Just taking a wild guess at a 2.4L crankshaft? Or the 420a Eagle Talon/Dodge Neon 2.0L DOHC engine has a crankshaft made of unobtainium!
Tom: There was no shortage.
Ray: There was no shortage and I was amazed to find out how many wackos inhabited our fair city, and those who came in who thought they knew what they were doing and didn’t really expect us to do the work for them for $2.50 an hour, or whatever we were charging them. We soon realized we were doing all the work for everybody, running around like nuts. … It was pretty much a bust. … What really drove us out of business was the fact that in 1973, fixing one’s own car was within the grasp of the average person. But as emission controls came into being and cars got more complicated, it soon disappeared — that ability soon disappeared — and we found the business diminished considerably. People in Cambridge who had had the time because they were unemployed bums, like my brother, to work on their own cars went out and got jobs and bought newer cars. …
Tom: But it’s interesting how much fun the bums could be. I mean, these were complete wackos, weirdos, as my brother said, he’s absolutely right, but man were they fun. … I mean people could take a joke! People weren’t as uptight as they are now. It was only a car. … What was really sort of spiritual about it was that nobody ever got hurt. I mean, in all the years that we did that, [with] complete rank amateurs using very dangerous equipment …
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Tom Magliozzi’s laugh boomed in NPR listeners’ ears every week as he and his brother, Ray, bantered on Car Talk.
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Tom Magliozzi, Popular Co-Host Of NPR’s ‘Car Talk,’ Dies At 77
Tom Magliozzi co-hosted the longtime public radio show Car Talk. He died Monday.
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Tom Magliozzi: As Warm In Real Life As He Was On The Radio
Ray: We didn’t know any better either! You wanna use the torch, yeah? Go ahead! We’ll be standing on the other side of the brick wall.
Tom: Here, wear this football helmet. Call us if anything happens — we’re going out for coffee!
On their first radio appearances as part of a WBUR car mechanics panel in 1977
Tom: We didn’t know that it was a real radio station. It’s part of Boston University and, at the time, the studios, I mean, you’d think it was like 1920.
Ray: The equipment resembled the tin cans and the string.
Tom: You’d expect [Italian inventor Guglielmo] Marconi to walk by any minute. And so, our assumption was, you know, first of all, who is listening to this station? And we thought it was a station that only broadcast on like wires within the school, within BU.
Ray: We thought it had, you know, 50-watt capacity and then we found out it had 50,000 watts.
Tom: Well, when they turned on the microphones, the lights dimmed. So yeah, I think we were pretty relaxed.
On how much Car Talk changed over the years
Ray: It sounded surprisingly like the new shows do.
Tom: It did?
Ray: I mean, we tended to, if we got someone on the line who we thought was interesting, we tended to talk to that person for whatever a period of time we thought was appropriate, sometimes 25 minutes. And our producer Doug Berman [who joined the show when it went national in 1987] would never allow that. Now he’s giving us the cut sign and waving his hands and jumping up and down if we go more than five or six minutes — he gets nervous. But other than that, I would say the show is pretty much the same.
Tom: Really?
Ray: Which begs the question, why do we need Berman? …
Tom: I’ve been asking that question since Day 1.
On learning how to do radio and constantly laughing on the air
Tom: No one ever told us anything. Until maybe a week ago, we would walk into the studio and say, “Are we on?” I mean, we had absolutely no information. We knew the room we would go to, we knew where to sit and that was it.
Ray: The only reason we knew that is there was a show on the hour before us called Shop Talk, which was two or three guys talking about stereo equipment and recording and the like. And we would watch them through the glass and we would see how far away from the microphone they sat. And we noticed they wore headphones and we noticed they pressed the lighted buttons on the phone to talk to callers, and so we patterned ourselves after what they did.
Tom: I am proud to say that after 23 or [24] years on the radio we have learned absolutely nothing. It’s absolutely the truth. People say, “Tell us about radio!” We have no idea. We sit in front of the microphones and we know nothing about radio. Nothing!
Ray: We’ve never made an attempt to learn anything, either. And we do laugh a lot, too much sometimes, and I’m sure people complain. And there are many people who can’t stand us.
Tom: My wife is one of them!
Ray: Well, that goes without saying. Which wife?
Tom: All of them.
