The Best of Car Talk - #2642: Overtightening Our Belts

Episode Date: May 26, 2026

Stacy had her car’s belts tightened recently and more recently the car went up in flames. Coincidence or Causal? Find out on this episode of the Best of Car Talk.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

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 Damning by Faint Praise Department here at Car Talk Plaza. We have in the past mentioned that car people are the most hated of anyone. Right. And there I was sitting in my office the other day, and I came across this little article, which I... Actually, what that, it means when we say that car deals... are the most hated. It's actually a survey done of National Association of Attorneys General. Yes. And what they measure is the number of complaints against, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And it's always auto repair or auto dealers or somebody. Auto industry is right at the top. As we've always said, anyone remotely associated with the automotive industry, right there, bingo. Well, have we got news for you? We have not only dropped to number two. Automobile people have dropped to number three. Get out. And here's why.

Yeah. Don't break out the champagne yet. Don't break out the champagne yet. Number two is home repair and construction. Now, they've always been number one in my book. They've always been number one in my book, too. Number one, however, is interesting.

telecommunications. Not a surprise to me. Have you had a phone bill in the last five years that you've been able to understand? Well, I have a story about telecommunications. In my office, I have a phone. And I don't always pay my bills on time. Or answer it. Or answer the phone.

But I get this bill from AT&T, and I had it for a long time. I had AT&T as my, quote, long-distance carrier. And I didn't pay the bill. and I looked at it was $11.43. The following month, another bill comes. I didn't pay the first one, so it shows arrears $11.43. And then it says current charges, $11.43. And I say, what are the chances of that?

Exactly. So I look to see how maybe I made exactly the same phone calls to exactly the same people for exactly the same amount of time. It turns out I made. Well, it's true you did. I made no long distance phone calls. Right, exactly the same people, exactly the same amount of time. Exactly.

Zero. The $11.43 was a series of charges which allowed me if I wanted to to make long distance calls. They were charging me $11 a month for the privilege. For the privilege of making a long. The opportunity. Opportunity. Right. So I called them up and I said, what's this?

And they said, well, that's how it goes. And they said, what are you complaining about? You haven't paid us. And I said, well, wait a minute. Cancel it. So I canceled it. Yes. I don't get the bills anymore.

Oh. The question is, how long had I been paying $11.43 a month? Well, worse than that, I mean, you get all kinds of things that you can't understand. LDS charges. Builds by, I got a bill from cyberspace. So the good news. So the car guys have dropped down to three only because the other guys are screwing everything up so badly. Even worse than Congress.

I mean, that's pretty bad. And the building boom is responsible, really, for the complaints against the building industry. Everyone's putting additions on or building houses and finding out, because as you thin out the ranks of the good guys, you automatically attract the sleaze balls into the business, and then the complaints start to mount. Yeah, so it's no surprise. But rest assured, when the economy slows, the auto industry will be back in the number one position. Come on, guys. You're not doing your part.

Right, where it belongs. You can beat the telecommunications and the building repair guys. And I know that. I know we can do it. We'll have to redouble our efforts, but we can get back to number one, guys, if we all pulled together. Well, if you'd like to complain about any particular profession. Yeah, like radio. Like anything.

Yeah. My name is Stacy. I'm calling from Boston. Hi, Stacey. Stacey. Boston, Massachusetts? Yeah, just across the river. Yeah, real Boston?

Well, Roslindale. Roslindale. Okay, that's close enough. Yeah, it's part of Boston. Roslindale is like next to JP, isn't it? Yes. Yeah, otherwise known as Jamaica Plain. But we don't have bookstores or decent coffee yet.

Oh, no? No. Roslindale is where you have to move if you can't afford the rents in Jamaica Plain anymore. Or Cambridge. Oh, oh. Cambridge. I mean, you've long moved out of Cambridge. We couldn't afford rents there for a long time. Right.

No, we do our show from a van now. So anyway, Stacey, what's the nature of your call to us? Okay. Well, I had a 92 Saturn SL2, and I really loved the Saturn. Had very few problems with it. But one day I went out to use the car, turned the key, and the battery light came on, and the steering didn't work. So a friend of mine, one of my neighbors came out, looked at it. the engine, and he figured out pretty quickly that the belt had just fallen off.

There you go. So I brought it into pep boys, and they replaced the belt. It took them a few hours. But when they were done, the mechanic mentioned to me that, you know, he had a really difficult time. The belts were a bit too tight, but he finally got one on. And that sounded kind of hinky to me, so I asked somebody, but he assured me that everything would be fine with it.

