#2680: Men in Minivans

Ray Magliozzi (0:16)

Hello, and welcome to Car Talk from National Public Radio with us, Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers. And we're broadcasting this week from the Patient Care Department here at Car Talk Plaza.

Tom Magliozzi (0:24)

Yeah, I know this is all true. I mean, it came over the Internet, so you know that it's all true.

SPEAKER_3 (0:30)

Oh, yeah.

Tom Magliozzi (0:30)

And these are sentences that were found in patients' medical charts.

Ray Magliozzi (0:35)

Where did you get these from? bogus.com.

Tom Magliozzi (0:37)

bogus.com, right. You know how the doctor always scribbles something on the chart and hangs it in front of the door of the hospital room?

SPEAKER_3 (0:45)

Right.

Tom Magliozzi (0:46)

Evidently, someone's got nothing better to do than go around and read all those, and take out excerpts and put them.

Ray Magliozzi (0:53)

Make a compilation of excerpts, huh?

SPEAKER_3 (0:55)

Yeah.

Tom Magliozzi (0:55)

Here's one. Patient has chest pain if she lies on her left side for over a year. You don't have chest pain too. That's a doctor who forgot to take English. But you can't do everything. The patient is tearful and crying constantly. She also appears to be depressed. I mean, this is a man with great insight. Patient has refused autopsy.

Patient seems to be numb from her toes down.

Man has occasional constant infrequent headaches. I have those too. She stated that she had been constipated for most of her life until she got a divorce. There are more, but I think that's enough to keep us going.

Ray Magliozzi (1:49)

Well, if you have constant infrequent, occasional, constantly infrequent occasional headaches about your car, you can call us at 888-CAR-TALK. That's 888-227-8255. Hello, you're on Car Talk.

SPEAKER_4 (2:01)

Hi, this is Kara from Philadelphia.

Ray Magliozzi (2:04)

Kara with a C?

SPEAKER_4 (2:05)

Kara with a K.

Ray Magliozzi (2:06)

I knew it.

Tom Magliozzi (2:07)

Kara from Philly.

SPEAKER_4 (2:09)

Yep.

Ray Magliozzi (2:09)

All right.

SPEAKER_4 (2:10)

I have a 95 neon with a recent scary brake problem.

It had just been inspected at the dealership and everything was fine, and I took it out on this drive to New Jersey. And about an hour into the drive, I was out on a highway, I went to hit the brakes, and nothing happened until the brake pedal was about halfway to the floor. And eventually it did brake. And this continued intermittently for the rest of that trip. And so then...

Ray Magliozzi (2:38)

So you continued to drive it even though you were...

SPEAKER_4 (2:41)

Sure.

Tom Magliozzi (2:41)

I mean, hey, she was in a hurry. She was going to New Jersey.

SPEAKER_4 (2:44)

Well, it's a stick shift, and I had a backup plan, like down to...

Tom Magliozzi (2:47)

I don't understand if you were leaving New Jersey.

Ray Magliozzi (2:52)

Right, but there's no large explanation for this, but go ahead.

SPEAKER_4 (2:55)

And eventually it would brake every time. And so the whole trip back, it didn't do this at all. That was two days later when I came back. But it started to make this noise. And this noise is like, if I start going, it starts slowly and gets faster, Until I put the brake on, once I put the brake on, no more noise.

Ray Magliozzi (3:17)

I love it.

SPEAKER_4 (3:18)

So after that first time it happened, we took it back to the dealership. They looked at it, they said to my husband, your brakes are fine.

And so then I took it on a trip to West Virginia. The whole way to West Virginia, no problem. The way back from West Virginia, about an hour into the trip, brakes start doing the same thing. And now that noise I told you about was happening again, and then the brake like started... making a squealing kind of noise, too.

Ray Magliozzi (3:43)

See, I can't imagine there's anything wrong. When you drove to West Virginia, and it didn't misbehave, the whole way there was fine. Was it cloudy or rainy?

SPEAKER_4 (3:57)

It was cloudy and rainy.

Tom Magliozzi (4:02)

I was going to ask her if the day had happened in New Jersey, if the sun was out.

SPEAKER_4 (4:08)

The sun was out the day it happened in New Jersey.

Tom Magliozzi (4:12)

Yeah, we have no idea.

Ray Magliozzi (4:14)

Well, what's happening is that you have a hung-up brake, and you have either a stuck caliper, such that it's not releasing the brakes. It's the equivalent. The reason you hear the t-t-t-t-t-t-t is that you're driving with one of the brakes on all the time. And the brake, by staying on, eventually overheats the system and causes the fluid to boil. And when it boils, the pedal sinks to the floor. And the reason it didn't happen on the cloudy days is that the ambient temperature wasn't high enough to cause everything to happen as fast. You know, to have the heating up take place as much. In other words, the heat was being dissipated more readily by the rain and the cool air temperature. And the reason they didn't find anything is that they didn't drive the car long enough to get the thing to stick.