January 31, 2017 • 55 mins
It's time for CarStuff's first installment of Nuts and Bolts in 2017. Listen in to find out if Scott and Ben can somehow squeeze in all the news stories, anecdotes and sidebar discussions that didn't make it into earlier episodes.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Go behind the Wheel, under the Hood and beyond with
car Stuff from how Stuff Works dot com. Hi, and
welcome to Car Stuff. I'm Scott, I'm Ben. We were
as always joined by our team Love Super producers and
most importantly you, Scott. It's the it's our first Nuts
(00:25):
and Bolts seventeen. Yeah. I wonder what that says, because
we're only went two months into and we've already got
enough kind of backlog of material that we just haven't
been able to get to that we have to create
a Nuts and Bolts episode or just you know, additional
stuff that maybe doesn't make a full episode, but it's
still so interesting that we want you to know about
(00:48):
it and in some cases we want to, uh maybe
ask you questions about it. Yeah, we've got a couple
of surprises coming today, a few a few things that
we have talked about, a few things that we haven't
talked about. Um, you've got I know, you've got one
that's just I know you've got a topic that's fascinating
and I can't wait. I can't wait to get to
this one. Really, the one, the one that you've brought
in especially the main focus I suppose, but one thing
(01:10):
that I want to start off with, and I feel
like I owe this to our listeners, all right, is
that I need to issue an apology. And well, I
feel like I haven't been responding to email the way
that I probably should or have in the past, because
I tried to get to everybody in kind of a
it might take a while, but I get to them.
Here's the problem with what's happened recently. We have made
a switchover to Gmail. Okay, a lot of people were
(01:35):
familiar with Gmail, and uh, and it's fine, I mean,
if you're you're accustomed to using that sort of thing.
But I had been a customer, grown accustomed over the
past nine years of working with Outlook, and they changed
it on us. They changed it um one weekend I
was leaving for the next week. So, uh, this is
the odd thing. I was leaving the office on Friday
evening knowing that I'm going on vacation for a week,
(01:58):
and so I set up my office from Finder and
then I realized at five pm, we're going off of
this Outlook program and onto Gmail. So even my you know,
out of office reminders won't work. And when I come back,
it's going to be a completely new system that I'm
gonna have to log into. It doesn't change our email
address or anything like that. By the way, we're still
car stuff at how stuff Works dot com, so you
can still reach us that way. The problem is, I
(02:19):
just can't simply navigate around in there and find out
what's going on because it's got all these settings and
toggle set that I don't really quite understand yet. The
training happened while I was gone. So if I have
ignored your email that you've sent in you know, you know,
future topic ideas or whatever, if it's just chit chat
type stuff. In the last I would say two and
a half months, I'm doing my best to find that stuff,
(02:41):
but it comes down to me having to search it
by a keyword, and that's almost impossible. Um, you know,
not knowing what you've typed your what you've sent to me.
So I'm I'm kind of fighting against that a little
bit every day. I'm gaining a little ground. But I
just felt like I needed to say something because I
feel like I'm letting our listeners down and not responding
to them. I tried to, Oh, I'm not you know,
I'm not laughing at you. Yeah, So there's a are.
(03:04):
I know, I'm laughing with myself about something. This is
like a who moved my cheese moment for me, because
I should be able to adapt to this kind of thing,
but I just can't. I mean, I'm trying my best,
and so hopefully I get this wrangled here pretty soon
and get back in the rhythm of things. But until then,
please be patient with us. Maybe re send that email
that you sent uh at the end of December or
(03:24):
whenever it was. Uh, it couldn't hurt. It's been a
it's been a crazy beginning of the year and all
honesty because we've been on some adventures, you know. We
we've been traveling. We've also been shooting things, by which
I mean filming right. Uh, very busy with that. Yeah,
(03:45):
and hopefully this will this will come to bear and
we'll have some really cool stuff to show you. Uh. Today,
we have some stuff that we found out about that
just blew my mind. We we caught up with We
caught up with some listeners out there who, as always
have wonderful suggestions, very fascinating questions, and super cool pictures. Uh.
(04:09):
Then we also found current events and things that have
piqued our interest. For one reason or another one of
the things that I saw popping up that that kind
of disturbed me. Scott, have you heard of this situation
with the Ford Kugas out in South Africa only what
you've told me so far, alright, it's very little. So
(04:31):
what we do know is that it's a like a
crossover vehicle, right, yeah, yeah, it's a Ford Couga is
built by Ford, is a dynamic suv. It looks like
one of those many crossover vehicles, you know, like somewhere
between a station wagon van and an suvv. Yeah, okay,
And these these things have apparently been pulling uh galaxy
(04:54):
note seven. They have been spontaneously catching fire like you
mixed the two and I wish I was joking, Uh,
spontaneously catching fire. Well do they know what the causes?
They think? Okay, So between December two fifteen January seen,
over fifty of these vehicles have caught fire, and people
(05:16):
in Ford did, like Ford saw there was a problem.
They were called the vehicles over four thousands in South Africa,
and they traced the problem to the coolant system. So
the people would have their cooling systems and their cougos repaired,
go back out and this stuff would still happen sometimes.
(05:37):
So what they're thinking is that the what they're thinking
is on Ford side is that the coolant system is safe,
but the problem is that people are using the wrong
formula or brand of coolant. Now, who would ever guess
that the wrong mixture or the wrong brand of coolant
(05:57):
would cause an engine fire. I can understand causing problems,
you know, it's not enough protection, doesn't have the right lubrication,
you know, etcetera, or it causes excessive scale build up
or you know, whatever it is. But I just I'm
I just can't believe. I'm kind of unbelieving that this
would cause an engine fire. That's amazing. Yeah, that seems uh,
(06:18):
that's pretty extreme, Yeah, for sure, to say the least.
I mean, so this is kind of early on in
this because they the recall is fairly new rights or
five thousand or whatever the number was. But it'll be
interesting to see what happens with this if this grows
to other makes and models, you know, in the forward line,
or if you know, maybe they determine that it is
a Ford issue, you know, or it's not the you know,
(06:40):
the owner's fault, because this is where it's it happens.
It's like that the owners like to point the finger
at the manufacturer that the manufacturer says, no, no, we're
doing everything right. It's you. And then you know, later
some stuff comes out in the wash and then you'll
find out exactly what happened. Um, that happens regularly with
these recalls. Yeah, it does. And so there's a little
bit of of a deeper dive here, all right. People
(07:02):
are saying this might be more about a refrigerant that's
designed to replace something else called R one thirty four A.
ARE one thirty four a UH is going to be
banned or already is banned in the EU and German
car manufacturers only recently switched from this substance. In December
(07:24):
two thousand twelve, Mercedes ben showed that the substance ignited
when researchers sprayed it and a C compressor oil onto
a car's hot engine. So senior engineer ran the test said,
we were frozen in shock. I'm not gonna deny it.
We needed a day to comprehend what we just saw.
Combustion occurred in more than two thirds of simulated collisions.
(07:46):
Now ARE one four A is a replacement of another
material that was already banned for you know previously the refrigerant.
I can't remember the name of it right now, but
there was another one just prior to that that we
can't buy here in the United States anymore, at least
not legally. Uh, there's there's restrictions on every can of
the stuff that's out there now. Um, maybe that's not
even the right way to say that. I don't know that.
It seems like some old timers has some old cans
(08:07):
of the old coolant or refrigerant rather on their shelves.
Um that they let go to premium. You know, it's
it's an expensive thing now, hard to find. But um,
that's interesting that maybe they're not even searching in the
right spot for this thing, or they're not you know,
giving the right right credit I guess maybe, or you know,
saying that it's the wrong system that's causing these fires.
And it'll be interesting to see what happens over the
(08:28):
next few months. Yeah, because maybe that is it right
And hopefully this is a situation where someone finds the
problem and then we can move past it immediately. So
I hope everyone is safe out there. I hope everybody's
doing well. Car recalls are always very touchy and at
times dangerous business. Oh yeah, hey, but I got something
(08:50):
that I'd like to bring up to that. This is
one that I heard. This is an all new one
to me. This was in the news a couple of
weeks ago, and I don't remember the the you of
the context of where I heard this, but there was
a term the storing out there called Pittsburgh left. Have
you ever heard of Pittsburgh left? Is that left hand
a left turn at a red light? It is, Yeah,
(09:11):
it's a left turn to red light. But the Pittsburgh
left is one where, you know, when you're when you're
face to face with the drivers in the opposite direction,
The drivers that are going forward, you know, going straight
through that intersection, allow the driver that's turning left to
go ahead of them, which is not really legal or
you know, it's I guess you can do it, but
it's not. It's not the common way that traffic moves
(09:33):
in that in that situation. It's a it's a courtesy
that's given by the driver at the very front of
that line of red light traffic at the intersection to
the guy turning left. So it's just a common rule
of thumb sort of practice it is, but it has
a named Pittsburgh Left. It's been associated with the Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania area, and for some reason, I mean, it's just
a common thing for them, you know, for these these
(09:56):
vehicles that are going you know, one's going straight through
the intersection, the other one's train left. It's a common
thing for them to do in that area. There's other
versions of this, I think they're um, you know, there
are things called like the Boston Left or the Massachusetts Left.
You know, they they've got different versions of it, but
it's common in that area. So I thought this was
kind of strange. I've seen this happen in my own neighborhood.
We're putting around about. We're the city is putting a
(10:19):
roundabout in the intersection that's just outside of my neighborhood,
and it's supposed to be like a two year construction
project for this this roundabout, But we have these terrible
intersections where you can't turn right on red. It's one
lane of traffic. There's no there's no designated left hand
turn lanes at these intersections. So you know, at rush
hour times, traffic just comes to a standstill because if
(10:40):
one person is turning left from any direction, it's it
completely blocks the line of traffic one the other way.
So the roundabouts necessary or at least widening the road
and making less turn lanes. But um oftentimes people to
use that road regularly like it's the it's the pass
through route for you know, the city's a lot where
they hold the school buses. You know, like where there's
(11:02):
there's about four or five miles away from me is
a this giant it's an enormous lot that they keep
probably I'm gonna guess like six hundred school busses are there.
It's a huge lot of school buses. And so those
drivers use that road as kind of a pastor, you know,
like a return to base road, and they're courteous enough
that they will flash their lights and allow people to
turn left in front of them. They'll kind of back
(11:22):
off on the gas and allow it to allow to
happen so that, you know, traffic can flow a little
bit smoother. And that's the idea behind the Pittsburgh Left.
It's just I had never heard of that before. Yeah,
And and this kind of led me to one other
quick thing that I want to watch that. In the
same article where I was reading about this this left turn,
there's something called the Pittsburgh parking chair. Have you ever
(11:43):
heard of the Pittsburgh parking chair? Okay, well, this is
kind of, ah, I guess, a common practice in the
northeastern United States and kind of like the Boston, Pittsburgh
area and really anywhere in the upper Midwest Great Lakes
region if you want to say it that way. This
is where on a snowy day, uh, people will put
folding chairs in parking spaces outside of their home in
(12:06):
order to reserve that space all day while they at
work or running errands or whatever. So it's an object.
It could be an ironing board, it could be um,
you know, a clothes hamper. It could be anything they
place something, you know. Usually it's two items in these
in these spots. Now, if it's a parking space that
you have to pull into, you know, like an angled
parking space in a parking lot situation, they can just
(12:26):
place one item in there, like maybe a traffic cone
or something, or again a folding chair. But if it's
a parallel parking situation like on the street, they'll use
two chairs to reserve just enough room for their vehicle
and that holds it for them all day. I guess
this comes from as early as the nineteen fifties. There's
photographic evidence, so this is happening as early as the
nineteen fifties in these regions. And the funny thing that,
(12:50):
the crazy thing is that everybody respects this. They don't
move those items out of the way and just park.
If they do, you know that, I think there's well,
there'll be a confrontation. Really that's all that really happens.