Stolen from, “‘We Have Learned Absolutely Nothing’: Tom Magliozzi On Decades Of ‘Car Talk’” NPR
I was with your sister until the no plates or insurance. It shouldn’t leave the yard without liability coverage. Yeah, three blocks what can happen? Things crazier than that have happened and you put your whole dad’s assets at risk. Talk to your agent for a short liability policy.
I can’t believe no one has suggested this, wash it good enough for a good picture and put it on eBay. People buy cars on eBay without a test drive all the time. Set your reserve at $600 and if it is not met, then you have evidence for your sister and dad that it is not going to bring that kind of money. If someone buys it, then cool.
EBAY listings in my area dropped off significantly five years ago. The listings that I see are mostly for odd vehicles or classics and are relisted week after week.
A 20 year old Neon with rust and expired plates is near worthless so I can’t see making much of an effort to sell it.
Have dad sign the title off, give it a quick vacuum/wash, and park it out front with a 600 OBO sign on it.
Another possibility is to sign up on a Neon forum and list it in a “For Sale” section. Maybe there would be some people who are forum members living in the same area who are Neon freaks and are willing to jump on it.
Heck IF I wanted to be 100% I could just put my car's plate on there for the short drive, no way I get a ticket then from a cop.
I know a guy who got charged with a felony for that. Same situation as you: Didn’t want to bother registering the car but wanted to drive it just a couple blocks. Got caught and spent the night in jail.
Pled down to a gross misdemeanor. See, the first thing a car thief does if he wants to keep the car is swap plates, and so they often juice up the penalty for swapping plates so they can stick it to the car thief even harder.
I also know a guy who got hit by an idiot driving with no insurance. He ended up cleaning the moron out. Fool lost everything, including his dog because he couldn’t afford it anymore. Driving without insurance is not only a jerk thing to do because you’re basically saying that you don’t care if you screw someone over if you hit them, but it’s also a stupid thing to do because if they don’t have an insurance policy to come after, they’re going to come after your assets.
I’ll throw my two cents in here . If the car is fairly solid & runs well , I’d clean it up & hang a for sale sign in it for about $1,300.00 & see if someone came along & offered me $800.00 or 1,000.00 for it . It would definitely be an , as is where is sale . You can always come down in price but you can’t go up .
I am waiting to hear from the two scrap companies I sent emails to. I figure can’t hurt and if they can come in anywhere near $500 I will take it, if not once I get a nice weekend day I will clean it up and put a sign in it and see what happens, thank you to all who commented here, I fully understand your views on driving an uninsured, unplated car and while I don’t agree, I respect everyone’s opinion here.
Another option is to donate it to your NPR station. As Click and Clack say, “towing your car away - with your permission, of course.”
they think it will bring big money like $600+
I guess big is relative.
I certainly wouldn’t have any qualms about a jaunt around the block for a test drive but everybody has their own level of risk aversion.
How would I prep this car for sale?
Clean out all personal stuff and move it close to the street with a sign in big letters- $495 OBO.
That’s it. It doesn’t warrant any more investment in time or money.
Do you have a teenager or pre teen that would work for a couple of dollars? If so, put him or her to work cleaning up grandpa (or great, grandpa’s) car. When I was in 8th grade, my mother went back to work and my parents had to get a second car. My dad came home with an eight year old 1947 DeSoto coupe. The maroon paint was badly faded. I really expressed my displeasure about the car and said that it wasn’t “cool”. My dad didn’t say a a word, but the next day he came home with rubbing compound, auto polish, wax, window cleaner, etc. and said to me " You are going to make that DeSoto look cool". I spent two days on that car. I even got the radio to work–,had to replace a tube. My. dad thought the car looked great. We all decided the car was cool–it had a radio and our other car did not. Maybe you can find a teenager who would like to make $20 and put him or her to work.
"Maybe you can find a teenager who would like to make $20 and put him or her to work. "
Figure the odds.
If this was summer probably could, but now in the weather we are having not so much, gonna try and get it done this sunday, reports are temps near maybe mid 50’s and hopefully all the snow will be gone.
This Thread has gotten pretty long already… I feel like the OP Has gotten many answers to his post to where he should feel where he wants to go but ultimately the decision or this decision sounds like a family matter and he needs to make sure it’s all ok with his dad and sister. Just my two cents.