Author Archives: HankWatsonsGarageHour
Diesel Dodge VS Damnable DMV, Truckers VS Teslas, Bosch Battery Boy VS Broadcast Boos, the Internet of Your Downfall (& Control in the Guise of Failure), + Fat Tony, Kaiser Soze & a Wreckful Childhood (…So Go Do Something Nice) [Aired 09.25.22]
Do YOU know better than to put propane in your Tesla’s tires? Do YOU know Teslas need special gas that doesn’t come from the gas station? …Then YOU might be smarter than the college laureates who could buy one but not own them. College… Have some: 09.19.22: Diesel Dodge VS Damnable DMV, Truckers VS Teslas, Bosch Battery Boy VS Broadcast Boos, the Internet of Your Downfall (& Control in the Guise of Failure), + Fat Tony, Kaiser Soze & a Wreckful Childhood (…So Go Do Something Nice)
While we’re at it: be nice to truckers (say it again, uh!), be wary of connecting your heater to your ‘fridge to your A/C to your electricity (the internet of things or an appliance army marching towards your destruction?), and the story of a guy from New Jersey who was forced to crush his Cummins Dodge because it was for sale on Fakebook Marketface. Yuuuuuup. Don’t say we didn’t warn you (because we did, like, all the time ago). Also, Karma to Burn, John Lee Hooker, Big Head Todd, Naked Funk, QOTSA, Skynyrd and the Allmans.
Gearhead Awesomepile: B-1Bs & F-15s, Bilsteins & F1, Santa Anas & Taco Bell Hot Sauce, + Truckers, Rioters, & Aliens [Aired 04.01.21]
…Crammed it all into this one. Script writer: go script yourself. With a device-thwarting free-news cable-cobbling in-lab intro, this is classic Garage Hour goodness – better hydrate. Fried cheese curds, cheating Chinese Teslas, F1 or circle-track, Bilstein 5100 and 6112 under your 4Runner, de-Wayneing the NRA, U.S. bombers in India and John Ratcliffe’s UFOs.
Even more: Body Armor? Drank it. Flopping tablets? Fixed ’em. Affirmative action for F1? Figures. ’60s Chicaco P.D.? Need ’em. The greys? Found ’em.
Brake This & Break That – Garage Hour Does Hi-Po Brake Fixes & Avoiding Low-Quality Bits [AIRED 01.10 & 01.12.21]
Ahhh, repetitiveness… You get into a groove, chatting up tricks for good braking technique and dodging lousy Chinese and third-world parts that’ll ruin your day (not to mention make you look stupid), then take a tug of a fine sip from Trinity Brewing, and suddenly there’s two episodes in a row about breaking and braking and breaks and brakes and broken binders with bad bits.
It’s not all ball-bearings these days, but if it doesn’t roll, it oughtn’t go. The January 12 show that just posted is about the real and hazardous quality issues that result from lousy Chinese (and other third-world hellohole) manufacturing: https://garagehour.libsyn.com/011221-quality-safety-matter-reasons-not-to-buy-chinese-or-crappy-parts-w-counterfeit-tires-low-flow-injectors-fraudulent-qc-intentionally-defective-equipment-disregard-life-poison-dog-food-anyone-exceptions-adventure-shopping-dumb-is-not-an-excuse
There’s another that went up last week (dated 01.10.21) that’s more about how you can treat your brakes a little better – after all, you only get to go around once if you can’t stop without collecting a telephone pole: https://garagehour.libsyn.com/011021-braking-brakes-until-the-break-do-you-brake-right-how-to-avoid-potato-chipped-rotors-pre-braking-the-cool-roll-brakes-on-fire-overheating-disc-rotor-physics-uberlate-garage-hour-wfluke-flying-lotus
Not to get on too high a horse, but you need to be good to your parts and avoid crap parts. Like it or not (but you will), the Garage Hour goons are here to help.
Pike’s Peak Hillclimb Hangout – Garage Hour Snoops Practice Sessions @ Glen Cove, w/ Driver, Crew & Racecar Interviews [Aired 08.28.20]
Who said work can’t be a nose full of tire shrapnel and downforce? The Garage Hour lurked up a few hours of awesomeness on Pike’s Peak this year, and managed to behave like a good race official (almost the whole time) while providing some good luck in the process (without getting run over!).
#Becauseracecar! It’s hillclimbing season (when isn’t it?) and the PPIHC is running its chop fluey-addled rescheduled race. It’s a little weird being fan-free (’cause kung flu), but the racers are here to race – folks like Dallenbach, Vahsholtz, Zwart, Yoshihara, Donahue, Schranz and more are running everything like a carbon-fiber Z, JZ’d BR-Z, open-wheel this and 50-year old that, Camaros and Mustangs, factory Acuras, and Porsches by the pound. Power is thick: V8s from the junkyard, blown everything, twin-turbo’d straight-six Buicks and VQs, with diesel power, ethanol power and even – heh – nine-volt power.
Jump on board – Hostus Maximus Justin Fort is trackside and grabs as much as iPhonely possible, which turns out to be tons of surprsingly good audio. Now you go do something fast and awesome.
