Buyer be aware: Not all car issues are mechanical

Measure vehicle, testdrive garage when you buy a house.

Dear Car Talk: We love your column. For some time, I’ve been meaning to suggest you address the following problem:

My friend bought a new home after her husband passed away. After the deal was done, she discovered her beloved pickup would not fit in the garage. Heartbroken, she then had to sell the truck and buy a smaller vehicle.

Our new Honda almost didn’t fit into our garage either. No one ever thinks of making those measurements first. Thank you for helping all of us with our car problems. —Yolanda

Yolanda: It’s a good suggestion, Yolanda. On the house inspection list, I’d put it somewhere between making sure the house won’t fall down and seeing if you like the color of the toilets.

The real problem is vehicle expansion. We keep wanting bigger and bigger cars.

And since people replace vehicles far more frequently than they build new houses, the houses haven’t kept up.

It’s like when I go to see the Red Sox at Fenway Park. Fenway Park was built in 1912. And its seats were built for 1912-sized butts. I don’t have a 1912-sized butt. I have a 2022 model. And it’s tight.

Similarly, a lot of people are finding that garages built for 1970s or 1980s cars don’t hold today’s F150s and Escalades.

So, listen to Yolanda. Test drive the garage when you buy a house. Otherwise, you’ll have to downsize your truck. Or live like an abject pauper and park in the driveway.

I can’t believe no one’s made a fortune selling “garage extensions” yet.

Dear Car Talk: I read your column regularly. Recently, Fran asked about extra sun visors for the side window.

Amazon sells stick-on shades for car windows that I use to block the sun from the side. They come in various configurations. I bought mine years ago. They’re pretty cheap, if I remember. You can leave them in place and move them around easily, so you don’t need double-sided tape to attach them. — Jenny

Jenny: Fran, meet your hero: Jenny.

Dear Car Talk: Is the idea of downshifting when going down a hill outdated for hybrid

vehicles with regenerative braking?

I grew up with the idea that one should always downshift on long downhills to avoid brake wear and overheating the brakes.

Now, I have a 2021 Toyota Camry Hybrid. There’s a monitor on the dash, and when I brake going downhill, it tells me I’m getting the benefit of regenerative braking, which recharges my battery.

When I downshift going downhill, I don’t see any regenerative charging happening. What I don’t know is the effect on the brake wear and overheating. To downshift or brake ... what’s a hybrid owner to do? Love the column. — Chuck

Chuck: Use the brakes, Chuck.

Regenerative braking does two things. It uses your already-spinning wheels to turn a generator that makes electricity. And because it takes effort to turn that generator, it slows down those wheels, reducing the speed of the car. So when you use regenerative braking, you’re not only making electricity and increasing your mileage, you’re also slowing the car without using — or wearing out — your traditional “friction” brakes.

If your friction brakes are being used lightly, or hardly at all, there’s almost no chance they’ll overheat your brake fluid and cause brake failure — which is the danger when you brake constantly while descending, say, Pike’s Peak. Now, if the regenerative braking is insufficient to slow the car and you step harder on the brake pedal, your car will add in friction braking. But those friction brakes will still be doing a lot less than they would if they were your only brakes. And there’s really no danger of overheating or wearing out the regenerative braking system.

It’s true that once your battery is full, you won’t be able to use regenerative braking because, simply put, there’s nowhere to put the electricity you’re making. But in a hybrid, your battery won’t be completely full when you’re coming down a hill. How do we know that? Because you just went up the hill and used the battery.

I suppose in a fully electric car, if you stopped at the top of a mountain and then charged the battery, you might then need to use friction braking on your way down. So keep that in mind, ski-chalet-owning Tesla drivers. But in the real world, that’s not going to be a problem.

So, the answer is to just drive it, Chuck. Use the brake pedal to slow the car as much as necessary and reap the benefit of better mileage and less brake wear.