The Best of Car Talk - #2660: Howard's Brake Fluid Recipe

Episode Date: July 28, 2026

Howard was in the desert down near the US/Mexico border when he realized that he was out of brake fluid with none onhand. He did, however, have some water, antifreeze, paint thinner and some high-end tequila. What would be the proper mixture of each to come up with a suitable ‘dot-Howard’ brake fluid? Or should he have just enjoyed the tequila while awaiting rescue? 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 to Tappertr Brothers, and we're broadcasting this week from the personnel department here at Car Talk Plaza. Wow. I remember when we used to do the show, when we were just amoephites at this. Now that we're consummates. Tadpole, so to speak. Well, I remember people used to admonish us.

This was broadcasting, and you couldn't narrow cast. Right. We didn't know what that meant. I still really don't. But it meant like you can't say hello to your brother-in-law. Hi, Eugene, how you doing? You can't do that. But this is a narrow casting thing.

I'll read you the news release here. Bosses of a publishing firm are trying to work out why no one noticed that one of their employees had been sitting dead at his desk for five days before anyone asked if he was feeling okay, which he wasn't. Well, he may have been. You don't know. Judge Turklebaum, 51, who had been employed as a proofreader at a New York firm for 30 years, had a heart attack in the Open Plan office he shared with 23, are the workers. He quietly passed away on Monday, but nobody noticed until Saturday morning

when an office cleaner asked why he was still working during the weekend, and he didn't answer, I guess. His boss said George was always the first guy in in the morning and the last to leave at night, so no one found it unusual that he was in the same position all that time and didn't say anything. He was always absorbed in his work and kept pretty much to himself. He had been deaf for five days. He had a coronary and, ironically, had been proofreading manuscripts of medical textbooks. And the reason I say that's narrowcasting, we have a big staff here. We do.

As you know, I mean, we got Kesarah, we got Nikolai Putin, we got all those guys, and they ain't doing much. Most of them could be dead. Most of them could be dead as we speak, and nobody would notice it. But of our immediate staff, like Dougie and Louis and Dave and Doug the yak-boy, I mean, we were very concerned after reading this, and we went around to each of them, and we lifted their heads off the test. We found out that they were just sleeping.

Are you okay? Is anything all right? They also define okay. So if someone around your office hasn't been saying much lately and hasn't been to the water cooler, you ought to check, I guess, is the moral of this little story. Indeed. As did we, and we found that everyone was as okay as they could be.

We're still alive with kicking. Anyway, if you're not dead yet and you have a question about your car or anything else for that matter, give us a call. at 1-88-car talk. That's 888-227-8-8-25-5. Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hi, this is Mariana from Charleston. Mariana.

Mariana, what a wonderful name. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Well, except for that affiliation with the trench. Other than that, it's a beautiful name. I know. That's what I tell people I was named after. Not my grandmother, but a big hole in motion.

Right. So what's up in Charleston? Well, I've been driving this Mazda protege. It's a 2000. And it has about 7,000 miles on it. Yeah? And whenever I get caught in traffic, my car smells like a dead lobster. Dead lobster.

Let me work on that one. I got it. I don't like it. What? Well, and it isn't like to smell of dead lobster. And then if you continue to drive it, the noise, the smell when it goes away. It's whenever I hit the intersection of 93 and 95 in the morning, it's eye-watering bad. And is anyone around you holding his nose?

Well, actually, people won't drive with me. A friend of mine says it straightens her hair. But when I'm moving, it's fine. Yeah, because you're leaving the stink behind. It's a new car, though. And I bought it because I wanted the new car smell. You got it? So that's what that new car smell is.

Things change. Dead lobster. But the smell has got to be coming from the exhaust. Oh, really? But no one's ever described an exhaust smell to us as dead lobster. Well, I don't know what a dead lobster really smells like. I know what rotten eggs smell like. Well, you know, it's not really a rotten egg smell.

It's the only way really to describe it, I used to work down at Fort Point Channel, and it's kind of like Fort Point Channel at low tide. Ah, that smell. Yeah. I've been there. Oh. Yeah, so, geez. Yeah, that's exhaust smell.