So we left there at about 3.30, and as we were driving home, me and my 10-year-old son, We could smell this burning rubber smell coming through the vents. So we closed the vents, roll down the windows. Good. We got into the driveway, and there was some smoke coming out from my hood, and I'm eight months pregnant. I didn't really want to be smelling the fume, so I went to knock on a neighbor's door to let him open it,

so he could smell the fumes. Good idea. Yeah. But by the time he opened it, my engine was on fire, and flames were shooting out of the... The headlights. Oh, great. Cool.

Yet the neighborhood kids thought it was pretty cool. I was very farmed out about it. Well, when the fire department, the police came, it was a total, and they took care of it. It doesn't take long. They suggested that I called pet boys back, and when I did call pet boys about it to let them know what happened. Let me guess. They wouldn't answer the phone. Oh, it just needs three days to get a hold of the manager.

Nothing we could have done. have caused this? Oh, no. And if I was, since I'm not a certified mechanic, I'm in no place to say that there's any connection between the two. So since you guys actually are mechanics, what else could have caused this if not the belt? And is it entirely outside the realm of probability that that belt would have caused the fire? No, yes, yes, and no. I forgot the question. Okay, that's it, Stacey. That's a wrap. That's what I

Well, there are many things that couldn't cause an engine to burst into flame. Mm-hmm. Not the least of which is a belt that's too tight. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Which he already admitted to you. Right. And his is creating so much heat that it may be able to, I've never seen it happen,

but it may have created enough extra heat to set the belt on fire, which could easily have set other things under the hood on fire. As you might expect, there are a lot of other combined. bustables there. I will tell you that we have had trouble in the past putting belts on Saturn's. We have trouble getting the right size belt. And it seems that whenever we order a belt for a Saturn, it's too short. And we've put a couple on, but we no longer buy the aftermarket belts for Saturn's. When we need a belt for Saturn, it's called a serpentine belt. It's one long belt that runs everything. we get them from the dealer.

Oh, okay. Did the forensics guys look at this thing yet? Because let's say, for example, the belt was all frayed. Yeah. I mean, they might be able to figure out. And the insurance companies are pretty good at this stuff. I mean, every time Uncle Leo, for example, has torched the car, they always catch them. So they're good at finding out of the origins of fires.

Absolutely. Okay. They will certainly go after Pep Boys. Well, they may or may not. Because it's more trouble than it's worth. I mean, the insurance companies, let's face it, are they on this list of people who are hated? Let me see.

The top 10 are telecommunications, home repair, auto sales, mail order, telemarketing, and it's not insurance. It should be. They're on my top 10. They're on my top 10 because every possible time that I've had to deal with insurance companies, their practices, I have to say, in my humble opinion, are sleazy. Questionable at best. They're questionable at best.

And so, I mean, it might well be that for a few thousand bucks, I mean, what are they going to pay you? It's a 92 Saturn. It's worth $3,000. I actually did end up with $3,000. There you go. But I guess that leads me to my secondary question. Yeah. Since your car scope recommended that I get a duster and that's just not acceptable to me.

The caroscope is great, isn't it? Yeah. He's a little updating, but it's... No, no, no. It tells you what that's what you want. That's what you need. That's it. Just because you can't find one doesn't mean the keroscope is not responsible for that.

Okay. And from this point out, should I stick with independent mechanics? I don't know what to say about that. I mean, the fact that Pepp Boys hasn't responded to you and admitted anything, that's not nice. I mean, if they are competent to put a belt in or even incompetent to put a belt in, they should also know that it's possible that what they did caused the damn fire. and you know that they know that. And at the very least, they should have offered to look at it.

Exactly. I mean, the fact that they're avoiding you kind of bothers me. Assigns culpability to them in my mind right off the bat. It's troubling. So, I mean, I think you deserve to go back to them. And if nothing else, report them to the Attorney General. Get the auto people back up to number one on the list of hated people in the world. Because they owe you something.

Okay, I'll give them a call. See you, Stacey. Thanks a lot. Bye bye. Bye-bye. Boy, I'm glad we didn't put that belt on. Okay, Tommy, look, it's time once again to search your soul. Do you remember anything about last week's puzzler?

Let me see. I see genetically modified crops. I see gastric eruptions and rubber checks. No, that was Bugsie's birthday back. Taco Bell. We'll hurry back. Hi, we're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us.

