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 answer to last week's Puzzler. This was an automotive Puzzler. We haven't had an automotive Puzzler in a while.
TOM: No.
RAY: And it was sent in by a fellow named Roy ... Roy Harvey, and he writes the following: "This happened to me way back, when I was commuting to college. The car was a '65 Rambler Classic with power steering, power brakes, automatic transmission, six-cylinder engine, and no air conditioning."
TOM: What a car.
RAY: "In other words, it was my parents' old car. The year and the car aren't important, but there are some cars with which you couldn't have this particular condition. The car had maybe 80,000 miles and, let me tell you, they were hard miles.
"Anyway, I was driving to school and about halfway through a 15-mile trip, the alternator light came on. It was daytime, so the headlights were already off, the heater blower was already off. I turned off the radio, but the alternator light persisted. I began to worry, and then I turned on one control on the dashboard and the light went out -- and it wasn't the ignition switch. So this told me what the problem was, and I continued on to school without concern, and I later fixed the problem with a few simple tools. Now here's the hint that I gave: This control had no direct electrical connection to it at all."
TOM: Hmmm.
RAY: In other words, it didn't have any wires hooked up to it. How could that be?
TOM: How could that be?
RAY: What did he do?
TOM: I have no idea.
RAY: Here's what he did. In -- lots of cars are set up like this -- he moved the heater control valve, which has connected to it at one end a little lever you move ...
TOM: Yeah.
RAY: And at the other end, connected by a cable, is a valve which allows water to pass from the engine to the heater. And when he did this, the water pump, which had been causing a slipping belt, all of a sudden had so much less drag on it that the belt, which was slipping and causing the alternator light to come on, went off, because now the belt was not slipping because he had reduced the ... the pressure in the flow, just ...
TOM: Oh, no. Bogus. Oh, bogus.
RAY: Every week I struggle to come up, and what am I met with? "Bogus"?
TOM: No, boooo-gus. But we do have a winner. We got a guy named Dr. James Randolph.
RAY: See? See? See?
TOM: He's a doctor. James Randolph from Long Beach, Mississippi.
RAY: Yeah, well. Hey, they have doctors there too.
TOM: Is there such a place?
RAY: Yeah.
TOM: Where are you from? Long Beach, Mississippi. And for having his correct answer selected at random, Dr. James Randolph from Long Beach, Mississippi, will receive ... what is he going to receive?
RAY: A $25 gift certificate.
TOM: A $25 gift certificate to the Shameless Commerce Division at the Car Talk section of cars.com, with which he can get -- now get this -- one and nine-sixteenths copies of the CD "Why You Should Never Listen to Your Father When It Comes to Cars." Now, this guy has the option of sending in the 25 bucks and getting back change. But he's not going to get change.
RAY: No, we don't do change.
TOM: We don't do change.
RAY: No.
TOM: So he's going to end up paying $25 for one CD. And then what's he going to say? "That's no good. I can get something else 'cause I got eight bucks left."
RAY: I kick in a few more bucks.
TOM: Kick in a few more bucks, and he's going to buy two CDs. Well, congratulations, Dr. James Randolph of Long Beach, Mississippi.
RAY: Anyway, we'll have a new Puzzler coming up in the third half of the show today. I'm sure it'll be as challenging as that, so don't give up on us yet. In the meantime, if you have a question about your car, or anything else, give us a call at 888-CAR-TALK. That's 888-227-8255.
[ Car Talk Puzzler ]
