The Best of Car Talk - #2657: Getting to Yes

Episode Date: July 18, 2026

Jane says that there’s somebody on the outside of her Honda banging it with a hammer or, at least that’s what it sounds like when she’s driving around. Click and Clack ask a bunch of inciteful, probing questions designed to elicit meaningful details… but Jane keeps saying, ‘Nope’. Find out if the boys can get any of the other callers to play nice on this episode of the Best of Car Talk.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hello and welcome to Car Talk from National Public Radio with us, Click and Clack, the Tappert Brothers, and we're broadcasting this week. You ready for this from the sociology department here at Car Talk Plaza. You could call it that. We have a new batch here of You Might Be a Redneck If. I know we've done this before, but from what I can see, these are all new. And it looks like it's Jeff Foxworthy stuff. But in any event, you might be a redneck if.

Go ahead. Give me your best shots. You ever cut your grass and found a car. Your stereo speakers used to belong to the Moonlight Drive-in Theater. Your mother doesn't remove the mallboro from her mouth before telling the state trooper to kiss her a butt. You may be a redneck if your wife has ever said, come on, move this transmission so I can take a bath. You may be a redneck if you refer to the...

the time you want a free case of motor oil as the day my ship came in. And this is as far as I'm going this week, but there are hundreds of these. You may be a redneck. I was afraid of that. If your entire family has ever sat around waiting for a call from the governor to spare a loved one. I will continue this because there's no end. There is no end. Oh, really?

Well, if you're looking, if you're one of the two or three, people in America that my brother hasn't offended yet. And you have a question about your car. You can call us the number is 888 Car Talk. That's 888-227-825-5-0. Oh, you're on Car Talk. Hi. My name is Connie, and I'm from Rome, New York.

Hi, Connie. We have a 1985 automobile cutless Sierra. And my husband and I drive into work together in this car. Lately, I've discovered that my husband and I have very different theories about how to warm this car up in the morning. Probably have different theories. about everything. And it's causing an argument on a daily basis at this point. He thinks that it wears the engine out to let it warm up while idling.

So his routine is to clear off the snow first, then start the car, put on a seatbelt, which takes about five seconds, and then immediately start driving. He believes the car will heat up faster while it's moving, and therefore it will have less wear and tear, ultimately. I'm more of the old-school type. I'm thinking 20 degrees, oil, high viscosity. This is a bad thing. It's better to start your car first. Let it warm up while you clear off the snow and then take off.

So he's a big car talk fan. He has all your tapes. He listens to you guys religiously. And he'll do whatever we say. Exactly. How about you? Will you do whatever we say? Yes.

And who drives to work? Him? Well, he does. Yes, he does. He does. And it's even to the point where he has a routine in the method that he drives. We live about a half a mile from the highway. So he'll take off going about 30 miles an hour, then it's downhill, so maybe goes up to 40.

So he says, I'm not straining the engine at this point. That's good. Then there's a stop sign, but the engine still is cold. Yeah. Then he'll make a right turn onto this highway, and he'll keep it pretty much between 40 and 50 miles per hour until the car kicks into overdrive. And then he'll go faster. I have to say that your husband is sort of doing everything pretty good. But for the most wacky reasons I've ever heard.

But it doesn't really matter, right? I mean, if it works, it works. I'd almost go along with what he said. Really? Almost. Okay. Except for the first part where I'd go along with you. I think I would warm it up before I got to the windshield.

Yeah? Well, only because it'll make it easier to get the ice off the windshield. Yeah. If it's warm. Did you buy it new? No, this is an old car that my dad actually rebuilt. He put a new engine in there. And so it's used, and it's 1985.

So it probably has, we think, with the new engine in it, 100,000 miles. And this is his car. We have another car at a 1995 Geoprism, and that's kind of like my car. But if I'm driving it, he insists that it gets warmed up in the same routine. Well, he's actually right, except in cold weather with modern cars, which are fuel injected. Now, the 85 is not fuel injected. Oh, okay. But the 95 prism is.

