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Modern Tech Upgrades For A C5 Corvette Without Cutting · In Wheel Time Podcast

• 0:13
  Don Armstrong: It's always good to start a show off just that way.
• 0:17
  Don Armstrong: Hello, and good morning, and welcome to the In Wheel Time Car Talk Show from our dual city studios in Texas, USA.
• 0:25
  Don Armstrong: I just admitted it, didn't I?
• 0:27
  Don Armstrong: Yeah, you did.
• 0:28
  Don Armstrong: Sorry I did.
• 0:29
  Jeff Dziekan: We're good.
• 0:29
  Jeff Dziekan: Nobody knows.
• 0:30
  Don Armstrong: It is the In-Wheel Time Car Talk Show just ahead.
• 0:33
  Don Armstrong: Why is pedestrian safety important to you and me?
• 0:36
  Don Armstrong: Because we're driving the car.
• 0:39
  Don Armstrong: We're going to find out, we hope.
• 0:40
  Don Armstrong: Plus, Jeff has cars from the 1960s that no one remembers or doesn't want to.
• 0:47
  Don Armstrong: And Mars has the Houston Hidden Underground.
• 0:50
  Don Armstrong: Again?
• 0:52
  Don Armstrong: But it's not so hidden any longer.
• 0:55
  Don Armstrong: There's the candy driving destination.
• 0:57
  Don Armstrong: Howdy, along with Mike out of this world, Mars.
• 0:59
  Don Armstrong: We always need more Jeff Seekin.
• 1:01
  Don Armstrong: David Ainsley is vacationing up in the UP of uh Florida.
• 1:07
  Don Armstrong: He wishes.
• 1:08
  Don Armstrong: Yeah, no, he definitely wishes.
• 1:09
  Don Armstrong: He called this morning.
• 1:10
  Don Armstrong: Now he's 2,200 miles away.
• 1:12
  Don Armstrong: He calls this morning and says, Well, it's 63 degrees here.
• 1:18
  Don Armstrong: I'm sitting outside in his teenager uh pants that he wears to the Kmart uh and uh drinking his coffee and just checking in with you guys.
• 1:28
  Don Armstrong: Well, we appreciate it, David.
• 1:30
  Don Armstrong: Thanks a lot.
• 1:30
  Don Armstrong: Let's go boating later.
• 1:31
  Don Armstrong: He's probably got his boat all fueled up there now.
• 1:34
  Don Armstrong: So I'm Don Armstrong.
• 1:36
  Don Armstrong: Glad you could join us today.
• 1:38
  Don Armstrong: Uh we're back from a week's vacation, as you can tell, and we're all amped up.
• 1:41
  Don Armstrong: I know Mr.
• 1:42
  Don Armstrong: Mars is.
• 1:43
  Mike Marrs: Absolutely.
• 1:44
  Don Armstrong: You all amped up, Mars?
• 1:45
  Don Armstrong: Oh, and we got sunshine today.
• 1:47
  Don Armstrong: You do.
• 1:48
  Don Armstrong: We got a little cloudiness today.
• 1:49
  Don Armstrong: It's cloudiness, and it's supposed to storm here today.
• 1:52
  Mike Marrs: I know it's it'll be here this afternoon, but for this morning, we had to do it.
• 1:55
  Don Armstrong: We do send it all off to your direction.
• 1:57
  Mike Marrs: We appreciate you sharing.
• 1:59
  Don Armstrong: Yeah, just to mess up your day and that clean car wash.
• 2:04
  Don Armstrong: So is that your car that's behind you this morning?
• 2:06
  Mike Marrs: I wish.
• 2:07
  Mike Marrs: That's my that's my dream car.
• 2:08
  Mike Marrs: I used to think I was going to build one, but at my age, I think it's gonna be buy one.
• 2:13
  Don Armstrong: No, at your age now, it's you can't afford it.
• 2:17
  Mike Marrs: I haven't gotten to that age yet.
• 2:19
  Jeff Dziekan: Is that channeled?
• 2:20
  Jeff Dziekan: Is that a channeled uh no?
• 2:22
  Mike Marrs: I don't think that was channeled.
• 2:24
  Mike Marrs: It's just uh lowboy.
• 2:25
  Jeff Dziekan: It's a lowboy, yeah.
• 2:27
  Mike Marrs: No fenders, things like that.
• 2:29
  Don Armstrong: Well, behind us today, we have my soon-to-be son-in-law's hippie van that uh he and my daughter took a trip, another 2200-mile trip from Denver to I think Montreal or somewhere up in the northeast.
• 2:48
  Don Armstrong: And um and it made it and it didn't have a problem.
• 2:53
  Don Armstrong: Go figure.
• 2:54
  Don Armstrong: Those are the kind of people that you just don't like and that don't watch this show.
• 2:58
  Don Armstrong: Yeah, they just roll the dice and go with it.
• 3:01
  Don Armstrong: Whatever, we'll deal with it.
• 3:02
  Don Armstrong: That's what we did this morning.
• 3:03
  Don Armstrong: We did with this show.
• 3:05
  Don Armstrong: Hey, so glad you could join us.
• 3:07
  Don Armstrong: Do we have our guest, Mike?
• 3:09
  Don Armstrong: He's I think he's on the phone with him.
• 3:12
  Don Armstrong: Okay, I I love to get the show started like this.
• 3:17
  Don Armstrong: But uh, anyway, Mars, you do we have our guest?
• 3:20
  Mike Marrs: Not yet.
• 3:21
  Mike Marrs: I think I'm gonna step away and see if I can uh find her.
• 3:24
  Don Armstrong: Okay, okay.
• 3:25
  Don Armstrong: Well, you got about two minutes, otherwise, we're just gonna move on because I don't want to beleaguer the show any uh this morning.
