The Best of Car Talk - #2659: Class Dismissed!

Episode Date: July 25, 2026

Linda’s Honda has such a bad ride that she is making her 8th grade class sit silently at their desks while she talks to Click and Clack about it. Will the brothers come up with the correct answer for Linda’s Honda? Or will they have to stay after class? 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 for Tappert Brothers, and we're broadcasting this week from the Expository Writing Department here at Car Talk Plaza. You never know if these things are for real, but it doesn't really matter. We don't care. We don't care. Like that vowel drop to Bosnia. That probably didn't really happen, right? Probably didn't happen, but does that make it any less funny?

No. No. Well, here's this week's collection of bad similes and metaphors. Actually, we should thank Stephen Weed because he did send it to us from cyberspace. I'll just give you a few of my selections. A smattering? A smattering. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law, Phil.

But unlike Phil, this plan just might work. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck. But a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe like from stepping on a landmine. I mean, there are names after all of these. Any names you recognize?

I'm looking for my kids. Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from, I can't believe it's not butter. Here's another winner here. The ballerina rose gracefully on point and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells.

Like if she were a garbage truck backing up. This was disgusting, but it's funny. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli. and he was room temperature Canadian beef. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs. And here's my personal favorite. He fell for her like his hot was a mob and formant and she was the East River. I mean, this is pretty creative, you have to admit.

The young fighter had that hungry look. And you get him not easy. Well, look, if you're tired of bad riding, but for bad car advice instead, give us a call at 1-888-8-8-8-8-8-8-5. That's 888-227-8-25-5. Hello, you're on car talk. Hi, this is Rush Hamilton calling from Mystic, Connecticut.

Hi, Rush. Yeah. What's happening, man? Rush, what's... Is that your name, Rush? That's what I go by. My real name is something else. I go by Rush, all right.

Is it Thornton? No. Is it shipping? No, but it's almost as bad. Is it Throck? Morton. You're getting close to. I try it out my new...

Well, you'll have to tell us what your real name is, and I'll tell you what my new name is. I have a new name. You do. You first. Me first? Yeah. Well, I tried it out the other night. I went with the pep to shoot pool at this local pool hall, and they make you give them a name, you know, to put your name on the list.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you tried a new name. I tried my new name, Erosmo. And the gal behind the desk says, Erosmo. You've got to be kidding. She said, you don't look like an Erasmus. I said, you know why? Stop my name.

Rosmo's good. Yeah, I think I'd use Arasma before I use my real name, which is Richard Stedman-Hamilton III. Oh. Yeah. Why can I use that? No, no, I don't be using it. You can have it all you like.

No problem there. Richard Stedman-Hamilton III. Yeah. Wow. Right, that is a rather a blue. a blue blood name. That is a blanche. Especially for a guy driving a 27-year-old car,

which is a car. Oh, yeah, it sure is. Okay, what is it? The cars, it's a 73 land rover. And the problem started, I came back from Thanksgiving. I went home to California, see my parents, came back,

picked the car up in a parking garage, and from the mom I open the door, it just melts. I just couldn't believe so much smell come from a car. Oh. It was at night. I pulled out, paid for the parking,

and then as I was getting on the highway, and it was cold. The heat on it got worse and worse and worse, and finally had to pull over, and I turned the way out and investigate what happened. It turns out I had left a container of butter in what would be the glove box. The glove box is more like a trough that runs about two-thirds the width of the car. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know it. And the butter had melted in the warm parking garage. And turn rancid.

Yeah, but it did more than that. I clean that out pretty well. I went to a gas station and used up, bought a whole thing of sort of detergeny stuff and used their windshield wiper, clean, all kinds of stuff, and clean out pretty well. The problem still persists, and what's happened is, I think, it's gone down into the heater vents and into the heating system. Oh! So it's in there. Yeah. How close you were like Fort Dix, New Jersey?

Pretty far, and I wouldn't want to drive with the smell. What's what you thought? A flamethrower. Yeah, I can say with some conviction that you will never get this smell out. Oh, stop it. Never. No. It is permeated every space.

