The Best of Car Talk - #2647: Service With a Smile

Episode Date: June 13, 2026

Raegan was doing a nice thing and brought her boyfriend’s Jeep to a local mechanic for a tune up. The mechanic not only tuned-up the vehicle but he also had it detailed and he refused to accept payment for any of the work, saying that he was simply glad to have Raegan as a new customer. Has Raegan found that unicorn, “the altruistic mechanic” or did this grease monkey have the hots for her? 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 Tappertr Brothers, and we're broadcasting this week from the Department of Research, Development, and precious gems here at Carhart Plaza. You know, this... It's an actual department, you know. I mean, of course. We have departments for everything. Indeed. And do we have someone staffing all these departments?

How many people do we have here? Louis Cronin takes care of all. Well, I have news here that could be on a par, it seems to me, with Paul. And Fleschman. Oh, that's too bad. I mean, Pons and Fleischman came out of nowhere, and they said, well, forget about all that stuff that you're doing. We're going to make all the electricity you need in a tomato can, right? Yeah, well.

Get this for news. Dr. Elias Sioris and Dr. Carlos D'Efani of the Swinburne Institute of Technology in Melbourne. The Swinburneberg, Swindle? The Swindle Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. right now, have invented a device as big as a wine bottle. You're with it already? Don't you love it already? I know the genesis of this device.

They drank the wine first. It fits under your car and changes the emissions of your car. Are you ready for this? Yeah. Into carbon and water. Well, that sounds okay. It's harmless enough. It is a microwave emissions converter and heats up the exhaust to 5,000 degrees Kelvin.

The carbon particles are put into the exhaust pipe where the carbon is changed to industrial-grade diamonds. Sonia! Hes, Tutu! Huh? Get out. Huh? We're killing ourselves trying to solve the emissions problem. These guys not only solve that problem, but as a little by-product, they make industrial-grade diamonds.

So is the thing available at Kmart? No, but Sears will be selling them in their auto repair centers any day. Well, Dr. Elias Seoris and Dr. Carlos Destifani, my hat is off to you, gentlemen. You have solved the world's problems. Yes, indeed. Well, if you've got any wacko theories, you'd like to run by us or some theory about your car, you can give us a call at 1-888-8-8-2-7-8-25-5. Hello, you're on car talk.

Hi, this is David White calling from Falls Church, Virginia. Hi, David. Falls Church. Yes, sir. What's happening, man? Not much. I think I'm cursed. Oh, yeah?

Could be. And I'll tell you why. I have a 1996 Honda Accordellix with 116,000 miles on it. A month ago, I went in for routine maintenance. Let's see, I had breakwork done, one tire and a oil change. That was $2.50. That's normal. A week later, an oil seal.

blue. That was $700. A week after that, the clutch, the flywheel, and the master cylinder went. Let's see, that was $1,000, and that was on the way to my niece's christening. Oh, this is getting exponential here. Okay. Last week, the starter motor bit the dust. 385. I'm now at 2335. And now there's a bizarre noise coming from the left rear door panel.

Whenever I turn the ignition switch on or off for about 10 seconds, I hear this. Just like that. Dave. Yeah. Okay. Give up, man. 275. Oh, more money.

Really? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh. What's wrong now, I believe, is that your fuel pump is giving out. Oh, no. Okay. Now, why would that be?

Why not? How many miles you have in this car? 116,000. 116. Yeah. Well, it's, you know, I mean, it is a bad stroke of luck that all these things should. should happen together. Are they related in any way?

Only that you own the car. Right. Yeah, they're all related to you, but they aren't related in any way. And none of them is really unexpected. No, and it's the right time for all these things to go with 116K. The clutch went, expected. The starter motor, sure, that's expected. The seal that blew.

Sure, that can happen. The fuel pump? I mean, how long you think a fuel pump can last? Yeah, okay. And it's going to get worse. But it doesn't go on forever. It doesn't. Because eventually it will just die.

