Latest / In Wheel Time Podcast / Maple Syrup Smell - Signs Your Car Is Done: National Parks Road Trip, the Kia Carnival

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Maple Syrup Smell - Signs Your Car Is Done: National Parks Road Trip, the Kia Carnival · In Wheel Time Podcast

• 0:06
  Don Armstrong: Car repairs that signal it's time to sell.
• 0:08
  Jeff Dziekan: Yep, well, uh fix it or sell it.
• 0:10
  Jeff Dziekan: These repairs usually mean it's time to move on.
• 0:13
  Jeff Dziekan: And the way to do that is every car reaches a point where repairs start to cost more than the vehicle is worth.
• 0:18
  Jeff Dziekan: Well, a few fixes are part of ownership.
• 0:20
  Jeff Dziekan: We all know that.
• 0:20
  Jeff Dziekan: Certain jobs hint that your beloved ride might be living on borrowed time.
• 0:25
  Jeff Dziekan: If you see these types of repairs, you might want to have something uh to consider.
• 0:28
  Jeff Dziekan: So here we go.
• 0:29
  Jeff Dziekan: One of them would be a blown head gasket.
• 0:31
  Jeff Dziekan: A blown head gasket is one of the most dreaded and expensive repairs a car can face.
• 0:36
  Jeff Dziekan: It can lead to overheating, poor engine performance, and even catastrophic engine damage if left unchecked.
• 0:41
  Jeff Dziekan: Repairing it involves hours of labor and significant costs.
• 0:45
  Jeff Dziekan: So use that as a either yay or nay on that.
• 0:49
  Jeff Dziekan: The next one, Mike, would be a transmission replacement.
• 0:52
  Jeff Dziekan: Now, who doesn't have a problem with a trans?
• 0:54
  Jeff Dziekan: So failure doesn't just ruin your day, it can wreck your budget.
• 0:58
  Jeff Dziekan: Symptoms like slipping gears, grinding, or total refusal to shift are early red flags.
• 1:03
  Jeff Dziekan: So if you got that, be aware of it.
• 1:05
  Jeff Dziekan: A full replacement or rebuild can run several thousand dollars depending on the type of vehicle you're driving.
• 1:10
  Jeff Dziekan: If you got a high-end vehicle, it's going to be more money.
• 1:12
  Jeff Dziekan: A little lower end, not so much.
• 1:14
  Jeff Dziekan: It might be time to say goodbye to that car.
• 1:17
  Jeff Dziekan: The next one that we have on the list would be a blown suspension or air ride systems.
• 1:22
  Jeff Dziekan: The luxurious floaty ride can have a steep cost when air suspension fails.
• 1:27
  Jeff Dziekan: Stagging corners and uneven stance, much like us here on the Dais.
• 1:31
  Jeff Dziekan: Uh or warning lights, that often means systems are in the last light.
• 1:35
  Jeff Dziekan: Stagging, I'm familiar with that.
• 1:36
  Jeff Dziekan: Yeah, and and uh thousands, especially for high-end makes of vehicles.
• 1:42
  Jeff Dziekan: Even standard strut or shock overhauls are not cheap.
• 1:47
  Jeff Dziekan: Next one, Michael, cracked engine block.
• 1:49
  Jeff Dziekan: If you've got this, this is very tragic.
• 1:51
  Jeff Dziekan: Uh the block is a death sentence for most vehicles.
• 1:54
  Jeff Dziekan: It often means your engine is overheated or suffered a major trauma, and fixing it requires either a complete rebuild or an engine replacement.
• 2:02
  Jeff Dziekan: Unless your car has significant value, this is the kind of repair that says, thanks for the memories.
• 2:07
  Jeff Dziekan: Gotta move on from that one.
• 2:09
  Jeff Dziekan: Electrical system overhauls.
• 2:11
  Jeff Dziekan: When multiple electrical components start acting up, dash lights, power windows, instrument clusters, it can all point to a deeper wiring issue.
• 2:19
  Jeff Dziekan: They can be expensive on a time-wise in any shop.
• 2:23
  Jeff Dziekan: Diagnosing and fixing electrical gremlins is often labor intensive with no guarantee that it's fixed.
• 2:29
  Jeff Dziekan: If glitches in multiple fasteners are faster than your mechanics answers, it might be a more cost-effective to cut the ties of that vehicle and move on.
• 2:40
  Jeff Dziekan: Back to engine-related issues, warp to crack cylinder heads.
• 2:43
  Jeff Dziekan: A warp to crack cylinder head usually results from engine overheating, like we talked about earlier.
• 2:48
  Jeff Dziekan: Fixing it requires machine work, replacement gaskets, hours of labor.