No. Every space. If you got two molecules, one of these smell molecules is stuck in between them. Well, here's what I tried. I sprayed some Lysol into the intake. Not strong enough. Right. But it was trying to do something to the...

the bearings on the bluer motor. Yeah, it is strong enough to do that. And the other thing I've done is since Christmas, I filled the car with Christmas greens. You know when you go to a Christmas tree? Sure. Yeah, see, you can't try to cover up a smell like this because it's only temporary. I mean, you could put anything in there and you could cover it up for a day or two.

But as soon as that stuff wears away, man. This reminds me of a funny stuff. We had this old guy who used to bring his Jeep, as a matter of fact. There was a Jeep Cherokee or something to our shop. And he had taken over the years to living in the car, I think, or to at least, he had been using the car as his personal refrigerator slash garbage disposal. Yeah. The odor in his car could absolutely kill you. And none of my guys would drive the thing.

We had it in for a rather large repair. And when the job was all done, we had left the thing. Someone had to test driving. We all refused. We drew the straw, and the guy who drew the short straw threatened to quit. So we said, he'll test driver. We'll live it up to the customer. And he comes to get the vehicle, and I just tell him that it's parked in the shop,

and he'll have to back it out himself. And he says, because all my guys at this time were hiding in the bathroom. seven of them in one stall. And I tell him he pays his bill and I say the keys are and he says, oh, could you back it off of me? I have a stiff neck. At which point I hear seven guys laugh at their butts up. And as luck would have it, I get in the thing to drive it out.

I take a few, I hyperventilate, take a few deep breaths. I get in, I hold my breath. I start the thing up. I start to back out and it stalls on it. Serbs you're right. Poetic justice. Anyway, what were you doing with a stick of butter in the car? Some friends were having sort of breakfast kind of party kind of thing,

and so we had pancakes, and they were out of butter, and they asked me to bring it, so I did, but then I forgot that it was there. And since then, I've looking like Ace Ventura with my head out the window. Yeah. It's just unbelievable. It's inscriable. Over the years, I mean, we have had lots of people suggest solutions to this kind of a problem.

and I don't remember any of them, of course. Well, freshly roasted coffee. Oh, coffee's good. But I'll tell you, there's no substitute whatsoever for getting to the absolute root cause of it. Absolutely. You have to remove every little tidbit of whatever butter remains in that thing out, by whatever means is necessary. You know, I'm really intrigued by this coffee idea. Any chance to just throw some beans down there and get sort of the roasting coffee smell?

They put the beans somehow just down where they're... Well, but the thing is you might say yourself, can weight it out. Yeah. But I can tell you that you won't wait it out. You'll die first. Yeah. You will.

Either that or you're going to have your head taken off by a truck's mirror as you go by. That's right. Okay. Jesus. Shipping Bradshaw the Fourth, I wish we could have helped you. And we can't. But take the dash off and expose the heater core. And if need be, take the heater core out and have it steam cleaned by somebody.

It's probably penetrated all the little. little passages. Well, it might not, if you're lucky, it's not on the heat of core itself, but it's just on the box. Yeah, this is the season. Take it apart, man. We're on the first warm day and get out there and just rip it apart. First warm day, he'll be dead. Yeah, do it sooner. Good luck, Rush. All right, thanks, fellas. Goodbye. Bye. Bye. All right, Tommy, look, to help you remember last week's puzzler, I'm going to ask you a few

fill-in-the-blank kind of questions. Go right ahead. Now, each of these words is a hint. So here's your first hint. Uncle Nunzio used to run blank. Numbers. Of course. And are you ready for the next one? Your IOUs aren't worth the blank they're printed on. Paper.

Good. I'm doing good. And if you ever get an answer right on this show, it's purely a matter of blank. What? It's close enough. I was looking for chance. All right. So those are the clues that I'm supposed to figure out the puzzle now?

No, those are just kind of random thoughts I was having. Hi, we're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us. and clack to Tappert brothers, and we're here to talk about cars, car repair, and the answer to last week's puzzler. And this was a mathematical puzzler sent in by Norm Leiden from Franktown, Colorado. And what I loved about it and what leapt out at me from among all the puzzlers I had to look at, it was written on a piece of paper in pencil. Yeah, I remember it.

