I headed out to Santa Cruz, CA Sunday to do some freelance work for CrossFit. With week one of the CrossFit Open coming to a close, they were creating an online show to highlight each week of the event and asked me to come out and help them with production.
I arrived in town around 1pm on Sunday, dropped my bags off at the hotel, and hit the ground running. We headed up to Tony Buddings garage gym to shoot the movement standards for wod 2 that would be released Tuesday. His setup is pretty amazing. Probably one of the nicest garages in existence.
Monday we got started on shooting the first show. It took all day to get everything shot, but we got all we needed and headed back to the office to start on the edit about 9pm. Heber and I worked throughout the night tightening up the segments and creating graphics. I think we finally got the show encoded about 9am.
There were some things HQ needed changed with the movement standards for wod two, so by 10am we were headed back out to Tony’s garage for a re-shoot. Back to the office and a couple more hours of editing and our 32 hour day had finally come to a close.
Today we went down to CrossFit Santa Cruz to give wod 2 a try. It’s a 15 minute AMRAP of 9 155# deadlifts, 12 games style pushups, and 15 box jumps. I ended up getting 9 rounds and 15 reps. Not bad for only working out a handful of times this month. After the wod I grabbed my camera and shot Danielle Edmonson give it a go. She is a beast who should do very well this year. She got 13 rounds and 16 reps! We shot an interview with her then headed back to the office so I could edit it down.
I was supposed to stay out until Friday, but ended up changing my flight to head back to Knoxville on Thursday. I was asked to make it back out to work on show 2 so I booked my flights tonight and will be back on Sunday for another wild two days. Me and Billie are heading to Nashville on Friday to catch a Predators hockey game. On the way we are going to make a detour to Cookeville to shoot a feature on the current leader of the Open, Rich Fronning Jr.
Im sitting on a plane out to California and thought I would catch up on the blog. I’ve been wanting to post some 2011 Garage Games highlights for a while now and keep getting sidetracked. The event was held February 5-6, 2011 in Woodstock, GA. We had a crew head down from CrossFit Knoxville to see how we stacked up against some Southeast competition. Johnny came to coach and Jorja and Billie were there for support.
I spent about 2 months training pretty hard with Ralston, Drew, Greg, Heidi, and Krystal. We did a lot of OPT’s wods, some max effort black box workouts, and several two-a-days. Diet was pretty strict paleo during that time and I was taking in as much protein as I could handle. I got my weight up from low 170′s to about 185. It’s probably the best physical shape I had ever been in (Now my diet sucks and I’m back down to the 170′s).
The highlights are from 3 of the 5 events featuring me and Ralston. The second video is from heat 1 where we took first and second. Going into day 2 we were both in the top 30 out of 125ish…so we were pretty happy with our results. I’m not sure where Ralston ended up overall. I ended up not competing in the final wod due to some major lower back pain. It would have killed me to carry a 120# sandbag up a hill, clean it 10 times, carry it back down, and do 20 315# deadlifts. I opted out so I would be able to move the next day. I had a bunch of photos, but they are on my hard drive that crashed. If you want to see them they are on Facebook.
A lot has happened since my last update. I finished up patching all the holes in the rear of the Cruiser. I think it took me about three full days of work and a lot of mig wire, but I finally got them done. I started with flux core, but ended up renting a bottle of CO2/Argon from AmeriGas and things got a lot smoother with the mig wire. I forgot to take photos of the rear seat mounts and the wheel well that I patched but they turned out pretty good. I still have to patch up the quarter panels. I can’t decide if I want to cut them to make them higher or patch them the way they are. I plan on getting to those when I get back from California (more on that in a minute).
Another project I’ve decided to do is to truck bed line the fenders, rockers, quarters and around the rear. I went ahead and lined the rear before I put the tailgate back on.
The radiator finally came in. Unfortunately the neck where you fill it was bent in shipping and cause it to crack. I caught it before I tried filling it with anti-freeze. Instead of sending it back for a new one like a smart person would, I decided to teach myself how to solder. I went to the parts store and got some acid core solder and ended up doing a pretty messy looking job. Oh well…it doesn’t leak and no one will ever notice.
Yesterday I threw the tailgate back on and decided it was time to take her for a spin. As you can see from the photo below, my clearance calculations were a bit off. I ended up clearing by millimeters not an inch! My plan was to drive it to the DMV and get tags, go to the car wash, and then head in to work. What should have taken a little over an hour ended up taking three. I couldn’t make it up any hills without about killing the engine. To make a long story short, the fuel filter was extremely clogged up. I managed to make it to Advance Auto Parts and grabbed a new one from them. After that was swapped out it was smooth sailing. She handles very nicely. I am pretty happy with the ride on the suspension. The engine is a little underpowered, but what more can you expect out of an old 2F?
I also received the opportunity yesterday to fly out to Santa Cruz, California and work for CrossFit media all next week. They will be shooting their new games show and premiering it for the first time, so I’m going to help them with that and probably edit a couple projects they’ve got going on. Should make for an awesome week. I’ll try to make a few updates along the way.