• 3:33
  Jeff Dziekan: So um, anyway, uh, how was your fourth of July?
• 3:36
  Jeff Dziekan: It's good.
• 3:36
  Jeff Dziekan: Uh uneventful, of course.
• 3:38
  Jeff Dziekan: Uh of course, we got a little rain and all that good stuff, but all in all good.
• 3:41
  Don Armstrong: I was in bed, I think, by 10, 9, 10.
• 3:46
  Don Armstrong: Yeah, generally, and then stayed up half the night listening to people pop in firewalls.
• 3:50
  Jeff Dziekan: See, that didn't happen.
• 3:50
  Jeff Dziekan: That normally happens.
• 3:51
  Jeff Dziekan: They were pretty much done by 10 o'clock, 10:30 after everybody had the big finale on TV and all that.
• 3:57
  Jeff Dziekan: It pretty much died out, which was good.
• 3:59
  Jeff Dziekan: And they really don't bother me, anyways.
• 4:01
  Jeff Dziekan: We don't have pets.
• 4:01
  Don Armstrong: Well, maybe it was the gunfire I heard from the freeway over there.
• 4:04
  Don Armstrong: I'm not exactly sure.
• 4:05
  Don Armstrong: Uh it's hard for me to describe.
• 4:07
  Don Armstrong: Backfiring cars out here.
• 4:08
  Don Armstrong: Yeah, it ain't that.
• 4:10
  Don Armstrong: Um, I've done nothing with the Corvette since we drove back from Grand Berry.
• 4:17
  Don Armstrong: Uh, that was a month ago, uh, three weeks ago, three weeks, three, three, four weeks ago.
• 4:22
  Don Armstrong: At any rate.
• 4:23
  Don Armstrong: Um, but I do have things to do, and I ran across, you know, I have a C5 Corvette for those that don't know, which is a 2001 for me.
• 4:33
  Don Armstrong: And it is so old school that it's got a perfect fit.
• 4:41
  Don Armstrong: Go ahead, old school.
• 4:42
  Don Armstrong: It is old school, like me.
• 4:44
  Don Armstrong: Um, so it's got this little bitty display screen that only shows what radio station you're on.
• 4:52
  Don Armstrong: The 10 disc CD player that was back in the back end of the car.
• 4:57
  Don Armstrong: I took that out a long time ago.
• 4:58
  Don Armstrong: I'm not gonna mess with that thing.
• 5:00
  Don Armstrong: I think I still have one on the shelf at home.
• 5:02
  Don Armstrong: Yeah, I do, and so uh I even sawed the bolts off that thing is supposed to mount to back there.
• 5:08
  Don Armstrong: Waste of time.
• 5:09
  Don Armstrong: Because what I've done is that I've got a little Bluetooth adapter.
• 5:13
  Don Armstrong: Oh, yeah, that plugs in the cigarette lighter, and it's really cool because it shows what frequency to tune the radio to.
• 5:22
  Don Armstrong: So it takes the Bluetooth signal and pumps it into the radio at that frequency.
• 5:27
  Jeff Dziekan: For those of you playing at home, what word did he say was key in that?
• 5:32
  Jeff Dziekan: Cigarette lighter.
• 5:33
  Jeff Dziekan: No cars have cigarette lighters, so you have a car, but they do have outlets.
• 5:37
  Jeff Dziekan: Well, they have outlets, but they're not called that.
• 5:39
  Don Armstrong: They're called I'll bet you if you bought it, if you go to U totem and buy the cigarette lighter for 1095, I'll bet you stick it in there and it'll heat up because the cigarette lighter had coils on it that were warmed or heated electrically through that plug.
• 5:54
  Jeff Dziekan: Yeah, with you plug your phone adapter in there, that's not the same type, as you know.
• 6:00
  Don Armstrong: Oh, that's why the last phone started smoking.
• 6:03
  Jeff Dziekan: They got a hot call coming in.
• 6:05
  Jeff Dziekan: Yeah, either that or that kind of smoking.
• 6:07
  Jeff Dziekan: I know, but I think that I don't I don't I wouldn't trust that.
• 6:10
  Jeff Dziekan: I wouldn't trust the guy at the quickie mart to sell me a plug.
• 6:15
  Don Armstrong: That's it.
• 6:16
  Don Armstrong: Yeah, so um, anyway, this that thing works great.
• 6:19
  Don Armstrong: Do I use it very often?
• 6:20
  Jeff Dziekan: Hardly for your radio, you do.
• 6:22
  Don Armstrong: Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, it connects up the phone to the yeah, but I don't really play the music.
• 6:29
  Don Armstrong: I have some CDs that I bought way back in the day.
• 6:33
  Don Armstrong: Headbang and yacht music, or what none of that, but it's turned into yacht rock radio now, headbang.
• 6:39
  Don Armstrong: Uh-huh.
• 6:39
  Don Armstrong: Or the the the Beatles' greatest hits and you know, 10 CDs or what whatever it is that I've got in there.
• 6:45
  Don Armstrong: So I've got that in some sort of a portfolio thing.
• 6:48
  Don Armstrong: You just flip flu it and put the thing in, whatever.
• 6:50
  Don Armstrong: I've got it all Taylor Swift.
• 6:52
  Don Armstrong: It works for me, but the point of the story is that I was scrolling, Doom scrolling, perusing, and uh Doom scrolling.
• 7:01
  Don Armstrong: And so one of the things that I found on there, somebody had put a member of the C5 Corvette bunch, of course, several of them actually.
• 7:09
  Don Armstrong: Somebody had posted something about he wanted to change out the radio and wanted to put something more modern in there.
• 7:16
  Don Armstrong: And I'm going, ooh, I could do that.