• 2:52
  Jeff Dziekan: You may face lingering issues after that.
• 2:55
  Jeff Dziekan: If damage is severe, selling might be more practical, less painful of a decision.
• 3:00
  Jeff Dziekan: Heater core replacement, back to the related parts.
• 3:03
  Jeff Dziekan: Does your cabin smell like maple syrup or fog when you turn up the heat?
• 3:08
  Jeff Dziekan: Well, I don't know.
• 3:09
  Jeff Dziekan: Uh your heater core may be failing.
• 3:11
  Jeff Dziekan: Replacement is usually means removing the dashboard, a labor-intensive job.
• 3:15
  Jeff Dziekan: Combine the cost of the age of the vehicle, and it's often repair tips that tips the scale towards selling the vehicle.
• 3:21
  Jeff Dziekan: And the last one, a big one, timing chain or belt failure.
• 3:24
  Jeff Dziekan: When a timing chain belt chain or the belt fails, your engine internal harmony collapses.
• 3:30
  Jeff Dziekan: The repair involves removing large chunks of the engine, chunks, there you go, uh, which racks up labor costs very fast for interference.
• 3:38
  Jeff Dziekan: For inner for interference engines, a snap belt can cause valve and piston damage, making the fix even pricier.
• 3:46
  Jeff Dziekan: And we don't want to go pricier, so be aware.
• 3:49
  Jeff Dziekan: You might have something that costs if the repair is more than the vehicle's worth, get rid of the vehicle.
• 3:53
  Jeff Dziekan: Go get up, go get a jig car.
• 3:56
  Mike Marrs: Mike one thing I wanted to ask you, because we kind of well, we're kind of running out of time here.
• 4:00
  Mike Marrs: That's right.
• 4:01
  Mike Marrs: What do you do with it?
• 4:02
  Mike Marrs: If you decide I'm not going to repair it.
• 4:04
  Jeff Dziekan: That's up to you.
• 4:04
  Jeff Dziekan: If the car's paid off, you can you you can sell it to a private owner, you can do a trade-in or go over the no, you can't drive it, but there's uh places that can pick it up to donate the car.
• 4:16
  Jeff Dziekan: We did that with Kathy's uh vehicle.
• 4:19
  Jeff Dziekan: Uh didn't get a lot out of it, but it was it was a good feeling that you donated to can be repaired for somebody else used it.
• 4:24
  Jeff Dziekan: Right.
• 4:24
  Jeff Dziekan: Or you might give it to give it away or or write it off in the taxes or have somebody have it as a project car.
• 4:31
  Don Armstrong: Running behind, thank you for joining us today here on the In Wheel Time Car Talk Show.
• 4:35
  Don Armstrong: We're gonna have our next segment coming up right after this quick break.
• 4:38
  Don Armstrong: Stay with us.
• 4:45
  Don Armstrong: Well, same speaking of things that are important, everybody's kind of looking forward to summer vacation now that we're at Easter and making plans for that.
• 4:53
  Don Armstrong: And I know that you've got a special feature on uh national parks and summer road trips.
• 4:58
  Mike Marrs: Yeah, there was so much to do.
• 4:59
  Mike Marrs: I kind of split it up.
• 5:00
  Mike Marrs: So we're gonna take kind of the west side of the country uh this week.
• 5:04
  Mike Marrs: But when you start thinking about summer road trips to the national parks, then we're not really close to any of them, so you've got to make some plans.
• 5:11
  Don Armstrong: Well, we do have a national forest nearby.
• 5:13
  Don Armstrong: We do.
• 5:13
  Mike Marrs: Well, you do, but that's not quite where you're gonna find uh from a driving perspective, you're not gonna find a lot of switchbacks or long straightaways to to really get into some elevation changes and things.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: Enjoy the car.
• 5:25
  Mike Marrs: Enjoy the car.
• 5:26
  Mike Marrs: So trying to do both of them, these are a few places you might go to.
• 5:30
  Mike Marrs: So Glacier National Park.
• 5:32
  Mike Marrs: Now it's called Going to the Sun Road.
• 5:34
  Mike Marrs: Oh.
• 5:35
  Mike Marrs: Now it's it's got a lot of tight switchbacks, it's got a lot of narrow lanes, uh drop-offs, the Glacier National Park.
• 5:45
  Mike Marrs: By the glaciers, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 5:47
  Mike Marrs: So if you really want to go out driving wise, you go to or go in the early morning when there's not a lot of people out there, the mountain air is a little more crisp, a lot of cooler.
• 5:56
  Mike Marrs: It's easier to drive the in a more spirited manner whenever you're doing that.