But they respect that. You know, this is just something
that happens in that area, and especially it happens during
these um uh inclement weather days, you know, like when
there's heavy snowfall. They're trying to protect it because what's
happened is, you know, these neighborhoods were built with you know,
(13:12):
some of them, some don't have any driveway. Some do
have driveway, but if you don't and you have to
park on the street and that's your only parking. The
number of cars, you know, because people now typically tend
to have two vehicles per householder or more. I think
it's probably an average that I'm not sighting correctly here,
but the number of cars on these residential streets has
outpaced the number of homes on the streets, so everybody
(13:33):
doesn't have the one car per one space thing that
they used to have. They're more cars now, so you're
you're finding that they have to park somewhere else, you like,
another block away, or have to you know, a local
parking uh spot that they're paying for that they didn't
have to make the hike to their house. And on
these bad weather days, you know, when it's a nice
storm or whatever, they don't want to do that. So this,
this Pennsylvania parking or other Pittsburgh parking share idea has
(13:56):
been something that's just kind of hung on and again
people respect it. Would would you ever would you ever
stand for something like that happening here in Atlanta? I
don't know if it's possible. I don't know either. I
think that people. I don't think people would would put
up with it if it wasn't tradition, if they hadn't
you know, grown up around this or you know what
that is. I wonder how people treat this when they
move into that region. I think they probably learned pretty quickly,
(14:20):
you think, so, yeah, after one it's very frowned upon
to move that chair. Imagine if you move that chair.
Let's say they moved to the Boston area from here
from Atlanta, and you you you feld folded the chairs
up and threw them on the lawn and parked your
car there. Anyway, what do you think you would come
back to the next time you're turning your car. Probably
an irate owner, you know, a homeowner. I guess you know,
(14:43):
somebody might hit my car try to get it towed.
Maybe I have this picture of me innocently folding up
someone's crappy old lawn chair and I don't know any better.
And then like this old man hobbling out from behind
a corner, He's like, yep, mate, I'll wicked pow all
that im You know, I love the exc and uh
(15:05):
uh townspeople with pitchforks and can maybe guns. It's possible.
I mean, it seems like no, no, no, no. Pitchfords
and torches and folding chairs you know have folding chairs
and ironing boards are shaking at you. But but it
seems like the very least you would receive would be
like a terse note on your windshield, you know, like
you know you're not you're not respecting the tradition, I guess,
(15:26):
you know, or or a bat through a windshield that
could happen to I mean, there could be the violence
start that would would resort to something like that. But anyways,
I thought that was interesting that, you know, there's the
Pittsburgh Left that I heard about this weekend in the
Pittsburgh Chair. Yeah. I wonder what other little regional things
that people have that that could be named to or
attributed to a city in that way. Well there, I'm
(15:49):
sure different cities have their own versions of there of
different strange things are typically illegal, but everybody agrees to
do it, so practice becomes the law. I guess one
thing I want to mention those I'm not talking about
things like like the way that it's structured. So like,
I know there's a Michigan Left and that's a certain
way that the streets are built, and there's a I
(16:11):
think there's something called a maybe a New York jug
handle or something like that, an intersection, but it handles
it so that no traffic really turns left at the light.
It all traffic makes their turns from a right hand
exit and then turn left or right. Um, but it's
called this jug handle. And you'll see examples of that
if you look at, you know, an intersection from above above. Um,
(16:33):
it makes sense. When you look at it, you'll see
it's visually looks like a jug handle. But I'm not
talking about structure that's that's incorporated in the city. I'm
talking about things that have just kind of happened in
the tradition now and people in that area know it.
But then outsiders don't know to uh to expect that,
so they may, you know, they may anger other drivers
by doing something wrong incorrectly. Well, then it could go.
(16:54):
We can even take it a step further. Let's just
make some up and see if they become a thing.
Like if I said, oh, have you ever heard of
the Amarillo U turn? You would be like, go on right, yeah,
I mean if we had some some some crazy yeah,
just some some crazy driving. Um, I don't know if
you can go patterns or behavior behaviors. I guess behaviors
(17:15):
that we attribute to a city that might that might
actually work out, Like if we called it yeah, and
and we would have to eventually accept whatever people came
to call Like if we just made the phrase Atlanta
parking spot, and then all of a sudden, we got
these pictures of you know, very dumb, a very dumb
(17:37):
specific type of fender bender. You know, I don't want
our city to be known for that. No, no, he
could be. But what if it's something cool, like it's
like like like that's the Dallas Drift, the Dallas Drift
and something like you know you have to do is
make it a literative in some way, and people I
think would buy into it. Yeah, Uh, Atlanta access highways
(17:58):
too clunky. Maybe Atlanta is not the it's not the
right city for a name like this. Maybe not. We'll
have to work on Atlanta. But and that's easy enough
for us to do, right, we can figure something out.
But it seems like if you have an again, like
something sounds like a headline, almost like a very literate
if something that's uh that um, you know, it's catchy,
something that maybe rhymes even that'd be even better. But
but yeah, but I think something like that could could
(18:20):
gain legs and you could get somebody to believe that
that's from that region and that it's somehow tied into
the history of that area, and you need to have that.
And now I'm wondering what an Amarillo you turn in UH,
because you know the Utah you turn Utah, you turn
your genius easy, that's great, it's simple. I have to
do is come up with the action and then figure
out a state or a city that matches right with
(18:41):
the with the same starting letter that You've got a
gift for this. So there's another thing I wanted to
explore before we move on, and it's gonna sound kind
of weird. What are the moral implications of holding up
a crowd for a left hand turn. I've thought about
(19:02):
this when I was stuck for twenty five minutes on
a on a road that that runs nearby. It's uh
de cab Road and decab Road has a suicide lane
in the middle of it. So we've already got the
problematic thing where people get to a light and treat
it as a turn lane. There are two choke points
(19:28):
at this UH in this street UH to choke points
where there are traffic lights without turn signals. Depending on
the time of day, two lanes will be going you know,
east and one west, or it will reverse. When it's
one lane headed into town headed west into town. It
(19:51):
is completely routine for it to take you twenty five
minutes or more to go from that first choke point
to the next one, not even not even a mile,
because it's one lane, and there's one joker up front
who has to turn left and he's blocking everyth there's
several people who would do that. Now, this has what
(20:12):
I used to live in a place where where that
would be my fastest commute. I always feel sorry for
those folks who were, you know, always heading east out
of the city. Always felt sorry for the folks who
were heading in because this line of cars, this congo
line of cars, just continues to the horizon. And I
started thinking when I found myself in that situation, I
(20:35):
remember seeing how busy it was, and I said, you know,
I'm not going to make a left, because I can
go up here where traffic is clear, I can turn
in somewhere else and turn around real quick and then
come from the other direction. And you're being courteous. And
if everybody did that, now, if at least more people
did that, the traffic would improve immensely. And so well
(20:57):
that's the theory behind the Pittsburgh Left. We need to
do that, I mean, but at the intersection. So maybe
Atlanta needs to learn a little bit from the Pittsburgh maybe.
And you know, I say, some joker up at the fry.
I mean that person has to turn left and they
don't know that they can go you know, another one
yards do a U turn and then come back and
and everything will move smoothly that way. And you're learning
(21:18):
that shipping. The story about ups that surfaced years and
years ago, how in an effort to improve efficiency, they
made all their directions use only right hand turns. I
think that was largely a myth. And if it wasn't
a myth, it's not true today. But left hand turns
in traffic. When I was really steaming the hell out
(21:40):
of road rage, I was thinking, just thinking, you know what,
this to use your phrase, because we're a family show.
You know what, this joker up here is just done.
This guy, this frigging guy has just said that he
is more important than fifty people behind him. And it
was like, I see a cop car, I see an ambulance.
We're all here, the pantheon, the U n of like
(22:03):
cars that need to go places. And I wasn't counting
myself and it wasn't a Honda Odyssey. I feel like
I need to make that clear. The car that was
taking a left and they had Georgia plates. You're kind
of sweating a little bit, you all right, I'm getting
I'm getting heated man, because they're saying like, that's that's
(22:24):
the implication. The implication is that. Sorry, the implication I
saw at the time was that they were, you know,
wasting fifty people's time rather than take a different turn.
But with that means said, it is completely true that
I do not know that person. I never saw them again.
(22:46):
They may be on very very important business. And also
ultimately at the end of the day or at the
end of the drive, that's not their faults, like the
left being a pain in the key star, the faults
of the system, as you said, And we can't be planning.
We can't hold people responsible for following the rules of something.
(23:07):
You know, you can't get mad at somebody for doing
what they're supposed to do. No, of course not. But
you can't be disappointed. That's right. You know, let's just
wrap this up. Let just say it by saying, hell
is other people? How about that? Right there? You go, Yeah,
I'm enjoying your rant, though I like it is a
really a bit a little bit. I mean only because
of the bulgeing vein in your forehead and the and
(23:30):
the arm shaking that you're doing. I might need to
take a walk. Man. It's the visual part that we're
missing here on this on the audio podcast. But how
about this, let's move on to something that maybe uh oh,
let's see a little bit less less stressful. Yeah, talk
me down from the ledge. I've got a couple of things.
I got three or four more things I want to
talk about here. But yeah, um, let's talk about the
(23:50):
Elio Elio motors thing. And I only want to touch
on this because I feel like this may weren't a
third episode on on car stuff. Um, here's what's going
on on now. Rudy Smith wrote in a lot of
people say, they'll say, oh my gosh, Rudy Smith. He
gets mentioned in every podcast. But Rudy Smith writes in
a lot with a lot of really interesting topics and
material and sends us links to a lot of a
(24:12):
lot of newsy things that you know, we quite frankly
hadn't heard of because it happened that very day or
the day before. He's on top of things. We're gonna
have to promote this guy to consult correspondent. At some
point someone said that in an email. They said, you know,
you need to give him a mention, uh in the
credits on everything you do, because he's he seems to
be a part of all that. But it's because he's prolific.
(24:33):
He sends in a lot of stuff and we and
we appreciate him for it. So he wrote in about
Elio Motors because I had no idea that that a
deadline had come and passed for Elio motors. And of
course we've had two episodes on Elio Motors and we're
cautious but hopeful about you were hopeful, great work. Well
maybe he won't be after this, uh, this little update,
and it's it's happening. So here's what's going on. Rudy
(24:54):
Roden And said that Q four came and went and
as far as I can tell, they did not sell
of the promised one hundred pre production vehicles. So they
promised one hundred sold by Q fourteen. I didn't I
didn't think I remembered that. Alright, So seventeen is here
and we are led to expect full production of Elio
trikes this year. My big question is this what will
(25:15):
be the next excuse? And it's a good point, I mean,
but this is written in early January of seen January six,
and then the news came out just recently. I just
looked this up um and actually, you know when he
sent me another link um in on January nineteen, is
just thirteen days later, damning reports suggests you'll never commute
(25:39):
in Elio Motors three wheeler. That's the headline, and here's
the report. Says that the company has delayed production of
the three wheel three wheelers several times and is reportedly
burning cash and at an alarming rate. So a um
AN SEC filing reveals that Elia Motors has just get
this number, they have just one hundred and one thousand,
(26:01):
three hundred and seventeen dollars in cash as of September.
Did you hear that number. That's a that's an extreme,
extremely low number. We're talking about company that needs hundreds
of millions of dollars to start production. The amount of
cash they have right now on hand as of September
is just one hundred and one thousand, three hundred and
(26:22):
seventeen dollars. That's the whole company. That's all they have
man as they as they put it here, for like
a big existing car company, one of the big you
know auto manufacturers, that's like the amount of a rounding error,
you know, like it's like the amount that they would
just kind of look over as like, oh, we made
a mistake, you know, very very tiny amount. Um. Maybe
(26:43):
even worse yet, is that the same document declares that
recurring net losses caused an accumulated accumulated deficit of over
one hundred and twenty three million. So the company comes
out and explains, like what's going on here? So they did,
they did comment on this at the at the time,
they said, if we're unable to continue to obtain financing
to meet our working capital requirements, we may have to
(27:03):
curtail our business sharply or cease operations altogether. So they're
starting to say it now, they're starting to say, we've
only got a couple of options here, and one of
those might be completely ceasing operations. So I don't know. Now,
this is the company. Remember they promised to bring something
like fifteen jobs to to that area, the Shreeport, Louisiana area. Um,
(27:25):
so far, the factory has remained idle throughout and they
haven't you know. They haven't brought a single job to
that area yet, so they're they're just completely falling down
on the promises. But they're still taking orders for this car,
the sixty hundred dollar car. Some of them are refundable,
some of them are not refundable. These these um you know, reservations,
(27:45):
I guess for a car. So even though I still
kind of want to believe in this thing, but man,
it's still it's just not looking good. Every time we
hear a report from them, it gets worse and worse, right,
and it may sound harsh to some of our listeners.
