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GHiT 0732: Waka Motorsports K Swap

GHiT 0732: Waka Motorsports K Swap

Garage Heroes In Training Oct 07, 2025 67 min
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About this episode

The conversation dives into the challenges and lessons learned from a complex K-series engine swap in a race car originally powered by a D-series engine. The team shares the painful process of acquiring a flood-damaged donor car, discovering numerous mechanical and electrical issues, and the long, costly rebuild that delayed their racing plans. They discuss the emotional and physical toll on the team, including the involvement of family members and new drivers. The episode also touches on the closure of the Pittsburgh Pitt Race track and plans for upcoming races, highlighting the realities of grassroots motorsports and the perseverance required to keep competing.

Topics: k-series engine swap d-series vs k-series performance race car rebuild challenges mechanical and electrical issues flood-damaged donor car team dynamics and family involvement grassroots racing Pittsburgh Pitt Race closure race preparation and strategy driver development
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Who hope to one day be the world's greatest driving heroes.
Created from the cosmic legends of the universe comes our team captain, The Vision, Bill Fisher.
And their soon-to-be wonder woman, Vicki Fisher.
And our captain marvel and head flight trainee, Jennifer Scriptjunk.
Their mission, to fight injustice, share what is right and wrong, to get you out
of your house and come out racing with them and serve all mankind.
They are the Garage Heroes in training team.
Welcome to the Garage Heroes in training podcast.
We are in mourning, but we have a great guess, but we are in mourning over the loss of our
favorite racetrack.
But more into that.
To counterweight that and bring us back to a neutral, if not above sea level episode, Wacka
Motorsports, Rich is back.
I am back and you're kind of really selling me on this.
I don't bring that much to your podcast.
We're supposed to be nice to our guests so we do what we can, you know?
Maybe the next episode.
Oh my gosh.
So let's talk about the bad news that we got yesterday or the day before.
Was it the day before?
I don't know.
This week.
Yeah.
Pittsburgh pit race is no more.
Three more races, four more races and they are done.
That was so fast.
How long were they in operation for?
It feels like a long time.
I think the people who own it now were there for like 10 or 12 years or somewhere around
there, but I think it was originally called Beaver Run.
I can't imagine why they changed that name, but I think we've lost Wacka for a minute.
Wait a minute.
I have to do nothing with that.
Oh right.
It is Beaver County, right?
Whatever.
And then they add it on to the track and it's like one of our favorites.
It's like a great track.
It's great facility.
It's got everything you could want.
I think it's still your number one, right, Miss Vicki?
Yeah, I've heard it.
It is one of my number ones.
Can you have one of your number ones?
You either have it number one or you have it's up there.
When you go to elementary school and you're learning how to count, they don't go one,
one, one.
Well, I have number ones.
Like it's one of my favorites.
One of my favorite.
Yeah.
What's one of what else is one of your favorite umbrella?
The favorite umbrella.
Yeah.
What else is on your list while we're doing mathematically impossible feats right now?
You can't have one of my.
Well, what was what was the cause that somebody just bought them out?
Yeah, somebody bought it out.
No, you know what?
I heard it was more somebody say private equity I heard private equity,
but that's still being bought out.
So, yeah.
Well, what happens when private equity slips in?
No more track.
Just turn it into Amazon warehouses or I don't know.
That's a thousand.
You haven't been there.
It's it's not exactly like starving for.
Things to be built there and thousands and thousands of people looking for.
I don't know why there's got to be more to it.
We'll find out.
They just have like out there in Pittsburgh,
near Pitt is just an old steel mill
that that works, I guess, a little defunct, but I think it's just there.
Anyway, it's it's not exactly, you know, boomtown.
So I'm I don't know what they're selling it for or what they're investing.
But but it will no longer be a track walking.
You never get out there.
I didn't. We planned on going in 2026.
We had actually already penciled it in.
We were going to start thinking of getting a garage and signing up for the race.
Obviously, when the schedule comes out, yeah, it was already penciled in.
Ethan convinced me we were actually on the cusp of trying to go to it this year.
Yeah, we were banging on you to do it for a couple of years now.
Yeah, we had planned on going this year.
If we didn't change the car up to such a significant degree,
it wasn't ready to go in time for Pitt.
Then we offered you a seat in ours just to get you out there.
And look, you turn it down and this is what happens.
Regret is lime flavored.
It's like lime. It does.
So sad. It is.
Well, we're going to do to replace it.
I wonder if they're going to move to summit.
I don't know. That's lemons you're talking about.
They. Yeah, I don't know.
We're doing summit in a couple of weeks.
But but enough about our grousing about.
Did you come up with your other number ones, my dear?
Let me see. I kind of like mid Ohio.
I know.
I was going to say really good one.
So that's your other number one or that's one of my other number ones.
I still like Jersey.
I still want the one with the octopus.
I always get a mixed up lightning. Yeah.
Oh, no, like the octopus.
You like Thunderbolt. Yeah.
Sorry.
I think that's because I have more nostalgia than anything.
Obviously, Jersey. First ever rate.
Oh, it's like.
Yeah, it's fun.
So.
Let's have more fun than that.
Walk a walk a walk a what you've been up to.
Well,
first, thanks for having me back.
Oh, let's chat with you guys.
Always welcome.
I'm going to mission in New Hampshire.
I guess you're not going to Hampshire.
Now we're doing summit summit.
Maybe that'll be on my list for next year as well.
I've heard I've heard good things about it.
I've never been so it'll be a bit of a bit.
OK, I'll wait for your review.
All right. Well, we will have one, whether it's good or bad.
All right.
Well, to piggyback on the fact we wanted to go to
a pit this year, we couldn't because we were in the middle
of a complete tear down of the car.
Against everybody else's wishes.
Literally, everyone told us not to do it.
Yep.
So.
The last race we went to was in
twenty twenty four.
It was Connecticut.
