The Best of Car Talk - #2670: Calling for a 'Friend'

Episode Date: September 1, 2026

Aaron has a theory about why his Chevy Impala suddenly has no power, and he’s tried a bunch of fixes that haven’t helped. Turns out it isn’t even his car, so Click and Clack want to know why they should care on this episode of the Best of Car Talk.Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. Car Talk's perks include full archive access, new call-in bonus episodes with Ray, and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.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 Tappert Brothers, and we're broadcasting this week from the Educational Testing Division here at Car Talk Plaza. Well, this came to us from several sources claiming to be answers to questions that 16-year-olds on some test that 16-year-olds took. So these aren't necessarily the SATs or anything are? No, no, because they're open-ended questions instead of multiple choice. So here they are. Here's a few of them. Name the four seasons.

Some kid answers, salt, pepper, mustard, and vinegar. Explain one of the processes by which water can be made safe to drink. Answer. Flirtation makes water safe to drink because it removes large pollutants like grit, sand, dead sheep, and canoes. Flortation, that's interesting. Flortation, yeah. What guarantees may a mortgage company, insati?

insist on. If you are buying a house, answers the answer. If you are buying a house, they will insist that you are well endowed. How are the main parts of the body categorized, parenthesis, for example, abdomen? Answer, the body is consisted into three parts. The branium, the borax, and the abdominal cavity. The branium contains the brain, the borax contains the heart and lungs, and the abdominal cavity contains the five bowels, AEI, and you. Well, they may have something.

Well, look, if you're shocked at how little some people know, just stick around, you ain't seen nothing yet. If you have a question about your car or anything else, give us a call. Our number is 888 Car Talk. That's 888-2278-25. Hello. Hello.

on Caratok. Hi, this is Cole from Portland, Oregon. Cole is in Cole Porter. Exactly. Wow. Anyway, what's happening, man? Well, I have 89 Volkswagen Golf, and I picked it up about a month ago. What do you mean you've picked it up?

You bought it used. Oh, you bought it. Yeah, I got it used. It was not a silly question because Bugsy Lawler has a 65 Corvette or something, and he keeps telling us he's going to pick it up any day. Oh, I see. I see. The Bugsies is in the shop, and it's waiting to be fixed.

I thought yours might be in the shop. He's waiting for the guy who's working on it to come out of retirement. Or to come back from the vacation he went on. Yeah. All right, so you bought it. I bought it, yeah. Okay. And?

And it's a really good shape. The weird thing is when I turn the heat on, because it's still cold and wet out here, the dry kind of dust, mist cloud comes out of the vent. Oh, really? That smells like maple syrup. That's too bad. That's really bad news, son. No, my brother's just mooing.

He's waiting for the farmer to come out and milk them. Yeah, you're going to get milked when you're going to get this fixed unless. No, there's no unless. Well, I don't know about this. Come on. This car originally, and it may never have had it done, was, I believe, the subject of a recall. Oh, no. By Volkswagen for a faulty heater core.

Wouldn't that be nice? Now, it may be that it's beyond the eligibility period, but maybe not. And in fact, if it never was done because the previous owner didn't get notification, then you might be eligible. I would try to argue a strong case. I'm going to. Well, you know, I was wondering, my wife and I kind of joked around, well, we shouldn't be breathing this, should we?

I guess we shouldn't. No, you shouldn't. So don't get in the car anymore if you don't have to. Well, I mean, it's not poisonous in small quantities. You'd have to ingest quite a bit of it. But I don't think breathing it on a daily basis is any good for you. And if you want to know what happens if you really breathe a lot of it in, just keep listening to my brother.

Well, I just quit using the heater. Yeah. Well, it's leaking all the time, but it's worse when the heat's on. Oh. But get it fixed. Whether you have to pay or not. So I just call a. dealer and ask them if it qualifies.

Give them your V-I-N. Right. And tell them that you know you need a heater cord, you want to know if you're still eligible. When they stop laughing, you can ask them, you can ask them how much it costs. Tell them, it's only been 12 years. I've been out of the country.

