117. Tuning with Haltech, DCT E36, 11 Cylinder Salt Flats Run w/ TunedByShawn

Gus' car is the fastest car I've ever been in. I oddly feel so safe in it, even at 180 miles an hour. And this is a s*** box E36 that he picked up for, I believe, $2,500. Maybe you should switch to Haltech, you know? And finally, they did it this year. And then I, in turn, got the opportunity to tune it. 283 miles an hour, I think, at Bonneville.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to the Minnoxide podcast. I'm your host, Harris, a.k.a. Minnoxide. Man of many automotive aspirations. And I'm here with my Ford Loving Co-host, Dan.

That's me.

Mr. Gunnit Garage. Still you.

That's still me.

Tripod in the back just went. But anyways, today we are here with Mr. Shawn, TunedByShawn, Haltech extraordinaire. Here at DRSC Automotive, which you guys may have may remember. We've had Dave on the show a handful of times in the past. Episode 64. And I want to say it was like episode 11 or something. I don't know. It was early on when he came on for the first time. But I figured it was time to get the other P in the pod on the show. So why don't you go tell us a little bit about yourself, what it is that you do, and then we'll just kind of go from there.

Yeah. So my name is Shawn Christensen. I'm the owner of TunedByShawn, co-owner of DRSC Automotive. They are two separate businesses. I started TunedByShawn in 2018, and I used to work for another individual named Elliot White with TurboSource Engineering. And so what we specialized in was adeptronic engine management systems, and also rotary cars. So essentially, all Mazdas, that's all I, that's how I started working on on a professional level in the automotive industry, was on rotary cars. And essentially, being the North American distributor for adeptronic engine management. So through doing that, I ended up being the North American tech support person who everyone called for help versus messaging people in Australia. And so I did that for about five years, and then I wanted to grow as an individual and, you know, essentially just do my own thing. And through doing the, you know, online support through adeptronic and helping people, helping shops, like I've helped Rob Dom, Mike Vargas, John Vargas, a lot of those guys that are super popular now. I actually got to help them, you know, through their trials and tribulations with adeptronic at the time. And so like I got exposure to those individuals and other shop owners all over the world. And at that point I was like, well, I kind of really like doing the remote thing with ECU stuff. And I like the, you know, I got to start tuning. That's kind of where I learned tuning and understanding that type of stuff. And so that's kind of where the whole idea of TunedByShawn started with remote tuning. And so when I first started the business, all I did was adeptronic remote tune stuff. And that's kind of, I lived off of that, selling that product and supporting it and, you know, all of the above. And a couple of years went by and all of a sudden, out of the blue, it got sold to Haltech. And it was kind of like, oh crap, you know, what am I going to do? And because at the time, you know, Haltech was the enemy and we needed to be better than them and da da da, you know, it was competition. And so we had, you know, through going to PRI and SEMA, I got to actually communicate and talk with the vice president of Haltech and other, you know, Haltech management and, you know, through the Grapevine, it was like, oh, well, we're going to eventually get rid of Adoptronic. And it was like, all right, well, then I need to switch. And so I started learning the Haltech stuff more and more and essentially switching over. And then there was a certain point where I just redid my website and became only Haltech and set that support boundary that, unfortunately, I was no longer going to support the Adoptronic product anymore because I didn't have any factory support. And...

Did they pull any DNA from Adoptronic and put it into Haltech? Did they take any technology or were they just looking for the customer base?

So that's a great talking point. So a lot of people will say yes. And the reason why that is, is the owner of Adoptronic is Haltech's R&D manager.

Oh, okay.

And so he obviously, all the new products and everything like that, he doesn't come up with everything, but he's the manager and he oversees everything. And he does come up with a lot of things. He's an extremely smart person. His name is Andy Wyatt. And you can see aspects of Adoptronic in Haltech now. And so there was definitely a melding pot between the two products, like the scope and just how the structure of how everything's set up definitely crossed over from the product and all around, you know, the biggest thing with Adoptronic that I saw from an individual that was lacking was having that that bigger corporate structure, essentially more money to really push the product beyond what other competitors had. It was really good for what it was, but it just quite never got polished. And with the Haltech product and they actually now Haltech is owned by race winning brands, which is even more of a bigger conglomerate, which at least from my perspective, I've seen a vast increase in how just the software, the product, everything has just gone through the roof in quality and the price. Yes, it's not the cheapest. It's not the most expensive, but for what you're paying for, it's an exceptional product.

I think it's a great price point. Like when you compare it to anything else, it just kind of seems to be like in the perfect kind of like market where it needs to be.

Yep, it's in the ballpark of everything else, I would think. I mean, coming from the Ford side of things where we tune stock ECUs, but if you want to get an ECU or something like that, it's right in that same price range, I think.

Yeah, and I find that even when I'm speaking to individuals who either purchased another product before talking to me or were thinking about another product, a lot of times I can, in regards to sales side of things is be like, well, okay, yeah, you might be paying a little bit more money here, but you get all these benefits and obviously, this is what I know and learn and use every single day. It isn't something that the tuning portion of it isn't my side gig. So even here at DRSC, I'm in the same sense doing exactly the same thing for my customers as I'm doing with my employees. I'm telling them, hey, this is how you do this, this is how you wire it up. I'm instructing them just as much as I'm instructing my customers. And so I also get to physically do it myself as well. And that obviously allows me to stay on top of, you know, helping customers remotely for the product itself. And so coming back to the product quality, the big thing that I really love about Haltech and the move that they've been going to is all of their stuff is all starting to really sink and integrate with. And that leads to me, like the car that you guys are sitting, you know, in front of here is the Consolaire. The entire car is controlled by the Haltech. The blinkers, the windshield wiper, the wiper spray, the radio, the engine, every aspect of the car is controlled by the Haltech. So, we used some of the factory switches to, you know, do blinkers, headlights, the, but then we have got a keypad for some of the extra stuff. And the keypad, you can do side functions, you can, you know, have like a dim light, you know, you can have it where the light goes from, you know, mood lighting, that type of stuff. And it's, to me, it's fun. I just find it, it's, as oddly as it sounds, is like when I get to be able to think about how all these functions are put together and then actually make it all work, that's fun to me, that's interesting.

