Car Talk #2224: Breaking the Family Car Curse & Cold Weather Starting Myths

New Year's Resolutions and Ranting

• 💡 Tom and Ray kick off the show discussing their New Year's resolutions, with Tom considering whether to rant and rave more or less, finding it therapeutic.
• 🧠 Ray humorously resolves not to call Tom stupid anymore, highlighting their dynamic.

Boiled Peanuts and Emission Lights

• 🥜 Eddie from Georgia calls in about roadside stands advertising boiled peanuts, describing them as chewy and boiled in the shell, though not eaten with the shell.
• ⚠️ Eddie also inquires about his 87 Ford pickup's emission light coming on at 70,000 miles, which Tom and Ray explain is a maintenance reminder tied to the odometer.

Cold Weather Car Starting Myths

• 🥶 LOL from Evanston, Illinois, asks about advice for starting cars in extreme cold: whether to turn off electronics or turn them on to "wake up" a sleeping battery.
• 🚗 Tom and Ray debunk the idea of waking a battery gently, explaining that car systems are designed to direct all energy to the starter motor during ignition, rendering the "wake up" theory counterintuitive and likely an old wives' tale.

The Family Car Curse Dilemma

• 🚗 Jill from San Jose, California, calls with a dilemma about her 82 Land Cruiser, which her family typically drives until it's unusable.
• 💰 Jill wants to break this family "curse" by selling the car while it's still running well, questioning if it's financially sound.
• 📈 Tom and Ray argue that from a monetary perspective, keeping the older, paid-off car is usually more cost-effective than buying a new one, citing an example where annual costs for a new car significantly outweigh keeping an older one running.

Puzzler: The Noisy Valve

• 🧩 The puzzler involves a car with a noisy valve that a DIYer attempts to fix, followed by a mechanic's adjustment, yet the noise persists for months.
• 🛠️ The mystery is solved when a routine tune-up inexplicably makes the noise disappear, leading to the question of what happened during the tune-up.
• 💡 The answer reveals that during the tune-up, the mechanic likely adjusted the idle speed, which indirectly affected the valve noise, rather than directly fixing the valves themselves.

Tire Rotation and Cruise Control Issues

• 🔄 Skeer from Washington D.C. asks about a 1987 Toyota Camry that pulled to the left after rotating tires from front to back, suspecting a bad tire or alignment issue.
• ⚙️ Skeer also inquires about his cruise control suddenly not working, despite the fuse being fine, and is advised to check defeat switches, relays, or a potential cruise control computer issue.