We actually had a really good time
when we were racing our 100 horsepower D motor or D 16.
We really didn't have many problems with the car.
We lost an alternator.
Otherwise, besides that one hour we were down.
We ran the rest of the race.
So you've had trouble in the past with races.
You finally get the car to where it's running
and you get almost an entire race.
And you decide, hey, let's tear the entire car apart
and redo everything to actually New Jersey of twenty four.
We ran almost the entire race as well.
No, I had a small issue.
I forget what that was. It wasn't. Yeah.
You see you see in any logic in this.
Yeah, so I figured it out.
I'm a masochist.
I don't like I don't like to have anything
in a feel right or good.
You can't have good pain.
Pain is where I'm most comfortable.
Yeah, you just can't have good toys.
You want your toys, not the work.
So yeah, so anything, any hijinks,
any bad ideas that come from WACA.
I will admit they are initiated or usually my brainchild.
I usually am the the engine,
which which propels bad decisions.
Right.
After Thompson of twenty four,
we had a car dropped in our lap.
Almost literally, it had a it was a ninety nine.
S.I. had a full case swap, but it didn't run.
And most most would say
that it didn't have a full case swap.
But, you know, whatever, man,
I looked at it like what a bargain.
Apparently it was in a flood, but it turned on.
I could drive it like forward the 10 feet before it would hit another car
in this parking spot. I confirmed it could drive.
So to me, that sounded like a great deal.
So for the home players,
our our endurance races longer than 10 feet.
Anyone?
Only slightly for us.
Yes, slightly for you, longer for others.
Well, when we got the car also, it's got the motor mounts.
It's got the ECU. It's a it's a ninety nine.
So it's an E.K.
So it should be a simple swap.
Simple. What could go wrong?
We got it for so cheap.
What I found out later of the of the owner of that car
contacted me. He wanted to buy it back.
It was actually in a tow yard.
It had been towed and turned over to the tow company.
What I found out later was the car was originally built in Buffalo
and it was involved in a flood that it was towed away.
And he lost track and never never knew where it went or whatever.
So that that was like the first inclination
that I might have some problems with the motor or trans.
Well, I mean, you know, the only thing missing is a Florida title.
But you know, go ahead.
Right. The plan, the crazy, crazy plan was maybe
we could swap it before New Hampshire late October.
This is like middle to end of August of twenty four.
OK.
But we mean we mean your dad.
Basically, my dad. Yeah. Yeah, I could help.
That's right. Let's get it right.
You're in there, especially scheduling permitted.
You can break doughnuts in KFC.
That's about basically I can I can hold the light.
He's going to be doing about ninety five percent of the work.
When we got the car up there,
even if it was just we have some parts to sell off of it and we can keep the rest.
We were we were pretty upbeat, pretty happy with our prospects.
And then it was like a it was like a checklist of what doesn't work.
So we we took the motor out.
It was a Frankenstein K twenty four block with a K twenty head.
We took it to a can we go back?
Yeah. So this is a a K twenty four swapped car.
Yeah. That barely runs that was put together by a guy who lost his car
in a flood.
And couldn't keep track of it.
OK, I'm just trying to get I'm trying to get a measurement
for the quality of the mechanical workmanship when I put into this build
that you there were some hijinks involved with him in the car,
which is why he ultimately lost possession of it.
But he contacted me and wanted to buy back the shell when we were done stripping it.
Oh, OK.
It's getting rid of the shell is sometimes the hardest part.
Yeah. Of course, shadowing.
I thought we've done this before.
Yeah. So we kind of we took the motor out.
We brought it to a machine shop or actually at the place over by us.
Headmasters. OK.
Figured they would deck it and maybe hot tank it so we have a nice fresh start.
We paid for that and waited a long time for that to get done.
So we were basically out of New Hampshire, which was fine.
We were almost kind of like it was kind of a rush. That's fine.
We started taking out the D power train and everything and all those old components.
I found somebody to buy that.
That was actually really easy.
People were like feeling for working D engine transmissions.
Do you know how many of those we have?
Oh, yeah.
Well, at least around here, they're kind of hard.
I know.
So then we were sitting without a motor and transmission in the car waiting for
at least the motor to come back.
We brought the transmission to a guy in Newark, Bobby.
I wish I could give him a proper shout out.
He went through it.
He had basically confirmed it was in a flood.
It needed a that's not what you want to hear back from the guy here.
Transmission. Yes, it was in a flood.
OK, it needed a light refurbishing.
We got new stink rows and a I think we replaced second gear.
Otherwise, the rest of it seemed to be OK.
Really? We even put in an LSD.
Second gear is not the one that usually is a problem with these, but OK.
Yeah. So that's where we kind of we we were.
We felt like we were in a good place with with how everything was moving.
OK. OK. Now now the fun begins.
So now. So exactly what medicinal substances were you taken
when you thought you could get a case swap done between August and October?
I watched too much YouTube. OK. Oh, yeah.
That's what it is. That is that high expectations.
Yeah, yeah, the half hour video that, you know, the entire car stuff.
Right. How long does a case swap normally take?
So now knowing what I know, I know it would be it would be several
several at least days, probably a couple of weeks to measure, get things right.
There's never like there's never the right components
or you're piecing everything together. Mm hmm.
So what we thought we had in the car was
incorrect. Mm hmm. OK.
So I get a call that New Hampshire passes and that starts the devastation.
We get a call from the person building or hot tank in the motor
saying it looks like it's spun a bearing block is no good.
The head, which we had brought him, which is a K20 head,
very, very valuable on the open market.
The valve train was completely destroyed,
probably mostly from the flood, but also from, I guess, wear and tear.
Somebody didn't take care of it.
That was the whole motor was almost completely garbage.
The transmission ended up costing us way more.
I mean, the gear and the synchro.
There were one or a few other things with the labor.
That alone was like the price of a brand new six speed transmission.
Mm hmm.