So I came back to, like when you guys first started working on this car, like that's kind of like when I came to the shop for the first time as well. So it's kind of like perfect timing. So explain this build behind us, right? Because I think Dave did a ton with it as well. And just break it down for us.

Yeah, so essentially we got the car and the owner wanted us to more or less finish it and kind of get rid of all the quirks and the things that it had from before. And at the time, it was honestly perfect timing, the Haltech PDM and R3 all kind of came in at the same time. And so the R3 is a ECU and a PDM all in one unit. And so it's not like a full PDM, there's limited channels, but it really is really good for controlling the engine functions. So the power to the coils, the power to the injectors, the power to, you know, we have the R3 controlling the fan, the electric water pump, the water to air fans. And so with the PDM itself, the PDM does a lot of the body functions, the headlights, the tail lights, the blinkers, the windows, the radio, all of those things kind of help integrate the chassis. And so let's say if I was selling the product to an individual, I would always most of the time suggest an R3 plus a PDM if they're gonna do the whole car. It's like the perfect combo. It gives you the most high outputs. The R5 is good, but you can't do an entire car with an R5. You might be able to get away with doing just a race car only. Super stripped down basics. You can do an R5, but for a street car, R3 plus PDM 16 is by far the best combo.

You know what I'm hearing here? I'm hearing go to the High Performance Academy, get their full tuning course, right? And then you could do this at home. Just buy a Haltech from you and just, you know.

Or have me help cut them some show.

Or have you do it. Yeah. You just mentioned DIY. Might as well do DIY.

But you know, that is a good point. You know, it doesn't have to be through me. You know, you can use HP Academy and other resources to help you with the product. It's becoming more and more of a thing that everyone wants to be involved with. And it really has been growing just crazy. And so to get back to the car, and in the aspect of the shop, the shop, we built the full, so actually it's a SRT4 motor.

Oh really?

Yep. Which the car actually previously did have a 2.4 liter, I believe, turbocharged engine before, but it wasn't the, so it's very similar. And it is a Pontiac, like the key looks like a Pontiac, all the guts were from a Pontiac of the time. It's like a Ferrer, Ferrer, I can't say.

Fiero.

Fiero 2.0.

Fiero Rocher.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, so it's got the guts of a Fiero and it doesn't run right? That's weird.

Yeah, yeah. It's wiring at least, seems like, I don't know if it's exactly that, but essentially it's a Pontiac derivative. And so we actually, it used to have like at least 10 or 15 gauges across the board. We decided to get a piece of carbon fiber and it was really funny because our workers at the time didn't really, had ever, none of us honestly really had did too much carbon fiber work. So we bought this $250 piece of carbon fiber that was only like, you know, three feet by a foot and a half or something like that. And we meticulously traced it all out and then re-did the whole dash with the IC7 and then the keypad and the radio. So it's like super cut down, super stripped down, but it obviously it looks great and is very, very functional. And then we had to obviously redo all the wiring and that had some of its own challenges. We ended up having to get a couple of new like clocks or not clock spring, but the blinker switch and stuff like that just didn't really work right. It was really old and we were getting mixed signals with to the Haltech and it wasn't always working the way it should be. And then as for the turbo kit design, our fabricator Matt, Matt Cornea, he went through and through some of our guidance and his own intuition, we designed the turbo kit. It's a water to air setup, so we have a tank in the back, ice tank essentially, and then we have two Dural twin fan coolers on each side of the air ducts. Previously, there was AC in the car, and then the other side was the inner intercooler for the car. We just got, the owner didn't want the AC, so we went with just two of them to try to maximize it for the track use that he likes to do. He also has like an LMP3 car and a Riley, and he actually installed a Haltech on his Riley. The new Haltech Rebel LS, he was like, I want to do it, and he's like, I'm just going to do it myself. It was like, perfect. I sent him the Rebel LS and an IC7. He did the full install himself as a DIY person, and he even set up the Wizard and raced the car himself. I didn't even help him tune it at all.

We'll get back to the show in a second, but if you or your shop is building a car this winter, you might need components for an exhaust, an intake, charge piping and who knows what else because you know builds never end. If you need mandrel bends, flex couplers, T-clamps and more, make Haze Performance your first stop so you're not sitting around waiting on your stainless steel goodies. Check out everything they have to offer at hazeperf.com and use code Minnoxide for free shipping as well. Let's get back to the show.

Does Haltech, do they offer like, so I order a product and I've got, let's say I got a 2JZ swapped into something dumb, right? So I've now ordered the product. Do they give me a startup tune? Like, do they offer support in that aspect or?

Yes and no. Their base maps really, I should say, in the Elite and R3, R5 product lines, there's just simple base maps that are really there just to start the car. And they really aren't for driving the car. They're really not more than just going, it fires off and that's it. It's really not a start and go product. Now, with that being said, they did introduce the Rebel LS and they did create a very amazing wizard that is constantly being improved as users experience it.

Is that the one I helped you guys film?

Yes.

Okay.

That is exactly what you helped us film. And even then, we had a little bit of trials and tributes. Trials and tributes. And even since we did that video, we had done another car, and that other car went even butter smooth compared to that.

To give you a little bit of context to Dan and the listeners, I came here, I believe it was 10 in the morning. You guys were starting to rip the Holley stuff out. And by the time I left here around midnight, one in the morning or something like that, everything was good to go.