• 6:01
  Mike Marrs: And a couple of cars you might want to look at if you're out there.
• 6:04
  Mike Marrs: If you have an opportunity, maybe use something like a Mustang, a Ford Mustang.
• 6:08
  Mike Marrs: But of course, if you got the family with you, then you're going to be looking for something, maybe an SUV like the Explorer to uh carry the family with you to go see all the sites and all the uh valleys and the hills and everything that the family's gonna want to see.
• 6:23
  Mike Marrs: I knew that.
• 6:26
  Mike Marrs: The other one we want to talk about that would give you some uh a little bit of both worlds would be the Tyoga Pass in Yos Yosemite, Yosemite, Yosemite.
• 6:36
  Mike Marrs: However, you want to do it.
• 6:37
  Mike Marrs: I'm trying to cover all the bases.
• 6:39
  Mike Marrs: There you go.
• 6:39
  Mike Marrs: It's Yosemite to me, National Park.
• 6:41
  Mike Marrs: We knew you were bilingual.
• 6:44
  Mike Marrs: Now, the thing about this is whenever you're going on this drive, you're gonna run into a lot of sweeping curves.
• 6:49
  Mike Marrs: It all keeps you a nice steady pace to go through it, but you go up above 9,000 feet.
• 6:55
  Mike Marrs: And so your car is going to be running on some thin air in there.
• 6:58
  Mike Marrs: So whenever you start coming back down, you're doing going through the curves and along straights, you gotta kind of get into a rhythm, but you really don't want to get too spirited with it because uh your car is not going to react like it does down at sea level or down even down here below sea level.
• 7:14
  Mike Marrs: There you go.
• 7:15
  Mike Marrs: Uh something you might want to look at for that.
• 7:17
  Mike Marrs: If you got a whole family with you, of course, something like a Jeep Grand Cherokee.
• 7:21
  Mike Marrs: You still got plenty of power, you can still feel the road and enjoy that.
• 7:24
  Mike Marrs: But if you're just you, maybe your special friend or something, you might try and do the Honda Civic.
• 7:30
  Mike Marrs: Get a little more spirited driving going.
• 7:32
  Mike Marrs: A little bit more oomph.
• 7:35
  Mike Marrs: Then uh the other one would be the Trail Ridge Road in the Rocky Mountain National Park.
• 7:43
  Mike Marrs: So this is kind of the this is actually the highest continuous paved road in the United States.
• 7:49
  Mike Marrs: Wow.
• 7:49
  Mike Marrs: So you got long climbs, steep descents.
• 7:52
  Mike Marrs: You can center, you can't got a lot of wide open views above the tree line, so you can see a lot of place.
• 7:57
  Mike Marrs: But here's the problem with this one: when you're coming downhill, you got to worry about your brakes.
• 8:01
  Mike Marrs: You got to do some brake management because you don't want your brakes to overheat in the steep descent.
• 8:07
  Mike Marrs: Uh and then you've got engine cooling you're gonna have to worry about if you're up there in the summer, even though it's up high, the elevation is a little cooler, but the engines really got to work a lot harder when they go through all these sweeping curves and above the tree line, and you're gonna see all the horizon that's like way over there, endlessly away.
• 8:25
  Mike Marrs: So uh something you might drive there, maybe if you get a chance, maybe one of the BMW 3 series, uh a Subaru has got some all-wheel drive vehicles that could work really well, or you might try the Miata MX5, which would be what I would think would be really fun if you don't have the kids with you.
• 8:40
  Jeff Dziekan: No, of course, a little skating a little bit.
• 8:42
  Mike Marrs: So you've got to kind of look at what you're in.
• 8:43
  Mike Marrs: So when you go to these national parks and you start thinking about them as destinations, obviously you know you may want to take the kids, you got a lot of scenic uh scenes to drive through for the elevation, the surface, surface scenery that you can see and stop and make some changes and uh get the family involved, or you can enjoy the drive a little bit more depending on what you're driving.
• 9:05
  Mike Marrs: So do some planning uh to go to the national parks for this summer.
• 9:08
  Jeff Dziekan: There you go.
• 9:09
  Mike Marrs: Thank you, Mike.
• 9:17
  Don Armstrong: For all these years, why do you have to have the minivan look like a traditional minivan?
• 9:23
  Don Armstrong: You don't, and they've proved it in this one.
• 9:25
  Don Armstrong: This vehicle was introduced in 2022.
• 9:28
  Don Armstrong: I think this is the first one that I've had.
• 9:30
  Don Armstrong: Uh exterior features include a minivan that looks like an SUV.
• 9:34
  Don Armstrong: Sliding passenger doors.
