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#1250: Tires Under the Tree

Dec 15, 2012
This week on Car Talk, nothing says, "I love you" better than… four new Michelins? Patty is dismayed by her boyfriend's plan to give her tires this Christmas. Can Tom and Ray help her convince him to think a wee bit more romantically? Meanwhile, in Our Fair City, Peter's friend showed his devotion by climbing into Peter's trunk when it wouldn't close. He succeeded in closing it, and when they realized he had the only key, spent the next several hours inside. Said friend is a Graduate Student at MIT. (Why are we not surprised?) Also, Ed's worried his radiator might blow bubbles, after he misdirected a bottle of wiper fluid; Laura may need to find out if a transmission is in the alimony agreement with her ex-husband/ex-mechanic; and we learn what happens when a clutch-wrecker tries to change his ways. All this, and lots more, this week on Car Talk.

Show Open Topic

The clutch wrecker tries to repent.

This Week's Puzzler

Ray sees an old roommate at the airport. How can he reach him?

Last Week's Puzzler

How can you, with one cut of the knife, cut a divided cake in half?

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3 Comments

Christmas Tires

My boyfriend got me snow tires for Christmas last year and I was really happy! It means he loves her and wants her to be safe.
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Puzzler fishy answers available

instead of any ol' salt cod, one can send the puzzler answer on smoked black cod or any other fish from the Sun'aq Tribe of Kodiak, via http://kodiakwildsource.com/ or, feeling crabby after this week's show? also available. From our tribe to yours.
Favorite Moment: 
The midwest is Worcester. Knew a student at UMass from Concord who thought the deep south was Manhattan. The wild west was Amherst.
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Parking wipers

Your response to the guy living near Tahoe about how to prevent his wipers from parking when he shut them off was at least partially nuts. No one uses a capacitor to store energy to park the wipers - the energy required would be enormous and not predictable since you can shut the wipers off in any position. Instead they use a cam which closes a relay to separately supply power to the wipers any time that they are not parked. If the wipers are turned on the regular switch carries the wipers through the parked position and if it's off it doesn't. The cam/relay could be anyplace and is probably not accessible so the best option is finding a wire in the wiper circuit which is common to the cam and the regular switch and is interruptable. If the entire apparatus in enclosed in a sealed container this may not be practical.
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