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HR2 DRIVE RADIO January 24, 2026 by John Rush
SPEAKER 21 :
Being an expert on general automotive knowledge, what would the correct ignition timing be on a 1955 Bel Air Chevrolet with a 327 cubic inch engine and a four barrel carburetor?
SPEAKER 12 :
It is a trick question. Watch this. Because Chevy didn’t make a 327 in 55. The 327 didn’t come out until 62. And it wasn’t offered in the Bel Air with a four-barrel carb until 64. However, in 1964, the correct ignition timing would be four degrees before top dead center.
SPEAKER 02 :
Get ready for another hour of Drive Radio, brought to you by Colorado Select Auto Care Centers. Got a question for the experts? Then give them a call, 303-477-5600. Now it’s time to pop the hood and get our hands dirty. Drive Radio on KLZ 560, The Source.
SPEAKER 11 :
And we’re back. It’s KLZ 560 with Drive Radio with Josh and Justin and Ken from Toontech Automotive. So what problems have you guys seen with the cold? I guess it was just yesterday that came in, but have you gotten a lot of dead batteries coming in, hard to start cars?
SPEAKER 05 :
We had, you know, we had two batteries yesterday, you know, and, and they were probably, I mean, they were all, you know, three plus years old anyway. But yeah, that was one issue. And we had a, it wasn’t related to the cold, but yeah, his battery went bad because his alternator failed. So it was, yeah, it wasn’t related, but. Yeah, and tires. Not that we do tires, but as the weather gets colder, less flex on the rubber, and they tend to leak more. So we were airing up tires quite a bit yesterday too. But other than that, nothing yet. It hasn’t stuck around long enough. The cold weather hasn’t stuck around long enough to really be able to gauge anything, so to speak. But yeah, you guys run into anything?
SPEAKER 11 :
Not as much yesterday. I think, you know, after the weekend progresses, we’ll have the usual batteries, like you said, tire lights on.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 11 :
And, you know, the washer bottle somehow froze up on a lot of cars. Right. Yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
Back on the tire thing, one thing I would say is don’t get that bottom of the line tire. Yeah. Your Advantas and Ling Wongs and this kind of stuff, you can go out and feel those tires when it’s cold like this, and they are hard as a rock. And I’ve driven on a couple, and it is scary. I mean, I’d almost rather have a worn-out Michelin or a Goodyear than a brand-new cheap tire. The Iron Horse or whatever.
SPEAKER 11 :
Maybe get up to that middle of the line. Right.
SPEAKER 03 :
You’ll appreciate it for sure.
SPEAKER 05 :
That’s a good idea. Yeah, well, you know, it was funny. I was taking off from the light this morning, and, you know, it was wet, I guess, pulling up to the light, and I go to take off, and I’m not taking off fast, but, you know, the tire, I hear it. You know, it spun on acceleration, and I was just like, well, I wasn’t planning on that. But, yeah, just the cold ground and stuff like that, they don’t get as good a traction.
SPEAKER 03 :
If your car’s in the garage, it might help out a little bit, give a little more flex to that tire versus a car that’s sitting outside. we’ll kind of test that tire a little bit more when it’s five degrees outside maybe try to build a little bit of heat into it um just like a race car driver does you know there’s a reason there you don’t get the slowing thing going they’re trying to build up some heat in those tires right you know so that they work right no no different in our personal cars yeah if those tires have a little bit more heat in them and you’ve driven a little bit more on them they’re going to stick a little better
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, for sure. And if you had a slow leak before, it’s going to be a bigger leak now with the colder weather.
SPEAKER 03 :
You guys doing nitrogen at your shops at all?
SPEAKER 05 :
No. No.
SPEAKER 03 :
We don’t really do tires. You don’t see that very much anymore, do you?
SPEAKER 11 :
It was a fad. I really feel like it was a fad. A lot of places were doing nitrogen all over the place, and they were pushing every medium we went to or whatnot to put in nitrogen, and now it’s kind of gone.
SPEAKER 05 :
When that first came out, And they approached me on getting a nitrogen machine. I mean, it was like $10,000. And I’m like, wow. Are you going to recoup that? Yeah, right. And it’s just for that. I mean, you don’t use it for anything else. I guess you could use it on the Dodge air systems. Oh, your air ride? Right. But that wasn’t even out at that point. But I know the trailer I’ve got a couple years ago, uh, had nitrogen in the tires, but I mean, I’m not adding that, you know, as they get low.
SPEAKER 03 :
So, and having to pay for it. I mean, what do you, what’s the cost of that? So 40 bucks, 50 bucks. Yeah. Right. You got to put nitrogen in the tires versus just airing it up. Right.