• 7:18
  Don Armstrong: So for 500 bucks, you can buy an actual display screen.
• 7:22
  Don Armstrong: You don't have to cut up according to the instructions, you don't have to cut up the structure behind it, which was a big thing.
• 7:28
  Don Armstrong: Cut up the structure, and the current surround that goes around the current radio just goes right up to it.
• 7:36
  Don Armstrong: I'm thinking, well, 500 is an awful lot of money, but it's pretty cool.
• 7:41
  Don Armstrong: And then, of course, it's got Bluetooth, and then you can marry your phone because it's got Android Auto in it.
• 7:47
  Don Armstrong: You marry your phone to it, and there's your there's a couple of things I see in this.
• 7:51
  Jeff Dziekan: One, the cost of it, obviously.
• 7:53
  Jeff Dziekan: And you helping me.
• 7:54
  Jeff Dziekan: That's the other problem.
• 7:57
  Jeff Dziekan: Yeah.
• 7:58
  Jeff Dziekan: But how long are you going to keep this car?
• 8:00
  Jeff Dziekan: You're going to put$500 investment in a radio and you drive it once a month.
• 8:03
  Jeff Dziekan: You haven't driven it, you said, since for three weeks.
• 8:05
  Jeff Dziekan: Three weeks.
• 8:06
  Jeff Dziekan: Well, and here's so is that really so here's the answer.
• 8:08
  Don Armstrong: Here's the answer to that.
• 8:10
  Don Armstrong: It's gonna be kind of uh really a fight to the finish to find out whether I'm gonna sell it or I'm gonna change the radio or do none of the above.
• 8:18
  Jeff Dziekan: I say upgrade.
• 8:21
  Jeff Dziekan: You say sell it, I say upgrade, not with the radio with the vehicle.
• 8:25
  Jeff Dziekan: I would say look into something else.
• 8:27
  Jeff Dziekan: I I'm thinking it's time.
• 8:29
  Jeff Dziekan: Well, here's the problem that has occurred in the past.
• 8:33
  Don Armstrong: Let's see, I bought that thing in 2017.
• 8:37
  Don Armstrong: Okay, bought it in 2017, and so we're coming up on, you know, I've owned it for eight years.
• 8:44
  Don Armstrong: My left knee isn't what it was.
• 8:46
  Jeff Dziekan: See, you're gonna buy a new car, or you're gonna get a new left knee.
• 8:48
  Jeff Dziekan: What are you gonna do?
• 8:49
  Jeff Dziekan: No, well, there ain't gonna be a new left knee.
• 8:50
  Jeff Dziekan: Well, then you need to uh I know a guy that's he bought a wonderful car, it's a Buick.
• 8:56
  Jeff Dziekan: And of course you might be looking into those, yeah.
• 8:59
  Jeff Dziekan: Into a Corvette, no, a Buick.
• 9:02
  Mike Marrs: Of course, the Buick.
• 9:04
  Don Armstrong: Mike, so I'm thinking, you know, the question then comes all right, so what are you gonna buy?
• 9:09
  Don Armstrong: Well, it's not gonna be anything new, it's gonna be used.
• 9:12
  Jeff Dziekan: Yeah, certified, sure.
• 9:14
  Don Armstrong: No, well, maybe because they're more expensive, but I don't know, so I may even do that.
• 9:19
  Don Armstrong: I'd like to buy something like you know, five years old, 35,000 miles on it.
• 9:25
  Don Armstrong: I'm thinking, I don't know.
• 9:27
  Don Armstrong: I haven't driven one in a long time, and that would be a 2000, do the math, whatever it is, and um maybe a Cadillac four-door sedan with a V6.
• 9:39
  Jeff Dziekan: There you go.
• 9:39
  Jeff Dziekan: Now you're talking.
• 9:40
  Jeff Dziekan: Now you're talking.
• 9:41
  Don Armstrong: Yeah, nice ride.
• 9:42
  Jeff Dziekan: I'd help you work on that.
• 9:43
  Jeff Dziekan: Air conditioner works.
• 9:46
  Jeff Dziekan: So, those of you listening at home, send to info at inwheeltime.com suggestions of what Don should buy, trade, sell.
• 9:54
  Don Armstrong: Now you know who's gonna jump right in on it.
• 9:56
  Don Armstrong: You know, George is going to.
• 9:57
  Don Armstrong: Yeah.
• 9:57
  Don Armstrong: And so does Heitzman, but Heitzman doesn't count because if you see.
• 10:00
  Don Armstrong: Heisman's got a Cadillac, doesn't he?
• 10:02
  Don Armstrong: No, he's got like a Kia or something.
• 10:03
  Jeff Dziekan: Oh, I thought he had a Cadillac.
• 10:05
  Don Armstrong: No.
• 10:05
  Don Armstrong: Oh, you know, here's a guy that claims to be a car guy, but he's not a car guy.
• 10:10
  Jeff Dziekan: He is.
• 10:11
  Don Armstrong: No.
• 10:11
  Don Armstrong: So he takes all the money he makes down there at NASA because you know it's government supported, uh, and uh socks it away.
• 10:19
  Don Armstrong: Maybe he should buy a mail truck, government supported.
• 10:22
  Don Armstrong: Hey, now there's an idea.
• 10:23
  Don Armstrong: Yeah, unair conditioned old mail truck with a billion miles on it.
• 10:28
  Jeff Dziekan: But no, send in suggestions of what you think Don might be be trying to do.
• 10:33
  Jeff Dziekan: Well, I was thinking about it.
• 10:34
  Don Armstrong: You know, is it a Cadillac CTS C T it's a CT, it's a four-door sedan, it's a mid-sized four-door sedan, and uh, I think that it's built on the old Camaro platform with stretched.
• 10:48
  Don Armstrong: I don't know, and uh it's got an old school V6 in it.
