This website is dedicated to real street performance and my current sports cars, a 2001 Honda S2000 and a 2014 Corvette Stingray. Is this website for a business? No. Sledgehammer Performance is simply my home garage, where I enjoy honing my shade-tree mechanic skills. You can find me in there tinkering with my vehicles a lot of the time. I take a lot of pride in my vehicles and one look at them will be proof of that. I consider myself a pretty good mechanic and very rarely will you see one of my vehicles in a shop. I prefer to handle virtually everything with my vehicles so I know it was done right and economically. When you can save money on labor it certainly justifies any improvements from a budgetary standpoint.
I have always been interested in cars, learning how to wrench on my first driver at 16, which was a 1979 Chevette. Cars of that era required constant maintenance so I was always getting my hands dirty with the help of my dad. He taught me a lot about cars and what it takes to keep them running and looking nice. I hope I can pass that on to my young son as well. This site has been on the Internet in some form or another since 1998 if you can believe it. It became Cedar Crest Speedlab in 2010 (formerly myturboregal.com) and was migrated to WordPress in 2014 for ease of updating and cataloging garage blog entries. In 2024, it was rebranded as Sledgehammer Performance.
In “real life” I work in healthcare information technology. I have been an MCSE since Nov 24, 1997, and I continue to remain certified as new products arrive on the market. I taught classes at Purdue University Global for six years and it was some of the most enjoyable and rewarding time I have spent. I met a lot of new people that were more than students … they became friends. I know a lot of them have gone on to rewarding careers in information technology and it is nice to know that I had a small part in that success.
In my free time, I enjoy keeping in shape with my regular bodybuilding program at FIT gym. I have always been into bodybuilding and have been doing it since I was twenty years old. I also enjoy summer water sports, such as boating and jet skiing. We spend a lot of time at the lake on the weekends during the summer months, which is a great way to relax and unwind from the week. There is nothing better than water sports and then enjoying all of the good places to visit in downtown Clear Lake.
You’ll find me in the garage a lot since I like to take care of my vehicles to the best of my ability. I find it a great stress reliever to spend time keeping my vehicles running well and looking even better. Listening to good music or watching my favorite car shows in the garage while I am wrenching or polishing up a car is time well spent. I’ve always believed that maintaining your car will pay you back in the long run, especially with labor savings. A clean, well-running car shows that you have pride in owning things and that’s something I hope to pass on to my amazing son.
Benjamin is currently (as of Oct 2024) in college studying cybersecurity. He certainly has a bright future ahead of him once he finishes this program. Ben took automotive classes in high school, so he knows what he is doing with the basics under the hood. We didn’t get a lot of chances to work on cars together as he was growing up. Probably the best project we undertook was installing a nice stereo system in his car along with general maintenance items.