No, eventually you will have replaced everything that can be replaced. Well, okay, then I'll go ahead and prepare to have the fuel pump replaced. Oh, absolutely. You have to do it. What's the difference? Yeah, and think of how many new parts you have in the car now. I don't know. It's exciting. It's like getting new hips, new knees, new ankles, or whatever. Yeah, you could get another 10 years out of this car. Wow.

Yeah, $2,500 a year. Which is, by the way, a lot cheaper than making payments to the bank of $500 a month. Well, it isn't $500 a month. You could buy a new accord probably for $350 a month. So $350 a month. Let's round it off. Let's say $12,000. $4,000.

So for $0.8.00 more a day, you could be driving a new car. Think about that day. See you. See you later. Well, thank you very much. All right. I'm going to buy. Eight cents more a day, huh?

Yeah, something like that. That's what falls out of your pocket when you sit on the sofa. Exactly. Stop watching TV, you can buy two new cars. 1-8-88-car talk. That's 8-8-2-27-8-25-5. Hello, you're on car talk. Hi, this Nicoletta from Portland, Oregon.

Nicoletta. That's a nice name, isn't it? Oh, thank you. Do people call you Nikki? No, well, they call me both. Nicoletta's a very pretty name. If I changed my name, to Nicoletta, would people stop calling me what they currently call me?

No. I would take Nikki. So what's up? I have an 89 Mazda minivan. Yeah. I have an intermittent jolt that runs underneath my seat. And what this feels like is a strong heart palpitation kind of coming just like underneath my seat.

And how many times does it palpitate at a time? Like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It's different. Yeah. And my kids are in the car, and the kids don't feel it. And it's a series of bumps, like, boom, boom, boom. Well, it's kind of almost like a little jerking. Like if you were, like if you had gotten hit from behind.

Also, the vehicle feels like it wants to move forward? Well, yeah, like a little jerk, maybe. I haven't called that. I think it's likely to be an engine. miss, where you have for a period of time you have a spark plug that's misfiring. And when that happens, the engine will shake. And if you have the same plug that misfires five times in a row, it can shake enough to cause even the exhaust system to hit the floor of the car or just enough to cause a

boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And also make it feel like you're being nudged from the back because every time the engine misfires, it slows down. And then when it fires correctly on the next... It moves... Rotation of the crane shaft, it picks up speed. So if I had a tune-up like two months ago, which I did. Yeah.

But I'm just now feeling it. Well, did we do the tune-up? Because if we did it, it couldn't possibly be that. You had this going on before and after? No. Not before the tune-up. So I can take it back to the guy and say, now I'm feeling this, and you guys did a tune-up.

You should take care. Well, it's not going to be easy for him. defined because it does it so infrequently. No, but I mean it does it every day. Well, then have them drive it for a day. Leave it there and tell them to drive it. She can't leave it there. She's got three kids.

She's going to leave it there. They have soccer games. She got soccer games to go, though. Well, next time it's classes. Valley, hockey. Come on. All right, sorry. I lost my head. Well, take them for...

I can't leave this car. No way. You have to go for a ride, and do you think that if you sat in the passenger seat that you would feel it? Well, you know, I've got different age ranges of kids. Yeah, that was my question. A little kid's than a big kid. The big kid even says she doesn't feel it. How big is the big kid?

Yeah, 16. Oh, so she doesn't feel it. And the little kid seven, and the little kid seven, and he thinks I'm nuts. Well, all seven-year-old kids think. The 16-year-old probably thinks you're nuts, too, but she hasn't told you yet. No, she just feels sorry for you. She thinks she's so nuts that you'd be on hold. Well, I would say she's just embarrassed to me in the minivan.

First of all, I don't think I'd be worried about it. Oh, okay. But I would try to get this fellow to drive it, the fellow who works on it, to drive it. And with you and the passenger, see, even if you don't feel the thumping he may. And he may say, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, at least I know what it is now. And I'm going to, I'm going to suggest to you that you tell them that it's an engine misfire. Okay. Good luck, Nicoletta.

Well, I appreciate it. Thanks, guys. I love you. Bye-bye. Good luck to you. All right, Tommy. Do you remember last week's puzzler? Wait a minute.