• 10:53
  Don Armstrong: I mean turbo'd, yeah.
• 10:54
  Don Armstrong: No, I don't I don't want turbo, I don't want a turbo.
• 10:57
  Don Armstrong: No, right aspiration.
• 10:59
  Don Armstrong: I have unsold myself from turbocharged anything.
• 11:02
  Don Armstrong: Okay, some of these cars that I drive turbocharged four-cylinder, oh 200, 250 horsepower.
• 11:11
  Don Armstrong: Here's the problem how long let me ask you this.
• 11:14
  Don Armstrong: How long have manufacturers been selling turbocharged four-cylinder engines?
• 11:20
  unknown: Oh, oh, oh.
• 11:22
  Jeff Dziekan: You you bring that up.
• 11:23
  Don Armstrong: Well wait, do you got to answer the question?
• 11:25
  Jeff Dziekan: Selling or making?
• 11:27
  Jeff Dziekan: Well, okay, uh making available to the public.
• 11:31
  Jeff Dziekan: Okay, let's let me back this up because my last part of the segment that I'm doing has a turbo in it.
• 11:38
  Jeff Dziekan: Oh, so we'll from the 1960s.
• 11:40
  Don Armstrong: Well, yes, I I I can tell you right now that the Corvair from 1964 had the Corvair Spider, yeah, that had a turbocharged engine in it.
• 11:53
  Jeff Dziekan: Didn't the Tucker have a turbo?
• 11:54
  Jeff Dziekan: It was a helicopter motor, wasn't it?
• 11:56
  Jeff Dziekan: I think Tucker is some sort of weird motor in it, but I don't know as if it's turbocharged.
• 11:59
  Jeff Dziekan: Oh, I don't know either.
• 12:00
  Don Armstrong: I was I was thinking Tucker.
• 12:01
  Don Armstrong: But at any rate, I have had some absolutely horrible, horrible turbocharged four-cylinder engines, and it's not the engine's fault, it's turbo lag to begin with, and then they marry it to a transmission that doesn't understand turbo lag, and they have damn near gotten me killed.
• 12:22
  Don Armstrong: Oh, and and I am I'm I don't hot rod these things.
• 12:25
  Don Armstrong: I rarely floor the car, but I will tell you that with the turbo lag connected to a transmission that doesn't get it, we're talking about a three-second lag before the thing takes off.
• 12:39
  Jeff Dziekan: It can be dangerous.
• 12:40
  Don Armstrong: In in this city, with all the cars and all of the situations that I drive in, I need the power now, not three seconds from now, to get across the intersection.
• 12:48
  Jeff Dziekan: And a lot of times you have to wait anyways because people are running red lights left and right all the time.
• 12:53
  Don Armstrong: It's nerve-wracking.
• 12:54
  Don Armstrong: And uh, I've actually called one of the cars out that I didn't really want to, but I'm not gonna lie to you.
• 13:01
  Don Armstrong: Um, the one I'm driving right now, that out there, that Toyota, spot on.
• 13:05
  Don Armstrong: Really?
• 13:05
  Don Armstrong: Yeah, it's great.
• 13:06
  Don Armstrong: It's an electric car.
• 13:08
  Don Armstrong: It's uh it's a plug-in hybrid.
• 13:10
  Don Armstrong: Plug-in hybrid, okay.
• 13:11
  Don Armstrong: Right.
• 13:11
  Don Armstrong: So it's got a gas motor in it, and uh that that's coming up next week.
• 13:16
  Don Armstrong: I'll review that.
• 13:17
  Don Armstrong: But I will tell you that uh one of the cars that I reviewed and didn't wasn't really kind to it, was the fact of this turbo lag.
• 13:26
  Don Armstrong: And it's not against one brand, it's against all of the brands that do this combination that the car doesn't talk to the transmission and engine at the same time.
• 13:37
  Jeff Dziekan: Well, this is how the technology is buying, is what you're saying.
• 13:40
  Jeff Dziekan: It's turbolag.
• 13:41
  Jeff Dziekan: So the next question is send your cards and letters to what color he should buy.
• 13:45
  Jeff Dziekan: There you go.
• 13:46
  Jeff Dziekan: That'd be the next one.
• 13:49
  Don Armstrong: Yeah.
• 13:49
  Jeff Dziekan: Okay, so what would I buy?
• 13:51
  Jeff Dziekan: Would I buy a red one?
• 13:52
  Jeff Dziekan: No, I think you'd you would probably uh it wouldn't be yellow.
• 13:57
  Jeff Dziekan: It would be a dark color, but it wouldn't be black.
• 13:59
  Don Armstrong: No, it was not no, I'll number out another black.
• 14:01
  Jeff Dziekan: They make a lot of nice, the uh like a darker than a battleship gray kind of no, no, not doing gray.
• 14:09
  Jeff Dziekan: No, uh the car you have out there now is red.
• 14:11
  Jeff Dziekan: You like that?
• 14:12
  Don Armstrong: I actually do.
• 14:13
  Don Armstrong: All right, it's not it's not a fire engine red, it's uh uh kind of toward the maroon side, maroon red, yeah.
• 14:20
  Don Armstrong: But it's very nice.
• 14:21
  Don Armstrong: I like it.
• 14:21
  Don Armstrong: Okay, I I it's and it's it's not a hot rod thing.
• 14:25
  Don Armstrong: What about looking into one of these, like a a uh pre-owned Toyota SUV?
• 14:30
  Don Armstrong: No, all right, no, I I have no reason for it to buy an SUV, I don't want an SUV.
• 14:36
  Don Armstrong: No offense.
• 14:37
  Don Armstrong: I mean just saying, yeah, yeah, I mean, they're great, they're the number one seller in the world.