Clark the Tappert brothers, and we're here to discuss cars, car repair, and the answer to last week's puzzler. I'm still not into the mode of answering the puzzler questions. It seems like the puzzle has been on vacation for so long. I'm not into the mode that it's back. Really? That's why I can't remember the puzzle. If it went away, you wouldn't miss it.

I wouldn't miss it. I don't think anybody would miss it. Well, if you remember from last week, this was sort of an anthropological, geological, algebraic, and above all, obfuscational. Oh, yeah? I think so. I don't remember any about anything about it. This was from the Blind them with Footwork Collection.

Yeah? Those are the best. Yeah. Those are good. Yeah, this wasn't really cricket, but hey, tough. In the little Asian country of Tuvaniska, there are two small towns separated by a mountain. And we'll call the towns Abba and Baba. And the preferred footwear in both of these little towns is the combat boot.

Now, Abba has a population of 20,000. You need a pencil for this. Oh, I remember this, yeah. They have 20,000 and one feet, one foot. So of the 20,000 people in Abba, 1% have only one foot. Yeah. So 1% wear only what? One boot.

One boot. Of the remaining population, half of them wear no boots. And the rest wear two boots, like you would expect. Yeah. In Baba, on the other side of the mountain, 20% of the people have one foot. Mm-hmm. Of the remaining people, half wear no boots and half wear two boots. 20,000 boots are worn in Baba.

So what's the population of Baba? I have no idea. I can just guess. Go ahead. Zero. How could it be zero? Who's wearing the boots? I don't know.

Maybe he visits. Well, it's not, it's not zero. Let's go to Abba for a second. Yeah, we go to Abba. Okay, 1% of the population was one booted. Half of the remaining population wears no boots. Yeah. Right.

Right. And obviously the other half of the remaining population where's the conventional two boots. Two boots. Okay. And if you go, and if you figure that out, you'll find out that there are 20,000 boots worn in Aba. Oh. Okay. And it turns out that it doesn't make any difference.

What percentage of the population has one leg? No kidding. And so when you go to Baba, even though 20% of the population has one foot, because they have one foot, that's also equivalent to being like half the population. Of course. Is it not? Of course. So every person that has one boot is just like the other part of the population where half of the people, we're no-were-n't.

So the average is that half the people wear a boot. Therefore, one boot per person comes out to 20,000. So if there are 20,000 boots worn in Baba, the population must be 20,000 or zero. Well, that's very, that was. Well, it was, I was, that was obfuscated. That was beautiful. Yeah, it was very simple math, but I had, I had to blind you with the footwork. Well, you had to because it alluded me.

If I, for example, if I asked you, what's, what's half of 20,000 multiplied by two? You would have known the answer right off. I would have known the answer. Yeah, okay. Do we have a winner? You bet we have a winner. The winner is Deborah Garcia from Tuxan, Arizona. I think it's Tucson, but I'm not sure.

No, I call it Tuxin. Okay. I like it. And for having her answers selected at random from among all the correct answers that we got, DeBrick Deborah Garcia from Tucson, Arizona. We'll get a $25 gift certificate to the store at the car talk section of Cars. And with that $25 gift certificate, what could she do? She can purchase one and nine-sixteenth car talk puzzler books, for example.

Well, we'd just rip out the pages and give her the rest. By the way, you don't have to win a gift certificate to get any of the totally useless items we occasionally mention. Flog, I think, is the right word. On the show, you can always visit the store at the Car Talk section of Cars.com for information. Or you can call 888 card junk. That was shameless commerce what you just did. That was advertising. This is NPR.

You can't advertise for people to go and buy junk. It's a public service. Right. Sure. It was a public service announcement. I'm having Bob Edwards do it next week. You'll see it'll sound a lot better. All right.

Hey, do you know what time it is? Time to order a fleece body suit for the MGB? No. It's time to play Stump the Chops. We haven't done this for a while, but this is the part of the show where we tracked down a previous caller, and we find out whether the advice we gave was down to earth, down to business. Or down three-quarts. So who's our lucky contestant this week?

As always, we don't know in advance, but the notes here say it's Deborah from Washington. Do you remember Deborah needed to do I? Not really, no. Well, it says here, Deborah had a GMC Sierra pickup truck that she thought was haunted. Huh? It made a strange sound. even after she turned off the car. Here's the call.

