The Best of Car Talk - #2674: Empathic Whatever

Episode Date: September 15, 2026

Jeff, a relationship counselor from Maui, and Click and Clack, relationship klutzes of great renown, engage in an exchange of professional services 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 the Tappert Brothers, and we're broadcast this week from the Cross Cultural Studies Department here at Car Talk Plaza. Correct. Cross Cultural Studies. Are there new departments? No, it's my way of warning you that I'm about to insult a couple of cultural groups all at once. Okay. But it's not me. No, I mean, I'm just reading from...

Evidently, these are excerpts from a book from a guy named David Bader. it's a clever idea. I mean, everyone is familiar with the Japanese poetic haiku. And he wrote a book entitled, Haikus for Jews.

And I have checked with the scholar of the Talmud here at Katak Plaza, Doug Berman, he says, not a word of this is untrue,

at least as far as he knows. Okay, here, I'll give you a little taste in these. Today I am a man. On Monday, I return to the seventh grade. Testing the warm milk on her wrist, she beams.

Nice. But her son is 40. Lovely nose ring. Excuse me while I put my head in the oven. This is good. After the warm rain, the sweet scent of camellias. Did you wipe your feet? I like this one.

Left the door open for the prophet Elijah. Now the cat is gone. Is one Nobel Prize too much to ask from a child after all I've done? This is not just Jewish mothers. Oh, no, no. This is Italian mothers too. Is one Nobel Prize too much to ask? Well, look, if you've had enough bad poetry and you're

ready for some bad car advice. Would it kill you to call once in a while? Our number is 888 Car Talk. That's 888-227-8255. Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hi, this is Andrew from Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Hi, Andrew. How are you? Mount Pleasant.

Yes, a lovely town. Well, sounds rather pleasant. Well, South Carolina might have, among the most perfect temperatures in the country. Mm-hmm. A brochure I got from some retirement community. I was researching this from my brother, of course. In South Carolina, said winter passes quietly and unnoticed. Yeah.

Just like my brother. He's going quietly. Anyway, Andrew, what's the other? Do they call you Andrew, Drew, Andy, what? Well, Andy or Andrew. I respond to either one of those, I guess. Well, I have a 97 Ford Escort and a two-part question. Really? Number one, do I need to replace the clutch?

No, you don't have to replace it. You don't? How do we know? 97. How many miles on it? About 65,000. So what makes you think that you might want to replace the clutch? Is this just came to you what I'm going to dream? No, no, it came to me off the expressway, actually.

When, you know, the engine is cold, the clutch works fine. But then when the engine gets hot, so you come off the expressway. way after driving for a half hour or something. It feels like the clutch isn't catching. You know, basically you can feel as your foot has come off the clutch, you can feel the engine rev up as you give it some gas, but you don't feel it, you know, propel the car any faster. Oh, gee.

That's good. That's a good test, isn't it? Has anyone else driven this besides you? Well, it's my wife's car primarily. Does she drive mostly around town or on the highway? Mostly around town. Yeah, you need to need a class. You think I do?

Yeah. Well, can I replace it myself? Oh. Because as my wife will tell you, I am the cheapest man on the face of the earth. This may be, this may explain, rather, why you bought an escort to begin with. Yes, that has something to do with it. With a stick shift. Were you the one who forced her to drive a stick shift car against her wishes?

No, she had this car when we came into the marriage. Oh, it was her car? It's her car. Oh. So she's a cheap skate, too. Well, she gets a match made in heaven. No, and we're also thinking of getting rid of the car in about eight months or so. Can I replace it myself, save some money, such that when we sell it, we don't get hammered on the fact that a clutch needs to be replaced.

You have an assistant, a ready assistant? Yes, I will. I have at least one ready assistant. Oh, good. Have you ever done anything like this vaguely reserved? Have you ever built a small nuclear power plant in the backyard? Out of wood? Not in the backyard, but you might not believe this. Well, I am a nuclear engineer. Oh, you are?

