Garage Heroes In Training

SPOILER FILLED EPISODE:  On this week's Way Off Our Topic (WOOT) episode, we try to review the most recent Star Wars movie, "The Rise of Skywalker".  We try to get a broad range of opinions from relatively hard core Star Wars fans to fans who have seen the movies and we also range from 11 years old to over 50.  In general, we all liked the movie.  We had issues with some parts, but in general, the...

Zack Klapman is a car guy through and through and was our guest for this week's episode.  You may know him from the Smoking Tire podcast and YouTube channel or from seeing him on air on the NBC /Drive show or as a producer for /Drive as well as several other television shows like "Proving Grounds".  We were able to talk with Zack quite a bit about his overall car interests and how he began working...

On this episode we started out with one show idea and quickly flexed into another when Judge Phil Greden from the 24 Hours of Lemons was able to join us after some scheduling issues.  Judge Phil is also an automotive journalist and often uses the pen name of Murilee Martin and writes for a variety of venues including Autoblog, Autoweek, Jalopnik, Truth About Cars, Car and Driver, Roadkill, and the...

Alan, Zombie Vicki, and Bill go over our recent Friendsgiving Work Weekend with special guest from the Everyone Racers Podcast hosts, Chris and Chrissy who came up to guide, instruct, and assist us with several of our cars that, as always, need repair and improvements.  Highlights to the discussion include:   1)  Our two and a half Porsche 944's that are available and soon to be posted for sale fo...

SPOILER FILLED.  We had a chance to finally review the new Disney+ star Wars related series the Mandalorian.  After the first three episodes, we are all impressed and looking forward to seeing where we go from here.  Our hosts were joined by our friend Jeff from the Everyone Racers podcast, a long time Star Wars fan and pop culture in general.  In this episode, we gave a brief synopsis of all thre...

On this week's podcast, we finally "met" with Dillon Brennan also known as EJ2 Track Rat after missing each other multiple times at the last Watkins Glen HPDE event.  While he is an accomplished driver and instructor, he started EJ2 Track Rat to help raise awareness to everyone that they can also get out on track and enjoy our great sport with a low budget.  You can follow him on his Instagram acc...

On this week's episode we have Scott Barton as our guest.  Scott is a very accomplished racing driver and very knowledgeable in the area of Sim Racing.  We thought we'd learn more about both on this episode, just in time for Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales.  Sim racing can be great way to get cheap track time, especially in the off season or during the work week when you aren't near a track. ...

Brent Picasso has been racing since 2009 and has since created a company that provides the RaceCapture and Podium real time telemetry and data capture/display systems.  We cover the development history and capabilities of the system, as well as his racing history.  With what originally began as a self-tweeting race car, they have been able to develop one of the best and most complete systems we ha...

This week's guests are once again from Race Bar, repeat offender, James Webb/The Jandy Man is now joined by Patrick McHugh/Richard Freelane, and Ben Dawson/Awesome Dawson, formerly of Winsome Racing and Race Bar pseudonym apparently still under construction, lol.  You can blame us for trying to wrangle another episode from the Race Bar team.  Instead of a visual guide of VIR, today we get a tour o...

We talk with Craig Ledbetter aka Craiggers, one of our favorite judges and team member of the Terminally Confused racing team from the 24 Hours of Lemons team.  Initially we review our future race at CMP and some of the recent debacle we had with relocating our El Jeffe/Bad Hombre race truck from a few episodes back.  Bill also makes a subtle plea to be a judge at some point.    Craiggers has been...

On this week's episode, we lose all pretenses of control with our guests from the Race Bar/Baby Shark racing team stage a coup of the podcast.  Strap in for one of the most unique episodes that we have ever had with your unofficial hosts for this week James Webb and Jeff Caplan.  Jennifer, Alan, Vicki and Bill were just along for the ride on this one.  With that, here is the Baby Shark episode, ju...

Our podcast this week focuses on our race weekend at NHMS with the 24 Hours of Lemons teams.  We had a bit of a struggle getting ready, but the cars eventually cooperated and raced well, at least for a bit.  In the end, we had a great time and caught up with a lot of friends and made several new ones this weekend. On this episode, Alan, Jennifer, Kate, Vicki and Bill are still recuperating from th...

