The Best of Car Talk - #2648: Where's Fred?

Episode Date: June 16, 2026

Bob’s extended family drove home from a recent outing, climbed out of their BMW and shuffled back into the house. A half hour later, someone finally noticed that grandpa was nowhere to be found. He was stuck inside the BMW, unable to get the locked doors to open. Handy feature or dangerous design flaw? We discuss 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 to Tappertag Brothers, and we're broadcasting this week from the soon-to-be-dismantled to zeroes in zero-zero campaign headquarters here at Carthau Plaza. Well, I mean, we've held out as long as we could. We even sent former Carthock Plaza, Consiliati, Vinny Gumbats, our elder statesman, down to Florida to represent us and plead our case in the courts. We did that. Well, but it looks now that even when the disputed votes are counted, we still won't have more than two votes. And those two were accidental, it turns out. They were apparently West Palm Beach residents trying to vote for Pat Ball.

So for the good of the country, and in the interest of healing, we are officially conceding the race. In fact, we tried to call both of the guys who finished ahead of us and offer our congratulations. But unfortunately, they were both toll calls, and neither of those cheapskates would accept the charges. Can you believe that? Anyway, we want to thank all the people who work so tirelessly for our campaign, stuffing envelopes, stuffing ballot boxes, hiding ballot boxes, bribing officials, and pre-detaching all those chads.

We really do appreciate all of the effort that went into getting us our two votes. And we want our supporters to know that you have not seen the last click-and-clack presidential campaign. In fact, we have already begun work on our 2002 presidential campaign. 2002 is a mid-term election. Exactly.

There's going to be so much less competition at the presidential level. In the meantime, if you want to call us about the Electoral College, the future of our democracy, the two-party system, or better yet. If you have a question about your car, then give us a call at 888 Car Talk. That's 888-25. A lawyer on Car Talk.

Hey, how you doing? Great. Great. Who's this? This is Robert Evans, Colin from Philadelphia. Hi, Robert. Philly. Yeah. Yeah. What's up?

I got a 93 Jeep Grand Cherokee. It's got 126,000 miles on it. And it has this constant tapping. If I'm sitting idle for any time, not even for any time, if I'm idling at all. Yeah. No music on. I can hear it. That's the problem.

No music, man. No, I have music. I just sometimes turn it down so I can see if it's still doing it. That's the problem. Don't turn it down. And how did you describe it ticking? Yeah. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

Yeah, maybe not quite that fast, but it does. Not at idle. It's tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. It's more consistent, but about that speed, yeah. Oh, so it is consistent. Yeah. And if you rev it up a little bit, does it go tick, tick, tick, tick, tick a little faster? By then the rev of the engine is loud enough that I can't hear it.

Right, it drowns it out. Right, but it, yeah, it still does it. Do you have the six-cylinder engine? Yes, straight six. Yeah. Four liter. Yeah. Yeah, that's what it is.

Yeah. Do you think so? It's a four-liter engine. Yeah. This engine that's in this thing has been around, oh, in one form or another, 1965. Since 1965. Yeah, I've heard it.

I've heard it. Yeah, I've heard that. Yeah, I mean, the basic engine. And back then, they had trouble with the same. And they keep saying, should we fix it? They did fix it. I remember at one point, and I don't remember how long ago, but they did come out with a new set of rockers and push rods and the whole bit. And on many of these engines, we even changed the hydraulic lifters to solve this very problem.

Oh, wow. And it may be that that's what you need, but you could also. also have low oil pressure. I check the oil pretty regularly. Yeah, but see, you could have enough oil but not enough oil pressure. Oh, okay. You need to have the pressure tested. How many miles on the vehicle?

$126,000 thereabouts. Yeah, it's possible with that many miles that you could have low oil pressure. So even though there's five quarts of oil in it, it doesn't mean that it's getting pushed to the places it has to get pushed to. Ah, okay. Well, you may know, you maybe don't know, but I own a 1987 Dodge-Ducson. coat of pickup truck, which I bought, was the first new vehicle I ever bought in my life. It was quite a thrill.

And after I had the thing a few months, I noticed that when I started it up in the morning or sometimes even when the thing was warmed up, I would get the same kind of tick that you had, that you have. Like, tick, tick, tick, you're nervous tick. And of course, being a, you know, an owner of a new car and entitled to the privileges and rights that accompany that. I go right back to the dealership and I tell them what's going on and no uncertain terms, you know, insist that they fix it. Well, of course, they didn't fix it.