SPEAKER 11 :
You got 75% nitrogen in there anyways. So let’s go to the phones. We have John with a transmission question. How you doing John? John, can you hear us? Yeah, I’m here. Hi. Yeah. Do you have a transmission question for us?
SPEAKER 09 :
It’s more of a clutch question. I have a 2009 Subaru Impreza. It’s got some kind of heavy-duty clutch in it. And what happened was, and I’ve never seen this before or heard of it, but the clutch fork welded the pivot for that. I noticed it was extra hard to push the pedal down, and eventually the pivot ball broke through the clutch fork. I thought, this is one of the many things, but I guess it’s not one of the many things. It’s a lot. And somebody online suggested just only use the clutch when you’re going from a stop, and after that, shift it without using the clutch, which I can do. But it’s a little harder. I don’t know if I should do that. I mean, I’d much rather the clutch fork were out than the sinker was inside the transmission. I did, me, myself, and I did change that clutch fork. It took me almost two weeks, but I did do it. I don’t want to do that again. What do you think about shifting it without using the clutch pedal?
SPEAKER 11 :
to replace the clutch is a lot cheaper than replacing synchro. So I think you got your answer already on it because synchros are not cheap to replace. And, and, you know, you can try and, you know, shift without pushing the clutch, but you’re going to take out a synchro. Eventually you’re going to miss a shift. Right.
SPEAKER 03 :
And then shops don’t rebuild that stuff. Like you’re, you’re buying a transmission. Yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
Exactly.
SPEAKER 03 :
Wow.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah. So, yeah, I wouldn’t recommend that. Yeah. Either it’s, And usually those last quite a bit. I mean, that’s not the only reason we see them go out, the slide on the –
SPEAKER 11 :
throwout bearing basically on the the nose of the transmission there that it slides on it tends to bind up and then it puts extra force on that clutch fork so and there’s a kit for that so they sell an oversized throwout bearing and they have a sleeve that goes over the basically the front of the input shaft where it comes out of the transmission and we see it we do a lot of subarus and yeah all day long i think we usually got one on the shelf yeah because of it for sure and most of the time when you buy the new clutch kits it seems like when i go to my suppliers it’s hard to get the original one we have to buy the one with the oversized bearing in the sleeve for that year’s subaru because it was just so soft and that’s like ken said that’s what took out that shift fork a lot of times yeah because that bearing will bind on that shaft and yeah cause problems so
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, I got the new fork from Subaru.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 09 :
It looked exactly like the other one. And I see online there’s upgraded ones that are billets or something like that or kind of a, you know, super duty clutch fork.
SPEAKER 05 :
Right.
SPEAKER 09 :
And I put, to me, it looked like the lube was kind of turned to powder. It was like a brown lube on that ball. And I just put in like chassis grease. And I’m thinking, I’ve never seen that turn to powder.
SPEAKER 05 :
No. It just collects all the dust that the clutch produces, yeah. Right. And then that shaft where the throwout bearing slid on that input shaft, that was okay? That wasn’t damaged or anything?
SPEAKER 09 :
It looked fine to me. I put another probably 30,000 miles on the car now since I had this done. Okay. So, yeah. I’m assuming, you know, it’s going to be good for a while anyway.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah. And what mileage did that fail?
SPEAKER 09 :
At about 110,000, something like that.
SPEAKER 03 :
That seems pretty typical.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it kind of depends on how it’s driven, I guess, too. I mean, if you do a lot of highway, of course, you’re not shifting as much. But, yeah, a lot of city. Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
SPEAKER 09 :
And I notice I can also usually shift it without pushing the pedal clear to the floor. And it shifts pretty easy. So, yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
As long as you’re not grinding anything, yeah.
SPEAKER 09 :
Oh, no, I’m not grinding anything at all.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 09 :
So even when it’s a little trickier to push it into gear, I’ll just do a clutch pedal about halfway and then hope for the best, I guess.
SPEAKER 05 :
Right, yeah. Well, if it lasts another 100, you know, or another 70 plus what you got on it right now, you know, that would be kind of expected, I guess.
SPEAKER 09 :
Right. Okay. All right. Thanks a lot, guys. Well, thanks for calling. All right.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, and looks like we can go on a break right now. So let’s take a little break and we’ll come back. All right.
