Hank Watson's Garage Hour - Cars, Trucks, Beers & Guns
05.28.15: An Hour @ Helm's Brewing: San Diego Beer VS the World, the Booming Beer Biz, Gov't Tracking of Your Mileage, bin Laden's Reading List, Shopping .22 Rifles, Plus Ministry, STP, Primus  & Mars Volta

Cars, trucks, beers, guns!  It's the Garage Hour - go figure.  This week, we pried ourselves out of the garage to put together another one of our adventure episodes, sitting down for an hour of sipping and salacious talk with the folks from Helm's Brewing, most notably GM Matt Johnson.  There's a good chat about the business of craft/micro/up-and-coming brewing, and where San Diego's excellent beer scene stands in relation to the rest of the world's beer (definitely not on the bottom rung).

We've also got a discussion of pros and cons to consider when picking up a .22-cal rifle for plinking duty, a visit with Osama bin Laden's reading list (lots of porn to go with his leftist and terrorist topics), and we briefly (far too briefly) visit with the pending epic fail that is state-mandated mileage taxes and what you can do to stop it (or how low-information fools let it happen).  Along with those goodies are rock/roll in the form of big-time weirdness from Mars Volta, stuff we're missing (Pixies annd The Smiths), and plane-Jane goodness like Primus, Ministry and the Stone Temple Pilot's kickoff, Core.  

On-air for this one with Hostus Maximus Justin Fort and Matt from Helm's were .45 Phil, Chef Jeff, Rick McElroy, Kurtis from JBA Speed Shop and Majid from GSR. Download us immediately.

Direct download: HWGH052515.m4a
Category:gearhead personality -- posted at: 5:39pm EDT

12.04.10: Classic! Christmas Holiday Traffic Rage & Lane-Change Logic, Don't Feed the Hippies, Rating Idiot VS Stupid, Bob Hansen & Quadalcanal, Cat VS Gator, Plus the Happy Patrol & Animal House's Eat Me Special (a.k.a. the Deathmobile)

When you're this good, who needs a plan? From the scattered intro to the return of Grizzly Chris, this one's pure Garage Hour.  There's Grizzlies Gone Wild, Mr. Dustin's (Top Earner) report from Irwindale Speedway, Dirty Dave and Black Ryan, plus big new truck bumpers and where we're going to put them (in a Prius), plus the Happy Patrol, how to rate an idiot's stupidity, Juan Williams versus Howard Dean (we all lose), fraternity chef and Guadalcanal first-wave Bob Hansen, and that's just to get things rolling.

Once the Garage Hour's crack team of gearhead consultants get started on the retrograde traffic of the silly season, it's all ball bearings - Miata rage, bumper rage, lane-change rage, Ryan rage, grizzly rage, and then it's conserving ammunition, shotguns, the Deathmobile, Wikileaks, and the government taking over the web (we warned you - didn't we warn you?).

Direct download: HWGH120410.m4a
Category:gearhead personality -- posted at: 2:41am EDT

11.05.11: Flux Capacitor Day! Also Guy Fawkes Day (For Real?) & 100%-Everything Attack on Occupy Idiots (Occupuke? Occupoop? Yummy Occupie?), w/ Occupy VS Cops, VS Volcanos & VS Themselves, +Jon Lovitz & Ship High In Transit

So much good stuff! The Garage Hour goons go after the usual fools in the Occupy idiots (remember all that astroturf?) with unusual relish in this episode of the show.  There's some honest-to-goodness background on the hypocricy that is a 1%er whining about her iPad being stolen at an Occupy encampment, plus a short list of the biggest FAILS to populate the Occufoo movement.  They put a lid on all that with some love (and a spirited defense) for Herman Cain, the most interesting presidential candidate who didn't get a date.

Have no fear, it's all gearhead, even when your favorite gearheads have their boots on the necks of the Occupee weirdos...  This episode's also got Dr. Emmett Brown's flux capacitor, beadlocks, Rhino Linings, SEMA, Donald Trump, off-road trucks, chrome auto paint, McRibs and Soviet and Nazi war leftovers.

Alongside that, the men with faces for radio discuss Dirty Dave's hatred of Rick Perry, Grizzly Chris's disdain for Jesse Jackson, Mr. Dustin's careless treatment of Slimer's paint, Barrister Hilton's interest in Michael Richards' dirty words (ala Jon Lovitz) and Hostus Maximus Justin Fort's inability to get the Brown Note generator down to the Occupiers (of Decency) in time for a mass movement they're never forget.

Direct download: HWGH110511.m4a
Category:gearhead personality -- posted at: 2:31pm EDT

11.12.11: Rainy Traffic Crap Salad! Wet Weather Fails VS San Diego Fires, Tires/Wipers/Headlights (Oh My), Junkyard Adventures, Hybrids @ 88mph, Slow-Exploding Volts, Cartel Truck Tanks, + Deadbolt, Fatso Jetson & Secret Samurai

In this episode, the gearhead goons go after the liquid lobotomy that is SoCal traffic during the rain - any rain.  When did you last check your tires?  Your wipers?  Your headlights?  Don't let Mr. Murphy make an example of you...  We also cruise local junkyards for seatbelts and discuss the merits of cordless Sawzalls (sorry, "reciprocating saws"), chat up David Lozeau's Christmas party, discuss how to have fun driving in the rain, and them slide off to our impending "Gearhead Movie Night" and the latest horror to spring up from south of the border, which would be the cartels building tanks out of dump trucks.  Seriously.

After our standard searing kickoff, it's stolen Viper parts (yup, Hennessey again - go figure), hybrids and their inability to not suck on the freeway, and electric car batteries and their ability to explode a month after a fender-bender.  Of course, it's the Garage Hour, so there's also rock and roll (including our recent visit to a Fatso Jetson/Secret Samurai show) and, just because, Beavis & Butthead.

There's also an over-the-shoulder look at Veterans' Day (despite both the show's vets being down and out).  Hank Watson's Garage Hour - we promise we're not part of the problem, though we may have caused it.

Direct download: HWGH111211.m4a
Category:gearhead personality -- posted at: 4:44pm EDT

04.28.15: In-Garage Hour! Live @ Yawsport w/ Track & Street Car Tuning & Setup, Plus Massive Suspension Knowledge, Bilstein's PSS-9, Corner Weighting, Techniques for Balance, Hillclimbing & High-Speed Solo 2-Style Competition @ The Lone Pine Trials

So much tech!  This live in-garage episode of the Garage Hour is dense with answers to your suspension-setup questions, including coilvers versus struts versus shocks, springs and perches, adjustable valve and suspension tuning, compression versus rebound, vehicle setup, diagonal weighting, the state of the high-performance shock business, weight jacking and weight relocation, plus the investment of time and energy necessary to be a professional gearhead in regulation-heavy Kalifornistan.

Hostus Maximus Justin Fort and his canyon-carving Subaru STi join road and race suspension tuner (and driver of note) Bret Norgarrd (or is it Bert Nogood?  Terb Draagron?) at his San Diego/Ramona-based Yawsport Tuning shop for some corner weighting and a Garage Hour-style chat about what it takes to make a good suspension better, in this case the new Bilstein PSS-9 boingers on the in-house STi.

Justin and Bret also chat about Bret's upcoming races (including the big Lone Pine Time Trials) and his campaign plans for the large-by-wide Yawsport SMF Acura TL.

Direct download: HWGH042815_050315.m4a
Category:gearhead personality -- posted at: 2:04am EDT

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