The motor mounts, which said hotspot on it,
which are required for putting a K into an older platform.
I found out they have a lifetime warranty.
If you send them the hotspot, they just replace the bushings.
Oh, cool.
They were knockoffs and they refused to send them back to us.
Awesome.
So I actually gave away our only motor mounts
because they weren't even in good condition.
And you had sold your D series by now.
Every. Well, I shouldn't even say everything.
Most of it was already being sold.
Yeah, we were past the point of no return.
OK. OK.
The ECU we got, the ECU alone is like kind of hard to come by
and like valuable.
I found out from one of the tuners is a very old model.
It's a standalone and it's not really good for casewaps.
Though it's used for it, no one tunes them anymore
and they have problems if you do tune them.
So it was basically garbage, get rid of it.
The shifter and the linkage
worked but needed to be fixed up, which was fine.
We needed a different radiator because obviously the the integral
one we were using wasn't going to match up.
The ports were on different sides.
The axles, again, the car was in a flood.
We cleaned them up best we could.
The axles were not in as good a shape as we thought.
We ran into wiring issues at the end of Connecticut,
which were exasperated with this case swap
and trying to put a new wiring harness in.
And what kind of deal was this?
This was a terrible, terrible, great deal.
People should stop letting me do things.
Can can we just let's go back just a little bit?
Yeah.
You didn't need a case series.
You weren't ready for it yet.
So I see that now.
Sometimes it really takes you to go through the pain
to understand what people are seeing and that's what our
podcast is for.
We screw all these things up so you don't have to.
I like you guys so much.
I just wanted to be in your same boat.
It's not a good boat.
It's a terrible boat.
Constantly sinking.
I'm throwing water out of it.
Mm hmm.
Basically, everything we got with this with this case
swap was no good and we would have been better off
piecing everything together.
That's the gist of it.
And then the shell, which I thought I had sold right away.
This gentleman disappeared and I had to work on selling
the shell while still kind of selling the D swap and fixing
and paying for all the case swap parts.
And it was like a battle, a battlefield up at my dad's
house and he was like, what the heck are you doing here?
I can't even walk through my garage.
There's like seats from another project car I'm working on
and he can't even like move through the garage.
It was a tense couple of months.
We were going to try and make Pittsburgh this year.
That's April for those keeping home.
This is August to start aiming for October.
Now we're talking April.
The end of October is when right after New Hampshire's
when all the chaos began.
So it got worse each week until probably like late
February when we started to kind of catch our breath.
We had to buy a new motor.
New trans.
Yep.
Had to find a new motor and we actually had to find
a new trans.
Do we see you?
Oh, we were hoping to still use the AEM.
Okay.
We did have to get a new ECU but not to later.
So what exactly did you get out of this old car
that you got all this great deal on?
Did you get anything?
That's funny.
Justin and Andrew, the two other owners wanted to know
more recently like what exactly did we end up getting
out of this car?
It was the case swap shifter and shifter cables
which two weeks ago as of this recording we replaced.
Nice.
So nothing.
We basically kept nothing.
Excellent.
That's a great deal.
You know how to do this stuff.
If that car never found its way to me, we would still
be running the D motor.
Which you weren't having any problems with.
Which we were actually having some fun and still learning.
You worked through all the problems.
You got it to where it ran.
You ran it for pretty close to two races almost.
Two races.
Yeah.
And then you said, how hard can it be?
It was like a sign from God.
Here is this car.
I mean, we did pay for this car.
It wasn't like...
Oh, you paid.
You paid.
But you still have the D series, right?
You still have that car.
After New Hampshire, we found a buyer for the D.
Right after New Hampshire.
Who also only came and bought the motor and trans
and left everything else in the garage until July of this year.
So we were still...
We thought we sold all these parts he paid for them.
We just didn't get the room we anticipated.
So we...
Or we...
My dad, the mad scientist, basically does this whole swap.
Over weeks and months.
He was a madder scientist after this.
Furious.
Furious scientist.
Furious scientist.
Okay.
I would say how it usually works is I do the research
and find the parts to buy.
I wouldn't even say pool our money.
We kind of take turns, the owners buying parts
and we mail them to his house.
And occasionally I get up there to help him work on it
and occasionally he doesn't buy himself.
You got like 90%.
Like 90%.
Yeah.
So approaching Jersey's race,
we didn't have a moving running car yet.
This is May.
For the home game players.
Yeah.
Actually it was late May.
We thought we had finished.
We went to crank it and it wouldn't start.
No.
Jersey is...
What was Jersey's date?
Like 8th?
Yeah, I think it's...
8th or something?
Something like 9th or something.
8th was practice, I think, something like that.
But you were getting close to May
and remember it started in August.
Yeah.
We actually contacted a tuner.
Aaron tuned, very well known in this area.
He's booked for like weeks in advance.
So when we figured we had everything together,
we booked him a week before New Jersey.
Wow.
What happened to your Honda guy?
Where'd he go?
He was actually still kind of helping.
That's Johnny J Swap.
But his schedule is also...
Yeah, he's got a green...
Johnny J Swap.
Yeah.
Johnny.
Johnny.
He was only able to kind of come down occasionally
and he kind of put me on to Aaron.
Okay.
Aaron shows up to tune this car and there's an issue.
And he basically comes to the fact that the ECU we have
is just not going to work.
We have to go buy a new ECU.
We thought, so I have an RSX
and I have a Han data for the RSX.
I said, I'm just going to use that one.
We'll find it in the garage in a day or two.
The race was probably the following Saturday.
It was like Thursday.
Come like Monday, we can't find my ECU.
We had to go buy another ECU.
$1,000.
Luckily, there was a place in Edison that had it.
I can't think of their name.
Over by the go-kart track?
Not far.
Yeah.
We needed like a thermostat spring or something else too.
So we got a couple parts and then like the day before
we're supposed to leave to go to Jersey.