And here it is the year 2000, 13 years later, and the thing is still ticking. It's still ticking. There was a TV ad, wasn't it? Yeah, exactly. The time X-Wi. John Cameron Swayze. And it's still ticking, and it hasn't altered its performance or anything. And whatever is causing the ticking, which we know.

It didn't break in all this time. No. I mean, if you don't have low oil pressure, you could certainly go ahead and invest in a set of lifters and push rods and all that and probably get the noise to go away, but I don't think I'd do anything. Okay. Assuming the oil pressure is okay. Well, you have to do one thing.

Don't turn the radio down. Right. You had the radio at the right level so that you don't hear it, and this is a clear case of what you don't know probably ain't going to hurt you. Okay. See you, Robert. All right. Thanks for calling, Robert.

Okay. Bye. Ignoring certain sounds is good. Noises especially. Is that why you never listen to me when I talk to you? Is that what? 1-888-8-8-8-8-2-7-8-25-5. Hello, you're on car talk.

Hi, this is Marianne from Charlottesville. Oh, now how would you spell that? Just the way it seems? The Frenchway, M-A-N-N-E. Oh, the French way. From where? Charlottesville, Virginia. Charlottesville, sure.

So what's going on? Well, I have a 91 Dodge Caravan that my adorable five-year-old twins left the button on for leave the lights on all night the other day. Yeah. So I came out in the morning, and, of course, the battery was dead. Sure. So I walked over to my neighbor who was outside fixing his car and asked him if he could help me. And I tell you a little bit of a story here before I get to my question. My neighbor is from Kosovo and does not speak English very well.

And he didn't really seem to understand what my problem was because when I told him that my car was, dead. He kind of, he leaped up, open up his car, took out the battery, goes over to my car, pops the hood, takes his battery, turns it upside down, puts the terminals on the terminals, and I swear my car started as if it weren't even being jumped. I love it.

It started even better than with jumper cables. Sure. Well, of course. So my question becomes, why do we need jumper cables? Are they just a marketing ploy invented by people, you know, to prevent you from doing this much easier way? Or is this really, you know,

hideously dangerous. You know, maybe he just went through a war and doesn't mind if his hands are blown off in his neighbor's driveway. Well, he didn't mind. Yeah, I mean, he comes from a part of the world where you can't depend on frivolous things like jumper cables. Yeah, I mean, come on. All the jumper cables are doing is exactly what he did.

The jumper cables are jumping from one terminal to the other. And if the judge, let's take the analogy of you take jumper cables and you hook them up And then you just a Godunken experiment, you keep shortening jumper cables. You put on shorter and shorter and shorter set of jumper cables. You have what he did. Right, but was it dangerous? Well, it's dangerous. It could have been dangerous.

In that the battery could slip out of your hands, number one. You could spill battery acid all over the place, number two. Because when you tip a battery, and the batteries that are sealed can also have the fluid slosh from one cell. to the other, so it's not the best thing to do. Well, that wouldn't be so terrible if it's lost from one cell to the other. But if, in fact, even though the batteries are sealed, some of them are not 100% sealed and they could leak. And if that happened, that would have been real bad.

The most dangerous part of it is that when you do it that way, you don't get the opportunity to make the last connection away from the battery like you do when you use jumper cables, and that's what's most dangerous about it. When you make that last connection, there's always a danger that you're going to get a spark. But because he flipped his battery over and touched his terminals to yours, he did get a spark in all likelihood. And had there been enough hydrogen gas from one of the batteries present, he could have blown the battery up in his face.

Well, we know there was no hydrogen gas from his battery because he just carried it from his driveway. And there was probably no hydrogen gas at your battery because the battery was dead all night. And so although theoretically there was some danger to all of this, he probably has done it so many times that he knew that it was going to work. Well, he's one of the survivors. The other guys that used to do it, they're all gone. They're all gone, right.

They're all called lefty. They got one hand left. So do I need to buy jumper cables for my new car? Or should I just, next time this happened, yank the battery out of the neighbors? It's not easy to get the battery out of most cars. how his battery came out so easily, I don't know, except that he probably has it tied up with a rope. Because he's one of those, he's a cowboy.