Yeah. There's really not much harm in letting the thing warm up, except that it wastes a little bit of gasoline. Right. But in the old days when you had a choke with a carburetor, the thing would be revving at 4,000 RPM. Yeah. You'd be wasting gasoline and doing damage to the engine because you'd be putting in an uncontrolled amount of fuel. Modern cars don't allow that. Oh.

So you can warm up your prism, not only while you clean off the window, but while you're cleaning. and off the kitchen table. So you can have breakfast and then come back in and do the dishes and let the thing warm up. You don't need to warm it up more than about a minute. Okay. Unless it's extremely cold, an extremely cold, I would put at zero or below. Okay. Yeah, and the real truth is it doesn't really make a big difference.

Really? Because this is the comfort factor, too. Because I don't want to get in the car. That's right. And when you weigh the comfort factor against the comfort factor against the comfort factor, too, because I don't want to get in the car. long life of the engine. Yeah. You've got to trade that off.

I mean, it's nice to have an engine that will last forever, but you're not going to last forever, so why should the car? And even more important than that is that you don't argue about it. Yeah. Well, I can tell you and your husband don't argue about this. No, they don't. But they do have words, and they do have a disagreement. And I've decided, for example, never, when I get in the car with my wife, I don't drive

anymore. Really? I refuse to drive. She has to drive because I don't want to take the heat, so to speak. Yeah, in fact, when you get in the car, nobody wants to drive. See you, Connie, but don't be afraid to warm it up for a minute or so, and, you know, even a little longer if it's very cold. I think your husband's position is a little extreme.

Okay. And if he warmed it up for a minute or two, it wouldn't do any harm, and it would be a little compromise with the comfort of the passenger. Okay, sounds good. See you. Great. Okay. Thanks. Bye-bye. 1-8-88-car talk. That's 888-227-8-255. A lawyer on Car Talk.

Hey, Tom and Ray. How's it going? Slow it down. Who's this? This is Brandon from Arcata, California. Hi, Brandon. Hi. Arcada. Where's that? Up north somewhere. Way up north. Way up north. Yeah, 90 miles south of the Oregon border right on the coast. Oh. Yeah. Yeah.

So what's going on? I have a 1973 VW. Carmen Gia. Ah, life is good in Arcata. You know, I've been thinking about common gears lately. I was wondering, you know, Volkswagen has come out with a new beetle. Uh-huh. They're soon to come out with a new microbus. Yep.

And I says to myself, I says, what about the gear? Yeah. What about that? I think you may have read their minds. Or maybe they read your... No, they could. Yeah. Oh, no, that's definite.

That's a definite. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Oh, sure. Because that was a very popular little car. Yeah. They must be working on it.

Well, thanks for calling, Brandon. If there's anything we can ever do for you, call again. So you've got a 73 coming year. What about it? Yeah, it's got a real wild problem. It sputters on acceleration. You know, if you're a stop sign and you want to go, it kind of sputters and stalls. Mm-hmm.

You know, it'll run fine once you get up to speed, and it backfires at low RPM. And I just recently found out I had some friends drive back. behind me from Eureka, which is like 13 miles south. He said little flames are shooting out your tailpipe. Black smoke. Huge flames are shooting out of the tailpipe. Yeah, and they also said that sparks are falling out of the tailpipe. You mean there's a fire in the back?

That's why they call it a backfire. Backfire. Yeah, they said it looked like a little tiny, like, blowtorch flame shooting out of the tailpipes. Yeah, it's backfiring. Yeah. Because it's missing. What's missing is the ignition is missing in all likelihood. In other words, you're not getting a spark in every cylinder every time.

So certain times the piston comes up and compresses the mixture of gas and air. And when there's no spark or insufficient spark to ignite that mixture, it gets pushed out as a combustible charge into the exhaust system. Whoa. Where it meets with all the other hot gases that were just combusted. And guess what? It's hot enough to burn, except now the flame is in your muffler, and it comes out your tailpipes. Wow. Is that dangerous?

Is it going to catch on fire? No, whatever it happens is going to be behind you. What do you care? Yeah, you'll see it in your rearview mirror. Yeah, it's dangerous. In fact, we had a call some years ago from a guy whose pickup truck was doing a similar thing, and he set the side of the road on fire. You know, that tall grass?