It was like Thursday.
The tuner came up, gave us a basic tune.
It was like something's wrong.
Something's not right with the car.
I don't know what to tell you.
He put a tune in and it would kind of start
but it would run wrong.
Part of this was when we rebuilt the motor
we were trying to put in the K20, the RSX Type S oil pump.
We couldn't get the chain to line up
and we bought what I thought was the bright chain from eBay.
We went back to the K24 oil pump
and basically just said,
all right, let's just run this oil pump for now.
Something wasn't right.
So the night before we're supposed to leave
with the motor and the car and everything
we ended up taking apart the part of the valve train
and the timing chain and did another timing chain on it
and redid some of the valve train.
The car did not start on Friday morning
when we left for New Jersey.
We pushed it onto the trailer with our fingers crossed
figuring maybe we can get to Jersey
and ask for some help.
We got down there.
What's the first rule of lemons?
The first rule of lemons?
Don't bring a broken car to the track.
I was so desperate because we had also paid for the race.
I mean, no.
I'm not saying we didn't do it.
I'm just saying that's the first rule.
I'm not even saying I'm not going to do it again.
We know you're going to have this great idea.
It's going to be a great idea.
Getting down there, Aaron, I'm sorry,
Ethan and Jonathan kind of hooked up their computer
and logged into our ECU to kind of see
what the difference in tune was.
It turns out we had a broken clip
that we thought was plugged in, but it wasn't.
So we went over the whole car.
We can't find anything.
They went over the car and they were like,
oh, your clip, I think it was to the alternator.
Your clip isn't plugged in.
It's broken.
It looks like it's plugged in, but it's just not sealing it.
It was just hanging.
So one of the connectors is not working?
Yeah.
They secured it, put their tune in,
put it up and I mean, that was the first time we even had like
a firing in the new piston rings.
There was no break-in.
There was not a lot really going on.
So I took it up and down like the side road.
Five or six times is our break-in and then said,
all right, well, that's almost a full break-in.
Here we go.
That was our experience with the case swap.
And then into New Jersey was just kind of
another set of whole other set of issues.
We didn't find out until after the race.
We were actually using the wrong exhaust valves.
They weren't totally seating.
They were bigger.
Good stuff.
We were burning oil all around the track.
You could see us smoking like a freight train.
We had issues with the oil pump all weekend.
We were using the stock D-Series oil pump.
We were eventually upgraded to the J-Series V6.
And then the computer didn't like it.
And we were basically stuck.
And then we blew our fuel regulator, the Sprint fuel everywhere
and how we didn't catch on fire is kind of a miracle.
And that was our weekend in Jersey.
We broke our axle.
Besides that, everything went well.
And we broke our axle.
Yeah.
So my friend, why the case swap?
You kept telling me you had to have it.
You needed it.
I have a burning desire to get better.
And I think I should have laid off
and learned the track a little better.
But it was a crime of opportunity.
If it wasn't for the ease of access to those parts,
I wouldn't have gone out hunting for the thousands of dollars
it took to complete that.
By ease of access, you're talking about the car that you purchased
that had all the parts that you never needed.
Yeah. The flooded broken car.
Okay. I'm just making sure I'm trying to keep up.
Yep.
Okay. So I'm doing a little backyard homework.
Miss Vicki, you've got some questions, I'm sure.
Yes.
So let's see.
I don't know if I got the right dog.
I'm not a smart person.
Yes.
I'm just...
When this car popped up,
what made you decide to say,
hey, this is the deal that I want?
This is it.
This is the end all be all.
I am going to go all in.
What were you thinking?
And I don't mean that sarcastically at all.
No, she says this to me all the time.
What were you thinking?
Obviously, what went through your mind?
Did you start this project well in advance?
Did you have a plan for it?
You're just like, I'm just going to do it in between races.
I have a street project I'm going to be working on.
It's an RSX type S going to turbo it.
More for like video content and anything,
but I had a rough idea what it would take
to eventually case swap the race car.
And how much that would run us was probably
in the area of like 8,000.
I always just say 10.
We'll call it 10 honestly with the added extras
that you don't account for.
So we'll call it 10.
It's 10 and a year, by the way.
The time is the worst part.
When this fell into our lap,
we got it for like three grand.
Right.
And I figured if we took out everything we needed,
we could sell it as is for like two grand.
I was being told by multiple people,
oh man, just the shell alone.
It's matching vins and it's in really good shape.
It wasn't.
It was resprayed.
It wasn't done well.
The wheels that were on it looked really fancy
and high end.
They were knockoffs.
Okay.
It seemed like a good value at the time.
Okay.
All right.
Can I go?
Can I be data guy?
Sure.
Okay.
So you needed to get to a K series
because your D series wasn't fast enough for you.
Right.
That's a tricky question.
Well, that's not it.
I'm looking at a space.
I don't know if I would,
I don't know if I would say it exactly like that.
So humor me.
Let's say that we look at you post case while your team,
your fastest lap,
I'm not going to say what it is.
Okay.
Your fastest lap.
And then I look at the year before our fastest lap
in a D series.
And guess who wins?
Did you beat our fastest lap in a K?
Why?
Yes.
Yes, we did.
We beat your fastest lap in a K with a D.
So which one was it?
Did you need the K series?
Or was it the loose nut behind the wheel?
We're not good drivers either.
That's what I'm saying.
You're not good drivers yet.
And you're going to get in the missile.
Yeah.
All you can do is hit the wall.
Any of this.
So how, how is your,
how is your dad managing all the,
the kerfuffle of the frankincar?
He looks like he aged for 14 years.
He did look tired when I went and visited him.
Truly, truly how I would describe him tired.
He tells me he wants to quit like every other day.
So he runs into an issue or two,
like electrical, I know zero,
I know negative 1000 electrical.
I can't help him with that at all.
At least some of the mechanical stuff,
like the shifter linkage and certain things.
