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 a Puzzler about my brother and his son, Alex, and it took place many moons ago when Alex was learning to drive. Anyway, Tommy fired up the old '63 Dart one day and took the kid out to some back country roads to give him practice behind the wheel. So Alex is driving along and doing rather well when, suddenly, Tommy realizes that the right rear tire has gone flat. It's a little country road, and they pull off to the shoulder. And Tommy doesn't want to change the tire, so he ways, Alex, a learning opportunity for you. Here's a chance for you to change a flat tire.
TOM: Everyone should have the experience I thought.
RAY: So, while Tommy kicks back and lights up a cigar, the kid loosens the wheel nuts and jacks up the car and very carefully puts the wheel nuts in the hub cap. But when he goes to retrieve the spare tire, he inadvertently steps on the hub cap and sends all but one of those wheel nuts cascading down the nearby hillside, never to be seen again. So, out of the five wheel nuts, he's got one that he managed to save and the others are gone. Tommy, after administering an appropriate number of dope slaps, says we're done for, we're going to die out here! But Alex says, wait a minute, can you have four wheel nuts on every wheel instead of five? And Tommy says, yeah, of course we can, at least until we get back to town, it'll be perfectly safe. Alex says, well, we can take then one nut off each of the other wheels, leaving four on each wheel, and we'll have four on this wheel, and we'll be all set. Kid was always thinking. You know? Wow. Well anyway, three hours later, the rescue team with the blood hounds tracks them down and brings them back to civilization. The question is, why didn't it work?
TOM: It seemed like such a good idea at the time.
RAY: Well, the hint was it was Tommy's '63 Dart. And for a bunch of years, and I don't know exactly how many, Chrysler, on the driver's side of the car, made the wheel nuts left-hand thread, the idea being as you went down the road the wheel nuts would tighten themselves up as opposed to loosening themselves up. So, as your wheel turned, the nut would be turning in the same direction that it would turn to tighten it, and there'd be no risk of having the wheel nuts fly off.
TOM: So, two of the wheels had left-hand threads and two of the wheels had right-hand threads.
RAY: So, the ones on the left-hand side of the car could never be used in this little plan that Alex devised. And thus, they were stuck there because the best they could do was put two wheel nuts on one wheel.
TOM: Five, five, four and two.
RAY: So close, though.
TOM: Good one. That's a good one.
RAY: Do we have a winner?
TOM: Yes, we do. The winner is Margie Harrison from Charleston, South Carolina.
RAY: There you go.
TOM: And for having her answer selected at random from the hub cap full of correct answers that we got, Margie will get a $25 gift certificate to the Shameless Commerce Division at the Car Talk Section of Cars.com. And with that gift certificate, she can get our new music collection, "Car Talk Car Tunes, the Car Talk Compendium of Disrespectful Car Songs." It's quite good, by the way.
RAY: Yes. This is the one that has songs like "Loose wheel, you picked a fine time to leave me, loose wheel. You picked a fine time to leave me --
TOM: Loose wheel."
RAY: And "You Can't Get There From Here In Jersey," another great hit, plus "Auto Service Hell," "My Bloody Yugo," "Mid-Life Chrysler." All the great hits that weren't great until we made them great, and that's ??.
TOM: Are you done?
RAY: Yeah. You want me to be done?
TOM: Yeah, very, very much.
RAY:Anyway, we'll have a brand new Puzzler coming up in the third half. I might say quasi-automotive historic --
TOM: Let me write this down, quasi-automotive historic --
RAY: Folkloric --
TOM: Oh.
RAY: -- challenging --
TOM: Yeah?
RAY: -- and potentially bo-o-o-o --
TOM: Potentially bogus.
RAY: So, bear with us while we stumble through the automotive stuff that's coming up. And better yet, if you have a question about your car, especially an easy one, call us at 888-CAR-TALK. That's 88, 82, 27-82-55. Hello, you're on Car Talk.
[ Car Talk Puzzler ]