Oh, so there might be... That smell is exhaust. I think your catalytic converter is faulty. Oh. And while the smell may... It may go away. Diminish in some time. It may take a long time.

So is this something that would probably be covered under warranty? I would say... Everything's covered by warranty. That's the beauty of owning a brand new car. Everything is covered. Not just the smell? Not just the smell. I would go to them and certainly go on record.

They may ask you to try. try different things like changing your brand of gasoline or just waiting it out. Yeah. And you should, you know, be willing to do those things. When did you buy the car? I bought the car in September. Oh, perfect. Whatever they suggest you try, you tell them you did that already.

Okay. When they say, well, we would try different brands of gas. I did that already. Okay. I would try warming the car up a little bit. I did that already. It's not very ethical. Ethical or honest?

I don't care. Anything you do to anyone who was remotely associated with the automotive industry is fair game, in my humble opinion. Wow. Okay, you do what you think is best, Mariana. Remember, you didn't hear it here. I didn't hear it. See you later. Hey, good luck.

Bye-bye. Bye. Wow, 1-888-8-8-8-2-7-8-25-al. Hello, you're on car talk. Hello, this is Peter from Esmont, Virginia. Hi, Peter. I've got a Mercedes 300D in 1983. Ooh.

Diesel. Yeah. And I was driving it into town. I live about 20 miles south of Charlottesville. Yes. And it would start slowing down and slowing down, losing power and losing power, until I was just sort of peeking along about five miles an hour. And so I drove it all the way up into where I got the car. And they tell me that they think that I might have an infection.

Really? Like a virus? Yeah. They said that I might have caught a disease. A diesel virus. Well, not a diesel virus, but a diesel algae. Really? That they think might have infected my fuel system.

Really? And then they were saying that they might have to take my tank out and boil it at 800 degrees to kill it. These guys are the most creative. And these are the guys who were going to do the de-algification? Yeah. And they were going to charge you for this? They weren't going to charge before it unless the problem became very serious and recurring.

They said it's very rare that you get a bad infection. And so they cleaned out the fuel sock and the tank and sent me on my way and everything's been fine since. Except now I'm afraid, and this is my problem now, I'm not so worried that I have, still have an infection. But now I went through a phase of guilt and repression about buying diesel from just any old dealer. And now I'm afraid to get it, but except at one pump in Charlottesville. Right, you want your diesel screened. Yeah. I'll become monogamous with my pump.

So since you've gone only to this one station, you have not experienced a problem at all. No problems. But that's also at the same time that they cleaned the sock. Yeah. Could have been the sock. I've never heard of a diesel. You never heard of an infection? No, I haven't.

But there's lots that I haven't heard of. Okay. My guess is that the sock was plugged up. The sock is the thing at the end of the pickup that filters out like the, rocks and the gargoyles that are in there. Yeah. But then the question is, is that where, do you know anything about where, how to practice safe desoling?

Safe desaling. Where should I, should I not buy it at mom, pop, I mean, should I just be care, be wary of where I'm like diesel. Well, the socks should protect you. Diesel fuel is about two steps up from dirt. I mean, it's two steps up from the primordial ooze. Exactly. So, unless there's a lot of.

water in it, which wouldn't cause the problem that you have. Right. I'm just imagining like Bill's water from Bahrain ending up in my tank. Yeah, I suppose all that's possible. I don't know anything about it. Why should I even give you my... However, I never had a diesel car on my life. I'm confident that we will be getting

hundreds of emails from diesel mechanics all over the country. Yes. The world. Who will, all over the world, perhaps, who will clue us in as to the causes and remedies. For diesel algae. Well, and we'll mention it on the air If we find out that there is such a thing As a diesel algae syndrome

Right, in the meantime, don't leave home Don't leave home. Right, okay. See you later. Thanks a lot. Hey, hey, the puzzler answer And more calls are coming up right after this. Hi, we're back.

You're listening to Car Talk with us. Click and Collect the Tappert Brothers And we're here to talk about cars, car repair and the answer to last week's puzzler. This was, I believe, an historic, folkloric, automotive, militaristic. I mean, all the elements. intriguing, woeful.

