RAY: Hi, we're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, and we're here to talk about cars, car repair, and the...the answer to last week's Puzzler. I guess this was an automotive Puzzler.

TOM: Well, it certainly was. Could be a household Puzzler -- a vacuum cleaner was involved.

RAY: Yeah. But you remember my neighbor Frank, who lived across the street?

TOM: Certainly do.

RAY: One morning I'm out for my constitutional. I notice that Frank is in the driveway working on his Lincoln. He's got the thing jacked up, and I'm assuming he's changing the oil or something like that. So, of course, I make myself scarce. I'm hiding in the bushes, and I see that he's under the car, working away. After a few minutes, he rolls out from underneath on his creeper, and the next thing I know, he bends over and picks up something off the ground. He holds it up; I can't see it well because it's sort of a distance away, but it looks to be about the size of a quarter. And he has a look of disappointment on his face. Stands there puzzled. I'm still hiding behind the bushes. I don't dare move, knowing that if I'm spotted, I may be asked to help. Anyway, Frank enters the house and comes back a minute later with his vacuum cleaner. I figure he's going to clean the car. But instead he attaches the hose to something under the hood. He plugs the vacuum cleaner in and starts up the vacuum cleaner. Hmmm. He gets under the car with this little thing the size of a quarter, does something, emerges from under the car with a satisfied grin on his face, turns off the vacuum cleaner. The question is: What the hell did he [??] ?

TOM: Well, I have to say that I'm completely baffled by this one.

RAY: There were a plethora of hints, I think. No? Maybe not...not enough.

TOM: I didn't hear a single one.

RAY: Ahhh. Well, I'm assuming he's changing the oil or some such thing, and, in fact, that's what he was doing. But in changing the oil, he left out the drain plug gasket. You know there's a little gasket...

TOM: Certainly.

RAY: That goes between the drain plug and the pan.

TOM: Um-hmm.

RAY: And when he finished the job, what he found on the ground...

TOM: Was the gasket.

RAY: Was the gasket, which he held up and looked at, with a disappointed look on his face.

TOM: Yeah, I considered that for a while.

RAY: Now, not having a clean vessel into which to drain the oil, he decided to use his wife's vacuum cleaner. So he goes into the house, hooks the vacuum cleaner hose up to the place where you pour the motor oil in, turns the vacuum cleaner on, and draws a vacuum on the entire crankcase.

TOM: Ohh, my God.

RAY: Don't try this at home; you can blow yourself up.

TOM: Are you crazy? So he takes off the drain plug...

RAY: He takes off the drain plug...

TOM: The oil is held in suspended animation...

RAY: By the vacuum cleaner.

TOM: Oh, bullfeathers. That's...oh.

RAY: Deftly throws the gasket on there, puts the plug in. He may have lost a little bit of oil, but certainly...certainly not the five quarts that he would have lost had he just taken the drain plug out and had it run...

TOM: Oh, stop it.

RAY: Hey.

TOM: What do I know?

RAY: Well, I suppose theoretically, this is possible. But it would require, of course, that the vacuum cleaner connection fit perfectly into the [??].

TOM: Oh, I didn't say that -- tape it up with duct tape -- but he stuck it into the...

RAY: He stuck it in there and...

TOM: Yeah, it just so happened that he didn't. It happened to fit right into the thing.

RAY: It happened to fit right in perfectly. He turns the thing on, and within a couple of seconds it [MAKES SOUND "PFZZZZZ"]. That vacuum is trying to suck the life out of his engine. And when he was satisfied that he had pulled enough vacuum, he slid under there, took that drain plug off, slapped the gasket in, threw the drain plug back in, and emerged with a grin on his face...

TOM: Well--

RAY: Before the house blew up.

TOM: All I can say is, I'm not disappointed that I didn't get that.

RAY: Oh, come on. I thought it was wonderful. Oh, God...

TOM: It is wonderful.

RAY: What does it take? I mean, it's a little far-fetched, and I'm going to try this, in your car, as soon as I get out of here.

TOM: All right. And I will admonish people not to try this, because this...

RAY: No, this is a very dangerous...

TOM: As you suck vapors out of the crankcase, gasoline vapors, you could blow up the vacuum cleaner, and yourself.

RAY: And yourself.

TOM: And your Lincoln.

RAY: And your Lincoln, and the house next door.

TOM: And your neighbor across the street who's hiding in the bushes. That would have been poetic justice.

RAY: That never occurred to Frank and, had I known what he was doing, I would have run over and stopped him. But I felt I was far enough away so that any explosion would not reach me.

TOM: Well, Frank didn't really do this. You made this up, right? Yeah, you did. OK. We have a winner, actually, and the winner is Gerald Runyan from Atchison, Kansas. Atchison, Topeka -- is that...

RAY: Yeah.

TOM: As in "Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe"?

RAY: No.

TOM: And for having his answer picked at random from the buckets of correct answers that we got this week, Gerald Runyan is going to win a $25 gift certificate to the Shameless Commerce Division of the Car Talk section of cars.com. So you go to cars.com, you click on Car Talk, you go to the store, and you look at all the wonderful stuff there, Gerald Runyan, and you can buy anything that costs $25 or less, including our wonderful CD "Men Are from GM, Women Are from Ford: Calls about Couples and Cars." And maybe Laura Doyle will be on the next one that we [??] of that.

RAY: Oh, yeah, she'll be a guest. No, very good. Anyway, we'll have a new PuzzlerÑI guess you'd have to call it automotive, too, kind of, in a way.

TOM: This one being automotive one?

RAY: Yeah.

TOM: That'll be coming up in the third half of today's show.

RAY: There you go, one, two, and three. We got a lot of numbers coming.

TOM: In the meantime, if you have a question about your car, or anything else for that matter, the number is 888-CAR-TALK, that's 888-227-8255...

[ Car Talk Puzzler ]