Yeah.

And I was with you guys figuring it out for your first go around.

Yep.

And I'm seeing you're thinking like, I could f****** do this. I'm just looking at it. I'm like, well, you just press beep, boop, boop, boop up. Oh, started. I mean, it wasn't that simple, but you get the idea. Like it was a day's work.

Yep.

It was a day's work and a couple of monsters. Yes.

Yes.

I think I was still on a Celsius hook at that time.

I think so too.

But yeah, it's actually a really amazing product. And even in the aspect of the DIY, having an individual like myself tune the cars, I've had many individuals who have, they've set the car up, they got it running and they're like, you know what? I just want you to tune the car. I obviously charge them for the tune. And they are, at least what I've been told so far is that they've been exceptionally happy with it. It allows me to have a super amazing base because everything, there's nothing that the end user usually has to do wiring-wise. It's all done for them. So that eliminates a lot of problems with some installs, unfortunately. Where, you know, a lot of my customers, it's the first time they've ever been using the product or they ever even touched a car. And that's okay. And that's what's nice about my service that I offer is I'm actually helping a DIYer get through those struggles. It isn't like back in the day, and this is the hardest thing that I think is to convey to a lot of individuals is that the service isn't like back in the day where you bring the tuner of the car and it better be perfect or you just blew $500.

Yeah.

That isn't how it works. It's I'm helping you even pre-plan. I'm helping you if you have questions, you can send me a text message, set up a consultation or even an hour long thing, that type of stuff.

So what does a pre-plan look like? Because I hear these stories sometimes from a mutual friend of ours. It's like they had this entire day blocked off to tune this car or whatever, and it's just missing this, this, and this because they don't think about it. What are some things you should think about before you go to in a car?

It's really about just getting all of the basic functions, the basic sensors, all those things plugged in first and foremost. Just everything that needs to be plugged in should be plugged in. Fluids, you know, I always joke around with people as like, I want to put a product on my page that I just want to hear it run tune and it's going to be like a thousand bucks. And they just have to be able to have cam crank and they'll hear that thing, you know, they have the injectors and the fuel system, hopefully oil in the car and, but that's not my problem because they want to hear it run. And I'm just joking for a very short period of time. But no, and I do get that a lot, where people just want to hear it run, and it's like, and I really have to put my foot down and be like, hey, I know you're excited. I know you really want, you've been working on this project. You just need a couple more days of work and the things that need to get done that, guess what, when we're done with our one hour session, you're gonna go and drive your car. Like that's usually the outcome on most of the one hour sessions that I do, is they're going from this project they've been working on for who knows how long, to one hour later, they're driving their car. And that is the experience that I like to offer and to most people experience. It doesn't happen every single time. It's just like I said, sometimes I get on there and you get people who are really super novice and you're like, hey, you know, you're missing this, you're missing that and kind of go over all of it and then kind of regroup and give them a game plan. And that's okay because they've paid for like the package deal. And so that package deal is built in for those individuals. Yes, there are some people that are super thorough and I appreciate those customers very much so because it does make less work for me. But in turn, we get to focus on more of other things that are important for those people. Why they're even coming to me is because of the skill sets that I've learned and the fact that I use a product every single day of my life pretty much. There's usually not a day that I'm not doing something with Haltech and even on a Saturday, Sunday, 10 o'clock at night, there's usually, I'm usually doing something every day. And so it allows them to have a seamless experience. Obviously, I should say that it's not seamless every single time, but because we're all human and we all make mistakes, me, myself, I do too. And it does seem that a lot of people do enjoy the service and they like to have that experience where someone's there to essentially hold their hand and make sure they've done all their, gotten their ducks in a row. And like I said, sometimes it doesn't go that way, but most of the time it does.

Well, there's something to be said about that too, where somebody does something all the time. Like sometimes I see us in the comment sections, right? Where people will be talking about like, oh, that guy, he hasn't worked on a car in his life. You know, look at his hands. Like, by the way, stupidest f****** comment ever. By the way, it's like, you know, like what's that orange s***? You know what I'm talking about? Or even the stuff that's in your, like, just stuff like, it just blows my mind. But there's guys that will tune hundreds of cars a year. They won't ever wrench on it. But you know what? They're a damn good tuner because that's all they f****** do. Now granted, you do a lot of wrenching as well, of course, you know, but it depends. There's a spectrum there, I feel. Yep. So then how many, how often are you tuning then? So I think right now, you do mostly remote tuning, correct?

Yes. Yep. Primary tune remotely. We do have ambitions of buying a dyno at some point in time. I'll talk on that a little bit real quick is I haven't bought a dyno yet because I do only tune one product. And in Minnesota, yes, we do have a lot of customers through me. I now have Haltechs. But it wasn't financially sound, I thought, to own a dyno. But now with Dave, with DRSC, he does other things. We do a lot of Mustang stuff. And there are sometimes other instances where the occurrence of another engine management system might come in that Dave knows more than I do. And we would use a dyno. So we might end up going that route sometime. And then obviously, if I buy a dyno, I'm going to be using it all the time for personal things, friends, all that type of stuff. But yes, I do remote tune more than I do physically in person. I actually find that most of the time, even when I do dyno in person, I usually have actually joined up with JWP Automotive. One of my, actually they're both my really good friends, John and Gus, they're both amazing people. And I go there and we scratch each other's back all the time. And even when I go to tune, if it's a car that's let's say over 500, 600 horsepower, I'm usually not even driving the car. I have Gus drive it because I can then focus only on the laptop. I don't have to focus about the car or any aspect of the car. I have him handle that entire aspect of it because it's the same thing with remote tuning. And that's why I say to a lot of people is like, I feel like I do a better job remotely because I have a train of thought and I can subjectively look at things that are happening in a different light. I don't have the dyno fans going, I don't have this loud car. I don't have a bunch of exhaust.

