you just hang them on people. Just like Eric, and you hand them out. And if someone hands you one, you got to wear it for at least a month.

Yeah, if someone hands you one, it obviously means you need it. Right. And you could... It might be just temporary fleeting stupidity. It might be, but usually it isn't, is it? No. No, not usually. That's a lifetime.

Well, in your case... In my case, it has. Anyway, if you have any life-altering ideas that you want to share with us, or you just want to talk to us about your car or anything else, our number is 8888-car talk. That's 8-882-2-7. 782-5-5. Hello, you're on Car Talk.

Hello, this is Ben from Northwood, New Hampshire. Ben! Have you got a cop problem? Here, where's my sign? Where'd you say you're from? Northwood, New Hampshire. Northwood? Northwood.

That sounds like it's way, way up in the north woods. It's actually not that far north at all. Oh. It's kind of towards mid-New Hampshire, around Concord and Portsmouth. Oh. Did they give a sign to the guy who knows? name this one. Yeah.

Okay. All right, we're ready. So what's up, Ben, baby? Well, it's kind of a argument that I'm having with my girlfriend. Should never argue with your girlfriend. I know, but I can't let this one go. You can't, huh? Well, it's about, I have a 1979 rabbit diesel.

Because of these cold mornings that we have in New Hampshire, I'm forced to plug my car in, so it's easier to start in the morning. Right. And then I start up, let the heat take about. an hour to warm the car up. So you just let the thing idle in the driveway? Yeah. And while you're shaving or having breakfast or whatever you do in the morning.

Yeah. Okay. Well, because of the new wind chill factor, my girlfriend thinks that I need to start my car up earlier because she believes the car is aware of the windchill factor. And I'm not buying this at all. I just need your help. Please tell me that the car does not know what windchill factor is because that would terrify me.

Well, it depends on whether or not your car has feelings. Yeah, VWs, they don't have feelings because they're made in Germany. Fiatts, on the other hand, are very sensitive to windchill. Very emotional. Very sensitive to windchill factor. Fiat's, Alf Romeo, stuff like that. Any car made in Mexico, for example, would be susceptible to windchill effects. I see. But, you know, those Teutonic countries like Germany and Germany and, you know, like Germany.

Sweden, too. Well, the Swedes, I'm not so sure. I don't know about that. But Germany, no. Not to my prejudice. They're tough. Not to that prejudice. Well, I mean, how are we going to handle this, Ben?

Delicately. I mean, you don't want to offend your girlfriend. On the other hand, you could give her a sign. I could give her a sign. She could give me the boot, yeah. Yeah, I mean, of course you're right, because Windchill is specifically how does it feel

so that when it's zero degrees and the wind is blowing at 40 miles an hour it feels like it's minus 30 degrees not the real temperature of zero right if only because the cold air can penetrate your bronco nor Gersky long underwear more readily when it's blowing

at 30 miles an hour than when there's no wind and that does have a very minor effect on the car and that minor effect is this if you park the car everything is going to cool off much faster. So you stop the engine and everything in there is hundreds of degrees. For example, just the coolant is 250 degrees or something.

And within a very short time, it's going to be zero if the temperature outside is zero. And that short time is going to be shorter if the wind is blowing. But once it gets to zero, the wind can keep blowing and it ain't going to get any colder for the car. Wonderful. So now the question is, are you going to tell her this and make her feel stupid? Well, that is a... It's always a problem, isn't it? I mean, we people who are so much smarter than everybody else,

we have the problem of wanting to tell them. And when we do, we don't make any friends. No. Right? I mean, I've learned. I mean, trust me, I've suffered this through my entire life. Oh, yes. That's why he has to tie a pork chop around his neck to get the dog to play with him.

I mean, I got a brother who's... Just between you and me, Ben, he's a couple of sandwiches short of a whole picnic. Oh, we have another brother? I didn't even know. He's your son. I don't know what to do, Ben. I mean, you can just basically kiss his girlfriend goodbye, literally, if you want to tell her this. I might suggest that it would be helpful for a third party to introduce the correct answer to this.