• 14:41
  Don Armstrong: Yeah, I get that.
• 14:43
  Don Armstrong: But uh there's no reason for me to own that.
• 14:45
  Don Armstrong: What about a pickup truck?
• 14:46
  Don Armstrong: Absolutely not.
• 14:47
  Jeff Dziekan: Okay, no, okay.
• 14:49
  Jeff Dziekan: So we narrowed down our choices out there.
• 14:50
  Jeff Dziekan: Yeah, there's no pickup trucks.
• 14:52
  Jeff Dziekan: Okay, no pickups, no, no uh SUV.
• 14:54
  Don Armstrong: No, I want a four-door sedan.
• 14:56
  Don Armstrong: Okay, yeah, all right.
• 14:58
  Don Armstrong: Not that I'd ever use the back seat, but just to have it, and you can't find a big two-door anymore.
• 15:04
  Don Armstrong: 40 years ago, you would have been using that back seat.
• 15:06
  Don Armstrong: And you know, I saw I saw while there's that.
• 15:11
  Don Armstrong: I might not have been a little bit older than the 40 years, yeah.
• 15:14
  Don Armstrong: But um I saw, and you know who's got it for sale?
• 15:19
  Don Armstrong: Chase Murray.
• 15:21
  Don Armstrong: Oh it was a 19.
• 15:25
  Don Armstrong: I ought to look it up.
• 15:27
  Don Armstrong: 80 Lincoln Continental, four-door sedan.
• 15:32
  Don Armstrong: That's it was absolutely gorgeous, and it only had 35,000 miles on it.
• 15:37
  Jeff Dziekan: Yep.
• 15:37
  Don Armstrong: The problem with that is then I'd be okay.
• 15:40
  Don Armstrong: Well, Don, it needs to have a transmission overhaul.
• 15:43
  Don Armstrong: No, no, we don't want to do any of that.
• 15:45
  Don Armstrong: I don't want to buy somebody else's property.
• 15:47
  Don Armstrong: Oh, yeah.
• 15:48
  Don Armstrong: And when you get into that old stuff, then you cut yeah, parts, all of that.
• 15:54
  Jeff Dziekan: Does anybody know how to work on them anymore, too?
• 15:56
  Don Armstrong: Well, I mean, I could work on it, we could work on it.
• 15:58
  Don Armstrong: I'm I'm uh no, I don't know that.
• 16:00
  Don Armstrong: Oh, yeah, we yeah, no, we we we got that down, but uh anyway, those are the things that a man of my stature, age.
• 16:10
  Mike Marrs: Age of stature, yeah.
• 16:12
  Don Armstrong: Well, not the stature, it's just the age.
• 16:14
  Don Armstrong: Uh, I don't want to be bent over a fender working on, you know, some carburetor issue.
• 16:21
  Don Armstrong: No, I I'm I'm over the I bought this is when I first got I know I I when I I got into uh the Corvette thing, the 1977 Corvette.
• 16:33
  Don Armstrong: I took it off the road, spent way too much money fixing it all up, show it, got the trophies, all that.
• 16:39
  Don Armstrong: So I bought a 55 Chevrolet half-ton pickup truck.
• 16:44
  Don Armstrong: It had rust holes in the cab that were as big around you could put your head in there, but it looked cool.
• 16:49
  Don Armstrong: It's brown, other than that, it was okay.
• 16:52
  Don Armstrong: I found myself working on that to keep it running as my second car, then I did the Corvette.
• 16:59
  Don Armstrong: Yeah, no, I don't want to get into all that.
• 17:02
  Don Armstrong: Been there, done that, and got the trophy.
• 17:05
  Don Armstrong: All right.
• 17:07
  Don Armstrong: Well, so much for Caroline Cash and the safety expert, why pedestrian safety is important to you.
• 17:12
  Don Armstrong: And the reason I say that is because I wrote that and I didn't want it to pass by.
• 17:15
  Jeff Dziekan: Okay.
• 17:16
  Don Armstrong: Uh, that I didn't write it, but I did.
• 17:18
  Don Armstrong: Gotcha.
• 17:18
  Don Armstrong: Just ahead in Jeff's car culture.
• 17:20
  Don Armstrong: 60s cars that no one remembers.
• 17:24
  Don Armstrong: And Mars drives us to the Houston Hidden Underground after this break, when the In Wheel Time Car Talk Show continues.
• 17:31
  Don Armstrong: Stay with us.
• 17:33
  Don Armstrong: The Tex The Texas Max dining experience is defined by Loopy Tortilla, your destination for Texas's best beef bajitas and frozen margaritas.
• 17:44
  Don Armstrong: Since 1983, Loopy Tortilla has served authentic and time-tested recipes made with the freshest ingredients.
• 17:51
  Don Armstrong: Atmosphere is part of the award-winning experience of Loopy Tortillas, all developed in a little house near Highway 6 and I 10 in Houston.
• 17:57
  Don Armstrong: Visit any of the Loopy Tortillas, and you'll see the same attention to detail in each and every location.
• 18:03
  Don Armstrong: Start your loopy experience with quiz of flamingato and guacamole, along with a classic frozen margarita.
• 18:08
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• 18:17
  Don Armstrong: Find loopy tortilla in Houston, Holland Station, Beaumont, Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas, Fort North.
• 18:22
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• 18:24
  Don Armstrong: The recipes are authentic and time-tested.
• 18:27
  Don Armstrong: The ingredients always fresh.
• 18:29
  Don Armstrong: Loopy tortilla.
• 18:30
  Don Armstrong: Eat pretty good.
• 18:35
  Don Armstrong: Apple or Android In Wheel Time podcasts can be found everywhere, on the stream and through downloads.
• 18:41
  Don Armstrong: Whether you're on the road or at home and searching for a fun car talk show, give In Wheel Time a try.