You just lock in.

I just lock in and it to me, I feel like I do a better job.

It's hard even on, so I've been on the other end of that and it's hard even getting a log sometimes because at first you're doing like these little polls to you know, don't go over 5,000 RPM and do it from this to this, start here, go to there. But when you start getting towards the end of it, we're like, okay, I need a wide open throttle poll to 7,500 RPMs and I'm going, okay. So now I'm also trying to look at the numbers too to make sure I don't see anything squarely so I know to kill it before the numbers get bad. And also, if you're ever done a wide open throttle poll in third gear to 7,500 RPMs, you get cooking pretty good and you're going to make sure there's no traffic, you're not going to hit somebody or a tree or go in a ditch. So yeah, it is a little nerve wracking to do it down the other, you know, street tune. You can pay attention to the numbers, it's a lot easier.

And that's a good talking point. So I, subjectively, as this might sound weird, is I actually charge more money for a full only street tune versus them going to the dyno and setting all that type of stuff up. And I do that for a couple of reasons. And so the dyno isn't just for seeing the horsepower. The dyno tells us the health of the motor. It's actually much, much more of a tool to see the health of the car than anything. And the extra bonus is that we get to see how much horsepower it makes. And obviously, we also use the horsepower number to see if it is healthy. That is one of the attributes of seeing if it's healthy or not. But it is more so being like, oh, because I've had it where customers are like, the car is fast as ever, Ben, this is great. We go to the dyno and the graph looks like this zigzag craziness, and it's like totally way down on power. And you're like, all right, we got a lot of work to do here.

You just casually described a JB-14, by the way.

And so in reality, in my opinion, a dyno graph, our objective is to be as smooth as physically possible. And most of the time it is. There are times that it is not, and it's generally because there's a problem. And street tuning does not allow us to very accurately see that. Sometimes you can, sometimes it's pretty obvious, and whether you see a dead hole, that type of stuff, usually you feel it. You get to these higher cylinder engines, which we can go down the rabbit hole of that whole journey I did just a little bit ago with the Bonneville Salt Flats car. It, you know, you... The car went 235 miles an hour on 11 cylinders, not 12. And no one knew, no, you couldn't tell at the time because there's a whole discussion there, but we'll get to that later.

Yeah, we better. That sounds super interesting.

But, but yeah, so the, what I was going to say is back to the dyno tuning and street tuning and that type of stuff. And so when I'm doing the remote tuning, the really to go back to Haltech even some more is that the safety features with the product allows me it, and I'm going to say this right now, it allows me to much more safely tune a car with having those nannies available. And is it perfect? Do cars blow up? They do. It happens. Does it happen every single time? Absolutely not. Otherwise, I wouldn't be in business, but it does happen and it's not flawless, but it does a very, very good job of those instances where you're like, oh s***, the boost controller was wired. You know, it was done incorrectly or, oh, the fuel filter was actually clogged.

I remember that story too.

Yeah, the, you know, or the fuel pump was wired wrong or...

You have no control on it.

Yep. Or you have a dual pump system in one of the pumps is dead. You have no way of telling us there. I did the same thing doing a poll, sending in a log and I was like, this feels great. I emailed the tuner and he goes, holy s***, tons of knock, lost all fuel pressure. I'm like, oh, it felt really good.

Right, and so in the instance of the Haltech, you wouldn't even have done a poll. It would have literally just shut your car off.

Yeah.

I wouldn't say shut your car off, but it would have been like, nope, you're not going any further. Shut it down. Shut it down, let mode, you're done. And that is what I rely on to safely remote tune cars because a lot of people are like, oh, you're not there. This is the wrong way of doing it. And they do have good valid points. I'm not disagreeing with them in any way, but there is an analytic way to look at what's going and to be able to set up the safeties so things don't fail. And that you can safely come to a great result. And so coming back to the tuning portion of it, the nice thing about, I was talking about how DIYers and getting their car started for the first time, that first hour that we get the car running and they go start their drive, it's usually what I tell them is go drive your car for about two hours. And it isn't go out and piss pound your car. It isn't rev match and all this stuff. It's just cruising, maybe getting on it a little bit just to get in to boost some or a little bit more throttle on any car, going to stoplights, stop and go. Does the car stall when you get to a stoplight? All of those things, that first two hour drive tells us a lot about the car.

The daily stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, actually, I'm glad you brought that up because the Camaro that you guys worked on, that you swapped the Holley out of to put the Haltech in, that was kind of like the main issue with that car, right? Is the daily functions of it. And it would just be dying at every stoplight or something like that, something like that.

Yep, and that stuff can be very challenging. And I would say that, obviously I don't know who tuned the car in the beginning, but Holley can do that. They can do that. People do have success with that. I don't debate that argument of what's better per se in that perspective. But from a product quality, I will debate that. But in the end... You're a little biased. Yeah, I'm a little biased, okay? But from having someone who truly knows the software and uses it every day, if someone brought that to a car, to a Holley guy that tuned the Holley's as much as I tuned Haltech's, I can guarantee you the car would probably run and drive just as good.

Yeah, that makes sense.

That's just how it is. And you can kind of say that for any ECU. If there was a guy that all he did was Megasquirt, I would praise him for doing that, but I'm just joking. But there are people that do that, and if you brought that car to them, it's going to be subjectively better than if I try to tune it. I just, I wouldn't know the ins and outs as much as I know the Haltech product because I use it every single day.

That makes sense.

And so I try to stay humble on that is what I'm getting at is that yes, I obviously do stick to one product and I do obviously try to sell that product and to show why it's a good product to use. But a lot of it comes down to is that it's because I use it every day and that I understand it. And I can then in turn, because you bought it from me, you come back to me to tune it or to help you with it. I can, you can have a good experience. And that's all I'm trying to offer is a good experience with everyone.

