The Best of Car Talk - #2672: The Spudmobile

Episode Date: September 8, 2026

Amy’s Honda is having a bit of a flatulence issue and, being something of an intellectual, she has determined that the main ‘ingredient’ in the offending odor is… potatoes! Will Click and Clack recommend a juice cleanse? Or does the Shameless Commerce Division have some other dietary supplement to fix this issue? Find out 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 department of, I guess you'd call it, celebrity endorsements here at Car Talk. No, not really endorsements. I mean, they're versions of the car. Celebrity versions. Celebrity editions. Yeah. Go ahead. What? I mean, Ford announced that they were introducing the first of a possible series of cars designed to tie in with a specific celebrity. The first one that's coming out in the year 2003 is the Shack Expedition, named for Shaquille O'Neal,

the Irish kid who plays for the basketball team there. The Lakers. That's it. Right. I mean, and they say it's supposed to be representative of Shaq himself. His own personality is in this car. It's got like 22-inch tires, gold piping on the seats, monochromatic paint. And we thought that we could come up with better ones than the Shaq Expedition.

Yeah? Yeah. You'd think so, huh? Yeah. I mean, the staff here put together, for example, the J-Lo Corvette. You know. Jennifer Lopez. It looks good and it has a huge rear end.

And then they're going to come up with the Tony Soprano Suburban. It flows, doesn't it? Yeah. Oh, yeah. The Soprano Suburban. I like it. Comes with run-slash tires and a baseball bat holder. The Al Gore Honda Insight comes with a just-earner.

height steering wheel to accommodate sudden additions in girth. Well, it's also, I think, it'll be sold as the Dolly Parton edition. It's right. They'll paint it pink instead. And then there's the... I like the Joan Rivers Stretch Limo. It's a brand new Taurus body,

which is stretched over the chassis of a 76 Lincoln Town. That's cruel. And the Dick Cheney Ford Excursion, specially tuned to get two miles per gallon and comes with a defibrillator built into the driver's seat. You never know when you're going to need one.

Well, you don't. But I like this whole idea of the additions. That's good. I mean, why not Shaq O'Neill? Why not Tom and Raymond Mayazzi? I can think of a lot of reasons. It could come complete with all the pizza boxes in the back seat. I like it.

Parts falling off as you drive down the road. I like it. I like it. Sure. Anyway, if you've got other ideas, probably better than these, you can email them to us. if you have a question about your car, you can give us a call. Our number is 8888-288-2-27-8-8-25-a-lawyer on car talk. Hi, this is Rich from Brussels, Belgium.

Brussels! Really? Where the sprouts come from? Exactly. You're not calling from Brussels right now. Sure. You are? You are?

Yeah. Boy, the paper cup and the string are really working great today. You're international, man. My wife is half Belgian, you know. Yeah? Is that right? Yeah. Which has?

I don't. Left. So what's up, Rich? I have a 97 Volkswagen Passat. I went out the other morning, and I turned the key, and nothing happened. The car was completely dead. Really? Really?

So I didn't know what to do, so I clean the garage. There's a method to my madness here. The car was near the bottom of my driveway, which is kind of shaped. like a clip. Oh, I got it. You're going to drive into the garage and pop the clutch. Exactly. I had about 30 to 35 feet.

And it worked. It did. Oh, absolutely. I, you know, I was quick with that break. Oh, man, that's great. Boy, you lucky devil, I once tried the same thing, except in order to start the car, I had to push it up the driveway first. And I almost had a heart attack doing that, but the hardest thing was stopping it

before it rolled down the driveway. into the garage without me. Well, I was pretty worried. You know, I was, that back wall of the garage was coming pretty quick. Oh, man. All right, so you did it. It worked. You know, I drove it around, and I parked on the street, and I popped the clutch three, four more times, you know.

So everything else worked. Once you got it started, you were satisfied that everything else was working. Oh, yeah, and I drove to Paris the next day, and it was fine for three hours. Oh, it was. And I got the Paris, and I made a little boo-boo even. I couldn't find a parking spot. and I finally found one, but after driving three hours, I forgot about my problem, and I perfectly parallel parked the car on an uphill slope.

Oh, and? Well, and then I looked, and it was a residential parking area, so I couldn't even leave it there. So I was really panicked. Had you turned off the engine already? Of course. But did it start? Well, I got back in the car, and that's it, it started. And you know what?

