If you haven’t seen this season of Car Warriors on the Speed Channel, set your DVR Now! 

Please read my post from episode 1 to understand what goes into these builds with these teams.

Once again the coin toss sent me over to the blue side to work with Northeast Elite. Although my team had some real talent, we learned rather quickly that L&G took this competition seriously! 11 minutes to remove and engine and transmission!?!

My team decided to make this an ambitious 48 hour build by cutting 10″ out of the frame and make it a shortbed (sorta). There were a few different approaches that could have been taken to get the job done but after discussing everything, we decided that since there wasn’t an angle finder in the shop for setting pinion angle that taking the 10″ should be out of the middle of the frame. We were pretty focused and making good time for about half of the build. At that point I think exhaustion started setting in and the guys were working slower and losing focus on the project.

Northeast Elite learned real quick that these 48 hour builds are no joke! Once you fall behind it is almost impossible to catch up. Teams, in general, that come to compete really have no idea how hard it really is until your right in the middle of the build and your reputation is on the line. I think had we stayed focused and actually completed the truck the way we originally planned we could have possibly taken the win. Northeast Elite had some real talent and completed a ton of mods in the 48 hours but I wish they would have listened a little more and made some different decisions.

Hats off to L&G for building one hell of a truck in 48 hours…Theresa is a great leader and made some good decisions that put them over the top.

Please take some time to follow the links below to see what these two teams have done when not constrained to 48 hours!

L&G Enterprises

Northeast Elite

Blue Team Members:

Smitty- http://www.facebook.com/pages/Frames-to-Flames-by-Smitty/326554229779

Bobby Moore- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1322834151

DPO-http://www.facebook.com/pwilhoyt

Jeff Barnes-http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=18418998

Rich Brandi- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001530637978

04/23/2012
Categories: "The Wall", Car Warriors . Tags: brad fanshaw, car warriors, ftk, full throttle, full throttle customs, full throttle kustomz, jimmy shine, linkedin, ray mcclelland, Speed, speed tv . Author: Ray McClelland . Comments: Leave a Comment

If you haven’t seen the new season of Car Warriors on the Speed Channel yet set your DVR now!

Please read my post about episode 1 so you can clearly understand what goes into the builds with these teams.

There is sooo much that can be said about this episode, even the fact of how it was edited and what wasn’t shown. I don’t even know where to begin or how much I even want to say or can say. Lets first talk about the most important part of this blog, the teams.

This week I was assigned to the blue team “Shinbone Alley” and I think I can speak for my team when I say that when the reveal showed the 86 Corvette we were all wishing it would have been a 66′ instead! The 1986 Corvette is a challenge to work on even when you are not constricted to a 48hr build-off. Trying to get anything done quickly on this car is no easy feat as you all saw by the engine challenge in the beginning of the show.

Since we were removing the fuel injected engine and installing a carbureted version with no emissions, it meant that nearly everything beneath that hood would be eliminated, including the infamous power steering line because the new engine had a totally different power steering pump already bolted to it.  Viewers never got to see the fabricating that went into these cars, like the 6 hours worth of work Sledsville took removing the back-end of the car to wedge in that fuel cell, or what both teams went through trying to shoe horn that engine in so the harmonic balancer would clear the rack n pinion (which by the way..a sheet of paper was about all you could fit through).

As I have always said, I am not a fan of shows that are built around drama. Although I know this is reality tv and parts of what happened on this episode were real, this episode was not my favorite because I feel it strayed from being about the talents of these teams and focused more on the Brad/Ray drama. I am only one small opinion, that in the big picture of reality tv doesn’t matter because as we all know…drama sells. I can see both sides of the coin here and why it was edited the way it was but it should have shown more of behind the scenes in my opinion…

ie: every week I help both teams on some level…I can go episode by episode with example after example of how I take time away from my team to help the other team and prior to all of this power steering drama, it wasn’t shown how I was right there with Brad at the tire machine removing that tire, or in the parts cage helping the other team look for parts…etc. The cut and edit only showed from the point of me getting pissed because of the response I got from Brad after all the help I had already given.

When Sledsville came over to see how we did our motor mounts, I had my back to them working on the car and reacted before I took the time to realize they were not the reason for me being pissed. Which is exactly why I walked over in the first place…to apologize for snapping at them. I was raised with the east coast mentality that if you make a mistake, make it right. I can go on and on about it but it is, what it is…an injustice in my opinion.

Please take some time to visit the websites and Facebook pages of these two teams…show them some love and “Like” their page!