Well, you can say that that's one of your main reasons. But if they were difficult to work with, you probably wouldn't work with them either.

That's correct.

So there's companies, you know, as said, named company, we've just been talking about is buying up other companies. And where they really lack, I think, is their customer support and stuff like that. It's been a lot of people complaining. From what you're telling me here is, even as they've been getting bought up by bigger companies, they're not, if anything, they're gaining improvement along the way, which is not very common when companies start to get gobbled up by bigger conglomerates. Usually quality goes down, things like that. But it sounds like they're really, they're taking that and using it to their advantage and growing bigger and better.

Right, so.

More bigger, some would say.

I'll go into that a little bit. So at least this is obviously only some hearsay, things that I've developed of my own opinion. I don't know anything or nothing in that perspective. This is just my opinion of what I've experienced as a, obviously a dealer and someone who uses the product, experiences the faults and the things, because nothing is perfect here. But what I have seen is that from before to now, things have accelerated extremely. They're, I don't even, I would even go to say that it needs to maybe pump the brakes just a teeny bit, but it, the amazing things that are coming out and how fast they're coming out and how well the product is being polished and the people that are, the Haltech staff, everyone there, even in the entire company, when they first got bought out, they were nervous, just like how you just put on some good points. I'm friends with a lot of the employees at Haltech and there were a lot of people that were nervous and there was people that did have to move on to different jobs, just their job role wasn't there anymore. But once it all came into the groove, a lot of them, at least from what I've seen, seem to be happier and they're excited to all the new things. And then the product themselves are just the things that they've always wanted are actually happening. And the things that we wanted are actually, as dealers and heavy users, like the things we like, oh, we wish we really had that. That's all coming around. And that is really making the product grow and just exponentially. It's shown, I'll talk about Black Friday a little bit, but like...

Too late when this air is in, Black Friday's gone.

It's the season, though. It's the season. We're in it right now.

I know it's not gonna, I'm just saying, just from even the sales and the aspect of the popularity of the product, I was worried that everyone's gonna be selling it. It might be less and it doesn't appear to be that way. It just seems there's more people and it fills in. Everyone gets a piece of the pie.

I think right now as a car community, based off of what I've been seeing, granted, I came in here not too long ago, like what, seven years ago now. I'm a youngin compared to some of these guys, but I think there's been insane growth. People have a hunger for knowledge again. I was arguing with somebody on Facebook, I think, today. I shouldn't say arguing. I'm not that bad, damn. It never goes well.

Anyway, you can't argue on the internet.

Yeah, but some people will say, these younger generations, they don't want to work on stuff or whatever it is. I feel like we're coming back to that, where people actually want to do their own things. They actually give a s*** for cars. And I think the clout thing is, I don't want to say disappearing, but I feel like it's not as important anymore. Again, just what I've been seeing. And I think we're going to see a lot more people that are wanting to get into modified cars, get a Haltech or, you know. I don't think you're going to get that MoTech money quite yet.

I think things are coming around as technology goes, though. It's getting... So there was like a gray area there, right? Everybody could do... I mean, you had to be a special guy to be able to know how to tune a carburetor, but cars were simpler at one point in time. There was like four wires and a carburetor that ran the whole entire car. Then things got... The 80s and 90s, late 70s came along and things got really complicated. Lots of sensors, wires, wiring harnesses. It was just insane. So then people were like, oh s***, fuel injection, all that. Everybody was like, no way.

There was just a war about it.

Right. And now I think we're getting to the point where things are... Computers are getting smarter. Things are being able to learn more. You can throw in wideband sensors and things like that. The car is reading things and going, oh, I need to do this. I can adjust. I think it's making it more user friendly as we get more... It's making it easier for guys like you, too, that are tuning as this technology comes along.

110%. So even from when... I'll talk a little bit on the adeptronic side of things, is that at first, let's say adeptronic to Haltech, at the same time when the products came out, the modular ECU was out and the ECU actually had six or seven years on the modular. The modular self was faster. You could tune it faster. Everything was better than the elite ECUs. I would say not everything, but a lot of the things from a tuner's perspective, in my opinion, was better. It was just faster is what it came down to. You didn't have to wait for things. You had a really nice trace feature, all these different things. Firmware updates were faster. You connected the ECU faster, all of these things. And so when the NSP software came out, so it used to be ESP. And that's when I started. And don't get me wrong, there's some Haltech guys that have way more experience than me, but they have way more experience with ESP. I was around when NSP came out. So I have just as much experience as any other individual with NSP because I came out when it was designed and when it was released. And so I've got to use the software that we use now on Haltech from day one. And so when that new software came out and you could connect to the Elite ECU instantaneously, it was like, thank God, this is amazing. Like this is finally, this is how Adoptronic was. And then the same features came out, the trace feature, the playback, all these things that were some aspects of Adoptronics. Haltech had some of the stuff too, but it just wasn't as polished. And now, even, you know, I think it's been like three or four years now with NSP's been out, and it's so fast and so streamlined, and the everyday aspect of tuning, I would say DIY cars that are, I wouldn't say like, you know, what's the term I want to say, like in and out type thing, you know, like real fast. It isn't quite that, because every car is a little unique. And some cars are crazy, super simple, like, and they can be wild cars. They could be a thousand horsepower car, but you do like two or three poles, and everything does exactly what it's supposed to do. And it usually comes down to the owner who built it and how they built it. And I am always surprised, I should say, that there, I have so many people that build their cars out of their garages. They don't, they, I have shops do it too. But I can have just as many problems or troubleshooting issues with a shop owner. And I can then the next day or even the same day, have a customer who did everything in their garage. And the car is just flawless. And everything works perfect. And you go and do two poles and it's like, your boost control is on point, your fuel pressure is great, AFR is following exactly what the VE numbers are supposed to be. This is amazing. Let's go to the dyno. And then you can have a car where you work on it for weeks on end. And that happens. And that's okay. And that's something that is just part of the job. And I personally don't get, I should say, we all get frustrated, but I don't treat them any differently. Most of the time, my package deal includes all of that. And sometimes you win with someone that's really quick. And sometimes-

You take the good with the bad. I was told that when I got into a certain industry a long time ago, and I was like, this seems like a s*** way to go about it, but it makes sense. Yup, yup.