While you even, in fact, try to support her position and you say, Oh, geez. I guess you are right. I guess wind chill doesn't really affect internal combustion engines. But get out of my house anyway. Right. See you, Ben. And get out of my house.

You got it, Ben. Bye, bye, bye. Thanks for going. Ben, you're absolutely right. And get out of my... That's about it. 1-8-8-8-8-8. So many wives have done that.

8-2. What's the number? 8-2. 278-255. Something like that. Yeah, that's right. Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hi, my name is Sonia.

I'm calling from Seattle. With an I or a Y? With a J. I knew that. A J. Sonia. Like in Sonia Henny's Tutu. Something like that.

Yeah, Sonia. What's your ethnic background? Ethnic background? Okay, I'm part Puerto Rican, part Norwegian, and part Scottish as far as I know. I love it. Puerto Rican, Norwegian? Isn't that awesome? Wow!

We don't want to ask you how that happened. Somewhere there was a sailor in that group. Where are you from, Sonia? Seattle. Seattle. Sailor. Never mind. Never mind.

Well, Seattle. Seattle. Oh, shit. That's right. Okay. So what can we do? And it's right near Norway and Puerto Rico. Exactly.

So, Sonia, what's up? Okay. Well, I have an 84-sodd-900 turbo. And recently, it left axle just broke. I mean, it just started choking and then stopped. And I think it's CV joint actually fell under the ground. Yeah, that happens. That happens.

By the way, before we answer your question, I have to tell you a short little story. Is it an inval a sailor? It involves a sob. One of our guys at the garage, Howie, who pretty much only works on Japanese cars or extraterrestrial vehicles. It happened if you'd be assigned to replace a water pump on a, if you're not. In fact, it was an 84 sob, 900. And he's looking at the thing. And, of course, you may not realize it,

but the engine in this vehicle is in backwards. In other words, the front of the crankshaft that runs all of the accessories, like the water pump, the air conditioner, da-da-da-da-da-da, is closest to the driver. And that the business end of the crankshaft, that is the part that ultimately goes into the transmission, is farthest from the driver.

And I guess not having worked on sobs very much, he looks at this thing, and he says, they must have come up with this design during those six months of darkness and Sweden and I can just see it now they put the engine in Nels! The engines in backwards!

We can make it work! You'll have to make the most of it now. Yeah, you betcha! It is definitely confusing, Kai. It is interesting. Air filter, and it took me, you know, probably about an hour or half just to find it.

Yeah. Well, when the engine's in backwards, then all bets are off. Yeah, who knows what can happen. The stuff could be any place. Right. But anyway, that's the CV joint broke. The axle fell out into the street. You'd stop dead, of course. Right. But anyway, I had it towed to the shop and they fixed it and I got it back a couple days later. And I noticed a few changes. I noticed it was a lot easier to shift. But turning the ignition on suddenly became incredibly difficult, like to where it would hurt my finger and stress the key.

Yeah. And the headlights used to turn on and off with the ignition. But now they just stay on even if I turn them off. You know, a week or so ago, a woman called us, and she had been to the dealership and complained about some symptom. The dealer basically told her that she was nuts and sent her away. And I got all in a tizzy saying, why do dealers do this? Why did they tell women?

And it's mostly women. Why do they tell them that they're crazy when they, when, Something is actually happening. Oh, they did do that. And now I know. You're crazy, Sonia. None of this could possibly have happened. Was the vehicle was towed?

Yeah, it was towed. Ah. Oh, is that, do I have something? Yeah. Yeah, I think something got disturbed in the towing. I think you may have even something as simple as a broken motor mount, or maybe somehow or the shift linkage got disturbed. Oh, I see.

Yeah. And my vote is for a broken motor mount. I mean, everything that you've suggested sort of leans toward the engine and transmission somehow getting out of whack, literally, physically out of whack. And that's also why the lights won't go off because you're not turning the key all the way off. Oh, okay. Take it back to them before you break the key off because then it's going to cost you no money. Oh, then you have to jump the car. Oh, that's a pain.

And you're going to have to use a lot of tact and diplomacy to do this. See if they can move, turn the engine around and have it faced the right way. That's more of most of your problem, I think. See you, Sonia. Okay, thank you. Good luck. Bye. Bye.

