#2641: How Cheap is Too Cheap?
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Term
shift it without going through the restart process
Some cars won’t let you shift normally until they’re fully “ready.” If you follow the right steps, you can skip the extra start/reset steps.
Term
put it in park
“Park” is the gear position that helps keep the car from rolling. In this story, the car won’t let the person select Park unless they do specific steps.
Term
emergency brake
The emergency/parking brake is what you use to keep the car from rolling when it’s stopped. Here, it’s being used because the shifter won’t behave normally.
Term
switch attached to the brake pedal
Cars often have a sensor on the brake pedal that tells the car “the brake is pressed.” The car uses that signal to decide when it’s safe to move the shifter.
Term
pin that inhibits the shifter from moving at all
Some cars have a safety lock that prevents the shifter from moving unless conditions are right. If that lock gets stuck, the shifter won’t move normally.
Term
interlock mechanism
An interlock is a safety “rule” built into the car. It makes sure you can’t put the car into a driving state unless you’re also pressing the brake.
Term
lock-out mechanism
A lock-out mechanism is like a built-in blocker. It stops the car from doing something dangerous unless the right safety step happens first.
Concept
runaway acceleration problems
Runaway acceleration is when a car speeds up on its own, without the driver meaning to. The idea is that safety systems were added to prevent the car from moving unless you’re braking.
Brand
Audi
Audi is the car brand mentioned here. The hosts are talking about older safety issues from the 1980s that led to added protections in some cars.
Car
Nissan Maxima
The Nissan Maxima is a regular-sized car (a sedan) made for everyday driving. A 1993 model is an older version, and 150,000 miles means it has been driven a lot over the years. People mention it to talk about whether older cars can still stay on the road.
Term
air mass meter
This sensor measures how much air is getting into the engine. The car uses that info to add the right amount of fuel so the engine can run smoothly.
Term
intake manifold
The intake manifold is where the engine collects and routes incoming air to the cylinders. If the air path or sensor connection is damaged, the engine may not know how much air it’s getting and can stall.
Term
air filter
The air filter keeps dirt out of the engine’s air supply. If it’s not right, the engine can run poorly because the air it gets isn’t what the system expects.
Term
bellows
In this context, the bellows is a flexible connector (often rubber or accordion-like) between the air mass meter and the intake manifold. Cracks can open under vibration (like going over bumps), causing the sensor signal/air path to become temporarily wrong and trigger a shutdown.
Term
tension
Tension is the force that a rope (or cable) pulls with. If you hang something from a rope, the rope is under tension all the way along.
Term
mechanical advantage
Mechanical advantage means you can use a system (like ropes) to multiply force. So you might push or pull with less effort and still get a bigger result.
Term
Newton
A newton is a way to measure force—basically how hard something is pulling or pushing. The numbers they mention are comparing input force to output force.
LIVE
On Consider This, NPR's afternoon news podcast, we cover everything from politics to the economy
to the world, but every story starts with a question.
In NPR, we stand for your right to be curious, to make sense of the biggest story of the
day and what it means for you.
Follow Consider This wherever you get your podcasts.
Hello and welcome to Car Talk from National Public Radio with us, Click and Clack, the
and we're broadcasting this week from the hate mail division here at Car Talk Plaza.
This isn't hate mail, but I'm going to predict that about half of the listeners that hear
it are going to hate it.
We have managed it.
Which half do you think?
Well, you'll find out.
This is as far from politically correct as you could be, but it's so funny.
We didn't author it.
We didn't author it and we're just passing it on.
Or authorize it.
I mean, occasionally you get a piece of mail and you read it and you laugh out loud and
this is one and you can't let that go by.
No.
So as long, I think on balance, enough of the guys will laugh and all the women will
hate us, but they may hate us already.
Right.
So we'll take a chance.
We'll take a chance.
Go ahead.
Here it is.
I know one woman in particular.
I know one woman in particular too and I know her name and I know her address.
And her social security number.
And I'll be in the garage tonight, but here it is.
It's a chain letter, the real man's chain letter.
This chain letter was started in hopes of bringing relief to other tired and discouraged
men.
Unlike most chain letters, this one does not cost anything.
Just send a copy of this letter to five of your friends who are equally tired and discontented.