It's an automatic, so I put it in park, and I turn it off. I take the key out, and it knocks again. And it'll be knocking while I'm walking away from it. Did you get any sense of where it might have been coming from then? It sounds like it's coming from inside the glove compartment. So I opened that up, and it's not, I think it's under the glove compartment. And, you know, is there a fan or something in there? If you want there to be, you're going to arrange it.

You know, in this business, the customer is always right. So what did we? I don't remember. What do we tell her? Well, we weave. We waffled. You had an excellent suggestion. You said that with the power antenna.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But that in great Deborah said there wasn't any power antenna. And I zeroed in on the fan, and you did me one better and suggested it was a twig caught in the fan. And I think that's where we left off. I don't like any of those answers. I have a new feeling about it. Do I get to give my new feeling about it? Sure.

I think that she's going to say we're wrong. She does have a power antenna. No, she doesn't have a power antenna, but I think one of the doors in her heating system is boom, boom, boom, boom. Well, let's see. Deborah. Hello? Yeah. Look, before we find out whether that twig was lodged in your fan or larger than my brother's brain,

we need to verify that the answer you're about to give here, and stumped chumps has not been influenced by our staff, the staff of National Public Radio, or the folks at seances are us. No. Okay. What's happening? What was it? It wasn't the fan, was it?

Well, no. But did it have to do with any of those vent doors? To give you guys credit, when you hit on the twigs and all that, it wasn't the twigs. But it was a really good clue for my mechanic. Really? Yeah, it turned out to be the actuator. That's it. That's it. It's the door. And I didn't even know what that was.

In fact, for the longest time, I kept the part because I couldn't remember what he told me that it was. Right, and this is the actuator that opens up the doors on the ventilation system. So my brother is right. Wow. Yeah. Cool. So now the noise is gone. And now you have nothing to, you have no topics of conversation. No, actually, it's been a great story because I was on car talk.

What can I say? Deborah, thank you so much for playing Stump the Chops. Thank you very much. Thanks again. Bye-bye. Right after these messages, you'll hear more calls and a new puzzler coming right up. We're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack the Tappert Brothers,

and we're here to discuss cars, car repair, and the new, what did I say? Algebraic Baseball Puzzler you said I did Actually you said it the other way A base From the baseball

Algebraic series Oh I did Of puzzlers Oh but that was rather brazen of me I was rather brazen I've been On tenter hooks What is a tenter hook

And why would I want to be on one You wouldn't want one On your geese around there Here it is Yeah Now that the baseball season Is in its waning days I'm going to use this.

And I've used many baseball puzzles in the past. Yes. You might guess I'm a baseball fan. Yeah. There were two rookie players who started the season on opening day and made a wager as to which one would have the best batting average at the end of the season. And they're both standing there. It's the last game of the season. And not much is going to change that last day, especially considering neither one of them is in the starting lineup.

And they're one of them. watching the other players take batting practice. And we'll call these guys, for the lack of something better, Bluto and Popeye. Got it. So, Bluto says, hey, Popeye, what did you bat for the first half of the year? And Popeye says, bat at 250. And Bluto says, well, I got you there. I bet it 300. And he says, how about after the All-Star break? What'd you do then? Proudly, Popeye pipes up or Pipeye pops up and says, I bet at 375.

Wow. He says, pretty good, but I batted 400. Fork over the 20 bucks that we bet. So there are several questions here. So let me get these numbers down. Oh, you do? I got, it depends. They got Bluto and Popeye.

So for the first up to the All-Star break, Bluto bats 300. Yeah. And Popeye bats 250. 250. Yeah. After the All-Star break, Yeah.

Bluto bats 400. Yeah. Popeye bats 375. And you're going to tell us that Popeye wins the bet. No. The Bat boy, Dougie, Sont is over and says, don't pay the 20 bucks, Popeye.

I think you won. How could that be? Whoa! And how many times did they hit him with the bat? And why is someone that batted 375 not playing in the last game of the season? That's what I want to know. Injuries. By the way, I want to add this.

It might help or it might not help. They both had the same number of at-bats for the season. Go figure. Now, if you think you know the answer, you would send that answer on a postcard or sew it to the bottom of a tempurpedic Swedish foam memory mattress. and pillow. And pillow, yeah. Actually, we'll take just a pillow.

And send it to Puzzler Tower, two pillows. Car Talk Plaza, Box 3,500, Harvard Square, Cambridge. Our Fair City. Matt, 02238. Or you can email your answer from the Car Talk section of Cars.com. 1-888-8-288-2-7-8-25. Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hi, this is Tom calling from Half Moon Bay.