I vaguely remember it. Scientific. Yeah. You're obfuscated. There was something about the guy praying over the car. Well, here it is. Flashback to the summer of 42. The place, North Africa.

The British are battling for control there against the Germans and the Italians. In one of the towns under British control, there's an Italian civilian named Tony Cardiolo. Tony owns a trucking company, and the British demand that he uses trucks to transport their supplies. Tony refuses.

always willing to compromise the British seized the trucks and throw Tony into a detention camp. Flash ahead to the late 70s, and there's Ed Wynn, who was the author of this little puzzler, three years out of college doing the only thing a political science grad could do to earn a living. We're going to have a doctor. 1978 was a cold winter, he says, and on many days the mercury was at minus 20 in the morning. Under those conditions, diesel engines, even the ones that had block heaters that were plugged in all night, didn't want to start. Now, the very same Tony Cardiello was the morning mechanic for this trucking company. He taught the drivers that when a truck wouldn't start, they shouldn't grind the battery down to nothing.

They should try it for a few seconds and then leave enough juice for him to help them try again. And when they went crying to him about a truck that wouldn't start, his first question would be, did you bless the truck? When they said, no, we didn't bless the truck. He'd walk over to it, faced a bulldog ornament on the hood of the truck. And with a certain reverence, he'd make the sign of the cross and say, now you started the truck. And nine out of ten times, the thing would start right up. The strange part was that when the drivers tried this themselves, they blessed the truck, hop in, turn the key.

It never started. Did Tony have some connection to God forged in his experience in the camp? Or had he stored up so much of that North African heat that he was radiating it into the engines? He never let on. I know the answer. He just blessed the truck and walked away short. of his power saying, now you go, good a luck. I know what it is.

Tony was a very heavy drinker. And when he stood in front of that truck and said, hey, that defumes from the Jim Beam that he had been drinking all morning, went right into. It was like starting fluid. It's like starting, just like starting. Well, you're close. Yeah. I am. Yeah.

The X factor here is time. A diesel engine requires or relies on the heat of compression to combust the fuel. Yes. So when it's minus 20 and you get out there and you turn the starter and it goes, you're compressing that ice cold air, but not getting it hot enough to start the engine because it won't get the air temperature of that compressed air up to the ignition point of the fuel. And when these guys ran off to find Tony, time went by.

And the friction that was inherent in the pistons going up and down in the cylinders had enough time to expand the pistons and the rings enough so that on the second try, the compression would be just enough so the thing would fire up. And that's why nine out of ten, the thing would start up because Tony knew and Tony never let, they had to torture him to get the secret out of him. He's back in the camp now. So anyway,

Good. Very good. Do we have a winner? Yes. The winner is Janice Baxter from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. And for having her answer selected at random

from the hefty bag full of correct answers that we got, Janice is going to get a $25 gift certificate to the shameless commerce division, which is at the car talk section of cars.com,

of course. Get out. And with that $25 gift certificate, Janice can get a car talk woolen winter muffler wrapped in. Get this? A genuine muffler.

clamp. Isn't that special? Yeah, we're overstocked at the garage, actually. You're going to get rid of them somehow. What? Clamps or the mufflers? Both. Well, do you happen to know what time it is now?

Time for our mechanic's spring break trip to Sicily? No. It's time to play. Stump for top! This is the part of the show where we dig up a caller from a previous show. Dig up. What an unfortunate choice of words. Well, sometimes we have to literally dig up to call up.

from our previous show and find out how I have advice panned out. So who's our willing victim this week? The victim this week is Tim from Cincinnati. That's the only definition, the only description of him that we have. The answer is no, I don't remember. I don't either. Okay. Well, but I do have this little slip of paper that tells me that Tim called us last fall.

Wow, that was a long time ago. Shortly after he had moved from Cleveland to Cincinnati, and ever since the move, his Honda Civic had been making a rattling noise when he accelerated. the noise. It sounds sort of, have you ever picked up a little refrigerator? Yeah, and the noise I heard was, oh, my back! Well, if you ever do that, you hear the compressor shaking in the back, sort of a hollow kind of rattling noise. Yeah, exactly. I know exactly the noise. It's the compressor springs.

