The Best of Car Talk - #2644: Who's the Bigger Slob?

Episode Date: June 2, 2026

Julianne called Click and Clack hoping to get a clue in hunting down a nasty smell somewhere in her car. Instead she ended up on the wrong end of a sweeping generalization regarding whether men or women are the bigger automotive slobs. Judgement rendered 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 Tappertr Brothers, and we're broadcasting this week from the When-In Rome department here at Car Talk Plaza. Yeah, in honor of Columbus Day. He was Italian, you know. And it was Columbus Day a few months ago. I thought it was from Ohio. Someone sent me this, and I realize now as I look at it, that we're going to get so much nasty mail from the Italian-American foundations of America.

No, it's all right to make fun of your own heritage. Yeah? Fine. Okay. Here it is. It's a list of... I mean, Yaakov Schmiernoff does it. He does it.

Who's he? I don't know. Is the Italian too? This is... You know you're Italian if. I like it already. You're 6 foot four. You can bench press 325 pounds.

You shave twice a day, but you still cry when your mother yells at you. You live in a 900-square-foot bungal, but still have two kitchens, one in the basement. In some capacity, there is a dump truck in your life. Hey, you never know. You netted more than $50,000 on your first communion. At some time in your life, you've called someone a mamalook. You've been hit with a wooden spoon or had a shoe through. at you.

And my personal favorite, a high school diploma and one year of community college has earned you the title of Professor Zoda among your aunts. Now, they're all going to send nasty letters saying, why should you be degrading your very own heritage? And the answer is, because it was funny. Well, you know, these were especially funny for us because every single one. It's true. Except for bench pressing 325 pounds.

I never got to more than 280. But mom always had the way with the wooden spoon. Oh, man? You'd be, she'd be at the stove, stirring something. And she'd tap the spoon on the edge of the pot. And you'd say something stupid. And you, no, you maybe didn't say anything. And all of a sudden, as you're turning away, you get the wooden spoon on the back side.

What was that all about? two weeks ago Thursday, you talked back to me. Well, hey. Well, anyway, if you have a question about... So, Professor Soto, what do you want to talk about? Anyway, if you happen to have a question about your car or your heritage, you can call us at 888-Cartalk. That's 888-227-8255.

Hello, you're on car talk. Good day, gentlemen. Hey. Dale from Florida. Hey, Dale. What part of Florida? Now, Clearwater, the Tampa Bay Area. Okay.

Yeah. The best part of Florida. Yeah. I have a 1994 GMC pickup, a half-ton pickup. Uh-huh. I've had it for two years. It's got high miles, miles on it. How much is high?

$150,000. About $97,000. All right. That's not bad. But she's starting to talk to me and moan and grown. And through a process of elimination, I have narrowed it down to the air condition. but I don't know specifically what's wrong with it. But if you'd like for me to describe,

I can actually give you the noise that it makes. First tell us under what conditions it makes the noise. When the air conditioning is running. Good. Yeah. Huh. Okay. And the noise that it makes is about a two to three minute interval. And it sounds like it's passing wind. Oh, really?

Yeah. Would you like me to describe the sound? Go right to it, man. Okay, here. All right, here we go. and it'll do this and I've had friends in my car saying Dale what are you going to do with this thing and I said I don't know

I'm either going to give it some fuel treatment or throw a bottle of kale picket down a pack. And no one says Dale stop that I have not taken it into a professional shop yet I thought I'd give you guys a whack at it first

where does it sound like the sound is coming from? It's either something close to the firewall or possibly, it's tough, it's really tough to hear it. Oh, sure. And it won't do it at all unless you're going at high speed. Right. Well, you can simulate high speed by opening, by turning the air conditioner on because

the air conditioner doesn't know whether the thing is moving or not. If you can bring the throttle up to 3,000 RPM in the shop, you can reproduce the noise in the shop. Okay. My first inclination is that it's the compressor clutch. that's failing. Well, I checked that, and there doesn't, there's plenty of clutch out there. All right, so we'll go back.

Plan B. I always have a plan B because plan A almost always fails. And plan B is that it's a vacuum leak in one of the controls. Uh-huh. And that's, I think, would make the passing wind sound. Yeah, it's wind. Wow. It is wind.

