The Best of Car Talk - #2620: Hubby's Fuelishness

Episode Date: March 10, 2026

Whitney lives in the New Hampshire mountains with her cheapskate hubby who insists on driving the cars bone dry before refueling them. And while this practice does bring a little extra excitement to a quick drive to town, is it bad for the car? Find out 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 Tappertit Brothers, and we're broadcasting this week from the New Products Division here at Car Talk Plaza. And once again, someone has beaten us to a million-dollar idea. I mean, why didn't we think of this first? We get in the mail a little spray bottle.

Yeah. It says reduce road rage. Yeah. On the bottle and all kinds of printed propaganda along with it. I'll read to the propaganda. Yeah, go ahead because... Reduce road rage and all natural herbal vitamin spray that is safe and effective. This special formula promotes calmness to reduce stress without losing alertness, which helps

reduce road rage. So when you have that feeling that you've got to kill somebody. You pop the little top off of this thing and you spray one spray in your mouth. Now I was reading the thing, it has some interesting ingredients. It has St. John's Warts

of a chloroform. It has Siberian husky or Siberian ginseng. It has Rocky Balboa and Essence of Dinglebe. I mean, there's all the important ingredients. And it's great stuff.

And I'm going to keep this handy. So if Tommy starts ranting during the show, I'll be able to give him a shot. Actually, I was working on a similar product. You were. Well, yes. Not similar, really, quite different. Well, firearms involved. Close.

It's a spray. You spray it in the face of the guy. It has the same effect. You immediately feel better. The trouble with this stuff is that the person who's responsible, for the road rage is the person who has to take it. He's the one who's going nuts. This requires that you recognize that you are a raging type.

And they don't. I mean, they don't know. What they need is something like the automatic dope slap. I mean, how do you know? For example, do you think you're the road rage type? No, I'm not. Well, there you go. Here's a sign.

Now, this stuff is made by a company called Creative Health and Spirit Product. Guess where they are? Got to be in Southern California. And guess exactly where? Lassianca Boulevard. No, Manhattan Beach. Yeah. Well, yeah, that's a good place for them.

That's, I've been to Manhattan Beach? Yes. They're all there. Dimitri used to live in Manhattan Beach. I'll go talk to them. If you want to talk to us about your car or road rage or anything else, the number to call is 1-888-car-talk. That's 8-8-8-8-8-8-8-8. 227, 8255. If you want to talk to Avogadro, his number is 1.022 times 10 to the 23rd.

Hello, you're on car talk. Hi, Carrie. Hi, Kerry. K-E-R-R-R-R. Don't tell us how to spell it. Just tell us where you're from. Okay, I'm from Columbus, Ohio. K-E-R-R-Y. Close. I. K-E-R-R-I. Oh, you moved from California. You weren't born in Columbus, Ohio, with a name like K-E-R-R-I.

You're right. I was born in Kansas City, Missouri. Now, that doesn't work either. Anyway, what's up, Kerry? Well, I have a 97 Subaru Impraza Outback Sport. My brakes are making sort of a grinding noise. It sounds like metal-to-metal grinding when I first apply the brakes, even on a small incline. Like, yeah, I mean, it really, it sounds like metal-to-metal, like I need my brake pads change. But you don't.

You've had them checked, and they've assured you that they're okay. Exactly. told me there was dust in there and that I was, you know, just being nutty and that there was no problem at all. And so, you know, I didn't believe them. I thought they were nutty. And so I went ahead and had the brake pads replaced and had them change to semi-metallic rather than metallic.

So these pads that you put on were not from Subaru. Right. All right. And so you thought that because you were reducing the metal content of the brakes that you would reduce the metal on metal sound would go away. So it should be about half, right? Yeah, exactly. They're what, semi-metallic?

Is it? Makes sense to me. Yeah, is it about half? Yeah, it's about half. No, actually, it didn't change at all. Didn't change at all? No. Well, first of all, I wouldn't worry about it because you know that there's nothing wrong with the brake pads.

Obviously, there was nothing wrong with the ones you took out. Right. And you can choose to try to live with the noise. Wait, wait, so if that's true, we go back a few steps, the guys at the shop thought she was crazy. She thought they were crazy. So we've just assured her that it was her that was crazy. Well, I was trying to break it to it gently. Yeah. Okay.