Right. I bet you'll notice that it always happens at the same RPM, or very close. So there's a range. It might happen between 24 and 2,600 RPM, for example. And beyond that, you don't get it, and below it, you don't get it. Because it's a sympathetic vibration. Okay. Yes. What it is, I'm saying, Tim, I can sympathize. I'm sorry you had to move to Cincinnati.

Cleveland is not exactly Valhalla either. So what do we tell them was? I don't remember. It was causing the sympathetic vibration. We said it was a loose heat shield, I believe. Oh, yeah, sounds good. Let's see what we did. Tim, are you there?

Yes, sir. Hey, you are. All right, before we find out what happened, I need to first confirm that you and I have not spoken since your last appearance on Car Talk. Is that true? That is absolutely correct. And my millionaire ex-wife has not made any cash contributions to your campaign fund to try to influence the outcome here today. Has she? No, but I'd be willing to accept them that she were. Okay. What was it, man?

It absolutely was the heat shield. Can we hear that one more time? Tadden. All right. Boy, look at that. crowd. Ah, boy, are they excited. Look, there must be a thousand people out there.

Well, that was easy. So we don't have to interrogate you or belittle the other people who looked at it or try to, you know. No, we don't have to do anything. We just say, thank you, Tim. We were wonderful to take part and stump the chumps. And that's it. We chalk it up and we recalculate the average, which is, I believe, below 500. Shh, shh.

No one needs to know that. Do you go ahead and get the heat shield fixed? Oh, yeah, yeah. Excellent. Very good. Well, Tim, thanks for playing Stump the Chumps, and thanks for agreeing with us. Thank you, guys. See you later, man.

Take care. Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye. Now, if any of you six listeners out there, hear someone that you'd like us to bring to Stump the Chumps, you know, we were going to go back and find them and find out if we were right, email us your suggestion from the Car Talk section of Cars.com. Would you do that? Or you can call and Stumpter Chumps the Chumps right now. Really?

The number's 8888-Cart Talk. That's 8-8-8-82-55. Hello, you're on Carthock. Hi, this is Jane from Boston. Is that with a Y? No. It's straight up J-A-N-E. I don't think I've ever made anyone, except for Jane Mansfield, who's J-A-Y-A-N-N-A.

I actually work with five J-A-N-E. Yeah, and? They all spell it J-A-N-E. Yeah. Well, not Jane Zamer. Who the hell is Jane Zamer? She's the other one who doesn't spell a J-A-N-E. I don't know J-A-N-E.

I don't know Jane Zer. I think she's an imposter. She changed her name. Well, I don't know. No, her. Where are you from, Jane? From Boston. Oh, from Boston.

I think you said that already. She did six times. So what's up? Well, I have a 1996 Chrysler Town and Country minivan. Mm-hmm. Uh-huh. And for the last six months or so,

it's been making two noises. The first one is this high-pitched chirping sound. That one I can't really verbalized for you. It just sounds like a bird chirping, and it goes at different sort of rotations per minute here. Does it change? It changes, yes. Do you have to be moving to get the chirp? No.

So the engine has to be running, however. Yes, the engine? Exactly. That's it. Okay. And sometimes it is so loud. It's incredibly embarrassing. But then sometimes it doesn't happen at all.

Right, right. Then sometimes it makes a low growling kind of, hr, ha, ha, ha, kind of sound. I love it. Boy, you're really angry about this sound, aren't you? Well, maybe it's not quite as growling, but it's much more low-pitched. So we've got to chirp and we've got a growl. Yes. And what are the conditions under which the growl occurs?

I can't figure out. It's random. But will it ever happen when the vehicle is not moving but the engine's running? Yes. And sometimes it happens when you're driving. Yes. Usually it starts when I start the car up. Yes.

And sometimes if I go for a long drive, it will start and then go away. Is the absence of the noise ever coincident with damp or rainy weather? You know, it might be. It might be. What a great question. I would have guessed just the opposite. If only I could interpret its meaning. I was going the other way.