Hey, I get to ask you this question this week. Do you remember last week's puzzler? Yes, it was about fishes and triplicate. Very good. I mean, do you know the answer? Of course I do. Would you be willing to share it with your sweet older brother? I don't know the answer.

I'm dead, pist and puss. This message comes from Wise. the app for international people using money around the globe. You can send, spend, and receive in up to 40 currencies with only a few simple taps. Be smart, get wise. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. Tees and Cs apply. 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 discuss cars, car repair, and the answer to last week's very, very good. Puzzler. I didn't make it up. No, this was top drawer, man. I like it. I like it. Here it is.

Three guys go out fishing, and they decide they're going to split whatever catch there is. This is in a boat. They're deep sea fishing. They collect a bunch of fish. They throw them on the deck. And they decide they're going to divvy up everything the next morning. So they pull into the dock. They sit there and they have a few beers and they sleep over the night away in the boat.

However, in the middle of the night, one of the guys has severe cramps and decides he's not going to stay the night. He's going to go home and he wants some peptobismol. So he says, I'll take my third. He goes onto the deck. He counts the fish and says, not divisible by three. He throws one of the fish overboard, takes his third, and he leaves.

An hour later, one of the other guys wakes up and realizes that he's got to be up real early tomorrow morning to go to a meeting. He can't stay on the boat all night. He says, I'll take my third, and I'll go home. So he counts the fish. He says, oops, not divisible by three. He throws one fish overboard, takes his third,

and leaves. The other guy wakes up 7 o'clock in the morning. He doesn't know the other two guys have gone, but he decides, well, it's time to leave. He looks at the fish. He looks constant, throws one overboard and says, here's my third, and he leaves also. And no fish are left, except the two-thirds.

No, the fish to the left, he's figuring he's leaving the other guys, their two-thirds. A third apiece. Yeah. Got it. So everyone did the same thing. And the question simply was,

what is the smallest number? the fewest number of fish by which this could happen, that each guy does the same thing and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and now what? I know I give the answer? Just as simple as that? Well, I mean, you could do it simply by trial and error,

just keep trying numbers. The original little equation, which was in the book that I read, and I can't remember where I got this puzzle because I lost the book. But I did remember the equation, and it was very simple. It was said y equals two thirds, parentheses, x minus one. So that y is what you end up with.

X is what you start with. And you keep plugging in numbers for X, what you start with, until you can solve that equation three times without running into non-integers. And that doesn't happen until you get to 25. Wow.

So they caught 25 fish. They caught 25 fish. The first guy tosses one overboard because you can't divide 25 by 3. That's 24. He takes his third, which is 8. That leaves 16 fish. The next guy comes, he can't divide 16 by 3.

Trows on overboard. There's 15. I can see it's beginning to play out, right? He takes 5. That leaves 10 fish. The third guy shows up in the morning. There's 10 fish. He thinks he's dividing it again into threes.

He can't divide it by 3. He throws one fish overboard, takes his 3, leaving. Six fish on the deck. To rot. To rot. And attract flies. And attract flies. And God knows what kind of evil vermin.

But the answer is that they caught 25 fish. Who's our winner, Ramey? Our winner this week. Is this some kind of a sneaky plot to get me to do more work? We tried. It's hopeless. Our winner this week is Constantine Rousseau from Arlington, Virginia. And for having his correct.

answer selected at random from among all the correct answers, Constantine will get a $25 gift certificate to the Car Talk Shameless Commerce Division with which he can pick up a Car Talk baseball hat. Mm-hmm. Whoopee. Don't forget, spring training is right around the corner, and it's going on right now. It is? The baseball season is right around the corner, and you don't want to burn your noggin while you're sitting in the bleachers, do you?

No, I want one of those Car-Tock baseball hats, man. 25 bucks? Well, no. You can get a couple of them for 25 bucks. You can't you? You get one in a third. One in an extra visor. Hey, do you happen to know what time it is?