That's it. I've been out of the country, and I just opened my mail. And I got this 11-year-old recall notice here. Try telling the truth. It might work. Say you call. Oh, thanks a lot. All right, bye-bye.

Bye-bye. 1-8-88-car talk. That's 888-227-8-8-2-55. Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hi, this is Aaron calling from Palo Alto, California. Hi, Erin. Erin. Yes. Are you one of those dot-com-type people? No, I'm the chemist, actually.

I'm the other half. Wow. Yeah. What's the formula for aluminum carbonate? ALCO-3 or AL-2-C-O-3? You're putting her on the spot. Or AL-C-O-3-2, AL-C-O-3-2. I think it's AL2-C-O-3.

Well, that's what I thought, too. I got some nasty mail when I said that. Well, it's not if aluminum is plus two. Yeah. Yeah. But I think it only works if aluminum is plus two. Do you have a Ph.D. in chemistry? No.

Well, magnesium is plus two. Oh, now we're changing the subject. We're on magnesium. What happened to aluminum? And then it's M.G. Well, it's probably... She's going from... the periodic cable, man.

Back to basics. Yeah, but aluminum can be different pluses, you know? Yes, I know it can. I like the sound of AL2-C-O-3, don't you? Well, it's happened again. You've blown off another perfectly good artist like the car talk, Arresti. I always went with the sound. That's why I flunked that course.

Yeah, we have to sound good. If it sounded right, you're right. You have to go with what sounds right. Yeah. Oh, you do? Well, thanks for calling. So what's up? Well, see, this all stems back to the fact that my husband taught me how to drive standard.

I just want to know that we have a clock here in the studio. Three minutes is gone by. We haven't even mentioned cars yet. And I need to learn how to drive again. So who was it? Your husband taught me how to drive manual. Yeah. And so I was recently in the car with my friend, John.

And he said, no, no, no. this is how you drive manual. And so what Mark does is my husband, Mark, he always gears down when he's slowing down, you know, to use the engine to slow the car. Yeah. And my friend John shifts the car into neutral, slows the car down, puts on the brake, and then when he's stopping, or when he's stopped already, he puts the car into first so that he can start again. Great!

But my husband, Mark says, no, no, no, no, no, that's really dangerous because the car is not in gear. Do you know, get this, they are both wrong. Then do I have to take new lessons to learn how to drive? No, just do what your husband says. And forget what your boyfriend says. Submission, didn't you read that book? Come on, whatever your husband says is de facto the way to do it. No, it's the other way around.

See, you say, yes, dear, yes, dear. and then you research it yourself and do whatever you want. You know, you rub the wrong intonation. It's, yes, dear. Yeah. Yes, dear. So you want to really know the answer. Yes.

Well, they're both wrong is the answer, but your husband is less wrong than your boyfriend. Not my boyfriend? It's not your boyfriend. Oh, I'm sorry. I've got an evil mind. Yeah, I mean, the guy who says throw it into neutral will come to a coast and then stop and then throw it in first.

He's really wacko. When you're stopped, he's everything he's doing wrong. When you're completely stopped, you should be in neutral with your foot off the clutch. Only when you're ready to go should you step in the clutch and shift in the first. Okay, but what my husband says is that,

let's say you get rear-ended, and you're at a stop. You're at a stoplight. You get rear-ended, and your airbags blow, and you become unconscious. Yeah. And you can't control the car.

Then if the car's in neutral, the car's just going to keep going. At least if it's in first, the car will stall and, you know. Oh, you'll probably be dead anyway. Did you see Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? Did you see that movie where they're contemplating, jumping off the cliff into the raging rapids below? And Sundance Kid says, I can't swim, and Butch says, what are you kidding? The fall is going to kill you.

So why is that the correct thing to do? Because you don't want to, in order to be in anything but neutral, you would either have to turn the engine off, which you're not going to do, or have your foot constantly on the clutch pedal, which if nothing else will cause you to get a monstrous left leg. My brother's developed this peculiar limp from driving his MG where he favors his left leg because it's twice the size of his right leg. And you'll wear out the clutch release bearing in spite of what engineers have written us to the contrary. Mechanical parts wear out when they're used. I don't care if the thing was designed to last 5 million miles. If you keep your foot on the pedal, the part will wear out faster than it will if your foot's off the pedal. So then what is the correct way to slow down?