Is for Rudy to say, what's the next excuse gonna be?
But he's being fair. Yeah, he's being more than fair
(28:08):
because Cedera Glover, who was the former mayor of sh
Reports says that the reservation holders those have put money
down on this thing have lost their money for good.
I mean, he said he doesn't have any faith in
them at all. He thinks that it's just not gonna happen.
And of course, you know, at the time of the
writing of this, they wanted to get a comment from
Elio Motors. They couldn't be reached for comment. That's the
(28:28):
way this ended, which is a shame because this looks
like it would be so much fun to drive. It does,
And honestly though, I don't know what the problem is
with this. This is this is one that was built
with a lot of existing components. There were there were
pieces there that really were coming there, come from suppliers.
It's gonna be a it's gonna be an assembled car
to some extent an all new body, of course, but
(28:51):
to some extent in an assembled car. Yeah, what is
the problem? And are you going to get your money back? Guys?
Scott is heavy into Elio, right, You've You've put thousands
of bin bucks in here. I haven't, to be honest,
I haven't invested a diamond Elio Motors, but but I
think if there was one in a lot, I might
give a second look as a commuter car. It's an
(29:11):
interesting vehicle. I mean, I'd love to see them on
the road. It's it's it's fascinating. I don't know if
I had trust it with, you know, like my my
kid or something early on, I'd like to see some
of the numbers too, you know, isn't that the thing too?
Isn't that the three wheel vehicles don't necessarily have to
adhere to the same standards as the four wheel of
vehicles to Okay, so maybe not then maybe motorcycles, well
(29:32):
for maybe for me then from a commuter car, I
might trust it. But anyways, we're getting off track. I
I just don't know if it's gonna happen or not.
I don't know if I would I don't know if
I would trust it on a highway. Would you trust
Would you trust it enough to write a thousand dollar
check right now to say I want one of the
first production vehicles? No, man, Okay, Well that that's your answer,
then you don't, So you don't. You don't believe either.
(29:53):
I'm in the same boat. And I wonder how any
of our listeners. I know that some there's got to
be some of our listeners out there that have invested
in I hope that for their sake, they were they
were one of the refundable reservations. Well, and I hope,
you know, I hope, maybe against hope that this does
someho I'll turn around and that these vehicles come out
(30:14):
because I am I am all for new disruptive car companies,
because I think it's ultimately better for everyone. And I
don't just mean like better for car buyers or people
renting cars. I think it's better for the large car
companies too. It's get there's some like new new blood
(30:36):
in the veins. There's a there's a new player in
the game, and it makes it more interesting and people
tend to uh be more innovative. Yeah, I like these
disruptive companies as well. I think it's it's something that
the market needs in order to stay fresh, right, I
mean it makes them stay competitive, it makes them want
(30:57):
to continue to innovate. And uh, I don't of the
next topics that I have really here have anything to
do with innovation. But but maybe we should wait just
a moment and take a word from our sponsors and
the back. I don't know why I was German for
(31:19):
a second, but here we are still I'm still not German. Well,
I've got I've got two things that I want to
talk about here, and that's really about the end of
it for me for today. But all right, been the
last two things that I have are rally related. Remember
we went on the Rally North America. Trip was at
the Ohio Valley. Yes that I get right. Yeah, it
seems like it was a long time ago. It doesn't.
(31:39):
There's so much this happens. But we've had a few
We've had more than a few questions about this. And
one question, uh that has come up many times from
many listeners a lot of different people, is about the
decals on my car. Um the process. Like a lot
of questions like did it destroy the finish in your car?
Did it peel up any painted? How hard were they
to take off? Because uh, you know, the rock solid
(32:01):
on there when you're when you're using it, you can
drive through car washes with them and they won't come off. Um.
But it was really a simple process. I used a
lot of guerrilla glue on the back and I'm still
looking for a way to you know, the solvent for
that now. I'm just kidding. I didn't do any of that,
but you measured carefully. I did, yeah, very slowly. That's
the thing. You know. The kid comes from the the
the rally organizers from Raley North America, and they send
(32:24):
you kind of like the basic kit with their sponsors
and the numbers that you request and all that, the
rally logos, et cetera. And then you're allowed to add
your own stuff to it, you know, as long as
it is appropriate, I guess right. So for us, we
added how stuff works logos and and car stuff logos
to the car and so we measured and got everything
cut at a local sign shop and applied them. And
(32:46):
I had some experience putting these on cars beforehand, so
that wasn't difficult. But you can look online and find out,
you know, a variety, a couple of different ways really
to put the money the drier wet. I put them
on wet with the spray and squeegee and all that
worked out real well. Everything was perfect. It looked it
because I spent so much time measuring. I think it
turned out all right. I mean it was great. You
guys have seen the photos of it, so they know
(33:07):
they know what we're talking about. But I think it
it turned out pretty well. And honestly, every car in
the rally hit had done an excellent job with their
their decals. They have experienced as well. They've done it
many times on the rally circuit. So the question was
when it came time to remove them, how do you
do it? And it's really really easy. All you do
is take either a hair dryer or heat gun very carefully,
(33:28):
very slowly, I shouldn't say slightly, very quickly. You heat
up the decal so that the um, the adhesion material
on the back of the glue, softens up a bit.
And then you have to take and this is important
that you do this. It's a plastic plastic razor blade.
You can buy plastic razor blades at the at the
hardware store. If you haven't ever seen them, you can
buy them, buy packs a tent or whatever. But that
(33:49):
won't scratch the paint. And so used these plastic razor
blades to kind of work an edge a little bit.
And then once you get an edge, you can just
peel it back and it's it's simple as anything, really.
And then he used just a simple h you know,
salute and to remove any remaining adhesive material is there.
And if you do this fast enough, if you don't
leave them on for a period of you know, a
year or longer, um you know, going through car washes
(34:10):
and other abrasive things, so that you know the material
behind it is UM. It shows the same amount of
scratches I guess is you know the rest of your car,
If that makes any sense. It's not protected for too long,
you wouldn't get that ghosting material then, so, uh, now
that goes to material ghosting. Look, I guess you know
like you could see where there was a number three
three three inside of the cart impression. Yeah, yeah, none
(34:33):
of that was really a factor in this case because
you know, ahead of time you had polished the car
a couple of times, you know, to get a good
smooth surface for it to easily come off of it.
Was it really it was a whole The whole thing
was painless from start to finish. It was really really
very easy. But that's because I did it quickly. I
put them on and remove them relatively soon. If you
had left them on for you know, a year or more,
I think you might have some some of that problem
(34:54):
with you know, where it was covered, it would be
you know, shining or smoother surface than where it him
off of. Yeah, I'm sorry where where it was not protected?
Right right? Yeah, that's what you're saying. Yeah, So I've
got to ask, no, after this experience, would you, uh,
would you do this again with the just for the
decal process. Oh, the decal process. If I if I
(35:16):
wanted to say, throw a racing stripe on my car.
I don't know. I mean maybe for a short time.
But I again, you know the whole thing that I
just mentioned with the changing the appearance of the car
after you take it off if you wait too long,
that would be the downside if you If I intended
to leave it on for a long long time, first
of all, I would have bought the more expensive vinyl material,
(35:38):
which is uh, it stands up for more years. This
was rated it like I think even the cheap stuff
was two years. Yeah, what would you And then at
what points would you decide, Hey, I should just uh
you know, I should just get this painted. Oh well, yeah,
I guess there's there's that too, for well, I mean
for a stripe, you know, since it's just a solid color.
(35:58):
If I if I had a car that I mostly
kept grudged, let's say it was a little sports car.
Let's say I had another Triumph or an MG or
something like that, and I want to put a raising
stripe on it. Something that I don't drive very often.
It's you know, protected from the sun. I don't I
don't clean it all that often because it doesn't need
to be cleaned, you know, maybe occasional soft cloth on it.
You know, once a week or once a month. I
(36:19):
would have no problem putting this on at all. You know,
it would be something that I would do for sure.
Um painting, I mean that's of course more permanent, and
you can be a little bit more aggressive with the
cleaning then at that point and it's not going to
ever come off, so you're not gonna have that situation.
So that's something different. I guess it's more expensive to
do it that way, a lot more expensive. So something
that's quick and easy and uh um, I would recommend
(36:41):
if if you kind of on the fence about wanting
to try this, just go ahead and do it. I mean,
if if you don't like the results, peel it off
and try again. It's not it's it's really not that
expensive anymore. It's it's kind of a cheap thing to do.
So are you going to get that gigantic picture like
the one where it's your face and you you put
it over the rear wind shield? Of course I'm gonna
(37:03):
do that, but I may get, uh, you know, something
not not quite as because that you know, I might
have an artist paint that on the wind shield. Actually, yeah,
you know what I mean, airbrush or something. Now I'm
not going to do that, but but let's say that
you let's just say that, for whatever reason, you're gonna
attend a car show somewhere and you want to stand out,
and you want to put a big VW logo on
(37:25):
the hood of your bookswagon, golf or whatever. Do that
for you know, a couple of weeks or maybe a month.
It's not that expensive, and you can easily remove it,
and there's no harm done as long as you do
it the correct way. And there's again so many YouTube
videos about how to apply and remove that stuff that
it's a simple matter, it really is. So I encourage
anybody to just kind of play around and have some
fun with it, because you can. You can make your
(37:47):
car look dramatically different overnight if you wanted to. It's
it's a fun process. Really. Oh oh, something completely different,
uh Michigan merge lane. Going back to the I've been trying,
it's higher times. That's pretty good, It's okay, it's not
it's no Utah, you turn because that's I think that's like.
(38:07):
So you get the painted airbrush under rear view and
then you get the you get the message of the
back that just says, you tell your turn. Hey, you
know when we're talking about recently on the on the
video shoots that we're doing, was the California roll? Oh yeah,
did I say that? Right? California role? I think that
is that's a sushi thing, right. It's also kind of
like rolling through a stop sign of holding without coming down. Yeah,
(38:29):
so that's that's a good way. That's that's a real one.
People really say that. It's like a Pittsburgh parking chair?
Is it? But the question is is it legal? Is
it something that's uh, you know, is it the California role?
Is that? No? Man, it's a stop signs, not a
role slowly passed me sign. It's one of those things.
I don't live in California. I don't know if that's like, yeah,
it's specific to California. Yeah, if they allow it or
(38:51):
did they say? Um? Is it just kind of a
a colloquial colloquial term. Yeah, but it's tough to say
colloquial term. It's not rural juror, but it's pretty tough. Boy. Well, anyways, okay,
should I come up with how about this? I know
you've got a kind of an interest big one for
the end. But here's another rally related thing that came
(39:12):
up while we were talking on our on our twenty
two and a half hour drive, So we stretched a
we stretched an eight hour drive to twenty two and
a half hours on the way up there. And you
talk about a lot of things when you've got a
lot of time, right, We talked about briefly and I
had mentioned this UM to you guys, and you kind
of were I don't know if you believe me or not.
So here's proof, right, So I had mentioned that I
(39:36):
had heard of a guy that UM had unintentionally got
an antenna stuck up his nose and punctured his brain.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, Well, the way that I
remembered hearing this was on a Detroit area morning talk
show and they had interviewed this guy back when this
when this happened, right after it had happened, and we
would have been would have been the late eighties, and
(39:57):
if anybody's from that area, it was the Dru and
Mike show. Everybody he's got, you know, every city's got
their own morning show that you know. It's kind of
like the the guys that have been there for ten
or fifteen years and you know, they got the comedy routines.