And so it, you know, all around it, the, what you were saying about companies getting bought up and then they're going away, you know, like AM and things like that. The Haltech, so a little bit, to get back to what I was saying about what I know about the buyout and things like that is that, like to my understanding, race-winning brands, they own JE Pistons, Manly, you know, a bunch of like hard part, mechanical part. I believe they own DART too, and like they own all these like mechanically inside of things, and they didn't have electronics company at all. And they didn't really know how the electronic company worked, any of that type of stuff. And this is just taking, reaching from conversations I've had in the last, even in at SEMA here, just a couple weeks ago or whatever it was. And they really didn't know about an electronics company, but they wanted that to diversify their brand. And so they bought Haltech, and they're using that to grow their company, not to just gobble them up to make their other brand better.

Right, just put a bankruptcy sheet.

Yeah, they seem to know what they're doing, because those names you just named off are like the go-to for all of the in that industry, right?

Yep, correct.

So they are race-winning brands, literally.

Literally.

Yes, all right.

So it's been a great ride so far. I mean, like literally, I like to be able to, you know, I have another mentor of mine, Phil Son, and I know him through the RX7 community and stuff like that. We chat a lot about business, and he's like, you know, this couple years ago, he's like, Shawn, you really should just do Haltech and just be the Haltech guy. And I was like, eventually, I was just like, okay, yeah, I'll do it. And then I just did it. And, you know, it's, I'm not the only Haltech person out there, but I do subjectively advertise and show off my work as that's what I do. And that's all I do is Haltech stuff. And so it has been, I succeed every year. I've been growing every year. And I, you know, I make mistakes and I do my damnedest to learn from them. I take mistakes very hard and I really want to be able to grow as an individual. And it isn't about just making more money. It's about just doing a good job every day, you know? And that's, and then focusing on just doing a good job. Guess what happens? You make money.

That's crazy how that works.

That's literally been the, I've built my company, I've never advertised or done anything. I literally just show up, do quality work, and am reliable. And it's gotten me pretty far.

That sounds miserable. It is.

We can say the same for you, Harris.

What, I'm miserable?

No, no, no. You're doing a good job and you're growing.

Oh, thank you. What's the hardest part about tuning for you? Or just being a tuner in general?

I think just staying for me because of my learning style. I'm definitely an experienced learner. So like I have to physically experience something to, to really grasp it and understand it. That's just who I am. That's the, you call it a fault. You could call it a strength, but I'm really good at if I get to experience it, it kind of just, I look at it different than other people and it just, it comes through my eyes. I would say I'm dyslexic, I guess. I don't know, like I spell things wrong sometimes, you know, like, but I look at things at a different angle than others might do it. And so that's what I'm getting as a difficult part is that if something is new or whatever, a lot of times I have to experience it and kind of really look at it from an outside perspective to be able to, I apologize, someone just called me three times in a row.

We can pause, yeah, we can pause, yeah, we're good.

Oh, f*** it.

Oh, no, throw them on, tell them he's on the podcast.

Yeah, tell them he just f***** everything up.

Hey, you're on the Minnoxide podcast, you know.

Nice.

What do you want? I want to give you money, Shawn. Oh, perfect. For what?

I need two PDMs, technically.

Okay. See, we're selling Haltechs here, Black Friday. All right. Well, we're going to wrap the podcast here, and then I'll give you a call later tonight or tomorrow. Is that okay?

Yeah. Yeah, tomorrow's fine. Just ask Harris where he wants pictures.

Oh, we haven't talked about Gus yet, so we'll get there.

Sounds good.

All right, bye. Bye, have fun. Okay, thank you, bye.

Great. Forget any other questions. What does Gus want us to talk about? Because, okay, to give the audience a little bit of a backdrop about who Gus is, it's what, about 1,000-something horsepower BMW.

Yeah.

It's put the pounding on many cars at power crews.

It's one of the fastest cars I've ever seen.

It literally went by Dan, and Dan was like, am I in park?

It was pretty bad.

So, Mr. Gus. I have known Gus now for roughly, almost the entirety of my business. So, it's been five or six years now. I actually met him through a mutual friend of ours, Andre Wenzel, who is subjectively one of my really, well, I shouldn't say subjectively. He is one of my best friends and also one of my best customers. He has always, I can actually say this, is he is the one who put it in my mind that my skill set was worth it to be a business owner. He paid me way more money per hour than I'd ever been paid before. And so, anyways, we can talk about Andre later, but I do love Andre. He's, like I said, one of my best friends.

That's how you met Gus.

That's how I met Gus, yes, yes. And so, I know, I keep, it just keeps flowing in a different subject.

I'll keep you on track, don't worry. Yeah, yeah.