So just wanted to make the point clear. Well, you're not crazy. I mean, you're hearing the noise, but I think you were crazy to have changed the brake pads. For no reason. For no reason. And the truth is that some cars just do this. And you can, there are certain chemicals that you can actually immerse the pads in that can cut down this noise. But it's only temporary. And we have some cars where we've never been able to get rid of it. And it's especially bad if the car sits for a day or two. Right, well, you know, it seems to happen more often when I first pulled the car out of the garage. And what's really peculiar, I think, is that I have a friend who has a 99 of the exact same car,

and her brakes make the exact same noise. Well, I just initially thought, you know, that one day I was going to be headed down a hill and go careening into someone's front door. No, that's not going to happen. Okay, well, then the brakes will work perfectly fine. Okay. It has nothing to do. And so you can live with the noise, even if the paths were worn out,

the brakes would still work perfectly fine for a while. They work great. Metal on metal is great. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it beats a foot out the door for sure. It does beat a foot out the door. So don't worry about that. You're not going to go careening into someone's front living room.

And I would recommend that when you get in the car in the morning, the first thing you do after starting the engine is that you turn the radio on. Turn it up really loud. Turn it up really loud. For that first few minutes. If you listen to the stuff, my son listens to you, nuclear explosions could be going on around your car and you wouldn't hear them. Okay.

Well, that's good advice. Thank you very much. Say you, Kerry. Don't worry. Everything's fine. Be happy. All right with the world. Bye-bye. Thank you. 1-888-8-8-8-8-2-7-82-5, a lawyer on car talk. Yeah, I'm David. Seriously, I'm calling from Palatan, Virginia. Hi, David. Palatan? Palatan, as in Chief Palatan. Yeah. Yeah.

VA. Got it. Virginia. Yeah. What's up, David? Well, I got an 87 Dodge van, unfortunately. And as I drive it, I go through an area of swamp gas that happens inside the car. Softer stench, really bad smell. Well, if you go to Taco Bell every day, that's what will happen. Yes, it's not the food, luckily. I eat at home.

In my humble opinion, of course. But what kind of, is this a full-size van, like a ram van? It's a one-ton Dodge van 360 motor. So it's a B-350 or something? like that, right? Yeah, I think so. A 350 model, yeah. Okay, got it. And one guy told me it was the air pump because the bearings in the air pump are bad, and it's making a pretty bad sound there that it could be the air pump. So I get about 15 miles into the drive, and I reach for a respirator, which I use in my work, and I put that on in order to get where I'm going, it's that bad.

And it takes 15 miles before it happens, though. Yeah, it's about 14 or 15 miles in it. I don't know whether it's something to do with the temperature at that point. All of a sudden, it's not accepting the exhaust. And how long does it last? Once it kicks in, you're done. Have you tried changing brands of gasoline? Tried that. Has anyone tried anything else like replacing parts, like the catalytic converter?

Many people have told me it wouldn't run as good as it runs if the catalytic converter was bad. That's not true. Another, I went to a Dodge dealership, and he said, well, I got to put it on the the computer because it might be O2 sensors and it might be some sort of throttle thing that has to do with the choke. Well, it could be a lot of things. I mean, it could be a bad O2 sensor. It could be a bad coolant temp sensor, for example, that's changing the mixture and not accounting

for the fact that the engine's warmed up, so it's putting in too much fuel. Well, it's burning very, you know, black on the exhaust. That was my next question. Do you have black exhaust? The answer is yes. Yeah. Oh, really? But what happens when they put it on the emission tester?

Does it pass? Well, he says that it's getting too much gas. Well, here's what can happen. If, in fact, the carburetor is flooding out and there is, therefore, pouring in way too much gas. Too much gas. What that does is it cools down the combustion mixture. Okay.

So when the spark plugs explode the gasoline, it doesn't reach the optimum temperature. When that exhaust stream reaches the catalytic converter, it cools it off. and in doing so, it renders the catalytic converter unable to absorb the sulfur that is a byproduct of combustion. Yes, the absence of sulfur, yes. And then what it's doing is it's allowing oxygen that's present in that mixture

to combine with that sulfur, makes sulfur dioxide gas, which is what you smell. So there may be nothing wrong with the converter. It's merely malfunctioning because it's running too cool. It's overloaded. And it's overloaded with gas, but it's being cooled down by the very rich mixture. And what you need to do is correct that first.