Time to give up wrong answers for Lent? No, no, that's not a bad idea, though. It's time to play Stump the Chumps! This is the part of the show where we check in on a previous caller and find out whether our answer gave him courage, solace, spiritual inspiration, or just ajar. So who's our supplicant this week? It's Eddie from New Hampshire. Fast Eddie from the land of Live Free or Die.

Oh, then Die Young. That's him. It says here Eddie had a Ford. Oh, it must have been a pickup truck, right? It's mandatory in New Hampshire. Of course. I mean, everyone in New Hampshire has a pickup truck. And it wouldn't start.

And after a succession of rapid fire penetrating questions, we were able to ascertain that the truck had an automatic transmission. Now, that's detective work, huh? Oh, yeah, Dick Tracy. So we narrowed it down to a couple of possible culprits. energized. Because it's either, in this case, the neutral safety switch or the ignition switch itself. But if I get power to the solenoid, to that thin wire, that means it's not the ignition switch. And it's not the neutral safety switch. And in that case, it's the solenoid.

It's the solenoid. Yeah, the solid only costs seven bucks. You might as well try one of those first. All right, maybe I'll. Or if you really trust yourself, you can bypass the neutral safety switch. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Very dangerous thing to do. But in New Hampshire, you'll find anyone to do that for it. I shouldn't have said that. That was cruel and unwarranted. It wasn't unwarranted, but it was cruel. You see, Eddie. Funny, no one ever uses the expression kind and unwarranted, do they? So let's find out how we did. Eddie, are you there? I'm here. Look at Eddie, before we find out whether our advice was cruel and unwarranted or just unwarranted, we need to verify that the answer you're about to give here and stump the chumps has not been influenced

our staff, the staff of National Public Radio, or the Society for the Provincial of Cruelty to New Hampshireites. Is that true? That is absolutely true. All right. So, were we on the right track with the neutral safety switching the solenoid? What do you think? As we say in Woodshop, you hit the nail right on the head. Oh, my. So really? I replaced the salenoid, and since then, boom. Did it cost you seven bucks? A little bit more, $17.4. Really? Well, that's the import taxes. Oh, New Hampshire right.

No taxes. This isn't Massachusetts? No, the taxes are added on before the products get to New Hampshire. Oh, is that what that was? Yeah, you guys think you're not paying taxes, but you really are. That's seven bucks here in Massachusetts. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Hey, thanks for playing stumped chumps, Eddie. Okay, guys. Nice talking with you. Take it easy. All right. And we'd like to remind our other listeners that if you're happening here, someone on the show that you'd like us to bring back for this little stumped chumps portion of the show, email us with your suggestion from the cartalk section of

cars.com. Or give us a call here at 888 Car Talk, and maybe you can stump the chumps right now. It's not that hard, you know. Anyway, can do it. Anyway, the number is 88, 82, 27, 855. Hike! Hello, you're on car talk. I love it.

What was it, 88, 82, 27, 82, 55. That's it. Hike. How can it be? That's 10 digits. Yeah. Seven and three is ten. Sonia.

Honey's Tutu. Hello, who's this? Hello, this is Marge Davis. Hi, Marge. Hi, I'm from Long Beach, California. Long Beach. Oh, and we have a sunny day out here today. Oh, rub it in, will you, Marge?

You've got a lot of rain lately, right? But as you can, when I start talking, you'll know where I'm from. Oh. I have a problem with my car. My car. You must be from Massachusetts. Right. Originally from Lynn.

Lynn, Lynn, so how to be? you wind up in Long Beach? Well, I left Lynn and went to the Philippines and then came back to Long Beach, California. Oh, were you, we were, like, a shoe buyer for a Melda Marcos? No. No, I didn't. We were at Super Bay. Oh, ah.

CIA. CIA. Yeah. Yeah. She's a spy. And on the way back, you said, why should I go all right to Lynn where it's cold? Right. You'd stay right here, hon?

Yeah. So what's your problem, Margie, baby? Oh, okay. Well, I got a problem. Yeah. Okay. I have a car. My car is an 88 Grand Marquis Mercury. Mm-hmm. I notice every once in a smell I get a smell of gasoline, and especially sometimes when I park it in the garage.