Blue Team “Shinbone Alley” : Known for their custom painting techniques on hot rods and motorcycles. Website  Facebook

Red Team “Sledsville” : Known for their crazy one-off customs. Website Facebook

04/17/2012
Categories: "The Wall", Car Warriors . Tags: brad fanshaw, car warriors, ftk, full throttle, full throttle customs, full throttle kustomz, jimmy shine, linkedin, ray mcclelland, Speed, speed tv . Author: Ray McClelland . Comments: Leave a Comment

If you haven’t seen the new season of Car Warriors on the Speed Channel yet set your DVR now!

Please read my post about episode 1 so you can clearly understand what goes into the builds with these teams.

This was one of my favorite episodes… Factory Five 33′ Hot Rods!

I have plenty of Factory Five experience but it all relates the their MK4 Roadster. When I found out we were building a Factory Five car, I couldn’t wait to get started. Take time to click on the Factory Five link above to see more info on the kits they offer and also read the companies philosophy. Then scoot on over to their forum and you will quickly see why everyone loves Factory Five. The teams in this weeks episode were basically compiled from Factory Five builders that all collaborate on their forum and have at least one build under their belt. Believe it or not some of these guys have wrenched on more than 50 builds!

I can tell you first hand that every single one of the guys that came to compete on this build-off were good people and the fact that they decided to donate the winning car to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation show just that! It didn’t matter what team you were on they all helped each other throughout the build, except when “Da Bat” asked Mark for the windshield…haha. Since the build was going so smooth for everyone (primarily because of the quality of the kit and the knowledge of the builders) Mark figured he would hassle them a bit. I remember having a conversation prior that with Mark and suggested having them give up 2 of their team members to come clean up our side in return for us giving up the glass. I thought that would have been funny and good tv

Both teams built one hell of a car in such a short amount of time and the quality on these two cars was amazing to say the least! I have to admit, although Salty Dawgs car was very cool and more Jimmy’s style, I absolutely loved our orange and graphite color scheme and the exposed engine. I begged Mark in the beginning, when he said their plans were to leave the engine exposed, to let me build a custom set of headers but he wanted a more traditional look. I still think a wild set of twisted headers would have been off the hook (and maybe a couple turbos!) but in the end the car came out very classy.

I do have one main BITCH here!!!!

In one of my otf (on the fly) interviews during the episode, I talked about building a kit car and the nice thing is that we don’t have to disassemble and assemble, we only have to assemble, with no grease!?? ( it was supposed to say “with no greasy mess!!!” ) Oh well…. I guess that’s how the boobie bounces.

Pictures are courtesy of Brad Fanshaw and Speed. My Iphone crashed and I lost pics from a few episodes and this was one of them.

04/10/2012
Categories: "The Wall", Car Warriors . Tags: brad fanshaw, car warriors, ftk, full throttle, full throttle customs, full throttle kustomz, jimmy shine, linkedin, ray mcclelland, Speed, speed tv . Author: Ray McClelland . Comments: 2 Comments

If you haven’t seen the new season of Car Warriors on the Speed Channel yet set your DVR now!

Please read my post about episode 1 so you can clearly understand what goes into the builds with these teams.

This was a fun episode right from the start! Both teams were a great bunch of guys and there was alot of joking by both teams…just a little more on the red side! The editing dept cut this show pretty accurately but did leave out a few things. Probably because there is only 47 minutes to fit in 60 hours worth of footage…no easy task there!

A couple things that I want to talk about first is the crazy talent that Fred (Blue team airbrush artist) had..this is the first time ever I had heard of someone actually airbrushing with two guns AT THE SAME TIME!!!  And also the fact of Fred giving up his pants to fix the “lack of fleece” issue that Nick had and it didn’t make the cut either. I can speak first hand from the talent I saw Ireson Motorsports bring to the table and the adapt and overcome attitude that eventually put them over the top. Every one of Ireson’s team members showcased their ability and worked well together as a team. The fact that they sent me a bottle of Black Label Johnnie Walker as a token of thanks for helping them on their build shows what kind of character these guys have.

Celebrity Kustoms had some mad talent and it showed as well. Both cars were two totally different styles and although CK didn’t finish their ride, what they did complete was definitely top notch! For those of you that have built cars for shows under the pressure of a deadline know that if you don’t have the kind of  ”fun” attitude that CK had you will stress yourself out to the point of cutting corners and putting out an inferior product with your name on it. Congrats to John and his team!

Checkout the links below and see what these guys are capable of when not constrained to 48 hours!