Then bundle up your wife or girlfriend and send her to the man whose name appears at
the top of the following list.
Then add your name to the bottom of the list.
When your turn comes, you will receive 15,625 women.
One of whom is bound to be better than the one you already have.
At the writing of this letter, a friend of mine had already received 184 women of whom
four were worth keeping.
Remember this chain brings luck.
One man's pit bull died, but the next day he received a Playboy swimsuit model.
An unmarried Jewish man living with his widowed mother was able to choose between a Hooters'
waitress and a Hollywood supermodel.
You could be lucky too, but do not break the chain.
One man did break the chain and he got his own wife back again.
When I get to the line that says, when your turn comes, you will receive 15,625 women.
One of whom could be your mother-in-law.
That's right.
I have to say that I thought it was very funny and I know that I'll obviously...
You would think it was funny and you are in deep doo-doo, man.
Yeah.
Well, I'm used to it.
Who wrote this?
Oh, we don't know.
We don't know.
I mean, we never know, but they say that a good laugh will keep you healthy and it's
going to have to be healthy for a long time in the garage.
Well, if like Tom, you have a lot of free time since just now, she's no longer speaking
to you.
Or if you have a problem with your car or anything else you can call us at 888-CARTALK.
That's 888-227-825.
Hello, you're on CARTALK.
I thought that letter was hilarious.
I can't tell you how many of those ridiculous chain letters I've got.
You thought it was hilarious.
I thought it was great.
Oh, good.
There's some hope.
There's some hope.
I didn't think that we could immediately...
Well, it's going to be less than half now.
It's half.
Less than half because what's your name?
This is Cherie.
Cherie Laft.
Yes, I did.
Wow.
Where are you from, Cherie?
I'm calling from Eugene, Oregon.
And what's going on?
I've got a 1989 Jeep Wagon-Ear.
It's an automatic.
And recently, this problem developed when I start the car and I try to put it into gear.
The shifter is stuck.
But if I turn the car off and jiggle the shifter and start it again, it goes into gear no problem.
And I can't figure out for the life of me what could be causing that.
Is the 89 the big monster?
No, it's not the...
No, in 89, they made a wagon-ear.
It looks just like a Cherie key, but it's called a wagon-ear.
The other one was a grand wagon-ear.
Right, that was...
Yeah.
Still got the sexy wood paneling though.
Oh, is that grand?
So, it starts right up, but you cannot take it out of park unless you do what?
You shut it off?
I have to turn it off and jiggle the handle, jiggle the shifter.
And I'm so used to it now that I know to just jiggle it right when I get in the car before
I even start it.
So, and if you do that, it starts up.
You can then shift it without going through the restart process.
And also, once it started, if I just want to run back in the house or something, I can't
put it in park because it'll get stuck.
I have to put it in neutral and put the emergency brake on.
And you do have your foot on the brake when you're stepping on the...
Yeah.
When you're pulling on the handle.
This has one of those setups where you have to step on the brake to take it out of gear?
Yes.
Okay.
Well, that's what the culprit is.
I mean, there's a switch attached to the brake pedal, which is disengaging a pin.
I don't know exactly how it works on this thing, but they all do it differently.
But basically, there's a pin that inhibits the shifter from moving at all.
And what must be happening is that thing is stuck.
And then by grabbing the shifter and moving it, you then, and you might not even have
to shut it off, although you may have to re-initiate the process.
So, I...
Okay.
So, I see how that could be related to the brake because I don't have the brake on when
I just jiggle it.
I don't put the brake on until I'm ready to start it.
Right.
But I mean, you shouldn't have to do this, but...
But this interlock mechanism is what's keeping it from moving.
Interlock.
A lock-out mechanism.
It's basically a mechanism that was put on the heels of the runaway acceleration problems
that Audi's and a few other cars had in the 80s.
Oh, okay.
So that people couldn't say, well, I put the thing in gear and it took off, well, you
couldn't have because we now make you step on the brake before you can put it in gear.
Oh.
So if it started moving, you would just have to step harder on the brake and the thing
would not go any place.
Okay.
You know, so it was put in as a safety measure, except that yours doesn't work.
So you need to have somebody take that thing apart.