They don't really play music, they just do bits and
things like that. Right, So that's what these guys were,
the morning funny guys. They were good and no longer
around there anymore. But anyways, they had interviewed this guy
(40:18):
in I think just after this had happened. But this
was and it was in Portland, Oregon. So here's the story.
A man who bumped into the tip of his car's antenna,
drove the metal rod up his nose and into his brain.
Here's the quote. It's the weirdest thing you've ever heard of,
said Troy Harding, who managed to pull himself free from
(40:38):
the antenna. Harding, nineteen at the time, told doctors he
was turning away from his car, went about three and
a half inches of the antenna on his fierro poked
into his nose. The antenna pierced his sinus, entered his
brain and hit his pituitary gland. He lost about a
pint of blood when this happened. Ben a pint of
(40:58):
blood out his nose. Can you imagine that that's a
that's a huge amount of blood to come out, all right,
So it says. Now at the time this has written,
this is June, says. He has been in the hospital
since the May twenty nine accident, and we'll have to
stay in until he can stand, perhaps another week. For now,
he said, standing gives him a headache. Can you believe
this story punctured his brain with his fiarro antenna? Now
(41:21):
this got me thinking, like, what other weird against kind
of like another request for submissions here, what are the
really weird car injuries have you heard of or seen
or been part of? Like has happened to you? And
I don't mean like you know, I burned myself on
my exhaust manifold, or you know something the car fell
on me or whatever, you know, nothing like that. That's this.
This is this is way out of the ordinary, way
(41:44):
out of the ordinary. So anything kind of in this
in this ballparker, in this wheelhouse of of you know
this type of injury. Is anybody out there have any
crazy stories like this? Because puncturing your brain with your
car antenna, that's that's remarkable. And again the guy couldn't
even stand afterwards, but somehow managed to free himself from it.
It's like, I don't know, it's almost you can't really
like in it to the guy who cut his own
(42:05):
arm off from where the one that was trapped with
the boulder, But I feel it's more like a reaction,
just like he had to get off of that thing.
Like even when if someone gets poked with something, you're
supposed to leave the object that's you know, like stabbing
you in right and then go to the hospital. Instinct
is to pull that thing out, whatever it is, a knife,
a stick or whatever it is. Or like if you
get if you get crushed, uh if a if a
(42:27):
person is crushed outside by a collision with a car
or they're pinned, you know, the instinct is too for
that both that person pinned and the people around them,
is to move them off of it, even though they
might bleed out because of that, where in some cases
it would be better to leave them in position until
the the you know, the the medics get there. Um,
(42:48):
it's just it's a really weird story, and we had
talked about it on that rally, and I felt that
I needed to bring in some kind of proof and
and also just kind of throw it back out there
again so that people are thinking about this question. We
don't even really have big metal antennas like that anymore. No,
you are vindicated because well the sphere. Of course it's
a low car, the metal antenna sticking up out of
the front right fender. I think it's a weird thing
(43:08):
to think of happening, but man, strange, just a strange accident,
weird occurrence. And speaking of weird occurrences, Uh, we are
unfortunately drawing to a close. Longtime listeners, you know that
(43:31):
Nuts and Bolts always ends with Scott and I. Uh,
still still surrounded by stacks of papers and documents and
stuff we want to follow up on, and this will
be no different. This tradition continues. But we have time
for one more story, something that many people have never
heard of. Myself included you know. Same here. I'm not
(43:54):
saying we're the we're the brightest crowns in the box,
but we do definitely try to read about all the
interesting stuff we can find. And we ran across something
called La mancha negra intrigued. So Ben, you showed me
this on we were on the remote shoot video shoot
and you showed me this on yourself one and I
only had a chance to read about one paragraph of this. Uh,
(44:17):
about what this is, but please fill us in because
this is uh, this is a mystery. Yeah, travel with
us if you will to Caracas, Venezuela. In six on
a on a road in the city, a smudge appears.
It's about fifty years fifty yards long, and it's uh.
(44:38):
It's seen by these workers who are patching asphalt on
this highway between Caracas and the airport. The asphalt itself
was thirty years old. People really didn't pay attention to
it at first, like, you know, stuff gets on roads,
that's how roads work. But someone spilled something, right, Yeah,
but it began to spread a hundred meters a mile.
(45:02):
Eventually eight miles of highway were covered with this unknown
material and that was weather reactive. So this is something
that's coming through the surface of the road and it
grows when conditions are hot and wet, and it shrinks
when they're cold and dry. It seems to prefer tunnels.
And la mancha negra is uh Spanish for the black stain.
(45:25):
Already sounds like a seventies horror movie, right, And what
they found was that the texture of this was kind
of gummy sticky, but it is extraordinarily dangerous. Vehicles were
crashing into each other running off the road in the
(45:46):
president and some experts like put their heads together to
figure out what was causing this, and they didn't know.
Uh so before as of like there were eighteen hundred
people who would die uh with with the with on
the road, with their deaths attributed to lament. Eighteen hundred
people in this one region, this one zone between Caracas
(46:09):
and the airport. So yeah, so the here's here's the thing.
It's expanding too. So in the early to mid nineties
in the Venezuelan government is asking other foreign powers for help.
Have you seen anything like this in your roadways? What
is this thing a fungus? Is it just some sort
(46:34):
of weird oil leak? Okay, stop here for just one
second if you don't mind. This is really bizarre. So
the leaders of this of this region are saying to
other other regions are They're asking like, have you ever
witnessed anything like this? So it's almost like you know,
all these all the movies where we have we have
visitors and the heads of nations contact each other and say, like,
(46:56):
if you're not gonna believe what's happening over here, anything
like this going on over in Japan in anything like
this happening in the in the former Soviet Union, where
what's going on, So it sounds like that's what they're doing.
They're saying, like, what's happening is something bubbling to the
surface of the earth that we've never seen before. We
can't even identify this stuff. And you know, maybe the
other countries are just saying, well, our maybe the other
(47:18):
countries are just like, no, our our main problem. In Russia,
they're like, our main problem is still bears. But good luck.
So yeah, I mean, we're we're joking a little bit,
but this is a serious and it's a real thing.
So they try different things to get rid of this.
So they try to wash it away. They say, okay,
maybe it's a paste of oil and dust um. And
(47:40):
then they were hoping that when the rains came it
would wash this stuff away. Didn't work. Uh, the pressure
pressure washers, power washers didn't work. They tried scrubbing it
away with detergents. They scraped away in the top layer
of the road, resurfaced it, and then the stuff came back. Finally,
(48:04):
they poured tons of limestone on it, and this seemed
to work. It didn't seem to eat up past who's
past the limestone, But they had to put so much
down that people complained they couldn't breathe because of the dust.
So they're rebuilding the road, but it's still every time,
it just keeps coming back. Yeah, weird. And they tried
(48:28):
to rub some dirt on there. I've heard that it
as like, just rub some dirt on that, get up,
You're fine, off right, uh, which is why you have
that enormous black stain slowly growing on your neck. It's fine. Um.
So this is the thing. They tried different things and
they didn't work. Uh. The stuff reappears, and people thought
(48:56):
it was going to be dealt with in because they
got some highly specialized cleaning equipment from Germany. However, two
thousand and one it reappeared on multiple avenues. They think
it has the consistency of chewed bubble gum, but it's
apparently slick as ice, according to drivers who are on it.
(49:19):
I was wondering that because you said it was dangerous
and there's always deaths attributed to it. But it sounds
like you said earlier on it was a sticky material.
I was thinking that would be better for tirodhesion, but
it gets it gets slick at times too, and so
it's changing. Yeah, but then that would still be gummy.
Still kind of has that connotation that there would be something,
there would be more traction. Sure. So so here's what weird.
(49:42):
Here's what they were thinking. It could be several things.
One theory is that it was substandard asphalt, so that
there's flawed asphalt and it's leaking oil whenever the temperatures rise. Uh. However,
the Ministry of Transport, there's that that the composition the asphalt, uh,
(50:03):
didn't have anything to do with the formation of this
different substance. Others think it was maybe just a bunch
of leaky, poorly maintained cars sprain fluids all over the roadway.
That's not coming from the road, But that would have
to be so much oil, and that would visibly be
oil and contaminants. Well, not only that they clean it
up and it reappears the exact same mixture, because it
(50:25):
would have to be a very precise mixture that would
happen every single time in the exact same way. And
this uh yeah. And then the professor, one of the
professors Gianetto, who was at the Ministry of Transport thinks
that it was a combination oil released from cars and
then dust on the roads and that formed the space.
And then there's another theory that it might be because
(50:48):
it likes tunnels and it likes these uphill slopes. Some
people think that raw sewage from the nearby slums is
running downhill under the asphalt and that causes a chemical
reaction breaking down the road. So it is because some
of the engineers hired by the government, at least one
(51:12):
of them famously said not only were going to remove
the La Mancha Negra, but we're also going to remove
the residents near the highway because they're part of the
problem creating the leaks in the road. But I don't
have I don't have um a recent update, and I'm
still I'm still searching for stuff. But it seems like
(51:32):
as of now, so far as we know, because Venezuela
has some other problems taking their attention at the time. Yeah,
I think they got some other things that are occupied
with right now other than road maintenance. We're investigating this mystery,
but we had never heard of it, and we wanted
to know if you heard of La Mancha Negra. Black stain.
Do you have any experience with it? If you ever
(51:53):
driven in this road to this particular road, this highway
between between Caracas and the airport that has this dreamely
slick material, and if there are sign I wonder if
there are signs warning you of this, if you know
it's at this point. I'm sure, Yeah, there have to
be because I mean, if it's causing literally thousands of deaths, Uh,
there have to be some type of warnings for this thing,
(52:13):
especially if you're gonna be driving that road in inclement weather.
You know, if it's if it's added to by you know,
the slickness of rain, what does that do to it?
I mean, or just anything, I mean intense heat. I
wonder if that makes even slicker. It's just it's a
strange thing. It's a strange Uh. Can you call it
a phenomena? I guess maybe an occurrence. I don't know
what I mean. It's just a mystery. It's a phenomenon.
(52:35):
I like mysteries though, A mystery. Yeah, I like mysteries
like this. I mean, when they're they'll find a scientific
reason behind it. But I like mysteries like this, and
we want to solve these mysteries whenever possibles right in,
let us know your best guests. Scott, it looks like
we're at that time again. We're headed out, but we
still have so much listener mail and something I've never
(53:00):
even read yet, something you haven't read yet. Remember the
they're in the I don't know, they're in the dark
corners of my Gmail somewhere the dark corners. I'll find them.
I'll find them. And while Scott goes out on the
hunt for email, and while I go out on the
hunt for further asphalts related mysteries. Uh. You can get
(53:25):
a closer look at some of our online nuts and bolts,
the stuff that may not make it the air for
one reason or another, by checking out our Facebook and
our Twitter where we are car Stuff hs W, as
well as every audio podcast we've ever done on our website,
car Stuff Show dot com. And if you want to
take a page from your fellow listeners book, but you're
(53:46):
not too much of a Facebook person, you're not too
much of a Twitter person. What do we say if
that stuff doesn't burn your rope? Now? Yeah, which is
a call back to an earlier episode that I guess
it just sounds strange if you haven't heard that episode
any way, whatever your favorite turn of phrase is. Uh.
We have an email address and you can write to
us directly with suggestions for upcoming topics, feedback on anything
(54:09):
in the show. And I am hoping for a few
good theories on La Mancha Negra. How about not my
bag of carrots? Not my pack of carrots is something
that you said many many years ago. I I found
it on a transcription of one of our episodes. I
have a bag of care Hi, you know, I'm not sure.
I'm not sure, I don't remember, but you said it's
(54:29):
not my bag of carrots and I like that. Okay, Well,
if in Facebook and Twitter or not your bag of
carrots and apologize to everyone for that one, that's a
good one. You can write to us directly. We are
car stuff at how stuff works dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics. Is that how
(54:51):
stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think.
Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com.
Go behind the Wheel, under the Hood and beyond with
car Stuff from how Stuff Works dot com. Hi, and
welcome to Car Stuff. I'm Scott, I'm Ben. We were
as always joined by our team Love Super producers and
most importantly you, Scott. It's the it's our first Nuts
(00:25):
and Bolts seventeen. Yeah. I wonder what that says, because
we're only went two months into and we've already got
enough kind of backlog of material that we just haven't
been able to get to that we have to create
a Nuts and Bolts episode or just you know, additional
stuff that maybe doesn't make a full episode, but it's
still so interesting that we want you to know about
(00:48):
it and in some cases we want to, uh maybe
ask you questions about it. Yeah, we've got a couple
of surprises coming today, a few a few things that
we have talked about, a few things that we haven't
talked about. Um, you've got I know, you've got one
that's just I know you've got a topic that's fascinating
and I can't wait. I can't wait to get to
this one. Really, the one, the one that you've brought
in especially the main focus I suppose, but one thing
(01:10):
that I want to start off with, and I feel
like I owe this to our listeners, all right, is
that I need to issue an apology. And well, I
feel like I haven't been responding to email the way
that I probably should or have in the past, because
I tried to get to everybody in kind of a
it might take a while, but I get to them.
Here's the problem with what's happened recently. We have made
a switchover to Gmail. Okay, a lot of people were
(01:35):
familiar with Gmail, and uh, and it's fine, I mean,
if you're you're accustomed to using that sort of thing.
But I had been a customer, grown accustomed over the
past nine years of working with Outlook, and they changed
it on us. They changed it um one weekend I
was leaving for the next week. So, uh, this is
the odd thing. I was leaving the office on Friday
evening knowing that I'm going on vacation for a week,
(01:58):
and so I set up my office from Finder and
then I realized at five pm, we're going off of
this Outlook program and onto Gmail. So even my you know,
out of office reminders won't work. And when I come back,
it's going to be a completely new system that I'm
gonna have to log into. It doesn't change our email
address or anything like that. By the way, we're still
car stuff at how stuff Works dot com, so you
can still reach us that way. The problem is, I
(02:19):
just can't simply navigate around in there and find out
what's going on because it's got all these settings and
toggle set that I don't really quite understand yet. The
training happened while I was gone. So if I have
ignored your email that you've sent in you know, you know,
future topic ideas or whatever, if it's just chit chat
type stuff. In the last I would say two and
a half months, I'm doing my best to find that stuff,
(02:41):
but it comes down to me having to search it
by a keyword, and that's almost impossible. Um, you know,
not knowing what you've typed your what you've sent to me.
So I'm I'm kind of fighting against that a little
bit every day. I'm gaining a little ground. But I
just felt like I needed to say something because I
feel like I'm letting our listeners down and not responding
to them. I tried to, Oh, I'm not you know,
I'm not laughing at you. Yeah, So there's a are.
(03:04):
I know, I'm laughing with myself about something. This is
like a who moved my cheese moment for me, because
I should be able to adapt to this kind of thing,
but I just can't. I mean, I'm trying my best,
and so hopefully I get this wrangled here pretty soon
and get back in the rhythm of things. But until then,
please be patient with us. Maybe re send that email
that you sent uh at the end of December or
(03:24):
whenever it was. Uh, it couldn't hurt. It's been a
it's been a crazy beginning of the year and all
honesty because we've been on some adventures, you know. We
we've been traveling. We've also been shooting things, by which
I mean filming right. Uh, very busy with that. Yeah,
(03:45):
and hopefully this will this will come to bear and
we'll have some really cool stuff to show you. Uh. Today,
we have some stuff that we found out about that
just blew my mind. We we caught up with We
caught up with some listeners out there who, as always
have wonderful suggestions, very fascinating questions, and super cool pictures. Uh.
(04:09):
Then we also found current events and things that have
piqued our interest. For one reason or another one of
the things that I saw popping up that that kind
of disturbed me. Scott, have you heard of this situation
with the Ford Kugas out in South Africa only what
you've told me so far, alright, it's very little. So
(04:31):
what we do know is that it's a like a
crossover vehicle, right, yeah, yeah, it's a Ford Couga is
built by Ford, is a dynamic suv. It looks like
one of those many crossover vehicles, you know, like somewhere
between a station wagon van and an suvv. Yeah, okay,
And these these things have apparently been pulling uh galaxy
(04:54):
note seven. They have been spontaneously catching fire like you
mixed the two and I wish I was joking, Uh,
spontaneously catching fire. Well do they know what the causes?
They think? Okay, So between December two fifteen January seen,
over fifty of these vehicles have caught fire, and people
(05:16):
in Ford did, like Ford saw there was a problem.
They were called the vehicles over four thousands in South Africa,
and they traced the problem to the coolant system. So
the people would have their cooling systems and their cougos repaired,
go back out and this stuff would still happen sometimes.
(05:37):
So what they're thinking is that the what they're thinking
is on Ford side is that the coolant system is safe,
but the problem is that people are using the wrong
formula or brand of coolant. Now, who would ever guess
that the wrong mixture or the wrong brand of coolant
(05:57):
would cause an engine fire. I can understand causing problems,
you know, it's not enough protection, doesn't have the right lubrication,
you know, etcetera, or it causes excessive scale build up
or you know, whatever it is. But I just I'm
I just can't believe. I'm kind of unbelieving that this
would cause an engine fire. That's amazing. Yeah, that seems uh,
(06:18):
that's pretty extreme, Yeah, for sure, to say the least.
I mean, so this is kind of early on in
this because they the recall is fairly new rights or
five thousand or whatever the number was. But it'll be
interesting to see what happens with this if this grows
to other makes and models, you know, in the forward line,
or if you know, maybe they determine that it is
a Ford issue, you know, or it's not the you know,
(06:40):
the owner's fault, because this is where it's it happens.
It's like that the owners like to point the finger
at the manufacturer that the manufacturer says, no, no, we're
doing everything right. It's you. And then you know, later
some stuff comes out in the wash and then you'll
find out exactly what happened. Um, that happens regularly with
these recalls. Yeah, it does. And so there's a little
bit of of a deeper dive here, all right. People
(07:02):
are saying this might be more about a refrigerant that's
designed to replace something else called R one thirty four A.
ARE one thirty four a UH is going to be
banned or already is banned in the EU and German
car manufacturers only recently switched from this substance. In December
(07:24):
two thousand twelve, Mercedes ben showed that the substance ignited
when researchers sprayed it and a C compressor oil onto
a car's hot engine. So senior engineer ran the test said,
we were frozen in shock. I'm not gonna deny it.
We needed a day to comprehend what we just saw.
Combustion occurred in more than two thirds of simulated collisions.
(07:46):
Now ARE one four A is a replacement of another
material that was already banned for you know previously the refrigerant.
I can't remember the name of it right now, but
there was another one just prior to that that we
can't buy here in the United States anymore, at least
not legally. Uh, there's there's restrictions on every can of
the stuff that's out there now. Um, maybe that's not
even the right way to say that. I don't know that.
It seems like some old timers has some old cans
(08:07):
of the old coolant or refrigerant rather on their shelves.
Um that they let go to premium. You know, it's
it's an expensive thing now, hard to find. But um,
that's interesting that maybe they're not even searching in the
right spot for this thing, or they're not you know,
giving the right right credit I guess maybe, or you know,
saying that it's the wrong system that's causing these fires.
And it'll be interesting to see what happens over the
(08:28):
next few months. Yeah, because maybe that is it right
And hopefully this is a situation where someone finds the
problem and then we can move past it immediately. So
I hope everyone is safe out there. I hope everybody's
doing well. Car recalls are always very touchy and at
times dangerous business. Oh yeah, hey, but I got something
(08:50):
that I'd like to bring up to that. This is
one that I heard. This is an all new one
to me. This was in the news a couple of
weeks ago, and I don't remember the the you of
the context of where I heard this, but there was
a term the storing out there called Pittsburgh left. Have
you ever heard of Pittsburgh left? Is that left hand
a left turn at a red light? It is, Yeah,
(09:11):
it's a left turn to red light. But the Pittsburgh
left is one where, you know, when you're when you're
face to face with the drivers in the opposite direction,
The drivers that are going forward, you know, going straight
through that intersection, allow the driver that's turning left to
go ahead of them, which is not really legal or
you know, it's I guess you can do it, but
it's not. It's not the common way that traffic moves
(09:33):
in that in that situation. It's a it's a courtesy
that's given by the driver at the very front of
that line of red light traffic at the intersection to
the guy turning left. So it's just a common rule
of thumb sort of practice it is, but it has
a named Pittsburgh Left. It's been associated with the Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania area, and for some reason, I mean, it's just
a common thing for them, you know, for these these
(09:56):
vehicles that are going you know, one's going straight through
the intersection, the other one's train left. It's a common
thing for them to do in that area. There's other
versions of this, I think they're um, you know, there
are things called like the Boston Left or the Massachusetts Left.
You know, they they've got different versions of it, but
it's common in that area. So I thought this was
kind of strange. I've seen this happen in my own neighborhood.
We're putting around about. We're the city is putting a
(10:19):
roundabout in the intersection that's just outside of my neighborhood,
and it's supposed to be like a two year construction
project for this this roundabout, But we have these terrible
intersections where you can't turn right on red. It's one
lane of traffic. There's no there's no designated left hand
turn lanes at these intersections. So you know, at rush
hour times, traffic just comes to a standstill because if
(10:40):
one person is turning left from any direction, it's it
completely blocks the line of traffic one the other way.
So the roundabouts necessary or at least widening the road
and making less turn lanes. But um oftentimes people to
use that road regularly like it's the it's the pass
through route for you know, the city's a lot where
they hold the school buses. You know, like where there's
(11:02):
there's about four or five miles away from me is
a this giant it's an enormous lot that they keep
probably I'm gonna guess like six hundred school busses are there.
It's a huge lot of school buses. And so those
drivers use that road as kind of a pastor, you know,
like a return to base road, and they're courteous enough
that they will flash their lights and allow people to
turn left in front of them. They'll kind of back
(11:22):
off on the gas and allow it to allow to
happen so that, you know, traffic can flow a little
bit smoother. And that's the idea behind the Pittsburgh Left.
It's just I had never heard of that before. Yeah,
And and this kind of led me to one other
quick thing that I want to watch that. In the
same article where I was reading about this this left turn,
there's something called the Pittsburgh parking chair. Have you ever
(11:43):
heard of the Pittsburgh parking chair? Okay, well, this is
kind of, ah, I guess, a common practice in the
northeastern United States and kind of like the Boston, Pittsburgh
area and really anywhere in the upper Midwest Great Lakes
region if you want to say it that way. This
is where on a snowy day, uh, people will put
folding chairs in parking spaces outside of their home in
(12:06):
order to reserve that space all day while they at
work or running errands or whatever. So it's an object.
It could be an ironing board, it could be um,
you know, a clothes hamper. It could be anything they
place something, you know. Usually it's two items in these
in these spots. Now, if it's a parking space that
you have to pull into, you know, like an angled
parking space in a parking lot situation, they can just
(12:26):
place one item in there, like maybe a traffic cone
or something, or again a folding chair. But if it's
a parallel parking situation like on the street, they'll use
two chairs to reserve just enough room for their vehicle
and that holds it for them all day. I guess
this comes from as early as the nineteen fifties. There's
photographic evidence, so this is happening as early as the
nineteen fifties in these regions. And the funny thing that,
(12:50):
the crazy thing is that everybody respects this. They don't
move those items out of the way and just park.
If they do, you know that, I think there's well,
there'll be a confrontation. Really that's all that really happens.