That was four days ago. And it's been fine ever since. I can't get it to not start now. The day that it didn't start, how many days it had been sitting without being driven? Just overnight. Just overnight. And I have to admit, I withheld some information. I know you did you.

Yeah. How about the fact that you had left the parking lights on all night? No, I hadn't. I swapped batteries with my wife's car, which is a 97 Audi. And her started fine, and mine was still dead. Her car started fine? Yeah, with my battery. But her good battery in your car didn't get it started even at that.

Right. So it's not the battery. That's what I thought. Yeah, I had written he had dead battery, which I'm now crossing out. No, no, you've got to cross that off. Okay, so... Come on, guys, give me a break. I'm not that dumb.

Come on, he's not that dumb. He may sound that dumb. We judge every caller on his or her own merits. So which battery did you drive to Paris in? Oh, I switched them back because... Oh, you switched them back. So you're back to your own battery. So now we have...

have to assume that it was the starter motor that was no good. On the ignition switch. Well, when you turned the key, did anything else work? Did the radio come on? Did the lights work? The lights work? The radio worked? Then it's the starter motor, or it's a bad connection at the starter. Okay. And why it chose to fix itself after you jump started, not jump started it, but push started it basically a few times, is anyone's guess. But you could have one bad spot on the starter motor. And if you had one bad spot, if you didn't wind up the other, then you're going to, would start every single time, and if you wound up with the motor stopping at that one bad spot, then it wouldn't start the next time.

Okay. So I think that you need a starter motor. And you will sooner or later get there again, and it will not start. But then you know what to do. You just pop the clutch and go, man. Yeah, and your garage is all cleaned out now. See you, Rich. Okay, thanks.

Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye. One 888-car talk. That's 888-278-255-0. on car talk. Hi, this is Jana from Lafayere University in Riverside, California. Jana? J-A-N-N-A? Just one in.

Okay, we're with you. What's up? Well, I own a 97 Chevy Blazer, and the windshield makes us noise like rocks are hitting it, like a rock hit that you know, when a car is driving in front of you, it kicks up a rock, and you get on that. Yeah? Yeah, but it doesn't have no cars around when the car is stopped. I don't know why.

It makes a big crack sound, and it's really scary. I think it's going to, like, fall apart on me one day. I'm going to, like, end up in the middle of the freeway with no windshield. Really? Yeah. Cracking sounds. I had a friend in the car with me the other day. She ducked and covered.

She did, really? I mean, it's that loud. Yeah, it's pretty loud. Sometimes it's quiet. Sometimes it just cracks really loud. It's done this since I got it last August. And is it preceded by doing anything unusual? For example.

Air conditioning? Air conditioning on, having been parked in the sun for an extended period of time, or the shade, and then driving in the sun. I'm trying to determine if change in temperature has anything to do with it. I thought of that, but it did it all winter. Now, my car hasn't been garage since I've had it, so maybe being outside so much. But, no, it did it all winter, and now I'm in California.

It's getting hot, still doing it. Does the engine have to be running? Do you ever sit in the car by yourself without the oil or? And smoke a cigar with my brother does everything? Without the engine running? It's not a common habit of much. So we don't know if it would happen at night, for example, when no one's around.

If a tree falls on the forest. If a tree fell on your windshield. But does it happen at night? Yeah, it happens at night. And it happens in the daytime. It happens the day. It happens when I'm stopped. Happens when I'm flying down the road.

How soon after you get in the car does it happen? Sometimes it doesn't for hours, and sometimes it does it, you know, from the start. And I hate to ask this question, but how do you know the sound is coming from the windshield? It just, it sounds exactly like a rock hitting your windshield. When I first got my car, I was mad because I thought my people were throwing rocks on my new car. And when it happens, how frequent are these rocks coming at the car? Is it like one a minute or one an hour? About one an hour.

It doesn't happen a whole lot. It's just one at a time, in other words. Yeah, just one at a time. But there's no cracks in my windshield at all. But there are no cracks in the windshield. You may need a windshield crack. Somebody said that GMC is known to glue their windshields in and maybe the glue is cracking. But that sounds just really dumb to me

That sounds bogus, yeah Is it just bogus or is it bogus? No, this is just bogus. Boy, Jenna, you know, I just noticed we're out of time. You know. You mean you guys are going to let me down? How about this? Call back with a different question.