SPEAKER 19 :
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SPEAKER 03 :
We’re here to answer any of your questions today, so give us a call if you have any car-related questions, car buying questions, maintenance questions, 303-477-5600. We’re happy to help today. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
And, yeah, I mean, getting a little further in on batteries and stuff, you know, we see a lot of failures between three and five years on batteries, so… You know, if you know your battery is in that age range and if you start experiencing any issues, you know, if you notice a slow cranking or especially on days like today, if you notice it’s slow today. If there hasn’t been an issue and you notice it’s slow today, it could be on its way out. You know, it might be good to get that checked out and see. You don’t want to have it get colder tonight and have it not start. You know, but that’s kind of one thing we’ve run into.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, a couple hundred dollars is probably worth not being stranded. Right, starting over and not have to worry about it for the next. You don’t want to be cold today. Right, exactly. You know, along those lines, you know, anyone, if you’ve got an AGM battery in your car, you need to check and make sure that the. The system doesn’t need to be reprogrammed when you replace these batteries as well. So the alternator tends to charge more and more and more as that AGM battery goes dead, and it doesn’t know when you put a new one in it, and you’ll take out your new AGM battery by not resetting that system.
SPEAKER 11 :
Pretty quick. Yeah, most of the European cars definitely are on AGMs, and they definitely have to be told that it just got a new battery all the time. Some of the domestics don’t, but I’ve found more and more Fords is doing that where they want you to tell it that it got a new battery so it can charge it differently over time.
SPEAKER 03 :
They’re making it a little bit harder and a little bit harder. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
Restart the learning curve on the battery, I guess. It is.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, because with AGMs, I guess their mindset is, When it’s new, we kind of easily charge it. We don’t give it a whole lot of current. And then as they degrade over time, the alternator will just start feeding it a lot more current.
SPEAKER 01 :
Sure.
SPEAKER 11 :
And so if the car thinks it’s got an older one in there and you have to put a new AGM in, it just sits there and cooks them because it’s feeding it current because it didn’t know it got replaced. Makes sense.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yep. Yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
You know, going down to the Google rabbit hole when it comes to batteries, I’m seeing a lot that EVs or, you know, your Priuses or not necessarily just an electric vehicle, but a hybrid vehicle that came with a lead acid battery originally. You’re seeing a lot of these guys recommend putting an AGM in there instead. Is that something you guys know anything about?
SPEAKER 05 :
I haven’t really run into anything like that. We have, you know, a number of hybrids that we work on and stuff. And so, yeah, it’s one of those things where, you know, we pretty much stick with what was original. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so just to avoid any possible issues that might not be an issue, but anything that could pop up and be less likely to have that.
SPEAKER 11 :
I would want to stay with what they came with because on the hybrids, you know, the Priuses and they don’t have an alternator and the EVs, they don’t have an alternator. They take current from the big hybrid battery and then bring it, step it down to, you know, usually like 13.5, 14 volts to charge the 12 volt battery. So, you know, that’s a lot of computer power being used to make sure all those batteries are up. So it’s not like it’s just an alternator that’s feeding it current. Like it doesn’t, you know, it’s, I know what I’ve seen is, you know, it doesn’t want to feed that battery a whole lot of power too. It wants to use it to move you down the road. You definitely want to stay with something close to the original.
SPEAKER 03 :
You know what’s kind of cool about the Korean EVs, your Kias and your Hyundais, is they’ll actually shut down the 12-volt system if the car hasn’t been turned on for a little while, and then you can turn it back on, and you can also purge the
SPEAKER 05 :
your high voltage battery to your 12 volt battery to actually start the car too so kind of cool what the koreans are doing with the the evs there yeah it’s a nice the just the power stored already might as well use it in an emergency so right that’s great and it’s a lot better than trying to start some of these cars when the battery’s dead right now or get them to move at all right yeah even to come out of gear yeah for sure so don and littleton you have a question on selling your car
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, hi. Hi, Don. Josh, Justin, it’s nice to talk with you guys. Yeah, you as well. Yeah, I’m glad Justin’s here because I kind of like to sell my truck, but I don’t know. What are the tips for determining how much it’s worth? I guess I don’t quite know how to do that.
SPEAKER 03 :
Tell me a little bit about your truck, Don.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, it’s a 2007 Tacoma, but it’s a base model. It’s just two-wheel drive and a four-cylinder and a regular cab and It’s a garage queen. It’s underdriven and over-maintained. And, you know, I just don’t drive it much anymore. And what do you know? I guess I could do without it, I guess.
SPEAKER 03 :
4×4 truck?
SPEAKER 07 :
No, it’s just two-wheel.