Wow. Yeah, you could be responsible for one of those many brush fires at California. California is plagued with every summer. Yeah. Yeah. Mystery surrounds. You'd be on the news, man. Your picture would be on a milk carton.

Oh, no. Find this man for us. I mean, there could be all kinds of causes for this. But the most likely is that your points are burned up. The points are burned up? I think this thing has points and condenser. 73. Oh, sure.

It must. Yeah, I went in to replace the points and I replaced the plugs, the wires. But not the condenser. Not the condenser. Replace the condenser. Replace the condenser. You've got to replace the condenser. Okay.

It's a pain in the butt, but you've got to replace it. Okay. This is the one I think where you have to push that little piece of plastic into the hole in the bottom of the distributor. Yep. You've got to take the distributor out to do it. And then it breaks or falls down inside. Oh, boy. Yeah, and then it shorts out.

That's why nobody ever does it. The car will never run again. Oh, no. But that will probably fix it. All right. Say you, Brandon. Good luck. Thanks, Tom.

And we'll let you know when they make the 2002 Carmen Gia. Oh, yeah. Actually, I looked on the Carmen website, the coach builder that built the body. Yeah, yeah. They've designed a new Carmen Gear, but I don't think they can find anyone to make it to actually produce it. Volkswagen isn't interested? I don't know. Well, hey, it could come out to be the Fiat Common Gear. Yeah.

Oh, God. How about the Hugo Common Gear? Oh, boy. Anything could happen. Yeah. Hey, thanks for calling, Brandon. Thanks, guys. See you later.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Hey, we've got more calls on the puzzler answer coming up right after. this. 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 course, the answer to last week's puzzler. This was an automotive puzzler, I guess. Not only do I remember the puzzler, I even know the answer. Well, no one likes to follow a city bus. They're ugly, they're noisy, they're smelly, they're big, they're slow. And I was like, I recall correctly. I said,

I just described my brother. And anyway, in our fair city, they don't even have the decency to pull over to pick up and discharge passengers. They just stop in the middle of the street, but I discovered something interesting lately, and I don't know why I didn't discover this before, about half the time I drive to work in the early morning. I repeat, early morning. Some of us go to work in the early morning. Biberic. I don't mind following the bus. In fact, I look forward to it. The question is why? Get a nice whiff of diesel fuels. Wake you're right. up. It's like cap, is that it? There's caffeine and diesel fuel? And I gave this hint. If it's snowing, I usually don't want to follow the bus. I didn't want

to mislead anyone thinking that the bus would be blazing the trail for me. Yeah, all, all right. You know, and I would follow in the nine. So I wanted to put that to rest. So if it's snowing, you don't want to follow the bus. I don't want to follow the bus. And the reason I don't want to follow the bus is when it's snowing, the sun isn't out. Now, Everyone knows that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Get out! But it doesn't. It only does that a couple of times a year.

In the winter, in fact, in the dead of winter, the first day of winter, it rises the farthest southeast that it ever rises. And it sets the farthest southwest, that is, if you live in the northern hemisphere. And when I drive to work, one leg of my long, long journey to work is facing the rising sun in southeast. and because I leave so, what? Early in the morning. It's right on the horizon, and nothing except a big, fat, bus, will allow me to see well enough.

So he gets blinded. If you let him run the pedestrian door. All you can see, of course, is the back of the bus, but that's good enough. It's better than anything else. It's better than having a bright light shining in your eyes, which is what usually happens when the police pick you up. So who's our winner?

Oh, the winner is... Oh, Doug, Jamest. Mel a Gemmel from Everett, Washington, and for having his answer picked at random from among those thousands of correct answers that we got this week, Doug is going to get a $25 gift certificate to the shameless commerce division, which is at the Car Talk section of Cars.com. And with that $25 gift certificate, what's going to happen? Well, if he throws it a few extra bucks, he gets something good. He might be able to get something good.