And I brought it to my mechanic, and they checked everything else, and it still went away. And he said that his son had sometimes had gotten gas someplace, and they could smell it. So anyways, I thought, well, maybe it's a gas. I don't know, but I still could smell it. Then occasionally, I've also not getting this good of gas mileage. And when you brought it into these mechanics, they looked for a gas leak and were unable to find one? Yeah, they couldn't find a gas leak. Now, I did get it filled up yesterday at a mobile gas station. I went out this morning, and I couldn't smell anything today.

So I don't know if it is the gas. It's not the gas. It's not the gas. No, all gas is the same. And you notice it mostly when you pull it into the garage. Yeah, it smells or even. Walter next morning and I still smell it. She sure sounds like you have a gas leak.

Yeah, I think so. I have to agree with my brother. You have a gas leak. And they didn't find it, but they have to look some more. Okay. Because you have a gas leak. Yeah, and I'm afraid of a fire. We had one time we had a car that caught on fire because it was a gas problem.

Sometimes that's a blessing in disguise. Here's what I suggest. I think the leak is probably coming from one of your injectors. Injectors? Yeah, you have eight fuel injectors in this car, I believe. Uh-huh. And they're going to have to sniff the injectors with their emissions tester, with the smog tester. Yeah, I've got a smog check, so that would, maybe that would pick up.

No, no, they're going to use the smog tester in an unusual way. Uh-huh. They're not going to stick it in the tailpipe. Okay. They're going to use that smog tester to check for the presence of unburned hydrocarbons. Which would this case would be gasoline, which is leaking out. Okay. I keep a piece of cardboard underneath my car.

Never find it that way. In the garage. Yeah, when the leak gets that big that you'll find it with the cardboard, the car will have caught on fire already. Oh, I don't want that to happen. No. Okay. Well, that sounds good.

Well, all right, I'll tell that to my mechanic and have him do a little more checking on it. Excellent. What kind of a dog, is that a German shepherd you have? No, that's a cock of spaniel. He has a German shepherd's bark. You're giving him the wrong dog food. Hey, good luck, March.

Okay, well, thank you very much. Thank you for calling. Bye, bye. All right, before we get to the new Puzzler, we're going to pause so my brother can beg me to take back responsibility for the Puzzler from now on. I have a newfound respect for you, my brother. Turns out that you're not quite the moron that I thought you were,

and how's that for begging? I guess that's about as good as it's going to get, huh? We'll be back in a minute. Ha, we're back listening to Car Talk with us, click and collect the Tapper Brothers. and we're here to discuss cars, car repair, and the new puzzler. I can hardly... Well, this is interesting.

On October 15, 1996, I received... This is a real day, sick. October 15, 1996. Well, hey, you're catching up. You're catching up, man. I received the following email. It says, despite your completely incomprehensible failure to use the last puzzler I submit, I'm giving you another chance.

by the way, I'm a cute little kid confined to a hospital bed with a wasting disease. The doctors don't hold out much hope of my surviving past the end of your show's current season. And my last wish is to have a puzzler used on Carhart. Oh, man. But don't let that influence you. Well, I didn't. I'm evidently not. On Tuesday, 18 January 2000, I received the following email.

Despite your completely incomprehensible failure to use the last puzzle I submitted. The exact same one. Same puzzler. Same puzzler. And the kid has survived. He survived, yeah. Yeah. Pretty good, huh?

Great. And maybe it was just a hope that you gave him, that someday you would read his puzzle. Well, in fact, it's... It's a considerable reservation that I use his puzzle. I know, because now if you use it, the kid will be dead in an hour. Maybe.

I mean, this has been keeping him alive. Every week, this is just, bummed it and used my puzzle. This is dangerous. I mean, you sure you want to do this? Well... You think he's lying, don't you? Yeah, I think he's a liable little snut. Well, let's hope so.

Here we go. You're ready? I'm just going to read his letter because I think it's, I forget, he had four years to revise it and he didn't. He didn't. So he must have thought it was pretty good. Yeah. On the hottest day of the summer, my mother was driving her decrepit 88 Toyota Corolla from New York City to Philadelphia with her significant other. They were going to a wedding and the bride had asked him to courier a shipment of gourmet, frozen sorbet-centipers from a little-known sorbet emporium in Queens.