SPEAKER 03 :
Two-wheel drive. That’s okay. There’s still a market for those as well. You’d be surprised how many people just keep those trucks around for household work, something like that. Sure. Even that two-wheel drive Tacoma, I mean, those do bring a premium. So whatever you’re seeing for a book value on NADA or Kelley Blue Book, usually they sell for a scoach higher than that. Okay. If you’d be willing to send me a VIN or pictures, justin at ridgelineautobrokers.com, I could do a little research for you as well and then maybe help you get the most out of it. Or if you want me to even sell it for you, we’d be happy to do that for you as well.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah? Would you sell it on a consignment basis, or would you buy it and then resell it? How does that work?
SPEAKER 03 :
You know, it depends on what you’re trying to get out of it. If we consign it, I can usually net you another $1,000, $1,500 versus buying it outright, but we can run both those numbers. But it is kind of a pain nowadays putting things on Facebook and Craigslist, and there’s a lot of jicky jacks out there. So let me deal with the pain for you if you want, but I can give you numbers both ways.
SPEAKER 07 :
Okay, okay. And you’re at RidgelineAutobrokers.com, is that right?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, Justin at RidgelineAutobrokers.com. Yeah, okay. Yeah, just send me a little bit of info there, and yeah, I’d be happy to help.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, thank you. Used to be selling a car was really easy. You put an ad in the paper, and folks came by, and it was always a cash deal. But now it seems like it’s a lot more involved.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, someone will ask if it’s available. You’ll say yes. They’ll never respond to you. Or if they do respond, they’ll offer you half of what you have it listed for. I mean, it is not the same selling a car as it used to be, unfortunately.
SPEAKER 07 :
No, it’s not. No, it’s not. Well, thank you. I’ll do that, Justin. And while I have you on the line, you mentioned earlier in the show about cars with two batteries in them. Yes. Can you explain that? That’s a new one on me.
SPEAKER 03 :
So some cars have what’s called start-stop, where when you come up to a stoplight, it will actually shut the combustion engine off.
SPEAKER 07 :
Oh, yeah, I’ve seen that. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
There’s a small secondary battery that keeps all your 12-volt stuff powered up, so your instrument cluster, your radio, your lights, all of that stuff stays powered by the secondary small battery, which it is small. It looks almost like ATV size, motorcycle size battery. And then the main 12-volt battery, they keep that charged up as much as possible to actually start the engine back up. Is that right, guys? Yeah, that’s correct. Yeah, yeah. That’s maybe a question for these guys more than me, but I think I went the right way with that. You did, yeah.
SPEAKER 11 :
You did, exactly. Because when the ice is off the internal combustion engine, we don’t want the headlights to dim at night. Or if the AC is on in the hot summer days or right now we have the blower motor for the heat, we don’t want those to cool. quit you know your seat heaters to stop right now you know all those things so they put a little battery there but to keep the main battery which actually runs the starter fully charged so you don’t run it down you know sitting at a stoplight for a long time ah okay well that’s interesting i
SPEAKER 07 :
I didn’t know about that. So you have to maintain that little battery, too, then, I would imagine.
SPEAKER 03 :
Then they’re expensive, too. I mean, they’re actually more expensive than your big 12-volt battery, typically. So if you’re replacing both of those batteries between paying for the small battery, the big battery, and labor, depending on where they’re located, I mean, you could be $800 to a grand to replace both those batteries.
SPEAKER 07 :
Holy moly. You know, I put a battery maintainer on my 12-volt I have for years, and I can triple the length of a life of a battery that way, but would you have to put a battery maintainer on the little one and the bigger one?
SPEAKER 03 :
You’re probably not going to be able to get to it most of the time.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, the little one or the auxiliary battery, they’re usually not accessible.
SPEAKER 03 :
So under a seat or sometimes located underneath the 12-volt.
SPEAKER 05 :
In a panel, yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, they don’t make it easy, too. I mean, that would be nice if you could do that, but, yeah, not easy.
SPEAKER 05 :
But if they sit a lot, yeah, I mean, it’s going to make them want to fail. I would think so, yeah. At some point, anyway, yeah.
SPEAKER 07 :
My truck will sit for a couple of weeks at a time, and I really appreciate having that maintainer on because I know when I tap the starter, it’s… fully charged.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And, and a couple of weeks in today’s standards isn’t a real long time, but yeah, but you’re doing the right thing to keep that going. So yeah, your batteries will last a lot longer for sure.
SPEAKER 03 :
Any car owner or house owner should, should have a maintainer at home. I mean, they’re not expensive.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah. They’re so easy, you know. And one thing you want to do, too, if you are buying a maintainer, is get one that will do both the lead acid and the AGM. Oh, yeah. Because there are two different ones out there. Okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah. Okay. Well, I’ll appreciate that. Well, hey, always a pleasure talking with you guys. You too, John.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thanks, John.