By the way, better than jumper cables are these battery things that they sell. Now, these booster things, which are basically batteries in a little plastic container with little short little jumper cables hanging off of them. Press Stone makes them, and there are probably 100 different companies that make them now. And you charge this thing up with their 110-volt. bolts in your house and you can carry this thing around in your car so you can basically do the same thing he did, you know, if you need to jumpstart somebody without actually taking the battery out of your car. You're going to take it out of the back seat and hook the thing up and

it's going to fire up the dead car. Right. But his technique was born out of necessity. This was a battlefield creation, so to speak. Yeah. We had a fellow who called us a few years ago that had a diesel that wouldn't start. He had been, he had shipped the thing to Poland. He was working for the government, I think. And a couple of guys, it was a diesel truck. Oh, it's a fire. They get the thing started by taking off the air cleaner and lighting some papers

on fire, on fire. And telling him, crank the engine over, and they throw the burning papers into the intake, into the throttle. And the engine sucks these papers in that are burning, and the thing starts right up.

We didn't try that. Does it work? It sure does. Is it dangerous? Sure is. Do we recommend it? We don't. Yeah. But don't forget, that's because we're all a bunch of wusses. And if we lived in a world where dangerous things happened every day, we would never even think twice about it. This would be low down on the ladder. Way down on the ladder. He was a nice guy. Good for him for helping you. And if he helps you again, run in the house. See you, Mary Ann.

All right, fine. Good question, Mary Ann. There are certain people who, when they offer you help. It's good that they're going to do it, but you don't want to be around. Keep your distance. My neighbor. You yell out the window. Thanks a lot. My neighbor Frank was like that.

I'm going to go, Frank. I hear my wife. I remember we were setting stuff on fire with Frank one day. Remember that? We were paving the street. We had holes in our streets, and Frank insisted that we had to light the pavement on fire. Boy, he was a nut, wasn't it? It certainly was.

But a lot of fun. Now, look, I know you don't remember last one. puzzleer, but I'm going to give you one hint, and I know you're going to get it. Okay, go for it. Give me a hint. It's the type of puzzler that I haven't done in a very long time. Oh, I got it. It was a good puzzler.

Oh, I knew you're going to say that. No, it was automotive. Hi, we're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Collect the Tapper Brothers, and we're here to talk about cars, car repair, and, duh, the answer to last week's puzzler. Is this the one about the guy on the bicycle and Sherlock Holmes? That was great, wasn't it? Man.

No, no, this is an automotive puzzler. It was the return of an endangered species, I think. I don't remember. Well, anyway, it was submitted by Jeff Matthews, who's in the Army somewhere. I don't know where he is. Mm-hmm. And to probably cast an absentee ballot. Yeah.

Yeah. He might have been from Florida. Maybe. He may have cast a deciding vote. He may have. Whoopee. Anyway, he wrote, some years ago, my wife complained that her Honda Accord would occasionally start bucking, snorting, and choking when she came to a stop.

It would keep that up for a couple of minutes. Then the problem would go away, sometimes not return for weeks. I looked at the usual things, but since I was never there when it happened and it wasn't my car anyway, I didn't really care. Oh, did he say that? I wouldn't quote him directly if he did. Because all you can do is get a guy into trouble with his wife. I've taken some license here, Jeff.

Yeah, I mean, we're in enough trouble with our wives as it is. Including Jeff. Then one fall, he says, I was getting the car ready for the state safety inspection, so I jacked it up, jiggled the wheels, and did all the things you usually do. And when I let it down off the jack stands, 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. Yeah.

It was not, what's the neighbor's brake fluid doing in your car? I asked her one question and when she gave me the answer, I knew what was wrong with her car. What was the question? And the question was, how often do you replace? You add brake fluid. Yeah. And the reason he asked that question was this. Somewhere along the line, he surmises, she went to the gas station and her brake light was

on because the fluid level. was down. She buys a can of fluid from the attendant and watches him fill up the reservoir. Thinking this is part of the regular maintenance of the car, whenever the light goes on, she tops it up, never bothering to ask, where's the brake fluid going? It's like, well, you'll add oil from time to time. Sure. It's not unusual to add brake fluid from time to time. And as such, she had this can under the seat. It may have been one of many cans that she used. And she was constantly adding brake fluid to a leaking master cylinder. And the master cylinder was leaking into the power brake booster.