I don't know if I remember it or not. Did it have to do with Ricardo Montalban and the case of the missing shoe? It did! We'll be back in a minute. Hi, we're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack to Tappert Brothers, and we're here to talk about cars, car repair, and of the answer to last week's puzzler. Which was? This was one of my series of coin-toss puzzles.

This is the first in the series. With Bill Gates thrown into kind of office gate matters, but Bill Gates has a place here. Of course. Right? Yeah, I think so. Because he recognizes the power of the power of two. Exactly. Anyway, here's the puzzle. A fellow finds himself at a party at Bill Gates's house,

standing next to the great man himself. And Gates says to him, hey, how many people do you think are here? The fellow looks around and says, geez, I don't know, 1,100. And Gates says, that's right. You know, you're very good with numbers. Are you into games of chance by any chance? Oh, no, the fellow says the chances thing I get involved in is tossing. a coin. Gay says, well, do you think you could toss a coin 10 times in a row and call it correctly

every time? The guy says, I don't think so. I don't think so either. Well, do you want to make a bet? Because I can do it. After all, I'm Bill Gates, and you're not. The fellow declines, no, I don't want to make a bet. I don't think I can call it 10 times in a row. I don't think you can't either, but I need the cab for you to get home so I don't want to bet. Gates says, do you think there's anyone in this room who could call it correctly 10 times? the fellow says, I suppose it's a chance, but it's a pretty small chance. Gates says, I'll tell you what, I'll bet there is someone who can call it correctly. And here's what calling it correctly consists of.

If I toss the coin, I can call it, and if I'm right, that's a win for me. Or if I toss the coin and you call it incorrectly, that's also a win for me. Got it? So Gates says, tell you what, I'll make you a bet. I'll bet you buy $10 million to your $10,000, that it can happen in this room, that there's one person who can win 10 in a row. The guy says, you're on. Was he right to take the bet?

He's right, but he's going to lose. Because it sounded very good. Maybe he just wanted Bill Gates to feel good. I mean, the guy's probably going to ego as big as Cleveland. Cleveland is as big as Australia, maybe. Maybe. And if the guy didn't fall for his little trick here, then Bill Gates might have lost a little of his self-esteem.

Well, anyway, Gates is going to win his money. Yeah. Unfortunately, because it is going to happen and it must happen. Let's say out of those 1,100 people we take, for the sake of convenience, 1,024 of them. Just a number I picked out of the year. Just a number you picked out of the hat by doubling 512. And let's take that 1,024 people and make 512 pairs of people.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. And each one of those pairs will do a coin toss. Well, obviously, one of them is going to win. Mm-hmm. So we're going to have 512 winners. Yeah.

Okay. And conveniently, we take those 512 and we divide them into 256 pairs now. That's a nice number, too. Isn't it amazing? Yeah. Mm-hmm. And, of course, we're going to have 256 people flipping coins. We're going to have...

120 winners. Son of a gun! Isn't that something? And you do that nine times. And you're down to two people. And inevitably, one of them is going to win. So of those people that played, you had two people that wound up doing it correct nine times. And one person who had to do it correct ten times in a row.

And Gates wins his money. That was his bet. Wins all the time, man. Getting sick of it. I'm sick of it, too. Who's our winner? The winner is Mark Kime from Valparaiso. Indiana and for having his answer selected at random from among the thousands of correct answers

that we got. Mark is going to get a $25 gift certificate to the store at the Car Talk section of Cars.com. And with that $25 gift certificate, he can buy one in nine-sixth copy of a haircut in Horsetown, the Car Talk Puzzler book. That book is still in print? That book is in print. Haircut and horse town? Oh, sure. That's a million seller. By the way, if you find yourself coveting some of the totally inessential items mentioned on the show. Don't call our 888 number. You can find this stuff at the store at the cartalk section of cars.com. Anyway, we'll have a new puzzler coming up in the third half of today's show.