 Fireballgraphicsbyfred.com

Iresonmotorsports.com

Johndagostinokustomkars.com

Daliodesigns.com

04/02/2012
Categories: "The Wall", Car Warriors . Tags: brad fanshaw, car warriors, ftk, full throttle, full throttle customs, full throttle kustomz, jimmy shine, linkedin, ray mcclelland, Speed, speed tv . Author: Ray McClelland . Comments: Leave a Comment

If you haven’t seen the new season of Car Warriors on the Speed Channel yet set your DVR now!

Please read my post about episode 1 so you can clearly understand what goes into these builds with these teams.

Like I have said in the past, you never know what talent each team holds until you work along side of them and I can tell you right from the start, Hot Rods by Dean really showed me they came to win. They rocked that engine challenge and made a clear statement right from the start.

Almost every team that comes to compete will watch last years episodes and wants to show that they too can do some crazy modifications in a short amount of time. The only problem here is last year they had more equipment and more time. So when my team told me they wanted to cut the roof off the car my initial thought was to go over and congratulate Brad on his win, but then I started to do the math on the amount of time it takes to cut the roof off vs the time saved in interior etc and I thought after seeing how fast they worked in the engine challenge that this just might be possible. So what the hell…I was game if they were!

Hot Rods by Dean did an amazing amount of work in just 48 hours and I would argue all day the fact of the car buckling during testing because with the added sub-frame connectors and the mini cage bracing, that car did not budge, it had more reinforcement than most convertibles do today. I believe Jimmy didn’t hear us when we told him the pins in the door hinges were worn out causing a little door sag but either way this was one hell of a competition. Kaotic Customs started off real rocky but by the middle of the competition Brad rounded these guys up and were catching up quickly.

So now comes the time to discuss the main drama point in this episode…. Should Hot Rods by Dean have given up that hour they won?

We discussed this for a while and what we would do if we won because there was talk early of giving it up. In the end I agreed with Dean’s decision because the fact was, Kaotic Customs was still behind and the team was tired and a little scatter brained so the thought was if we did give them a chance to rest and regroup they would come back stronger and faster and our chances of them not finishing the car would diminish.

Hats off to Kaotic Customs for coming back and proving that you guys had the talent and the know how to pull it off!

And let’s not forget Cody’s headers…does that guy know his shit or what?

Badass fab in no time at all!

Red Team: Hot Rods by Dean www.HotRodsbyDean.com

Blue Team: Kaotic Customs

Cody, the “mad scientist” fabricator from the blue team. Go figure his shop name ” LoveFab “. He just moved into a larger shop and is in the process of building a new website so be patient. You can also checkout the crazy NSX build he is doing to race Pike Peak!

03/15/2012
Categories: "The Wall", Car Warriors . Tags: brad fanshaw, car warriors, ftk, full throttle, full throttle customs, full throttle kustomz, jimmy shine, linkedin, ray mcclelland, Speed, speed tv . Author: Ray McClelland . Comments: Leave a Comment

If you haven’t seen the new season of Car Warriors on the Speed Channel yet set your DVR now!

Please read my post about episode 1 so you can clearly understand what goes into these builds with these teams.

Where do I begin…. I truly love the coin toss that determines which team Brad and I get to work with. That coin seems to always give me the teams that have a story  to tell. Episode one, Jim, the red team leader’s wife just had twins and one was in intensive care during the episode. Episode two, Patrick from the red team’s step father was just diagnosed with cancer. Now episode 3, Jim, the red team leader’s 4yr old son was diagnosed with Leukemia.

For those of you that don’t know, I have a son that I have had full custody of since he was just a little boy. When Jim was telling me the story in the beginning of the build about his son Bryson, always by his side in the garage helping him work on cars at age 4 it reminded me of my son. My son is my best friend and has always been by my side working with me on projects since he was around 3 years old.  I couldn’t imagine getting news like that about my son and I felt myself tearing up just hearing it. It brought me back to 2007 when I was doing the Fireball Run Transcontinental Ralley to find missing children from Florida to California. It is a 9 day event and in the last leg of the race I was in Barstow California where cellular signal is almost non existent and I received a phone call from a doctor asking me to code my son. The call was dropped and when I tried to call back I could not reach the doctor.

My son was in a quad accident at age 15 and was life-flighted and having seizures. My whole world revolves around my son so when I got that news I literally fell apart. I was driving a fully built Shelby GT500 on that event and let me tell you if there was a land speed record to be beat it would have been mine. I drove straight to Ontario airport and took the first flight out, wiping tears the whole flight, praying for my son. I know what this did to me as a father and I couldn’t imagine not having my best friend by my side. We were fortunate in that my son completely healed from all of his wounds and was back to himself in no time.

