DEAR CAR TALK: I went to a big-box store to replace my tires. They removed my hubcaps and placed them in my back seat. I did not notice until I was home. I am going back to have them added to my new wheels. Is there a reason why they would not put my hubcaps back on?
-- Pat
DEAR PAT: There are a couple of possibilities. One is that they forgot. They'll typically put the wheel covers in the back seat when they remove them so they don't lose track of them or confuse them with the 78 other wheel covers lying around on the garage floor. And it's possible that whoever was working on your car just spaced out.
You would think he (or you) would have noticed the absence of the wheel covers, because the car looks pretty unfinished without them. But maybe he was daydreaming about finding a rare, first-edition 1963 AMC Rambler shop manual in a barn somewhere, and wasn't thinking straight?
The other possibility is that they sold you new wheels that don't use wheel covers. You mention getting tires and wheels. If you bought a set of alloy wheels, for instance, you wouldn't need wheel covers.
Alloy wheels, which are forged out of aluminum alloys, are designed as "one-piece" wheels. The design of the wheel is part of its appeal. And they look good -- and finished -- just the way they are.
In that case, the mechanic may have tossed your wheel covers in the back seat just to return them to you. He figured they were yours, and rather than throw them away, he'd let you decide how to dispose of them, or include them in your estate planning.
There's a small possibility that the store sold you a new set of wheels that your wheel covers don't fit. But there's only about a 1 percent chance of that.
So take a walk around your car. If you look at the wheels and see a big, black, industrial-looking steel maw in the middle of each wheel, then they probably forgot to put your wheel covers back on. But if the wheels look good, and they look shiny and finished, then you probably bought alloy wheels, and you can use those old wheel covers to start some tomato plants.
DEAR CAR TALK: I have a 1986 Toyota two-wheel-drive pickup with a four-speed manual transmission, no power steering and a carburetor. To start, the old beast requires cranking for at least two minutes before it will fire up. Usually, I need to jump the battery, as the old battery doesn't last long enough. After starting, it runs fine, so a tune-up is not needed. If I stop the engine and restart it, it'll start right up. Is the gas in my carburetor evaporating? There's never any gas smell or gas on the ground. Any idea what else could be causing the need to crank the engine so much?
-- Dave
DEAR DAVE: This sounds like a real beauty. I'm surprised the Pebble Beach Concourse d'Elegance folks haven't been hounding you for it.
You could be right about the gasoline evaporating. But before you go down that road, make sure it's not just a weak battery.
If the battery is weak, or your starter motor is drawing too much current, then maybe the engine just isn't cranking fast enough to start. That could explain why it'll crank for two minutes without starting, and then start up after you give it a jump from a healthy battery.
So don't crank it first with your existing battery. Try jump-starting the engine right away next time, and see what happens.
If you still can't get the truck to start, then the gasoline probably is evaporating. It's likely leaking out of the float chamber into the intake manifold, and evaporating overnight while you're dreaming of 2017 Tundras.
Then, when you try to start it the next day, there's no fuel left in the reservoir. So the mechanical fuel pump has to draw fuel all the way from the gas tank at the back of the truck. That takes a while. Especially with the starter motor turning the engine at 100 rpm (versus 1,000 rpm when the engine is idling).
Here's how you test this theory: You are fortunate to have a carburetor so old that it has a glass observation window in it, so you may be able to see if there's gasoline in there in the morning. When the truck is cold, remove the air cleaner, find the glass window in the carburetor, and push down a little bit on the fender. If there's gasoline in there, you often can see it sloshing around. My guess is you won't see any.
Then crank it for a couple of minutes until the truck starts, shut it off and check again. Once you know there's gasoline in the float chamber (because the truck has just been running), shake the fender and look again. If you see gasoline sloshing around, you have your answer.
Then you'll have two options: You can either visit some local assisted-living centers and see if you can find someone who remembers how to rebuild an '86 Toyota carburetor, or you can buy yourself a new one. It'll probably cost you a few hundred bucks, but thanks to the miracle of the worldwide web, you can order it in your pajamas.
Ray Magliozzi dispenses advice about cars in Car Talk every Saturday. Email him by visiting
cartalk.com
HomeStyle on 04/01/2017