That was some kind of blatant commercialism you just threw in there. If you find yourself coveting... We'll have a new puzzle coming up in the third half of today's show? No, no, no, you can find the stuff at the store. So who's our winner? What? I didn't recall saying anything. Forget it, forget it.

It was blatant commercialism. I'm embarrassed for you. Did it work? Yeah, I hope so. Anyway, stay tuned for the new Puzzler. In the meantime, you can call us and ask us a question about your car. The number is 888 Car Talk. That's 888-227-8255.

Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hi, my name's Reagan. I'm from Fort Collins, Colorado. Like, R-E-G-A-N? R-A-E-G-A-N. Kind of similar to the girl and The Exorcist. You know that little girl? Didn't see that movie.

R-A-E-G-A-N. Reagan, yes. Is that an Irish? name? Well, actually, I was named after a vacuum cleaner. So if a vacuum cleaner was Irish at the time, maybe. That's good. I mean, I think that's nice. Yeah, I don't know really what to think of that. It should be the first thing you see when you'll come out of whatever snooper you're in. It could have been worse. You could have been named Oreck. Exactly, or Hoover. Anyway, Reagan, where are you from? Fort Collins, Colorado. Yeah, I knew that.

So what's going on? Well, I was calling because I want you guys to settle a domestic debate for us. My brother is the expert at both initiating and settling domestic squabbles. Well, let's settle. Let's settle. Go ahead. My boyfriend actually lives out in Redlands, California. And I was going out there to visit him.

He's a football coach and is in the middle of the season and is super busy. and I decided that I was going to take his car and get it oil changed and get the tires rotated and get all the things done that he has been putting off because he's in the middle of his season. Aren't you sweet? I am. I can see that your sweetness got you into trouble. Exactly. And now you're trying to get out of it.

I want you to know in advance that no matter what happened, I am 100% on your side, and I will defend you if I have to lie through my teeth. Whatever it takes, Reagan. We're with you. You're with me? So I take it to just a typical, I don't know, jiffy-lub. Oh, you jerk! What are you doing a thing like that?

That's probably why I went wrong. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. So I walk in, and the man behind the counter was a tall man as well. I'm six foot three myself. Ooh. I knew that. You knew that.

She sounded tall to you? Yeah. And he was immediately very friendly to me. Not unexpectedly. I told him that I just needed, you know, the oil change, and if you would rotate the tires. And there was also something going on with the air conditioner. And he says, sure, we'll look at it. And he told me it would only probably take about 45 minutes that I can wait if I wanted to.

So I figured, sure. Or we could go down down the street for coffee. How about you and, yeah? Yeah, one of those deals. Yeah. So I sat there and he took the keys back to one of his other mechanics, and he stayed out into the front lobby area and continued to talk with me, and he was very friendly. And there would be other customers that came in, and he was very friendly with them, too, just a nice guy.

Were they tall also? No, there were short people in there. Were they female? Some of them were female. Most of them were. Most of them were. You're getting to my point, though. Yeah.

No, go ahead. So, 45 minutes passed, and he's talking to me about, I played basketball. football in college and a little bit professionally, and we were talking about that. And he brings me the keys, and he says, here you go. And I said, okay, well, what do I owe you? And he says, oh, it's on the house. Consider we want over a customer. You're come back again, and he was just very nice.

I'd say smitten. Smitten would be a word I would. That would come to mind. You can't say anything like that yet. If you're going to back me up, you can't say anything like that. All right, we'll remain neutral. Okay. So I get into the car, and the air conditioner's fixed.

He topped all the fluids like I had asked him, changed the oil, rotated the tires, and he took the car or had one of his mechanics, take the car across the street to this big car wash place. And wash it. They washed it. They vacuumed it. It smelled like vanilla. It was incredible.

So I take the truck back home, and the boyfriend comes home, and I surprised him with, I got all this done, and it was free. And he doesn't accept that it really wasn't free. That I had to have been flirting, that I had to have been using my womanly ways in order to get this for free. And I explained that he was just a very nice guy. Hand mechanics actually be that nice. Ha ha. How old are you?