So rebuilding the carburetor might be, you know, I've checked, and for $50, you can get a kit to rebuild the carburetor. Yeah, well, you can try rebuilding it, and it may work. Okay. It's 50 bucks worth of versus 500 bucks. Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm thinking. It's the word miracle on the rebuild kit. I mean, it might work, but it might not.

Yeah, I mean, what the thing is. The pieces that you need might not be in the rebuild. You won't have the, in fact, you won't have the advantage of testing the thing before you put it back on. Whereas when they rebuild the carburetor, they can actually... So I might still have to wear the respirator to drive it. You might. But they have a machine. They put the carburetor on and they flow test it, the good rebuilders.

And they see if, in fact, that if it's putting out the right fuel air mixture. And if it isn't, they reject it, and they go ahead and either discard it or rebuild it again. So if it's not the carburetor, then it could be catalytic? It could be cataclysmic. Yeah. By this point, you may have ruined the catalytic converter, and you may need both of them. Because of being so thick plugged up or something. Right.

Great. Yeah. Well, they're only about a grand. Well, then that's $5.50 plus a grand. We're doing good. Yeah, oh, yeah. And then price of gas makes it easy, too. But solve the rich running problem, and don't assume that it is the carburetor even necessarily. I mean, it could be something like a thermostat that's stuck in the open position.

So make sure you have somebody who really is going to check from square one. Okay. All right? All right. Well, thanks, guys. See you, David. Good luck, David. Good luck. See you later. Bye. Bye. Bye, bye.

We'll be right back with the answer to the puzzler right after these messages. 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. Wise. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. This message comes from NPR sponsor, SAP Concur. Atricure is a healthcare company that develops technologies to treat atrial fibrillation. Senior manager Latora Jackson shares how SAP Concur solutions help her team manage travel and meet their patient's needs.

Surgery is not always a nine to five scheduling appointment. So when something does change, very last minute, we have sales reps and employees traveling cross-country to meet those doctors' immediate needs because a patient may need emergency surgery the very same day, and they will be there. The efficiency and intuitiveness of the system and being able to utilize the concurred platform while on the go allows them to take care of their administrative responsibilities en route to literally a ER room. So that allows for them to continue to stay focused on our patients, but still maintain their responsibility for administrative needs.

Visit concur.com to learn more. Hi, we're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack the Tabbert Brothers, and we're here to talk about cars, car repair, and, duh, the answer to last week's puzzler. You ready? I can't remember it. I could barely remember it myself, but it was good. Picture this.

It's 1936. You're in your second year of high school. Europe is on the brink of yet another war. Second senior year. In a secret location in Germany, German officers are gathered around a table with the designers and builders of its new personnel carrier. They're going over every little detail and leaving no stone unturned. They want everything to be flawless.

One of the officers stands up and says, I have a question about the fan belt, about the longevity of the fan belt. You with me? They spoke English there? Oh, yeah. Just like in all the movies? I'm reading the subtitles. Just like an old movie.

I often wondered, how come they all spoke English? Well, it's so close to German, after all. Yeah, you just add an ish or anything to the end of everything. Anyway, this fan belt looks just like the belt around your waist. It's a flat piece of rubber, and it's designed to run around the fan and the generator. So he asks, how long do you expect the belt to last? The engineer says, 30 to 40,000 kilometers. The officer says, not good enough.

He said, how many months? Miles is that. The colonel says... That's why I never made any money in script writing. Yeah. The colonel says, not good enough. We needed to last at least 60K. The engineer says,

not a problem. It's just a question of taking off the belt and flipping it over, right? Turning it inside out. The officer says, that's unacceptable. Our soldiers will be engaged in battle. We can't ask them to change fan belts in the middle of the battlefield. Well, it's a good point.

That's right. I mean, come on. You can't tell the guys to stop shooting your fan belt's got to be replaced. Exactly. Hold your fire. So the engineers huddled together and they come up with a clever design change. And I think I mentioned they do not change the material of the belt in any way, yet they satisfy the new longevity requirement quite easily.