We all have a story and if you don’t you will soon. Hearing Jim’s story, I told myself I am going to bust my ass even if it meant a fast pace and no sleep until the end to give Street Customs the best chance in winning.

I can also relate to the blue team from Pa. I was born and raised in Pennsylvania and the SPG crew were all from Wyotech, an automotive school that my nephew went to. These guys built one hell of a car and completed the build in the 48 hours given. I believe the oldest guy on the team was 30, that goes to show you even after making a few mistakes (being over stressed and in a time crunch) the kind of hard working talent these guys have.

These builds aren’t always about how you would build your own car…it’s a 1 hour tv show that gives these guys an opportunity to show America what their skills are using the parts and tools given. You can’t choose the wheels that best fit your design, you can’t order the coil spring that gives you that perfect ride height, it is about the wow factor and what you can do in just 48hrs.

In the end it came down to who did the best in 48 hours. Street Customs, 1st to pull the engine out, 1st to get the new motor in and fired, 1st into paint, over the top paint job, brought the exterior colors into the interior design, complete working audio with a complete trunk design all within 48 hours. That shows the drive these men had for Bryson!

Congrats to both teams because there is no loser here… Only winners!

BTW…Bryson scored another victory…he is now in remission!

Red Team www.streetcustomandpaint.com

Blue Team www.spgcustoms.com

03/12/2012
Categories: "The Wall", Car Warriors . Tags: brad fanshaw, car warriors, ftk, full throttle, full throttle customs, full throttle kustomz, jimmy shine, linkedin, ray mcclelland, Speed, speed tv . Author: Ray McClelland . Comments: 5 Comments

If you haven’t seen the new season of Car Warriors on the Speed Channel yet set your DVR now!

Please read my post about episode 1 so you can clearly understand what goes into these builds with these teams.

This week it was Downey California against Denver Colorado! Both teams showed up wanting to show what they were made of. Willie (Red Team Leader) and his team are well known for street customs and rat rods and Rick (Blue Team Leader) is well known for his off the wall creations. Two totally different backgrounds come together to build a 1967 Pontiac LeMans in just 48 hours.

I actually had the opportunity to hangout and watch the episode with the red team when it aired since they are only a couple hours from where I live. I met them at Bob’s Big Boy in Downey. If you are not familiar with Bob’s Big Boy they started as a burger stand back in 1936 and have since grown into a full blown car hop restaurant and franchised locations around the USA. They have weekly car shows and events and the Downey location is very familiar with Willie and the boys. They have together thrown many car shows and events over the years so when Jim had the opportunity to host a “Car Warriors Party” for Willie he did just that. Outside: Cool cars and good people. Inside: Good people and the party! Bob’s was packed and Willie and his team setup a satellite and big screen so everyone could watch.

If you watched this episode (if you haven’t, stop here, go watch it and then come back) then you already know about some of the drama between red team members and also between the red team and blue team. I was assigned to help the red team on this build and right from the start you could tell how passionate this team was about winning this competition. We lost the engine challenge right out of the gate primarily because of rusted bolts and no access for a sawzall. But this showed the red team how serious Krazy Kreations were about this build too! Despite not utilizing their guys they way you would think (working on the interior during a motor challenge) they had the motor out in damn near record time.

The TV version of the show covers the build pretty accurately but leaving out a few details…the major one being “What happened to the blue teams paint??”  This is a question that puzzled many of us including me right down to the very end when Rick (Blue team leader) came into the shop with a bucket of dried up paint showing us it all had been mixed and not used so it hardened. Rick was unaware his team mixed all the paint when they did the jams and wheels and the next day when it came time to paint the car his team didn’t confess. This actually sounds worse than it really is, these builds are extremely fast paced and you are getting pulled in twenty different directions and not getting any sleep during all of this. The plan for what gets done next on the car changes constantly and I am sure they had the intention to paint everything together. Both teams had some really subtle and creative ideas for these Pontiac’s and in the end some cool ideas were left on the table because both teams ran out of time.

Congratulations to both teams for a well fought battle and to the United Hot Rods for the win!

Please take time to follow the links in this blog and if you live near one of these cities, stop by and checkout the work they can do when not restricted to just 48 hours!

03/12/2012
Categories: "The Wall", Car Warriors . Tags: brad fanshaw, car warriors, ftk, full throttle, full throttle customs, full throttle kustomz, jimmy shine, linkedin, ray mcclelland, Speed, speed tv . Author: Ray McClelland . Comments: 3 Comments

If you haven’t seen the new season of Car Warriors on the Speed Channel yet set your DVR now!