And every once in a while when she came to a stop, especially an abrupt one, or if the level of fluid in there where there's not supposed to be any was high enough, that fluid would get sucked into the engine and make the thing try to combust the brake fluid, which would cause it to stumble and choke and maybe even stall. And then once it worked its way through, accompanied by this belch of small, broke out the tailpipe. It ran like a dream. Everything would be right.

And the subsequent stops wouldn't be a problem because she'd have to wait until enough fluid accumulated in the booster to cause the problem again. Oh, man. So the question was, how often do you add brake fluid to the car? Yeah.

So who's our winner? Nathaniel Myers from Berkeley, California, probably some aging hippie sitting there on the streets of Berkeley selling beads. And now... Yeah, don't you wish that were you? He's the tone I don't.

And now he's going to win a $25 gift certificate for the store at the cart talk section of Cars.com. And with that $25 gift certificate, he can get a limited edition, two zeros and zero-zero campaign t-shirt with the slogan, don't blame me. I voted for click and clack. That's a great t-shirt, isn't it? Notice how we had these ready the morning after the election, even though we didn't know who won yet.

Well, we knew that we weren't going to win. We suspected we weren't going to. Hey, by the way, if you're thinking, why does Nathaniel get one of those and not me, you can always visit the store at the Car Talk session at Cars.com. And use your own $25 gift certificate. Exactly. It's known as a $25 bill. Anyway, we'll have a new puzzle coming up in the third half of today's show, so stick around.

Hey, do you know what time it is? Time to move those campaign matching funds to our bank account in Aruba? No. It's time to play. Stop the Chops! This is the part of the show. where we check in on a previous call to see if the advice we gave was full of certitude,

rectitude, or just plain attitude. And so who's our lucky contestant this week? Funny you should ask, because our lucky contestant is you. Now, a couple of weeks ago, you made a very bold claim. Let's see it. Can we bring up the cut? Here on car talk. Hi, this is Kathy from Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Ann Arbor, Michigan, so it must be Kathy with a K. Hey, you are one smart guy. Well, you notice, I've never been wrong on the Kathy thing. Oh, come on. I have never been wrong on the Kathy thing because I know the rule. I'll rule this. You made up the rule. Someone has to make up the rules.

Anyway, we went back into the archives. Oh, no. Come on. We didn't have to go that far back just to see how perfect your record was. I'm not going to like this. Am I? And we're going to give you three chances. Kathy number one, will you enter and sign in, please?

Hi, guys, this is Kathy from Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania, so it's Kathy with a K. No. Oh, darn. Well, that wasn't all that impressive, was it? Well, let's go to Bachelorette number two, Sally. Well, she might have moved. All right, Bachelor number two.

Hi, I'm Kathy calling from Connecticut. Hi, Kathy with a K? Kathy with a C. Okay, one more, and you've got Tresuevo, so here she is. Kathy number three, your last and final Kathy. Hello, this is Kathy from Old Lyme, Connecticut. Hi, Kathy from Old Lyme.

With a what? C. No. Old lime? Lime with a K? With a Y. Yes, lime with a Y, Kathy with a K. I swear all those.

Most people had to have moved from somewhere to where they finally ended up. Well, in all fairness, we had to go back five years to find all those wrong answers. You were right most of the time. Five years. Oh, I didn't learn the rule until four and a half years ago. But we thought it would be fun to embarrass you anyway. Anyway, if you hear someone you'd like us to bring back the stump the chumps. Like a caller, you know, someone who actually called in to the show.

Yeah, exactly. Then email us your suggestion from the car talk section of cars.com. Our call and stump us right now. The number is 888-Cartalk. That's 8-8-8-27-8-8-25-5. Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hi, this is Bob in Jacksonville, Florida. Bob Jacksonville.

How you doing? Good, good. I have a 1995 BMW station wagon. Did you vote? Yes, I did. Why? I'm sorry. Go ahead.