But they respect that. You know, this is just something
that happens in that area, and especially it happens during
these um uh inclement weather days, you know, like when
there's heavy snowfall. They're trying to protect it because what's
happened is, you know, these neighborhoods were built with you know,
(13:12):
some of them, some don't have any driveway. Some do
have driveway, but if you don't and you have to
park on the street and that's your only parking. The
number of cars, you know, because people now typically tend
to have two vehicles per householder or more. I think
it's probably an average that I'm not sighting correctly here,
but the number of cars on these residential streets has
outpaced the number of homes on the streets, so everybody
(13:33):
doesn't have the one car per one space thing that
they used to have. They're more cars now, so you're
you're finding that they have to park somewhere else, you like,
another block away, or have to you know, a local
parking uh spot that they're paying for that they didn't
have to make the hike to their house. And on
these bad weather days, you know, when it's a nice
storm or whatever, they don't want to do that. So this,
this Pennsylvania parking or other Pittsburgh parking share idea has
(13:56):
been something that's just kind of hung on and again
people respect it. Would would you ever would you ever
stand for something like that happening here in Atlanta? I
don't know if it's possible. I don't know either. I
think that people. I don't think people would would put
up with it if it wasn't tradition, if they hadn't
you know, grown up around this or you know what
that is. I wonder how people treat this when they
move into that region. I think they probably learned pretty quickly,
(14:20):
you think, so, yeah, after one it's very frowned upon
to move that chair. Imagine if you move that chair.
Let's say they moved to the Boston area from here
from Atlanta, and you you you feld folded the chairs
up and threw them on the lawn and parked your
car there. Anyway, what do you think you would come
back to the next time you're turning your car. Probably
an irate owner, you know, a homeowner. I guess you know,
(14:43):
somebody might hit my car try to get it towed.
Maybe I have this picture of me innocently folding up
someone's crappy old lawn chair and I don't know any better.
And then like this old man hobbling out from behind
a corner, He's like, yep, mate, I'll wicked pow all
that im You know, I love the exc and uh
(15:05):
uh townspeople with pitchforks and can maybe guns. It's possible.
I mean, it seems like no, no, no, no. Pitchfords
and torches and folding chairs you know have folding chairs
and ironing boards are shaking at you. But but it
seems like the very least you would receive would be
like a terse note on your windshield, you know, like
you know you're not you're not respecting the tradition, I guess,
(15:26):
you know, or or a bat through a windshield that
could happen to I mean, there could be the violence
start that would would resort to something like that. But anyways,
I thought that was interesting that, you know, there's the
Pittsburgh Left that I heard about this weekend in the
Pittsburgh Chair. Yeah. I wonder what other little regional things
that people have that that could be named to or
attributed to a city in that way. Well there, I'm
(15:49):
sure different cities have their own versions of there of
different strange things are typically illegal, but everybody agrees to
do it, so practice becomes the law. I guess one
thing I want to mention those I'm not talking about
things like like the way that it's structured. So like,
I know there's a Michigan Left and that's a certain
way that the streets are built, and there's a I
(16:11):
think there's something called a maybe a New York jug
handle or something like that, an intersection, but it handles
it so that no traffic really turns left at the light.
It all traffic makes their turns from a right hand
exit and then turn left or right. Um, but it's
called this jug handle. And you'll see examples of that
if you look at, you know, an intersection from above above. Um,
(16:33):
it makes sense. When you look at it, you'll see
it's visually looks like a jug handle. But I'm not
talking about structure that's that's incorporated in the city. I'm
talking about things that have just kind of happened in
the tradition now and people in that area know it.
But then outsiders don't know to uh to expect that,
so they may, you know, they may anger other drivers
by doing something wrong incorrectly. Well, then it could go.
(16:54):
We can even take it a step further. Let's just
make some up and see if they become a thing.
Like if I said, oh, have you ever heard of
the Amarillo U turn? You would be like, go on right, yeah,
I mean if we had some some some crazy yeah,
just some some crazy driving. Um, I don't know if
you can go patterns or behavior behaviors. I guess behaviors
(17:15):
that we attribute to a city that might that might
actually work out, Like if we called it yeah, and
and we would have to eventually accept whatever people came
to call Like if we just made the phrase Atlanta
parking spot, and then all of a sudden, we got
these pictures of you know, very dumb, a very dumb
(17:37):
specific type of fender bender. You know, I don't want
our city to be known for that. No, no, he
could be. But what if it's something cool, like it's
like like like that's the Dallas Drift, the Dallas Drift
and something like you know you have to do is
make it a literative in some way, and people I
think would buy into it. Yeah, Uh, Atlanta access highways
(17:58):
too clunky. Maybe Atlanta is not the it's not the
right city for a name like this. Maybe not. We'll
have to work on Atlanta. But and that's easy enough
for us to do, right, we can figure something out.
But it seems like if you have an again, like
something sounds like a headline, almost like a very literate
if something that's uh that um, you know, it's catchy,
something that maybe rhymes even that'd be even better. But
but yeah, but I think something like that could could
(18:20):
gain legs and you could get somebody to believe that
that's from that region and that it's somehow tied into
the history of that area, and you need to have that.
And now I'm wondering what an Amarillo you turn in UH,
because you know the Utah you turn Utah, you turn
your genius easy, that's great, it's simple. I have to
do is come up with the action and then figure
out a state or a city that matches right with
(18:41):
the with the same starting letter that You've got a
gift for this. So there's another thing I wanted to
explore before we move on, and it's gonna sound kind
of weird. What are the moral implications of holding up
a crowd for a left hand turn. I've thought about
(19:02):
this when I was stuck for twenty five minutes on
a on a road that that runs nearby. It's uh
de cab Road and decab Road has a suicide lane
in the middle of it. So we've already got the
problematic thing where people get to a light and treat
it as a turn lane. There are two choke points
(19:28):
at this UH in this street UH to choke points
where there are traffic lights without turn signals. Depending on
the time of day, two lanes will be going you know,
east and one west, or it will reverse. When it's
one lane headed into town headed west into town. It
(19:51):
is completely routine for it to take you twenty five
minutes or more to go from that first choke point
to the next one, not even not even a mile,
because it's one lane, and there's one joker up front
who has to turn left and he's blocking everyth there's
several people who would do that. Now, this has what
(20:12):
I used to live in a place where where that
would be my fastest commute. I always feel sorry for
those folks who were, you know, always heading east out
of the city. Always felt sorry for the folks who
were heading in because this line of cars, this congo
line of cars, just continues to the horizon. And I
started thinking when I found myself in that situation, I
(20:35):
remember seeing how busy it was, and I said, you know,
I'm not going to make a left, because I can
go up here where traffic is clear, I can turn
in somewhere else and turn around real quick and then
come from the other direction. And you're being courteous. And
if everybody did that, now, if at least more people
did that, the traffic would improve immensely. And so well
(20:57):
that's the theory behind the Pittsburgh Left. We need to
do that, I mean, but at the intersection. So maybe
Atlanta needs to learn a little bit from the Pittsburgh maybe.
And you know, I say, some joker up at the fry.
I mean that person has to turn left and they
don't know that they can go you know, another one
yards do a U turn and then come back and
and everything will move smoothly that way. And you're learning
(21:18):
that shipping. The story about ups that surfaced years and
years ago, how in an effort to improve efficiency, they
made all their directions use only right hand turns. I
think that was largely a myth. And if it wasn't
a myth, it's not true today. But left hand turns
in traffic. When I was really steaming the hell out
(21:40):
of road rage, I was thinking, just thinking, you know what,
this to use your phrase, because we're a family show.
You know what, this joker up here is just done.
This guy, this frigging guy has just said that he
is more important than fifty people behind him. And it
was like, I see a cop car, I see an ambulance.
We're all here, the pantheon, the U n of like
(22:03):
cars that need to go places. And I wasn't counting
myself and it wasn't a Honda Odyssey. I feel like
I need to make that clear. The car that was
taking a left and they had Georgia plates. You're kind
of sweating a little bit, you all right, I'm getting
I'm getting heated man, because they're saying like, that's that's
(22:24):
the implication. The implication is that. Sorry, the implication I
saw at the time was that they were, you know,
wasting fifty people's time rather than take a different turn.
But with that means said, it is completely true that
I do not know that person. I never saw them again.
(22:46):
They may be on very very important business. And also
ultimately at the end of the day or at the
end of the drive, that's not their faults, like the
left being a pain in the key star, the faults
of the system, as you said, And we can't be planning.
We can't hold people responsible for following the rules of something.
(23:07):
You know, you can't get mad at somebody for doing
what they're supposed to do. No, of course not. But
you can't be disappointed. That's right. You know, let's just
wrap this up. Let just say it by saying, hell
is other people? How about that? Right there? You go, Yeah,
I'm enjoying your rant, though I like it is a
really a bit a little bit. I mean only because
of the bulgeing vein in your forehead and the and
(23:30):
the arm shaking that you're doing. I might need to
take a walk. Man. It's the visual part that we're
missing here on this on the audio podcast. But how
about this, let's move on to something that maybe uh oh,
let's see a little bit less less stressful. Yeah, talk
me down from the ledge. I've got a couple of things.
I got three or four more things I want to
talk about here. But yeah, um, let's talk about the
(23:50):
Elio Elio motors thing. And I only want to touch
on this because I feel like this may weren't a
third episode on on car stuff. Um, here's what's going
on on now. Rudy Smith wrote in a lot of
people say, they'll say, oh my gosh, Rudy Smith. He
gets mentioned in every podcast. But Rudy Smith writes in
a lot with a lot of really interesting topics and
material and sends us links to a lot of a
(24:12):
lot of newsy things that you know, we quite frankly
hadn't heard of because it happened that very day or
the day before. He's on top of things. We're gonna
have to promote this guy to consult correspondent. At some
point someone said that in an email. They said, you know,
you need to give him a mention, uh in the
credits on everything you do, because he's he seems to
be a part of all that. But it's because he's prolific.
(24:33):
He sends in a lot of stuff and we and
we appreciate him for it. So he wrote in about
Elio Motors because I had no idea that that a
deadline had come and passed for Elio motors. And of
course we've had two episodes on Elio Motors and we're
cautious but hopeful about you were hopeful, great work. Well
maybe he won't be after this, uh, this little update,
and it's it's happening. So here's what's going on. Rudy
(24:54):
Roden And said that Q four came and went and
as far as I can tell, they did not sell
of the promised one hundred pre production vehicles. So they
promised one hundred sold by Q fourteen. I didn't I
didn't think I remembered that. Alright, So seventeen is here
and we are led to expect full production of Elio
trikes this year. My big question is this what will
(25:15):
be the next excuse? And it's a good point, I mean,
but this is written in early January of seen January six,
and then the news came out just recently. I just
looked this up um and actually, you know when he
sent me another link um in on January nineteen, is
just thirteen days later, damning reports suggests you'll never commute
(25:39):
in Elio Motors three wheeler. That's the headline, and here's
the report. Says that the company has delayed production of
the three wheel three wheelers several times and is reportedly
burning cash and at an alarming rate. So a um
AN SEC filing reveals that Elia Motors has just get
this number, they have just one hundred and one thousand,
(26:01):
three hundred and seventeen dollars in cash as of September.
Did you hear that number. That's a that's an extreme,
extremely low number. We're talking about company that needs hundreds
of millions of dollars to start production. The amount of
cash they have right now on hand as of September
is just one hundred and one thousand, three hundred and
(26:22):
seventeen dollars. That's the whole company. That's all they have
man as they as they put it here, for like
a big existing car company, one of the big you
know auto manufacturers, that's like the amount of a rounding error,
you know, like it's like the amount that they would
just kind of look over as like, oh, we made
a mistake, you know, very very tiny amount. Um. Maybe
(26:43):
even worse yet, is that the same document declares that
recurring net losses caused an accumulated accumulated deficit of over
one hundred and twenty three million. So the company comes
out and explains, like what's going on here? So they did,
they did comment on this at the at the time,
they said, if we're unable to continue to obtain financing
to meet our working capital requirements, we may have to
(27:03):
curtail our business sharply or cease operations altogether. So they're
starting to say it now, they're starting to say, we've
only got a couple of options here, and one of
those might be completely ceasing operations. So I don't know. Now,
this is the company. Remember they promised to bring something
like fifteen jobs to to that area, the Shreeport, Louisiana area. Um,
(27:25):
so far, the factory has remained idle throughout and they
haven't you know. They haven't brought a single job to
that area yet, so they're they're just completely falling down
on the promises. But they're still taking orders for this car,
the sixty hundred dollar car. Some of them are refundable,
some of them are not refundable. These these um you know, reservations,
(27:45):
I guess for a car. So even though I still
kind of want to believe in this thing, but man,
it's still it's just not looking good. Every time we
hear a report from them, it gets worse and worse, right,
and it may sound harsh to some of our listeners.