The correct way to slow down is to leave it in gear. Uh-huh. And slow down by stepping on the brake. And not to gear down. And if you're in a high gear and you want to slow down quickly, you can use the engine to slow you down too. By downshifting as Mark, your high. husband said. Right.

But if you downshift solely for the purpose of slowing down, then you, in fact, we're out the clutch very fast, and the clutch is not, is ill-designed to slow the car down. The brakes are really there to slow the car down. So you can use both, but you should rely primarily, unless you're in a situation where you've been going way too fast and you need to slow down in a hurry. You should rely primarily on the brakes to slow the car down, but you should always leave the car in gear when you're slowing down.

and never take it out of gear until you stopped. So your husband is far more right than John. Than your boyfriend. Then your boyfriend, John. Well, good, because I have to go back to him tonight. See, Aaron. All right. Good luck.

Thanks for calling. Bye-bye. We'll be right back with the answer to the puzzler right after these messages. 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 the answer to last week's puzzler. I have to say I don't have it yet. Oh, well, I will tell you, well, let me start from the beginning.

Yeah. This was sent in by someone named Frank Jaskolka from Cyberspace, I think. And he writes, I was recently asked this question on a job interview for a software engineering position. I figured it out finally, but it took me too many steps so I didn't get the job. Maybe this puzzle will help some poor unemployed engineer get a job with the sick and twisted manager who gave me the test. And here's the test. You've got a four-ounce glass in a nine. nine ounce glass and you have an endless supply of water. You can fill or dump either glass. You

can fill one, dump the other, fill both, pour them on your head, do whatever you want. And you can dump one into the other, obviously. And the objective is to measure out exactly six ounces of water in the fewest number of steps. Yeah. Well, Frank sent us an answer with 15 steps. Yes. And of course, I researched this very carefully, spent about a minute on it, and determined that Frank, who said he didn't get the job because it took him too many steps. I'm afraid he's not going to get the second job either because that took him too many steps. Our estimable Louis Cronin figured it out in only like eight steps. And here's how. Are you paying attention?

Of course I'm paying attention. Undivided. Undivided. Go ahead. You start with... Is that a new shirt you wearing? You start with both glasses empty. Yeah. Okay.

Step one, you fill the nine-ounce glass. Step two, you pour four ounces from the nine-ounce glass into the four-ounce glass, because that's all you can do, right? Yeah. Okay. Step three, you dump out the four-ounce glass. Okay. So you got five ounces left in the big glass.

That's right. I'm with you. Step before. Again, you fill the four-ounce glass from the nine-ounce glass. Okay. Okay. And step five, again, dump the four-ounce glass. So now the four-ounce glass is empty, and you got one ounce in the nine-ounce glass.

You are... Am I quick? You're paying attention. I am. Step six, pour the one ounce of water from the nine-ounce glass. Okay, you go one-ounce into the four-ounce glass. This is crucial now. Okay.

Step seven, fill the nine-ounce glass. Okay, so at the moment here, you've got a full nine-ounce glass, and you have one ounce in the four-ounce glass. So now you pour just enough water from the nine-ounce glass to fill the four-ounce glass, which means you're pouring how much out of the nine-ounce glass. Three ounces. Right, and that leaves how many ounces in the nine-ounce glass? My God!

Six! QED! So, Frank... Frank, back to the drawing board. Frank gave us 15 steps. Frank, I would consider a new career. Yeah. Frank, you ought to consider grave digging.

