Crew Member Perspective- Nick Migues' blog!

[steiale]

Any ideas on what your 4th truck will be for Jack? 

[Nick Migues]

11 hours ago, steiale said:

Any ideas on what your 4th truck will be for Jack? 

For April it’s supposed to be an FTI themed truck (our Transmission sponsor) and after that it’s actually supposed to be switching to Kristen’s truck as the Big Bad Wolf Wolfs Head oil truck (another Amalie company) and Jack is going to move over to RK or ICM. Not sure the exact plan but that’s the general idea for right now 

[Nick Migues]

So I just realized I haven’t done this in awhile. A few weekends ago we took the weekend off to go out to the World Finals to watch for fun, then we wrapped up getting Xtermigator, Ice Cream Man and Razin Kane ready for our show in Green Cove Springs. It was an alright show, I’m really proud of Kristen tho she did an awesome job for her first time driving! The truck had a few issues but she battled it and did awesome driving. She certainly wasn’t afraid of it! Before the show we had to put an orbital o ring in RK and after the show we had to put one in Gator, and ICM had a shock rip apart and fall off for whatever reason lol. So we got that patched up, as well as we had to put an old Gator body on Jacks truck for this weekend as the Torque body wasn’t ready in time. So Gator 1 and ICM went on their way to Syracuse while our team of RK and Gator 2 headed to Little Rock where we had some pretty good shows. Friday night we started off good with Jack making it to the finals in racing, and then in 2 wheel skills he went a little hard trying a Paxton popper and put the Gator on its lid lol which isn’t a huge deal cuz that body is supposed to be retired lol and then Trent won 2 wheel skills. They both had good runs in freestyle, Jack knowing he had a junk body ran harder than he has all year which was awesome. On Saturday before the show we had to patch the Gators mouth back together and reset his shocks because they didn’t take air right before Friday so they weren’t exactly right for the show, and we had to throw another orbital oring in RK. Which btw the orbital is what the steering wheel connects to on monsters, basically fluid goes through it and tells the tires which way to turn so if you blow out an oring you lose all pressure and have no front steering. And then Saturday night went well, Jack made it back to the finals again and lost and then ripped the hood off in Freestyle which was awesome, the fans really got behind the Gator this weekend with the Gator Chomp! And then Trent rolled RK in freestyle so she’s in pretty rough. So this week we have to patch up the RK body, switch our motor back into RK(right now it has a Feld motor in it) and then mount the Torque body on Jacks truck. Next weekend we’re in Knoxville Tennessee with all 4 trucks! JR McNeal in the Amalie Oil Xtermigator (#GatorChomp), Roy Pridgeon in Ice Cream Man, Jack Brown in FTI Torque, and Trent Montgomery in Razin Kane! Razin Kane and Ice Cream Man have displays on Friday, Kristen will probably be at the RK display and it’ll be either me or Jack at the ICM display because I don’t think anyone else but us 3 will be in Knoxville by then lol but I could be wrong. But I know it’s just me and Kristen for all 4 trucks this weekend lol. If you’re in the area come check us out, on top of our 4 well also have Tyler Menninga in Digger, Linsey Read in Scooby, Tom Herzog in Midnight Rider, and Cole Venard in Black Pearl! Also a random side note, it was really cool to be up against USA1 this weekend 😎

[Nick Migues]