After a rough day in Charlotte on Friday I returned home to find UPS didn’t deliver my radiator…dang. I caught up on sleep and Saturday morning decided to patch up a couple holes in the rear of the Cruiser. One thing led to another and next thing I know I’ve got everything torn out of the rear.
I’ve got pretty poor welding skills so I figured I would start on spots that will be unseen. I don’t have any gas yet so everything I’ve done so far has been with flux core wire. By the end of the day on Sunday I started to get pretty good. Here are some photos of the work. I also threw in a shot of the rear suspension. Crossing my fingers that my radiator shows up tomorrow and I get it running again.
Well…it’s been a REALLY long day. I woke up at 8am and headed down to the gym for a quick workout. For those of you familiar with CrossFit I did Annie at 6:53 then 50 handstand pushups for good measure. Trevor and I grabbed some breakfast and then headed out with the team for a day full of filming for the diaries. We got some pretty good stuff along the way and had a few laughs. I finished up my camera work for the day with a sunset timelapse downtown and headed back to the room to start on the edit. Meanwhile, Trevor continued with a behind the scenes look at the managers preparing the uniforms for tomorrow. Lo and behold it’s 4am and I finally got this sucker posted. I hope you enjoy!
It’s that time of year again. The Vols traveled to Charlotte today for the first round of the NCAA Tournament. My co-worker Trevor Greene and I came down to cover the team and produce another round of NCAA diaries. Minus a couple technical issues I finally got the first one edited and posted to the site. Check it out!
I picked up a Lincoln welder off of Craigslist and went to town on a new battery mount for the Cruiser. The old one felt like cardboard because it was rusted so bad. I grabbed some angle iron from Lowe’s and fabricated the mount to fit my new DieHard Platinum marine battery.
I wish I had taken a photo of the skid plate before I cleaned it up. It was literally caked with grease and dirt about and inch thick. Once I got it cleaned I let it sit for a day with a rust converter. Next I threw on a couple coats of Rust Bullet and sprayed it black.
Other projects I’ve been working on have been installing the lift. I will try to get a few more picks of it up when I get back from Charlotte this weekend. I removed the fender flares. It was a good thing too, because they were causing my fenders to rust out. I think I am going to patch the holes and paint on some bedliner on the edges of the fenders. I gave Billie a leg workout yesterday pumping my brake pedal while I bled the lines. I figured she needed some participation in this restoration…and I couldn’t get my bleeder pump to work correctly. The radiator should arrive at the house tomorrow so hopefully I will have everything running when I get back in town.
Got every thing tightened and slapped on the wheels to see what we are working with. The rear corner measures 77″ which gives me 1″ of clearance! Whew…that was close. More photos and update coming later.
I’ve got a bunch of updates from the work I got done this weekend, but I left the card with the photos at work so I will try to get to those later this week. For now I wanted to show a little problem I may have.
My Old Man Emu lift came in today so I drove to pick it up from Old Dominion after I got off of work. My neighbor John came over and helped me get the rear installed and I finished up the front about 1am. I still have to install the shocks and torque everything to spec. Overall the quality of the lift is amazing. I can’t wait to get the wheels on to see what it looks like.
My biggest fear ever since I started this project was that I may not be able to get it in and out of the garage when I get it lifted and put on the 33′s. I think I started to realize my fear tonight. As you can see in the photo the rotors and drums are only a few inches off the ground. Now there will be some compression on the springs when the weight of the vehicle is taken off the jack stands, but as of right now it sits at 73″. My garage door clearance is 78″. I think we may have a BIG problem.
I’ve been super busy this week with work and haven’t had a chance to post any updates to the Cruiser so here goes…
Drew coming in last weekend was a HUGE help. With all the painting that needed to be done, we got it completed in half the time. I wire wheeled the entire frame and went back over the hard to reach spots with a brush or sandpaper. I got some rust converter from Lowes that you spray on rusty metal. It does some crazy chemical reaction that converts the rust to something that is not rust. That had to sit for 24 hours before getting cleaned off. My Rust Bullet also came in so after the frame dried we painted two coats to it and the axles. I then hit the frame with 2 more coats of Rustoleum satin black. The axles got 4 more coats of the same paint. I also shot 3 coats of rattle can undercoating in the wheel wells after wire wheeling them. The wheel painting was also completed. I’m pretty happy with the way they turned out.
On Sunday I installed new spark plugs and wires, changed the oil, new pcv valve, new water pump, thermostat, and belts. There was a belt tensioner missing off of the alternator so I ran down to the bolt store and got a long bolt and a couple nuts I need to weld up to make a new tensioner.
Today I hooked up my new 2 gauge battery cables I made. I also pulled the headlight covers, sanded them, and painted them flat black. I called the radiator shop to see what the status was and they were just getting to it today so hopefully I can go pick it up tomorrow and get that installed. I finally got tracking info on my lift and it left Washington today…I guess I will be getting that next week. I’ve decided to go with an Optima red top battery. I think I may try to go pick one up tomorrow along with some steel to make a dual battery mounting plate.
