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. But first, the answer to last week's Puzzler.
TOM: First "the" instead of "and the."
RAY:: First "the."
TOM: First "the."
RAY:: This one was from the early days of aviation. Is it coming back to you now?
TOM: No.
RAY:: Can you see yourself with a scarf wrapped around your neck?
TOM: I can't.
RAY:: A leather helmet.
TOM: I used to have one of those hats.
RAY:: You're playing football with Knute Rockne.
TOM: Oh, the DC-3! The pilot! Yeah! Coleslawvania!
RAY:: That was too easy.
TOM: Oh, darn.
RAY:: Once upon a time, aircraft mechanics were confused; early aircraft mechanics were confused.
TOM: Yes.
RAY:: Because the airplane engines seemed to backfire through the carburetor with some kind of regularity. And this would cause damage to the carburetors, or at the very least would require the mechanics to do extra maintenance. Well, they began investigating, figuring there was something wrong, and after thorough investigations, ruminations, recalibrations, and the like, they discovered that the cause of the backfiring was the pilot. And, in fact, the pilots were doing it on purpose. The question is...
TOM: Like Tony used to do when he went through the tunnel.
RAY:: Why would a pilot want the engine to backfire through the carburetor, scaring the pants off himself, when it seemed in the estimation of the mechanics to have no useful purpose?
TOM: Yeah. I don't know.
RAY:: Well, back in the early days, before they had figured out this phenomenon, when pilots flew under damp and cool conditions, the carburetors would...
TOM: Ice up.
RAY:: Ice up. Exactly.
TOM: Oh, and they would make it backfire to blow the ice out.
RAY:: To blow the ice out.
TOM: Blow it out your carburetor, as they say.
RAY:: So to speak. Blow the ice out, baby! And they would either lean out the mixture or advance the timing or do whatever it took to get the thing to pop back through the carburetor, thus expelling the ice which, if it were allowed to build up, would eventually stall the engine and then seize.
TOM: And that would be not good.
RAY:: That would be not good. And, of course, the same thing happens to automobiles. It can happen to automobiles.
TOM: Yeah.
RAY:: And cars have some crude little device which prevents this, and, of course, airplane engines don't really have carburetors anymore. But that's why they did it.
TOM: Whew!
RAY:: So who's our winner this week?
TOM: The winner is Ginger Culbertson from Greenville, South Carolina. And for having her answer selected at random from the truckloads of correct answers that we got, Ginger is going to get...are you ready for this, Ginger? A $25 gift certificate to the Shameless Commerce Division at the Car Talk section of cars.com. And with that $25 gift certificate, what can she get, you might say?
RAY:: You might ask.
TOM: What can she get? She can get a brand-new Car Talk muffler.
RAY:: Ah!
TOM: We have a muffler. It's a black winter muffler, otherwise known as, what? Like, a scarf, right?
RAY:: Hey, hey! Does it have a lifetime warranty?
TOM: Yes, it does.
RAY:: OK, so I was checking out.
TOM: It says Midas on the side. Actually, it's embroidered with the Car Talk logo and it comes with this: an actual muffler clamp.
RAY:: Ah!
TOM: Isn't that sweet, hunh?
RAY:: What a nice touch!
TOM: Oh, man, my brother ordered too many muffler clamps at the garage last year and we were dying to get rid of them, so you're going to get one if you buy the muffler. Wow!
RAY:: Hey, by the way, if you'd like to tell somebody that you really don't like them that much this Christmas, you can find all kinds of Car Talk gifts at the Car Talk Shameless Commerce Division, which is at the Car Talk section of cars.com. But you can also call that. Do we have a number for them?
TOM: We do. 888-Car-Junk.
RAY:: There you go.
TOM: Sure.
[ Car Talk Puzzler ]
