DEAR TOM AND RAY: I have a 1996 Ford Windstar in perfect condition that was driven for years by a little old lady. She actually was from Pasadena, Calif. The problem is the occasional buzzing. It is like I left a door open while the engine is running. The van will be running fine, with no problems, except the buzzer is buzzing, the interior light is on and a picture of the van is lit up on the dash in red with a door open. Once the van reaches 15 mph, everything goes back to normal -- until I slow to under 15 mph, at which point the buzzing starts again. Can you help with this annoyance? I'm going nuts.
-- Danny
RAY: You say the car acts as if a door is open when it's not, Danny.
TOM: Well, it may be that a door actually is open.
RAY: Not fully open -- as in, you make a left turn and you roll out of the car and end up at the curb. But not fully closed, either.
TOM: I feel fortunate in saying that I haven't seen a 1996 Windstar in the shop recently, but there's either a switch in the doorjamb that gets pressed when the door is fully closed, or on some cars the door latch also acts as the switch.
RAY: And unless that switch is fully engaged, the buzzer is going to come on, along with the dome light and dashboard warning.
TOM: My guess is that the hinges on one of your doors are worn out and the door isn't closing correctly. That wouldn't be a surprise on a car that's approaching the two-decade mark.
RAY: If I had to guess, I'd try the driver's door first. Why? Because it's the door that gets opened and closed the most over the life of the vehicle.
TOM: You can try this experiment: Next time the buzzer goes off, roll down the window and get your whole arm on the outside of the door. Then pull the door closed as hard as you can. If you can get the buzzing to stop when you pull, and start again when you release the pressure, you've found the offending door.
RAY: If that experiment doesn't work, you'll have to engage an able-bodied assistant to help you push harder. While the buzzer is sounding, have your assistant stand outside the car and push on the door with both hands.
TOM: If that stops the buzzing, have that assistant run alongside the vehicle for the next few years, pushing on the door, until something more serious breaks.
RAY: Actually, if you get no results on the driver's door, try the driver's-side sliding door next, and then work your way around the vehicle.
TOM: And once you've found it (or even if you can't identify it on your own), a body shop probably is your best bet to have it fixed. Try to get it done before you go completely nuts, Danny. Good luck.
DEAR TOM AND RAY: I was involved in a car accident. My car was thrown 83 feet. The guy who hit me was driving a 2002 Thunderbird, weighing 3,775 pounds. My car was a 2006 Toyota Matrix, weighing 2,679 pounds. Is there any way that I can calculate how fast his car was going at the point of impact? I was turning left, and the guy smashed into my passenger side as I crossed his lane. I would say the angle at which he hit me was about 110 degrees, since I wasn't quite at 90 degrees to him yet. I was just starting to turn, so I was going no more than 5 mph. I ended up 83 feet away. There were no tire tracks at the point of impact, so my car must have gone airborne! This seems like a physics problem, and I have contacted some physics students, but they are students and are not interested. I think it should be possible to calculate it, but I don't know physics. Please help! My car was totaled. The other guy claims he was going 35 mph, but given how far my car went, that just doesn't make sense.
-- Cathy
TOM: Well, we happen to have our very own physicist on staff, Cathy. Wolfgang Rueckner, who moonlights teaching physics at Harvard, handles just these sorts of questions for us.
RAY: Along with questions about how much glue you need to keep your rearview mirror from falling off the inside of the windshield.
TOM: So we sent Wolfgang all of the salient data, and he scribbled it all down, mumbled stuff about mass, distance, force, angstroms, Bohr models, antimatter, absolute motion and something about remembering to pick up milk on the way home, and then he told us how fast the guy who hit you was traveling.
RAY: Thirty-five mph. Maybe even slower.
TOM: Now, he cautions us that that's an estimate. He doesn't know whether your car skidded the entire 83 feet, or rolled some of the distance. He did not take into account any curbs you had to cross over or how many park benches you took out along the way. So he says that if you're planning to go to court, he would appreciate it if you would leave him out of it!
RAY: There are forensic accident physicists who do this for a living and do sophisticated computer modeling to really narrow down the speed of each vehicle.
TOM: But if you're just interested in knowing whether the other guy is being truthful, it sounds like he might be; a speed of 35 mph is consistent with the rest of the information.
RAY: But as you now know, being hit by another car that's going 35 mph creates a very violent collision. And we hope all of our readers will keep that in mind before checking their phones for a text message.
Click & Clack (Tom and Ray Magliozzi) dispense advice about cars in Car Talk every Saturday. Email them by visiting
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HomeStyle on 11/01/2014