Get out. Then you probably can't do it. Ah! Well, because engineers don't know squat about how to do anything. Yeah, the guys that work for me say the same thing. Over the years, I've had a few MIT would-be engineers. In other words, students who are, like in their junior year of mechanical engineering, come to the shop for summer employment.

Yeah. Hopeless, right? It's pretty sad. Yeah. Is it? Okay. It's pretty sad that they're designing the things that they can't take apart. Well, they can't even recognize.

Oh, yeah, I designed one of those. Is that what it looks like? Hey, what do you know? Anyway. What does it do? Do you have tools? That wasn't true of Tony Prusinski, though. No.

Tony was an MIT student, and yet he could build a nuclear reactor in his backyard. He has. He probably got one. Anyway, do you have tools, Andrew? I have an auto hobby shop that I can go use here at the... Oh, so you should definitely do it because there'll be somebody there who will take pity on you and help you. That's a good thought. Yeah, I mean, and this thing, it's pretty simple.

You take out the two axles and you take the trans axle out. Piece of cake. It's a piece of cake. And with any luck, you'll be done after a weekend or two or three. Three or four. Good luck, man. All right, thanks, guys. See you later.

Bye, bye. It's a nice job, though. I mean, I did a clutch in my driveway. I didn't even have one of these little shops like he's got it. No, you didn't. Yeah. You're finished? My 15-year-old daughter helped me do it.

She was only 12 at the time. She was. She was. 1-8-88-car talk. That's 888-28-255. A lawyer on Car Talk. Hi. This is Susan in Bettendorf, Iowa.

Hi, Susan, in Bettendorf, Iowa, huh? Yeah. Right next to Davenport. She's Iowa. What's going on in Bettendorf? Not that I, you know, I never heard of it before, but that doesn't mean much. Oh, we moved here from Chicago. about 10 years ago.

Why? Yeah, we've been asking ourselves that, no. No, it's a nice state, you know, but the whole state doesn't have the population of Chicago alone. Wow. But Bettendorf is like a little town. Well, it is. It's right smack dab next to Davenport. It's like a little suburb.

Oh, that's cool. Yeah. A suburb of a place we never heard of. That's right. All right, Susan. What's up? We've got an 85 old cutlass Sierra. Oh.

So, and this isn't really a technical question. This is more cosmetic. Yeah. You know the, the material that lines the inside of the hood of your car? Yeah, it's insulation. It's a, like fiberglass insulation. Oh, well, no, this is the actual material material. This is under the hood or under the roof?

Under the roof. Oh, inside the car. I thought he said under the hood. I thought you said. Oh, I'm sorry. To me, that's the hood. That's the roof. The hood is that thing in front where the engine is. Well, you check the oil.

You lift up the hood. You check the oil. So the headliner is coming down. If you sit down in the car and it's literally a pain in the neck because you keep ducking because this stuff hits you on the top of the head all the time. Yeah. And this Andrew before me said that he's cheap. Well, he's not, he hasn't got anything on my husband. Oh, he doesn't.

He's like six foot tall and Bohemian. and so he's so cheap. He doesn't want to take it anywhere to have it fixed. Yeah. Oh, we've got another one of these on our hands? Well, he may be the problem. Maybe his head was bouncing up against the headliner, and that's why it's falling down.

Headliners are a mystery, because whatever is holding them up there or was holding them up there is invisible, because it's behind there. Yeah, and I don't want to cut into this material to smear something up there to make it adhere again. Well, you're going to have to. Oh, that's what I was wondering.

Unless you want to attack it from, the other side. What? The outside of the car? Drill a hole in the roof. And then put a rubber stopper up there, right? Put a rubber stopper, a cork. Put a cork in it.

Yeah, I mean, you have to get behind it, unless you want to prop up a two-by-four on the seat. But that's bogus. Oh. Not much is going to work. Is the thin material actually separated from the padding? Oh, yeah. But the other material, that is the padding that is between the cloth and the metal of the roof, that's still in place as far as you can tell.