Okay.
And they'll probably find out that it needs to be lubricated or maybe there's a loose
wire or something.
That's my case.
All right.
But in the meantime, keep jiggling.
Yeah.
It's been working.
That's it?
That's it.
Thanks, guys.
See you, Sherry.
So long.
Thanks for calling.
And thanks for chuckling.
Oh, yeah, of course.
We'll see how many more you get today.
Oh, man.
We'll see.
Bye-bye.
See you later.
1-888-CAR-TALK.
That's 888-227-8255.
Hello.
You're on CAR-TALK.
Hello.
This is Dan.
Call Lake City, Florida.
Lake City.
Yeah.
Kind of by Jacksonville down there.
Yeah.
Not to be confused with Lake Buena Vista.
We've been there, man.
We've been there.
Oh, okay.
The whole place was on fire the last time.
I think my brother threw a cigar out the window.
So you caused it all, huh?
I think so.
I don't know.
So what's shaking?
I'm having a problem with my car.
Yeah.
I'm in a 93 Nissan Maxima.
Right now, it has about 150,000 miles on it.
The problem I've had when I drive over a rough surface, for instance, railroad tracks, a
speed bump, something like that, if I don't give it any gas, it kills.
Really?
Yeah.
And if, you know, if I put it in neutral and start, it'll start right back up.
But when I drive over a rough surface, it'll kill.
I haven't had it in the shop to check it out, but I thought I'd give you guys a ring
and see if you could tell me what the problem is.
When you come to the railroad tracks or the bumps or whatever on the road.
Right.
If you slowed way down, it wouldn't do this.
Yeah, it would.
Get out.
It would.
Right.
Well, are you slowing down by stepping on the brake when you come to these things?
Are you slowing down by simply taking your foot off the gas?
Sometimes one, sometimes the other?
Exactly.
Or even sometimes if I'm going real slow, sometimes like if it's, say, a big pothole
or something.
Yeah.
If even if I'm going real slow, it'll just kill.
But when it stalls, it starts right back up again.
Yeah, I'll pop it in neutral.
I know what it is.
It's a stick shift?
No, it's automatic.
I knew that.
You did?
No, not really.
I think I know what it is.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
I don't think so.
No, I don't either really.
I think Dan might buy it.
There's a large rubber hose basically that runs between a device called the air mass
meter and the intake manifold.
Okay.
And it conducts the air that has gone through the air filter and through the air mass meter
and gotten measured by the air mass meter into the engine to eventually burn up the gas.
Okay.
If there's a crack in that thing, sometimes when you do certain things to the car like
go over bumps, that crack will open up enough to make the thing just shut right down.
Huh.
And then as soon as it does that and you stop and restart the car, the crack is closed up
and the thing will be fine and it may never give you a problem until you duplicate those
conditions again.
Right.
So it must have something to do with going over a bump and causing the engine to move
and that crack is opening up.
Interesting.
Yeah.
It could be the air mass meter itself, but because we have 150,000 on it, I would suspect
that that bellows connecting the air mass meter to the manifold is broken.
Okay.
And you might be able, if my brother's right, you might be able to make this happen.
You might be able to make this happen by letting it idle and jump up and down on the fender.
Okay.
Well, better than that, you can grab a hold of this thing while the engine's idling and
squeeze it and play with it.
Okay.
And you'll get it to move and when you do that, the engine will stall out, I bet.
Sure.
And if that's it, you'll find the crack.
If that isn't it, don't ever call back again.
Yeah.
Let me ask you this.
Yeah.
Does anybody ever call and you guys just don't have the answer?
You haven't been a listener for very long, have you?
We make up answers all the time.
We never let our listeners down.
And answers and answers and answer right or wrong makes no difference.
Thanks for calling Dan.
Thank you, sir.
See you later.
Okay, Tommy, do you remember last week's puzzler?
Didn't have to do with falling leaves, falling arches, and falling off a bike.
No, that was your commute to the radio station today.
Hi, we're back.
You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack, the Tapper Brothers.
And we here to talk about cars, car repair, and the answer to last week's puzzler.
Have you remembered it yet?
No, no, but you go ahead.
Go ahead.
Well, this was an historic folkloric puzzler.