You have a Volkswagen? No, it's a 1995 BMW station wagon. Oh, BMW. Yep. And I have a problem with the door locks. If you lock the doors from the outside with the key, and there's anybody inside the car, they're locked inside the car, and they can't get out of the car by unlocking the doors. There's no way to unlock the doors from the inside once you've locked them. Why can't they open the handle? It doesn't work. Everything is shut off. So the horn doesn't honk. The lights don't turn on. You can't open with the handle. It doesn't pop it up. You can't get out of it. And unfortunately, my father-in-law found that out the hard way. How many days was he in there? It was only about a half an hour until we started kicking out the windows. Well, if you were in the car sitting in the driver's seat,

there is no switch on the dashboard or on the door that will unlock the doors? There is no way to unlock the car from the inside. So this is not something that's broken. It's something that's missing. It's really, it's a design defect. I mean, most cars that, I don't remember the 95 BMW, but most all cars, have a way to unlock the doors from inside, and not necessarily by pulling up on the little doohickey.

There's a switch somewhere. The little stem. What happens in this car is the stem goes down so far into the door. That you can't reach it. Well, I have a ready solution. What's that? A brick. No.

Well, that, okay, I have two solutions. That you add an extender piece to that little stem. Well, actually, on this car, you can reach it and pull on it, but it doesn't do anything to the mechanism. You pull on it, and it won't. It won't unlock the mechanism. Also, that's just a vestigial little thing there. Right.

Boy, if that's true, that's extraordinarily stupid. Yeah, well, isn't it? I agree. Actually, I actually bought a new BMW recently, and in the owner's manual, it tells you, don't lock the car from the outside with someone inside of it because they're locked in. They didn't change the design. They just put on the owner's manual, don't do this. Really?

I know why they did it. It's an anti-theft device. Someone's in your car trying to steal it. Someone's in your car trying to steal the car. You jump out, you lock him in and you run away. And you go for the police. The police come and there he is waiting for you. Already incarcerated.

Or there's the car with a broken window and the brick. Because he did this before. By the way, why did you lock your father-in-law in the car in the first place? Well, we just sort of forgot about him. We all got out of the car. So you all get out of the car. You said, let's go have an ice cream. And you lock the car and the guy is.

And a half hour later, somebody says, where's that? Where's Fred? Exactly. I mean, it's known as though it's such a big car that he was like down in the basement to something. Bob. About half an hour later, we thought about him.

We went down to check on him. And about that point, he was coming up the stairs in a panic. And first he tried to kick out the windshield. He broke it, but couldn't get out because of the plastic parts in the windshield that hold it together. He just cracked it.

And he ended up breaking out of the, of the driver's side window and crawled out. So you didn't lock him in there purposely, or you did? Well, I don't think Bob's at liberty to tell, really. I deny all knowledge. Deny all knowledge. Were you having a senior moment? No, no.

So he's the life of the party, I guess. Well, you know, I mean, I don't know if there's any ready fix for this, but I do know, and I've seen some catalogs where they sell a hammer. designed exactly for smashing a window. It does seem like a rather extreme remedy. No, I mean, there are many people who think that this hammer thing is a really necessary safety device because of all the electric stuff that's going on in the cars. And you'd be amazed how hard it is to break a window, as I'm sure your father-in-law can attest.

We actually bought him one and gave it to him for Christmas. Oh, a little late, huh? Of course. I mean, what are the chances that this is going to happen again? Well, I hope BMW rethinks this whole thing because I really can't think of the advantage of this. We're going to ask them, and we're going to find out, and if we find anything interesting, we'll report on a future show on their reason for having such an insane little feature. That's great. I'd love to hear that.

Thanks for your call. And if possible, we'll get you the money for that broken window. Okay, great. See you, Bob. Thanks for calling. Bye. Okay, Tommy, do you think we should take another call or take a break? I always vote for the break.

That's funny. So do our listeners. When we come back, are you going to have a great new puzzler? How about just a new puzzler? We'll be back in 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 non-automotive puzzle. I can hardly wait.

I didn't have a better descriptor than that. That's good enough. Here it is. Yeah. I'll try to make it brief. You notice the puzzles of Lativ and rather lengthy? Yeah. Yeah.

I'll try to make this one short and sweet. Well, the more lengthy, the more opportunity for obfuscation. See, that's the thing. Of course. If you give a one-sentence puzzler, you're hard-pressed to work in bicycles in the north of England and all. You're hard-pressed to do that. You would think so, wouldn't you? In one sentence.

Unless you have a sentence like, I was reading the first 20 chapters of The Odyssey the other day, and somewhere in there. Well, here it is. Yeah. A woman and her husband frequently go walking together. On this day, they walked side by side, one never getting ahead of the other. It was they kept abreast of one another. And as a matter of fact, they could have held hands the whole time. Okay.

