05.05.25: Hefty Fabulous Shop Raid w/ Chris Hefty - The State of Off-Road Bumpers & Custom Fab, Market Trends, Four-Wheelin' Customers, Neighbor Shops (Keeping Each Other Going), + Bridging the Gap Between Bolt-On & Custom Goodness
Hank Watson's Garage Hour - Cars, Trucks, Beers & Guns
Release Date: 07/21/2025
Hank Watson's Garage Hour - Cars, Trucks, Beers & Guns
There's some strange things afoot at the Circle K, amongst them some sideways situations for American firearm owners and Second Amendment supporters (which means everyone, in a fashion). What's going on with the unintended acceleration from M18s? Did Sig Sauer make a mistake or is this something worse? What's better for our fighters to carry - an M18 or an M14? Did we have these problems when US warfighters carried their 1911s cocked and locked? Do all off-roaders carry a sidearm? How about a frontarm? Meanwhile, what's afoot and ahand with the...
info_outlineHank Watson's Garage Hour - Cars, Trucks, Beers & Guns
There's some strange things afoot at the Circle K, amongst them some sideways situations for American firearm owners and Second Amendment supporters (which means everyone, in a fashion). What's going on with the unintended acceleration from M18s? Did Sig Sauer make a mistake or is this something worse? What's better for our fighters to carry - an M18 or an M14? Did we have these problems when US warfighters carried their 1911s cocked and locked? Do all off-roaders carry a sidearm? How about a frontarm? Meanwhile, what's afoot and ahand with the...
info_outlineHank Watson's Garage Hour - Cars, Trucks, Beers & Guns
Are you a maker or a taker? We've made nothing but the good stuff on this episode: automaker OEs forgetting who owns the cars they sold (you) and taking away the performance over the phone (and forgetting the rules of Right-To-Repair as outlined by champs like Steve Wozniak and the federal case against John Deere). Speaking of tractors, we've got a study of the big-head elitist media whackos at NPR who are either pretending they just discovered tractor pulling or they're actually that clueless. There's also the new measurement of horse-pounds (when HP and FT-LBs ain't...
info_outlineHank Watson's Garage Hour - Cars, Trucks, Beers & Guns
Are you a maker or a taker? We've made nothing but the good stuff on this episode: automaker OEs forgetting who owns the cars they sold (you) and taking away the performance over the phone (and forgetting the rules of Right-To-Repair as outlined by champs like Steve Wozniak and the federal case against John Deere). Speaking of tractors, we've got a study of the big-head elitist media whackos at NPR who are either pretending they just discovered tractor pulling or they're actually that clueless. There's also the new measurement of horse-pounds (when HP and FT-LBs ain't...
info_outlineHank Watson's Garage Hour - Cars, Trucks, Beers & Guns
The Garage Hour: home of microaggressions (plus the other kind) - your favorite gearhead goons got lost in the good stuff (Collegiate Mountains above Salida, Poncha Springs, Buena Vista and St. Elmo) and their trucks will never be the same. Cohosts White Mark the Diversity Hire and the Walkin' Dude came along, and dragged FOB cohosts Papa Smurf and Mike the Gimp along for the fracas. Trails? Tomichi Pass and Hancock Pass (so many rocks), the Bonanza Mine complex (so many options), Mt. Antero (so many feet above sea level), Taylor Mountain (so many llamas), and Billings Lake...
info_outlineHank Watson's Garage Hour - Cars, Trucks, Beers & Guns
The Garage Hour: home of microaggressions (plus the other kind) - your favorite gearhead goons got lost in the good stuff (Collegiate Mountains above Salida, Poncha Springs, Buena Vista and St. Elmo) and their trucks will never be the same. Cohosts White Mark the Diversity Hire and the Walkin' Dude came along, and dragged FOB cohosts Papa Smurf and Mike the Gimp along for the fracas. Trails? Tomichi Pass and Hancock Pass (so many rocks), the Bonanza Mine complex (so many options), Mt. Antero (so many feet above sea level), Taylor Mountain (so many llamas), and Billings Lake...
info_outlineHank Watson's Garage Hour - Cars, Trucks, Beers & Guns
Don't get traffucked - it's up to people who think, who see, and who comprehend to deal with the state of cars and trucks around us (instead of being ground into quivering sheetmetal jelly by the incompetence of the four-wheeled troglodytes and chuds who seek to drag us down to their level of base idiocy). What makes it worse, bad bureaucracy compounds the failings of the flabby halfwit shoveling breakfast into her face in the hybrid in the next lane by adding ineffectual laws, dysfunctional lanes and obsequious lemminglike expectations like a blanket full of smother. The...
info_outlineHank Watson's Garage Hour - Cars, Trucks, Beers & Guns
Don't get traffucked - it's up to people who think, who see, and who comprehend to deal with the state of cars and trucks around us (instead of being ground into quivering sheetmetal jelly by the incompetence of the four-wheeled troglodytes and chuds who seek to drag us down to their level of base idiocy). What makes it worse, bad bureaucracy compounds the failings of the flabby halfwit shoveling breakfast into her face in the hybrid in the next lane by adding ineffectual laws, dysfunctional lanes and obsequious lemminglike expectations like a blanket full of smother. The...
info_outlineHank Watson's Garage Hour - Cars, Trucks, Beers & Guns
The Garage Hour does good interviews (whether or not Hostus Maximus Justin Fort is any good at interviews), and we did a semi-sneak beer attack on Chris Hefty at the eponymously named Hefty Fab last month. Unfortunately, with the hillclimb and about a gajillion client to-dos on the front burner, we're a little late with the upload. Sort'a sorry! No matter: it's worth the wait - we puzzle out the doin's of keeping a serious shop going when times get tight (as our hero Hunter S. once opined, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."). Chris details the art of...
info_outlineHank Watson's Garage Hour - Cars, Trucks, Beers & Guns
The Garage Hour does good interviews (whether or not Hostus Maximus Justin Fort is any good at interviews), and we did a semi-sneak beer attack on Chris Hefty at the eponymously named Hefty Fab last month. Unfortunately, with the hillclimb and about a gajillion client to-dos on the front burner, we're a little late with the upload. Sort'a sorry! No matter: it's worth the wait - we puzzle out the doin's of keeping a serious shop going when times get tight (as our hero Hunter S. once opined, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."). Chris details the art of...
info_outlineThe Garage Hour does good interviews (whether or not Hostus Maximus Justin Fort is any good at interviews), and we did a semi-sneak beer attack on Chris Hefty at the eponymously named Hefty Fab last month. Unfortunately, with the hillclimb and about a gajillion client to-dos on the front burner, we're a little late with the upload. Sort'a sorry! No matter: it's worth the wait - we puzzle out the doin's of keeping a serious shop going when times get tight (as our hero Hunter S. once opined, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."). Chris details the art of shifting the lift when retail production took a hit post-Scamdemic, the intense and varied demands of the "Please make my truck work" customer, and what it takes to chase the market when the market takes a left turn at Albuquerque.
Because it's the Garage Hour, we've got more: bicyclists who just don't get it, whether cleaning soap is a procedural singularity, Nate's efforts to reinvent the Brady Bunch, how you can ruin a good message with too much creativity, the Hefty Internet Café, and dropping $40Gs for serious parts that don't get serious use. There's also shock rebuilds, F-150s, Cherokees, an F-350, 80-Serieses in a big pile, Miatas versus S2Ks, and of course, 4Runners.