It came from someone named Carrie Brown at the American Precision Museum in Windsor,
Vermont.
They had an exhibit there called The Pedal Power.
Yeah, which closed one around 1895.
Well, something like that.
But the museum is still alive and well.
In any case, she wrote, in the 1800s, the common form of bicycle was called the ordinary.
And you've seen pictures of it.
It's the bike with the huge front wheel.
It was mostly considered a toy for wealthy young men.
It was expensive and obviously dangerous.
And the most common accident was something called the header.
It sent the rider going over the handlebars, usually to his death.
Yeah, you're sitting about seven feet up in the air.
And obviously it was difficult to mountain and ride and the whole thing.
So to make cycling more universally acceptable, something called the safety bike was developed,
which had two wheels of the same size, a chain drive, and many features we see on bikes to this day.
The safety didn't catch on at first.
It was considered ugly, inefficient, and uncomfortable.
Now, I said this was the beginning semi-automotive.
Did I not?
Quasi-automotive.
Oh, you did.
I remember you introduced it as being a quasi.
Right, and you will see why in a minute.
In 1889, a veterinary surgeon in Belfast, Ireland patented an accessory which revolutionized the bicycle.
Safeties became popular and the ordinary became...
Obsolete.
Passé.
Yeah.
The question, very simply, is what was the name of that surgeon?
Or what, in fact, did he patent?
Either answer would suffice.
He's an answer, so the thing must have his name in it.
And it's not the bicycle seat.
No, but that would have been good.
That would have been important.
I think the seat was...
That would have been important.
Someone had figured out the seat.
No, the reason I couldn't give you his name is that John Boyd Dunlop.
And Dunlop invented the pneumatic tire.
And in doing so, made the safety bike the bike of choice because now it was no longer uncomfortable.
See, the big wheel of the ordinary smoothed out the ride over those cobblestone streets and rutted back roads.
Of course, but if you put smaller tires, smaller wheels on the bike...
That weren't pneumatic.
Oh, man.
And all the people who rode those had their teeth knocked out.
Gary Hage.
So anyway, who's our winner, man?
Our winner this week is John Robertson from Chillicothe, Ohio.
And away, John!
And for having his answer selected at random from among all the correct answers,
John will get a $25 gift certificate to the Cartok Shameless Commerce Division on our website,
with which he can wow his friends, get this, with a match set,
service for four of Cartok coffee mugs.
It's if he's not too cheap to pony up the extra $0.95 that it's gonna cost him.
But he's got $25 to spend any way he wants on the Cartok website.
By the way, if you want to be eligible to win one of these great prizes, including a tap and range,
or anything else from the Spiegel catalog,
you can always visit the store at the Cartok section of cars.com,
or you can call 888-CAR-JUNK and they'll read you the list of stuff we have over the phone
until you find out something you like and you'll say, I'll take that.
Yeah, right.
I also wanted to mention a free public service that you may not know about.
What's that?
Well, sometimes people miss a puzzler, accidentally, of course.
Loss of other people miss it on purpose,
but if you're one of the people who misses an occasional puzzler,
or a puzzler answer and doesn't mean to, you can now get them delivered by email.
Wow!
All you have to do is sign up for the Psychic Friends Puzzler Network
and you can also do that at the Cartok section of cars.com.
Isn't that a great, nice little feature?
Is it just one more service from your pals at cars.com?
Now, we will have a new, and I can't describe this puzzler yet,
because I have three potential puzzlers and they're all in the tumbler.
And whichever one pops out will be the one I use.
So that'll be coming up in the third half of today's show, so stay tuned.
In the meantime, you can call us and ask us questions about your car or anything except physics.
1-888-CAR-TALK, that's 888-227-8255.
Hello, you're on car talk.
Hello there, this is your physicist friend from Harvard.
Get out!
It's okay.
Get out!
You just said cause with anything except physics.
I forgot your name.
It's Wolfgang Ruckner.
Wolfgang, yeah.
From Harvard University to World's Greatest University.
And you must have been listening last week when that poor young lady called us up with that physics problem.
That poor young lady, and you were on the right track, but didn't quite get it right.
I forgot who called, what her name was.
But what she said was that she was...
Your name was Kim.