But we do have a winner. The winner is Ken Thurn, from of all places Honolulu, Hawaii. At a boy, Ken. Ken, we are going to deliver to you a luau! A $25 gift certificate. It's going to take both of us. So if you want to get this $25 gift certificate, send us two round-trip first-class tickets from Boston to Honolulu,

and we will deliver you your $20 gift certificate with which you can go to the Shameless Commerce Division of the Car Talk section of Cars.com, and you can get one and eight-sevenths of a Car Talk baseball cap, just in time to protect your ball spot from the hot Hawaii sun this coming summer. Good work, Ken. Anyway, we'll have a new automotive puzzler coming up in the third half of the show today. So don't flip the dial just yet. In the meantime, if you have a question about your car or anything else,

please give us a call at 888-8-8-8-8-8-8-2-75-Hello. Hello, you're on car talk. Hey, this is Aaron from Austin, Texas. Aaron with two A's? With two-A's, yeah. Oh, just checking. The King James Version. The King James Version from Austin, Texas.

And not the King version. The King had 1A. The King. Elvis, Aaron, Presley. With 1A. I don't understand why. Mispelling. Anyway, Aaron, what's going on?

I have a 2000 Impala, Chevy Impala, and it's a taxi cab. Really? Oh, you drive a cab? I do. Good man. Yeah. Anyway, this Impala usually runs beautifully. It's brand new, so it's only got about 30,000 miles on it.

until I got it back from my night driver a couple of weeks ago and he said there's a problem it has no passing power so I took it out and drove it and sure enough when I would romp on the gas instead of taking off like a champ it took off like it was towing

trailer full of bricks okay it makes a funny little noise when you push the gas down and it ships I'm gonna tell you the sound it makes it makes a sound like air escaping from a balloon

you ever take a balloon and pinched it Actually, it's not like that. Nope. Nope, that's not it. Makes us sound like this. Yeah, exactly like you. You made too many banana daffries, and your blender is burned out.

That would be pinging, which would suggest that the wrong octane fuel was in there. What do you use for gas? I put beautiful gas in it. How beautiful is it? Is it more beautiful than me? It's always a fancy name brand. It's always Texaco or Chevron or something. Ninety-three octane?

93, yeah. What the heck of you're burning that stuff for? Well, because I was putting 89 in it, and I thought I heard ping, so I put 93, didn't help. Really? So, it sounds like a bunch of marbles rattling inside a coffee can. Yeah, yeah, there you go. So it is pinging. Yeah, but it's very, very spying.

But why? Is the check engine light on? Yes. Oh. But it goes off sometimes. Aaron! Oh, no, that's the whole problem. You've got to tell us these things.

You have, I'm going to guess you have a bad crank. angle sensor crank angle sensor yeah that's my guess it what because this thing is fuel injected and electronically controlled you have different sensors on the engine which are telling the computer went to shoot in the gas and more importantly when to fire the spark plugs uh-huh and if any of those sensors are sending the wrong information to the computer what will result is pinging in low power black smoke poor mileage and the check engine light will come on i love that Yes. That's great because that means it's not the transmission.

No. And the night driver had told the cab owner that it was the transmission, and I contended that it was not the train. Oh, you don't own the cab? No. What do you care? Well, I've got to save face. Oh, I see.

I told the owner that it wasn't the transmission, but he doesn't believe that I'm very mechanically inclined. But if I tell him, I think it's the crank angle center. He's going to think I'm a genius, and I'll never have to play a lease again, probably. That's right. You want to have to drive the night shift anymore. Good luck, Aaron.

Thanks a lot. All right. Hope we're right. All right, me too. Bye, bye. Bye. He hopes we're right. Well, than we do.

We don't really care. One 888 car talk that's 888. What if we were getting paid on the basis of right answers? Yeah. Wouldn't that be sad? Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah.

We'd have the next cardboard box next to what's the two guys in the... What? A girl and squirrels under a bridge? Yeah. Roasting. Roasting squirrels on the road bridge. Right. 1-8-8-8-8.

Oh, thank God for America. 1-8-8-8-8-card talk. It's 8-88. Imagine how well we do in Italy. They don't care about anything over there. My son recently flew to Italy for a high school trip. Yeah. They flew Alitalia Airlines.

He said the plane takes off. Everyone's strapped in his seat. As soon as it leaves the runway, everyone breaks into applause so thrilled that they're not dead They're actually off the ground As soon as it made it off the ground Everyone started cheering, clapping

Hey, fantastic, we're not dead And then He said as soon as the plane Even came close to leveling off And in spite of the seatbelt sign being on Everyone is out of his seat Running around Trading chickens with the guy

It was... And they're cowboys. They fly like they drive. They fly like they drive. Yeah. I mean, even when they're on the runway and they're going over to the gate, they're speeding. Yeah. Well, these are the guys who lost their licenses.