• 9:36
  Don Armstrong: Love it, upright attractive drill and headlight.
• 9:42
  Don Armstrong: What I like about it, overall, it gets high marks in design and execution.
• 9:48
  Don Armstrong: I want to use improvement or they can get rid of those funky wheels.
• 9:52
  Don Armstrong: I said that.
• 9:53
  Don Armstrong: Sorry.
• 9:54
  Don Armstrong: Interior highlights, minivan roominess with second row captains chairs.
• 9:59
  Don Armstrong: I would imagine that you could probably get a bench back there, but why?
• 10:03
  Don Armstrong: Unless you've got a uh an entire school that you're hauling around.
• 10:08
  Don Armstrong: Um fold in the floor, third row seating.
• 10:14
  Don Armstrong: That was good, that was handy.
• 10:16
  Don Armstrong: And it's got a dial shifter located on the center console.
• 10:20
  Don Armstrong: I love those.
• 10:21
  Don Armstrong: Uh ten-foot wide dual purpose screen inside of Elder Dash.
• 10:27
  Don Armstrong: I'm exaggerating, obviously, but uh the thing goes the whole way to the of the dash.
• 10:33
  Don Armstrong: Um cargo room massively, especially with the seats down.
• 10:36
  Don Armstrong: What I like the Swiss Army Knife mindset for this vehicle.
• 10:42
  Don Armstrong: We could use improvement again, second row bench option.
• 10:45
  Don Armstrong: Um you could haul the entire soccer team with that.
• 10:50
  Don Armstrong: Here's the interesting thing it has a 1.6 liter gasoline turbo hybrid power plant.
• 11:00
  Don Armstrong: 242 horsepower, which is a lot.
• 11:03
  Don Armstrong: Uh 271 pound feet of torque.
• 11:05
  Don Armstrong: It had plenty of traffic speed, automatic transmission, but it is front-wheel drive only.
• 11:11
  Don Armstrong: Mileage, 34 city 31 highway for a combined to 32, 30.6 miles per gallon over 420 miles.
• 11:20
  Don Armstrong: Ain't bad, McGee.
• 11:22
  Don Armstrong: What I like, the mileage with the horsepower.
• 11:25
  Don Armstrong: We could use improvement, nothing.
• 11:27
  Don Armstrong: Riding handling, smooth.
• 11:31
  Don Armstrong: What else can I say?
• 11:32
  Don Armstrong: It handles it handles great.
• 11:35
  Don Armstrong: Okay, so here's the pricing.
• 11:37
  Don Armstrong: Base trim price.
• 11:39
  Don Armstrong: $53,093.
• 11:43
  Don Armstrong: Price as tested with all the uh putroll mode,$57,865.
• 11:49
  Don Armstrong: Not bad.
• 11:50
  Don Armstrong: The base price on this vehicle.
• 11:53
  Don Armstrong: The base price is it's the guy from the Hemi Hunkout.
• 11:57
  Don Armstrong: Yeah, there you go.
• 11:59
  Don Armstrong: Like you.
• 12:00
  Don Armstrong: Good for you.
• 12:01
  Don Armstrong: Uh base model price,$41,390.
• 12:07
  Don Armstrong: That's the entry level.
• 12:08
  Don Armstrong: Yeah,$41,000.
• 12:09
  Don Armstrong: I'm all into that.
• 12:11
  Don Armstrong: So uh competitors at that entry level price include, but not limited, the price of Pacifica starts at$44,445.
• 12:20
  Don Armstrong: The Honda Odyssey starts at$42,795.
• 12:25
  Don Armstrong: Sienna starts at$40,000.
• 12:32
  Don Armstrong: Because let's face it, I mean the average price of a vehicle these days$50, and that falls well below it,$10,000 below it.
• 12:40
  Don Armstrong: I really do like this vehicle.
• 12:42
  Don Armstrong: And if you're in the market for a minivan slash SUV, uh, I would definitely go down to your Kia dealer and take a look at it.
• 12:51
  Don Armstrong: Get a test drive.
• 12:52
  Don Armstrong: I think that you'll really be impressed.
• 12:55
  Don Armstrong: Good stuff.
• 12:56
  Don Armstrong: It is.
• 12:58
  Don Armstrong: Um Mars, you're sitting down there awful quiet, which really I'm taking notes.
• 13:03
  Jeff Dziekan: He's ciphering.
• 13:04
  Jeff Dziekan: Are you?
• 13:05
  Jeff Dziekan: I think he started his taxes, is what he's doing.
• 13:07
  Jeff Dziekan: Well, I'm trying to finish it.
• 13:08
  Jeff Dziekan: The fifteenth coming up pretty quick.