Mechanical

2021 Goals and Our 2020 Goal Review

As the year wraps up, we review how our 2020 racing season went and what goals we would like to do and accomplish in 2021. Obviously, the year did not go as we had hoped or planned with the COVID pandemic impacting normal life routine. But we did make some significant growth and made the best out of a horrible situation. Goal making is one thing that is very easy to do, but also very easy to skip. However, we have found it to be very beneficial to our growth as racers as well as is our personal and professional lives.

On our Dominating with Dawson segment, we go over what it means to be driving at the limit, what is the limit, and how to get closer and closer to the limit safely and effectively.

We hope you enjoy this episode!

Best regards,

Vicki, Jennifer, Alan, and Bill

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training Podcast and

Garage Heroes In Training racing team drivers

Highlights from this episode include:

1) We start of looking at what our goals were for 2020 and how we did

2) The next segment covers what we want to accomplish going into 2021. (including items that we would like to improve about our driving and our team.)

3) We then begin to look at things that went well this year and things we could have done better.

4) It probably wouldn’t be a podcast without our doing a Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, so we did.

5) The final step was we tried to grade our year and then determine a few things that would define a successful year for ourselves and the team.

6) We did forget to go into The Mirror that we added to aid us in getting in better shape for racing, so we added it as a bonus section after the credits.

GHIT 0158: Our 2020 Year in Review and Our 2021 Goals

Out 2020 Goals episode can be found here.

GHIT 0157: John and Dean from Safety Third Motorsports Discuss Race Car Preparation

John Lavin and Dean Hesser join us to discuss improvements to our car preparation processes. This includes before leaving for the racetrack, as well as at the racetrack and after the race. We learned a ton of things that we should have been doing but weren’t simply because we didn’t know or hadn’t thought of it yet. We hope that this episode will save you at least one headache at the track or eliminate one breakdown or even better prevent an issue on track that causes damage to you or your car. We don’t have a lot of can’t miss episodes, but this is one of them for sure.

In addition, Dominating with Dawson we discuss some of the goal options for endurance racing. It is not simply a situation where you are either first or last, but really it is a race where you and your team are trying to work together and perform at the highest level internally and the final position is a relative measure of the team’s performance versus the current bar that weekend. While winning overall, or even your class, is a great accomplishment, it is not the only measurement available each weekend, especially early in your racing career.

We hope you enjoy this episode!

Best regards,

Vicki, Jennifer, Alan, and Bill

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training Podcast and Garage Heroes In Training racing team drivers

Highlights from this episode include:

1) Bill makes up a new word, “ThankYouNess”, well you know what we mean.

2) How Dean has “capitalized” on being target fixated during a race. Your results may vary.

3) Then we go into a “Weekend At Bernie’s” worthy moment. For those under 40, it’s a movie.

4) A brief summary of why many of the Safety Third Motorsports team members have ended up using BMW’s as their weapon of choice on track.

5) Bill cannot help but to make fun of the test drive at John’s shop where the GHIT M3 HPDE hit a deer. Sometimes you can’t make this stuff up.

6) A discussion of their team’s racing plans for 2021 and how both teams generally decide where to race.

7) How their team has progressed and grown over the years. It appears that our team is actually following their progression, both in how our team is organized and how our drivers are individually progressing. Perhaps there is hope for us. Who knew? Lol.

8) How Dean and Jen both ended up learning and growing as racing drivers as a result of their track incidents.

9) What is prepping a car? What is involved? What do you do before the race, during/at the race, and after the race to prepare and preserve your car and make sure that it has a higher likelihood of performing well.

10) Basic assumption: Assume everything is broken after a race and then verify before you take it to your next event.

11) Develop a wear rate of consumables and moving parts and then develop a preventative maintenance plan to replace before they fail at the track.

12) Overview: Repair things as they break or replace them ahead of time at a certain interval. Determine your team’s philosophy and plan appropriately.

