As I was driving around yesterday, I was idly listening to the ‘Click and Clack’ brothers—or whatever they call themselves— on NPR. For those of you who have never heard of these guys, they’re an automotive question and answer team heard on nationally syndicated public radio. For the most part, they’re informative and often funny-- but not as funny as they seem to think they are.
One segment of their show is called the ‘weekly puzzler’. In it, they offer up a car problem and ask listeners for the one right answers to that problem. Listeners who answer correctly apparently win cash, prizes, and untold adulation from their peers.
Fine, right? Wrong. I think I spotted a serious flaw with last weeks puzzler (They present the puzzler question one week and in the following week they reveal the answer).
Here’s the question and the supposedly ‘correct’ answer-
You’re driving a 1963 Chevy Dart. As you’re driving along, you notice that your right rear tire has gone flat. You pull over and start changing the tire. Lo and behold, as you’re changing it, you accidentally drop four of the five lug nuts from that tire down a nearby storm drain.
Drat.
But being resourceful, you immediately think, ‘Hey, if I take one lug nut from the other three wheels I can end up with four lug nuts on all four tires (1 lug nut that didn’t fall down the drain + 3 lug nuts taken from the remaining 3 wheels = All 4 wheels with 4 lugs).
Five hours later, you’re still sitting there. Why?
The answer?
The lugs from the left side of the car wouldn’t work on the right, so you’d be screwed.
In 1967 Chevy’s, the lug nuts on the left wheels where threaded the opposite direction of those from the right side. Chevy’s thinking-- at that time-- was that as you drove down the road, the centrifugal force of the wheels spinning would keep the lug nuts secure, because they’d be threaded to tighten up as the wheel moved as opposed to possible loosen up, had the wheel not been threaded the opposite direction.
Yeah, OK. Pretty stupid question and answer, if you ask me.
But it got me thinking- couldn’t you take 2 lug nuts from the right rear tire—where it’s threaded the same direction—and adding it to the one that you salvaged from falling down the storm drain, and make a total of three on the right front and rear wheels?
The car should be able to drive with three lugs on two separate wheels, right?
I’m thinking about calling their smug asses next week and telling them their puzzler was screwed- that person could still have driven off, he wouldn’t be stuck.
But would I be right?