We were able to work through with a fresh set of eyes.
Anything else, um,
if he's up by himself and he runs into an issue,
he goes to bed like stressing about it and can't sleep.
He's like, these guys are waiting on me to, to fix the car.
So it's like stressing him out that it might not be ready
or, um, he might have done something,
not a good or not up to par.
Um, meanwhile, you know, we're just,
we're going to get there.
Maybe, maybe the car's ready.
I don't know the strength of your team.
Is your father.
The weakness of your team is your drivers.
The weakness of the team is me actually.
Strength is him and the weakest part is probably me and my,
my ideas.
Um,
you need to stop thinking, stop thinking.
They need to stop listening.
Well, yeah, that's true.
I can't, are you there?
You know what else would help if they stop listening
and perhaps you did.
Cause I can't think of anybody in a paddock who said,
you know, this is a great idea.
You should definitely do this.
Uh, again, hindsight is 2020.
No, this was before, this was before.
You had this, you had this K swap idea last Jersey,
not 2025, 2024.
And you were talking about it.
I'm like, that's not your problem.
Run this car for a year or two as a D series.
Get good at driving and then think about it.
Don't do it.
Think about it.
No, no, no question.
You were, you were right.
I felt like a good biggie to say those words would be great.
Absolutely.
I was wrong.
I should have listened again.
If that car doesn't just drop into our lap.
I wasn't hunting for K swap parts.
I told these guys were probably a couple of years away from
the swap.
Also just because of the money and looking back at
essentially what we ended up having to do to get it running.
We would have been better off just probably buying things
piece by piece.
Cause I knew a fully dialed in K swapped civic ready,
willing and able to run.
Good to go.
But I wasn't going to tell you about it.
The last thing I need to do is tease you with that idea.
And you went and did it yourself.
I'm not going to tell you about it.
I'm not going to tell you about it.
I'm not going to tell you about it.
I'm not going to tell you about it.
I'm not going to tell you about it.
Just forget it yourself.
I'm reckless
I'm more worried about your wrecking notes.
The energy when you hit the wall goes up squared with
speed.
And if you got a faster car when you hit the wall,
you will hit the wall harder.
Part of that was we were all we had a meeting.
I explained to everyone, obviously we're going to be faster,
we might not stop as well, drive it cautiously and
your way up start low start slow and work your way up mm-hmm that we did
while we ran on track we we did okay at no point yeah you almost went as fast as a d-series almost
it's my goal one day to be as fast as a d-series again with twice the first power but go on
one day maybe one day we didn't i didn't want to like hurt it at first and then once i got the
speed you were going you weren't gonna hurt it man no i know once i got like in the car it was
smoking so now i'm like oh it's probably it's probably dead uh so you live and you learn
probably gonna make stupid decisions again i don't i i'm not responsible for any of these
hijinks can can can we can we get you on record right now will you at least
listen when we say stuff not just us ethan
Jonathan will you at least listen you can disregard it but at least listen and know that we're trying
to help you and trying to save you from yourself no of course you sound like my therapist of course
of course i'm gonna listen but i have a very like my wife i have a very short memory and
what's in this year is out the other a few minutes later i'm the k-swap what did you say k let's let's
say okay case k's later in the alphabet than d that's gotta be good uh well i've learned one
many lessons through the lemons and uh one of them was that's good don't tell me some of the
lessons that we have learned mr. walka contention being content with yes what you have in front of
you mm-hmm yeah that would be good how much more needs to happen to the car total just
butting it all up after new jersey we we kind of figured out some of the issues um electrical
was kind of a big one we had bought a cheap amazon panel with switches now did but before
we move on did you say that this car was caught in a flood earlier the um yeah that's what i'm saying
donor car not ours okay all right okay the um mechanical issues on this car we we've
since figured out um they weren't as bad we so we took the head off we were like why are we
smoking we probably knew need new piston rings which we actually changed out we replaced the
piston rings were more specifically the mad scientist that's when we found the oversized valves
he's well on his way to pissed off scientists by the way but go on
yeah yeah the retired scientist um we have gone down the checklist and i think we've covered all
our bases so we should be um a complete calm new hampshire so you you did jersey did you do
thompson uh no we we couldn't make thompson we were still like um the motor was still apart
okay so you started this in august yeah you you kind you kind of ran new jersey ish yeah and
then you missed a race that was a year later a year yeah okay i'm just making sure i'm trying to
keep track of this for this for the home home player i can't i can't fault him for it though
i mean we've had we've had our fair share of issues at one point i actually contemplated i
didn't even really tell this to my old man i contemplated starting fresh with another race car
i thought we could build from scratch a lemon's car to run an event before we could fix this one
at this point it might be cheaper just to buy one done it would have been exponentially
cheaper it would have been so so much cheaper we had we had a line on one that's a k swapped e g
and i wasn't going to tell you about it i will take a loan out what what are we talking about here
no it's gone now but that's for the best thank god it is so so you said you learned what what
did you learn from this young walka i learned that i'm i'm stupid and i shouldn't be trusted to make
decisions for a group of people okay and that everything is going to take longer than i think it
will and that my wife is always right uh that wasn't lemons but sure that wasn't lemons but i've
learned um just going down the list uh i should have i should have just stayed with the d
and i mean even even besides that like we haven't had a chance to work on like hot pits
nope we've done like a total of 10 hot pits over like nope i think we've been six races now maybe
so i think we've barely done any hot pits we usually come into the garage to check the car
to see what's wrong before we go back out do a driver change well let's be fair usually
you come into the garage to figure out what you did wrong like hooking up the horns or seat
bell yeah i usually usually miss something on the first the first lap yeah or uh go pros or
some stupid thing that another bane a bane of my existence is my my drive for content which
usually doesn't work no yeah mostly see what you need to do is drive for content not drive for
content you need to drive the car and the content will take care of itself yes yes well i'm excited
about the k-swap when it's done it's good i'm it'll when it's done it'll be worth it ish are they ready
for the case it's done now well yeah um well i mean they don't learn i mean they'll learn the limit