What did they do? And what they did was they manufactured the belt, the twist in it. Imagine if you took your own belt and joined the two ends together. So you'd have an inside of the belt and an outside. But imagine before joining them, if you gave one end a twist and made it into what's called a Mobius strip. Of course. Now it's going to go on both sides all the time. Exactly. And in essence, you've doubled the length of the belt. Oh, me. You've allowed it to run on the inside and the outside at the same time. Did Detroit know about this? Yes. They do? We don't have any Mobius strip fan belts on American cars?

Well, it's a little known fact that the fan belt lobby is very strong in this country. They don't want them to last twice as long. Of course not. Nor do we who replace belts. Yes, I know. Anyway, who's our winner, Tommy? Boy, are you going to be surprised? The winner is Liz Walsh from Lexington, Massachusetts.

Get out. Is it? What are the chances of that? Wow. And for having her correct answer, selected at random from all the right answers, Liz is going to get a gift certificate and she can blow $25 at Car Talk's Shameless Commerce Division on our website. And with $25, she can get about one and two-thirds car talk CDs. Not bad.

That's about all you could stand. I mean, actually, if they leave out the middle two-thirds there, you can play most of it. Don't worry, Liz. It'll be good. Anyway, we will have a new quasi-automotive puzzler coming up in the third half of today's show. So stay tuned for that. In the meantime, you can call us and ask questions about your car or anything else you would like.

The number is 1-888-8-8-8-28-8-2-57-8-255. A lawyer on car talk. Hi, this is Whitney calling from Holderness, New Hampshire. Holderness? Yep. Holderness. Holderness. It's right.

Next to colderness? It's right across the river from Plymouth, New Hampshire. Ah, that's good. That's where the pilgrims landed, right? Right. Plymouth Rock. Plymouth State College, actually. I knew that.

Yeah. Just give us a rough idea. How far north? It takes about an hour and a half to get to Boston on 93. Oh. Oh, it's close. Yeah, it's not bad at all. Yeah.

It's unfortunate. We've never heard of it. Really? Well, we're only kidding. We're boring. Yeah, I mean, we don't go killing animals, so why would we go to New Hampshire? So what's up, Whitney? Well, I actually, I'll tell you my problem.

I've got like a two-part question for you guys. Good, I love those. Yeah, and it's kind of a conflict with my husband type thing. I love those, too. Yeah, yeah. He, okay, we have a Jeep Cherokee Laredo, and that's like a 97, and we have a 97 Volvo 850 station wagon. and my husband has this thing with not filling. He likes to let the lights go on until he gets gas, you know?

Yeah. And for instance, I'll be like, well, I'm going to run down and pick up the pizza. I'll take the Volvo. We switch back and forth sometimes. I'll go, ooh, we're going to have to get some gas, you know. I'll get in the car and the light will go on, and I'll go back going. And I'll go back down and get some gas. I'm like, why do you let it go that far?

It's not good for the car. He thinks that I'm completely wrong. But my question is, like, isn't it bad for cars that are fuel injected if we run out of gas? It's not, no, it isn't bad to run out of gas. It's always bad to run out of gas in general. Yeah. Not because it's detrimental necessarily, but we are of the belief, however, that it is not good for the fuel pump, which in both of these cars resides inside the gas tank.

Right. to run with the tank close to empty because the fuel actually cools the pump. Let me close to empty. This is what he does. I'll get in the Jeep, and it's got one of those computer consoles, the top.

Miles to empty, it tells you. Yeah, right? So I'll get in it. We live two and a half miles up on top of this hill, thank God. And we get in the Jeep, and it'll say, okay, miles pull empty. Zero. All right?

And he'll look at me, and he'll be like, we can make it, honey. It's like that episode of Seinfeld. Yeah, it's like the holding hands. You know, as we coast into the gas station, woo! Has he ever explained to you why he does this? I don't know. Adventure?

I don't know. Is that it? I don't know. Is there not enough excitement in his life? We just had a baby in September. I think there would be. No, evidently not enough. You know, he clearly, there's no question.