Is that Tom, T-A-U-G-H-M? You can spell it like that, I guess. I've never done it that way. Half-moon Bay. Half-moon Bay, California. Oh, it's, uh, really? It's in Northern California? Yeah, we're about half an hour south of San Francisco, just north of Santa Cruz.

Oh, it's a half-an-hour moon bay, half-an-hour South Moon Bay. Okay, got it. What's up, Tom? Okay, I've got an 81-2-wheel drive Toyota pickup. up. The problem is, it's hard to describe, but basically, whenever I get up to a certain speed at a certain RPM, she starts to misfire and sputter, and she gives the old kind of pat, pet, pet, and sometimes even backfires. It's usually in fourth gear, somewhere around 55 miles an hour, give or take, five miles an hour. And the other weird thing is it usually only does it when I'm going uphill,

particularly on this one hill on Highway 1 as I'm coming up out of Pacifica going into San Francisco. It always does it in the exact same spot at the exact same RPM at the exact same speed in fourth gear. But in fourth gear. Usually in fourth gear, if I downshift into third gear, even if I'm going 55 miles an hour, it won't do it. I mean, it runs a little rough, but it doesn't cut out like that. It doesn't do it in the flats. It doesn't do it downhill unless I... I really accelerate hard.

Or sometimes even if I'm accelerating and then I just engage the clutch, I'll get kind of a backfire. Yeah. This is a classic case of RFI. Radio frequency interference. Is there a microwave tower near your truck? Let me write that down. RFI. Well, actually, it sounds like a classic case of bad secondary.

ignition. Secondary ignition. The secondary ignition in your car is all those components responsible for taking the 20 or 30,000 volt spark and getting them from the distributor to the spark plugs. And any one of those pieces could be at fault. For example, you could have a bad coil. You could have a bad coil wire. You could have a spark plug wires. You could have a bad plugs. Bad distributor cap. I've replaced the thing. I've done in my own half-baked diagnosis in last eight months when it started happening. Are all those things we just mentioned? Well, no, I actually haven't done the coil, but I've set the timing.

I've replaced the plugs, the wires, the distributor cap, the fuel filter. I've even replaced the vacuum advance. And none of that has worked, although I haven't done anything to the coil. Well, the coil is actually pretty easy to test, but you need an o-meter. Okay. And if you have that in the book, which I'm sure you have. Oh, I've got the book. You've got the book, all right.

So you'll find out a spec for testing the coil, and you may find out it's bad. The other possibility, this is an 81, but it has electronic ignition. Okay. I believe, and it has something called an igniter. Okay. But since you haven't changed the coil, it seems that you've changed everything else. Uh-huh. You may want to just change it.

It's probably 30 or 40 bucks. Uh-huh. Yes, but for 30 or 40 bucks, you can buy an old meter. And then buy the coil. Then buy the coil. And then you'd have an o-meter. I can buy the o-meter, and then it'll tell me to buy the coil. Don't forget everything that you do is an excuse to buy another tool.

Problem is whenever I buy a tool, usually just gets me into more trouble than I have. Oh, yeah. But you want a nice digital volt-o-meter. Okay. You can get one for about, oh, cheap, a short-buck. Very short-shod. What are you talking about? I bought one in Radio Shack just recently for about $20.

bucks. Doesn't work, though. It's perfect. Yeah? Oh, it's awesome. $200 is about what the car is worked. No, $20. $20.20. $20.00. Radio Shack. I can give you the model number. You want to? I'll take it. Or just buy the coil. It's probably that. But by the Volto media, you can do all kinds of things with it. Oh, yeah.

Okay. What else can I do with it? The instructions are in the book. You can try that whether or not you have 110 volts coming in your house. Of course, it'll cook the meter, but you'll know once a for all. No, it won't. This little cheap meter will operate up to like 500 volts AC. No, that's worth $20. No toolbox

should be without one. Yeah. Okay. And it is the coil. See you, Tom. Okay, thanks a lot. Good luck. Good luck. Yeah. Oh, God. One eight, this can get any easier. You think after 25 years, we have, no. One-eight-eight-eight-eight-eight-car talk.

Well, you know, actually, there's an interesting thing going on. The questions are getting easier. The cars are getting too complicated. No, we're getting stupider. Oh, that too. Because don't forget, people don't have complicated questions anymore because either the car is hopeless or

if there's something that's reasonable, they call us. And so the questions have become, I think, simpler. I always thought the struggle was the best part of this anyway. Because if the questions got easier, we were as smart as we were 20 years ago. Well, the show will be over 10 minutes.