It is literally a wind sound. Literally win. I like this one. I like plan B. I do it's hell on dates, man, because they think I'm making noise, and I'm saying, look, it's my car. It's my truck. Right.

It's always tough to break into a song or something. When your first sense, the thing is starting to do it. Now, what would cause it to do it about every two to three minutes? There's some kind of a time frame in there in a pattern. Yeah, because the vacuum builds up and leaks. And something is leaking. And so you got this cycle going on of some vacuum building up and then leaking down, and at some point on the way up or down, it makes the noise.

There are things called vacuum motors, you know, which control the doors to direct, you know, the flow of air. And if one of those... Oh, talking to which I got, yeah, one of those, I don't know which one it is, but, man, that door slams hard. It sounds like a garage door slamming. Ah. Yeah, I do have that. That's the one. Yeah, you know, you should do call the show.

Chevrolet dealer or the GMC dealer, and see if they have a service bulletin on this. Okay. And they may be able to tell you exactly what the problem is. I'm sure you're not the only one who has this problem. And if it is one of these doors or vacuum motors, it's going to be relatively easy to fix. Okay. Good luck, Dale. Drive safely, brother.

Hey, thank you very much. You all have a good day. You too. Bye-bye. See you. 1-888-car talk. That's 888-227-8-25-Hello. Hello, you're on Car Talk.

Hi, this is Julianne. I'm calling from Dorchester, Massachusetts. Julianne, all one word. All one word. Yeah, so what's up? Well, I have a 95 geoprism. And my problem is this. I went away on vacation for the last week of August, and I came back, and I got in my car, and it smelled. And, you know, it smelled like rotten fruit, really sweet, kind of toxic.

And I actually assumed that maybe, you know, something fell out of my lunch bag, and I had some rotten fruit. Very, very likely. Well, but I can't find it and I've looked and I've torn it up and I've really determined there is no rotting free. Well, you can't find it now because it's vaporized. Maybe it's disappeared. I mean, I don't know how to say this without sounding... Stupid? Sexist.

Sexist. Yeah. Go for it, man. Regarding the interiors of cars, women are slabs. That's it. I said it. You said it. That's it. Yeah. Guys are not. Most guys are not. I mean, I've seen thousands upon thousands of cars over the years,

and at least from my small perspective. Yeah, well, it's not insignificant, though. Not insignificant. No. The numbers are such that it's not, there's no question about it. I mean, it's overwhelming that most women come in with empty or semi-empty yogurt containers stuck under the seats. All kinds of rotting fruit, 50 or 60 pairs of shoes thrown in the bag.

I mean, the shoes alone can give you a smell that you could never pinpoint. I could knock. So any of those things. Are you one of those people, Julian? First of all, my shoes don't smell. Is your car a mess? No, it's really not a mess. I mean, I have, like, papers and debris and stuff, but I try.

But nothing that could rot. Right, right, you know. How would you know, though? See, that's the problem. Well, but I've really torn it apart. And when I've sort of gone down on the floor of the car, the smell isn't, the smell doesn't come from the floor of the car. Really? Yeah.

And you checked the trunk. I checked the trunk. I did find a case of Clementines once in my nephew's trunk. And my son. Tommy said. He's had a whole case of Clementine. Joanna sent him off to college with, you know, a big care package of all kinds of foods. among them is a case of Clementines,

and Alex, of course, leaves them in the trunk for about five weeks. He comes home because his car is broken, and I open the trunk, oh, my God, was it disgusting? But it smells like, I mean, the only other thing that makes awful smells in a car, and I imagine this smell is awful, is mold. Mold, okay. Well, mold and decaying creatures. Yeah. And decay, I mean, I can't say that I'm an expert on the smell of decaying creatures,

but I wouldn't say that it is totally unlike decaying fruit. Depends on what they ate before they... I mean, they are basically, you know, carbon-based things, you know? Right. And it's possible that a little misi-mousy crawled into something, and maybe the reason you can't find him is he's sitting there, sitting, lying there with his paws up inside, the heater ducts.

Oh, because it really did seem like, you know, it was around the mid-level of the car, like maybe from the air ducts. Well, is it worse when you turn on the fan? I've tried to figure that out. Sometimes I think, yes. Yeah, it's just so bad all the time. Is it abated at all in recent weeks?

