#1051: Gifts For Guys

Dec 18, 2010
This week on Car Talk, having trouble gift shopping for the man in your life? Good news! Tom and Ray are here to help. We have the official Men's Gift Guide, starting with two words no guy can resist: ratchet and socket. Meanwhile, our callers have their own holiday wish lists for Tom and Ray: Braden would like to remove the Eau de Poochy from his Honda Odyssey, Adrienne would like to get her husband to stop using cruise control while they're comin' down the mountain, and all Elizabeth wants is to be able to see out the windows of her Volvo. And, the long-distance call of the week comes from Antarctica, where summer can't come soon enough for Matt and his snowmobile. All this, and lots more, this week on Car Talk.

Show Open Topic

Tom and Ray offer a few special holiday shopping tips for the man on your list.

This Week's Puzzler

Can you figure out the secret code at a most unusual bar, that allows you to get a free beer?

Last Week's Puzzler

An off-duty police officer believes a car at a gas station has been stolen. What does he notice that makes him suspicious?

As Read on Car Talk



10 Comments

Show Review - 1409

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Show Review - 1410

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Show Review - 1415

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problems

I listen to your show regularly but more and more the web broadcast is becoming dissappointing. This week you have listed last week's show topics and some segments do not play. I would think someone reviews the quality of the broadcast before puting it up on the site each week.
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Heavy-Duty Clutch reomendations

I too have clients that have stick, but haven't got the hang of how to ingauge the clutch. I also have the "Speed Demons," that blow them up too early. I've been contacting the manufacturers, and asking if the clutch assembly on a "Larger Model" fits the customers model? I have to say that I get a lot of good information, and (a bit of curiosity) on "Why I'd want to install this in the first place?" The best example is a Porsche 914-6; was still using the 1.8, or 2.0 litter clutch, BUT the 2.7 911 assembly worked just fine! And the owner was good for about 60,000 miles (driving like an idiot), but never lost it to a slipping clutch. Lastly you told the guy with the Toyoda what to replace minus 1 "all important part" for a car with 60,000 miles; that was we always replace the "rear main seal" because you don't want to have a customer come back with that oil leak from the flywheel.
Favorite Moment: 
After removing the whole drive train on a guy's 930 we installed all the trick parts to get it (on the dyno upto 1150Hp! He was thrilled, but was used too his car with less than half that when we started. He drove it for 1-Day, and wound up having it in his garage, and reached in to start the car (to warm up), and it was left in reverse, and went through the garage wall, and into his den where it had hit his pool table, and was pushing it into the dinning room before he got to the key, and shut the thing off!
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Pashko missed the opportunity and so did you.

You guys are great!! As a kid I remember watching to old bulls fight it out for 2-3 minutes and then taking a 10 minute break, enough said.
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If Pashko is smart, he will step forward and pay the entire bill. Just think about it, 2 women, some amount of kids, 100s of miles.......eeeeeeek! He might have to drive the next time. He might want to confer with his brother-in-law so they both come out heros.
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Answer to a non-prayer

When I asked my boyfriend what he wanted for Christmas, he said, "Nothing." I immediately ordered a label-maker, because I knew that he would love to label all MY stuff, because he can never find anything in my house. Today, I asked if he had heard the show this week - Fortunately, he missed it. I told him about the topic, and we had a long discussion about cordless power drills, which I told him I had NOT ordered. Apparently, this was a topic about which he had thought a lot about before he bought a drill 2-3 years ago. He had decided that 95% of the time he could use his plug-in drill, and use an extension cord if necessary, or borrow a cordless one from a buddy. Experience had confirmed for him the wisdom of this: new models are coming out all the time; but the main reason for owning multiple drills of the cordless kind is because the batteries don't last. Will update you on his reaction to the label-maker.
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I like all the moments when you comment on psychology of the sexes. Moreover, I found the story you told ten or more years ago about a women's internal monologue vs. a man's (after she commented that they had been dating for six months) I later read in Moscow in one of the first Russian editions of "Cosmopolitan."
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Need more

I absolutely love the show I just wish it was longer or daily the wait til next week is a killer keep up the good work and don't feel bad I am working on Christmas too
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Cruising downhill

It's a new world: hybrid cars are here. Their cruise control prevents acceleration (i.e. going down hill) by kicking in the generator drive. Thus it is a good idea to use cruise control while going down hill with these cars.
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The cruise control advice was a tad alarmist

I thought you guys went overboard with the cruise control advice. On both of my cars (a 2002 Subaru and 2007 Toyota), the speed is controlled going downhill. In the bad old days with carburetors and non-electronic engine control, I recall speed increasing on downhills with cruise control engaged, but even then it still wasn't the life threatening thing you made it out to be. You just used the brake to slow down, which cuts off the cruise control. Or you could downshift, too.
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