They're hanging lefts and rights, wings are bouncing off the tarmac. Yeah. Well, anyway, yeah, so if we fail here, we're heading right for the old country, the home of our ancestors. 1-8-88-car talk that's 888. With a 10. With a 10. Or are we? At least they were sure of it.

They were happy, no matter what. 227-8-255. Hello, you're on car talk. Hi, this is Nancy in Laurel, Mississippi. Hi, Nancy. And that's Nancy with an eye. Really? Yes.

With an eye? With an eye? In Laurel, Mississippi. In Laurel, Mississippi. That's right. All right. I thought that was a California spelling. Oh, well, I've,

never even been to California. Wow. I've learned a little something today, which is not usual. What's up? Okay. I have a 1994 Pontiac Grand Prix, and about three months ago, when I would start it in the morning, I would get this noise that sounds like it's behind me that goes boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, kind of like that, about seven or eight times, then it doesn't do it any more in the day. Usually, occasionally it'll do it one more time in the day if I'm running, you know, a lot of errands. And it doesn't do it every single morning, by the way. And when it does it later in the day, it does it right after you've started off from a dead stop? Well, only when you started. And then once you've started it, the car runs smoothly, not a problem, just like it always has.

Yeah. The car's got 120,000 miles on it. We're getting ready to take it in. And I thought it would be nice if I had a little enlightenment before I went in. Yeah. Would have been nice, huh? Oh, dear. I would ask you to do an experiment.

Okay, I'm writing. And that is, instead of turning the engine on, Okay. Just turn the key to the on position. Otherwise, don't turn the key all the way. Right. And see if you hear the noise. Okay.

I'm thinking it could be the electric fuel pump, which is in the tank. Oh, okay. Are you? I am thinking that that... Gee, it doesn't sound like that to me. But it sounds like it's coming... It's a heavy sound, right, Nancy? Yeah.

Boom, boom, boom, boom. That's right. She doesn't go bing, bing, bing, bop, b... Well, I mean, she said, bum, boom, boom, boom. Well, that's why we're trying to differentiate here. It could be that the exhaustive... system, for example, is hitting the underside of the car. I'm all for that.

Or it could be something inside the exhaust system that's, you know, when getting heated up and causing this like baffles in the muffler. Okay. As a muffler expands, you might get this and then once it's warmed up, it goes away, and that would also explain why it doesn't

happen every day. If you explain it... I don't know how it would explain how it doesn't happen every day, but we'll leave that up to your imagination. Well, it's a function of how smoothly the engine is running. If the engine isn't running, really smoothly, then it's more likely that the exhaust system is shaking. Okay. But I think you have a loose baffle inside the muffler.

I don't. And I'm sticking with that, Nancy. I don't believe my brother. I don't believe he's nuts. An exhaust pipe is banging a and something, which they'll be able to tell easily. Okay. When they have it up on the lift, they'll just shake the exhaust system. And if they hear the bump, boom, boom, there it is.

Because they'll be able to shake it enough to make the noise. So it's either going to cost you $6 or $600. Well, okay. We'll try to go for the six. All right. See you, Nancy. Thank you. Thanks for calling. Bye-bye. All right. All right, Tommy. Look, it's time for us to take a minute and get ready for the new puzzler. Oh, good. I mean, I have to get my head together, man.

I said a minute. Not a mallet. Ha! We're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack the Tappert Brothers, and we're here to talk about cars, car repair, and the new puzzler. Before you give you the new puzzler, I have a little note I wanted to read here. Okay. Hi. Rick Whitman from North Hampton Mass here with a comment and a puzzler. Regarding your Will Schwarz Puzzler.