Yeah, but then it'll come back, and that's what I find out about it. It'll go away for a few days, and it'll come back. Well, I think you should take this car to a detailer. Okay. And see if, first of all, they recognize. the smell. Don't forget, they're well-versed in smells automotive. Okay.

And they may be able to tell you, oh, yeah, that's a dead mouse. And they can probably, I mean, eventually the mouse will just disappear. Okay. It will evaporate. Okay. At least the parts of it that remain won't smell. Okay. And you might be able to spray stuff into the ventilation system to, if nothing else,

overpower the smell. Okay. And my recommendation is always Lysol. Okay. Yeah. But there are many other things. I have a smell in one of my own cars. I let my brother drive for two days.

And I've been using, with some success, coffee. Coffee? Coffee. If you roast coffee beans, get them real hot so they're smoking. Okay. And being careful not to burn your seats or any other parts of the car, you put the hot beans in the car and you close the doors. Oh. And if nothing else, it will smell like coffee, which is preferable to what you've got.

I mean, that doesn't get rid of the smell, but it masks it. Okay. Yeah, good luck, Julian. Okay, thank you so much. There's always fire. Bye-bye. Thanks. Okay, Tommy, I have one and only one question for you.

Do you happen to remember last week's puzzler? Did it have to do with the International Monetary Fund, the Home Shopping Network, and Abdul's Falafel Emporium? No, that was your credit card bill for this. It had to do with my new CD player and the song Iko, Iko. Hi, we're back. You're listening to Car Talk. with us, click and clack the Tappit Brothers, and we're here to talk about cars, car repair,

and duh, the answer to last week's puzzler. And this came from the audio files. The audio X files. Some weeks ago, I was convinced by my son that we needed a new CD player for the house, even though the old one worked great. So we bought this new CD change, and I hooked it up to the sound system in my living room. Then I had to decide what to do with the old one. I was about to offer it to my brother for $200 when I realized that I could hook it up to my Bo's Wave radio in the kitchen. I have this terrific radio, but I was too cheap to buy the one with the CD player. Yeah. So I hook it up, and I put on my favorite song of the moment, which is Iko, Iko.

And I crank up the volume. Can you give us a little excerpt from it? How does it grow? Ico. Can I hear you say, Iko, Iko, Iko, Ako, Ako, Ako, Ako, Ako, Jacimo Fino, Anay. Jockimo, Finai, Ye. Anyway, I put the thing on, and it's skipping like mad. Being the master of diagnosis that I am, I begin to perform a series of tests.

I take my Tish Inohosa CD, and I put it in the old CD player. Works fine. Doesn't skip it all. Ha-ha, I say, the Iko-Iko CD must be junk. So I take it over to the new CD player. Good, good. Right, right? Yep.

I plunk it in the new CD CD. player, expect to get to skip like crazy, and it doesn't. Oh. So I take it back to the old CD player, and I perform a couple of technical adjustments. Yeah, right. Boom. Did they involve the back of your hand? On the palm of my hand.

I drop and I kick it. I figure, uh-huh. I put Iko, Iko in, and it skips all over the place. And I said, geez, there's got to be something wrong with my old CD player. I'm going to have to sell it to my brother after all. But there isn't anything wrong with it. How did moving the old CD player 50 feet from the living room to the kitchen disturb this thing and make it malfunction?

The answer is it did, but not in the way you'd think. Yeah. And the mistake I made was I didn't put it too close to the microwave or anything like that. I put the CD player down on the counter and I put the radio on top of it. And when you play a song that has a lot of bass, like Iko, Ico, boom, boom. Mm-hmm. The bass was making the thing shake and making the CD player skip. And when I played, you know, the melodious sounds of Tishinojosa.

Yeah. Of course, there was no big bass sound. No big bass sound. No vibration. She got no stinking bass in her music. Simple case of vibration. Simple case of vibration and the CD player. Because I spent the better part of four weeks figuring in the song.