Kim.
And she was taking some kind of physics test and she was having trouble with a problem.
And here's what the problem...
She was trying to bluff her way into medical school.
And she needed to pass this physics test.
And you remember the problem?
Yeah.
Go ahead.
A car is stuck in the mud and you tie a strong rope to the back bumper of the car and the other end to a tree.
At the midpoint of the rope, she pushes down with her maximum effort, which she estimates to be a force of about 300 Newtons.
You with us so far, Wolfgang?
With you.
The car begins to budge with the rope at about a 5 degree angle.
With what force is the rope pulling on the car?
And I remember my answer, which I didn't even think about.
I just said 300 times the cosine of 5 degrees.
It has to do with vectors.
That's right.
It has to do with vectors and the components of those vectors.
You're right on the right track and using trigonometry.
Who was that professor who always said, remember, force is a vector.
That was Professor Teaser.
Got it.
Okay.
Do you know Professor Teaser from MIT?
No, I don't know.
He retired for 65 years.
He was retired then.
He worked on the Manhattan Project, not the one, the bomb one.
The one where they actually built the island of Manhattan.
Okay.
I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
Right.
Okay.
So you visualize pushing on this rope so that you're pushing in one direction.
The rope's pulling back on you in a kind of a V-shaped force.
Got it.
I got the little diagram there.
Okay.
So you've got the component of the V that's pulling in the opposite direction that you're pushing.
That component is going to be the sine of the angle times the tension in that rope.
Because it's two parts of the V, it's going to be twice the sine because you've got both parts of the rope pulling back on you.
So it turns out that the tension then is going to be your force divided by twice the sine of theta.
And if it's going to be five degrees, sine of five degrees is around 0.1 or so.
So twice that.
So the tension is going to be like five or six times the force that you push.
What?
So you've magnified it by a factor of five or six.
How did you magnify it?
Mechanical advantage.
Where's the pulleys?
How can the force pulling on the car be more than the force that she's pushing with?
See now, that's the part of it that I never understood.
What is this?
Is this some kind of perpetual motion machine?
How can you get more force out than you put in?
Mirrors.
Mirrors.
I mean, what is this?
Liayakoka reincarnated?
You see now why I flunked that course twice.
The part that you push with turns out to be just one component of the force of tension in the rope.
And so when you resolve that into the direction of the rope is pulling, you do have that mechanical advantage.
Hey Wolfgang.
You don't believe me, do you?
Well, I'll do respect.
I mean, what?
Come on.
Well, this is good.
We could use this to our advantage if you don't mind the expression.
I mean, this is good.
You can push with 300 Newtons and you can get five or 600 out of the DRS.
No, 1500.
1500.
15, 1700, yeah.
Well, that's not the whole story, though, that the rope is tied to the tree.
The tree is pulling.
And where you're losing, you're pushing, let's say, I don't know how long the rope is,
but if you're deflecting it by five degrees, you're pushing maybe a couple of feet.
And the car only moves inches.
Exactly.
So there's your mechanical advantage.
It's like a pulley.
Oh.
All right.
One last question then.
Yeah.
What's a Newton?
Why don't we have you?
Should we ask him the other question, too?
Yeah.
How are things in the optics area for you?
Oh, fine.
Somebody called us.
I wrote to it.
I don't remember.
Alan, some guy named Alan, because we got it up on our website.
He said, every once in a while, I walk along the street and the sun is shining.
And I see in rear windows of vehicles a bunch of little dots.
What are those dots, he said?
And we said, with our typical great sense of physics knowledge, huh?
We, too, have seen those dots.
Sure.
You've probably seen them with Polaroid sunglasses.
Well, I've discovered that if you turn your head, you can make them do funny things.
Yeah.
Yeah.
In fact, everyone should own a pair, just to see these marvelous, marvelous patterns in the glass.
Oh, so you know about this, too.
The dots you're seeing is where they've stressed the glass.
As you know, if you break the windshield, it shatters into zillions of pieces rather than big chunks that might fly in.
That I know about.
Yeah.
Well, they do that by pre-stressing the glass.
So glass, which is not under stress ordinarily, is a very what we call isotropic medium.
It's like a liquid where all the molecules are facing in random directions.