• 18:46
  Don Armstrong: Honest new car reviews, fun informative interviews with real car people, weekly automotive news, features like Jeff's cart culture, Mike's driving destinations, all on In Wheel Time.
• 18:56
  Don Armstrong: Check us out on Sirius XM Podcasts, iHeartRadio, or while you're shopping on Amazon through Amazon Music.
• 19:02
  Don Armstrong: InWheeltime.com has a list, so check us out.
• 19:06
  Don Armstrong: Invite you to join us 10 to noon Central Time every Saturday for our live show about all things automotive.
• 19:13
  Don Armstrong: You get a heads up on all of those uh podcaster people.
• 19:16
  Jeff Dziekan: Yep.
• 19:16
  Don Armstrong: Because this is the real this is the real deal.
• 19:20
  Don Armstrong: It's a fun ride.
• 19:21
  Don Armstrong: We invite you to join us every Saturday.
• 19:22
  Don Armstrong: All right, time now for Jeff's Car Culture, we call it.
• 19:25
  Don Armstrong: This week, 60s cars that we don't remember.
• 19:29
  Don Armstrong: Do we really need to remember them?
• 19:31
  Don Armstrong: Well, you're gonna help us out.
• 19:32
  Jeff Dziekan: Yeah, you might remember one or two, but vaguely.
• 19:34
  Jeff Dziekan: So here we go.
• 19:34
  Jeff Dziekan: And this opening pick right here, this is actually a Plymouth Valiant Signet.
• 19:38
  Jeff Dziekan: The Signet was an upscale version of the Plymouth's popular Valiant Compact.
• 19:42
  Jeff Dziekan: It was comfortable, reasonably stylish, and perfectly respectable, which is another way of saying nobody's hung a poster of this car in their garage in 40 years.
• 19:51
  Jeff Dziekan: Moving on.
• 19:53
  Jeff Dziekan: The next one is a Rambler AMC.
• 19:56
  Jeff Dziekan: This Rambler had one of the coolest names of the decade.
• 19:59
  Jeff Dziekan: Unfortunately, the car itself didn't leave quite the same impression.
• 20:03
  Jeff Dziekan: AMC sold plenty of them, but today most people remember the company's later oddball choices like the Gremlin and the Pacer.
• 20:12
  Jeff Dziekan: Hey, we like the Gremlin.
• 20:13
  Jeff Dziekan: I had a good friend of mine, Kathy that grew up with a she grew up with a high school friend that had a uh PACER.
• 20:18
  Jeff Dziekan: It was a cool little car.
• 20:19
  Jeff Dziekan: Uh that was the fishbowl.
• 20:21
  Jeff Dziekan: Yeah, no, no, the gremlin was the fishbowl.
• 20:23
  Jeff Dziekan: Well, the pacer, yeah, you're right.
• 20:24
  Jeff Dziekan: The pacer.
• 20:25
  Jeff Dziekan: I was thinking of the another one.
• 20:26
  Jeff Dziekan: Anyways, Rambler American is the next on the list, and the millions of Americans once drove the Rambler American, but spotting one today feels uh about as good as finding a payphone that still works.
• 20:38
  Jeff Dziekan: They were dependable, affordable transportation for people who cared more about saving money than impressing the neighbors.
• 20:43
  Jeff Dziekan: Wasn't exactly the recipe for a long-lasting frame.
• 20:47
  Jeff Dziekan: That would be the AMC Rambler.
• 20:49
  Jeff Dziekan: Next one, uh, the Mercury Meteor.
• 20:52
  Jeff Dziekan: The meteor existed in a strange space between Ford and Mercury, where buyers weren't entirely sure why it existed.
• 21:00
  Jeff Dziekan: It wasn't a bad car, it wasn't an exciting car, it was just there.
• 21:05
  Jeff Dziekan: Uh and it was green and boring.
• 21:08
  Jeff Dziekan: Uh, which might explain why even many Mercury fans forgot about the meteor, even though it was part of the lineup.
• 21:14
  Jeff Dziekan: How about that?
• 21:15
  Jeff Dziekan: Forgot about it.
• 21:16
  Jeff Dziekan: Next about it.
• 21:18
  Jeff Dziekan: One of my favorites, and I did see one of these, and I do remember this car is a Mercury Monterey Breezeway.
• 21:24
  Jeff Dziekan: Oh my god.
• 21:25
  Jeff Dziekan: Mike, we're uh oh, we're we're gotta go one more.
• 21:29
  Jeff Dziekan: I think you gotta go one more.
• 21:30
  Mike Marrs: You need one more?
• 21:31
  Jeff Dziekan: Yeah, that was the meteor.
• 21:34
  Jeff Dziekan: There's the breezeway.
• 21:35
  Jeff Dziekan: Uh, the breezeway featured one of the strangest production car features ever offered.
• 21:39
  Jeff Dziekan: The rear window rolled down.
• 21:41
  Mike Marrs: Oh, yeah.
• 21:42
  Jeff Dziekan: Seriously, Mercury claimed it improved ventilation, which it did.
• 21:45
  Jeff Dziekan: It also guaranteed that anybody seeing one would immediately ask, wait, why is the back window doing that?
• 21:51
  Jeff Dziekan: Now, this was ahead of its time because now you got pickup trucks with the window goes down.
• 21:55
  Jeff Dziekan: But look at the roof line in the back.
• 21:57
  Jeff Dziekan: It's jacked.
• 21:58
  Jeff Dziekan: It's I like it.
• 21:59
  Jeff Dziekan: I like that car.
• 22:00
  Jeff Dziekan: I'd I'd do things with that car.
• 22:02
  Jeff Dziekan: The next one, Mike, is a Chevrolet Biscayne.