Remember Will Schwarz Puzzler was you take the name of a current car and you scramble up the letters and you add one letter and you got another name of another car. He says regarding your Will Schwarz Puzzle. I have an alternative answer. Really? In other words, our answer was you take a Zuzu and you add the... And you add an X Y and Z and you get some Z. Suzuki. He's, Geo, with a D added, makes the make of a car dodge.

But you can't do it unless the number is two. Two Ds, that is. What's this punk's name? Rick Whitman. You can't do it if you add two D's. All right. All right, Rick. I just wanted to make you humble enough.

I can take it. Okay, I know you can. I can take it. I know. Believe me. I've had enough. Suffered enough indignity in 23 years of doing this show that nothing hurts anymore. Anyway.

Yeah. So you've got a new puzzle for us, which is going to be as good as that one. Better. This was sent in by a fellow named Roy Harvey, and I had to fix it up and off a scale a little bit and all that. He did a pretty good job. He says the following automotive puzzle happened to me way back when I was commuting to college. The year was around 1971. It's unimportant.

The car was a 65 Rambler classic. Oh, man. Power steering, power brakes, automatic transmission, six-cylinder engine, no air conditioning. In other words, my parents gave me their old car. The year in the car aren't important either, but there are some cars for which you couldn't have this particular condition. I guess by this point he says it had maybe 80K miles, and let me tell you, they were hard ones. Anyway, he says, I was driving to school, and about half a half-foot. through a 15-mile trip, the alternator light came on. It was daytime, so the headlights were off.

The heat and blow were already off. I turned off the radio, but the light persisted. I began to worry. I then turned one control on the dashboard, and the light went out. And it wasn't the ignition switch. As I cruised to the cyber That would do it Yeah Turn the key off the left So he turned

What is his words again? I turned on One control on the dashboard Turned on Turned on One control on the dashboard Well I hadn't originally intended To add the word on

Yeah He had the word on I was going to delete it But now that I let the cat out of the bag That makes it even more interesting I turned on one control on the dashboard and the light went out. This told me what the problem was and I continued on to school without concern and I later fixed the problem with a few simple tools.

Hint, as far as I know, and I know, but he didn't know, this control had no direct electrical connection at all. In other words, it didn't have any wires hooked up to it. How could that be? What did he do? What did he do? If you think you know the answer, write it on a postcard

or on an RCA direct TV receiver with 35-hour hard drive and multi-room capability. How are we doing on getting this stuff? Bad. Let's have a room full of the stuff. Send it to Puzzler Tower, car talk plaza,

Box 3,500, Harvard Square, Cambridge. Our Fair City. 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 the number to call. One happens to be 1-88-227-8255 in case you are alphabetically impaired. Hello, you're on Car Talk.

Hi, this is Dorothy calling from Devon, Pennsylvania. Which end of Pennsylvania is Devon? It sounds easty. I'm near Philadelphia. It has that sound, yeah. What kind of a car do you have? Well, actually, my question actually concerns a Land Rover that my husband and I have in the Okavanga Delta of Botswana, where we do research in a national park. Well, we do a lot of work there.

Yeah, absolutely. That's why I called. Yeah. My brother does a lot of work in the park, too. They've caught him doing most of it chased them out. Oh, God. Okay. All right. So this is an area of southern Africa where there's this big inland delta and a swamp that flooded for about four months of the year, and it's impossible to do it.

do any driving at all. But for about the rest of the year, for about eight months, it's possible to drive to our camp, which is in the middle of a national park from the nearest town, which is the town called Mound. And it's about 50 miles away. But it's very slow going because there are no roads, and you have to drive through deep sand and some water. Sounds like my ride home every night. Anyway, a few years ago, we decided to upgrade ourselves and trade in our old, ancient Toyota pickup truck for a camouflage green Landover TD5 diesel truck.