SPEAKER 07 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 11 :
And let’s go to break. We have two callers coming up after break. But let’s take a break now, and then we have time for the callers.
SPEAKER 13 :
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SPEAKER 11 :
And we’re back. It’s Drive Radio on KLZ 560. And let’s go straight to the phones. We’ve got Mike in Masonville. How are you doing today, Mike?
SPEAKER 08 :
Hello, guys. Hey, I got a tip there for your very first caller this morning.
SPEAKER 16 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 08 :
That fellow who was having trouble with his battery and then his alternator and he had all those questions. Yes. The one thing you should have mentioned to him is that it really sounds like his starter motor is frozen up because when you put a brand new battery in, And now all of a sudden your starter, the typical clue is he got it started once, he shut it off, then went to start it again and just went, there you go. That’s your frozen starter motor there. He needs to replace that starter motor or at least have it checked. And the problem is with that, every once in a while you can get a starter motor that sometimes if it gets hung up like that, you can just go underneath it with a, little hammer and tap on the side of the case. So either one of the brushes that’s not making contact, it’ll come into contact, or it might just kind of help if there was something that was blocking where the bearing is that holds the shaft in place before it turns the flywheel. But anyway, you should have mentioned that to him. Hopefully, I don’t know, it’s too bad you can’t call him back and say, hey, one more thing.
SPEAKER 11 :
He’s still listening. I’m sure Eric’s still listening. There’s a good tip for you there, Eric.
SPEAKER 08 :
I need to help you guys out. I need to help you guys out on batteries just a little bit because you actually said a bad thing there. Those AGM batteries, AGM, gel cell, flooded lead acid, three different types of batteries. Each one of them has specific charging characteristics for when you first purchase them, depending on how fast you can charge them up and when they’re in use in your car. And what happens with the AGM, if you put an AGM battery into a car that has a voltage regulator for lead acid, it will work in a pinch for a while, but eventually, especially in cold weather, what will happen is your regulator for lead acid will And usually now the regulators are temperature compensated, so they know also what the ambient temperature is that they’re operating in. When you start that up in the wintertime on a cold day like today, it’ll send 15, 15.2, 15.6 for the first 10 or 15 seconds. Then it’ll maybe drop down to like 14.8 for just a little while. And then it’ll start decreasing that voltage as that current draw through it decreases so if you do that with an AGM battery eventually what happens in time as time goes by you’ll cook you’ll cook the electrolyte right out of your AGM battery so the point is and every battery shop and all you auto technicians should be checking this the very first question is Was your car built for lead-acid battery or was it built for AGM battery?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I can agree with that.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, sure. Yeah, that’s the number one question because you can get by. Now, let me tell you another, just one other little tip on batteries because I work for batteries. I had probably 60 batteries that I had maintained on a 24-7, 365 battery. And if my site goes down, I might get that call at 2 o’clock in the morning and say, hey, there’s nothing we can do. You’ve got to go out and swap those batteries. And, oh, my gosh, you don’t want that to happen. So here’s the tip. People make this huge mistake. When it comes to cold cranking amps, especially here in Colorado and anywhere north of here, you have to be concerned about cold cranking amps. So, yes, if you can get a higher cold cranking Back in the old days, now, new vehicles, you’ve got to have pretty much the BCI or the group size perfect. But if you think people make this mistake, they’ll put – if they can get a higher cold crank battery, they think, I need that, I need that. And so they pop that in there. But what they forget to check is to say if their alternator has the capability to charge a – larger battery like that because also there’s if you don’t charge a battery with the correct voltage and current with the correct current obviously going into the battery in other words you’re under charging it all the time it builds up sulfation and then your battery dies and then you wonder why when you really do need it it won’t it won’t perform so there’s some tips for you how to I’ll let you talk about that. You can kick that around unless you want to ask me a question.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, no, that’s good information. Yeah, glad to hear that, Mike. And, you know, for everybody, yeah, that’s good to know. Stick with what it was recommended for or what’s recommended for the vehicle. Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER 08 :
You made me flash on something else. Your battery tenders are good. They’re good products. But you got to do this little test with your because they make the cheaper battery tender and the more expensive one. I had one where I could charge 10 batteries, 10 automotive batteries at a time. But now you do have to say even on your battery tender charger, you want to get one. If you’re going to use AGM batteries, you got to get your charger. Make sure your charger has a switch on. or a button that you can push. You can select that. But here’s the tip that a lot of people got to double check. Make sure when you get your battery tender, put it on. Say you got your spare battery or the battery out in the car. Run your extension cord out there. Have your battery tender on. Then after five minutes go over, pull the extension cord out of the outlet. for two minutes, stick it back in and make sure your battery tender comes back on. Sometimes, maybe battery tender has fixed it, but I’ve been caught with my pants down and sometimes my underwear came down too. And my battery tender did not, it didn’t have that capability. Whether it was a defect on the one I was using, I’ve had, I have three battery tenders But you’ve got to check that because just like that guy said, if you’ve got $400 battery and you think you’re giving it that standby battery tender maintenance charge all the time, if you lose power and then the power comes back on, you’ve got to make sure that you’ve got to do some tests to make sure your battery tender comes back on. So there you are.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, I have quite a few of them, and they don’t. They’re all the smart chargers, and they just go back to their reset position. They don’t start charging again once they lose power.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah. Yeah, because my brother, he fishes, goes out onto the ocean. And so when he comes into port or when fishing season’s over, and instead of hauling those batteries out, He was putting them on a tender also. Now, I don’t want to say, I don’t know which brand he had, but when he went back three months later or four months later, his batteries were 100% dead and they would not take a recharge. And so, like you say, $400 a battery times five or six batteries, that’s a lot of money. Yep.