He might be able to get a haircut in Hors Town and other great car talk puzzles, volume one. Well, Mr. Doug Jemmel, for you. from Everett, Washington, that's it. You can get anything you want. Go to the Car Talk section of cars.com, go to the company store or whatever it's called, the shameless commerce division, and pick out anything that's $25.

Yeah, and talking about puzzles, there'll be another puzzler coming up in the third half of today's show, and I hope it's as good as all the fine puzzlers in that volume one of our puzzler book. I got a hint. I got a hint that the puzzler may be another one in the Magic Hat.

series. Is that? Maybe. I'm not sure yet. I'm working on it. But if you want to call us, the number is 888-227-8255, which just happens to be. You ready for this? Yeah. What are the chances? 1-888-car talk. Get out of here. Hello, you're on car talk. Hello, this is Sarah from Ithaca, New York. Sarah with an H? Yes, with an H. Ithaca. And I have a 91-is-suzu impulse. Was it an impulse purchase? Actually, no. My dad purchased it a while ago, and then I in here. inherited it eventually. So I'm a graduate student now. I don't even know, I don't even know what an impulse is, I don't think.

I'm trying to... It's actually, it's a car. I've had trouble finding... I've had trouble signing parts for it before because I have very many of them around. Yeah, it's like a two-seater thing, right? Yes, it's a two-seater, two-door. Two-door. Yeah, two doors, two-seats, two-wheels, everything.

Got, okay, all right, we're with you. You got it. And your father gave it to you, because you're a graduate student, studying art history at Ithaca State University. Nice time. I'm actually studying dirt. I'm studying soil science. Dirt. No, dirt's important. Dirt's important. That's good. That's good, Sarah.

I'm glad somebody's finally realized the importance of dirt. Very important. You can get a job working for Tide. So it's briefly stated, my main problem with my car, and it's an old car, so there's lots of little problems. But the prohibitively annoying problem is that whenever the temperature drops to be a freezing, I can't get in it. And what happens is the doors freeze set. Right. Not the locks, but the doors. Not the locks, but the doors themselves.

And see, the weather in Ithaca rains and ices and snows all the time. So the biggest problem is definitely when it rains first, and then it gets colder, and then it freezes. So then what I have to do is I have to climb in through the trunk. And it's a little hatchback type of. It's not very dignified. Not very dignified. But then the bigger problem is that in order to drive anywhere after I've climbed in through the trunk, I either have to shut the truck from the inside, it doesn't work very well, or leave it open.

Or force one of the doors open. Which you can do from inside by putting your foot up against it. But then I can't close the door again. So I'll get out and I'll walk and I'll go and set the trunk and I'll get back in to drive away. And the latch won't even work anymore. So I have to hold it shut up my arm while I drive. Oh, so at that point the latch won't work after you have forced it open? Right.

After I force it open, the latch won't work. Oh. You need a bungee cord that goes from one door to the other. I was thinking about that. And it will also double as a seat belt. I thought of that I never tried it yet you might have two problems

because I think when that happens if the door itself is shut and the block isn't stuck it sometimes is because the little rubber seal around the door the weather stripping

that goes all around the perimeter of the door that gets especially if it has been wet and moist and rainy and then it gets cold and that thing freezes and that's what's holding the door shut And that's sometimes spraying it with like silicone spray.

Right. We'll fix that. But that wouldn't account for the latch not latching after you force the door open. Right. So I think you've got two problems. No, I think you have one. One. I think just the latch is frozen.

What's wrong is that water is getting in there. I mean, water naturally gets in between the window and the weather stripping on the, you know, on the door. And that you can't avoid that. but what's happening is that moisture is getting in there and freezing on the latch mechanism. And so what you need is some kind of an inhibitor. So I think what you need to do is... I thought of duct tape around that window. No, I don't think that's going to help.

I don't think that'll be a good fix. It might help, but then you can't open the window. Right. But when it's all frozen, I can't open the window anyway. And they're power windows. And they're frozen, too. Well, this castle's like a real joy. How was it in the summer?

It's great in the summer. All right, well, good. Yeah. Well, she needs... And summer is so long there in Ithaca, maybe two, three weeks. Have you considered a graduate program at the University of Arizona? Actually, I just moved here from the graduate program in Texas, so it was great. Well, here's what you need to do.