Believe it or not, sorbet centipers are considered quite the thing at wedding receptions, at least in Philadelphia. At the emporium, they loaded a crate packed with sorbetesteads into the backseat of the car. The merchant warned them that they had three hours before the sorbet would begin to melt. Philadelphia is two hours away. Flushed with the urgency of their charge, they set out. Yeah. All went well until they ran into bumper-to-bumper traffic. Oh, man.

heading over the 59th Street Bridge. You knew it had to happen. Significant other began showing symptoms of cardiac distress. And Mum changed course to New York Hospital. Oh, man. The next thing she knew, a policeman was reviving her. She had lost consciousness and crashed into a guardrail, but was miraculously uninjured.

She recovered sufficiently to drive significant other to the hospital. A full cardiac workup showed no medical problem. The Sorbet must go through, so they set out again, having lost an hour. Now they're in trouble. Significant had a few more rough moments as they passed through the Lincoln Tunnel, but he seemed to have recovered on the Jersey Turnpike. The story has a happy ending. They made it to the wedding with moments to spare and without further incident.

The Sorbet was a smashing success. Wait a minute. What could the question possibly be? Go ahead. Go ahead. Keep going. No, keep going. I'm done.

You're done? I'm done. Is there a question? I don't know. A full cardiac workup showed no medical problem. The question is, what happened? They load the sorbet. They get into hot day.

It's hot, hot day! They have to hurry. They have to rush to Philadelphia. The guy says, you got three hours. They know Philadelphia's two hours away. Yeah. They're on. They're crossing the 59th Street Bridge.

The old man. starts to show symptoms of a heart attack. Yeah. She changes course for New York Hospital. Yeah. The next thing she knows, a cop is reviving her. Her! Her!

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! She takes them to the hospital, because she's concerned.

Damn, the sorbets. Yeah, for a moment, at least. For a moment. When they found out he's all right. Back in the car. Back in the car. Back in the car, the sorbays must go on. Okay.

So you just devulsed that it really, her significant other was actually, a person. We didn't know that before. I did. Didn't I? Well, the question is, what happened? Now, if you think you know the answer, write it on the back of a $20 bill or a stale croissant 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, the number is 1-888 car talk. That's 888227825. Hello, you're on Car Talk. This is Amy from San Francisco. Amy, how you been?

Good. How are you? I've been waiting to hear from you. Well, good. I've been waiting to... What kind of a Honda do you have? What kind of Honda? No, wrong, huh? No, I don't have a Honda. Oh, all right. I just had Honda feelings there.

Oh, and my mom sells Hondas. Maybe that's how you got the... Oh, that's it. Oh, that'll do it. Okay. I'm calling actually about a 1992 geoprism with about 135,000. miles on it. And it's got this weird thing where if you drive it for any length of time, like over half an hour, and then stop it, it won't start back up again. But then if you leave it alone for an hour, or sometimes two hours, depending on how long I was driving it, it starts right back up, no problem. It usually starts back up right after I've called the tow truck, actually. It's wasted away to me to call the tow truck, and then as soon as they get there, it starts right back up,

and they look at me like I'm a total fool who doesn't know how to turn on the car. Mm-hmm. So you could almost make this do it. So, for example, if you wanted to demonstrate this to your mechanic, you could drive the car for an hour. And make sure you ended up at the shop. Right, and pull into his shop

and shut the thing off and demonstrate to him that it didn't restart. Well, we could do that if it wasn't so. It's deliberately thwarting us from trying to figure out what it is. Like one time my husband did exactly that. He had an hour and a half drive, and he drove, He drove right to the gas station where the mechanic is stopped when I talked to the guy

went back out, tried to turn it back on, started right back up then drove the three blocks back to our house turned off the car and just out of curiosity turned it back on wouldn't start up. Well, either you or your husband has to become the detective here because otherwise this is going to drive you to the loony bin. Well, it's really, it's a hassle.