But yeah, so Gus, Gus the bus, he's a BMW guy. He came to me with his friend, Alex Mauser, who they both had E36s at the time. And Alex had a built E36 that he blew up on a stock ECU. And then he had it all re-built and Gus helped him pretty much put the, Alex paid for it and Gus pretty much built the entire car, to be honest with you. He did most of the wrenching, pretty much did assemble the entire car for, for Alex. And Andre had suggested Gus and I meet, and Gus and I kind of just hit it off as friends. And he was like, hey, we really want to do standalone ECU. And I was like, all right, well, I only do adeptronic at the time. And I was like, I've never done a BMW before, but I could figure it out. And so I busted out the all data documents, and I essentially reverse engineered the BMW harness. And I created, for Alex's car, I actually created a jumper. So I took a factory ECU and I took out the PCB board. And then I actually took a heat gun and pulled off the header. And then I created my own jumper harness. And after reverse engineering the wiring diagram, and we got the car running. There was a couple of trials and tributes of it not running right. And to this day, it still happens every once in a while. For some reason, I don't know what it is on that diagram, but I mix up the five and six ignition coil. So it's always first start has got that first miss too. And, but no, it's been resolved since then, but it was a problem that's happened a few times. And so we made, I think like 800 horsepower, and that was honestly the first piston car I've ever tuned.

And that's crazy.

So like I had tuned many rotary cars at that point in time, but I had never tuned a piston car. And I believe Alex's was the first car I tuned with Adeptronic and a piston car. And so essentially from that point on, Gus was hooked on me and I was hooked on BMWs. And so like we've kind of just tagged teams for the last five years. I've, you know, he's learned his skill sets through BMW stuff and through him learning through BMW stuff, I've learned through BMW stuff. I've essentially perfected the product at this point and it's a product I sell where I take a BMW harness and then I just simply cut off the plug and pin it into a Haltech engine management system now, not Adoptronic. And we, he's pretty much pushed me into really understanding that platform subjectively more than almost any other platform because he keeps pushing the limit on his car. He has been, I've helped him, like I helped him, like I essentially quote unquote sponsored him at the time. Like I helped pay for the first turbo kit and kind of R&D. It was kind of a business project slash help a friend out type thing.

And, and we've seen the size of the sticker on his car.

Yeah, it's pretty big.

It's almost as big as the Fig Newton sticker.

I tried to go for the front wheel windshield, but his boss got that over me.

So, no, no, we'll figure it out. So I actually did tell the dragon in a Camaro that had the Fig Newton sticker. It was a Wonder Bread wrap on it. Right. And if you just put the little holes like in there, you could see through it.

Pretty good.

All right. All right. Let's not say pretty good. But also, well, it depends, right? If you're doing straight, might be an issue. But if it's like a car where you take corners with it, who cares? You don't have to worry about the windshield.

Exactly. Drift car, you just look out the side, you know?

Yeah. But anyways, we'll make it happen.

Gus's car actually goes, Gus's car is the fastest car I've ever been in, and it is the safest car subject. Sounds really weird.

Now I'm skeptical. Eyebrows.

It is skeptical, but I oddly feel so safe in it, even at like 180 miles an hour. And this is a s*** box E36 that he picked up for, I believe, $2,500. And it's been the same car for the last five years, and it has grown and grown and grown. It was so funny the first time we got that car running on the Haltech. Or no, I think, yeah, it was on the Haltech, and it was in the middle of winter, and we were like, because it was just had the eBay EBA TurboKit, the last owner had on there, and it was just blowing off the tires. Obviously, it's like 30 degrees out or 20 degrees out, you know, when we shouldn't be f****** around on the roads, but we were.

Typically, 36 owner things.

And we thought it was fast, and we go to the dyno and made like 240 horsepower or something ridiculous at the first pole, you know, where we thought it was, I think we ended up like maybe 350 or something like that. That was the first time, and it was a stock block, and you know, don't mean to omit this, but between Gus and I, we have blown up probably equally the same amount of engines together through our own shenanigans. And so, the thing is is he is the man, the myth, the legend in regards to swapping out E36 motors. We will pull the engine at seven o'clock at night, and by four to six o'clock in the morning, it's running again, and we're back on the dyno, and the car's running again.

We watched him do a head gasket at Power Cruise, and yeah, it was all while we all stood around and drank beer and watched him do it. I think it was like a few hours from start to finish.

It was two hours. I literally had called him and I said, hey, do you need anything? And he's like, no, I'm swapping the head gas. I'm like, all right. I get up there to help him. I literally pull in to the track. He's already put, head's already back on the motor, and he's putting the exhaust back on. And I'm like, well, I guess I don't have to do anything.

We helped him. We helped the flashlight.

Yeah. Yeah. But no, it's really helped me learn my craft, I would say. And so I'm very grateful for him because I know he's spent a lot of money, but I have also spent a lot of money on that car. And the funny thing is, is in the beginning, I ended up spending more money, but I think, I shouldn't say think, I know he has now spent more money than I have, and that's fine, because it's his car, and we've grown together, and we play off each other in regards to pushing the limits, and I've gotten much better about really focusing on keeping the car together now, more so, just because it looks good for business to have the car out there all the time, and doing that kind of stuff.

But that car mops up, dude.

Yeah, yeah.

There is actually a good reason that your sticker is on the back window, because that's all you ever see in that car.

That's all you ever see. Yeah. So this is the other aspect is Gus has actually given me a lot of challenges in my career, and he was actually one of probably the first, I'd argue say maybe five people in the United States that had a working DCT.

When you say DCT, explain that a little bit more.

That's a dual-clutch transmission. It's out of a BMW. I always get the names right or wrong. Maybe if Gus would actually go on the podcast, he'd tell you exactly what they are from.

I'd tell him to hop in his f****** car, we'll pause the podcast, he'll be here in 25 minutes.

He does have to pay me for Black Friday.

Tell him to bring the check, too.

Yeah, bring the check. So he challenged me with doing that, it's something he wanted to do because he saw it, and he was like, I want that in my car.

So clarify that, because I'm not exactly sure I fully understood. You said on the first five DCTs, like in the country on a Haltech, or what exactly are you saying?

Swapped into that particular E36.

Swapped into any car.

Yeah, okay.