This guy does not have enough excitement in his life. He needs to take a bungee jumping, splunkering. I mean, this guy needs to do, you got to get him help right away. You think? Yeah, the next thing you know, he's going to be calling you from Nepal. He's going to be studying yak husbandry. But if we're coasting down the hill on fumes quite often, is that bad for the environment? No.

It's not? No, no. That doesn't. The first part of your question, does it harm the engine? Yeah. No, it doesn't. Okay. It might harm the fuel pump.

That's my brother's theory, unsubstantiated by anybody. But it might be true. because we know he's a genius. I just have empirical evidence. And he owes me money. But the second thing, I mean, this is not very mature behavior. I know. Now, he needs help.

He needs help. He's crying out. My brother's right. Don't ignore him. I think it's something. Maybe we need a vacation. He needs more than a vacation. Maybe like parachuting.

There you go. Yeah. Yeah, he needs something. I don't know. He needs to work on like the bomb squad or something. He needs more excitement. What does he do for a living? He works for the Holderness School.

He's in development. Oh, not good enough. Oh, yeah. Well, he needs a little development himself. See, I would be careful here, Whitney, because how long have you been married? A little over three years. Yeah, I'd be careful because I think he's having a little bit of an adjustment problem. I can see it that he's yearning for his carefree days.

Well, I said to him the other day where someone won this big lottery thing, and I said, honey, I said, what would you do if you won the lottery? And he goes, you don't want to know. He goes, he goes, he wants to convertible Mustang with a 56 Mustang or something like that. Why are we not surprised? And I said, he goes, I said, you beat Helen and I, and you take off in this fast car, and he goes, hmm, no, I come back and get Alan. There you go.

Oh, man. Well, good luck. I hope you can nip this in the bud, but it's going to take something creative. I'll think of something. Fast. Thank you so much. See you, Whitney.

Bye, bye. Bye. We'll be right back with more calls and the new puzzle right after these important 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. We're back. You listen to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack the Tappert Brothers, and we're here to discuss cars, car repair, and other new puzzler. Yeah, okay. Oh, here it is.

A few weeks ago, Tommy calls me up one day at work, and he says, our sister Lucille is sick, and she needs some care. And he says, I'll make her some chicken soup if you will deliver it to her.

So after work, I show up at his house, and he's pouring chicken soup into this plastic container, and he's mumbling something about not being able to find the right cover for it. So we try a cover. It pops off. We put another cover on.

It pops off. And he says, well, do your best. I try to put tape on it. The tape won't stick to the plastic. And he says, be careful because you could make a mess with this thing. So I carefully carry it out to the car, my Colt Vista. And I, this is the automotive part. And I put it on the floor in the front, on the passenger side.

and with great trepidation, I pull away from the curb. You're with me so far? I'm with you, yeah. Worried that the slightest little abrupt stop or turn that's too sharp is going to spill this stuff all over the place. Yeah. Now, I realize, as I'm driving, that my house is between his house and her house, and I should stop off at home and, you know, maybe see the wife and kids and the hounds

and maybe have supper. You're married? Well, so. So, in fact, I do that. I stop at home. I go to the house. How you doing, hon? We hug and kiss.

Son and I hug and kiss exchange pleasantries. The dogs come and we pet the dogs. And I have supper. Yeah. And I sit in front of the TV and I fall asleep watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Hours later, I wake up remembering that my sister is probably at the front door, clawing at the door, waiting for the chicken soup. So at like midnight, I say,

oh, the soup. And you go back to sleep. I go back to sleep. I wake up and get at 1.30. Yeah. And I hurriedly grab a few old National Geographic magazines and some fruit that we were going to throw away. And I jump in the car and I drive to her house, which is several miles from my house. Yeah.

Never once concerned that I'm going to spill the soup. And in fact, I don't spill a drop of it. Although you were concerned when you left my house. I was very concerned. In fact, I drive like a maniac. Yeah. And it has nothing to do with the National Geographic magazines or the rotten fruit. Now, if you think you know the answer, which you probably.

The answer to what? What's the question? Why didn't this happen? Why wasn't I concerned? Why weren't you concerned? So that's the question. You know, sometimes we say things like send your answer on the back of a piece of overripe fruit or an old two-by-four. Yeah.