And when light goes through ordinary glass, nothing unique or special happens.
But if you stress the glass, then you tend to align some of these molecules in certain directions.
And that alignment is going to affect how the light passes through the glass.
Okay.
Does your wife hate you?
Can she get you to do anything around the house, or do you always talk your way out?
I mean, if you know everything, you don't have to do much.
Right.
Well, hon, I mean, the force here is through the Newton.
If I got up on that ladder and I were to drop an apple, you could crack the sidewalk and end the world.
They set off a tremor.
Tsunamis would be telegraphed to all the oceans in the world, and that would be it.
Wolfgang, as always, you have bailed us out.
You have enlightened not only us, but all of our seven listeners.
Well, I hope so.
You've used up your lifelines.
Hey, thanks a million for calling.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Okay.
I've had enough.
I think we should take a break.
If you've had enough, then you know that both of our listeners bailed out at least 10, 15 minutes ago.
Ha!
We're back.
You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack, the Tapper Brothers, and we're here to discuss cars, car repair,
end of the new semi-automotive, quasi-automotive, non-automotive.
Non-semi-quasi.
The new puzzler.
Yeah.
Here it is.
In the little Asian country of Tuvanizca.
You know Tuvanizca?
Of course.
Been there very, very many times.
That's where Richard Feynman went to collect stamps.
Yeah.
I think.
It just so happens that there are two towns a few miles apart on either side of the mountain.
And we'll call these towns Abba and Baba.
So Abba is on one side.
They're only a few miles apart, but the mountain's in between.
There you go.
I got it.
Okay.
And Abba, I'm drawing a picture, and Baba.
Okay.
And the preferred footwear in this region is the combat boot.
Okay.
Do we need a pencil for this?
You need a, oh yeah.
Yeah.
Hi, we're back.
Get a pencil.
Get a pencil, yeah.
So the first town is Abba, and the other town is Baba.
There are 20,000 people who live in Abba.
Yeah.
Okay.
And 1% of them, okay, has one foot only, and as such they wear what?
One boot.
On the other foot.
On the foot.
On the foot.
Yeah.
The remaining people in the town, half of them wear no boots at all.
They go barefoot.
Oh man.
Okay.
Got it.
And the rest of the people wear two boots like you do.
Okay.
Yeah.
All right.
Now you can go figure out how many boots there are in Abba.
I can do that.
You can do that.
I would be able to do that.
Okay.
Now let's go to Baba.
Baba.
Okay.
How many people live there?
That's what you're going to tell me.
Ah!
That's X.
X.
In Baba, 20% of the people have one foot.
We don't know what happened.
It was a mining accident.
Of the remaining people, half of them wear no boots.
Yeah.
And half of them wear boots.
Two boots.
Two boots.
There are 20,000 boots worn in Baba.
Wow.
Oh yeah.
What's the population of Baba?
That's a fascinating puzzler.
Well let's just summarize it again.
20,000 people live in Abba.
Let me see if I got it.
1% of them have only one foot.
That's right.
And they wear a boot on that foot.
You would think so.
Yeah.
Right?
Right.
Of the remaining people, half of them wear no boots.
Half of them wear no boots.
And the other half wear two boots.
There you go.
And in Baba, we don't know how many people live there.
X people live there.
But 20% of them, due to that industrial accident, have only one foot.
Half of the remaining people wear no boots.
And the other half wear two boots.
And in Baba, there are 20,000 boots altogether.
That's right.
What is the population of Baba?
Not Baba.
Baba.
Baba.
I thought it was Baba.
Like in Bubba Shot the jukebox.
Oh, Baba.
Baba.
As in Ali Baba.
Yeah.
Now, if you think you know the answer, write it on a postcard, or carve it into a 60-foot
flowering stewardia.
Japanese stewardia, of course.
Oh, okay.
If that's what you want.
With nicely exfoliating bark and chip it to Puzzler Tower, Cartok Plaza, Box 3500, Harvard
Square, Cambridge.
Our fair city.
Matt 02238, or you can email your answer from the Cartok section of cars.com.
By the way, I should add, not only what is the population of Baba, but why?
Why?
Yeah.
Also, you can call 1-888-Cartok.
Then I have the answer.