As far as I can tell. You may have to make a tiny hole and look in. But here's what I'd recommend that you do punch a little hole in there. And you buy a can of spray contact cement, if there is such a thing, or spray adhesive. And what you're going to do is you're going to try, you may have to make a couple of little little. incisions. Okay. So you're going to try to spray the

what's stuck to the roof. Oh. And you're going to try to spray the fabric that's hanging down in front of your face. Okay. And then you're going to prop it up with something. Oh, I think if you do it right, if you let this stuff dry and then you put the two pieces together,

it will stick forever. Oh. You may have to prop it up with a couple of bales of hay or something. Okay. That might work. They got them in their front lawn. Oh, yeah. Oh, sure.

This is corn country. It is. It is. So it may take a few cornstalks to hold this thing up, but I think that's your only hope. The alternative is to rip the thing out. Oh, and put all new in. Well, I'll have no headliner. You could rug it.

Oh, that would be pretty ugly. Oh, you could paint it. You could wallpaper it for that matter. No, I shag carpeting. But try this. It'll probably work. Okay. Give it a shot.

And if I'd call back next week, we'll tell you how to replace the clutch. Yeah, right. See, Susan. Thanks. Good life. Okay, Tommy. It's time for your weekly puzzler hints. Oh, okay.

Go ahead. Okay, those who know you best generously describe your thinking as blank. I would say perspicacious. No, I was looking for backwards. And remember, that's generous. Well, here's your next hint. Neighbors admiring your yard often ask if your landscaper was who. Oh, Frederick Waugh Olmsted.

No. Responsible for the emerald necklace or whatever it's called around here. Yeah, that's him. Olmsted. No, I was looking for Alan Nissenbaum. Because your long looks just like Mrs. Baum's junkyard. Hi, we're back.

You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Collect the Tappet Brothers, and we're here to talk about cars, car repair, end of the answer to last week's puzzler. Yeah. This is the suggestion for this puzzle that came out of cyberspace from a fellow named Michael Leiden. And he writes,

I cut my mechanic's teeth, so to speak, as a pump jockey at a Sonoco station in the burbs of Cleveland. In other words, he pumped gasoline at a gas station, and he adds in parentheses, that's the one hint you get. Oh, I forgot that. We don't know what the hint was, actually. Was it gasoline? Was it suburb or was it Cleveland? Yeah, we don't know. And he writes further, we had a guy who helped out holding wrenches, catching oil, spills, holding up cars, and his name was Harley, Strong as an Ox and twice as smart, we said.

One day a friend came in with a Chevy 350 engine that he had picked up at a junkyard and was going to rebuild, and he wanted some pointers on what to do and how to go about the tear down and all that stuff, you know. Then he asked, how do I get the engine to rotate in the other direction? Now, if you just picked up any old Chevrolet 350 engine, it would rotate clockwise, but this fellow wanted to make it rotate counterclockwise. Well, Harley was stumped, as you might expect. But the question is, why would you want to rebuild an engine so it would run backwards?

Wow. And the hint is Cleveland. Cleveland? Where is Cleveland? Cleveland is on the Ohio River. No. How about Lake Erie? The Mississippi River.

Yeah, well, I was thinking about boats. Well, you were... I knew Cleveland was near water. And if you were thinking about boats and you had two inboard engines... You would want one of them to go one way And one go the other The other way Otherwise the boat would just go around in circles all the time

You want the props to wash in opposite directions That would make it That would make you go really nice and straight ahead I would think so I don't really know but that's what they do And I'm taking Do they do that now? How do I know

I don't even own a boat The rumors are all false I do not own a boat I have never made a boat payment in my life So I wouldn't know But why would it matter? I don't like it. It could be bogus.

I'm just going on blind faith. Blind faith. And it seemed intuitively obvious that you would want the props to go in opposite directions. For symmetrical reasons. It's nothing else. But I don't think it's necessary. I don't either. I think it's bogus.

Hey, who's the one who submitted this? Mike Leiden. He's the one who's going to task him. In fact, we'll give you his email address. it turns out to be bogus, you can send the nasty emails to him. By the way, it ain't easy to get it to turn backwards. Well, no, it isn't. No. That'll be next week's puzzler.