• 22:05
  Jeff Dziekan: The Biscayne was a budget-minded full-size car.
• 22:07
  Jeff Dziekan: Millions were built, but it lacked the flash of an impala and the prestige of a caprice.
• 22:12
  Jeff Dziekan: It perfectly a perfect example of a vehicle that was everywhere once and almost nowhere today.
• 22:19
  Jeff Dziekan: That's true.
• 22:20
  Jeff Dziekan: Mercury Comet Cyclone.
• 22:23
  Jeff Dziekan: I had a friend of mine that had a Mercury Comet and it was a cool car.
• 22:26
  Jeff Dziekan: He had velocity stacks on it and twid bowls on the front.
• 22:28
  Don Armstrong: Did it have those great big nostrils on the front of it?
• 22:31
  Jeff Dziekan: The hood was so chopped up for the velocity stacks, we don't know.
• 22:34
  Jeff Dziekan: The cyclone had one major problem.
• 22:37
  Jeff Dziekan: It existed in the same era as the Mustang.
• 22:39
  Jeff Dziekan: That's a little like trying to become a famous rock star while standing next to the Beatles.
• 22:43
  Jeff Dziekan: It was actually capable of performing, it was a performance car, but it spent most of its life in somebody else's shadow.
• 22:50
  Jeff Dziekan: That's a cool car.
• 22:51
  Jeff Dziekan: I drive that today.
• 22:52
  Jeff Dziekan: And lastly, Don mentioned turbocharges in the first part of the show.
• 22:56
  Jeff Dziekan: Oldsmobile F-85 Jetfire.
• 22:59
  Jeff Dziekan: Look at that, baby.
• 23:00
  Jeff Dziekan: The jet fire deserves far more attention than history has given it.
• 23:03
  Jeff Dziekan: This thing featured a turbocharger years before turbocharging became cool.
• 23:08
  Jeff Dziekan: Unfortunately, early technology brought reliability headaches, and the jet fire became one of the most overlooked performance experiments of the entire tech.
• 23:18
  Jeff Dziekan: Wait a minute.
• 23:18
  Jeff Dziekan: Is isn't that Marvin Zindler behind the wheel?
• 23:21
  Jeff Dziekan: I think guys got a half.
• 23:24
  Jeff Dziekan: Every one of these I would drive.
• 23:26
  Don Armstrong: So Buick had a version of that.
• 23:28
  Don Armstrong: Was it the Skylark?
• 23:29
  Jeff Dziekan: I believe.
• 23:31
  Jeff Dziekan: I think it was.
• 23:31
  Jeff Dziekan: I think it was the Skylark.
• 23:32
  Don Armstrong: But uh same platform.
• 23:34
  Don Armstrong: So my my buddy Ross Putnam that had the hot rod.
• 23:37
  Don Armstrong: Um somehow, some way, I guess he got grandma's car or something.
• 23:41
  Don Armstrong: It was a four-door sedan, uh, this body style.
• 23:45
  Don Armstrong: Right.
• 23:45
  Don Armstrong: It was white, and we called it whitey.
• 23:48
  Don Armstrong: And I'll never forget the evening that it had rained.
• 23:51
  Don Armstrong: Pardon me?
• 23:51
  Don Armstrong: It fits code.
• 23:53
  Don Armstrong: And it uh it was uh uh parking, it was a strip center, strip mall at an intersection.
• 23:58
  Don Armstrong: The intersection was Hillcroft and Brazewood, and there was nobody there after all closing time, and they had no curb stops.
• 24:06
  Don Armstrong: So you get out there and you'd floor it, and that right rear tire would just spin up to yeah, and uh we'd do donuts, all six of us in the car.
• 24:16
  Don Armstrong: Yeah, that's my memories of that car.
• 24:18
  Don Armstrong: Put the heavyweight guys on the right wheel, pretty much.
• 24:21
  Don Armstrong: Yeah, very good.
• 24:22
  Don Armstrong: Mr.
• 24:22
  Don Armstrong: Mars has driving destinations, Houston Hidden Underground, Mr.
• 24:25
  Don Armstrong: Mars.
• 24:26
  Mike Marrs: Yes, sir.
• 24:27
  Mike Marrs: We had uh quite a few things I want to point out here about the uh Houston Hidden Underground.
• 24:33
  Mike Marrs: And starting off with if you everybody that drives around Houston, particularly if you happen to go out the Katy Freeway while they were doing the big widening job here years ago and made it what the widest freeway in the world, yep, you could see all of the utilities that are underground.
• 24:46
  Mike Marrs: I mean, there's gas lines down there, there's water lines, there's sewer lines.
• 24:50
  Mike Marrs: Phone companies spent millions of dollars on that project trying to get their underground equipment over and get it out of the way.
• 24:57
  Mike Marrs: So when you're driving over these roads, unless you're on the tenth story of a stack of freeways, you don't really think about what's underneath you, but there's a lot of stuff that's down there.
• 25:08
  Mike Marrs: Now, there's also a couple of other things that are down there in the Houston, and one of those is the Buffalo Bayou Sister.
• 25:16
  Mike Marrs: Now, I wasn't aware of all this stuff that was going on down there whenever uh back in whenever so this was started in 1926.
• 25:28
  Mike Marrs: It was a project that was built in 1966 when Houston was growing so fast they needed more drinking water storage.
• 25:34
  Mike Marrs: And they so they came up with this plan to make it one of the earliest underground reservoirs, which is unusual in Houston considering the static water level, the ground water level.
• 25:45
  Mike Marrs: But this thing holds 15 million gallons of water, and that's what kind of what started out helping maintain the water pressure while the city was growing.
• 25:52
  Mike Marrs: Now it's the size of one and a half football fields, and it's actually supported by 21 columns that are built down here underneath this area.