You could leave the windows open in the winter. You have the option of crawling in the window. Or leave just one window open. You need to have your mechanic, take apart the door and grease up with usually, they use like a white lithium grease on all of the relay rods and all of the latch mechanism. And what that'll do is it'll prevent the water from getting in there and freezing the thing up. Yeah, the water will get in, but it won't get onto the parts that have to move. It won't adhere to the metal parts and freeze on there because those metal parts will be covered with grease.

Yeah, and the silicone spray idea I gave you, bogus. That's not going to help. Okay, I won't do that, and I won't use duct tape, and I'll forget the bungee cord for now. Yeah, and I would try. one door and see if that works. If it works. If I do that, there you go. Okay. See you, Sarah. Thanks.

All right, good luck. Good luck. Bye-bye. Bye. The spring is right around the corner. 1-8-88-8-8-8-8-8-2-7-8-25-5. Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hi, guys.

This is Scott from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Hi, Scott. Yeah. What's happening? Well, I have a truly bizarre problem. You've probably never heard of this. I have a 95 Ford Explorer. It has about 80,000 miles.

And it sings. Sings! It makes a really loud, musical tone under the hood. Under the hood. Yeah, and it sounds actually just like a French horn, I swear. It goes, Bha-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b. And the thing is, it only does it when it's at idle.

I'm going to ask you one very profound question. Penetrating. Penetrating question. What? Am I sick? No, no. Does it have to do with the color? No, it does not have to do it. That was my next question.

That was your backup question. Does it run perfect? Does it run perfectly smoothly at idle? Now, before you answer, think of the consequences. And really think about how it ran before it made this noise compared to how it runs now. No, it runs smooth. Son of a... The only other clue I can give you is that it doesn't do it right when I started up.

Well, the only reason I mentioned this is we had back in 1959. We had a 59 Ford Explorer. No, we had an explorer in the shop a few months ago that was making, I mean, I don't know what your French horn sounds like, but I know what mine sounds like. And we had one that was making, I could have believed, was a French horn sound. And it turned out to be a vacuum leak. You know, remember the old days when you were a kid, you took a piece of tissue paper and a comb. Sure. And you blew across that thing and you got that tissue paper to vibrate against the comb.

Those are the days when we used to carry combs. I don't carry a comb anymore because, like, what? I don't have a comb. But you could get that noise by doing, by blowing through that tissue paper. Right. And if that's the kind of noise you're getting, then it could be that the, with a vacuum leak is if it's a hose, where the air is being sucked in, the crack in the hose is vibrating

like that tissue paper would. Right. And we found it just by using a piece of hose ourselves stuck in, one end stuck in our ear and the other end moving around. Moving around until you found the source of it. Uh-huh. And then we said, uh-huh, and as soon as you put your finger on it,

boom, the noise stops. I mean, you might be able to do it just by sticking your ear in there and listening. So is this something that could really cause a problem? No. Eventually, the leak will get worse and then it'll start running badly. Uh-huh. Or it could be something completely unrelated to this.

But this is so good. What do I do if there really is a French horn player into there? Call us immediately. See you, Scott. Thanks, guys. Bye-bye. What a rotten gig that would be. Okay, I got a job for you.

You're going to play into the horn. 95-foot Explorer. I'll take it because this is bad. 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. We are?

Car repair. We are? And the new puzzler. This is the high point of the show for most people, including me. Yeah, that's pretty bad, isn't it? That's pretty bad. Well, Tommy and I discussed the puzzler just last night. Yes.

As a matter of fact. But I decided to put that off another week. It needs a little refining. Oh, obfuscation? Yeah, yeah. I got an email. What was this, December 88? This came from someone named Kevin Tolman.

Who was a high school student at the time, and he's now incarcerated. He's in the witness protection programs. We don't know what his name is, and we don't know where he's from because he's from the Internet. He does say, however, that he got this puzzle from a guy in Inja. Oh, I love it already. Yes. Are there ropes involved? Better.