Yeah. And since there are, his one, why I think it's bogus, since there are lots of bolts that have two engines, it seems unlikely to me that some of them are running backwards. Well, like half of them. Like half of them. Because it's not easy to do. And if you had one engine, how would you get that to run backwards and forwards at the same time? Figure that out. Yeah. Did we have a winner?

Did someone send an answer in? No. I didn't think so. Why would we have a winner for a bogus puzzler? Yeah, we got a winner. The winner is John Wyand from Carrollton, Ohio. From Carrollton, Ohio. Right up the road from Cleveland.

Of course, that's why he won. And for having his correct answer selected at random from all the correct answers we got this week, John Wyand from Carrotville. Carrotville. Just read that thing. is going to win a $25 a gift certificate to the Shameless Commerce Division at the Cart Talk section of Cars.com, with which he can get our father's CD collection just in time for Father's Day. Why, you should never listen to your father when it comes to cars.

You have to hurry, though, we only have a few hundred million of these sitting in the basement. Anyway, we'll have a new, I guess, mathematical puzzle coming up in the third half of the show. So stay tuned for that. In the meantime, if you have a question about your car or anything else, give us a call at 888 Car Talk. That's 888-227-8-255. Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hold your horses there.

Michael Leiden. Can you hear you breathing heavy in the background? Who's this? This is Terry calling from NACNIC, Alaska. Terry? Oh, man. Macknick. No, N-A-K-N-E-K.

N-K. Oh, N-K-K. It's out in the bush. It's about 300 air miles. southwest of Anchorage. There's no road to get here. We have to barge and fly everything in, including my truck. And you live there? Why? Because I like it. Because it's safe from the real world. You don't have to take your keys out of your car or lock your house. How many other people live in Nackneck, Alaska? Well, it's sort of a community in that across the river, there's

100 people in South Nacknick, and 14 miles down the road is King's Famine, and there's about 400 people down there and there's about 400 years. 400 people. Nkneckians. Nacknickians. Oh, Nknecichites. Are you Nacnichites? Native Neknichites.

Yes, I am. But you're not a native Nacnichite. No, I've only lived here about 17 years. 17 years. Terry, somebody has to, no, not. That's not true. That's not true. I mean, that's my question.

What brought you there? Why are you there? You don't like civilization? Yes, I like civilization. My grandparents always wanted to live in Alaska, and they both passed away before they ever even got to come here. Oh, so you're channeling them. I'm channeling, yes.

You're channeling. See, my father always wanted to go to California, and he died never having gone there. I mean, for his whole life, 93 years of his life, he always said, I should have gone to California. So did you make the pilgrimage for him? I'm not going either. You're not going either?

No, I'm sure. trying to keep up the family tradition. Right, he's on his own. I'm not going to go take a trip that he should have taken. Come on. So what do we have to do to your truck to get you out of NACNEC? Well, I have a 1996 Dodge Dakota Sport. It's got an automatic, and it's got 41,000 miles on it.

Of course. I mean, how can you get any mile? How did you put 41,000 miles on it in five years? How many places are there? That's 8,000 miles a year. In NACNIC? King Salmon. is 14 miles away, and I like to go to King's Salmon sometimes.

Oh, so you go there for a little excitement. Yes, a very little excitement. So continue. Okay, so here's the deal. It's starting to do this thing where when it's warm, which really isn't very often, but when it's warm. I guess not. Lucky you.

Any time I drive it for like two or three miles, it won't. start up again and stay running after I turn it off. I mean, so when the motor's even the slightest bit warm, once I started again, it dies immediately. It can't keep going. I have to, like, give it a lot of gas and ram it into gear, which I know is bad, but that's the only way I can make it keep going. I can start over and over and over, and it will not stay running until I get it running, and then it's okay. And how long does it take before it will stay running? Probably, I'd say, um, a mile or five minutes. I like that.

So, but in every case, you've always just held your foot on the brake and the gas at the same time, shoved it into drive. Yeah. And take it off. And if need be, you've come to a traffic light, if there is such a thing in King's Salmon. You've come to a traffic light. All right. A moose crossing.