I mean, you sound like a problem. person we would probably want to talk to. But this is a bogus question. Well, it isn't. I mean, I'm sure that there's an answer someplace, and it's possible that the windshield is set incorrectly. Okay.

It's possible. And it's possible that what you're hearing is the expansion of the glass, or I don't know what you could be hearing, but if you really think it's coming from the glass, then you should take it to a glass shop. Okay. Trumbull is that it happens so frequently that no one's

going to be able to hear it and they're going to just think that she's crazy. Like weak, but they may have heard it. They may have... Don't you think she's nuts? Oh yeah, she's nuts. Thanks. I appreciate it. But they may have heard the noise from other blazers before. Maybe. And they may say, oh, yeah, the windshield needs to be reset. In which case what they do is they take it out? It's that old cracking blazer noise.

And they tried not to break the windshield and then they reinstall it. And it could be as simple as that. I honestly don't believe it's the windshield. What else could it be? Well, that's the problem. That's why I am a firm believer in the windshield theory. I mean, people duck in cover when they get in my car.

They think the windshield's going to cave in or something. Yeah, boy, have you called a Chevrolet dealer? Because, I mean, this is the sort of thing. This is, whatever this is, it is unique to the blazer. Yeah. If it really is happening, the only ones who will have any idea, of what it might be, would be a Chevy dealer. Okay.

And I would call them because, as you probably have gathered, because you sound like you're pretty sharp and quick, we don't have any idea. Yeah, I picked up on that one. See it, Jenna. Thank you so much. Thanks for your call. Bye. Okay, look, here we go with your puzzler hints.

All right, I will do my level best. Well, that's why I make them easy. Okay, this one's historic. Before our independence, we were a colony owned by, blank. Yeah, X-Ys. I knew that one right away. No, I was looking for England.

Okay, here's one. Oh, yeah, England. When someone says to you, your car's a heap, you'll reply, this means blank. This means, then I guess you're not going to buy it from me. Is that it? No, no, no, this means war. The puzzler was about a man from war from England during the war. Hi, 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 repairs, and the answer to last week's puzzler. And this puzzler comes from my World War II series. Yeah. A long, very long war. There have been a lot of them. You haven't done any of 15th century wars for a long time. No. Or whatever, those earlier ones were. The guys with the bows and arrows. What was that? The Crusades and the like. What were you talking about?

I don't know. As you called? That's it. That's it. Yeah. Anyway, here it is. David Thorndyke had been operating as a spy behind the German lines even before the outbreak of hostilities in 1939.

I should mention that the names have not been changed. They've been completely made up. Oh, so these are not real names. No, anyway, as a son of an English father and a German mother, Thorndyke was perfectly suited for spying on the Germans. His knowledge, of the language, German culture, history, music were unsurpassed. Yeah. And yet, among his colleagues, he was not above suspicion.

In the Third Reich, nobody was above suspicion. He was watched carefully, but never a false move did he make. As the war wore on, invasion plans materialized, of course, he knew about these because he was a spy. He became encouraged, even euphoric, that soon the war would end, and he would return to jolly old England. Yeah, that's it. So we discussed this.

It's Jolly Old England, Merry Christmas, and Jolly England. Whatever. And one day, while he was in Berlin, maybe lost in his thoughts, thinking about his return to Jolly Old England. He was standing on a busy street corner getting ready to cross the street when he felt a tug on his sleeve and a pistol in his ribs. He'd been discovered. Yeah.

How? Mm-hmm. This was so easy. You think, huh? Oh, I mean, even Dougie got it immediately. Oh, I hadn't meant for it to be that easy. You didn't. Especially, I mean, I guess on the heels of the previous World War II, Puzzler of just a few weeks ago.

Well, it had to do with lefts and rights. It had to do with lefts and rights again. I guess, I guess that was the giveaway. I think maybe it was. Yeah. His English birth betrayed him. Yeah, because he looked to the right. As he was stepping off the curb, he looked to the right, and that's the direction that the cars would be

coming from if you were in England. Jolly old. Jolly old or Mary old. Yeah. Yeah. Mary old. But old David Thondike is nowhere now. Except maybe.

So he looked in the wrong direction and of course the Gestapo guy who'd been following him around. Who was suspicious of him anyway. From the very beginning. Just needed one little thing to shoot him. An excuse. Just shoot him in the ribs and that's what he said. That was it. That's it.