Well we wrapped up an interesting one here in Knoxville. We had all 4 trucks with us and just me and Kristen crewing. Friday started out with me having to work at the track getting Gator and Ice Cream ready for the shows while Jack and Kristen both had to take Torque and RK to displays, then we had to hurry up and tire up and set up those trucks that night to be ready for our first show. We only had one show on Saturday in the afternoon, and it started out rough when Trent took out the pinion gear in the diff in RK in 2 wheel skills, which takes to long to change during the show so it was done. Then in freestyle Jacks truck broke a fitting for the rear steer which ended his run early, and then ICM and Gator both had good runs but Roy broke a right rear outer axle in his run. So we got that all fixed up and ready for Sunday’s afternoon show. We started out pretty good as Jack and Torque took their first win in the Monster of the year in time trials which was awesome, then in 2 Wheels the solenoid for Jacks rear steer went out so had to change that out during intermission. Then in freestyle Jack had a good run, had a really nice wheelie across the pod and didn’t even hurt the new body, and Trent had probably not only his best run of the year but probably the best run I’ve ever seen of his in an arena, lots of good air and momentum and kept the truck on the edge with crazy wheelies and air without breaking anything or rolling it (although we think the rear steer pump is getting weak), then ICM goes out and 2nd hit he tripped up and hit the pod and did a stoppie and tried to moonwalk but missed reverse then missed 1st so Rollover Roy struck again and put ICM on its lid, and finally JR goes out in Gator and cut a decent sized hole in the side wall of one of his tires. Then load out was a huge cluster, we weren’t allowed to drive trucks across the street to the trailers until we washed tires because the city didn’t want dirt on The streets which luckily the arena washed them for us but was also pointless because A. They blew the mud from the tires right back on the trucks, B. They didn’t wash the bottom side of the tires and C. We drove right back through the mud puddles as we were leaving. So we had to wait on them to wash the tires, then it just took us forever to load up all our trucks and tires because there was just a lot of crap to load up and 2 trailers and we had to bring Gator over way later cuz they washed it last and it didn’t have air in the tire so we had to keep airing it back up and then the battery died on us. But all in all wasn’t a bad weekend, got some tire swapping to do, body work, and finally putting our motor in RK and taking out the MJ motor. Once again we got all 4 of our trucks this weekend in Huntsville,Alabama along with Tyler in Digger, Linsey in Scooby, Matt Pagliarulo in Jester and Scott Hartsock in Gunslinger. Should be a fun 4 show weekend!

[Nick Migues]

What a weekend here in Huntsville! We killed it competition wise. On Friday we all showed up, had intro practice where we actually took out a fuel pump in Ice Cream and had a fuel pump fall out of RK which started a weekend of lots of weird little issues, but then Friday night for the show it started off with JR racing Trent in the finals where Trent took the victory, then the team carried the momentum for JR to take home the donuts win, and then Trent won the overall event championship with JR running up! We carried that momentum into the next show where Jack took out Slinger to win racing, and then in that show Trent bent a steering ram shaft in 2 Wheels, got it fixed and had to make it kinda sorta work with a shorter shaft, then had to do the same thing on JRs because he broke one in freestyle. Then the Saturday night show we didn’t win anything but only had a few small issues, Trent blew out the O rings in the orbital which is a recurring issue for some reason, then Roy ripped the steering ram tab off the housing in freestyle. Got everything fixed up, then Sunday show was good except Trent blew out the O rings again and then rolled RK again to finish it out. Then we got to load up in the rain again (really getting old). This weekend we’re in Tallahassee Florida, with just JR in Xtermigator and Jack in Torque. We only have 2 shows on Saturday, then next week we have to get RK ready for Kristen to get some more practice in out at ORI for a few days, then we take RK and XTG with Kristen and JR driving in Arcadia Florida for a 2xtreme show on May 5th, then the following week we do Virginia Beach with XTG and ICM. Exciting few weeks coming up, come see us if you’re near by!

[fernBurn]

Your guys steering pressures aren't too high?

[Nick Migues]

No we run around 1800-2000 PSI in all of our trucks. Not sure why it suddenly it went through so many, but we’re actually about to switch all of our trucks to a block out system in our orbitals rather than the o rings, which basically takes something away to blow apart. My guess would be the problem is the truck taking a weird hit and it just spikEs the system for whatever reason and blows out the weakest point which would be those o rings. JR and Roy both run the block outs tho and they don’t have any issues so that’s why we’re switchin it all over. RK is weird tho, it’s just a tough truck to steer for whatever reason, gets tough and locks up occasionally but we’re not really sure why it does it, I’m thinking maybe the locker is just fighting it or something because we upgraded everything to bigger stuff on the front steering and it still acts weird. The fun thing about monster trucks is you can run the same set up on 3 trucks.. and get 3 completely different results with totally different issues, like Jack runs the o ring System with the same steering setup as RK and it works flawlessly. Makes no sense sometimes @fernBurn