RAY: Hey! We're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers. And here's the answer to last week's puzzler. You may remember long ago in a galaxy --

TOM: Oh yeah.

RAY: Far away. A Ford Galaxy, that is, our buddy Crusty was driving what was to be his wedding ceremony, up in the wilds of Maine. He's driving along this lonely, unimproved, i.e. dirt road, cow path, full of potholes and whatever, he's driving along and he drifts into the state of euphoria. Remember that?

TOM: Is that near Maine? Is that east of Maine or --

RAY: Well, it's just between New Hampshire and Maine. Anyway, he drifts into this state of Euphoria, thinking about the marital bliss that awaits. So, there he is and he hits this huge rock in the road. Big rock and it tears open his gas tank and he says, "Ah, man." What did he say?

TOM: Fudge. Oh, fudge.

RAY: Fudge.

TOM: Oh fudge!

RAY: And he realizes... He does a quick calculation and he realizes that the gasoline is pouring out at such a rate that he's never going to make it to the wedding and he knows that if he doesn't make it, she's not going to hang around because he's what?

TOM: A loser.

RAY: He's a loser. So, he opens the trunk and he's trying to figure out some way to solve the problem and he starts pulling stuff out. He's got another transmission in there, a starter motor, a raccoon coat. The raccoon still in it, I believe. His tool kit. He looks down again under the car and he sees the gas pouring out and he realizes that in five minutes he will have lost so much gas that he'll never make it to the wedding.

TOM: Whoosh.

RAY: So, he runs to the front of the car, throws open the hood and with a few tools in his hand and in a... Maybe a minute, maybe less, he yanks something out from under the hood and a minute later he's driving away and he makes it to the wedding on time and the question was what did he do? He didn't take the fuel pump out or anything like that.

TOM: No, in a minute.

RAY: Yet the gas was pouring out. What does he --

TOM: I have to say that I have no idea what the answer to this is.

RAY: No?

TOM: I have no idea.

RAY: Well, I think you might hate it. He removes the windshield washer bottle, pours out the washer fluid -- glug, glug, glug. Fills up the washer bottle with gasoline.

TOM: Oh.

RAY: Puts the washer bottle back where he took it out from, hooks the hose from it not to the spritzers, but to the carburetor and he gets to his wedding by hitting the little button on the dashboard. So, instead of using his fuel pump to fill up the carburetor with gasoline, he goes bzeep, bzeep. And the car begins to run all right and we notice that he's starting to stumble and losing power. He gives another little squirt.

TOM: Aw. I do like it actually. I was confused by the fact that I thought from your description of the situation --

RAY: That he removes something and left it.

TOM: He removes something --

RAY: I had to lie.

TOM: Closed the hood --

RAY: I couldn't --

TOM: Got in the car and drove away.

RAY: I couldn't tell the truth because it would have been too easy.

TOM: And I didn't understand how he could have done this in a minute.

RAY: That's why it was what?

TOM: A puzzler.

RAY: A puzzler. I mean I could have made it easier say he removed something, he re-installed, he took the hose that had previously been connected to it --

TOM: Well, I mean --

RAY: And connected it to something else.

TOM: If you had said --

RAY: And I --

TOM: If you had said five minutes, I might have thought in a completely different way.

RAY: Well, it really took a minute.

TOM: Bull feathers.

RAY: All right.

TOM: All right, twenty.

RAY: Twenty-five minutes.

TOM: But it's very good. I like it. I like it.

RAY: And of course it applicable because his Galaxy was carburetor. If he had a fuel-injected car like we all have now except for --

TOM: Not all of us.

RAY: Tommy.

TOM: Yeah.

RAY: Do you even have a carburetor?

TOM: Not really.

RAY: All right. Anyway, who is going to win our fabulous prize this week?

TOM: I have no idea, but I can tell you who is getting our crummy tenth anniversary T-shirt. The winner this week is Tyrone Herman from Burlington, Illinois and there is a Burlington as you...

RAY: Yeah, go ahead.

TOM: We won't even discuss it.

RAY: No, not necessary.

TOM: By having your correct answer chosen at random, Tyrone, from among all the answers that we got this week, you're going to get a T-shirt that says on it Car Talk, celebrating ten years of bad car advice. Now, this T-shirt is super absorbent and excellent for wiping off your dipstick or anything else.

RAY: Oh.

TOM: It's really... You clean off your windshield or you can wax the car with it. It's very soft. Don't wear it because it looks stupid.

[ Car Talk Puzzler ]