Mungooses? Better. Oh, man. I may paraphrase an obfuscate as is necessary. Is there a monkey? There could be a monkey. Go ahead. Seems there was a mango tree owned by a certain Maharaja that had very sweet fruit and very abundant fruit.

And everyone would come from miles around to pick it. So he decided to protect the tree. The owner erected a series of seven fences around the tree, concentric fences. Each fence had a gate with a guard. To get to the tree, a person would have to pass through seven gates and pass seven guards, practically impossible to do. I'd say so. One day, a man approaches the guard at the first gate and says the following. If you let me pass through, when I come back, I'll bring some mango.

and I will give you half of the mangoes I have, but you must give me one back. For example, if he brings back ten mangoes, he'll give five to the guard, and the guard will give one back. So the guard will have four, and the man will have six. Yeah. The guard lets the man in through the gate, and the man proceeds to make the same deal with the other six guards. Man, I've got it. The question is, how many mangoes did the man have to get to pass back to the same? through the seven gates, giving half to each guard,

and the guard giving one back. Answer is, no mango tree could produce that many mangoes. This is a very prolific tree. And, of course, I mean, it's obvious, but you can't cut any of the mangoes in half. Now, if you think you know the answer, write it on a postcard or tape it to the back or front of a 50-inch pioneer plasma TV

with five cinema modes and adjustable... temperature. And mail it to actually ship it in a big box, you know, marked fragile. To Puzzler Tower, Car Talk Plaza, Box 3,500, Harvard Square, Cambridge. Our Fair City. Ma, 022, 38. 50-inch, huh? Plasma.

You know, that's almost four feet. It is almost four feet. It's a little over. Also, you can email your answer from the Car Talk section of Cars.com. If you'd like to call us, the number is 1-888-88-28-8-8-2-7-8-25-5. Even if you wouldn't like to call us, that's the number remains. The number sits there and doesn't care whether anyone calls it or not. Call or not. We don't care.

Hello, you're on car talk. Hi, guys. This is Jane from Canada, Arizona. Jay-A-Y? No, J-A-N-E. Oh, Jane. Yeah, like in Tarzan. Did you say Phoenix? Candler, right near Phoenix.

Chandler, Arizona. The third largest growing city in the United States. Yeah. Up to 12 people? No. Yeah, 15. Every time you had a person, it's the fastest growing. Yeah, right.

At least we're warm. Well, we're actually broadcasting from South Beach, and it's 82 here. Oh, give me a break. Yeah, South Beach, right. What's up, Jane? Well, I have a crazy 93 Civic, Honda Civic. Yeah. Okay, by three weeks ago, I was taking a trip up north of Sedona in the mountains.

and just as I started up the first mountain, I hear this. Knock, knock. I thought I was going up. You said, who's there? Yeah, that's what I was thinking. When I was packing my car, I had left my trunk open for a while, and I thought, oh, my gosh, someone's crawled in there. So it's this loud, loud, knocking noise,

and it kept it up louder and louder. I couldn't pull off on the interstate. So I kept it up, and I'm thinking somebody's in there, and he's trying to get out. But it's in the back, you hear it. Yes, in the back. It's a metal sounding, and it sounds like it's coming like from the trunk. Anyway, it finally stopped after I got down the last mountain into Sedona.

I come back as soon as I get in the mountain again, it starts up again. Did you have to be climbing the mountain? That's the question. Up or down. Oh, what a rotten answer. Jane, that is the worst. We're going to give you a moment to reconsider. Well, I'm going north.

I'm going up. Wait, is that your final answer, Jane? Yeah. Oh, shucks. Okay, so this keeps up. Now it's doing it down here in the valley, but it just does it a couple times and stopped. I took it to one mechanic. He said, oh, it's your exhaust and your tailpipe system.

That didn't help a bit. Did he change the system? No, no. He said he was hitting. He tightened it. But it doesn't sound like it's coming from out. It sounds like it's inside. But does it sound like somebody has dropped up?

bowling ball in the trunk. No, it sounds like you have a hammer and they're beaten on the side. There wasn't anybody in there. And when it happens, it's not rhythmic in any way. It's just a one-time boom. Or it might be two or three in a row. Boom, boom. That's right.