yeah the limit that they're willing to drive in it the limit that's higher than they're capable
of driving sure they'll learn how do you learn when you learn in in a car that's way faster than
you well let's see we'll see i'm not rooting against him i'm trying we have a we so the the lineup going
to new hampshire it's it's kind of a new lineup my my old man he is now officially retired his last
race was jersey almost his first race was jersey by the way yeah when i when i finished my first stint
this past jersey it started to rain and to not be greedy to make sure everybody got a turn i want to
make sure we we spread the love i asked everybody hey are you guys comfortable with going in the car
now it's gonna start raining harder uh just was like i don't i don't know if i'm comfortable enough
yet and my dad i guess didn't want to seem like he was afraid said i'll i'll go in in hindsight
i should have stayed in the car he had gone out and ran only a few laps and he ended up spinning it
and keeping it off the wall by like 10 feet a great video of it on the channel um he came into the
pits yeah uh came into the pits it was it was really raining like it was like you guys were
there it was too wet for anyone to really push yep um and basically he's like i'm done
uh when i finally got in the car to go back out the rain had stopped it wasn't as wet
so if i had probably just gone back out and let him wait till it was dry uh he would have been a
little more uh easy on on himself but he's done and in his place we're bringing my brother
um who's there's more of you there's more yeah uh he's just learned how to drive stick
or is still learning so it gets worse
he's never raced before in his life he's he's a big like um f1 fan and plays some sim
so he has an idea of i guess some of the the structure and mechanics but never done it physically
when when you say sim are you talking like a set of course uh
uh i racing are you talking forza and grand therizimo i'm i'm talking actually more like
f1 he hasn't even done like grand therizimo or oh no okay yeah okay so okay there's that
okay all right so you're doing new hampshire we are we are gonna do new hampshire new hampshire
is not not really my favorite track nope not mine either i would have uh considered summit
actually if i was able to plan enough it's also it falls on like right around halloween
tough schedule wise yep it is but um going forward i'm not really sure we'll race new
hampshire much more often i didn't love it the last time and this is kind of just
by default one of the last races we can go to so no that's that's i mean okay all right so
it's time for the intervention oh yeah that's time of the month mr mr rusa yeah what do we have
to get you and perhaps your teammates
to go to an hbde with us oh i want to i want to go and i know you want to go but we never
seem to get you to go when i was trying to coordinate schedule wise when you go into jersey uh i can
look it up while we're talking i think that's that's a missing thing that you guys don't have
um the only one of us that has a car i mean we could i guess we could bring the slows car
bring anything the otherwise the only car we have that stick is my rsx doesn't need to be
stuck true actually i've i've seen some in-car camera from some of your drivers might be better not
to be stuck that's exactly why they need stick that's why they need to be i'm with you shifting
more i'm with you okay so the good news is ninja imp is october 24 through 26 the bad news
is we are in summit point but if you tell me you're going i will find out from some friends
and get you a good instructor or some good instructors 24th through the 26th yeah so weekend
after uh new hampshire okay i'm gonna strongly consider that actually okay it's worth going
i we went to one right when the car was first caged and um i mean it was brutally slow but
we had a good time i got it was on the lightning course was it brutally slow or were you brutally
slow um it's a good answer you need a little bit remember did your car need a little bit of
giddy up is that what you're looking for no it didn't yeah yeah okay i think it did
okay all right so so you're going to new hampshire
got a new team yeah you've got a new driver who's never driven stick
who's never driven a race so what are your what are your goals going in let's let's try and
let's try and see whether we're there at and see if we're we're somewhat a lot
keep the car in one piece try not to break anything don't crash into anybody okay just try and
finish the race okay perfect what do you see as the where do you see where do you see the
parts of the track where are the riskiest for your car the hard kink up the hill
okay that one's controllable to go off the the nascar circuit and then the re-entry
onto the nascar circuit going down the hill hard right that one's easier i think there's one
there's one out there yeah you gotta be careful in the s's after you get down there because the
the road goes wide yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah do you know the thing about the d series
no the thing about new hampshire is just that i don't know what it is about new hampshire but
drivers just lose their frickin mind up there it gets really aggressive at new hampshire and i
think it's because well i think it's because of the bottleneck that happens right before you go
uphill in the s's and and it's like everybody fights for it oh yeah okay so i'm gonna i'm gonna
give you something for your team and you can use it or not use it it's up to you when you're going
in the turn three and you're going up the hill you're just about the it's the kink to go up the hill
yeah okay until you guys are good and controlled and seasoned drivers you should stay on the
right hand side so no one slides out into you that's excellent advice so you control it
that's excellent advice okay going down the hill onto the oval is not such a big deal
you just have to avoid the turtle which i've heard the turtle's gone
the big hump on the right hand side yes okay yeah yeah but after the turtle when you go through those
s's the road goes wide narrow wide narrow wide narrow wide narrow do not try to pass anybody
just form a line form a line and if somebody tries to pass you let them just let them go just don't fight
it so the last engine was literally that because we couldn't pass anybody right this time around i will
i will try and heed heed that warning that advice especially especially your new drivers on turn
three stay on the inside and then don't because the only thing that can happen is you'll get
into an accident if you hit the gas pedal too hard because you'll slide out into them
that's their fault don't do that be on the inside then yeah okay okay my my biggest stress is and
those are obviously good um good pieces of advice my biggest that i will choose to ignore like
no no no not just me though my it's the team collective justin justin is looking to just
turn laps he's kind of looking to just kind of learn the mechanics of like a downshift and
and rev match he's not really looking to push andrew he's looking to try and get like a faster
time okay i assume nick my brother is just going to be looking to get laps i'm i'm kind of
worried about him destroying the clutch and transmission honestly more than anything i don't
think he's gonna be overly aggressive though i'm sure he'll once he gets comfortable might try