And I almost dismiss it as being some fourth grader. It might be a fourth grader for all I know, but... Fourth graders are smart. They sure are. But there's nothing smarter than a seventh grader. Yeah, they know all their state capitals and everything. Not that that's ever really come in handy, but... No.

Unless you're on Jeopardy. I mean, I was watching Jeopardy the other night, and there was a woman who, I mean, she knew everything. And I said, mamma, me, how smart is she? And then I said... You quit school in seventh grade. I said she's as smart as the average seventh grade. School should end at the seventh grade. It did for some of us.

Okay, here it is. Yeah. Three different numbers are chosen at random and written on each of three slips of paper. The slips are then placed face down on a table. And the objective is to choose the piece of paper with the largest number. And here are the rules. Are it coming back to you now? I remember this.

You can turn over any slip of paper you want and you can look at the number written on it. If you think this is the largest, you're done. You keep it. Otherwise, you discard it and you can. You can't go back and get it, but you can turn over another slip, again, either one you want. And if you think that's the largest number, you can keep that and the game is over. If you don't, you discard it and then you're stuck with the third number, no matter what it is. And the numbers can be anything at all.

Yeah, from a dollar to what? Infinity. Infinite. Infinite dollars. Like what my wife spends. So I presents this here game to my brother Tommy and to Vinny. Tommy says, is your part? I remember what I said.

I said, it doesn't matter. I think what you said is, that's pretty stupid. Your chance of getting the highest number is one in three. Yeah. Vinny, on the other hand, says, I don't think so. What are you talking about? I think I can do better than that. Is Tommy right or is Vinny right?

Is there a strategy by which you can improve the odds from one in three? Well. What is he a puzzler? If I weren't wrong? Yeah, I should let you be right once. You should. I mean, you could have just as easily said. I could have reversed the rules.

Vinny said, ah, it's only one in three. And my smart brother said, uh-huh, uh-huh. But did you do that? No. Well, Vinny's strategy. I mean, people are walking around the world thinking that I'm dumb. Well, Vinny's strategy. And you have nothing to do with it.

Vinny's strategy, in fact, changes. the odds for him to one in two. Oh, yeah. You pick one of the pieces of paper at random. You look at the number. No matter what it is, you throw it away. You then pick any other piece of paper. And if the number is greater than the first one you picked, you're done. You say that's what I think is the highest. Exactly. Right. Okay. And you keep that. And if it isn't, you throw that away and you take the third and whatever it is. Well, let's say for the sake of simplicity that the three slips of paper, say $1, $500 on another, and $10 on the third one. Okay? Now, his strategy is you pick up the first piece of paper no matter what it is, you remember it, but you throw it away and you don't

keep it. So if he picks the one with a thousand, he can't possibly win because no matter what else he does, he's going to lose. So let's forget those two cases. Let's look at what happens if he picks up the 500 one first. I'm with you. If he picks the $10 one second, he throws it away, in which case, he ends off going to the $1,000 one. Whoopee! If he, by chance, again, if he picks the $5001 first,

and he by chance goes to the 1,000 one next, his rule says, his rule says you keep it. Keep it. And he wins again. And he wins again. Pretty good. If he picks up the $10 one first,

first, his rule says, throw it away and pick up another one. If he should be unfortunate enough to pick up the one that says 500, he's going to keep it. He's going to keep it and he's going to lose. However, if his second choice is not the $500 one but the $1,000 one, he's going to keep that. And it turns out if he does this,

you look at all the scenarios, Tommy's method will allow him to win one time out of three. And Vinny. Vinny will win three times out of six. That's almost half. It is in some countries. So if you want to see this, you can go to our website, which is the Car Talk section of Cars.com,

and you can stare at the screen for 15 to 20 minutes until you get it. Do we have a winner? The winner this week is Charles Nicol from Palm Beach, Florida, and for having his answer selected at random. From the wheelbarrel for the correct answers that we got, Charles is going to get a $25 gift certificate to the shameless commerce division, which is at the Car Talk section of Cars.com. And what can he do with that $25?