We can't ever drive any place where we're not going to be there more than an hour or two hours. Yeah, well, maybe it's the car's way of dictating your social life. Yeah, because we're going out too much. This is either a fuel problem or a spark problem. Fuel or spark.

Yeah. Or oxygen. And I don't think the car is suffering from lack of oxygen, so it's going to be fuel or spark. And the way to determine easily is to, the way to go about this easily, is to test the spark first.

And the easiest way to do this is to take it to your mechanic and have them show you how to determine when, the engine has spark. Okay. When the ignition system is creating spark. And you can do it very simply with a screwdriver on the car like this.

It requires opening the hood and pulling off a spark-plug wire, but it's not hard to do. Okay, we can figure it out. But you're going to figure out, and you're going to say to him, one of two things, either when it doesn't start, it has great spark or it has no spark. Okay. And if it has no spark, then he's going to go ahead and replace the coil in the igniter. and if it does have good spark, then he's going to begin to look at the fuel system. But at least he'll know that the ignition system is okay

and have eliminated many costly pieces. Okay. And he's not going to replace. But my vote, if I had to guess here, I'd say, Coil. I'd say it's the coil or the igniter. I'm with you, ma'am. But why does it happen only after we've been driving for a while?

Oh, we can't answer that. I mean, why? We're having enough trouble with what? We'd have to kill you then, Amy. Come on. You can't ask all these questions. Why and what? You want what?

You want why? Come on. Next thing you'll be asking us how. We don't even know how. Oh, who? No, when the coil heats up, it's often the case that when the engine is shut off, that the built-up heat will prevent the coil from working. The same thing happens with ignitors.

And the heat actually, the underwood temperature goes higher when you've turned the key off. for a short period of time. Okay. Because you've stopped moving the car and the heat that the engine has built up is liberated to these parts. And then once they get hard enough to create what's called an open circuit,

they won't work. And then you let the thing cool off for a while and boom, it starts up and it runs perfectly. Yeah. And if you check for spark and you get no spark, that'll tell the mechanic that one of those two things has done this.

Okay. And that's the answer to what? the answer to why we'll have to wait for our next book. Okay. See you, Amy. Great. Thanks a lot. Right. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. Well, it's happened again. You've squandered 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 Frowellin, Furnalosa. And Louis Cronin, the Barbarian. Our engineer is Dennis DeNus Folley, our senior way black. He is Doug the old gray mayor,

and our technical, spiritual, and menu advisor is John Bugsy, free lunch, luller. Our public opinion pollster is Paul Murky of Merkey Research, assisted, of course, by statistician Marge and Overa. Marge in Overa. Our customer care representative is Haywood Jabuzov. Our director of new product repair is warranty my foot. Our official spokesperson is Lou Scanan, and our shop foreman is Luke Busy. Our pseudonym consultants.

We've got some great people. Norm De Plum, 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. And our Russian chauffeur is Bikoff and Broppoff. Our chief counsel from the law firm of Dewey Chittenden Howe is you, Lewis Dewey, known to the sidewalk snowboarders in Harvard Square as Ui Louie Louie. Thanks so much for listening. We're clicking clack to Tappert Brothers, and above all, don't drive like my brother. And above all, don't drive like my brother.

We'll be back next week. Bye-bye. And now it's a special treat because we have here in the studio, Kartalk Plaza's chief mechanic, Mr. Vinny Gumbats. Hey, thank you very much. Now, look, if you've worn a copy of this year's show,

which is number 10, just pick up your phone and call this number 1-88-car junk. Hey, Vinny, what if I wanted something else like maybe a Car Talk CD, a baseball hat? What do I call that same number, Vin, Vin, No, you call Bajigaloo, Bajalup, Bajalup and Pascuali. Attorneys at law, you dope.

Of course, you call the same number. There's only one number. You're called the Shameless Commerce Division at 888 car junk or visit it online at the Car Talk section of Cars.com. Thank you, Vin. You stayed right on message today. Hey, message to this radio boy. Car Talk is a production of Dewey Cheever and Howe and WBUR in Boston. though Sylvia Pujoli launches one of her news department issue tear gas casters in our general direction.

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