Of course, to say what we didn't know, was that there was someone over to his right who yelled out, hey, David! He turns to the right, bingo, he's dead. Anyway, who's our winner? The winner is Jill Sanford from Fort Collins, Colorado. And for having her answers selected at random from all the other correct answers that we got this week.

She's winning a hot point range? What? He was going to get a Kenmore, wash your drop. Stackable? stackable washer dryer and a $25 gift certificate to the

shameless commerce division at the car talk section of cars.com and with that $25 she can get a washer dryer from Sears. Well, Jill, if you're not home when they deliver the washer dryer, back they go. Or she can get a copy of our CD.

You should never listen to your father when it comes to cars and she can unload that as a Father's Day gift. See, we even provide disposal advice. You buy the stuff. It's junk and you give it away. Cool. Anyway, we'll have a new puzzler from the coinage series. Coinage!

Coming up in the third half of the show. So don't give up on us yet in the mid-it might get better. In the meantime, if you have a question about your car or anything else, please give us a call at 1-88888-288-8-8-2-7 825, a lawyer on car talk. Hello, Tom, hello, Ray. This is Vladimir

from Mountview, Minnesota. Vladimir. You're from Minnesota. Yes. Where are you from, actually, originally? I'm from Bulgaria. Oh, Bulgaria. That would be like east of Italy, is that correct? Yes.

Almost. Yeah. It's near Romania. Okay. Romania is north of Bulgaria. Yeah. It's between Romania, Greece, and Yugoslavia. So Yugoslavia would be to the southwest of Bulgaria. Is that correct? Not exactly.

You're very close. Yeah, you're very close. Northeast. Yeah. But we have a rough idea what Bulgaria is. We know you're from there. Yeah. Our real problem is where's Minnesota?

Well, I consider myself a Minnesota already. You really? And do you live in northern Minnesota or in the middle? Well, this is one of the suburbs of St. Paul. If you think about Boston, it's like. like a Melrose or Medford. Oh, so how do you know that? Well, I learned to, I try to study.

So you've never been to Boston? No. But you know where Melrose is. I don't know where Melrose is. If someone said, how do you get to Melrose? I wouldn't be able to tell him. So why are you calling us, Vladimir? Well, I'm driving a wonder car.

You can believe. This is 88 Fort Torres. Mm-hmm. And it has 170. thousand miles on it. Yeah. When I break, the car starts jerking. And it's not happening every time I'm breaking.

When you say it's jerking, does that, do you mean that it feels like it's stopping and then not stopping and stopping and then not stopping? Is that what you mean by jerking? In other words, is the jerking in the forward direction or in a side-to-side direction? No. It's along the length of the car. Right. In other words, it's surging back and forth.

Yes, but it's breaking okay. It stops all right. Yes. And sometimes it doesn't do this hardly at all? Sometimes it's gone almost. I think it's the brakes. I think the disc rotors are warped. Here's what I think is wrong.

See, my brother has to explain why it's there sometimes and not there other times since the rotor, which is warped, is there all the time. Except that's the problem. Except if both rotors are warped. Okay. If both rotors are... I... Stick with me here.

I like it already. If both rotors are warped, there will be times when the warp will come around simultaneously... And other times when it doesn't. Cancels out. You can't do it. Unless the number is two.

Unless the number is two. It's a tough... It's a tough road to hold here, Vladimir. But I think that if both rotors are warped, there are times, because the way the thing works, and the reason you feel the shaking in the car, especially in your brake pedal, is that when the warp comes around, it pushes back on the pads, and that pressure gets telegraphed back to your brake pedal. Okay. And you feel this pulsing, and you'd also feel the car going jerking back and forth.

Yes. So what happens when one of those things is warped, you feel it every single time. Yeah. But if both are warped, they can be. in phase or out of phase. Imagine if one warp was coming when one dip was coming. They canceled right out. You wouldn't feel

anything. And of course we know this can happen because the front wheels are always turning at different speeds unless you're going straight ahead. Yeah. Are you buying this? Oh yeah. Oh yeah, good. I trust you 100%. But I have a question. Who is wrong and who is right?

No, I mean, I like this theory. I don't believe it. But I like it only because it's so beautiful. And it's very easy to test. You can just go to any shop that does brakes. And they will measure the warpness, the runout, of both rotors. And they'll tell you that, yeah, both rotors are warped. Okay.

