Shop Truck

Blast Magazine is fixing up a 1987 Dodge W150 Power Ram piece by broken freakin piece!

The Shop Truck: Why would I want exhaust headers?

February 6, 2014

Ever since we ran our exhaust replacement story in the fall, we've been asked (and have started debating) why exhaust headers are such a good thing, given the price, installation difficulties, and maintenance t...

New mufflers on a 1987 Dodge Power Ram, exhaust swap

The Shop Truck #9 — Let’s “do” the exhaust

John M. Guilfoil

October 26, 2013

This portion of The Shop Truck restoration was made possible by Summit Racing Equipment. For over 40 years, Summit Racing Equipment has set and reset the standard for fast shipping, customer service, and tech e...

The Shop Truck #8 — Seafoam!

John M. Guilfoil

September 5, 2013

Every gearhead seems to love this. Maybe it's just the smoke, but something about Seafoaming an engine hearkens us back to the very roots of our car-loving, car fixing, car breaking beginnings. Seafoam is a ...

The Shop Truck #7 — How to wash your engine bay

John M. Guilfoil

August 26, 2013

Corey expertly covers the air cleaner/carburetor and the distributor cap. Just go for it, right? Wrong. After our trip to Little Foreign Car Garage to see Skipper Hull went, well, swimmingly, we were adv...

The Shop Truck #6 — What’s that coming out from underneath..ohhhh crap…

John M. Guilfoil

August 24, 2013

Son of a bitch. Yeah...it overheated As Corey introduced earlier this week, Blast Cars visited the Little Foreign Car Garage in Waltham to catch up with my old friend Ken "Skipper" Hull, who has been in ...

The Shop Truck Update: Marvel Mystery Oil didn’t work for lifter tick

John M. Guilfoil

August 19, 2013

Obviously, not every product works exactly the same way for exactly the same problem. But, sadly, we have to report that Marvel Mystery Oil did not do the trick for our Chrysler LA 318 engine's lifter tick. ...

The Shop Truck #5 — Cleaning Out the Doors

John M. Guilfoil

August 14, 2013

This is Zep 505 cleaner. I love it. Car restoration is glamorous right? A guy gets his hands dirty, uses a ratchet and some wrenches, maybe gets cut a few times. Women in the area get turned on. (Or a wo...

The Shop Truck #4 — You hear that ticking? We think that’s a bad lifter

John M. Guilfoil

August 13, 2013

You hear that? Use your noggin to filter out the pulleys and the fan noise and you'll hear a rhythmic ticking. It's a dreaded sound that is often associated with faulty hydraulic lifters. In the video ...

The Shop Truck #3 — Status Report

John M. Guilfoil

August 8, 2013

Kevin had The Shop Truck for almost 90 days, and in that time he replaced a lot of parts and did way more work than he could ever have anticipated on a truck that is, as we both noted, shockingly clean. He run...

The Shop Truck #2 — Buying It

John M. Guilfoil

June 15, 2013

Let me tell you something you already know: Buying a car sucks. Shopping sucks. Dealing with salespeople really sucks. (The fake "supervisor" that the guy talks to, I mean, seriously?) Knowing that you're getti...

The Shop Truck #1 — Air Conditioning Repair

John M. Guilfoil

June 5, 2013

Welcome to the first installment of "The Shop Truck." In this ongoing series that signals the launch of Blast Cars, we are repairing and restoring a 1987 Dodge W150 Power Ram pickup truck that we found on Craig...

Blast Magazine was launched in 2007 with a simple thought — do journalism for the video game generation. We’ve really seen a lot since the 1980s. Nintendo Mega Man games, dial-up Internet, Dos, and the Palm Pilot were all in their infancy as we grew up. We shared files on 1.44MB (that’s MEGABYTE) floppy discs, and they were more than sufficient. As we grew up, the Internet blew up. Today you can stream a movie live in HD. Not only did HD not exist when we were growing up, but downloading a single, low-quality MP3 of our favorite song could take over an hour!

Technology developed quickly as we came of age, and we can claim to have mastered everything from iPads to Netflixes. But there is one thing that our generation did not have to grow up with — car maintenance.

A lot of us are interested in cars and trucks and motorcycles — this site wouldn’t be necessary if we weren’t. But how many Gen-Y’ers have ever had to change their oil? Change the brakes? Fix a cracked serpentine belt? Fixing cars was always something optional for us. We had to want to jack up a car and change a tire.

So now that we’re adults and we’re starting to recover from the crushing debt of our student loans, (We’re very bitter about this) we are finding our interests diversifying. If we were into cars already, we are getting more into cars. If we could never afford it, we are slowly raising our expectations. Say what you will, we are a curious generation.

Blast Cars is not exactly a beginners’ guide to the galaxy, but we’re not going to assume you know everything. We’re learning with you, and the experts we’ll bring into the process will walk both of us through everything we ever wanted to know about everything automotive.

In addition to restoring our Shop Truck, we are following some other Gen-Y restoration projects, including a racing bike. We’ll also bring you some relevant news, reviews, and rumors. We’ll even take a look at some of the most famous cars in movies, music, TV, true crime, and other popular culture. Let us know what you want to see!