And with that $5 gift certificate, he can get an embroidered car talk baseball cap. Did we really get a whole wheelbarrow full? We did. Would this be an appropriate time to read some mail that I got regarding puzzlers? Can I do that? I have a piece of mail here that you're going to love, man. Here's an email. Remember the buzzler about the mango tree?

Yeah. You said quite convincingly. There's no other solution. There's no other solution except two. Infinite. Edward Holmes, I think it's sure. I think I said I had no other solution. In fact, what you said was, you can't do it unless the number is too old.

That's what you said. You can't do it. Edward Holmes says, O contraire, Piston, bus. I was afraid of that. The briber of the guards would have to leave the palace with exactly 130 mangoes to get back out of the seven fences. he goes away with three mangoes and the entry guard gets one. If he could carry 386, he could go home with five. My analysis only went up to 120.

And then you got tired. What did he say again? Let me hear that again? You can't do it unless the number is two. Boy, it sounds so... What does it sound so... Convincing. It's ethereal.

Yeah. Well, this little note was actually slipped to me before the show. Really? By an unnamed member of the staff. Soon to be unemployed, I might end. Unless the number is two. All right. Okay, that's it.

All right. With that little admonition, I guess we'll have a new puzzle of the third half of today's show. So I should stay tuned for that. In the meantime, if you have a question about your car or anything else, the numbers. Go on, that's the matter. You can't take a joke. 888 Car Talk. That's 888-227, 8-8-25-5-130.

I should have figured that one out, huh? All right. Hello. Hello. Oh, you're on Car Talk. This is Ann, and I'm in Cleveland, Mississippi. I'm calling y'all because when I turn on my car in the rain, there is a rushing water same.

behind my glove box. And by the time I get to the stop sign at the end of the street, there is enough water on my floorboard that there are waves going back and forth. Oh, and my dear. What kind of a car is it? It is a 93 Accura Integra. And my husband at first looked at it the first time it happened, and he thought that it only leaked if the air conditioner or the heating unit was running.

So the next day when it rained, the car was not, even on at all. And there's just a real slow drip if the car is off underneath the glove box. But as soon as you turn it on, you hear the water again, and it just floods out from underneath. How long has this been happening? Just for the past several weeks. Weeks? Yes. Yes. We just didn't know. It doesn't rain very often. It started about maybe in December, and then it didn't happen again for a few weeks. And then this past week, we've had a lot of heavy rain

and just a lot of water in the car. It has nothing to do with the rain. How about them apples, Annie Baby? Well, it only happens in the rain. It only works if the number is two. Oh, no. You can't do it unless the number is two. What a merciless group.

Sheesh. I feel like Pietro the house painter. Wait, wait, wait, she just said something that is going to change everything we said. She said it only happens when it rains. That's right. I know that. Because when it rains, Ann. That's the only time you turn on the defrauster.

That, I don't really turn on the defroster. And that's another problem with the car. But I don't know if it has to do it. The lake, the air conditioner hasn't worked for a little while. And your husband and you are sure that this is just plain water. Oh, yes. We put a tray on the floorboard yesterday. It rained really heavily. Yeah, yeah. And the water is crystal clear. It doesn't have any tent at all when it comes out.

Did you try watering any plants with it? No. See if they'd die. Well, I mean, there are two sources of water. I mean, my first approach. I mean, don't forget, you started by saying, It has nothing to do with the rain. Remember that?

All right But looking back on recent events I may be forced to You may be forced to Sit in my position There's a substantial amount of water Because when we put the tray Underneath the floorboard

Yesterday, it was a heavy rain But we emptied that tray out three times Just during the day when I'm at work Because at home I can go under the carport But at work when it rained and it was leaking We emptied and I had to run errands We had to empty that tray out three times There was that much water

It was a lot of water I think it has everything to do with the rain I do too I'm beginning to come around I think you have a leak Well, where do I stop Well either it's possible that your windshield is leaking Yeah, I like it

Or it's possible that the ventilation system Which is supposed to, you know, water and air coming through that vent on the cowl You know right in front of the windshield Right Well that allows fresh air to come in but it also allows of necessity water to come in, except that water is supposed to drain out,

and it may be that the drains are plugged up. Okay. Yeah, that's what it sounds like. You might have alligators in there or something. I don't know. They don't have alligators in Mississippi. Oh, we do. They do.