That's another story. So who's our winner, man? Well, the winner is Michael Levine from Portland, Oregon, and for having his answer selected at random from along all the correct answers that we got, Michael's going to get a $25 gift certificate to the store at the cart talk section of cars.com. And with that $25 gift certificate,

he can put a sizable down payment on a trendy, trendy, long-sleeved denim car talk shirt. I happen to be weird. How do I look? Is that it? That is the very very very big. very shirt. How many $25 payments is that? Oh, many. Only seven payments of $25. Well, don't forget the shipping and handling. That's where we get them. That's what we get them. That's worth every

sense. But it is a wonderful... It happens to be a very nice shirt. Yeah. Oh, yeah. How did you get a free one? I went through mayor's things and stole it from his backpack. By the way, if you'd like information on any of the fashion challenged accessories mentioned on the show, you can always Always visit the store at the Car Talk section of Cars.com yourself, or you can call 8-8-8-car junk. Anyway, we'll have a new, I don't know how to describe this, but it is mathematical, logical in nature. Semi-quasi-not automotive. Non-automotive. Just say non-automotive.

Non-historic. Non-foloric. Non-foloric. Just, okay. We'll have a puzzle coming up in the third half of today's show. So don't slam your radio dial to off just yet. In the meantime, you can call us and ask us questions about your car. The number is 1-888-8-8-8-2-2-7-8-255.

Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hello, this is Grace from Hamden, Connecticut. Grace. How's everything in Hamden? That's great so far. Good. See, my buddy, Richie LaDano used to live in Hamden, Connecticut. Do you know them?

They're the wacko family that lived on... With the six Chevrolet Corvairs, Parkwell. the front lawn. Sounds like about my neighborhood. So anyway, go ahead. Okay, I have an 89 Subaru station wagon, and it has a number of problems. But there's one, I'll start with the first one. The car in the morning doesn't want to accelerate past 20 for, I mean, three or four blocks.

And we live on a small street that turns on to the main thoroughfare into New Haven. So in the morning, everybody's driving down that road about 60 miles an hour, and I'm driving 20 when I first turn on. I've tried flooring it. And what happens when you floor it? It just doesn't go. No, the engine gets really loud. It starts roaring, really loudly. Oh, oh, oh.

Oh, Gracie. Oh, Gracie. Gracie, you're in trouble. Oh, no, really? It's going to cost you a fortune. Oh, no, I was going to say, I don't want to spend any money on this. You don't have to. You can just leave it by the side of the road.

Oh, grace. You have an automatic transmission? Of course she does. It's too bad. That's too bad. Oh, no, you mean I'm supposed to shift out of one? No. No, it's supposed to shift out of one.

It's slipping. There are various reasons for that. The most common of which is the transmission is done for. But it doesn't mean that you couldn't be real lucky if you had to have led a good clean life. And it's possible that something simple like your low on transmission fluid is causing the problem.

That's very unlikely because no one could lead that clean a life. No, it's more likely that your torque converter and your clutches are cooked. But it wouldn't hurt to check the transmission fluid and make sure that it's gutted. And if it's really dirty, you can try changing it. Yeah. Okay. That would be the second step.

You can have someone change the filter and the fluid in the gasket, and that might help. And if you've let a somewhat good life, then that would make it work. But if you've been the evil thing that I think you have been, uncaring about your fellow motorists. Then it's going to cost you $2,000.

But not to worry, you can put it right in the Ladano's front lawn because they're collecting old jalapies. Put it right next to those six quaveres. If I just ignore it and don't do anything, will it just keep running the same way, though? No, it's likely to get worse in a hurry. Okay.

long has it been doing this 20 mile an hour thing? Oh, see, I bought it used, and I got it about a year ago. It has been doing this for a year? Ever since I bought it. Oh, really? Yeah. How much did you spend for the car?

About almost 4,000. Oh. But he said that it would run until it has like 230,000 miles on it. Well, it will. It'll only a 20 miles an hour. He didn't mention that. Now, drive it, I mean, check the obvious stuff. If your mechanic thinks changing the fluid will help, and I think it will, then I would go

ahead and do that. But don't do it without changing the filter, too. Okay. And if that doesn't help, drive it until it drops, and then you can decide what to do. But it is dangerous driving at 20 when everyone else is doing 60. So you might want to find an alternate route for that first couple of miles of driving so that it has a chance to warm up or drive around the block seven or eight times. Okay. And one other question. Yeah. I took it in the shop because it was smoking all the time. and it smells like smoke all the time and the guy says that it leaks like the Exxon Valdez. Oh, really?