and push a little i just want the equipment back in one piece okay are you gonna do practice on
friday we are uh i don't like to do practice anymore we did it the one year and i've seen
so many horror stories we're going to do it mainly because not everybody has driven this car yet
and um only me and andrew have driven this track so just to kind of give everybody an idea of
how the track is and then try and work on shifting for nick and um and justin a little bit the six
speed which came with the car like basically what we got um handed to us we'd have probably
opted for the five right out of the ep three but it came with a six the gearing on that is is
kind of crazy mm-hmm whereas like slow and mellow was going down the front stretch
in fifth gear and not even like all the way at the top we were winding out sixth gear
no yeah um so i don't i don't know if it's going to be extra shifting that sounds terrible
it was like very high um i didn't go past third um even when you're in jersey that slow hard left
just before you approach the octopus yeah um even going down to like third the third there was higher
rpms um i don't love the fact that it's the sixth speed and it's kind of more shifting
yeah for the rest of the team that it was at the end of the world for me i didn't mind
terribly the shifter was bad so right it was actually stopping us from going five to six on
the occasion and downshifting the to four the money shifted one or two times because it didn't
like lock this out of sixth mm-hmm which is why we had to replace the shifter but that's weird
because usually the sixth one you can go to a higher speed than the fifth
uh i was i mean we have i have some data i can i can i'm not doubting your data not that
you would doubt i'm just to show it seems weird oh you kind of a comparison i don't really know their
exact times or rpms but for us and where at least where i was at the beginning of uh turn one
i'm in six here oh that was the other thing we don't have a we raced new jersey without a
tachometer speedometer or fuel gauge so i don't know well like what do with those three it's okay
but you need one of them i i didn't even know what rpm i was shifting at i kind of
could listen like it sounded like my acura otherwise it was just kind of a general it's
probably like 60 500 do you have a rev limiter on it we do it was set by the tuner at 72 which is like
stock um we have since put the type s oil pump pump in and i think we have a harness from hybrid
racing that's going to allow us to get the tachometer working i just need the tach to work
yeah that's all you have the three that's the one i would say yeah i don't know that's like the last
front here i'm supposed to go up there this weekend and work on it with the mad scientist okay all right
so we're gonna go with reasonable goals we're gonna we're gonna try to get everything back in
one piece we're gonna just have fun out there and see how we're doing yeah fun okay hopefully
lots of laps i'm sure there'll be laughs pain is pain is funny laps not laughs but because there
will be pain and yes well yes but you bring it on by yourself so i can't really say much
okay so can we invite you on for a post race episode because i i can't wait to hear what
happens absolutely all right very well is there anything that we can help you with
um off the top of my head at the moment no i would love to link up at some point for an hpd day so
okay all right if we can't get it done this season we'll we'll schedule one early next spring yeah
like before whatever race pit race isn't because there is no more pit race yeah
yeah sad trombones
you need to you need to insert like um boys to men
yeah but then i won't be able to monetize i won't be able to monetize my billions of fans
yeah why is she laughing so loud i can hear her without the she broke through the microphone
she went above the spike in the recording software and i hear her coming down the the
stairway into another room that's how loud she is okay i can almost i know it's the singing it's
the singing listen the last thing i'm gonna say on our anniversary is my beautiful bride is cackling
this is not the way to go happy anniversary thank you she's put up with me way too long
how long has it been 27 wow lucky 27 that's how many championships the Yankees have
yeah awesome so we we wish you well well thank you it'll be fine and as we both know you are not
shy to contact me if you need a contact with a quicker response just text me don't do the
facetime thing facebook thing because i have to go look for that just text me it's fine or call me
if it's really big and uh we do appreciate you uh lending us that radiator oh sure sure at least
the least i could do for you guys was awesome it helped me speak you get that car back and
we're gonna be using it really did good i'm glad you didn't use it because we had ordered two of
them poorly i'm not gonna say wrong i'm just gonna say poorly we know better now two thing or two
about that it's like why doesn't it always come in from the left and go down to the right no no no
it depends sometimes it comes in on the left and out the left sometimes it comes in on the right
and goes out the left sometimes it comes in on the right and good sometimes it's only that little
half with one what the hell i know i'll be never easy no but we'll get there well you guys you guys
have earned a good race well thank you i think uh you know for for all the pull that we have which is
as you know zero um we will be pulling for you and uh hopefully this is the one
this is the one it'll be fine it'll be fine trouble free that's all we want trouble free
weeks hoping hoping trouble free that's it what do you care where we finish we finish last you just
want trouble free cheap cheap to fix on the end nice and easy yeah like it would think of it
this way you could go into next season with a car that only needs a check over and an oil change
it's possible it's possible i would love for that to be the case i have i've it's been it's been a
very very painful year yeah but yeah i would like it to just be a nice easy process yeah the best
thing about it being so painful this year is you did it to yourself you dummy i know i know no
other way i know no other way miss vicki yes i feel bad for him because i feel like he's back
where we were when we first started i i do remember how hard can it be you know right and that's and
that's what it is here's what here's here's what i keep thinking it's like the weekend home shows
do you remember sitting there watching this old house and you're just like i can do that no
place to trim around your door of course it's a 10-minute job right i need a 20 by 20 you know it's
like the entire weekend if you got the whole door ripped off the frame and you end up having no door
there's no defense for my actions i will say i need poor decisions many times and they compounded
upon one another and it's all led us to right here right now yeah here's one thing i learned though
you never learned from a car that's not broken you're learning that's why i'm looking at it that way
you must be the smartest person we know then um painful do you want do you want to feel better
about your team sure okay so here we were we're at our first race we we go to the race we uh
we get some help from a local garage it's vicky myself our son leon i don't think you've met him yet
and his friend cast and they're both 17 just got their license so obviously got to get to racing