It must be alligators in there. Is it something that we could do ourselves? No, I would take it to the dealer and tell them what the situation is, because what they'll do is they'll hose it down in a systematic fashion, and they'll try to figure out where the water. coming in. Okay. And then they'll clear out the drains, which probably is not going to cost you one arm and a leg.

Okay. Unless it's an alligator. Then it's going to cost a mechanic an arm or a leg. Good luck, Ann. That's what it sounds like. Well, thank you so much. Good luck. Thank you. Bye-bye. You've got to be so careful. 130 does work, by the way. It does.

It does, huh? It is. It's elegant. I mean, I was so close. Yeah. Well, I mean, you can't, that's the trouble with solving problems empirically instead of abstractly. No, I tried. See, if you had used X's and Y's, you would have come up with all the different solutions. No, I tried X's and Y's and I came up with no solutions. And I trusted the bum who sent the question.

What was that again, Ted? You can't do it unless the number is two. Wow. Wow. But it's not fair. I mean, by doing this, I had no part in this. I was just asked to read this letter. Yeah.

But the other guys, don't they realize that they are destroying your credibility completely? They don't care. For everything? Now when you say, when you make an incident, there's nothing to do with the rain. I mean, no one's going to believe you anymore. Oh, well. You might have to get a real job. No.

We're done for it. Yeah. All right. Tommy, listen up, we have reached a crucial turning point in the show.

What's matter? You're pocketing me to run out? Yeah. I'll give you a quarter if you go out and feed it for me. I'll do it for 50 cents. Deal. We're back.

You're listening to Car Talk with us. Click and Clack the Tapper Brothers. And we here to discuss cars, car repair, and the new, I'd have to call this historic, folkloric, automotive,

everything. And militaristic. Militaristic. Is it from the string series? No, no. The Hat series? No, it comes from... The Rock Series.

No, it comes from WW2. Well, it has its roots. Okay, go. And this was sent in four or five times by a guy named Ed Wynn. Ed Wynn. I know him. Palmyra, Pennsylvania. And he says, I hope you'll reconsider this puzzle that I resubmit here with.

Anyway, I'm going to read it pretty much as he wrote it. A five-page letter. No, no, I read fast. Half of it's the answer. And the other half is background. Oh, okay. So it's three halves, but I'll do my best to condense it. Flashback to summer 1942, the British are battling the Germans and Italians for control of North Africa.

In one of the towns under British control is an Italian civilian named Tony Cardiillo. He refuses to submit to the British demand that they use his trucking company to transport supply. always willing to negotiate, the British confiscate the trucks, and throw Tony into a concentration camp. That's a compromise. Move ahead now to the late 70s. Here I was, out of college three years, doing the only thing that a political science grad could do to earn a living then. I was driving a truck. It was a cold winter in 1978 when we experienced many days with the mercury at minus 20 in the morning.

In those conditions, diesel engines, even the ones that had block heaters that were plugged in all night, just didn't want to start. Tony Cardiolo was the morning mechanic for this trucking company. The very same, Tony? And he was the one that we turned to when our big rigs wouldn't get up and go. He taught us that when a truck wouldn't start, we shouldn't grind the battery down to nothing. We should try it for a few seconds, and if it didn't start, we should leave enough juice for him to help us for a second try. When we went crying to him about a truck not starting, his first question would be, did you bless the truck?

When we stared at him, he'd repeat, did you bless the truck? When we said, no, we didn't bless the truck. He'd walk over to it, face the bulldog ornament on the hood. Make the sign of the cross and he'd say, now you started the truck. And nine out of ten times the truck would kick over and we'd be on our way. Wow. The worst part was that when we tried this ourselves, we'd get there in the morning, We blessed the truck, hop in, turn the key.