And whether the theory is correct or not, it won't matter because you'll have to replace them both. Yeah. And when you do and the jerking goes away, it doesn't matter if the theory was right or not. As long as it fixed it. Okay. As long as you get to land on the moon. It doesn't matter if the equations are right. Exactly.

So I think I would go, I'm sticking with it, Vladimir. Yeah, okay. I'm sticking with you too because I believe everything you say. I know, I know, I know. Well, let us know how you make out. Oh, thank you, Tom. Thank you, Ray. We'll see you in Melrose someday.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. 1-888-car talk. That's 888-227-8-8-255. Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hi, this is Mike from Spicer, Minnesota. Hi, Mike. What's happening? Well, I have got a 1997 Chevy Blazer 2-door. Got about 80,000 miles on it. Now, when the temperature outside is cold, which here in Minnesota is 10 months out of the year, the thing runs great.

But as soon as spring comes and the temperature or the outside temperature rises, and you drive for more than about 45 minutes, it begins to shift very abruptly. When it comes to second gear, it's like, bang, shifts right into gear. Hard. Hard. Do you ever have trouble with this blazer and whereby it seems like someone's dropping pebbles on the windshield? Yes.

Yeah? Like what? Like you're just driving along, And all of a sudden you hear this click sound, just like you said, it sounds like a pebble hit the windshield. Have you figured on what it is? No. Wouldn't you love to know what it is? And aren't you curious how I knew that you had this problem?

Yes, and yes. Well, because we just had a caller about half an hour ago. We had exactly the problem. We had no idea what the heck it was. From Riverside, California with a 97 blazer. Yeah. And she says it sounds like someone shooting at her with a BB gun. He can just crack.

It does. It sounds just like a pebble hits the windshield. Yeah, well, we couldn't help her, and I don't think we're going to be able to help you either. With that problem or your transmission problem. But that's encouraging because that means that maybe Chevy knows what this noise is. Uh-huh. Well, thanks for calling, Mike. You certainly solved a problem for us here.

So it shifts. In other words, when you take off from a stop, is there like a hesitation and then bang it shifts into first? No, no, there's no hesitation. It's just a hard shift. First gear is okay. First gear is fine. When it shifts from first to second. Yep.

And it does it from second to third. You just don't notice it as much. Yeah. Did you buy this thing new? No, I didn't. And I bet you you bought it in the winter. Yeah, I did. Oh, sure.

Yeah, because it was doing this for the previous game. He knew we'd never sell this dog. Oh, I got it at a dealer. There you go. Oh. Have you taken it back to complain? Well, no. See, the problem was, you know, the problem didn't surface until a,

few months later. So it was like, you know, any warranty I would have had would have been expired by then. Well, I don't know exactly what it is, but it sounds like it's something you could live with forever. Unless it gets really bad. I mean, it must be you have a sticky valve in the transmission and pressure is building up and then bang, and why it's doing it in warm weather is anybody's guess. The windshield could be causing this. I wonder if they're not related.

Well, I wonder. They could be. When you go back to the dealer to complain about the cracking glass, I would mention this in... Just mention this in passing. And there may be a bulletin on this too. Aha. See you, Mike.

Okay, thanks a lot. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Well, all right, I can see you're getting squirmy. Well, yeah, I've been sitting still for nearly 20 minutes now. You know, I realized recently that you have ADD. Really? Is that what I got?

Yeah, advanced dufous disorder. Ha, 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 new puzzler. The World War II series. No, that was last one. That was last one.

We're not going to continue with that? No. Well, you could. We could. It's 1942. Where of the year's going? You're sitting at a table with a bunch of pennies on it, okay? Yeah.

Okay, and of course, some are facing heads up and some are facing tails up. You're with me so far? Yeah. You're wearing a blindfold. Wow. And you're wearing mittens or gloves. So that you can't actually feel the coins and tell which side is facing up. That's the reason for the gloves.

Yeah. If we could trust you, if you weren't so dishonest, we'd let you do it without gloves. Well, I always sit around with mittens and a mask on anyway. On the table is a bunch of pennies. You don't know how many pennies. It's unimportant. But I will tell you a certain number of them is facing heads up. Okay.

Let's say it's 10. Okay. So you tell me he's a bunch of pennies in front. front of you and 10 of them are heads up. Now, with your mittens on, you can move the pennies around, you can pick them up, you can put them down again, you can listen to them, you can shake them, you do whatever you want, see if Abe Blinken talks to you. Yeah.