I'm 25. You haven't learned much, have you? I mean, where you've been? I'm worried you guys aren't going to back me up. Well, we're leading in that direction. You're on your own here, Reagan. I mean, this is hopeless. I mean, we were willing to go out of a limb here, but come on.

No, and he had the hearts for you. hearts were, and the reason he was so nice to the other customers in your presence was to not make you suspicious. Was pretty obvious to me. He wanted you to think. He was a nice guy. How come he couldn't just be a nice guy? You guys seem like nice guys. Reagan, you have been.

You've let a terribly sheltered life. You have been very, very naive about this whole thing. I'm trying to protect myself here. Oh, man. Now, we can't, we don't know whether you were flirting or not. Mm-hmm. But if you say you were just talking to the guy, sometimes it doesn't, you know, women don't really understand.

I guess some of them just don't know. Men, don't I have to tell you about men? I've always made the impression that men just don't know. We are, oh, no. Oh, no. Men know, but we are rotten, evil, evil creatures. And generally have only one thing on our minds. I'm bringing the customer back, right?

That's what you have on your mind. Yeah, right. Yeah. So your boyfriend, let's get to him for a minute. Okay. Is he a nice guy? He's a great guy. What Jiffy Lou was he working at?

He was a mechanic. He was a mechanic. Did he do a valve job for free? Well, all I had to do is. rebuild the engine it hardly cost me anything. And what are you doing for dinner? And he knows, that's why he says, he knows this guy's a dirty dog.

Yeah, and he does know. But I would throw myself on the mercy of the court, and you just have to say, and he'll understand this. You have to say, so help me, hon, I didn't do anything to provoke this guy. I didn't do anything to attempt to flirt with him. and whatever he did was on his own, and he'll say, I can understand that.

And the good news is if your boyfriend dumps you, this guy, Jiffelow, will be waiting for you with open arms. And you know the way to Redlands now. I know the way to Redlands now. You're right. Good luck, Reagan. But I feel that there may be no way out of this for you. No.

I think you just tell your boyfriend what you told him. You were just being you. You were just being you. The same charm that traps him, right? Exactly. Whatever charm you had. It worked on this guy as well. And you were completely innocent.

Well, thank you. See you later. Good luck. You too. Bye-bye. Can't believe she's that naive. No woman is that naive. Are they? We hope so.

We'll be right back with more calls and the new puzzler after these messages. 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 new puzzler. Now, you may have noticed at the beginning of this puzzler season, the paucity, the dearth, the downright non-existence of the automotive puzzler. None of the puzzlers has been automotive in nature. Really? I hadn't noticed that, no. Well, it's true. But I believe you.

I know you would never lie, nor would you obfuscate. Not so sure I believe it either. But I don't think I've had an automotive puzzle this year. So the first automotive puzzle of the season. Of the automotive season. This was submitted by Jeff Matthews of the Army Mail. He's in the Army. Oh, dotgov.

No, dot mill. Dot mill. Yeah, I can't read all the other stuff because then they'd be able to triangulate on it. Yeah, okay. Some years ago, he says, my significant other complained that her Honda Accord would occasionally

commence bucking, snorting, and choking after a stop. It would keep that up for a couple of minutes, then the problem would go away for a few weeks. I looked at the usual things, but since I was never there when it happened, and I didn't really care because it wasn't my car. Right.

I added that. Sorry, Jeff, I didn't get in trouble. I couldn't figure it out. Then one fall, he says, I was getting the old jalopy ready for the state safety inspection. So I jacked it up and jiggle the wheels and did all the kinds of things that you usually do. And when I let it down off the jackstands, a nearly empty can of brake fluid rolled out from under the front seat.

I said, hmm, hmm, that's interesting. I went into the house and asked my wife one question. When she gave me the answer, I knew it was wrong with her car. The question is, what was the question? Now, if you think you know... The question is, what was the question? I like that part of it alone. Right.