And you've held your foot on the gas and the break at the same time. And if you didn't do that, it would stall out. You've got it. Got it. You got a problem with that? Every car at every car, they're over old. Yes, they have a problem with that. Does the check, has the check, the check engine light should be on.

No. It isn't on. Not on. Really? Does this have a temperature gauge in it? Yes, and the temperature is fine. Now, what if you didn't stop? If I didn't stop, if I leave it running, when I get out and I leave it running, it will stay running, and it's not a problem.

And if you go to King Salmon, it runs fine all the way. way, 14 miles, right? All the way, yes. And if you leave it running, we'll keep running, it's only if you turn it off and turn it back on again. Well, here's what happens when you turn a car off. You shut off the heat dissipating mechanism, i.e. the water pump and the fan and all that jazz.

And if you were to just get back into it after even driving three miles and turn the key on without starting it, you'd notice the temperature gauge was way up near hot. Because when you shut off the engine, you stop dissipating the heat and the heat that's in the engine stays in the engine. Which always happens when you stop.

This is not an abnormality. This is typical of every car. Right. So if there's something wrong, for example, if you have a faulty coolant temperature sensor and it's reading the temperature incorrectly, it will make the fuel injection behave peculiarly. And I would predict that if you just sat there

with it long enough and let it cool off, it would start up and be perfectly okay. Yeah. Well, you know, the thing is, I swear, it sounds like air. It's like it doesn't get any air, and it just all of a sudden stops. It ain't air, Terry. Leave that idea. Forget that idea.

Okay. That idea is not going to work. That's not going to fly. It is not air. I doubt it's vapor locking. I also doubt it's the fuel pump, although anything is possible. But you don't have like a repair shop in one of these times. Well, we do, but everything's hit and miss.

I mean, we don't have, like, computerized where you can go plug it in. You know, I got a guy who goes, I think it's the oxygen sensor. I think it's this. I think it's the fuel pump, you know, and pretty soon you got a new engine. What do you mean? There's no king salmon Chrysler-Plymouth dealer up there? No. No, huh?

Well, there's an opportunity for somebody. Well, I would send away for a coolant temp sensor first because they're cheap. Cool and temp sensor, okay. Now, that doesn't mean it can't be something else. It could be a bad ignition coil. It could be certainly a bad fuel pump relay, but you're not going to figure any of this out without some test equipment or some very good guesses. That's why I have you.

Yeah. I mean, the next thing I'd suspect is a faulty coil. Okay. And I don't even know if this thing has more than one coil. It may have more than one coil. I might have a coil pack. But that's the thing that's also very temperature sensitive. Okay.

And you're going to get on this because you're going to miss summer. You don't get this fixed. We already did. It was yesterday. See you, Terry. Thank you, bye. Thanks, you, call. Knack, Nick.

1-888-man. Car Talk. That's 888-227-8-255. Hello, you're on Car Talk. We do get some very interesting callers from Alaska. Well, they're obviously interesting people. She went there 17 years ago because her grandparents wanted to go. Get that.

She went there because her grandparents wanted to go. grandparents wanted to go. She didn't say she wanted to go. No. She just wanted to know where, why do they want to go there? She hates those old geese. And she stayed for 17 years. Yeah. Hey, Tommy, you want to take a break? Not now, man. We're on a roll. I mean, you wouldn't ask Picasso to take a break when you're in the middle of painting something, would you? You wouldn't ask Mario Andretti to pull over in the middle of a race, would you? No, and I wouldn't interrupt my dog when she's in the middle.

Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. We're back. We'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. I can hardly. I wouldn't get that excited. You said it was a mathematical puzzle. Well, here it is. This is from the hat in the river series of puzzles. Imagine this.

It's the first day of spring or summer or whatever. You decide to rent a little boat at the dock and go for a little boat ride. Yeah. So you do that. You get in the little boat, a little. rowboat and you begin to paddle upstream. You're with me so far? Ro.