One of my earlier posts explained all the changes that were made for season 2. To start things off, two teams from around the country come to compete and have no idea what exactly they signed up for until they are there. These builds are exhausting! One of the first questions that usually pops up “Is this really 48 hours straight or do we get breaks?”. Brad and I always get a chuckle in here because unlike most other shows this one is non-stop until the car is done. Our answer is: no, not really, it is actually more like 60-63 hours then 8 hours off then another 10 hours!

This competition isn’t for the weak at heart…it takes it’s toll on you and endurance is key when doing these builds. I was recently talking to one of the editors about the show and he said they basically layout each episode as if there were no time constraints and then work their way back from there. They start off around 2 hours long and then get cut to around 47 minutes so there is a ton of footage that doesn’t make it which makes it funny for those involved to watch because they remember all of the joking around and pranks along with all the cool behind the scenes stuff that goes into building the car.

This episode was my toughest one. I was so nervous the day before I couldn’t sleep, wondering what the hell I got myself into and how this whole thing was going to play out. A wise man once told me, in the end you only have your reputation and the hand shake you stood behind, so I spent my whole career making sure my customers were always happy with their results and and I always went the extra mile to put a smile on their face. Doing a show like this I was ultimately putting all the years of hard work into someone’s hands to either make or break me. I was so worried about how I was going to look and sound on camera. I knew I had the skills to handle whatever the build could throw my way but my main concern is that I wanted people to see the real me without any bullshit.

The “Lead Tech” role is to basically make sure your team completes their car in the 48 hour time frame. We can, but do not have to, dive in and work along side of these teams. We cannot make any creative decisions nor can we call the shots at anytime. Brad and I both enjoy working with the teams and love to dive in and turn wrenches. We each have a unique style and bring a little something different to the table. On this build I was assigned to the red team (Hot Rod Hooligans), and right from the start I felt the need to dive in and get dirty… They were having a problem with stripped motor mount bolts, so I rolled underneath the car to see if I could lend a hand. These cars were 40 years old and had obviously been worked on previously. Our car had mismatched motor mount bolts and the head of the bolts were rounded. I tried just about every socket in the drawer trying to get  those damn things out. I even at one point tried using a metric socket and a hammer but had no luck there either, they were just too far gone. Up to this point we were rockin’ and way ahead, but without a torch there was no quick way to get these things out.

We later used a chisel and a hammer to get them out. Our car was in a prior accident so trying to get the body panels to line up was a whole other battle. This car literally kicked our asses! It didn’t help that the team leader Jim, hadn’t slept in days prior because his wife just gave birth to their twins. This was only part of the behind the scene chaos that occurred during this build. I could go on and on…right down to the fact of the whole “No Start” issue but what fun would that be?!? haha

Each of these teams come with the hopes of showcasing their skills and reaping the benefits from the viewers seeing their talents but most never get a chance to show them. Case in point… Jeff Styles from the Hot Rod Hooligans in episode 1 is known for his striping abilities and he never even got a chance to stripe the car he worked so hard on for 48 hours! Jeff is like many other people that show up to compete, they are “team players” and are all working towards one common goal, finishing the car in 48 hours. Jeff has a very successful business striping but viewers never got the chance to see how talented he really is. My hopes for writing these blogs for each episode is to be able to talk a little about “behind the scenes” of that episode and also spread the word about all of the talent you never got to see.

It was unfortunate that I didn’t get to connect with everyone during these builds so my goal was after the judging to make sure I shook their hands and let them know my plans to do this and contact me with info and pics so I could help them spread the word. Some forwarded info and others didn’t. Most of these teams are made up off multiple shops combined into one. Please take some time to checkout the links below and see the work these guys are really capable of given more than 48 hours!

Congrats to both teams!!!

Jeff Styles (Hot Rod Hooligans) www.SoCalPinstriper.com & his Facebook page – give it a “Like”

Jamie Fifield (Hot Rod Hooligans – Audio) www.AdvantageAudioAndAutosports.com

Jim Iams (Hot Rod Hooligans – Team Leader) www.ImzzIndustries.com 

Tom Prewitt Jr (Hot Rod Hooligans – Painter) www.DepartmentOfCustomz.com

Isaac Gallardo (Inland Empire – Blue Team Leader) www.IEautobodyandpaint.com 

Fernando (Inland Empire – Blue Team Mechanic)  www.fernandosautocare.com

03/05/2012
Categories: "The Wall", Car Warriors . Tags: brad fanshaw, car warriors, ftk, full throttle, full throttle customs, full throttle kustomz, jimmy shine, linkedin, ray mcclelland, Speed, speed tv . Author: Ray McClelland . Comments: 2 Comments