Now, I brought it to the dealer twice, and both times it goes away after the car's been serviced, but then comes back. Ooh, I like that. Don't you like that? Yeah, I don't. Now, I have another problem, and I don't know if it's related or not. You might as you give us the other one.

Spill your guts, Janie, baby. How's everything at home, all right? This is truly bizarre. Kids doing all right? The car will spontaneously go out of gear, but only, and it's happened four times, only when I'm leaving a parking garage. I pay the ticket. I go to put my foot on the gas. And it's in neutral.

But it doesn't make any noise. Nothing happens. It doesn't even rev. She's a wacko. I know how we're going to get rid of her. I don't know how we're going to get rid of it. I don't know. The mic's on, are they?

No. Okay. The chip, the growl, and the mysterious. Oh, I'm sorry, Jane, you there. You guys just talk amongst yourself. Well, I'll address your second question first. Will you? I recall reading recently a technical service bullet on something similar to this with Chrysler transmissions.

Okay. That they can sporadically, spontaneously, and without warning, not be in any gear. Yeah. So you might want to call your town and country dealer to see if they have read the same bulletin. I hope they have. Now, the other thing, the chirp, growl, hiss, boom, bah, I think is either a bad belt. You know, this engine has one serpentine belt, one long, long belt. Either the belt is bad or the tensioner is going bad, and that would cause either the chirp or the growl,

but it would go away in wet weather because the lubrication afforded by the moisture would cause the noise to go away. Okay. What I suspect they may be doing when you get it serviced is they may be running an abrasive across the belt if it is the belt to make the noise go away. And then it'll go away for a few days and once the belt gets glazed again because the tensioner isn't pushing on the belt tightly enough, then the noise will come back.

Okay. Because that's what we do. Usually with the customers that are going out of town. Uh-huh. They'll be in New Jersey by the time that noise comes back. Well, good luck, Jane. All right, thank you for a later. Bye-bye.

Okay, bye-bye. Okay, we're two-thirds of the way through the show. Do you know what that means? Let's say, two-thirds of three halves. Cancel the two, cancel three. Hey, we're done. You're done, you knock. We'll be back in a minute.

We're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clock the Tappert Brothers, and we're here to discuss cars, car repair, and the new Ah, geez. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Automotive? No.

Folklore? No. Clever? Mm. Good? The new puzzler. That's an apt description. Well, let people put their own little adjectives in there.

The new blank puzzler. Okay, I'm going to read a list of words. Yeah. And your assignment, if you choose to accept, is to tell me what these words have in common. Really? This is just a straight old puzzle Without obfuscation. Without obfuscation, without a lot of explanation.

Wow. Without eating up a lot of time. This harks back to the days of your. Indeed. You're what? All right, I'm going to write these down. Get the pencil. Is that what you're saying?

Get a pencil. Well, let's wait off. While listening everywhere, six of them, have a minute to go and get the pencil. Okay. Time is up. Do do you do. That's a movie.

It's the loony tunes thing. What do the following words have in common? Yeah. Wait a minute. I've got to get a pencil. Go ahead. Deft. Yeah.

Like he made a deft move. Yeah. First. He came in first. Mm-hmm. Calmness. He was overcome by calmness. Yeah.

Canopy. He opened the can of peas and carrots for dinner. Canopy. A canopy covered the boat so we wouldn't get wet. I gotcha. Loughing. It was no laughing matter. Stupid.

Needs no further explanation. Crab cake. As in, I dropped two crab cakes in my shorts and nobody else. I just dropped. I just dropped. And nobody noticed. And hijack. Hijack.

So I'll read the list again. Deft. First. Calmness. Canopy. Laughing. Stupid. Crab cake.

And hijack. Now, I can't tell you from whom I stole this puzzle. Because if I get, you know, go buy the book for, you know. whatever and so that's very interesting interestingly i i wrote two columns of four words each how did i know that was going to happen like that that was bad thinking uh anyway if you think you know the answer write it on a postcard or on the back of a winning 40 million dollar jackpot lotto ticket sent it to puzzler tower car talk plaza box 3500 harvard square cambridge our fair city matt 022 38 or you can email your answer from the car talk section of cars.com.