right so we go to our first race we're changing uh drivers every half hour on the first day
just so a if the car dies everybody got to shot and b we're trying to get used to it and
you remember your first day on track it's a little overwhelming yeah a lot of overwhelming yeah it's
like all the senses on 10 yeah all the things jacked up you never knew like when you were racing
especially in lemons that all five senses would be used and i mean all five i mean taste because
some of the cars taste pretty bad um or at least the stuff coming off so that so then we do the
race we do okay not too bad and then driving home the first thing vicky and i discussed that was not
worthy was i i believe she said it that uh something very close to a quote was i think we found our
idiots meaning meaning the friends that we had in the paddock which we all can agree and then
we made the decision that may rival your case what hey
that wasn't hard at all i don't know why people are having trouble you know what we should do at
thompson we should bring two cars now because because one wasn't hard at all and you want to
hear to top it off mm-hmm our racers were all teenagers and vicky sister do you know what
you know what a nightmare it was to run a team of teenagers that have never done anything before
oh it wasn't good imagine it's not like they weren't willing to work it's that they did not
have a clue what work meant they thought once they got out of the car and driving they were
done for the day let's go yard sale for hours actually one of them did do a parts run and
they all decided to go yard sailing hard sale when we're waiting for the part their
yard sailing after getting the part like where are you yeah so yeah so we're not trying to tell
you what to do sure we're we're trying to tell you what we did so you don't do it because we've
done a lot of them a lot only fully understand however you guys aren't there to hold my hand
daily i need i need help daily you have my number you can call us we are we are again
way overdue for the waka motor sports versus garage heroes and training go kart i know actually
did you just see we i put out a uh a video recently of the grand prix i have another one
coming i think wednesday where would people go see these great videos that you put together
because let me let me give you a compliment your videos are much better than your racing
well that's not saying much but thank you very much i appreciate it you gotta be good at something
like saying my wife is better than this dirt in the event they were totally
devoid of something else to do when we're we're bored they could go to youtube and watch
waka motorsports videos mainly on youtube and they're they're excellent it's amazing how you
get so much content from so little track time you just gotta get you just gotta get let the
camera play before and after the blow up and the crashes and the spins and and if you go see
and if you go see these videos and you're you're lucky enough to get on to the youtube
channel have a little bit of time and watch when they're showing those live
shots from the car that is not slow motion that is that is real like that's us real time
yeah we're actually that's slower on the course yep yep yep we are going to do a walk of garage
heroes go karting event in 2026 gonna happen we're gonna do that uh i think i think we've got a
chance this year before christmas but we have 100 if we don't get it before christmas we
will do it after yes we'll definitely schedule something yep maybe more than one
yeah absolutely a series maybe a series even because all i know is all i have to do is show up
and drive the go kart all the video will be taken care of because you're ridiculous
unfortunately well we do wish you luck on this track and this event and uh good luck to your
brother who's going out there for what he has no idea what he's getting into and uh and is your
father gonna be attending yes okay so he's kind of pit manager yeah he's gonna kind of team engineer it
from the garage that's a good plan yeah you know what your goal should be then make it so he doesn't
have to do anything yes that's almost always the plan we fail very often well you know plans
versus execution can i can i say this this was a quick edit i don't know if anyone's had this
issue in the past but the um tons i tip my cap to all the track workers at new jersey they do
for sure awesome awesome awesome my one gripe was the uh the tow the tow truck driver
kind of um maybe was a little hasty ended up ripping off the front end of our car
not not once but twice and we had to actually buy a whole new front end so so allow me the tow
tow truck drivers from track to track are usually not associated with the track so they vary in skill
however i just want to point this out to you you may not have thought about this if your
shit didn't break they wouldn't have to tow you in yes yes no did didn't think it did run
through my mind at some point i'd like to avoid meeting or running into him again
the cost yeah it'll be fine all gonna be fine and if it's not a better podcast amen how about that
content just imagine if the next podcast is hey how'd it go oh it went well we uh we finished
every lap we we finished in the top 50 car ran like a top we drove back home all right great
episode thanks thanks for coming on i'm almost certain it won't be that easy
no it's still am i i mean uh hopefully it is
oh sick awesome all right sir good luck keep thank you guys it was a pleasure lemon's warm for us we
gotta we gotta do our race the week after you so show us what to do good luck i wish you guys the
best in that as well
so
so um i could send you guys this screenshot he's uh i guess just gonna come back just forward that to
us yeah he's excellent he works out of a shop where they do like a lot of tuner cars like sky
is like 15 skylines in there in arc seven like real located new work
oh uh like town you can't pronounce yeah watch this go ahead say it
nork yeah no that's not it nork nork how do you people say it in nork she grew up in delaware
so it's new work yeah we have a new arc and she can't say it our way so it's endlessly fun to
watch it right okay nork nork nork nork nork i'll send you over his uh nork
nork yeah he's excellent she is so talented and so skilled in so many ways and she can't say a six
letter word you know what i i don't judge because i say uh root 46 and route 80 yeah and there's
really no rhyme or reason for that at least you're not from the west coast and don't say the 80
the 80 no i wouldn't yeah that sounds ridiculous yeah how do you get there oh you take the one
over to the 105 and then you take the i'm like oh the highways are actually like people they're
speaking about yeah the if you say root 105 they have no idea what you're talking about what's
105 oh sorry the 105 oh just right there it's very pretentious actually yes oh all right
it's tough thank you sir mama quiero el iphone nuevo yo también quiero uno sabes que con verizon nos
llevamos cuatro iphone 17 sin intercambio todos vamos a estrenar iphone y yo terminó rando con
verizon tu familia disfruta más por menos llévate cuatro iphone 17 y no se necesita intercambio
con cuatro líneas nuevas en ciertos planes unlimited visita nos o habla con un representante en español
al 844 4648796 se aplican términos adicionales para las ofartas visita braison.com para detalles

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