Yes, of course.
888-227-8255.
Woo!
Hello, you're on Cartok.
Hi, this is Michelle, calling from Spokane, Washington.
Hi, Michelle.
Hi, Michelle.
How are you?
Oh, couldn't be better.
Good.
What's up?
Well, I have sort of a general, almost philosophical question to pose to you.
I'm wondering if $170 can never be too much to spend on a vehicle.
Well, I defer to my brother in all questions philosophical because he is taking the home
philosopher King study course.
Yeah.
Well, my husband and I, who I might mention, I just married recently, decided that we needed
a second vehicle.
We're both in school full-time and working full-time, and it's just getting too much
to shuttle each other around.
So we set the sort of arbitrary budget of $500 to spend on our car.
To buy the car?
Well, yeah.
And so a lot of people sort of laughed at us, haha, you'll never get a car that runs
for 500 bucks.
And I kind of left it up to Sean because he's the one who's going to be driving it.
And kind of let it go.
And he called me at my work the other day and said, I got a truck for 170 bucks.
And I said, wow, a truck.
What kind of truck?
And he said, a Datsun 74 pickup, which happens to be my dream car.
Whoa.
Yeah.
And I said, well, you know, what's wrong with it?
And he said, well, it's missing a back window.
And that's really it.
And so I kind of spent the day kind of psyched thinking, wow, you know, maybe this will be
good.
$170.
All I need is a back window.
So I went home and I sort of approached the truck and as I peered in the broken out back
window, I noted that, um, among other things, there's a sort of this huge group of wires
kind of just stuck together with the twisty in the middle of the truck.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, you can't worry about that.
And what's Sean look like?
I hate to interrupt you, Michelle.
What's Sean look like?
Well, kind of short and stocky and has red hair.
He looks kind of Irish actually.
Yeah.
Well, I was just curious.
I mean, if the, if a 74 Datsun is your dream car, what your dream guy looks like.
How big you were even born in 1974?
Actually, that's when I was born.
Also, that has something to do with it.
Well, no, it's actually, I grew up in Ohio and I went to school in Chicago.
And until I was 21, I never went west of Chicago.
And then, you know, when I was in college, I took all these environmental policy classes
and I sort of got this sort of idealized vision of what the West would be like.
And I really wanted to move west and sort of live that carefree lifestyle that these
Westerners live.
And I always sort of envisioned myself like kicking around in my 74 Datsun with my cowboy
boots.
Wow.
This is fate.
A dream come true.
Yeah.
Well, it is.
So there's a bunch of wires hanging down, not a problem.
That's not all.
Go ahead.
I'm standing there and he's putting on the new gas cap because he says, you know, it
didn't come with one and that's an overrated car part anyway.
Gas cap?
I'm wondering about the curtains on the Titanic.
You've got a hundred and seventy long time bomb here.
You worry about the gas cap?
Well, then I noticed that it doesn't have seat belts and he says, oh, it might need
new brakes and new engine and new clutch.
I said, uh-huh.
And then the thing that is most alarming to me, which may not be alarming to anyone except
for me, because I'm kind of neurotic, is I noticed as I'm looking at the conglomeration
of wires in the middle of the thing that there's sort of light peering up at me through
the floor of the vehicle.
Oh.
And there's so much holes in it.
Uh-huh.
And Sean says, oh, I'm just going to put a metal plate over that.
I have to say, before we discuss the individual issues here, that Sean is a man after my
own heart.
Oh, mine too, I guess.
I guess so.
But I mean, the truth of the matter is that this sounds like a great vehicle for a man.
Jesus.
I love it already.
My, every one of my brother's cars has been rescued from the scrap heap.
I mean, he's been at the 11th hour.
He's been there, staying the hand of the guy about to throw the switch on the crusher.
And what's nice about this is only you can drive it.
There will be no one that you're loaning the car to kind of borrow your car.
We are right.
Well, okay.
You take these two wires and you wind them up together and then you just touch this wire
to the metal part of the dashboard and then you stand back because it might be small explosion.
But the thing will usually start then.
It will usually start.
And only you know, and it's sort of like this camaraderie thing, you know, this sense of
oneness that you have with the vehicle because nobody understands it but you.