Whoa. The landover people aptly call it the Defender. Yes. And the Defender comes equipped with all sorts of intrepid accessories, like a bull bar for driving over trees. And it really does have the rhino package. Absolutely. And you really need the rhino package there. There's about two rhinos left in all of Africa. We might

run into it. That's because you guys are running them down with these defenders. Well, this thing could do it. I'm sure. And it's this camouflage green for the rhinos never see you coming anyway. Great. But it also has a snorkel for driving through water. But we've run into a problem. Apparently the design of the Land Rover is such that the fan is situated very close to the radiator. So if you drive through water any deeper than about 20 inches, the water pushes the fan against the radiator,

and the fan shreds the radiator. Oh, they hadn't figured they hadn't counted on that. So we talked to Land Rover, and there are solutions to say never drive through water any deeper than 18 inches. Ah, morons. But mechanics in Mound, which I say is a nearby town, are very creative and resourceful, and they resorted to the time-honored solution to every engineering challenge in Botswana, which... Take the piece off. Wire.

Wire is used for everything in Botswana, from plumbing to constructing houses, and there's even a kind of genre of wire sculpture. It's like the shim. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's the metallic equivalent of the shim. Yeah, and you have deep discussions over beer about which gauge of wire to you. Refrigerator wobble?

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Okay. So here's their solution. You're driving along, you come to water. You tie the fan down with a bit of wire, which you've attached to the chassis of the car. So the fan is now completely immobile. Now you drive through the water.

And after you get out, you stop the car, open the hood, detach the wire, free the fan, and you drive on. Perfect. Perfect. Except here's my question. First, given that you're pushing the car by driving it in extremely hot weather in first gear and in low range, how far can you drive the car with a fan wire down without the engine exploding? Until it boils over. Yeah.

Well, first of all, how far would you be driving through water? Well, it varies, you know. Oh, it could be miles. If you're in the water, you don't need the fan. I mean, the way the cooling system works is it transfer his heat from the engine through the radiator core away with air, usually. but now half of the radiator is going to be covered in water. So it doesn't matter. Oh, if any part of the radio is covered with water, the transference of heat is so much better.

You've got much better transference. You know what it's like now? It's like the river is your whole radiator. Basically, we should always drive through water. Whenever possible. Yeah. Sure, just take the fan off. You all need it.

See, better, I was thinking better than the wire, you could. I don't like the wire idea. Well, it's inconvenient. Rather than using the wire, you ought to be able to hook something up where you run a little rod right through the dashboard that would just stick into the fan and stop it, so you don't have to get out there. Oh, now I like that.

Don't you? All you want to do is stop the fan from turning, and you can do that any way you want. Right, you can stick your leg in there. A stick in there. A stick. A stick would be good. So if you could put a stick that went through the dashboard somehow.

But it wouldn't be culturally correct, because wire is the product of choice here. Right. They have wire art. So, explain to us again. What are you doing there? Well, we studied baboons. Ah. You want to visit us? You want to come to the show sometime? Absolutely. We've been doing this for 25 years.

You have to drive across the Charles River. So give us, what's the most fascinating thing about baboons that you've gleaned from your 20 years of study? Well, they live in social groups a lot like humans, and they have vendettas and alliances, gossip? Really? Did they watch the Sopranos? They are the Sopranos. They are the Sopranos are they?

Yeah, well, it gives you some idea of how close groups like the Sopranos are. To the Simeon population. We haven't come all that far. No, and in fact, the only thing they don't have is wire. Well, you know, and if they had it, maybe one of the only things that separates us from them is speech. Well, it may not be speech because they may have enough speech to work. Well, speech, but by speech, I mean the written word and all that.

And we think we're so much elevated. We forget how close to them we are. Yeah. You know, and you're reminding us of that, Dorothy. Thanks very much. It's been nice talking to. Okay. Thanks for your call.

Good luck. Okay. Bye-bye. Vendettas. Gossip. Gossip. So, I mean, from gossip, how does she know that? How would she know that?

20 years, they're talking about her. See, she's back again. Oh, she learned the Wyatt trick. I wonder if they know that. She learned the Wyatt trick. Oh, they crossed, they can hear a month early. They can cross the river now. Damn.

Yeah, they may know. And do they say, Sonia and he's too? I'm sure they do. Well, it's happened again. You've blown off another perfectly good hour listening to Car Talk. Our esteemed producer is Doug the subway fugitive Bongo Boy, not a slave to fashion, Berman. Our associate producers are Louis Cronin the Barbarian and David Gibraltar Green, our engineer.

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