Is for Rudy to say, what's the next excuse gonna be?
But he's being fair. Yeah, he's being more than fair
(28:08):
because Cedera Glover, who was the former mayor of sh
Reports says that the reservation holders those have put money
down on this thing have lost their money for good.
I mean, he said he doesn't have any faith in
them at all. He thinks that it's just not gonna happen.
And of course, you know, at the time of the
writing of this, they wanted to get a comment from
Elio Motors. They couldn't be reached for comment. That's the
(28:28):
way this ended, which is a shame because this looks
like it would be so much fun to drive. It does,
And honestly though, I don't know what the problem is
with this. This is this is one that was built
with a lot of existing components. There were there were
pieces there that really were coming there, come from suppliers.
It's gonna be a it's gonna be an assembled car
to some extent an all new body, of course, but
(28:51):
to some extent in an assembled car. Yeah, what is
the problem? And are you going to get your money back? Guys?
Scott is heavy into Elio, right, You've You've put thousands
of bin bucks in here. I haven't, to be honest,
I haven't invested a diamond Elio Motors, but but I
think if there was one in a lot, I might
give a second look as a commuter car. It's an
(29:11):
interesting vehicle. I mean, I'd love to see them on
the road. It's it's it's fascinating. I don't know if
I had trust it with, you know, like my my
kid or something early on, I'd like to see some
of the numbers too, you know, isn't that the thing too?
Isn't that the three wheel vehicles don't necessarily have to
adhere to the same standards as the four wheel of
vehicles to Okay, so maybe not then maybe motorcycles, well
(29:32):
for maybe for me then from a commuter car, I
might trust it. But anyways, we're getting off track. I
I just don't know if it's gonna happen or not.
I don't know if I would I don't know if
I would trust it on a highway. Would you trust
Would you trust it enough to write a thousand dollar
check right now to say I want one of the
first production vehicles? No, man, Okay, Well that that's your answer,
then you don't, So you don't. You don't believe either.
(29:53):
I'm in the same boat. And I wonder how any
of our listeners. I know that some there's got to
be some of our listeners out there that have invested
in I hope that for their sake, they were they
were one of the refundable reservations. Well, and I hope,
you know, I hope, maybe against hope that this does
someho I'll turn around and that these vehicles come out
(30:14):
because I am I am all for new disruptive car companies,
because I think it's ultimately better for everyone. And I
don't just mean like better for car buyers or people
renting cars. I think it's better for the large car
companies too. It's get there's some like new new blood
(30:36):
in the veins. There's a there's a new player in
the game, and it makes it more interesting and people
tend to uh be more innovative. Yeah, I like these
disruptive companies as well. I think it's it's something that
the market needs in order to stay fresh, right, I
mean it makes them stay competitive, it makes them want
(30:57):
to continue to innovate. And uh, I don't of the
next topics that I have really here have anything to
do with innovation. But but maybe we should wait just
a moment and take a word from our sponsors and
the back. I don't know why I was German for
(31:19):
a second, but here we are still I'm still not German. Well,
I've got I've got two things that I want to
talk about here, and that's really about the end of
it for me for today. But all right, been the
last two things that I have are rally related. Remember
we went on the Rally North America. Trip was at
the Ohio Valley. Yes that I get right. Yeah, it
seems like it was a long time ago. It doesn't.
(31:39):
There's so much this happens. But we've had a few
We've had more than a few questions about this. And
one question, uh that has come up many times from
many listeners a lot of different people, is about the
decals on my car. Um the process. Like a lot
of questions like did it destroy the finish in your car?
Did it peel up any painted? How hard were they
to take off? Because uh, you know, the rock solid
(32:01):
on there when you're when you're using it, you can
drive through car washes with them and they won't come off. Um.
But it was really a simple process. I used a
lot of guerrilla glue on the back and I'm still
looking for a way to you know, the solvent for
that now. I'm just kidding. I didn't do any of that,
but you measured carefully. I did, yeah, very slowly. That's
the thing. You know. The kid comes from the the
the rally organizers from Raley North America, and they send
(32:24):
you kind of like the basic kit with their sponsors
and the numbers that you request and all that, the
rally logos, et cetera. And then you're allowed to add
your own stuff to it, you know, as long as
it is appropriate, I guess right. So for us, we
added how stuff works logos and and car stuff logos
to the car and so we measured and got everything
cut at a local sign shop and applied them. And
(32:46):
I had some experience putting these on cars beforehand, so
that wasn't difficult. But you can look online and find out,
you know, a variety, a couple of different ways really
to put the money the drier wet. I put them
on wet with the spray and squeegee and all that
worked out real well. Everything was perfect. It looked it
because I spent so much time measuring. I think it
turned out all right. I mean it was great. You
guys have seen the photos of it, so they know
(33:07):
they know what we're talking about. But I think it
it turned out pretty well. And honestly, every car in
the rally hit had done an excellent job with their
their decals. They have experienced as well. They've done it
many times on the rally circuit. So the question was
when it came time to remove them, how do you
do it? And it's really really easy. All you do
is take either a hair dryer or heat gun very carefully,
(33:28):
very slowly, I shouldn't say slightly, very quickly. You heat
up the decal so that the um, the adhesion material
on the back of the glue, softens up a bit.
And then you have to take and this is important
that you do this. It's a plastic plastic razor blade.
You can buy plastic razor blades at the at the
hardware store. If you haven't ever seen them, you can
buy them, buy packs a tent or whatever. But that
(33:49):
won't scratch the paint. And so used these plastic razor
blades to kind of work an edge a little bit.
And then once you get an edge, you can just
peel it back and it's it's simple as anything, really.
And then he used just a simple h you know,
salute and to remove any remaining adhesive material is there.
And if you do this fast enough, if you don't
leave them on for a period of you know, a
year or longer, um you know, going through car washes
(34:10):
and other abrasive things, so that you know the material
behind it is UM. It shows the same amount of
scratches I guess is you know the rest of your car,
If that makes any sense. It's not protected for too long,
you wouldn't get that ghosting material then, so, uh, now
that goes to material ghosting. Look, I guess you know
like you could see where there was a number three
three three inside of the cart impression. Yeah, yeah, none
(34:33):
of that was really a factor in this case because
you know, ahead of time you had polished the car
a couple of times, you know, to get a good
smooth surface for it to easily come off of it.
Was it really it was a whole The whole thing
was painless from start to finish. It was really really
very easy. But that's because I did it quickly. I
put them on and remove them relatively soon. If you
had left them on for you know, a year or more,
I think you might have some some of that problem
(34:54):
with you know, where it was covered, it would be
you know, shining or smoother surface than where it him
off of. Yeah, I'm sorry where where it was not protected?
Right right? Yeah, that's what you're saying. Yeah, So I've
got to ask, no, after this experience, would you, uh,
would you do this again with the just for the
decal process. Oh, the decal process. If I if I
(35:16):
wanted to say, throw a racing stripe on my car.
I don't know. I mean maybe for a short time.
But I again, you know the whole thing that I
just mentioned with the changing the appearance of the car
after you take it off if you wait too long,
that would be the downside if you If I intended
to leave it on for a long long time, first
of all, I would have bought the more expensive vinyl material,
(35:38):
which is uh, it stands up for more years. This
was rated it like I think even the cheap stuff
was two years. Yeah, what would you And then at
what points would you decide, Hey, I should just uh
you know, I should just get this painted. Oh well, yeah,
I guess there's there's that too, for well, I mean
for a stripe, you know, since it's just a solid color.
(35:58):
If I if I had a car that I mostly
kept grudged, let's say it was a little sports car.
Let's say I had another Triumph or an MG or
something like that, and I want to put a raising
stripe on it. Something that I don't drive very often.
It's you know, protected from the sun. I don't I
don't clean it all that often because it doesn't need
to be cleaned, you know, maybe occasional soft cloth on it.
You know, once a week or once a month. I
(36:19):
would have no problem putting this on at all. You know,
it would be something that I would do for sure.
Um painting, I mean that's of course more permanent, and
you can be a little bit more aggressive with the
cleaning then at that point and it's not going to
ever come off, so you're not gonna have that situation.
So that's something different. I guess it's more expensive to
do it that way, a lot more expensive. So something
that's quick and easy and uh um, I would recommend
(36:41):
if if you kind of on the fence about wanting
to try this, just go ahead and do it. I mean,
if if you don't like the results, peel it off
and try again. It's not it's it's really not that
expensive anymore. It's it's kind of a cheap thing to do.
So are you going to get that gigantic picture like
the one where it's your face and you you put
it over the rear wind shield? Of course I'm gonna
(37:03):
do that, but I may get, uh, you know, something
not not quite as because that you know, I might
have an artist paint that on the wind shield. Actually, yeah,
you know what I mean, airbrush or something. Now I'm
not going to do that, but but let's say that
you let's just say that, for whatever reason, you're gonna
attend a car show somewhere and you want to stand out,
and you want to put a big VW logo on
(37:25):
the hood of your bookswagon, golf or whatever. Do that
for you know, a couple of weeks or maybe a month.
It's not that expensive, and you can easily remove it,
and there's no harm done as long as you do
it the correct way. And there's again so many YouTube
videos about how to apply and remove that stuff that
it's a simple matter, it really is. So I encourage
anybody to just kind of play around and have some
fun with it, because you can. You can make your
(37:47):
car look dramatically different overnight if you wanted to. It's
it's a fun process. Really. Oh oh, something completely different,
uh Michigan merge lane. Going back to the I've been trying,
it's higher times. That's pretty good, It's okay, it's not
it's no Utah, you turn because that's I think that's like.
(38:07):
So you get the painted airbrush under rear view and
then you get the you get the message of the
back that just says, you tell your turn. Hey, you
know when we're talking about recently on the on the
video shoots that we're doing, was the California roll? Oh yeah,
did I say that? Right? California role? I think that
is that's a sushi thing, right. It's also kind of
like rolling through a stop sign of holding without coming down. Yeah,
(38:29):
so that's that's a good way. That's that's a real one.
People really say that. It's like a Pittsburgh parking chair?
Is it? But the question is is it legal? Is
it something that's uh, you know, is it the California role?
Is that? No? Man, it's a stop signs, not a
role slowly passed me sign. It's one of those things.
I don't live in California. I don't know if that's like, yeah,
it's specific to California. Yeah, if they allow it or
(38:51):
did they say? Um? Is it just kind of a
a colloquial colloquial term. Yeah, but it's tough to say
colloquial term. It's not rural juror, but it's pretty tough. Boy. Well, anyways, okay,
should I come up with how about this? I know
you've got a kind of an interest big one for
the end. But here's another rally related thing that came
(39:12):
up while we were talking on our on our twenty
two and a half hour drive, So we stretched a
we stretched an eight hour drive to twenty two and
a half hours on the way up there. And you
talk about a lot of things when you've got a
lot of time, right, We talked about briefly and I
had mentioned this UM to you guys, and you kind
of were I don't know if you believe me or not.
So here's proof, right, So I had mentioned that I
(39:36):
had heard of a guy that UM had unintentionally got
an antenna stuck up his nose and punctured his brain.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, Well, the way that I
remembered hearing this was on a Detroit area morning talk
show and they had interviewed this guy back when this
when this happened, right after it had happened, and we
would have been would have been the late eighties, and
(39:57):
if anybody's from that area, it was the Dru and
Mike show. Everybody he's got, you know, every city's got
their own morning show that you know. It's kind of
like the the guys that have been there for ten
or fifteen years and you know, they got the comedy routines.