The number if you'd like to call us here is 1-888-car talk. That's 888-2278-255. Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hi, this is Piali from Watertown, Massachusetts, right next to your fair city. P-I-A? That's it. L-L-I? Nope, 1-L.

Piali. Yep. And what nationality is that? So I'm originally from India, from the much maligned city of Calcutta. No kidding. No kidding. Cool. So what's up, Pialli?

I have a 97 Honda Civic, and whenever the temperature drops below freezing, which it seems to do quite frequently around here, the steering wheel makes this incredibly loud squeaking sound when I turn the wheel. And it also clicks if I jiggle it. But it's inversely correlated with the temperature, so as soon as the temperature rises or when the car has been sitting in the sun, no problem. Right. And the noise is coming right there from the steering wheel right in front of your nose. my ear to it and that's where it's coming from. Forget about it. Yeah, well, you can fix it, but it ain't

going to be easy and you may not ever really be able to eliminate it completely. So what's the problem? Well, it's happening is the steering column is rubbing against, or the steering wheel maybe even is rubbing against the plastic that surrounds the, you know, the steering column with it where you put the key.

You might want to experiment by taking that stuff off, taking those trim pieces off. Yeah. To see if you can find out the actual source of the rubbing, but you'll have limited time to do it, and because you have to do it when it's cold out. So this is just, this is not going to be a dangerous problem. No, no, no, it's not a dangerous thing, but it's an annoying thing which could turn

into dangerous. Well, I think it's dangerous because whenever my husband drives a car, he's laughing so hard at the sound, he almost drives a car into a tree. Well, see, the problem is that you are from Calcutta. Yeah. And if you were from Italy, you would have fixed this a long time ago. What would have done? You'd have lost your temper.

then you'd have whacked the hell out of it. And that might have fixed it. I mean, you might want to just whack it a few times. I did. I do whack it. But you may be whacking it the wrong direction. Okay. I think you want to whack it from the bottom up.

Bottom up. Yeah. Okay. And you have to yell obscenities while you do it. At least that's how Uncle Vinny used to do. That's why we don't let Tommy in the shop anymore. Does it have to be an Italian? Yeah.

I don't know. We could do a little ethnic study here. You try some Indian obscenities and see if it works. Okay. Because we know that it works using Italian obscenities. Most of which start with... B... B...

I might suggest that you try... In the event the obscenities don't work, but I'm sure they will. You might want to try some... Silicon lubricate. Okay. I got it. Another idea for our... to get a ticket out of this dump.

What's that? Spray can obscenities. A lot of people don't know obscenities enough. And it can. You're just, and it's just fiend. Well, better than that, it could be like one of those, one of the laugh bags that were popular about 25 years ago where you press the little button, the thing would just start laughing.

Yeah. Well, try both approaches, but I'd try the silicone spray first. Okay. See you, I'll do that. Thank you. Bye, bye. Thanks, bye. You know, for Valentine's Day, my wife gave me a heart-shaped box of candy with a big picture of Elvis Presley.

And when you take the cover off the box, you hear, love me tender, love me true. Is he singing or are you? Tim. Oh, really? Yeah. Is he still dead? So we could make a little thing like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

With obscenities in it. You think so. Take off the cover of? You. Look for it on the Car Talk website. Coming soon to a TV station near you. 1-888-8-8-8-8-2-7-8-25-5. Hello, you're on Car Talk.

Hi, this Howard from Ruby, Arizona. Hi, Howard. Ruby. Cool. Yeah, Ruby. And where is Ruby, Arizona? It's about 50 miles south of Tucson down close to the United States-Mexico border. Oh, yeah.

Did you retire there, or were you in? Arizona. He sounds like a military man. Air Force. No, sorry. Nope. I'm, uh... Really? Oh, this is a ghost town. It's one that's been in the family for some years, and I go down there regularly, and that's sort of the, uh, the crux of the, uh, of the problem I've had. Yeah. I have a, have a 1974 GMC suburban with a couple hundred thousand miles on it, I imagine. And I was, uh, I was down, heading down to Ruby the other day, uh, and, uh, the brakes started getting really soft.