Rowing or you're paddling. You're not doing both. I happen to be an expert in this whole area. Okay. So you're paddling. You're rowing. You're rowing. You're rowing.

Two oars. Okay. You've got two oars and you're rowing. People say I don't have two oars in the water. What do they mean by that? So I'm rowing. Okay. You're rowing upstream and you get a mile from

the dock, the mile from where you put the boat in the water, and your hat flies off. Okay? You're rowing upstream. Yeah. You say, forget it. And you keep rowing or paddling, whatever the case may be. Get it on my way back. Then you realize that your two tickets to that night's Sleepy LaBeef concert are tucked

inside the sweat band. So you've rowed away from their falling hat for 10 minutes. Okay. So you roll mile upstream, the hat falls off. You roll for another 10 minutes, at which point you say, the tickets. Yeah. And you turn around and you start rowing again.

You're rowing with the same number of strokes that you were. Yeah. Okay, the same intensity that you were upstream and downstream. Got it. You catch up with the hat right at the point where you first took off with the boat, right at the dock. And I know what the question is. The question is.

How fast is that? the current. There you go. Now, I want to give you a hint. Go ahead. Give me a hint. Well, you don't need algebra to solve this. Ah. In fact, you probably shouldn't use algebra. It would complicate it. Really? Yeah, that's the hint. Wow. I mean, everyone's, what's the first thing you were going to write down? X equals the rate of the river. Right. Yeah, I think it was Bertrand Russell, who wrote a little book called The Dawn of Nothing, or How Al-Ecter. Algebra began. Did he?

I don't know. I may have made that up, but it sounded good. Anyway, if you think you know the answer, write it on a postcard or tape it to the handlebars of a metallic blue 2001 light speed to Nazi mountain bike with 18-inch geometrically enhanced titanium alloy frame, Shimano XTR components, and Rock Shawk suspension forks. And ride that right over to Puzzler Tower, Car Talk, Plouye. Box 3,500, Harvard Square, Cambridge. Our Fair City. Matt 02238, or you can email your answer from the Car Talk section of Cars.com. If you'd like to talk to us right now, the number is 1-888-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-25-5.

Hello, you're on Car Talk. Aloha. This is Jeff from Maui. Aloha to you, Jeff. Oh, man. What's the weather like in Boston? Oh, shut up. So how long have you been in Maui? Seven years.

And? And I have a 1987. No, but you'll love it? You know, it's like a doorstop, and it's reliable. It's boring. I have a motorcycle. And it's boring. See that?

See that's all right? What did you say? No, he's talking about his car. You're not talking about Maui. No, forget your car. We're not interested in your car. Oh, okay. What about Maui?

Maui's fantastic. And do you take it for granted, or do you, every morning do you wake up singing Zippity-d-d-da-zip. But you know what? I woke up to bird singing this morning, which is the way I wake up every morning. You know, doves and honey creepers, and it's just spectacular. It's sunny. It's warm.

My brother wakes up the Brits of buzzards. He says circling his cars. So, I hate to get off the topic if even there were one. But what do you do for a living there? Two things. freelance condominium management, and I teach relationship skills workshops with my partner, Deborah. Oh, relationships? Oh, my God, do we ever need you?

You mean there are skills involved? Yeah, give us something that you think we might be lacking in that would help in our relationships with our wives. Yeah, give us one little trick that we could use like when we get home tonight. Okay. That we'll cement our relationship. shipping. Don't ever use the word cement. Cement.

Not if you're Italian. Bad connotations. Cement overshoes. Yeah. I mean, there must be some little things, you know, tricks. We want to fool them. Okay, okay.

I'll give you something straightforward. It's called empathic, shared meaning. Yeah. And all it's really about is listening. Listening to what she's saying and the words behind, or the music behind her words. So you get the feeling aspect. You can actually drop into her experience as though you were in her shoes saying,

okay, I'm standing in Phileen's basement and... Okay, what kind of a car are you got? That didn't do my work. That was better than the question I was going to ask her. And I was trying to figure out how to ask it. What kind of a question? Oh, well, my part, she has an 87 sob 900. Oh, Deborah has.