And they walked for an hour. At the end of the hour, the woman says, boy, that felt good. I think I walked four miles. and the husband says, oh, I walked much farther than that, I'm sure I walked five or six. How could that be? So she walked four miles

and was pretty certain of that. Yeah. And he was pretty certain when he said, oh, no, I walked much more than that. I'm pretty sure I walked five or six. And of course, they're both right. I guess that's a puzzler, right? My question was,

how could this be? Now, if you think you know the answer, write it on a postcard on the back of a thousand watt per channel Yamaha surround sound system with Dolby B. Especially on the back, we don't want you to, you know, scratch up the front. And send it to Puzzler Tower, Car Talk Plaza. Have you been to Berman's house lately? He's got all this stuff.

He's got that Chippendale dining room. I see the trucks wind up outside. Are you kidding? There's going to be something illegal about that. Anyway, Puzzler Tower, Car Talk Plaza, boxed. 3,500 Harvard Square, Cambridge. Our Fair City. Matt 2-2-238.

Or you can email your answer from the Car Talk section of Cars.com. If you'd like to call us, the number is 1-8-8-Cartalk. That's 8-8-2-2-78-255. Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hi, this is Tom from Amherst. Hi, Tom from Amherst. Yes, with a T. With a T.

Do you spell it the way I do? T-A-U-G-M? No, T-O-M. Although I was getting junk. mail from people that spelled it, H-O-S. Oh, yes. Well, that's an abbreviation.

That's what you see in the phone book. But Tom is shorter. Tom is shorter than the abbreviation. Exactly. It's like W-W-W. Yeah. Isn't World Wide Web shorter than saying W-W-W-W? Certainly is.

Anyway. That's nine syllables as opposed to three. It's three times as long. It's a craziness. Waste of energy. Anyway, Tom, what's going on? I have a new 1997, a new 1997-eastern, Maxima Essie, which I just got last week.

And I was reading the manual, and it recommends that I have premium gas of 91 octane or better. And I said, aha, because I remember listening to Car Talk, and you guys saying vehemently that the only reason to get premium gas is for the detergents, which is now in every grade. No, no, no, we never, never said that. Yeah, we did. We did say that, but it was many years ago. and we can't be held responsible for anything we said more than six weeks ago.

It's in our contract. Well, because it may have been true many years ago, but it isn't true now. That's not the reason for using the higher octane. Well, actually, the original reason for using higher octane way back was to keep the car from pinging. In other words, when you accelerate the car, if you have the wrong octane gasoline in the tank, the car will make an horrendous noise, which is caused by pre-ignition of the fuel under hard accelerators. So you get this noise that sounds like bolts, nuts and bolts rattling around inside the engine, or in some cases a knocking sound.

And that was prevalent for years and years and years up until the 70s. And then came along the EPA and whatever, and all the gasoline were changed to unleaded. And all the compression ratios were dropped down so that it hardly made a difference. Then when fuel-injected cars started to come out in the 80s, it was recommended that those cars used high-off. octane because those were the only fuels that had the additives to keep the injectors clean. So this is kind of a brief history of high octane fuel. But now that all cars are fuel injected, all the gasoline's had the additives in, whether they're premium or regular, to keep your injectors clean.

So now we go back to the 1960s reason for using high octane, which is pinging. Which is pinging again. And your car has a high compression engine, at least higher than most of the other cars out there. And as such, requires a higher octane fuel. And you should buy 91 octane. Okay, well, here's my question. Yeah. In my area, we have 89 octane, which is plus.

And 93. And I was wondering, is the formula linear? Yes. It's totally linear. Yeah. Mix 50% 89, 50% 93. And you've got 91.5. Exactly.

Pretty good. That's pretty good. You can mix them, and you will get 91 octane. Ah. Pretty good, huh? Excellent. But if the car calls for it, you should use it because you could do damage to the engine in the long run.

Okay. That's it. Well, great. Hey, but thanks for remembering what we once said. Well, if someone has to remember what you guys said. We know. Keep us honest. See you, Tom.

Thanks a lot. Bye, bye, bye. 1-888-car talk. That's 888-227-8-255. Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hi, I'm Jill from Buffalo. Jill? Jill?