That's good enough to... It's often the case, the statement of the puzzler. It's more important than anything. Is much better than the answer. If you think you know the answer, write it on a postcard or tape it to the handlebars of an elliptical rotary walker with articulating footbed pivots, bi-directional resistance, and German-engineered electromagnetic brakes. and send it to Puzzler Tower, Car Talk Plaza, Box 3,500, Harvard Square, Cambridge. Our Fair City.

Matt 02238. Or, of course, you can email your answer from the Car Talk section of Cars.com. If you'd like to call us, the number is 1-88888-8-288-2-255. A lawyer on Car Talk. Hi, I'm Andrea from Southern California. Hi, Andrea. Hi. Southern.

How Southern? San Diego? Not quite that south. Huntington. Beach. Huntington Beach. We've been there. Yeah. Yeah. Nice place. It's a nice place. Thanks. Do you live right on the water? Yes. Really? Uh, 0.5 miles away. Point five. Oh, yeah. When the tsunami comes, that'll be close enough to be wiped out. So, yeah, that's considered on the water. That's the water, yeah. So what's up? Well, since I've listened for

so long, and I hear, and I hear the things you talk about, I feel compelled to preface my story with a confession. Yeah. I'm an attorney, but In my humble opinion, this is mitigated by the fact that I went to law school in Boston, and I'm visiting in Boston right now. Neither of those is going to help you. I hope that helps. Not much, but we'll talk to you anyway. Okay.

So after I graduated law school, I moved to California because I got this great job, so I decided I would treat myself to a shiny red BMW 95. It had 30,000 miles on it when I purchased it about seven months ago. Three series, five or seven? Three, 18. Okay. So now I'm having the shit about a Honda Blues. Yeah.

Because when I am driving on the busiest highway in America, I am in the stop and go traffic. So I'm in first-gear stop. First-gear crawl stop. Yeah. An hour after I've been sitting in this kind of traffic, when I let out the clutch to move forward, it goes, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, as I'm letting it out.

And I have to give it a lot of gas and really get the RPMs up there and let the clutch out really slowly, almost like I feel like I'm hurting it and burning out the clutch or something. to get it to move forward. But it does go into gear easily. Yes. It's only as you're letting the clutch out. Yes.

And as you're letting it out, you hear the noise, but is it accompanied by any change in the way the car feels? Does the clutch chatter? It sounds, it's a very faint kind of sound. Like the clack, clack, clack is definitely exaggerated. It's more of a chatter, and I definitely feel as though it's not engaging, and it's like the car's then bucking a little bit

as it's trying to get into gear. And you have to give it a lot more gas or just a little more gas. I have to get it up about around 2,500 RPM as I'm letting the clutch out and then really give it more to get the car moving. And if you didn't rev it up to 2,500 RPM, what would happen? It would stall. Yeah, I believe so. Right. I think you have maybe like an engine misfire.

Yeah, it's not the clutch. Oh, okay. I think the stop and go driving is causing the engine to. to load up, you know, and it's running very rich. This is a technical term, though, my brother just made up. It's loading it up, yeah. Well, it's running too rich, and it's probably fouling the plugs. You know, you're letting the gas out, putting the clutch in,

you're lurching your head five or ten feet at a time. And what's probably happening is the oxygen sensor is correcting and leaning out the mixture too much because it's getting too rich a signal. And there may be nothing you can do about it. Oh, boy. But maybe a tune-up would help. Right. And it's 38,000 miles now, so it's about time for a tune-up anyway.

Yeah, I mean, that may solve the problem. I don't think you have a huge problem, but it may be that they should look at the oxygen sensor, too, to make sure that that's working correctly. Okay. All right. Have you sued anyone lately? What kind of cases do you take, Andrea? I do tax work, but not for the IRS.

I work for the people. Great. Anything we can do to screw the IRS is fine by me. Wee. It's a fun job. Good luck. See, Andrea. Thank you very much. Bye bye. Bye, bye. Hey, do you know what time it is?

Time to get snow chains for your scooter? No. It's time to play. Stump the Chumps! This is that part of the show where we check in on the advice that we gave to a previous caller to see if our advice was on the money or on the court dock. So who's our lucky contestant this week? I have here on the little scrap of paper, Peter, from Dorton.