SPEAKER 11 :
i’ll let you guys go thank you well thank you yeah that’s some good information there yeah thanks exactly for sure yeah we got a few minutes before break let’s go to jeff we’ll start with you jeff and then we’ll go and break and maybe come back afterward jeff how you doing good morning guys good morning i’m doing well i uh two things well first of all before i get to tires the uh
SPEAKER 09 :
On batteries, we own a 2004 SSR, and it went through two batteries. I mean, it killed them dead. And the second one, it did it in less than a month. So that was the kind of current we were getting on it. But I’ve never been able to really isolate what the draw is, but I just put a tender on it, and I’ve never had that problem since. It’s just always green 100%. I have them on all our vehicles. As the last caller said, sulfation… is the enemy of a battery. And so the less that you sulfate, which is what happens when you discharge, you turn lead into lead sulfate, and it goes back to lead, but you never get it all out. So if you can minimize your discharge, you’ll minimize your sulfation. One thing to know, though, and this is a dummy on my part, is I plugged mine into an outlet, not realizing it was a switched outlet, switched to the light.
SPEAKER 05 :
Right, yeah.
SPEAKER 09 :
in my garage, so every time I left, I’d switch the light off, and the charger would stop turning.
SPEAKER 05 :
So you’re out there testing it when you hook it up, with lights on, meter on there, hey, everything’s good. Oh, boy.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, my key for that was I’d go out, and I’d turn the lights on, I’d go take a look at it, and it was yellow. oh what’s going on right never completely charges that’s weird yeah well you know is that grog is it that bad to maintain it and keep it up i mean i i was just and i realized no dummy you plugged it actually what i’ve done is i put uh you had you had your ceiling lights yeah and i put up some some lights here and i had one of those little screw outlets that you put go into the You screw into the light bulb. Oh, sure. Plugged into that. Oh, funny. Yeah, that was my downfall. So I went to the garage door opener outlet and haven’t had a problem since.
SPEAKER 05 :
It goes green and stays green until you take it off, huh? That’s funny.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, and that’s on all my vehicles. I have them on my lawnmower. I have them on my 4×4 side-by-side. I have them on my portable generator just to make sure it stays green. stays good so um yeah for the cost uh they’re they’re indispensable yeah another dummy thing though i did we were talking about tire pressure and uh You said that tires leak. I don’t think tires really leak as much as most people just use ambient air to pressurize them, and that’s 20% oxygen. So that 20% oxygen oxidizes with the rubber inside. And so what happens is as that oxygen goes away, your tire pressure decreases. And so, you know, if you fill it up the first time, it’s going to go down to 80%. And then if you fill it up again, it’s going to be 80% or 20%, which is, I think that’s like 4%. Yeah. So you’re going to have, after the second time, you’re going to have 96%. And every time you do that, it’s eventually not going to have enough oxygen in it to matter. But, uh, Again, I kind of learned this the hard way. I had put new tires on a vehicle in September, I think it was 21. And then in December of 22, I hadn’t really taken a look at the tires and gas mileage or anything. But in December of 22, I put in new coil packs and new plugs. And as winter came in, I noticed that my gas mileage was going down in the winter. And I’m going, what’s going on? What’s wrong with these coil packs and the spark plugs? And I’m checking. And, I mean, this was a couple of years. And then it finally dawned on me. I went out and checked the tire pressure. And it was way, way down. So my gas mileage was not lost. It was not due to the coil packs or the plugs. It was due to me checking. stupidly not checking my tires to make sure pressure was good because it had been good for so many years I’d gotten out of the hat.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, more drag, longer warm-up, all that stuff all contributes to that. Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER 09 :
And it was in the wintertime. So, you know, that’s the other thing is that air gets denser the colder it gets. So your tire pressure will go down in the winter. If you have them at 35 PSI, don’t be surprised if they’re down somewhere between 20 and 25 in the wintertime. So it’s not a one and done on them. Again, as I found out to my degree, you need to keep track of that. And the way I do that, we have a 2019 Ridgeline, which gives me the actual tire pressure off of the TPFS, which is good. And so that was kind of my key for figuring that out. And so you just have to keep on top of it. It’s not one of those things you can do once or do once a year and forget. Do it at least twice a year just to make sure that you’ve got the right pressure for the season. I’d say four times a year. Yeah. When you pressurize them in the summertime, you know, at 35, they’re going to go down. If you pressurize them to 35 in the winter, in the summer, you’re going to be probably up 40, 45%. Yeah. Or PSI.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, that’s all good information.