Oh, I thought you said, chill. You're going to be chilled pretty soon. soon. No, Jack and, like Jack and Jill, we got it. How are you, Jill? How are you? Not too bad. My story begins when I was driving to the hospital to pick up my husband. He had broken his arm in this big basketball tournament we have here. He was there all of 10 minutes and he was sprawled out with a broken arm. And I got a ticket for an overdue inspection sticker. While you were making this mercy trip. That's right.

So then we took the car to be inspected and they said we needed brakes. So we had them fix the brakes and we picked up the car and due to his broken arm, they asked me to back the car out of the service bay, which I did. And when I went to step on the brakes, there was none. And my foot went all the way to the floor and I smashed into a car in the parking lot. Yeah. And at that moment, at that particular moment, was your thought, oh, my God, what have I done? Or was your thought, oh, my God, what did these morons do?

That, the second. Oh, it was. So you didn't have an attack of female guilt syndrome. No. Excellent. I was, it was like, it was awful. And everyone came running. Apparently someone forgot to do something.

Yeah. Put the brakes in, maybe. Yeah, they were very sorry, and they told me to drive it, and he, like, punched the brakes or something with his foot, and he showed me that the car did, in fact, stop, which it did. But I'll tell you, I don't trust it right now. What they forgot to do, Joe, was they forgot to test drive it. When you put new brakes on a modern car, a car that has disc brakes,

you must push the caliber pistons all the way in to accommodate the new pads, which are thicker than the old ones. At least you hope they're thicker because that's why you would replace the pads. They were all worn out. So you're replacing the thin worn-out pads with nice thick new ones. But when you do that, you more often than not push the piston in much farther than you need to. So there's a big space between the piston which pushes on the brake pads and the brake pad. So when you get into the car,

after the new brakes have been installed, the first time or two that you step on the brake pedal, goes to the floor. It will sink to the floor because it's making up that space, and every application of the brake pedal is bringing that piston closer and closer to the brake pad until finally it makes contact, and the car will stop.

But until that point, the pedal can travel all the way to the floor, and each application of the brake pedal brings the piston closer, and the piston stays in that position. You pump the pedal again, It goes closer still. So each time it's making a step and doesn't retreat when you take your foot off the pedal. So you can trust it now because that's not something that they did that's going to cause the breaks to not work. Ah, see, my husband told me that, but I didn't believe him.

You didn't. Well, how can you believe anybody would have broken arm? That's right. And I thought, well, and I know he broke, he broke his arm. I can see it now. He was reaching into his thing of popcorn. Yeah. And a player on the court fell on top of him, and that's how he broke his arm.

arm, isn't that it? That's right. And it was like, and I told you so factor, you know what I mean? Yeah, no, he's right and they're right. I mean, they, first of all, they did two things wrong. I mean, they didn't pump the pedal, and they also didn't test drive it. Because whenever you do a brake job on a car, before you let the customer take it, you have to test drive it. Yeah, I mean, the brakes pull off. Why didn't they back it out of the service bay? Why would... That's a good question. Yeah. Did they initially try to blame you? No. They knew. No. They knew right.

They did say, as she just reported, that they said, oh, he forgot to, and she said something about punch the brakes. Do something, yeah. Do something. Punch the brakes. Yeah. Well, the brakes are okay, and these guys are okay. The fact that they didn't try to pin this on you is admirable. Okay.

Most shops would have found an opportunity to blame the customer. Oh, no, they didn't blame me at all. Great. I think you're all right. Just driving. Thank you. See it, Jill. Thanks for calling, Jill.

You're welcome. Next time, make them back the thing out. Absolutely. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Well, it's happened again. You've wasted another perfectly good hour listening to Car Talk. Our esteemed producer is Doug the subway fugitive, not a slave to fashion.

We can drop those other ones, slave to fashion. Just go right to Bongo Boy. I think so. Doug Bongo Boy Berman. Our social producers are Louis Cronin the Barbarian, and David, they better be gentle giants green. Our engineer is Tad Massimon-Curie. Our senior web blackie is Doug the old. gray mayor, aka Sheep Boy, and our technical, spiritual and menu advisor, just back from a free-range

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We're click and clack to Tappert Brothers. And remember, 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 Dewey Cheatham and Howe and WBUR in Boston. And even though Robert Siegel begs for an indefinite tour of duty on the International Space Station

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