The show would be over in 10 minutes. We'd be zapping off answers. Okay, go check that. That's that. We'd be all We used to do that. 1-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-2-7-8-25-5. A lawyer on Car Talk. This is Aaron from Kalamazoo, Michigan. Erin, E-R-I-N?

Yes, thank you. spelled it right. So what's going on? Well, I'm calling because I have a 1986 Volvo-760 turbo wagon. Yeah. And I'm having a problem with this lovely sound that is coming from the car when I break. It doesn't happen all the time. It doesn't seem to be affected by the temperature, whether or not it's rainy, and it doesn't matter how much pressure I put on the brakes. It is really loud. It's kind of a

high-pitched screaming sound. And I've had the brakes looked at and the calipers and everything checks out, and my mechanic can't figure out where this sound is coming from. I have a hint. You do. Yeah. Coming from the brakes. Yeah, I knew that, too. You say your mechanic, who is not a Volvo mechanic? No. Right.

No. And but I have asked people at the dealership, and they always say, well, it's your brake pads. Right, and they're 100% correct. And the brake pads are in perfect condition because I had my brakes taken apart. When did that happen? I think it was probably about two. two months ago? While the Volvo dealer is right, it is your brake pads.

Okay. And there doesn't have to be anything wrong with the brake pads, and so far as, you know, breaking, whether they're worn out or whether they stop or don't stop the car to make the noise. Right. Because what's wrong with them is they have the wrong composition. Okay. Break pads, modern pads, are made out of a lot of different things. And Volvo has spent tens of thousands of dollars of research money.

finding brakes that didn't make noise. You may remember, maybe even when you first got the car, that your brakes may have made noise all the time. Volvo brakes were notorious for making noise. For some reason, Volvo had a bigger problem than anybody else, and I don't understand why. Every Volvo that came into our shop, the brakes made noise, and every Volvo the left our shop, the brakes made noise.

And then we finally started using, in desperation, the factory pads with these Teflon-coated shims that come with them, which probably didn't come with the pairs that your neighborhood mechanic put on, and this special paste that goes on both sides of the shim. And these all but eliminate the noise. And we don't have one Volvo out of a thousand now, which makes noise. I just want to warn you, Aaron, that if you say that you had the last break job done at a Volvo dealer, we're hanging up.

We're going to hang up. I'm never going to speak to it again. No, I didn't have the last break job done with a Volvo dealer. Yeah. I would take it back to this fellow who did the breakwork and ask him to buy the genuine Volvo pads, which will come with the shims and the paste. Okay. Hopefully that'll stop the noise.

It will absolutely stop it dead in its tracks. Give it a shot. Good. See, Erin. Great. Thanks. Thanks for your call. Bye-bye. Well, it's happened again.

You've eviscerated another perfectly good hour listening to Car Talk. Our esteemed producer is Doug the subway fugitive, not a slave to fashion Berman. our associate producers are Louis Cronin the Barbarian and David, you're going to love it on the Cape Green. Our engineer is Tad Shrimp Curry. Our senior wear blacky is Doug the old gray mayor and our technical spiritual and menu advisors just back from his startling upset.

At the 400 meter eat and run in Sydney is John Bugsy Lawler. Our public opinion pollster is Paul Murky of Merkey Research, assisted by statistician Marginalvera. Our customer care representative is Haywood Jabuzov. Our director of new product repair is warranty my foot. Our shop former is Luke Busy. Our new truck reviewer is Zibignu Rig. And our director of Firestone Tire recalls, of course, is Ivana Michelin.

Our pseudonym consultant is Norm De Plum. Our divorce attorney is Carmine, not yours. Our staff copy editor is Adeline Moore. Our appointment adeline more. Good, good. Our appointment secretary is still early. Our Russian chauffeur is peak off and drop off the banker and cartels. Talk Plaza poker games is Nikolai Putin, and our seat cushion tester is Mike Easter.

Our chief counsel from the law firm of Dewey Cheatham & Howe is U. Louis Dewey, known to the Virgil quoting Street People in Harvard Square as Ui Louis Dewee. Thanks so much for listening. We're clicking and clack to Tappert Brothers and don't drive like my brother. And don't drive like my brother. We'll be back next week. Bye-bye. Car Talk is a production of Dewey Cheatham & Howe and WBUR in Boston.

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