Link to NPR's Car Talk show

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If you want to listen to the "Car Talk" show on NPR radio go to their website.Click & Clack, the brothers Tom & Ray Tappett, answer car questions with humor.http://cartalk.com/Radio/Show/online.htmlBACKGROUND:You want to know about "Car Talk." You're probably wondering how two low-life bums like us could end up having a weekly radio show on a prestigious network like NPR. We're wondering too. We've been wondering for years — but it doesn't stop us from cashing that paycheck that shows up every month.The truth is, we got a call one day back in 1977, from Vic Wheatman, the Program Director at Boston's WBUR Radio. Now, this was at the time when WBUR was a tiny little college radio station, with a signal that would get staticy whenever the wind blew.Anyway, Vic called, asking if Tom and Ray would sit in with four other grease monkeys on a call in talk show about car mechanics. After a few milliseconds of thinking about it, Tom realized he had nothing more meaningful to do with his life, and said, "sure." (Ray claims he had a hair dressers appointment that day. This is unlikely but plausible, since Ray had hair in those days.) It turned out, Tom was the only one who showed up — all the other mechanics decided not to show their faces — wisely assuming that this "radio show" was probably some kind of Department of Consumer Affairs sting operation. So the panel of five turned out to be a panel of one: Tom. Things went surprisingly well, though: Tom gave out many wrong answers, and misled many callers — but did so with such finesse that he was invited back the following week.And when Thomas showed up that next time the studio was empty. Vic Wheatman had been fired! There was a letter saying, "You're on your own, have a good time, and try to watch your language."This was an historic moment in Car Talk history, for it was the only time a Program Director was fired before he or she put "Car Talk" on the air!And the next week, Tom made The Biggest Mistake in the History of Car Talk: he brought along his brother, Ray.The early days of Car Talk was a time when dinosaurs roamed the earth and people actually worked on their own cars. We answered a lot of questions like, "I'm stuck with my left arm in the transmission, how do I get it out?" and, "I lost a three-eighths hex wrench taking off the cylinder head, but I can't bend down to pick it up because I have the timing chain in my right hand — could you send your brother over to help me?Tom and Ray in the studio We were crammed into a tiny studio. It was the two of us, and an engineer who ran the control board — he had to be damn quiet, or you'd hear him on the air. We'd walked in five minutes before air time, and we always started the show with "Are we on yet? Are we on yet?" Because, the fact was, we never knew for sure when we were on the air.The show went on in a much more leisurely pace in those days. We were on for an hour and a half, during which time we'd answer approximately three questions. It's painful to listen to those shows, now. These days, of course, we have a producer and all that stuff. Dougie Berman is always saying things like, "answer the question! answer the damn question!"After several years of doing "Car Talk" pro bono, as they say, we finally steeled up our nerve and asked WBUR for twenty bucks a week. To our shock and amazement, they agreed to it on the spot. At that moment, we realized that we had obviously asked for too little. We kicked ourselves all the way home. This did, however, mean that we could buy donuts and coffee each week. In 1980, we asked for a five dollar a week raise and they told us to take a long walk off a short plank. We didn't argue, since a case easily could have been made that twenty bucks a week was twenty bucks too much already.Despite our complete lack of preparation and our consumate unprofessionalism that set new lows in radio, the show somehow managed to not only survive, but to thrive. The now notorious Car Talk puzzler effectively doubled our listener base, as three more relatives (okay, okay, uncle Nunzio and cousin Vinny were both in the slammer, so they were sort of a "captive" audience) began listening to the show.

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I podcast cartalk weekly and they make me laugh and learn at the same time. They really know their cars. Today (Sunday's broadcast) a 04 Matrix owner called in with a surging RPM when cold problem. Sound familiar anyone?? They suggested a possible vacuum leak or a faulty coolant sensor.Anyway, the show is well worth a listen.Here's the podcast linkhttp://www.npr.org/rss/podcast...11203