Yes. And being somewhat mechanically inclined, I said, okay, I'm going to do the 30,000 mile service on it. So what I did was I flushed out the old brake fluid, got rid of the primordial ooze that was in the reservoir, put in fresh fluid, bled the brakes, got all the air out, everything was duckie. Then we took a long drive, long drive on Maui's about 14 miles. and we parked the car.

We got in the car when it was hot, and the brake pedal would go to the floor. Pump the brake a couple of times, and it would be fine. Drive back home again, and every time that the car gets hot or we let it sit in the hot parking lot, get back in it again,

the pedal will sink. The rest of the time it's fine, which is about 90% of the time. Sounds like you didn't bleed it correctly. No, I mean, you can get into it right now with the engine cold, the car not having run for a while, and the brake pedal and drive it and the brake pedal is fine.

Absolutely. You can continue to drive it. And while you drive it and every time you use the brake, the brake pedal is fine. That's right. It's only when you let it sit for a while that the thing fails you. Right. When it sits, after it's been driven and it sits and it gets hot, then it starts to sink. So you don't think it's got air?

No, I don't think it doesn't have air because I've gone back and re-blood it. See, he's going to tell you that it. It needs a master cylinder. Yeah, I'm going to tell you it needs a master cylinder. Before I condemn the master cylinder, I'm going to ask you to check to verify that none of the calipers is sticking. Okay. You could have a faulty caliper causing the brake fluid to boil. That could cause loss of brakes.

But why that would happen after you change the brake fluid doesn't make sense? Well, that's why my brother believes that you've got air in the system. But I know you don't. Absolutely. I'm going to stick with my original belief. that it's the master cylinder. I don't like it. And why it just happened?

Hmm. This is the penalty you're paying for living in Maui. Yeah. Well, so cute. This is your penance. And if that's what it's, if that's what it costs you to live in Maui, pay up. Make sure, don't get hurt. I mean, make sure that they work before you go doing anything crazy.

I understand. Say it, Jeff. Thanks for your, thanks for your call. Thanks for your sound, the words of advice, whatever they were. and good luck with your car. Thank you. Aloha. Well, it's happened again.

You've squandered one of your last three hours of the week listening to Carthuck. What a misfortune. Our esteemed producer is Doug the subway fugitive, Bongo Boy Berman. Our associate producers are Louis Cronin, the Barbarian, and David Gibraltar Green. Our engineer is Tad Masamon Curry. Our senior web lackey is Doug cranberry juice boy, mayor, and our technical spiritual and menu advisor, just back from his stint as a celebrity taster at the Greater Sheboygan, Sour Mash, and Sukatash invitation

is John Bugsy Lawler. Where is Bugsy? Our public opinion poster is Paul Murky of Merkey Research, assisted by statistician Margin Overa. Our customer care representative is Haywood Jabuzov. Our director of allergy research is Teresa Pollinating. Our guide to rapid sun tanning is less blocked. Our director of roadway resurfacing is Sylvia Pottholing

and our air traffic controller is Yulanda, you lucky. Our sexual harassment investigator is Hank Panky. Our New York-based dispute settlement coordinator is you talking to me. Our meteorologist from the New Delhi office. You talking to me? His Luke out of window. Our Elvis impersonator from the Cairo offices. Our miles shook up.

Our Russian chauffeur is peek-off and drop-off, and our seat cushion tester is Mike Easter. Our chief counsel from the law firm of Dewey Chewy-Chinman Howe is U. Louis Dewey, known to the out-of-work actors posing as living statues in Harvard Square as Uie Louis Dewey. Thanks so much for listening. We're clicking and clack the Tappert Brothers. And above all, don't drive like my brother.

Don't drive like my brother. We'll be back next week. Bye-bye. Car Talk is a production of Dewey Cheatham and Howe and WBUR in Boston. And even though World War II vets say we survive Pearl Harbor for this, whenever they hear us say it, this is NPR National Public Radio.