RAY: Hi, we're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack, the Tappett Brothers, and we're here to talk about cars, car repair, and, duh, the answer to last week's Puzzler.

TOM: What was the Puzzler?

RAY: Well, this came across my desk recently. I think 1994. And I don't know if it's true or not, but as I mentioned last week, it's never stopped me in the past. And this came from someone named Dale via our Website, which is the Car Talk section of cars.com. And I can only assume that Dale is a bedouin. Dale says, I used to work at a marina where we stored and launched boats with a crane. We had a repair shop with about five mechanics, a parts department, you know, all that stuff, a new and used boat sales department, and as such, I'm sure they had a lot of auto mechanics hanging around the place. One day, a customer with an inboard powered boat used it for water skiing and left it at the dock overnight. And he came in to use it the next morning, and the battery was dead because he'd left the lights on. So, the head mechanic pulls out the battery and takes it to the shop for a quick charge. You don't bring the mountain to Mohammed in this case. You bring the battery in.

TOM: Yeah.

RAY: A while later, they take the battery back to the boat. They put it in and try to start it. The starter spins up. You know, you can hear the motor turn, but it doesn't engage the fly wheel.

TOM: Mmmm.

RAY: OK? It started fine several times yesterday, the owner of the boat says. So, they pull the starter off, thinking it's no good, and they what? Bring the starter inside, and they put it on the bench, and they test it. And every time they hit it with the 12 volts, it works perfectly. The little gear jumps out, and it would engage the --

TOM: Spins like crazy.

RAY: Spins like crazy. So, they put it back in the boat, and again, it spins up, but doesn't engage the fly wheel.

TOM: Hm.

RAY: A while later, they figured out what was wrong, and they fixed it, and there was nothing wrong with the engine, there was nothing wrong with the starter, and I guess I lied a little bit when I said there was nothing wrong with the --

TOM: I think so?

RAY: You think that was a lie?

TOM: Well, you could call it a mistake.

RAY: I could, huh?

TOM: You could. And you could even explain away, you could --

RAY: How would I do that?

TOM: No, you could prove that there really was nothing wrong with the battery.

RAY: The battery wasn't faulty.

TOM: The battery wasn't faulty.

RAY: OK. So, there was nothing wrong with the engine. The starter motor was OK. And the battery was not faulty.

TOM: No. The battery was the problem, but there was nothing wrong with it.

RAY: And the question was, what was the problem? I've never done this before, but I understand it's possible, when hooking up the battery charger, if you remember, they took the battery from the boat and brought it into the shop. And they hooked up the charger to the battery, which was completely stone dead, obviously, because he had left the lights on overnight. And when they hooked it up, instead of hooking the red connector to positive and the black connector to negative, they reversed them.

TOM: Yeah.

RAY: And evidently, the battery will take the charge in reverse. And when they installed it in the boat and hooked the wires up correctly, it made the starter turn backwards. And when that happens, the little gear won't pop out and engage the fly wheel. Do we have a winner this week?

[ Car Talk Puzzler ]