And I checked the master sonar I got there, and the front half was about half empty, and the front reservoir was completely empty. And I had no brake fluid with me. But I did have some, I did have a couple of different fluids with me. I had water and some paint thinner, some anti-freeze,

and some really good 40-proof tequila. So you put the tequila in there? No, he drank the tequila. He didn't care if he had any brakes. In the end, I remembered an old front-end loader we had on the site, and it had just enough brake fluid to about half-fill that front brake reservoir, and I was able to very slowly get back to civilization and get some break fluid, and I sort of repaired the problem. And obviously, I carry brake-load with me now, but what I'm curious about is, if that sort

of thing happens, and I have those sorts of fluids, which one in an emergency would have I put in? Extra virgin olive oil is the only one I would recommend. I wouldn't recommend any of the ones that you had. Okay. And I'm a chemist. Well, you know, of all the fluids that you mentioned. Yeah, I know what my guess is. What choice?

We have used, I believe, denatured alcohol to flush out brake systems. So I know that that is not going to eat up the seals. But in a dire emergency? Do you think that's what paint dinner is? No, no. But the tequila might be. Oh, but the tequila is? Yeah.

I certainly wouldn't recommend adding anything other than break fluid unless you're willing to subsequently do a whole system tear down because anything you put in there is going to contaminate the fluid. It's going to change the boiling point of it unless you can get it all out of there. And unless it doesn't do any damage, to any of the other parts. I was thinking I might have to flush the system, obviously we flush the system,

but I was just trying to think of which one would do the leaf damage until I got back to town so I could flush it out. Well, we're going to go to Paul Murky in the lab. We have a laboratory. No, we're actually going to try this on my brother's car. We're going to leave the station today. And we're going to do an analysis of break fluid and all of these fluids that you described.

Water would be the one you absolutely wouldn't use. Okay. But the other three are fair game as far as I'm concerned. We'll let you know, Howard. A great question. But carry that can of break fluid from now one, will you? We have a lab at Harvard University. It's run by a guy named Jim Davis who makes believe he teaches there, but he's never had a class.

He's just there to do these experiments for us. Right. And so he's probably on it right now. Indeed. We'll have a full report in a few weeks. You know, if he doesn't blow himself up. See you later. I appreciate your helping.

Thanks. Bye-bye. But you've underutilized another perfectly good hour listening to Car Talk. Our esteemed producer is Doug the subway fugitive, bongo boy. But that just rolls off the lips, doesn't it? Bongo boy, boy, Borman. Our associate producers are Louis Cronin, the Barbarian, and David, what do you mean? Built on a swamp cream.

Our engineer is Tad Masamon Curry. Our senior web lackey is Doug Yack, Boy Mayor, and our technical, spiritual and menu advisor, just back from the greater. Winnetka, snowmobile associations, all you can eat, pancake and kilbasa feast, 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 Euripides Upman, who is not related to our tailor, Euripides, I Menadies, or to our staff bouncer Euripides, I break your face, or to the proprietor of our menser. clothing sharp, Euripides, you own these. Our divorce attorney is Carmine. Not yours.

Our chief estimator is Edward James Almost. Our sexual harassment investigator is Hank Pankey. Our credit counselor is Max Stout. Our assistant... Max Stout, get it? Max Stout. All right. I like it.

Our assistant disciplinarian is Joaquin de Plank. Our meteorologist from the New Delhi offers is Luke out of Vindo. Our director of Pavlovian research is Isabel ringing. Our Russian chauffeur is beak off and drop off. The banker at Car Talk poker games is Nukalai Put in, and our seat cushion tester is Mike Easter. Our chief counsel from the law firm of Dewey Cheeverman Howe

is U. Louis Dewey, known to the pigeons with 800 SATs in Harvard Square as Ui Louie Dewee. Thanks so much for listening. We're clicking clack to Tapit Brothers. And remember, don't drive like my brother. And remember this, by the way. Yes. Don't drive like my brother.

Good suggestion. We'll be back next week. Bye-bye. Car Talk is a production of Dewey Cheatham-M-Haw and WBUR in Boston. And even though Robert Siegel reconsiders that offer to host Survivor 3, whenever he is us say it, this is NPR National Public Radio.