And Sean is looking for that.
The camaraderie.
The camaraderie.
Right.
So, I mean, the holes in the floor, as long as it's not part of the structural integrity,
I would say Sean's approach of putting a metal plate down there is I've had many a car with
metal plates.
Sometimes you can just rug it.
Well, that's the thing.
You know, if the hole's not big enough to fall through.
Right.
That's the thing to pick the rug up.
No, you don't have to take the rug up.
When the rug gets real wet.
You put another one over it.
Put another one over it and the cab gets smaller and smaller.
And the engine and the clutch junkyard, you know, you go to the junkyard, you'll buy the
whole thing, engine, clutch, all together, a few hundred bucks, brakes you're going to
have to spend money to fix.
And the other thing, I can't read my writing, but it ends with an S. Vines, it looks like.
Wines.
Wires.
Wires.
We already discussed the wires.
We don't need those anymore.
So I would say that this could be the car of everybody's dreams.
Really?
Yeah.
We're trying to show a little excitement.
Really, that was beautifully said.
You've changed your tone dramatically.
This was the car of your dreams and unfortunately it's gotten a bit tarnished.
Well, yeah.
Now it's in my backyard.
So I'm not sure if it is the car of my dreams anymore, but, uh, well, I mean, how far does
he have to drive?
Well, that's the thing.
I mean, he only needs to drive about five miles to and from work and school.
Yeah.
But you know, I'm, don't want to have to be, you know, going to pick him up everywhere
when the thing stalls on the side of the road.
Yeah.
I think we have a dream that it's going to turn out to be this great, you know, clean
running.
Well, it is not going to be that, and it is going to break down, and that's what life
is all about.
Well, okay.
And it will bond you two together.
It will.
Oh, man.
It will.
It will.
I mean, it's, it's, it's bad for couples to have things go well all the time out of
adversity, gross strength.
Okay.
Yeah.
And by a rope.
So you can hang him again.
Hey, Michelle, it's a pleasure to talk to you and give my very best to Sean and tell
him that if he ever needs any advice, he can come to my house and we can talk about it.
Okay.
Thank you.
See you later.
Bye.
See you later.
The very fact that the guy showed up, you know, he must have seen the ad somewhere,
truck, 170 bucks.
He goes to see it.
Oh, he might have wanted a grain.
He might have chiseled him down to 170.
He might have wanted 200.
You wouldn't ask for 170.
No, you wouldn't ask for 170.
That was a funny number.
Yeah.
200 is probably.
And the very fact that he went there and wasn't disgusted when he saw what he saw because
he saw what Michelle saw.
And he said, great.
Reminds me of the time my wife and I were driving out on it.
We were taking a Sunday drive.
We were driving out in the country someplace and we come upon a yard sale or some such
thing and this prominently displayed in the front of the yard is the ugliest hotch kind
of thing that you could ever imagine.
And the guy is asking a ridiculous price for it of like $200.
And at the time we had a Dodge van, one of those big vans.
I remember.
You remember it well with the engine between the seats.
And of course it was just ideal for picking up junk like this.
Yeah.
And my wife says, oh, we have to buy it.
And I look at it and I say 200 bucks.
This is out of the question.
And I say to the fellow, how much do you really want for it?
And he says, oh, 200 bucks, I'm firm.
And I think, thank God, all I have in my pocket is 35 bucks.
And I tell him that.
He says, I'll take it.
No.
And I spent the next two years of my life stripping that thing and then finally throwing
it out.
Anyway, it's happened again.
You've laid waste.
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About this episode
Cheap-car dreams collide with real-world problems as callers describe bargain vehicles that come with missing parts, safety issues, and intermittent drivability. One caller’s $170 Datsun pickup is missing a back window, while another describes a neglected car with exposed wiring and no seat belts. The hosts also troubleshoot a stuck shifter interlock and an intermittent stalling issue tied to a cracked air-mass sensor connector. Between calls, they keep the tone light with improvised “rescued” car stories and the show’s usual puzzles and contests.
Original notes
Michelle and her hubby need a second car but funds are ‘limited’ and she wants to know if it’s possible to get a decent one for $170? Tommy worries that Michelle is overpaying on this episode of the Best of Car Talk.
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