He says that there's so many leaks in it, he said that he wouldn't know where to begin. My question is, will that smoke ever become like flames or is it just always going to smoke and that's fine? Could, I'd wear your sneakers if you buy this guy so you can get away fast. Well, see, the lucky part is that you're only going 20 when the fire breaks out and you'll be able to just jump out

and have a running start. Well, yeah, it's possible. It is possible to burst into flame. The most common areas of leakage on these things are the camshaft seals and the valve covers in the oil pan and the oil pump and the oil pressure switch. All of which caused the leaks to go onto the exhaust system, which is pretty hot. Right. So it's possible for the thing to catch fire. Oh, it is.

It's possibly, yeah. But I wouldn't worry about that. I think the transmission will give out before that. Good luck, Grace. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Bye. And next time you buy a car, Grace, even though the price seems right, you really ought to have a mechanic check it out because a mechanic would certainly have seen all those oil leaks. Well, it came from a mechanic shop.

Oh, they told me they looked at everything before they love it to me. And you believed a mechanic who was selling you a car? Yes. Are you interested in a bridge? Oh, geez. Grace. Well, see, you are a nice person then. You're a trusting person, and it's coming back to get you.

Yes, I guess. Yeah, this will make you wiser and stronger. Okay. See you later. And more cynical, like the rest of us. 1-8-8. That's too bad. It is unfortunate.

Well, it's the nicest people who get it, yeah. Who get taken advantage of. Yeah, I know. I know that, boy, through bitter experience. Hey, man, I think it may be time for us to take a break. What I think? that, why? Well, our producer is jumping all over the place, waving his arms on the other side of the

glass. No, no, no, that's because Louis just spilled a hot coffee in his lap. Oh, we won't worry about it then. We'll be back with a new puzzler in just a minute. Ha, we're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack the Tappert Brothers, and we're here to discuss cars, car repair and the new puzzler. Oh, no description. Just

the new puzzler. The defies description. Jump right into it, man. Just go for it. Well, I do have to acknowledge. When was this sent to me? 1980 what? I'm trying to figure out who sent it. Wow, it's a big, long thing. Oh, actually, Bruce Robinson, Ph.D., professor of civil and environmental engineering from, I forget where he's from University of Tennessee.

He's probably retired by now. Sent a bunch of puzzlers in, and I've... Oh, I see. And you've... I've stolen a couple of them, and I'm going to steal another one. Oh, good. Okay. Well, pretty good.

And this is something for the rest of you to aspire to. Stealing. Yeah. Oh, no, no, sending in four or five pretty good puzzlers. Oh. Remember when you were a kid, you had those little plastic gadgets with the numbers in them, and they had the numbers one through 15 and one empty square. Yeah.

You know, and, of course, the thing came with the numbers all scrambled. And your job was to put them in order. Put them in order, shuffle them around and all that. And you always wound up, 10, 11, 12, 13. 15, 14. Right. And you could never get it right. And there was no way to get there.

Well, when I read this puzzle, it reminded me of that frustrating little toy that I had when I was a kid. Imagine this. There are 25 jealous people who live in the squares of a five-by-five grid. Okay, so drawing a piece of paper a five-by-five grid. So this would be like a strange apartment building. It could be a strange apartment building. Okay. And each of them thinks that his neighbors in adjacent

squares. So the guy in the middle, his window looks out on the guy next to him, and his window looks on the guy next to him, and then, so if you want to know if it's raining, you've got to look to three guys' apartments. Right, you're going to call everyone. Open your windows. Okay, I got it. This is a very strange way. So we're going to number the squares. If we start on the upper left-hand corner, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, et cetera, etc. are down to 25. So the first row starts with one, the second row starts with six, the third row starts with 11 and so forth. I got it. Right. So everyone is jealous of his, if his adjacent neighbor, not his diagonal neighbor, but either the person up or down from him

or left or right of him. You got it? Yeah. Okay. And each aspires to move into the apartment of his adjacent neighbor. One of his adjacent neighbors. For example, number one guy can either move to number two apartment or number six. Wow. Okay. So they'll be willing to take any other apartment as long as it isn't theirs. As long as it isn't theirs. The smell has gotten too bad.