They don't really play music, they just do bits and
things like that. Right, So that's what these guys were,
the morning funny guys. They were good and no longer
around there anymore. But anyways, they had interviewed this guy
(40:18):
in I think just after this had happened. But this
was and it was in Portland, Oregon. So here's the story.
A man who bumped into the tip of his car's antenna,
drove the metal rod up his nose and into his brain.
Here's the quote. It's the weirdest thing you've ever heard of,
said Troy Harding, who managed to pull himself free from
(40:38):
the antenna. Harding, nineteen at the time, told doctors he
was turning away from his car, went about three and
a half inches of the antenna on his fierro poked
into his nose. The antenna pierced his sinus, entered his
brain and hit his pituitary gland. He lost about a
pint of blood when this happened. Ben a pint of
(40:58):
blood out his nose. Can you imagine that that's a
that's a huge amount of blood to come out, all right,
So it says. Now at the time this has written,
this is June, says. He has been in the hospital
since the May twenty nine accident, and we'll have to
stay in until he can stand, perhaps another week. For now,
he said, standing gives him a headache. Can you believe
this story punctured his brain with his fiarro antenna? Now
(41:21):
this got me thinking, like, what other weird against kind
of like another request for submissions here, what are the
really weird car injuries have you heard of or seen
or been part of? Like has happened to you? And
I don't mean like you know, I burned myself on
my exhaust manifold, or you know something the car fell
on me or whatever, you know, nothing like that. That's this.
This is this is way out of the ordinary, way
(41:44):
out of the ordinary. So anything kind of in this
in this ballparker, in this wheelhouse of of you know
this type of injury. Is anybody out there have any
crazy stories like this? Because puncturing your brain with your
car antenna, that's that's remarkable. And again the guy couldn't
even stand afterwards, but somehow managed to free himself from it.
It's like, I don't know, it's almost you can't really
like in it to the guy who cut his own
(42:05):
arm off from where the one that was trapped with
the boulder, But I feel it's more like a reaction,
just like he had to get off of that thing.
Like even when if someone gets poked with something, you're
supposed to leave the object that's you know, like stabbing
you in right and then go to the hospital. Instinct
is to pull that thing out, whatever it is, a knife,
a stick or whatever it is. Or like if you
get if you get crushed, uh if a if a
(42:27):
person is crushed outside by a collision with a car
or they're pinned, you know, the instinct is too for
that both that person pinned and the people around them,
is to move them off of it, even though they
might bleed out because of that, where in some cases
it would be better to leave them in position until
the the you know, the the medics get there. Um,
(42:48):
it's just it's a really weird story, and we had
talked about it on that rally, and I felt that
I needed to bring in some kind of proof and
and also just kind of throw it back out there
again so that people are thinking about this question. We
don't even really have big metal antennas like that anymore. No,
you are vindicated because well the sphere. Of course it's
a low car, the metal antenna sticking up out of
the front right fender. I think it's a weird thing
(43:08):
to think of happening, but man, strange, just a strange accident,
weird occurrence. And speaking of weird occurrences, Uh, we are
unfortunately drawing to a close. Longtime listeners, you know that
(43:31):
Nuts and Bolts always ends with Scott and I. Uh,
still still surrounded by stacks of papers and documents and
stuff we want to follow up on, and this will
be no different. This tradition continues. But we have time
for one more story, something that many people have never
heard of. Myself included you know. Same here. I'm not
(43:54):
saying we're the we're the brightest crowns in the box,
but we do definitely try to read about all the
interesting stuff we can find. And we ran across something
called La mancha negra intrigued. So Ben, you showed me
this on we were on the remote shoot video shoot
and you showed me this on yourself one and I
only had a chance to read about one paragraph of this. Uh,
(44:17):
about what this is, but please fill us in because
this is uh, this is a mystery. Yeah, travel with
us if you will to Caracas, Venezuela. In six on
a on a road in the city, a smudge appears.
It's about fifty years fifty yards long, and it's uh.
(44:38):
It's seen by these workers who are patching asphalt on
this highway between Caracas and the airport. The asphalt itself
was thirty years old. People really didn't pay attention to
it at first, like, you know, stuff gets on roads,
that's how roads work. But someone spilled something, right, Yeah,
but it began to spread a hundred meters a mile.
(45:02):
Eventually eight miles of highway were covered with this unknown
material and that was weather reactive. So this is something
that's coming through the surface of the road and it
grows when conditions are hot and wet, and it shrinks
when they're cold and dry. It seems to prefer tunnels.
And la mancha negra is uh Spanish for the black stain.
(45:25):
Already sounds like a seventies horror movie, right, And what
they found was that the texture of this was kind
of gummy sticky, but it is extraordinarily dangerous. Vehicles were
crashing into each other running off the road in the
(45:46):
president and some experts like put their heads together to
figure out what was causing this, and they didn't know.
Uh so before as of like there were eighteen hundred
people who would die uh with with the with on
the road, with their deaths attributed to lament. Eighteen hundred
people in this one region, this one zone between Caracas
(46:09):
and the airport. So yeah, so the here's here's the thing.
It's expanding too. So in the early to mid nineties
in the Venezuelan government is asking other foreign powers for help.
Have you seen anything like this in your roadways? What
is this thing a fungus? Is it just some sort
(46:34):
of weird oil leak? Okay, stop here for just one
second if you don't mind. This is really bizarre. So
the leaders of this of this region are saying to
other other regions are They're asking like, have you ever
witnessed anything like this? So it's almost like you know,
all these all the movies where we have we have
visitors and the heads of nations contact each other and say, like,
(46:56):
if you're not gonna believe what's happening over here, anything
like this going on over in Japan in anything like
this happening in the in the former Soviet Union, where
what's going on, So it sounds like that's what they're doing.
They're saying, like, what's happening is something bubbling to the
surface of the earth that we've never seen before. We
can't even identify this stuff. And you know, maybe the
other countries are just saying, well, our maybe the other
(47:18):
countries are just like, no, our our main problem. In Russia,
they're like, our main problem is still bears. But good luck.
So yeah, I mean, we're we're joking a little bit,
but this is a serious and it's a real thing.
So they try different things to get rid of this.
So they try to wash it away. They say, okay,
maybe it's a paste of oil and dust um. And
(47:40):
then they were hoping that when the rains came it
would wash this stuff away. Didn't work. Uh, the pressure
pressure washers, power washers didn't work. They tried scrubbing it
away with detergents. They scraped away in the top layer
of the road, resurfaced it, and then the stuff came back. Finally,
(48:04):
they poured tons of limestone on it, and this seemed
to work. It didn't seem to eat up past who's
past the limestone, But they had to put so much
down that people complained they couldn't breathe because of the dust.
So they're rebuilding the road, but it's still every time,
it just keeps coming back. Yeah, weird. And they tried
(48:28):
to rub some dirt on there. I've heard that it
as like, just rub some dirt on that, get up,
You're fine, off right, uh, which is why you have
that enormous black stain slowly growing on your neck. It's fine. Um.
So this is the thing. They tried different things and
they didn't work. Uh. The stuff reappears, and people thought
(48:56):
it was going to be dealt with in because they
got some highly specialized cleaning equipment from Germany. However, two
thousand and one it reappeared on multiple avenues. They think
it has the consistency of chewed bubble gum, but it's
apparently slick as ice, according to drivers who are on it.
(49:19):
I was wondering that because you said it was dangerous
and there's always deaths attributed to it. But it sounds
like you said earlier on it was a sticky material.
I was thinking that would be better for tirodhesion, but
it gets it gets slick at times too, and so
it's changing. Yeah, but then that would still be gummy.
Still kind of has that connotation that there would be something,
there would be more traction. Sure. So so here's what weird.
(49:42):
Here's what they were thinking. It could be several things.
One theory is that it was substandard asphalt, so that
there's flawed asphalt and it's leaking oil whenever the temperatures rise. Uh. However,
the Ministry of Transport, there's that that the composition the asphalt, uh,
(50:03):
didn't have anything to do with the formation of this
different substance. Others think it was maybe just a bunch
of leaky, poorly maintained cars sprain fluids all over the roadway.
That's not coming from the road, But that would have
to be so much oil, and that would visibly be
oil and contaminants. Well, not only that they clean it
up and it reappears the exact same mixture, because it
(50:25):
would have to be a very precise mixture that would
happen every single time in the exact same way. And
this uh yeah. And then the professor, one of the
professors Gianetto, who was at the Ministry of Transport thinks
that it was a combination oil released from cars and
then dust on the roads and that formed the space.
And then there's another theory that it might be because
(50:48):
it likes tunnels and it likes these uphill slopes. Some
people think that raw sewage from the nearby slums is
running downhill under the asphalt and that causes a chemical
reaction breaking down the road. So it is because some
of the engineers hired by the government, at least one
(51:12):
of them famously said not only were going to remove
the La Mancha Negra, but we're also going to remove
the residents near the highway because they're part of the
problem creating the leaks in the road. But I don't
have I don't have um a recent update, and I'm
still I'm still searching for stuff. But it seems like
(51:32):
as of now, so far as we know, because Venezuela
has some other problems taking their attention at the time. Yeah,
I think they got some other things that are occupied
with right now other than road maintenance. We're investigating this mystery,
but we had never heard of it, and we wanted
to know if you heard of La Mancha Negra. Black stain.
Do you have any experience with it? If you ever
(51:53):
driven in this road to this particular road, this highway
between between Caracas and the airport that has this dreamely
slick material, and if there are sign I wonder if
there are signs warning you of this, if you know
it's at this point. I'm sure, Yeah, there have to
be because I mean, if it's causing literally thousands of deaths, Uh,
there have to be some type of warnings for this thing,
(52:13):
especially if you're gonna be driving that road in inclement weather.
You know, if it's if it's added to by you know,
the slickness of rain, what does that do to it?
I mean, or just anything, I mean intense heat. I
wonder if that makes even slicker. It's just it's a
strange thing. It's a strange Uh. Can you call it
a phenomena? I guess maybe an occurrence. I don't know
what I mean. It's just a mystery. It's a phenomenon.
(52:35):
I like mysteries though, A mystery. Yeah, I like mysteries
like this. I mean, when they're they'll find a scientific
reason behind it. But I like mysteries like this, and
we want to solve these mysteries whenever possibles right in,
let us know your best guests. Scott, it looks like
we're at that time again. We're headed out, but we
still have so much listener mail and something I've never
(53:00):
even read yet, something you haven't read yet. Remember the
they're in the I don't know, they're in the dark
corners of my Gmail somewhere the dark corners. I'll find them.
I'll find them. And while Scott goes out on the
hunt for email, and while I go out on the
hunt for further asphalts related mysteries. Uh. You can get
(53:25):
a closer look at some of our online nuts and bolts,
the stuff that may not make it the air for
one reason or another, by checking out our Facebook and
our Twitter where we are car Stuff hs W, as
well as every audio podcast we've ever done on our website,
car Stuff Show dot com. And if you want to
take a page from your fellow listeners book, but you're
(53:46):
not too much of a Facebook person, you're not too
much of a Twitter person. What do we say if
that stuff doesn't burn your rope? Now? Yeah, which is
a call back to an earlier episode that I guess
it just sounds strange if you haven't heard that episode
any way, whatever your favorite turn of phrase is. Uh.
We have an email address and you can write to
us directly with suggestions for upcoming topics, feedback on anything
(54:09):
in the show. And I am hoping for a few
good theories on La Mancha Negra. How about not my
bag of carrots? Not my pack of carrots is something
that you said many many years ago. I I found
it on a transcription of one of our episodes. I
have a bag of care Hi, you know, I'm not sure.
I'm not sure, I don't remember, but you said it's
(54:29):
not my bag of carrots and I like that. Okay, Well,
if in Facebook and Twitter or not your bag of
carrots and apologize to everyone for that one, that's a
good one. You can write to us directly. We are
car stuff at how stuff works dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics. Is that how
(54:51):
stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think.
Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com.
CarStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Scott Benjamin
Ben Bowlin
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