Welcome to Finnegan's Garage, an inside look at my shop and projects. Each week (hopefully) I will bring you a new tip, trick or absolute nonsense concerning my cars, trucks and boats.

This time on Finnegan's Garage, I am building a new coil mount for the Hemi in my 55 Chevy using some cheap tricks and tools.

I'm working on my drag boat project, a 19-foot long Tom Peterson Placecraft jet boat. I plan to do as much of the work myself as possible, including building the exhaust system for the turbochargers. In this video I test my trusty Milwaukee abrasive chop saw against a Fein Slugger cold saw. I bought the Slugger from Trick-Tools.com and it works awesome!

I bought the Roadkill ramp truck last month and promptly drove it from California to my home in Georgia. It runs pretty good, is semi-reliable, and looks cool. However, the bed floor is completely rotten so I have to replace it before I can haul a car around the block, let alone to a drag strip. I know nothing about woodworking or the tools that go along with that so this was an adventure. I probably bought the wrong lumber, used the wrong tools, used them incorrectly but, it's all good because a new floor is now in place. This might not have as many good nuggets of info at the first few videos on my channel but at least you can watch me sweat for twenty minutes and laugh at my misfortune. Yay!

If you're new to the world of TIG welding or simply don't want to drop $200.00 or more on a tungsten sharpening tool then this vid is for you. This time I'm showing off dirt cheap ways to get a nice point on a TIG torch tungsten without contaminating it.

It's hard to believe that you guys have subscribed to this channel so quickly. I cannot thank you enough and it really confirms the idea that this is something I should continue doing. The greatest reward for creating Finnegan's Garage so far has been the comments and input you all have provided. I've learned as much from you as you probably have from me and to say thanks, I made this little video, complete with a celebratory burnout.

As a mini-trucker, I've installed more than my fair share of rear windows in trucks. However, I've never chosen to install one using the rubber seal and lock strip on a Chevy. It ain't easy but I got it done using some cool tools that I bought from LMCTruck.com. The ramp truck now has a solid, secure rear window just in time for me to start hauling Blasphemi around. Now I have a rad view of the Hemi's bottom blower pulley through the rear window as I drive.

It's no secret that my wife wants her car painted and that I refuse to make it happen. Her car is way too much fun to be locked up in paint jail when I could be out honing it daily. So I am always looking for things to fix in an effort to prevent the inevitable from happening. As luck would have it the front suspension started falling apart, providing yet another in a long line of excuses for me to keep the car dull and dented instead of shiny and bright.

I love building and tuning racing engines and driving a drag boat has allowed me to build outrageously powerful engines that would be pretty useless on the street. When bolted into my jet boat, though, I can experience brutal acceleration without the risk of going to jail. Of course, the risk of death is there since boats like mine don't have roll cages or seat belts, but the fun far outweighs the fear. I liken driving one of these water-rockets to driving a fast street bike. Anyway, I don't have much footage of my driving days but luckily my buddy Randy Joyce found a tape of a race from way back in 2009. Hopefully this will get you pumped up to see my next drag boat hit the water, hopefully later this year. Episode 10 will feature the header build for the new boat. For now, enjoy the action from one of the best weekends I've ever had in racing. Thanks to the Pit Crew-Randy Joyce, Robert Jonsson, Joe Cole, Scott Pynn and Track Announcers, Jeff Fry and Rolf Sammons.

Yo! The Kibbe and Finnegan show is now called the Kibbe and Friends show and has it’s own YouTube channel. I’m still on it when I can be – and it’s still awesome. Go subscribe right now!

Better late than never right? Here it is, a video about cutting and welding stainless steel tubing into a turbo header. There's some good tips in here and a time lapse segment of me dragging a vertical band saw with my '55 Chevy. Part 2 of the video won't be out for a couple of weeks because I had to leave town to go on Hot Rod Power Tour. The truth is i ran out of argon the day before I was leaving, right as I was beginning to back-purge the primary tubes and finish weld the. The good news is that I can no make a better, longer video all about that process so splitting the header build into two vids isn't necessarily a bad thing. Anyway, hope you enjoy this look at my jet boat and how I made these headers.

I just got home from Power Tour and as you might have guessed, i uploaded Part 1 of the drag boat header build video and then left town. Needless to say, I need a bit of time (and argon!) before I can finish the headers and upload Part 2. In the meantime, here's a quick test of NOS' nitrous transfer pump as well as tips for safely filling nitrous bottles using just an ice chest and a bottle heater. Hope you dig it!

The Hemi-powered drag boat is back and I'm making serious headway on the stainless steel exhaust headers. In this video I'll show you how to back purge stainless steel for a better quality weld as i finish assembling the primary tubes, collectors and flanges

My life is a never-ending battle to see how much work and play i can cram into every minute of every day. In fact, i hold a personal record for having a root canal done on my tooth in the morning, gone snowboarding in the afternoon, and drag racing with my buds at night all on the same day. I figure you guys and gals are fighting the same battle I am so here's a few tips that may save you a few busted knuckles and hours of daylight the next time you're wrenching on your ride. As always, there's a million ways to skin a cat; these are just my favorite ways to pet the...er...kitty. :)

It's always more fun to work with friends and this time my buddies Jacob Davis and Daniel Bopshers dropped by the garage to work on Jacob's '72 AMC Hornet Sportabout wagon. I met Jacob a couple years ago while filming Roadkill and he just happens to live near me and work at a local hot rod shop. I met Daniel at Hot Rod Power tour and we share a love of engine building so we get a long really well. Jacob is planning a late-model Hemi swap for the AMC and before that happens he wanted to have some fun with the inline six in the Hornet'. We decided to spray the living hell out of the engine at the drag strip with nitrous but not before comfirming that the engine was tuned properly. It's true you can bandaid minor tuning issues with a direct-port nitrous system but the odds of the engine surviving longer if it's tuned properly in naturally-aspirated form are much better. Jake bought an AutoMeter wideband O2 sensor and gauge kit that we'll be installing and testing on this episode of Finnegan's Garage.