AR-15 Q & A: .223 VS 5.56, Handguard Styles, Trigger Types & Lots More AR Need-To-Knows [Originally Aired 05.03.20]
When you’ve got to know the basics, it’s not okay to be a poseur. The Garage Hour goons gathered up a few know-it guys from Freedom:30 Arms and peeled the onion on an episode all about new-guy questions about the AR-15 – y’know, helping you get over the hump. We even found a few questions that we didn’t know the answer to, plus the wonder that is .40S&W LEGO bullet heads.
Do you need to understand one and two-stage triggers? Do you know the the difference between .223 and 5.56? How about which handguard and what type of barrel shrouding is right for you (and why)? What’s the “AR” stand for? What’s barrel twist about and why do you need some (and why do some folks think it’s a conspiracy to make it a legal requirement?), plus sights and lasers and freakin’ sharks.
Garage Hour Podcasts: Latest Shows, Classic Reloads – Yes, Have Some!
Download every Garage Hour you miss and dig into the rapidly multiplying pile of vintage episodes at our podcast page – follow the link (http://garagehour.libsyn.com/), hunt us down on iTunes (search “Garage Hour”), or click to the microsite through this website. There’s a grand assortment of gearhead awesomesauce that we’ve uploaded for your downloading pleasure, with all the cars, trucks, beers and guns you can handle, plus off-roading, Boris Said, traffic, shooting, bad aim, Dude Food, a little bit of politics, some international intrigue, rock and/or roll, and all the other gearhead goodness you demand from your talk radio.
Remember, if you can’t get us on-air at 6:PM Saturdays (and can’t make it to a Sasquatch Run or find us in the canyons), have a podcast – they’re super.
In-Garage Garage Hour! Gearhead Talk & Go-Fast Bits in the First Live Pure Podcast
We took a few new bits of technology, a little more processing power and a gang of Garage Hour goons, and pointed them at a pile of speed parts and several growlers of Twisted Manzanita beer to create the first-ever Garage Hour live-to-tape pure podcast. Live from the garage? Damn right.
What’s that, you say, new Garage Hours? Damn right, with a little help from Chef Jeff, Surfer Greg and Jaime from Off-Road.com, Hostus Maximus Justin Fort screwed together the first of what’s the new thing in gearhead talk – pure-podcast Garage Hours. This one’s a gem – lot’sa recording experimentation, discussions of beer and food, a little bit about Queens of the Stone Age’s last gig, all while Justin installs a set of slotted rotors on his nasty little Subaru STi. It’s gearhead! Have some.
No Garage Hour and no gearheads make listeners something something…
In the immortal words of Homer Simpson, “No TV and no beer make Homer something something…” Don’t go crazy – Hank Watson’s Garage Hour hasn’t gone away – we’ve just left AM radio; the podcasts will continue.
Long story short, through no fault of our own – and someone else’s specifically – the suit overlords of KCBQ’s parent company called all the overhanging balances of the pain in the ass upstart shows like the Garage Hour, and we didn’t have the wad to bail ourselves out of an unceremonious trip to the AM grooveyard. This, despite being the best piece of gearhead radio on-air in San Diego, listened to in more than 40 countries and at least 44 of these united states. Dammit.
Thankfully, the aforementioned Garage Hour podcasts have been going gangbusters, and download numbers for current shows and Garage Hour Reloads are climbing like a Saturn 5 in a hurry. We’re going to keep recording our shows (once we’ve had a few Saturdays off to remember why days off are so much fun), and keep uploading the shows for your downloading pleasure. There will be some experiments with how we record and mix ’em, but it’ll be the Garage Hour – have no fear. C’mon, you can’t keep a little monster like this down, though for now, we’re going to change our shape to fit the times.
Also thankfully, we (you’re in on this too) must appreciate the advertisers who’ve stuck with the show, because it’s a lot to ask for small businesses to ride this sort of thing out. Twisted Manzanita Ales & Spirits, Active Shooter Defense School, and Tony’s Lube & Tune have been with us for a long time, and we’re grateful for every minute of their support.
08.09.14@6:PM – Do Stuff! Garage Hour Chats Canyon-Carving and Off-Road Adventure (and Wants You to Have Some Too), Plus Car Chases (Someone Else’s), and Rock and/or Roll
It’s that time of year – get out of your box and go DO something. If you’re a gearhead like us, that means finding some of the wonderful roads in your own backcountry (be they paved or un) and doing things on them. If you’re lucky enough to have mountains and higher-elevation trails, that means getting the family truck out, checking tire pressure and stepping off the pavement, and if you’re a fast guy who likes a curvy piece of pavement, go find one and stick it to it.
Of course, statements like this will separate those who can from those who could, and we’re here to help. Get involved, find someone who can show you the ropes, who can help you understand what makes your stock four-by Exploder or two-by 4Runner a decent truck for decent trails (and where to go to learn about it), or who can be your bandit while you learn to put your Z or GT or or WRX or Miata through its first paces on the curvy roads nearest you.
In-studio with Hostus Maximus Justin Fort (real-life fast guy) will be .45 Phil (real-life Master Guns) and Seth “Metal” Hollander (real-life off-roader). Tune in at 6:PM, only on 1170AM and KCBQ.com.
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