Please vote for Vicki A https://www.intechtrailers.com/max-the-tach#   NHMS race weekend prep status. One race, two cars, neither working.  The rest is good though. On one hand we have the BMW E36 3 series from 1998.  Issues, yes.  It won't start.  It seems to not be getting power to the computer system and won't turn over.  We found one wiring issue and are tracking down any others, slowly.  One...

Welcome to our latest podcast episode where we review our weekend HPDE with NASA North East at the world famous Watkins Glen International racetrack.  We had a great weekend with 5 of our team showing up and two other friends from the Everyone Racers Podcast and The Three Pedal Mafia racing team, Chris and Chrissy.    We summarize the prepping of the many cars we brought and the debacle it became...

Racing is both physically and mentally challenging, even at the beginner and intermediate levels.  For this week's episode, we were very proud to have Trey Shannon as a guest.  Trey is located near Charlotte NC and is helping many high level drivers and teams with their off track preparation both physically and mentally.  The discussion will go over many areas that you can focus on and improve not...

On this week's (delayed) podcast we go over how to plan and prepare for a race weekend nutritionally.  We will usually have a 3-4 day weekend with 12-40 drivers and crew to feed, so we know what works well for us and what doesn't.  It really does affect how well the weekend goes and can seriously Impact your driver's and team performance in a significant way.    Some of our top tips include:   Pre...

On this week's podcast episode we go over wheel alignment and measurement techniques that can be used at home and at the track by almost everyone with Gil Winingham from QuickTrick Alignment.  Having a minor change to the alignment can lead to very significant effects, increasing speed, decreasing lap times, and easier/safer driving and handling.   Please contact Gil at:   https://www.quicktrickal...

Our team now has a new race car build about to begin.  Long Roof for Life:  Project Codename:  Godzuki!!!  It is a "new to us" Honda Civic that we will be converting into an endurance race car after this season.  Since we know "Mr Honda" we will have backup knowledge to assist us as we go.  Our plan is to build this car as a demonstration project for our listeners.  If you have any ideas or though...

Another new intro bumper starts off our summary of Disney's D23 expo with most of the highlights.  We cover most of the announcements and also give our opinion on most and background in many cases if you are not familiar with the different properties.  We also highlighted two additions to the Disney park areas.   We cover a wide variety of the recent announcements including: Moon Knight She Hulk M...

Chris Egan is our special guest driver from the Futility Motorsports endurance racing team.  We last saw Chris at the 24 Hours of Lemons race at Thompson.  We review his lemons racing history as well as the team's recent over-temp issues at their last race.  Chris started racing with a Shelby Daytona and somehow he is still going (with the Futility Motorsport Saab).  Chris has also raced in severa...

We (Finally) cover the recent San Diego Comic Convention (SDCC).  We cover the entire event with what we found of interest.  Marvel dominated most of the announcements, but we tried to cover everything.    Including: Krypton, several times The Witcher and Henry Cavil Top Gun Maverick Trailer Jay and Silent Bob Reboot movie and all of Kevin Smith's movies Terminator:  Dark Fate The Cats Trailer It...

Wendy Charlier has been our primary contact at Porterfield's since we started our team and has been with the company 20 years.  Wendy has a racing background from her family that goes back many years.  Also, for those of you that are not familiar with them, Porterfield's is a private company that services all kinds of performance applications related to the braking your car and heat management, in...

This episode is dedicated to our friend Aaron Leinemann.  He has had some unexpected bad medical news and a GoFundMe page has been started to assist.  Please share whatever you can to assist Aaron and his amazing family.  Link at the end.    On this episode, our team reviews the 2019 24 Hours of Lemons race GP du Lac Chargoggagogg(etcetera) AT Thompson Speedway in Northeastern Connecticut.  We ent...

We were honored to have internationally renowned racing coach Peter Krause join us for an introductory discussion of data collection and analysis to improve your track driving while minimizing the addition of risk.  The conversation was exceptional and covered a wide range of areas and topics.  Some of the highlight areas we covered include: Data collection systems, options, and comparison What to...

On this episode, we were happy to have the lead instructor of the NASA HPDE group that Bill attended a few weeks ago.  We tried to cover John's background, NASA Great Lakes teaching philosophy and approach.  We think this is one of our best episodes yet and hope it serves to get at least one of you to go out and try performance driving.  We would love to see you at the track.  Please make sure to...