Well, after a short hiatus I'm back. My apologies for the gap between uploads. I was gone for a bit while filming Roadkill and then I had to have my gall bladder surgically removed, which was so fun! But i'm back home and wrenching in the garage again so I should have more fun stuff to show you like this vid about working on Blasphemi. My '55 Chevy is powered by a 531ci Chrysler Hemi topped with a set of ported heads and a Blower Shop 8-71 supercharger with Hilborn injection. It's a beast of an engine that puts 800hp to the rear tires and does excellent burnouts. Today's project is replacing the crate engine valve covers with a set of classic race Hemi valve covers. While I'm in there I'll check the valve lash with my buddy, Daniel Boshears, who is an excellent engine builder.

The Green Hornet is back. Jacob Davis' 258ci straight six-powered station wagon won't do a burnout so we've got a slick plan to double the power of the stock engine using nitrous oxide. Before we can put the squeeze to the gutless wonder, though, we've got to fix a few small problems with the induction and exhaust systems. In this episode we install a slightly better, used intake manifold, a two barrel carburetor, and a tubular header. The car still won't smoke the tires but it's one step closer to swallowing a 150-shot of N2O. Thanks for watching.

I've been gone quite a bit lately and since there hasn't been a new episode uploaded in awhile and it's a holiday weekend (labor day) I thought, what the hell; Let's drop an episode on Friday instead of Monday and have a massive sale on t-shirts!

This '73 Chevy C30 Crew Cab ramp truck is one of my favorite and most useful hot rods. Powered by a 454ci Big-Block Chevy with a three-speed TH400 transmission and equipped with a Hodges hauler bed, I constantly use it to haul project cars around. It's semi-reliable but not altogether comfortable because the floorboards get incredibly hot while it's mobbing' down the highway. On this episode of Finnegan's Garage Jacob Davis and I are going to rip out the original carpet and insulation and install a bunch of products to drastically reduces the temperature of the floorboard and make the interior less disgusting.

My plan for the drag boat was to take my time, enjoy the build and not rush it for any sort of deadline. Two years later I'm still working on the thing and progress has been slow. I realize I've been obsessing over every little part and at this rate it'd be five years before the thing was finished. So I took the opportunity to unveil the boat at the annual SEMA show the first week of November 2016. No big deal, that's only two weeks away. Now my friends and I are thrashing to finish the turbo system, wirining and plumbing, and fabricate a bunch of other small parts for the boat before it's hauled to Las Vegas for the biggest industry-only event in the nation. This video shows the work to-date and offers tips for mounting waste gates in a turbo header. Oh and if you stick around until the end of the video you'll get a look at the new engine for my bagged and body-body dropped '67 Chevy C10.

The drag boat is almost done and thanks to my friends we got it buttoned up and transported to the SEMA Show. David Newbern, Daniel Boshears, Jacob Davis, Marcel Robert, William Roberts, Robin Lawrence, Jack Day, Sonny Leonard, Blane Burnett, Bill Tichener, Bub Miller, Todd Griggs, Tim Place, Jeff Conrad, Tom Peterson, Chastin and Lauren Brand, Holley, Earl's, Aeromotive, Brodix, Precision Turbo, SRE, Race Part Solutions, MSD, Stainless Headers.com, B1 Racing, Rockett Brand Racing Fuel, Place Diverter & Controls, and American Turbine all played a part in this build. Thanks! There's still work left to do before the boat hits the water but it's close and I'm more motivated than ever to finish this thing.

It's time to get cracking on my '67 Chevrolet C10 pickup, the bagged and body-dropped hot rod I sold and then bought back nearly a decade later. It's a long way from being finished but it's also a perfectly wrong platform for Chevrolet Performance' 650hp LT4 crate engine and six-speed Super Magnum manual gearbox. In this video I'll go over the history of the truck, the innovative features of the engine and a few of the parts needed to begin the swap. Thanks for watching and check back later for more updates as I continue working towards getting this project back on the road.

I'm building a 598ci Big-Block Chevy for my friend, Jeff. It's gonna be a bad mofo. The foundation is an aluminum block made by the folks at Brodix, right here in the good ol US of A! In this video I'll compare the lightweight block and a set of Brodix SR20 aluminum heads to old, cast-iron Chevrolet parts and show you how to take a couple of basic measurements so that you can order custom pistons for your next engine build. Wanna know the difference in weight between the iron and aluminum parts? Don't worry, I've got ya covered there, too.

After a short hiatus the Green Hornet AMC Sportabout wagon is back and badder than ever. Jacob Davis spent the backend of his summer rebuilding the long block to rid the 258ci inline six-cylinder engine of excessive blow-by, leaking valve seals, and wore-out cylinder bores. While he was at it he also upgraded the valve train to a new Comp Cams hydraulic flat-tappet camshaft with more lift and duration, new valve springs, better lifters, and a new roller timing chain. He topped it all off by replacing the cast-iron intake and two-barrel carburetor we installed in Episode 17, with a Clifford Performance aluminum intake and four-barrel Holley carburetor. When he brought the car back to my garage it didn't run too well and it still wouldn't do a burnout. In this episode we'll fix all of that with a bit of wrenching and a new MSD ignition system.