13) A standard rule of thumb is to use a margin for wear, it can range from 75% to 80% to 90% of the experienced failure rate before replacing a still good part. This does not address issues due to abuse or an accident etc. As an example, if your front wheel bearing fails after 100 hours or racing, you may want to replace them all before they break at 75 or 80 or 90 hours. The balance of costs and/or effort vs your acceptable safety/failure factor is a personal/team decision.

14) Several available options range from paint marking nuts and bolts to adding safety wires.

15) What should you do when at the track and prepping for the race in the morning.

16) What to do the night after are race while racing the next day.

17) What to do post-race weekend while packing up to leave the track.

18) Why checklists are so very important and how your team will need to develop it from your own experiences and particular car.

19) It was good to hear that we aren’t the only team to have had radio communication issues at the track. They have come to the same solution as we have. Painfully.

20) The key is really to minimize the number and potential for errors.

21) We finish up this segment with the post-race recovery process for your race car. Don’t just put it away to wait for the next track event.

22) We wrap up with a post episode discussion of the skid pad and the value that it has had to our driving, as well as Dean’s.

GHIT 0157: John and Dean from Safety Third Motorsports Discuss Race Car Preparation

GHIT 0156: Pirate Takeover of Everyone Racers

(from 2018) and the (Horrible) Beginning of Our Podcasting

We found several of the original sound files and decided to put this together for a bonus Christmas gift to everyone. This is the podcast recording sessions that started everything. We originally intended this to fill in a week gap that the Everyone Racers podcast took for Chris and Chrissy’s wedding. However, it took almost thirty tries for us to get to this point.

In addition, we added an early snippet of our first GHiT podcast introductions. I guess we did get better over time, but honestly, we really had to, there was nowhere else to go.

We were such newbies back then. Hopefully, we can look back three years from now and feel the same ways about our team now vs then.

We hope you enjoy this episode!

PS Don’t blame us. Bill’s editing skills have improved to where this was possible and almost sounds decent.

Best regards,

Vicki, Jennifer, Alan, and Bill

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training Podcast and Garage Heroes In Training racing team drivers

Highlights from this episode include:

1) A few of our best E1R (Everyone Racers) intros followed with our own feeble attempt to follow their episode guideline at the time.

2) A very brief wrap up of our recent race at Thompson with the 24 Hours of Lemons, our teams second overall race, and Alan and Jen’s first ever race. The race weekend was very hot Friday and then very wet and humid for the rest of the weekend.

3) One of our first jokes came at the expense of Jeff. Very fitting.

4) The announcement of the team’s newest puppy, a Bernese Mountain dog named Zoe Lemons Fischer.

5) Even back then, we had prep issues. Still a focus of our improvement.

6) Alan had bad internet at the time and was using the local Starbucks internet since it was much faster. Lol.

7) When 4-5 psi is an issue on your SpiderStang, a 1984 Mustang GT Turbo, obviously you turn it up to 15 psi or so.

8) The end of the Capri at Thompson is reviewed a bit. The project is still ongoing.

9) Special shout out to Bruce and all his help with fixing the Capri until late in the morning, only to find out our issue was a broken cam shaft.

10) Our first ever racing trophy was received at the Thompson race. Unfortunately, it was the
I Got Screwed” award and even more unfortunately, it is still our only reward, but at least we have one, lol.

11) Alan’s first black flag came this weekend. But not his last.

12) Our first ever attempt to help the Everyone Racers podcast with a sponsor reading. It did not go well

13) Vicki provides just the tip. It was on the help of Friday practice. We would add pre-race prep to this as well. A lot of this can be done ahead of time with YouTube and various track guides and track walks available, especially our favorites from Ross Bentley and Racers360.

14) We even discuss our plans for the Capri after the transmission and engine issues at Thompson. The plan is still the same. Our skills just haven’t allowed us to get it to the finish line. Yet. Stay tuned.

15) Proof we can have an episode last less than one hour.