Chester Mast. You remember Peter? Neither do I. Not even a little bit. Peter had a magic Ford Explorer. It shrouded itself in blue smoke and made transmission fluid disappear. I've been putting transmission fluid in it because it seemed like it was slipping a little bit. And I couldn't see any leaks or anything. But the strange thing is that I noticed that my oil was getting higher and higher and higher. And I know it sounds totally crazy, but when I changed my oil, it completely over.

overflowed. You know, like there was 10 quartz in there. Yeah, because you were adding the transmission fluid to the oil, to the engine oil. It seems like it, but somebody told me that was totally impossible. No. Oh, you kidding me? We do it all the time. So what advice do we actually give Peter? Well, we disagreed, actually.

Oh, that's good. So we actually doubled our chances of getting it right. That's the idea. I took the mechanical approach. I thought Peter had two problems. Get this. A leak in the transmission cool line and a crock block. Yeah, you've got to crack. And that's how the stuff was getting into the crank case.

You got a cracked block all right. And I believe I took the dipstick approach. I told him he was being a dipstick and putting the stuff in the wrong hole. Well, let's find out. Hey, Peter, are you there? I'm here. I was waiting for the drum roll. All right, listen, before we find out how the tranny fluid was getting into the crank case,

we need to verify that the answer you're about to give today has not been influenced by our staff, the staff of National Public Radio, or the good folks at OPEC, who are very interested in your rising audience. level. So what's going on here? What's up with the car? Well, I was not pouring transmission fluid in the oil

in the crank case. So my brother, right away, is wrong. But I still have a shot at being right. I could have been that stupid. I mean, really. Yeah, well, you sounded like you could have been. See, but I gave you more credit,

Peter. I knew you weren't doing anything that stupid. Thank you. So now that we're pals. Thank you. Well, I tell you, actually, when I called the mechanic, they guessed exactly what you had guessed, which they said the cooler tube, you know, coming out of the tranny. Yeah.

And they said it sounded like it corroded. And then when I brought it in and told them about the smoke, the guy said, oh, head gasket, which was what your final suggestion was to me to get a head gasket test. Yeah, that's right. And? But then, alas, the tranny guy said, it's not a blown head gasket at all. It's the modulated. Vacuum modulator. How could we have...

Cars don't have vacuum modulators anymore. No, I don't forget the modular, but that would never account for the oil level going up. No, it wouldn't. That's right. Well, he said that the oil was... The tranny flu was getting sucked into this thing. And there was a hole in the diaphragm or something.

Yes, that's right. That would account for the smoke. That would account for the smoke and the loss of the unexplained loss of transmission floor, but it would never make the oil level and the engine go up. Peter, you still have a mystery on your hands. One of these days, you're going to pull that dipstick out for your motor oil, and it's going to be five quarts overfilled.

You know, I checked the oil yesterday. Yeah. Okay, it's been a couple weeks now. Yeah. And it's perfect. Yeah, well, give it a few more weeks. There's something nefarious going on here. I demand a recount, too.

Here's one other theory. I'm going to give you one other theory. Go ahead. Go ahead. That, in fact, your engine is running too cold. And what you're getting in the crank case is not extra oil, but gasoline. Oh, really? Yeah, there's something wrong.

And the oil is getting diluted with gas, and thus its level is rising because of dilution with gasoline that isn't being burned by the engine. Either you have a bad injector or an engine that's running too cold. Or over a period of weeks and weeks and weeks, the oil level will go up. You'll see. So this is going to have to be another stuff. Peter, you may be on every week. Anyway, thanks for playing stuff to chumps, Peter. Thank you.

Bye, bye, bye. Well, that was not conclusive at all. Well, there was one conclusion. We were wrong. Well, it's happened again. You've squandered another perfectly good hour listening to Car Talk. Our esteemed producer is Doug the Subway Fugitive, not a slave to fashion, Bongo Boy Berman.

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