So here's the question. Is it possible to separate those pennies into two groups so that each group has the same number of pennies facing heads up? The answer is yes. I got the puzzle all right. Give me the money. Give me the 25 bucks. And part two.

What is that way? What I want to do not? I want to separate all the pennies into two groups so that there's an equal number of heads in both groups. Yeah. And remember, you're blind. A blindfold. If you think you know the answer, write it on a postcard or on the plexiglass covering of an authentic Tom Seaver autographed baseball from the 1969 World Series. And send it to Puzzler Tower, Car Talk Plaza, Box 3,500, Harvard Square, Cambridge.

Our Fair City. 02238, or you can email your answer from the Car Talk section of Cars.com. If you'd like to call us, our number is 1-888-8-8-8-8-2-7-8-255. Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hi, this is Ethan from Leavenworth, Washington. Hi, Ethan. Ethan, Leavenworth. Gee, I got a cousin there.

Oh, that's Kansas. Where are you? Leavenworth, where? Washington. Washington. I didn't know there was a Leavenworth, Washington. Well, we know now. So what's happening, Ethan? Well, I've got an 85 Volvo with a six-cyl turbo diesel engine in it.

Oh, God. Oh, don't say that. Well, I mean, not a silly thing that is. Come on. Well, I've got a problem with it. It has no power going up hills at all. I can't get above 30 miles an hour, even up the slightest incline. Oh.

And when I do, it's bitten out a whole bunch of black smoke and just making awful noises. What kind of noises? Uh, well, e-e-e. So you said you had a problem. Can we get right to it? Well, that's the problem. What do you got like 500,000 miles in this car? No, it's only got 150,000 miles on it. Oh, stalled.

Yeah, get out. Come on. No, really. No. Did you buy it new? I bought it used. Why? What made you go to the diesel?

It was cheap. Well, it was a good price, and it got great gas mileage. and my parents have had a diesel suburban before. So I know it's a genetic thing. Yeah. No matter how hard you try, your kids always end up doing stupid things just like you did. Well, my dad actually helped me buy it. There you go.

So he gave it his seal of approval. Right. But how long have you owned it? I've owned it for about three years now. And how many miles did it have on it when you bought it? 95,000. And did you buy it from the original owner? No.

I bought it from a youth car dealer. Oh, can you imagine the party that they must have thrown when they have loaded this beast? You guys aren't making me a few. Can you imagine? I mean, I'm questioning the mileage. I mean, whatever miles you put on it, it means that when you bought it, the thing had been driven like six or seven thousand miles a year. Right. For 15 years, or for 12 years or something.

They couldn't take the fumes. And that's not a lot of miles. That's very, very low miles. And the thing is, it would be incongruous with a diesel. Exactly. Why would you buy a diesel if you were driving 6,000 miles a year? I mean, you could pay five bucks a gallon for gasoline. What would you care?

So I think that dealer turned back the odometer. You do. And I think this car has got 400,000 miles on it. Okay. Because the answer we're going to give you. It won't fit if it's only got 150,000 miles. Yeah, we think it needs the engine rebuild. It's got low compression.

You think the engine, the whole engine? needs to be rebuilt. Maybe. Okay, I've talked to a couple of mechanics. Yeah, yeah. They've suggested that it could be a fuel injection timing problem or a fuel injector blockage. Well, the fuel distributor on this thing, I guess is what you'd call it.

Or the fuel injection pump is driven by the timing belt. Uh-huh. And it's possible that it's jumped time. Right. And if that's the case, and it's injecting the fuel at the wrong time, it could give you exactly the condition that you have, low power, black smoke. Similarly, low compression could give you that symptom. Right.

So you need to have, the first thing to do is you start from square one. Do a compression test. You need a compression test done, but you can't do it yourself because you don't have the gauge. Right. And I think you're going to find that you don't have compression. Okay. That's what I think, because I think that this thing's got far more miles on it than the odometer suggests. All right.

I wish you the very, very best, Ethan. Well, thanks a lot for your help, you guys. I appreciate it. Hey, thanks for calling. See you later. Thank you. Bye, bye. Bye.

1-888-Cart talk. That's 888-227-8255. Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hi, this is Amy, and I'm calling from Pembroke, New Hampshire. Hi, Amy. Pembroke. What part of New Hampshire is that? It's just east of Concord.