GHIT 0152: Craig Watkins Joins us for Car Setup 101 Focusing on the Tires

Craig Watkins Car Engineer for Flying Lizards Motorsports

Carig Watkins with Flying Lizard Motorsports

Craig Watkins joins us for this episode to discuss his driving history, as well as his time spent as an engineer for Flying Lizard Motorsports, among others. Craig concentrates now being an amateur racing driver and fells the pain of being a single person team. We also go into his business that started as a tool he needed to help him as a race car engineer and grew into what we know as Smart Racing Products that offers several solutions that are easy to use to set your car alignment up, even if your car is a truck or a bus. We hope to have Craig on again to go into the area more deeply in the future. We had recording issues so the episode is a mix of two parts, and you may be able to tell a difference in recording almost halfway through. We cannot express how happy we were when Craig said he would come on again to cover the first section that we could not edit well enough to use.

Craig Watkins at the Baja 500 and on Pismo Beach

Craig Watkins on Pismo Beach — Craig Watkins at the Baja 500 and on Pismo Beach

Our Dominating with Dawson segment goes over how to get more out of an HPDE event or a track day by setting goals. It has helped our team to maximize the benefit of each event and get the most bang for the buck/minute of track time. This process will help you to improve as well.

We hope you enjoy this episode!

You can get your Smart Strings, Smart Camber etc. from Smart Racing products at: https://www.smartracingproducts.com/

Best regards,

Vicki, Jennifer, Alan, and Bill

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training Podcast and Garage Heroes In Training racing team drivers

Highlights from this episode include:

1) Bill’s longest intro to date. Vicki had very little patience for it.

2) Craig covers most of his racing history, off road and on track driving, to becoming a race car engineer, to how he arrived at the present day as an amateur racing driver.

3) How professional racing is different but fundamentally the same as amateur racing.

4) What are some of the functions of a chief race car engineer and how he used several key pieces of data and the driver feedback to get the car as fast as possible.

5) Bad physics/chemistry flashbacks abound. Ideal gas law is fundamentally a relationship that says the Pressure X Volume is proportional to the Temperature. PV = nRT for those playing at home.

6) How the tires are really the critical control point to focus on to get your car to be fast and drive most easily.

7) What is the #1 most critical measurement tool to have in your racing tool belt, how to use it, and how to make sure you minimize variability by using a one individual gauge for all your measurements.

8) And then we also look to what the next few items and measurements are to further refine and improve your car’s performance and “dialing it in”.

9) A great summary of what the 24 Hours of Lemans – Lemans Classic event is and why you may want to add it as a bucket list item for you and your team.

10) Tire pressure at target. Then tire temperature uniformity across the tire surface and across the four tires +/- 30 degrees F or C?. If you aren’t sure of your exact tire temperature range, around 150 degrees is a good first level estimate to where you enter your tire’s performance window.

11) What are the three primary aspects of your tire alignment, Camber, Caster, and Toe, what they represent, what order to adjust them in, which ones are more critical to performance, and rough starting points for you to begin to optimize from further. As expected, we also get into some of the ways to set up the car to measure and adjust these parameters. We also discuss the other terms that are sometimes referred to including thrust angle.

12) The two ways that tire grip is generated. And there really are only two.

13) While each of the settings are car dependent, we attempt to give some broad based approximate starting ranges that will aid you in establishing a baseline point to begin from to set up your race car. We also try to explain how each parameter, and direction of change, affects the car’s performance.

14) As with several of our prior episodes, Craig explains how the best teams are better by simply being better at the several fundamental aspects of car prep and team operation during a race. And if you sprinkle in a bit of luck, they will compete well and have a better than average chance to win.

15) Craig teases us with his excel list of adjustments and effects that came from his experience as a race engineer. Next time we see him, we are going to get a copy. We have a chance at getting at least the format of the list, without the exact content. tbd.

16) Craig also brings up the very valuable point to remember that you are the one to define how deep down the rabbit hole you want to go and that should be the primary determinant in how deeply you get into the car and its set up.

17) Bill finally gets to make a String Theory joke, but it wasn’t very funny. Situation normal. But it was way better than his tuna joke.

18) We also go into the way to use Smart Strings and Smart Camber to measure and adjust your cars alignment before and even at the racetrack.\

PS Did anyone catch the semi-subtle Three Pedal Mafia reference in this episode? GHiT decals can be sent out to you if you let us know.