And people actually do it. Yeah. In fact, in the last couple of weeks, we've received correct answers on a half-eaten apple and a frosted pop tart slash roofing shingle. And given our success, I thought I'd try something a little different this week. So if you think you know the answer,

write it on a postcard or a 47-inch high-definition TV set. I mean, there's always one cuckoo that does it, right? Or two tickets to Honolulu. Yeah. That's next week. I like it. Excellent idea.

And send that answer to Puzzler Tower, car talk plaza, 3,500, Harvard Square, Cambridge. Our Fair City. Matt 02238. 47. Of course, you can email your answer from the Car Talk section of Cars.com. If you'd like to call us, the numbers, 1-888-88-227-8-25.

Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hi, this is Kim von Miller from Austin, Texas. Kim, from Austin. One of my favorite towns in the whole world. Oh, you guys are celebrities here. We are? are? Yeah. Yeah, would they put us up? So what's cooking? I called y'all

because nobody can answer my question. Ah, okay. There's absolutely nothing wrong with my car. Cool. Okay, well, thanks for calling, Kim. It's been a lot a lot of fun time. No, listen, you're going to laugh. Yeah. I have this curiosity that's eating me up. You drive down the road and you see these model letters on the cars.

Yeah. I have a 98 Mazda protege LX. But I've also seen a car that looks just like mine that's LF. And so I start looking, and I'm thinking, well, is my car nicer than the others, or is my car less? You know, it's an ascending order, a descending order, LX, X is way down the end of the alphabet, or is this maybe Roman numerals? I can't. It doesn't make sense.

Yeah. Can you answer my question? Well. Can you give me any specific information? We're going to try to help you as much as we can here, Kim. We wrote a newspaper column on this subject. It's very subject. For one thing.

And to be perfectly frank with you, I don't remember a thing that we said. Well, I don't remember that there was any specific rhyme or reason to it. Oh, we know that. You can't assume that one manufacturer's LS, if that means, for example, if the LS is the top of the line for your car, And you can't assume that if you go to a Toyota, that an LS is going to be the top of the line for their car. Of course. I mean, first of all, you have to realize that these letters mean absolutely nothing except what the manufacturer decides that they will mean. That was my theory.

And what they mean, for example, the LX subliminally suggests luxury. Got it? Yeah, we think that they're working on subliminal things completely with all of these letters. And it's obvious, for example, like the SX. We know what that means. Yeah. But more importantly, all of these letters are designed to trick and fool the buying public, which is what advertising people are very good at, in my humble opinion.

It's the only thing that they're good at in my humble opinion. It's making you think you're buying something that you ain't really buying. Yeah. Like, for example, you live in Austin TX. Now, is that good or bad? Right. I mean, we don't know. I mean, is that better than D.E?

No, or D.C. How about M.A.? How about F.L.? I mean, we don't know. There's no way to know. Yeah. Yeah. I think the deeper you go into the alphabet,

the more creature comforts you're getting. Yeah, but stay away from D.C. Whatever you do. What is D.C.? Evil. It's evil. Washington, D.C. Well, anyway, Kim, I'm sure the.

He helped you. And you have certainly raised another question worthy of a doctoral dissertation. Oh, well, thank you. So there's some kid in Northwestern right now who's dying to get a doctoral dissertation topic. See? He's in the marketing department. And you have just given him an idea that's going to get him through. Get him his doctorate so he can teach somewhere and perpetuate all this BS that is going around.

I don't be an interesting model. The BS. The BS. The BS. Well, guys, it's been fun. Thanks very much. See you later. Bye.

Okay, bye-bye. Bye-bye. 1-8-88-car talk. That's 888-288-2-2-5. Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hi, guys. This is Dennis in Louisville, Kentucky. With one end or two?

With two ends. Two ends. I don't have any ends in Louisville. Just horses and bourbon, basically. And not in that order. And what's happening, Dennis? Okay. My wife.

has a ninety five nathan althama and occasionally i like to try to do nice things uh... and wash it clean up the car the last two times i've done this over the course of the last six months lots of fallen off and cold i break the car

would you break the car i mean what are you used to wash it with like a stick i don't know but a friend said maybe it was too much fluoride in the water i don't know but here's what happens i'm back it out of my garage wash it in my driveway, crank it up, pull it back into the garage. The next morning she goes out to go to work, the car won't start. The car will do a...