It never started. Really? Did he have some connection to God forged to his experience in that concentration camp? Or had he stored up so much of that North African heat that he was radiating into the engines? He never let on. He just blessed the truck and walked away, sure of his power, saying over his shoulder, now you go, good a lot. The question is, how was Tony Cardiolo starting?

these trucks by blessing them when in fact these guys couldn't do it themselves. Now, if you think you know the answer, write it on a postcard or on the back of a deed to a four-bedroom oceanfront condo on South Beach with wraparound Palazzo Terrace, rooftop, and in-room telescope. The kind you put the quarters in. And send aforementioned deed to Puzzler Tower, car talk plaza box 3,500, Harvard Square, Cambridge,

Our Fiercity, Matt, 2,2238. Or of course, you can email your answer from the Car Talk section of Cars.com. 1-888-car talk. That's 888-227-8255. That's the number to call if you'd like to converse with us. Or if you're on Car Talk. This is Mark Osmers in Phoenix, Arizona.

So what's up, Mark? I have a 1991 Ford Explorer. It's got 167,000. thousand miles. And I noticed that there was, I'm having trouble getting the truck into gear. It's actually a five-speed. No kidding. I didn't even know they made one.

Oh, yeah. Then I found out it was a hydraulic clutch. Oh, yeah. And worse than that, the slave cylinder is buried. Is inside the bell housing. That's not good. Isn't that the stupidest? Oh.

We'll explain what all this stuff is in a minute. But go ask you a question. When I'm leaving from a dead stop, and I let out the clutch, I get a metal-to-metal sound. I said, e-e-h. Oh, that's good. That's good? Yeah, well, it is good. Good, as in cheap, or?

No. I don't think good was the right word. I mean, it's sort of like when your doctor says, well, I have to take out your appendix, and I'm going to take out everything else inside you at the same time. I said, well, I get a discount. It's all broken. And you say, good. That kind of good.

So it's that kind of good. So you have to take out the transmission on this vehicle to get at the clutch release bearing, which is also the clutch slave cylinder. It's all one shabang in this thing. Okay. So once the transmission is out, you would want to replace the clutch anyway.

You would never go through all that without replacing the clutch. Right. And the grinding sound tells you that it wouldn't have been a waste of time. Right. So the clutch needs to be done too, and you may need to have the flywheel resurfaced or replaced.

Maybe there is no flywheel left. Yeah, I mean, because your clutch is real, if it's grind, if you hear that noise, the clutch is really quite gonzo. What's happening is the rivets are being ground up either by the pressure plate, which would be lucky or by the flywheel, which, considering

everything else it's wrong, would be just a minor additional inconvenience. He's going to need a flywheel, he's going to need the slave cylinder, he's going to need all the clutch parts, and it's going to cost them a thousand bucks. Okay. Mark, see you later, baby.

Hey, Mark. Thanks for the good news. Before you go, just say, that's good. That's good. That's my brother's definition of good. I don't understand it either, but thanks for calling. You bet. See you later.

Bye-bye. 1-888-8-8-8-2-7-82-55. Hello, you're right. I mean, I've been so, what's the word, disoriented today? I haven't even even officiated the number at all. No, you haven't. I noticed that. 8255.

Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hello, this is Linda Valley from Fort Wayne. Linda. I'm sitting here with the whole class of eighth graders and they're being very quiet. They are. Eighth graders, see now, those are the ones that are the smartest people in the world. As soon as they get finished with eighth grade, tell them not to come back to school ever again. I can't tell them, man.

Everything that they will learn from then on, they will never use. No, no. You know what happens? All the useful stuff you learn up until eighth grade. Anything you learn after that, you're going to crowd out all the stuff. Exactly. Oh, and then you forget the important thing. You can forget those state capitals.

Remember what Sherlock Holmes said. The mind is like an attic. And for everything that you cram in there, something else has to come out. So unless your wife is doing it. Do you want them to forget everything for the sake of learning, for example, calculus, which they will never use? It won't help them figure out their car problems. You ain't just a kid. Anyway, what's your car problem?

My problem is I've got a 91 Honda cord EX, and I've only owned it since this past fall. So this is my first winter with it. I've got all four new tires on it. I've got Firestone tires, and there's nothing wrong with it until I hit slippery roads. And it doesn't just fish tail, the whole thing just like levitates above the ground. Ooh, dangerous. And we've had the tires sipped, and that doesn't do anything at all. Yeah.