GHIT 0152: Craig Watkins Joins us for Car Setup 101 – Focusing on the Tires

Craig's Flyin Lizard Motorsports Porsche

GHIT 0144: B Squad Hotrod Podcast Hosts Train and Woodchuck

Our latest podcast is number 144 with the B Squad Hotrod Podcast Hosts Train and Woodchuck

Colton (aka Train) and Steve (aka Woodchuck) are two of the four host of the “B Squad Hotrod” Podcast on to discuss how they have learned and continue to learn to work on their hotrod projects, cars and other related projects, like building a huge garage from scratch. We also get into some of the current and upcoming projects and goals for the coming few months. A great podcast hosted by two sets of brothers, in 4 states, and three time zones, they work together towards finishing the project and learning a ton along the way. Since they are B Squad, they came on our podcast, because A Squad would be a guest on a big time TV show.

Ben joins us on our Dominating With Dawson segment to talk about how to buy a car for a project or to become a race car. It is the first of a many part discussion and we will be having at least one returning guest to go over this area more fully in the future. Usually, it I said that you make your money when you buy a stock, or a house, or a car, but in our case it is more like you are only starting to lose your money once you buy the car, lol.

As you would expect, we try to bring them over to the dark side and build a car for a race. We will see how successful we are. We offered to help and race with them. That may not have increased the likelihood of their racing, lol.

Please send in your projects so we can share with the B Squad to help show them what we are doing and drag them into racing.

We hope you enjoy this episode!

Best regards,

Vicki, Jennifer, Alan, and Bill

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training Podcast and

Garage Heroes In Training racing team drivers

Highlights from this episode include:

1) What are the projects of B Squad and some of their background and learnings along the way. With their guidance, we may work our way up to the B squad at some point.

2) The logistics of being located in 4 states and 3 different time zones between the four hosts and their individual projects.

3) Everyone is jealous of Woodchuck’s projects: huge garage with a lift, a Humvee, 1967 fastback Mustang for the family CFO. Progress continues despite working full time in the public health arena of Wyoming.

4) Train’s projects are equally distracted by his (over) full time firefighting/paramedic and when time allows him to work on his 1941-46 Chevy Pickup with an S10 frame swap and full engine swap resto mod.

5) The way that B Squad works out the mechanics of working together with each other remotely. It involves a lot of calls, photos, video calls, and infrequent in person trips when possible.

6) It seems that all of their interests can be traced back to one of their father’s Corvette.

7) Train being in south Texas battles the heat most of the year and Woodchuck in Wyoming battles the cold winters.

8) Suggested first projects to begin learning to work on your own car or project and what to grow into eventually and then where you may want to bring in some professional help.

9) Why you may not want to let Train work on your electrical issue, especially if it is perhaps a 200 dollar 1974 Impala. Take home: shot gun shells are not functional fuse replacements.

10) Vicki somehow make an analogy between learning to work on a car and learning a new video game that actually works pretty well even though it initially sounded a bit weird. If only there was a cheat code with the joystick.

11) The El Jeffe tire story comes back to life to help Train feel a bit better about his Impala.

12) Ever wonder how Woodchuck got his nick name, its covered here. And we finally get to ask the question that has pondered the world forever.

13) Some discussion on how to deal with your tool storage when you need portability and mobility to work outside the home garage. Also, a discussion of several alternatives for how to layout a home garage.

14) Train is not a big fan on body work. He would probably be very open to help if you happen to enjoy it.

15) Train is introduced to cars-parts.com. We are sure it will help, especially with some of the later model car projects. B Squad was the source where we learned of the project Farm YouTube channel which has been helpful.

16) Woodchuck makes a great suggestion of trying to find a mentor to learn from/with.

17) If you notice, there seems to be a truck them with most of Train’s answers and interests. Perhaps we could get him into our race truck one day.

GHIT 0144: B Squad Hotrod Podcast Hosts Train and Woodchuck