• 26:03
  Mike Marrs: And each one of them is like 25 feet tall.
• 26:06
  Mike Marrs: Now, it's been in business for 80 years, it's been working, and uh the engineers have done some repair leaks and repaired some leaks, but they took it out of service actually in 2007 for realistic use of supplying water for the city.
• 26:22
  Mike Marrs: Now, it's still been down there ever since, but then during the Buffalo Biopark redevelop redevelopment, instead of tearing it down and trying to fill in this massive area, they opened it up for tours.
• 26:35
  Mike Marrs: So, some things to that to really notice, if you happen to take this tour, 221 cop concrete columns, 25 feet tall, 15 million gallons of water when it was operational, 87,500 square feet down here under the ground.
• 26:51
  Mike Marrs: And if you stand there and it's quiet to where you can do an echo, it takes 17 seconds.
• 26:56
  Mike Marrs: Your echo will actually run for 17 seconds across here, and so it still has that little thin layer of water at the bottom, so it reflects it and it makes it look even bigger.
• 27:08
  Mike Marrs: Now, the other thing that's going on downtown Houston, and I'm sure some of you guys have heard of it.
• 27:13
  Mike Marrs: I have never heard of it until recently when I started looking for this stuff.
• 27:17
  Mike Marrs: There were rumors, but there is an underground tunnel system in downtown Houston.
• 27:23
  Mike Marrs: Now, it was started in 1935, and what it was done was to connect two buildings together because of the heat and the rain and everything.
• 27:30
  Mike Marrs: So it was just a convenience thing that actually started.
• 27:34
  Mike Marrs: But now there's now six miles of interconnected tunnels beneath downtown, and dozens of office buildings are connected.
• 27:41
  Mike Marrs: There's restaurants, there's coffee shops, there's convenience stores, there's even some banks down there.
• 27:46
  Mike Marrs: So that these people that are downtown working, I mean, you can literally go downtown and go underground and stay down there literally all day long.
• 27:55
  Mike Marrs: And it's just uh a lot of that reason, again, it was started because of the Houston summers and uh the late afternoon thunderstorms that make a mess of it that we have that we're still dealing with, obviously.
• 28:05
  Mike Marrs: But if it's 98 degrees outside and the humidity is up at 80%, and you want to walk down two blocks down the street to go to a restaurant, by the time you get back to your office, you're not gonna be in the best of shape as far as heat goes.
• 28:18
  Mike Marrs: So you go downtown, you go down into the tunnel system to the restaurants, the coffee shops.
• 28:23
  Mike Marrs: If you want to do walking, because you want to get in shape, there's long corridors that you can walk, just like at a mall.
• 28:29
  Mike Marrs: It's almost like a mall down there.
• 28:31
  Mike Marrs: But uh, you gotta be careful to make sure you don't get lost down there because it does wind around quite a bit.
• 28:36
  Mike Marrs: So that's two places underground in Houston that most people don't think about because of the water tip table that's in the ground and the fact that it's out of sight, it's out of mind.
• 28:47
  Mike Marrs: So if you're looking for some place to go this summer in the Houston heat, here's two places that you could go to get out of the heat and find someplace a little bit different to hang out.
• 28:55
  Don Armstrong: Good story.
• 28:56
  Don Armstrong: Okay, thank you, Mike.
• 28:57
  Don Armstrong: Appreciate that.
• 28:58
  Don Armstrong: Uh Houston Hidden Underground.
• 29:01
  Don Armstrong: I've been down there in that I haven't been to the cistern, but I have been to the tunnel system, and you can get lost real easily.
• 29:09
  Jeff Dziekan: That's understandable.
• 29:09
  Don Armstrong: Yeah, I think most of those shops down there are closed, but it's still, I don't know what part of it's open and closed.
• 29:14
  Don Armstrong: I don't know anymore.
• 29:15
  Don Armstrong: So go.
• 29:16
  Don Armstrong: Thanks, check it out.
• 29:17
  Don Armstrong: Thank you, Mr.
• 29:18
  Don Armstrong: Morris.
• 29:18
  Don Armstrong: All right, in wheel time continues right after this quick break.
• 29:21
  Don Armstrong: Stay with us.
• 29:24
  Don Armstrong: Your car is a direct reflection of you, so don't be satisfied with color fade or a dingy dull appearance.
• 29:30
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• 29:33
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• 29:53
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• 30:00
  Don Armstrong: John will help you understand the many options in pricing right on the spot.
• 30:04
  Don Armstrong: He's your guy to have your ride looking its best and protected too.
• 30:08
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• 30:10
  Don Armstrong: Gulf Coast Auto Shield is easy to get to, located just south of the Southwest Freeway on the Sam Houston Parkway.
• 30:16
  Don Armstrong: Gulf Coast Auto Shield, full-service luxury car care today and online at gcautoshield.com.
• 30:24
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• 30:31
  Don Armstrong: Now you can get one or a car show poster customized for you, a friend, or a loved one.
• 30:36
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• 30:39
  Don Armstrong: No matter what the day, birthday, anniversary, or any day, an autographics custom illustration adds an extra touch of class to any home.
• 30:46
  Don Armstrong: Call Bill today, 832-922-0963.
• 30:50
  Don Armstrong: That's 832-922-0963.
• 30:55
  Don Armstrong: That's it for this podcast episode of the In Wheel Time Car Show.
• 30:59
  Don Armstrong: I'm Don Armstrong, inviting you to join us for our live show every Saturday morning on Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, and our InWheelTime.com website.
• 31:09
  Don Armstrong: Podcasts are available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartPodcast, Podcast Addict, TuneIn, Pandora, and Amazon Music.
• 31:17
  Don Armstrong: Keep listening, and we'll see you soon.