Oh, that kind of breaking of the car. I got that. First time it happened, called AAA. They put it on a flat truck, and they hauled off to the Nissan dealership. We went back that evening, and the Nissan guy said, nothing wrong with this car, can't figure it out. Happened again a couple of weeks ago. Pull them, go out in the morning,

and nothing happens. I love it. So I say, there's something wrong with this car. I'm not going to take it back to the Nissan guys. I'm going to take it to my gas station. The guys know what's going on. Yeah, they know and love you. Exactly.

They tell me basically the same thing. They call me at work. They say, hey, car starts, what's wrong? I said, car didn't start this morning. They said, okay, let us work around on it. So they replaced the distributor rotor, fuel filter, and the spark plug. Good. Car started good for them when they started this.

Car started great for them when they finished this. Yeah. What am I doing wrong? Have you watched the car since then? I'm afraid to, guys. And my wife's not too picky about the dirt. Well, here's what's happening. Okay.

Do you close the garage door? Yeah, he does. Yes. Yes, you do. And we knew that. You are loading up the car with moisture. And then you are driving the wet car into the garage. into the garage and closing the door and leaving.

That's it. It's like taking an apple and sticking it in a plastic bag, a Ziploc. Okay. I got that vision. And what's going to happen is the water is going to, can't really leave the garage. And what it's doing is it's permeating, in my opinion, the faulty or worn-out spark plug wires that you have on this car. Which they didn't replace. We were listening carefully for that on the list.

They replaced the plug, but not the wire. Yeah, not the wires. and you are right at the time when you probably need wires. Five years old. And the reason that it started when the dealer got it is that the ride between your house and the dealership was enough to dry everything off. In fact, had you just opened the garage door or left the car outside after you washed it? It would have started the next day.

Yeah. So you got a choice here. You can either have the spark plug wires replaced or you can stop washing the car or You can wash the car and not put it in the garage or not shut off the engine. Leave the engine running while you're washing the car. You can put it in the garage and leave the door open or leave the engine running. You know, a lot of choices. A lot of choices.

A lot of things you can do. Okay, guys. But I'm going to suggest that if you don't change the wires, the first day it gets left outside in the rain. Uh-huh. It's not going to start either. Oh. You've got to replace the wires, your cheapscape. See you, Dennis.

I've already put $100. Okay. Thanks a lot, guys. Good luck, man. Bye. Bye. Well, it's happened again. You've vaporized.

You're at another hour listening to Car Talk. Our esteemed producer is Doug the subway fugitive, not a slave to fashion, punk and lips, Berman. Our associate producers, our frau, Catherine Fenolosa.

Thank you. And Louis Cronin, the Barbarian. Our engineer is Dennis de Menace Foley. Our senior web lackey is Doug the old gray mayor, and our technical, spiritual, and menu advisor is the bugster, John Bugsy,

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Our Chief Counsel from the Law Room of Dewey Cheyman How is Uly Lewis Dewey. Known to the Farrell Cats in Harvard Square as Ui Louie Dewey. Thanks so much for listening. We're clicking clack to Tappert Brothers. And above all, don't drive like Tommy. And don't drive like Ramey. We'll be back next week. Bye bye.

It is all a pleasure to have in the studio today. car talk plaza's chief mechanic, Mr. Vinnie Gumbach. Vinnie? Hey, thank you very much now. If you want a copy of this year show, which happens to be show number 13, you can get one on the web. Just head on over to the car talk section of www.

dot cars.com and click on the Shamous Commerce Division. And what if I wanted something else, like a Best of Car Talk CD? I mean, when I go to the same site, Vinnie? No, you go to www. www.flamenfarm animals.com, you'll do. Of course you go to the same site.

It's the shameless commerce division at the Car Talk section of Cars.com, or you'll order the old-fashioned way by calling 888 car junk. Thank you, Vinny. That was very revealing. Hey, I got the reveal right here. Car Talk is a production of Dewey Cheever and Howe and WBR in Boston. And even though the FCC chairman sends out an APB whatever he is, I'll say it. This is NPR, National Public Radio.

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