Real Name: Nicholas
Lefty works as an aircraft mechanic; and live in western Oregon with my wife, two kids and one very large dog (who is often heard in the background of the podcasts). I’ve been into cars for nearly as long as I can remember, but a childhood as a military brat means moving every 2-3 years, so I never really plugged into the local car scenes. At 15 I started busting my knuckles on my first car a 1981 CJ-7 Jeep. It had been a farm truck at my grandfathers for many years, and the entire B squad spent many an hour in the summer with the four of us rolling around the ranch in that Jeep.
Ever since I was a small child my favorite thing has been building things, the medium is less important to me than the task itself. When I lived in south Texas it was rebuilding 70s era motorcycles, and returning my airplane to the skies. Here in Oregon, I’m building my 38 Hudson Terraplane and working on my carpentry skills. After buying the Hudson I began looking for podcast that dives into the nitty gritty of a restoration, and wasn’t really able to find one that didn’t involve spend mountains of money, so knowing that Woodchuck was also working on his rebuild, I called him up and we each harangued our brothers into stepping up to mics and starting this show.
Real Name: Colton
Colton lives in the heat of south Texas where he is a newlywed (more or less). He began working on cars as soon as he was able to understand what wrench his dad was looking for. Work continued on the beginnings of a used car lot that was the family driveway. Where the basics of automotive mechanics were laid down. Voluntary and involuntary maintenance was performed on vehicles including 1986 Ford F250 4x4, 1981 Ford Bronco 4x4, 1984 Honda Accord, 1975 Stingray Corvette, and more than a few non ground vehicles. A 1990 Toyota 4x4 pickup was the vehicle of choice for a budding driver and mechanic for many years rolling through college and after. Current vehicle in maintenance is a 1992 Ford F150 4x4.
After settling in south Texas, Train got a part time job restoring a car for a local company while in school for firefighting/EMS. The project was a 1979 MGB, handed to him as a freshly mounted engine and body on a rolling chassis. The rest of the project was a jigsaw puzzle of parts scattered around the shop with no labeling or organization. Low and behold a few months later and a bunch of seek and find in boxes the car was driving in no time and off to the paint shop for a fresh coat of paint. After this the love of the restoration was born.
Real Name: Steven
There once was a guy who liked to race
On a snowmobile he messed up his face
Because he was so dumb
It swelled up like a plumb
And he soon became stuck
Forever known as a Woodchuck
-B Squads own Woodchuck
Steve lives in the wilds of Wyoming with his family (wife, and two daughters). He got into cars in college when he could neither afford a car that did not need work nor to have the work done. The guinea pig was a 1984 Toyota Pick-up. He learned to change brake shoes and pads, some electrical, how to replace a master cylinder and how a carburetor works (kinda). That was the entirety of his car knowledge, until recently. With little more than a desire he and his wife started down the road of restoring a Mustang. Looking for car podcasts yielded some results, but he did not find any that were about actual building of cars that were not at least in the six figure range. As it turns out one of the other B Squad members also ran into this problem. Knowing very little about cars we decided that our follies should be put of for the world to see and learn from. And thus started a podcast, not from teachers teaching students, but students learning by trial and error.
...Oh, and I do the editing too, so you can blame me for most of the mistakes.
Real Name: Bradley
Brad lives in CO on the front range. He got into cars by having to do “involuntary maintenance” on “multiple instances” on his college car and later being voluntold to be on the B Squad Podcast. His dream project is a Stingray Corvette.
Brad currently drives a 2010 Chevy Pick-up as a daily driver with Rough Country suspension and Bilstein shocks. His current listen count of the show remains at a single partial episode (by force on a long road trip with Woodchuck).
This is entirely too short because Hollywood is still in the process of writing his bio….20 month later. In fact he hasn’t even started. If you get the chance E-mail us and tell him to get on it!
Real Name: John
John lives in Wyoming and is in the middle of expanding his garage space to accommodate his many projects including the Satellite pictured above in addition to 3 Willys, 2 more Plymouth sedans and an old Ford pick-up.
John will be joining B Squad to give us direction and keep us from orange coning too far from the automotive world -- all from behind the scenes. Some would call him a writer or maybe a director in the film world, but B Squad only takes direction as well as they can read. Arm signals and flying objects will probably be the tool of choice.
Real Name: Daniel
Daniel is B Squad’s Welding, Fabricating and Manufacturing expert. He owns a fab shop (DPP Manufacturing) in Kansas. He works on his projects, a 68 GMC C-10 and Miata with a SBC with his son.
After writing in several times and then taking B Squad up on an interview request, Daniel has become a regular on the show. He joins us once a month and usually keeps us on track once a month as we talk about all things metal working.
Real Name: Jim
Jim (Mav) is one of those who believes in the "get it running first" theory of cars... then get it right, because they are no fun without progress. He started young with model cars and moved to real machinery as soon as he could. He has been called an instigator/bad influence by his wife, a voice of reason by some, and hard of hearing by most everyone. Speak directly at him if you think he will care what you say. Occasionally he even has good advice on getting cars going.
He and his wife Gail have what most would say are too many cars, and most of them are old enough to be classics. He is currently on a quest to make those that are not as attractive look better by better learning body and paintwork. Or maybe it is just putting lipstick on a pig…. It remains to be seen.
Real Name: Gail
Gail lives in Wyoming and does IT work for a regional bank. IT work might be an advantage in working on cars if she owned anything that was modern enough to have any kind of computer controllers or even electronics. She started working on cars around the age of 6 because she was hanging out with her Dad and had hands small enough to change the tail lights on a 70 Buick LeSabre. That 70 Buick eventually became her first car, or ¾ of a car, as it had a significant rust issue. While scabbing scrap metal onto the frame to keep it from breaking in half the attitude that things didn’t need to be perfect was born. This has carried through on many projects with the occasional desire for perfection just often enough to make her husband crazy that the goal has changed without notice.
Over the course of a couple decades, she and her husband have collected an assortment of classic cars, mostly by buying them and never selling the previous ones. The collection spans from the 1930s to the 2010s with at least one car in each decade except for the 40s. Shopping to get a 40s car to fill out the missing decade is a frequent reason to search for new cars to buy.
Real Name: Brett
Brett is a guest host on the podcast and joins us from time to time as support for events that we attend. Brett lives in Arkansas with his family. He has a '77 Cordoba that was purchased specifically for one of B Squad's Events.He also has a short bed International pick-up among other projects. He is a great addition to the BSquad Family both as a listener and now a contributor. One odd thing about is that all of his projects are flat black.There is something to be said for simple.