Oh, yeah. Got it. I have a 1996 Nissan Ultima S.E. That has 48,500 miles on it. and about five weeks ago, it started emitting an odor from the back end. And it's... Sounds like my brother. I'm sorry, I couldn't help it.

That's all right. I consider a similar crass statement, but decided that our listeners didn't need to hear anything like that. So I didn't say it. You didn't say it. I'm already embarrassed for my car. Yeah, well, you should be. And I haven't even brought it to the Nissan dealership yet because I'm too embarrassed to go in and tell them. But the smell that's coming out of the exhaust pipe has been described by people as either really bad French fries on Coney Island, overboiled potatoes,

something definitely having to do with potatoes. We're now calling it the Spudmobile. Potatoes, really? And it doesn't smell like eggs. Oh, no, no, no. It's not a sulfuric smell at all. And it's been doing this for how long, three weeks? No, about five weeks.

And I have a friend from where I work, who's a former NASCAR Winston Cup mechanic. So I told him about it, and he examined the car and decided that it was a problem with the gasoline and that in New Hampshire, we have a law now where throughout the winter our gasoline is oxygen reformulated. And then as of the 1st of April, the dealers and gas stations no longer have to use the oxygen reformulated gasoline. So this NASCAR man said to me, run the tank dry, put in a fresh tank of gas, go to a different gas station than usual, and the problem will be gone.

And? Wrong. It didn't work. Oh, man. And NASCAR man looked for like roadkill under the chassis. He opened the hood. He looked at everything. And it's only coming out of the exhaust pipe.

NASCAR man. He doesn't want his name revealed on the air, as you can imagine. Oh, no, no, no. I understand that. He has a reputation to uphold. Did he ask to be called NASCAR man or did you just like make that up? Well, I have nothing else to refer to him as. I like NASCAR man.

Well, he just give him a name. He could be friends. You know, I visualize him with a cape. It's NASCAR! Let's karma! I can see him flying around, smelling tailpipes. Yeah, it could be like... Never mind.

I don't know if he could pull off wearing a cape. He doesn't look like... Doesn't look like the type, huh? No. Especially the tights and the leotard. It definitely wouldn't happen. All right. It has to be the fuel.

I think the fuel could have permanently altered the catalytic converter. permanently permanently altered that seems a little wild that seems a little wild whew it's just a guess well I do believe that it's possible

I wouldn't go so far as say permanently not permanently I retract that it could have caused something that would be there beyond the tank of gas two tanks of gas now

have you noticed any any diminution in the No, no diminution How long have you been waiting to use that word? It's the wrong word. I know it's... It's diminution. Diminution.

But it sounded better the way you said it. Dimmunition, yeah. No, I like diminution. It's like ammunition. Yeah. If you notice any lessening... No, none. I mean, I would say it might take three or four tanks of gas before it goes away.

And if that doesn't work, then I would have to... I would have to go to the Nissan dealer and ask them. Well, have you stopped any other Ultima owners to ask if they have the same problem? No, I haven't. I mean, you have to do that. I think I should, like, pull up behind Ultima at red light. Ah, and go sniff their tailpipes. Exactly.

Well, here's the other possibility. The other possibility is that there's something wrong with the engine that is causing the smell, and it's not the fuel. Really? Yeah, for example, I mean, there could be any number of things, which wouldn't necessarily turn on the check engine light. Name two. I was thinking a one.

But you said any number of things. I suppose one is any number. All right, I'll give you one. Give a small number. Well, for example, a dirty air filter, a faulty oxygen sensor. I would take it to the Nissan dealer, but I would try a few more tanks of gas first. Okay. See, Amy.

That sounds great. Thanks. Thanks for your call. Okay. Bye-bye. Bye. Well, it's happened again. You've squanded an otherwise pretty good hour listening to Car Talk.

Yeah, you could have been having a lot. having real fun. Our esteemed producer is Doug the subway fugitive Bongo Boy Berman. Our associate producers are Louis Cronan the Barbarian and David Gibraltar Green. Our engineer is Tad Massa Man Curry. Our senior where Blackie is Doug South Beach Casualty Mayor. And our technical, spiritual and menu advisor currently preparing for the Fondulac Fondu Festival is John Bugsy Lawler. Where is the bugster? Who knows? Our public opinion pollster is Paul Murky of Merkey Research, assisted by statistician Margin Overa. Our customer care representative is Hayward Jabuzov.

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