It's not rhythmic. And does it happen when you hit bumps? Well, no. Going up and down the mountain, there's no. There were no bumps. No bumps. And does it happen more often as you're accelerating, or breaking?

No, because I wasn't breaking. No, not when I'm breaking. Would you get with the program here and give us an answer that we can work with? Work with me, Jane. Work with me here. You've been obstinate, defiance, and completely uncooperative.

Okay. How about the loose shock theory? I like that, don't you? No. Come on. Work with me. It was a shock all right. Well, the fact that it happens with seeming unpredictability.

How about the sway bar theory? Well, it could be. I think she has a swing. Could we install? Could we get one installed? I think it certainly, well, it certainly could be a suspension problem. I think, of all the possible suspension problems, I think a broken coil spring. I like that.

I could certainly live with that. Yeah. It would have... Why it would happen going up or downhills? I don't know, but certainly things do change when you go up and or downhills. How about when you're going level ground? Well, I think what happened is more of the thing broke even more. And it's difficult to spot, and I wouldn't be surprised at the fellow who had it on the lift

and corrected your exhaust problem. Didn't even see this because the way they break is at the very bottom on the last turn of the coil. Okay. That's my feeling. Either that or there's a missing. softball in the trunk. A wax. Or watermelon.

You wouldn't bring any watermelons up there. Not yet. Not yet. But, yeah, I can just see me going in there. And soon as I go and they go rolling their eyes, like, oh, here comes a dumb woman again. Well, you might want to try another job. Maybe it's not that you're dumb. Maybe you're just wacko.

Oh, come on. They've got you figured out, Jay. I mean, I get the same thing every place I go. Yeah. Well, enjoy the wonderful weather. And get this looked at because a broken spring is no laughing matter, even though we're laughing at it. Okay. Good luck, Jay.

See it, Jane. Okay, thanks for calling. Uh-huh. 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 Bongo Boy. I like Bungo Boy.

It just kind of rolls off the lips. And it's all literative when you say Bongo Boy Berman. Our social producers are Louis Cronin the Barbarian and David, I came, I saw, I made an offer green. Our engineer is Tad Masamon Curry. Our senior web lackey is Doug Yak-boy Mayor and our technical, spiritual, and menu advisor just back from his triumph at the Greater Natchez Chili Dog Derby is John Bugsy Lawler.

Our public opinion poster is Paul Murky of Merkey Research, assisted by statistician Margin Overa. Our customer care representative is Haywood Jabuzov. Our document security expert from the island of Jamaica is Erippides Upman. Hey! It was not related to our tailor. for ages. Euripides, I men of these.

Euripides. What is it? Or to our staff bouncer, Euripides, I break your face. Or to the proprietor of our men's clothing shop, Euripides, you won't a dees. Our divorce attorney is Carmine, not yours. Our staff archivist is Bernadette File. Our staff chaperone is Teresa Crowd. Teresa Crowd. Our sexual harassment investigator is Hank Pankey.

Our meteorologist from the New Delhi office is Luke Out of Vindo. Our director of Pavlovian research is Isabel ringing Our local chauffeur is peak off and drop off The banker at Car Talk poker games Is Nikolai put in And our seat cushion tester is Mike Easter We got a lot of new people

Oh, we've been... We've been... We're picking them all up from all the failing dot coms, man. They've got no work that we're getting them for song! I love it! Isabel ringing is my favorite. I mean, Euripides, I mean, he left a while ago from Greener Pass.

He's back. He's back. And all his relatives are back. And they're all living in the same apartment. Our Chief Counsel from the Law firm of Dewey Cheeverman Howe is U. Lewis Dewey, known to the multilingual barflies in Harvard Square as Ui Louie Dewee. Thanks so much for listening. We're click and clack to Tappert Brothers. Don't drive like my brother. 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 Cheeverman Howe and WBUR in Boston. And even though NPR President Kevin Close gives another listen to the demo tape for that new diet show, Cobb Talk. Whenever he hears us, say it, this is NPR National Public Radio.