SPEAKER 09 :
We’ve got to take a little break here, Jeff. Yeah, those are my two lessons from hard knocks. Sounds good.
SPEAKER 10 :
Thanks for the information. With that, we’re going to go on break.
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SPEAKER 11 :
And we’re back. KLZ 560. It’s Drive Radio with Ken from Toontech and Justin from Ridgeline, our brokers. So how’s car sales been recently?
SPEAKER 03 :
It was kind of a slow start to the year. You know, fourth quarter seemed to be okay. But I don’t know. I think everyone kind of gets those New Year’s resolutions going and gets a little tighter on money. But eventually they’re going to need to buy something. So it always comes back around. Sure.
SPEAKER 11 :
Spending all their money on the gym membership and paying off Christmas.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, exactly. But I don’t know. When we’ve got a couple slow weeks like this, if someone’s looking for a deal, there’s a lot of cars we’d probably do 500 over cost, something like that. Some of that’s the price we have it listed at, and some cars we might be able to give you $2,000, $3,000 off right now. Yeah. Take advantage of it if you’re looking for, you know, a deal right now. We could probably give you one. It sounds like we might have a nice two-wheel drive Tacoma for sale, too, which I think that’s going to be a hot commodity.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, right. Yeah, a few people will be all over that quickly. They will. So, yeah. What kind of vehicles do you inventory? I know you consign and all that stuff, too. What?
SPEAKER 03 :
We try to do vehicles that are in our mechanics wheelhouse. So our goal is to be able to sell a reliable product, and the ultimate goal is to get the customer to come back for service. I like to say that we probably over-recondition our vehicles for what the used car industry is. So we don’t make a whole lot of money on what we call the front end of the deal. We don’t make a lot of profit on that, but we try to earn the trust of our customer, and they tend to come back as that vehicle needs to be serviced. So we sell it out the door ready to go, but just like any car, eventually they’re going to need service, and we like to stand behind the car and be able to service the car down the road as well. Well, good. That’s awesome. Yeah.
SPEAKER 21 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 11 :
Mostly, you know, domestic and Asian cars. Not a whole lot of European cars.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, we’ve kind of gotten into some of the more simple European cars lately. Some of your like 3 Series BMWs, C-Class Mercedes. You start to get into some of those higher end models and they depreciate quickly. They tend to need a lot of maintenance a year. Um, you know, we’ve ran the numbers, you know, Josh owns three shops and you look at some of these higher end European cars and you see upwards of $8,000 a year in maintenance on these cars. We try to sell cars that we believe are going to be in that thousand to $2,000 a year in maintenance. Um, You know, our price range is a little bit lower. We’re in that 7 to 20, 7 to 25. So a lot of younger drivers, you know, high school drivers, college students, people getting into their career. So we want something that’s not going to cost them an arm and a leg to keep going and keep on the road is our ultimate goal. So not necessarily specific makes and models, just what we know well enough that we think is going to be reliable.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, cars that are three to five years old or two to five years old, something like that.
SPEAKER 03 :
We’d love to do stuff with more Japanese models, too. We’d love to do more Hondas and Toyotas. But the problem with Hondas and Toyotas, when you go to purchase this vehicle, is we have to pay a premium to purchase a Honda or Toyota from the get-go. And then there’s not a whole lot of money left for us to recondition it. Um, so because of that, we, uh, we do do a lot of domestic stuff because we’re able to make that a nicer product.