And as long as it's adjacent to theirs. Adjacent but not diagonal. And the question is very simple. What is the fewest number of total moves that can accomplish this? Satisfy everybody. Satisfy everyone. So that everyone gets to move in one of the adjacent apartments. You got it?

Yeah. You ready? You sure? I think so. I understand it. All right. If you think you know the answer, write it on a postcard or stick it to the back of a bottle of 1997 Dante Rivetti Barbarresco, Bricco di Nievis, or something else, bright, plummy, cherry, and violet scented with firm tannins and send it to. Puzzler Tower, Car Talk Plaza, Box 3,500, Harvard Square, Cambridge.

Our Fair City. Matt 02238. Or you can email your answer from the Car Talk Plaza. section of cars.com. If you'd like to call us, the number is 1-888-8-8-8-2-27-8-2-25- Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hi, this is Jim Collin from Ruben Mass. Hey.

So what's up, man? Okay, the saga starts. I was driving home on the highway, and my thermostat maxed out, and then the dreaded red check engine light comes on. I knew that was trouble, but I was trying to get home. I was in Connecticut at the time. Yeah. And next thing you know, there's a green smoke bellowing into the car.

I had a passenger in the car that was so the hot-cooled. And you said, I know I can make it. It's only 110 miles. That's exactly what I was saying. But the deal with the day, we didn't make it. I barely got. I was in the right lane, barely pulled off. And so anyway, that's how it all started.

So what happened, the diagnosis was a blown heater core. Yeah, I figured that. Either you have to have a Ford Taurus or a Volkswagen. Actually, it's a 93 Honda Civic. Exactly. That was my third choice. So, okay, so I see a couple options. I could, the first one, obviously, what you guys are thinking is get it fixed.

But I'm getting prices anywhere from $500 to $1,000 because it's a very labor-intensive project from what I'm hearing. And unnecessarily so, but that's another topic for another day. And I, I'm the kind of, I can basically change my oil and change a flat. beyond that, you don't ask me to do any car work. So I'm thinking I'm going to get my whole dashboard out, which this project involves, that I'm not going to be able to get it back in. So I'm looking for an alternate heat source. Oh, I know.

There you go. But you see where I'm going, right? Yeah, I mean, I was immediately going to suggest that you just take it out of the circuit, which is relatively easy to do. I might add, before we go any further, Jim. Yeah. That it's likely that the head gas is going to blow in about six weeks anyway. Oh, perfect.

So what you were hoping for? Well, because you overheated it so badly. Okay. You stretched the head gasket beyond the point where it can return to normal service. So what are we looking at for a bill on that? Oh, that's $1,000. Everything is $1,000. Okay, so we'll just round it to it.

Okay. So we'll just round it off. For $1,000. $1,000. That's why I don't think you should fix the heater core. Perfect. That's what I want to hear. That's what I'm looking for you guys to tell me.

I thought you should think I was crazy, but okay, go ahead. I mean, so for the next. six weeks, you won't have any heat, but you can wear your Bronco-Nogersky long underwear. What if my mother gets in the car? Nobody will get in the car with you. No. No, and the thing is that you may think you can tough it out now. Right.

We've had a couple of chilly days. You say, this isn't so bad. I'll wear a hat, I'll wear gloves. But I'll tell you, when it's nine degrees and it's snowing and the window is so fogged up that you can't see, you'll pay $3,000 for that heat of course. and understand that the price will be inflated when the appropriate season arises. And there may, in fact, be alternative sources of heat. But the truth is that the defroster is really the biggest issue.

So there's no alternate, in other words, there's no sort of a small heater, like a space heater that you could get for an RV or something that would plug into my cigarette lighter that would heat the car. There are, I suppose, but no, there's not one of them that can heat the car. Right. I don't think you can pull enough energy out of that charging system to heat the car. I could be wrong. One advantage you have is that it is a pretty small car, and you might want to go and buy one of these things. How much value, Jim, do you place on your life?