We put weight in the trunk, and that doesn't help. And it didn't do this with the previous tires. It did do it with the previous tires, and that's why we put new tires on it. Wow. But you didn't have firestones on there before? Actually, there was two on there of the ones that I have, and two other ones that were harder and older. So we took those off and put on two that matched the two that were on there that were pretty new. They're probably only six months old.

But you've never driven this car with anything but Firestone tires on there? That's right. And you bought these at a reputable tire store? Oh, sure. The Firestone store. Well, sort of, yeah. I think they kind of care. Just sort of.

Was it like out of the back of a truck? What sort of mean? Well, you get them a lot cheaper than anywhere else in town. Yeah. So they say they're not really seconds or anything, but they're supposed to be okay. And have you taken this to any place other than these guys? Yes. And what is?

They checked the pressure and the tires and fix some of them, but that didn't help either. Has anyone checked the alignment? No, but the car drove fine before we had the tires and had them sipped and now it pulls to the left. Yeah, I... But it did this before, too. Right, because the alignment's been off forever. You think so? Yeah.

And I'd be willing to bet a quarter. Does it feel like you're driving on bowling balls? Yeah. There you go. When it's slippery. Well, I mean, every condition that results from improper alignment is exacerbated. when it's wet. Exacerated.

Made worse. That's a good word. Yeah, that's a good word. It's an eighth grade word. That's a ninth grade word. They're never going to be able to use that word. Oh, those poor kids. Unfortunately.

Are they still sitting there quietly? They are still sitting here quietly watching me. Do any of them want to participate? It's anything like, say, you know, causing trouble? I could have to say hi to you. That would be great. In unison? In unison.

Everybody say hi, click and clack. Shut up and stay in your seats. You're right. All staying after school. All right. No lunch one year. Okay, I'll call you back next time about the fish that fell through my sunroof. That's why it's fish tailing.

See you, Linda. Thank you. Bye. Bye-bye. Well, it's happened again. You've squandered another perfectly good hour listening to Car Talk. Our esteemed producer is Doug the subway fugitive Bongo boy, Berman. Our associate producers are Louis Cronaughan the Barbarian and David just built me a teepee in the T-station green.

Our engineer is Tad Massaman Curry, our senior web lackey is Doug Yak-Boy Mayor and our technical, spiritual, and menu advisor. Just back from his stunning victory at the Twin Cities' fruited jello mold off is John Bugsy Lawler. Is he here? No. No. He's back, but he's recuperating. Our public opinion poster is Paul Murky of Merkey Research, assisted by statistician Marge in Overa. Our customer care representative is Haywood Jabuzov.

Our document security expert from the island of Jamaica is Euripides Upman, who is not related to our tailor, of course, Euripides, I menadies, or to our staff bouncer, Euripides, I'd break your face, or to the proprietor of our men's clothing shop, Euripides, Euronides. Our divorce attorney is Carmine, not yours. Our bullfighting intern currently on medical leave is Gordon Head. Our sexual harassment investigator is Hank Aanky. Our meteorologist from the New Delhi officer is Luke Outa Vindo.

Our director of Pavlovian research is Isabel Ringing. Our Shakespeare waiter is coffee anon. Our Russian chauffeur is peek-off and drop-off. The banker at Car Talk Plaza Poker Games is Nikolai Putin, and our seat cushion tester is Mike Easter. Our chief counsel from the law from the Dewey-Chinman Howe is U. Louis Dewey, known to the best and the brightest visions in Harvard Square

as Ui-Louis-Louis-Dooey. Thanks so much listening. We're clicking clack to Tappert Brothers. Don't drive like my brother. Don't drive like my brother. Please. We'll be back next week. Bye-bye. Car Talk is a production of Dewey Cheaterman Howe in WBUR in Boston.

You can't do it unless the number is two. Talk about rubbing it in. Relentless. You hang that on your wall. And even though Terry Gross reconsidered that offer to host Wild Kingdom, whenever she hears us say it, this is NPR National Public Radio.