SPEAKER 15 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 03 :
Um, and we’re really looking at like history of the vehicle too. You know, if a domestic vehicle has been well-maintained, you know, sometimes we’ll, we’ll pick that car over a Japanese vehicle that hasn’t been well-maintained. Yeah. Um, Again, we want something that’s going to go down the road for our customers. Makes sense. Something we can back up. Yeah, makes sense. Totally.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, and I mean, how important is it to have a good Carfax when people are looking at a car or purchasing a car?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I mean, it makes a big difference.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, it does. I mean, I know personally, when I’m looking at buying a used car or something like that, You know, I’m going to look at – first, I’m going to look at where it came from. You know, if it’s from the East Coast, I’m not going to take a second look at it. I’m going to pass right over that. You know, I’m going to look at maintenance that’s been recorded too. You know, if you see, you know, multiple owners, you know, it’s like, okay, well – You know, if it’s a three- to five-year-old car and it’s only, you know, it’s had six owners, it’s like, okay, that’s probably not, there’s something going on with that.
SPEAKER 03 :
No, we see that a lot at the auction. You know, a six- or seven-year-old vehicle that’s already had four owners or five owners, you question why. Right. If it’s a sports car or something like that, those cars tend to have more turnover. That makes sense. Because it’s not a necessity. Right. It’s like a third car and people get bored. I’m that way with my motorcycles. I like a motorcycle for two or three years. Right. And I’m like, oh, now I need something different. Totally makes sense. So on those type of vehicles, you expect more owners. But on like a Corolla, a Corolla, you don’t anticipate to have an owner a year, you know, that kind of thing. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER 11 :
It looks like we got a call. Let’s go to Bob in Colorado Springs. Bob, how are you doing this morning?
SPEAKER 21 :
Pretty good. How are you guys doing? I appreciate you guys very much. Last week, you guys, who am I talking with? Josh and Ken and Justin. Josh?
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 21 :
Justin? Okay. Yeah, Justin. Yeah, my name is Bob. Justin, I talked with John last week. I got a Chevy Silverado 2000 5.3. Okay. Fantastic truck. Pardon?
SPEAKER 06 :
Fantastic truck.
SPEAKER 21 :
Oh, well, thank you very much. Yeah, I love it. It’s 25 years old, and everything’s been just great on it. I got hit with a little problem here last week. We were out in my lights, my turn signal lights, kind of started going wacky on me. And I talked with John about this, and he told me some things to check with and everything. And I did. I replaced the relay flasher fuse signal and relay hazard. It’s a combination that’s kind of like behind a fuse box. The driver’s side there on the dash on that side there underneath. So I replaced that, but it didn’t seem to make any difference. And so… I replaced some bulbs that were burned out. And then so I’ve been just narrowing things down. And so he told me to also check for a ground. And so I look for a ground and I really didn’t know. So my wife went online and I got underneath and I think I found a ground. It’s on a frame, I think. Am I correct? It should be. Okay. And it’s kind of like below. If I would open my door on the passenger side and put my feet down inside there, it’s kind of straight down from that. Is that where that would be? It’s kind of hard to say on that one, or do you know what I’m talking about? There’s usually one there. And what it is, it’s coming off of a harness that’s attached to the frame. It’s coming off of it, and it’s going to the frame. Okay, and there’s two wires. You know, one’s got that little hook on it. So I took them off, and I cleaned it really well. I sanded it and everything. I mean, even the connectors I sanded, and they look beautiful, brand new. I hooked them back up, and I thought, well, I’m going to get this baby going now. Nope, same problem. So I’m in my garage there late last night, and I’m pushing on my brake and steed because I put my turn signals on. And they’re going wacky. You know, it goes from red to yellow, red to yellow on each side. And it shouldn’t be. But when I turn the truck off, then it’s okay. But I need it when I’m running to have turn signals. But it goes from the top, you know, hazard brake light, you know, down to the yellow, up, back, up and down on both sides. And even my license plate, little lights on each side are flashing. And so then I look up on my cargo lamp and, uh,
SPEAKER 11 :
Can we put you on hold?
SPEAKER 21 :
I noticed they weren’t on.
SPEAKER 11 :
Bob, can we put you on hold and come back after the break? It’s the noon break, and this is what we call a hard break, so we have to hit it right on time.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, we’ve got some questions to help you figure this out for sure.
SPEAKER 11 :
This is going to be a longer one, so let’s go on break, and we’ll come back with you.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thanks, Bob.
SPEAKER 15 :
Still haven’t had enough? Go to drive-radio.com. Email your questions and comments. Download previous programs and find lots of useful information, including your nearest Colorado Select Auto Care Center. That’s drive-radio.com. Thanks for listening to Drive Radio, sponsored by the member shops of Colorado Select Auto Care Centers on KLZ 560.