Exactly. Because, I mean, you could also get yourself a nice little propane here. And you could prop it up on the front seat. I could grill some hot dogs. And you could grill hot dogs, and you could aim it, you know. and those work, you get plenty of heat out of them, you'll be dead in an hour.

Well, here's what I was going to see. If it doesn't blow you up, it'll suck up all the oxygen in that's passenger compartment, and you'll be dead. I think this is a job you should undertake yourself. Okay, you do.

You could do it. I mean, it is a lot of work. And you'll need the book. Right, I went to the Chilton's book. No good. You need the actual Honda service manual. Okay. It's like about 900 bucks, I think.

Right, exactly. No, it's a thousand. Everything's a thousand. And then sit down and read it. And after reading it, you say, oh, there's no way I could do this. Right. But it'll give you step-by-step instructions. I remember we did this once many, many years ago before we really knew anything about cars.

And we had decided we were going to do a job on my truck. So I went to GM and I bought the manual. And we were flipping through it one day to see how big. I forgot what the job was, but I looked at the page, and they were like six steps. And we said, piece of cake, we can do this. Finally, we decided to actually do it. And we noticed that the first step is remove engine. Right, okay.

So be careful when you get the book. Make sure you read it carefully so you know what you're really getting into. Okay. And a friend and a Polaroid camera will help tremendously. Yeah, because you'll never remember what stuff looked like. That's what I'm, you know, afraid of. Right. And little containers into which you can put clips,

there are a million clips and screws. You won't believe it. No, this is sounding worse and worse as we can. Oh, yeah. No, you'll never get it back together again. But you'll be the only one driving to work with a dashboard less. Right. You know, the dashboard is not everything that's cracked up to me.

And the car will still run. You might want to just take the dashboard out, put the heater core in, and leave everything else off. Right. I mean, if it doesn't go back together, what do you care? You'll have a heat. Right, it doesn't matter anyway. Doesn't matter anyway.

I'll just put an extra blank card. Now, you can do it, Jim, but get the book. Okay. And if it looks too daunting, then pay the money because you'll freeze this winter. Hey, thanks a lot. Good luck. I appreciate it. Take care.

Bye, bye, bye. Well, it's happened again. You've devaluated another perfectly good hour listening to Car Talk. Our esteemed producer is Doug the subway fusion of... Do you mean Bongo Boy, Berman? Bongo Boy, Berman. Our esteemed producer is Doug Bongo Boy Berman. I love it.

And you know to whom we owe this and he wants us to make sure that Burman knows? Who else? His father. John Bugsy Lawler. I spoke to him just this morning. He said, when you give it to Dougie, make sure he knows it was me who thought of it. Our associate producers are Louis Cronin the Barbarian and David, watch out for falling prices green. Our engineer is Tad Shrimp Curry.

Our senior web blackie is Doug the old gray mayor And our technical spiritual and menu advisors Just back from his mad cow this All Beef Lunch Tour is John Bugsie Lawler Bongo Boie Berber Our public opinion I get your bongos right here Our public opinion poster was Paul Murky of Merkey Research

Assisted by statistician Marge in Overa Our customer care representative is Haywood Jubuzov Our director of new product repair is warranted my foot. Our shop former is Luke Busy and our new truck reviewer is a big new rig. Our director of Firestone Tire recalls is Ivana Mishlin. Our pseudonym consultant is Norm Diplum. Our divorce attorney is Carmine, not yours. Our bungee jumping instructor is Hugo first. The Car Talk Travel agent is Lois Faire available. Car Talk Plaza's pedestrian advocate is Jay Walker. Our Russian chauffeur is Big Golf and Drop Off.

The banker at Car Talk Plaza poker games is Nikolai Putin and our seat cushion test is Mike Easter. Our chief counsel from the law firm of Dewey Cheetahman Howe is U. Lewis Dewey, known to the type A squirrels at Harvard Square

as Uie Louie Dewee. Thanks so much for listening. We're clicking clack to Tappert Brothers. Don't drive like my brother. Don't drive like my brother. Don't drive like my brother. We'll be back next week.

Bye-bye. Car Talk is a production of Dewee Cheever and Howe and WBUR in Boston. And even though Baxter Black steps in a cow patty whenever he hears us say it, this is NPR,

National Public Radio.