Any car, like there was very limited. So it was HEG, which, I'm not going to get into that, they're just not really a company anymore, but they were a new company at the time, and they had a product out there that allowed you to essentially fully control the DCT. They were one of the first people to do it publicly. And so everyone was struggling. Like this was just this race of information and trying to do the job correctly. And to be honest with you, it took me, I think, three or four tries on Gus's car and a Mechtronic unit, to which thankfully we got really lucky. There's actually a company called BMW Recycling, just like three miles away from here, that Gus actually worked at at the time. And he happened to have an Mechtronic unit that we got for like 150 bucks at the time. Like right now, you probably can't get one for like 1500 bucks. And so like we got lucky, because what it is is that the solder points are so small. And to be honest with you, soldering is something I've done in the past, but it was never a craft. And that challenged me to put my soldering skills where I don't ever want them to ever be again.

You don't want to make iPhones?

No, no, no, no. From my understanding, I've done a total of four cars, and all four of them actually do work. And they, but beyond that, it was kind of like, I even had a 3D printed like a mock-up board so I could position the mech unit, so it would be easier to solder, because it's kind of like awkward thing, because it's got a bunch of solenoids and position sensors and stuff like that. They're all on it, and when you put on, you can't put it on a flat surface. So I had a friend 3D print me this block.

Like a jig or something like that.

Like a jig, so I could actually solder perfectly on it. And yeah, like Gus's current setup, we've broken the trans through horsepower, and most trans, they've lasted over a year or so. And this isn't just someone daily driving this car. This is piss pounding.

Oh yeah.

You are, it's, the tires are always spinning, shredding, on limiter, banging gears, all the time. There isn't an instance this car isn't being thrashed. So the transmission just, this one just broke, like it was about a year, year and a half, and it finally shredded, like I think third or fourth gear, just completely shredded it. But we literally just went through, de-soldered the board real quick, and when there was a company called Damiworks, they made this adapter board for HGG, and that like made the, we didn't do that right away. We started with just like our own little crisscross wires, and the one thing I learned, this is at the time, and this is through my learning experiences, how like we, Gus always wanted me to use these non-resistor spark plugs, because previous tuners that he'd saw through the grapevine in the E36 community would use it, because it does inherently have more spark, because there's no resistance. But when there's no resistance, it actually creates a very, a big EFI, Electromagnetic Field, EMP, yeah, EMP, sorry. And I say that I already said the analogy wrong three times now. But anyways, essentially electromagnetic interference. And we're having all these problems with the Dct. And I was like, wait a second, what spark plugs are we using again? He's like, oh, these ones. And I'm like, and this is at the time, I was still in the learning stages of things. And I was like, wait, I just heard the other day that this causes this problem. And I was like, let's change the spark plugs. He's no, no, no, no, no, no. And they're like, we should change them. So we did. Literally the Dct started working perfect. That's crazy. And so it was f****** with all the sensors because just, and that's just through how the product was designed to, I mean, it was a little bit of that, but also sometimes products are designed with that in mind that that could happen. And so they circumvent those problems, but that didn't have a lot of the sensors on the trans didn't have all that type of stuff. And so as soon as we did that, it started working. And then, you know, through just, you know, breaking things, learning, blowing up engines, we ended up doing the DomiWorks board eventually, and really making it professional. And that's what he's been running for like the last two, two and a half years. And like I said, the last transmission, I think it's been a year, year and a half, at least year and a half, two years, I should say. Just well over 800 to 1200 horsepower the entire time, just being destroyed the entire time. And the most we've made is roughly about 1200 horsepower.

Jesus.

Which that's on dyno jet numbers on a Mustang dyno was like around...

Like high nines, I think it was.

Yeah, high nines, it was 997 or something like that. And he's been, it's been kicking his a**, but it's a little bit of stubbornness, which is, I love it because we've really been able to push the limit and understand certain things. Like, that car is making 1,000 horsepower on stock 5 16ths fuel lines. And it doesn't lose fuel pressure. I mean, I should say, above 1,000 horsepower or above 1,000 horsepower Mustang numbers, it does start to lose fuel pressure. But at that 950 to just below 1,000, zero fuel pressure issues. We do have some, you know, witchcraft, wizardry of the fuel system that we do with some brushless pumps and some voltage boosters, but it seems to take it and is consistent and exactly what you want out of a fuel system. This year, finally, finally, we get to upgrade the fuel system. And, you know, honestly, we're going to probably be shooting for that, you know, probably 1,300 to 1,500 horsepower range. F*** off.

Yup. Dude, that car is like a tin can. It weighs like nothing.

What's in it for a motor?

It's a built M50, so...

What's that out of typically again?

BMW, I'm going to get this wrong. That's why I asked you. Is it 328i or 3... You know, I don't know. I'm not a BMW guy. I just tune them, okay?

Well, actually, we'll get back to Gus in a second. But can you touch on that, right? Because is tuning just tuning, right? Can you just tune any car at that point, then?

In reality, yes. I have, I guess...

Or any engine, I should say, rather.

Obviously, every engine responds a little bit differently. You do kind of have to learn your craft a little bit and understand, like, there are certain engines that need more timing, but isn't because the engine needs more timing, it needs more timing because the belt, on the belt, it's belt driven, and it stretches as you go up and higher RPM. So, you use a higher timing table or you can use an offset table, too. There's many different ways to do it, but there's just different engines take more timing in general, and there's a craft behind it. I'm still, I am still, I should say how to put this, is that I always have more room to grow, and I understand things all in all. I have a great conversation that I had the other day with Jay, who used to be the, I don't think he owns Real Street anymore, but the...

Yeah, he went to go do his own thing.

Yeah, own thing.

Yeah. What else is it called? Is it like Meager Performance or something like that?

Something like that.

Yeah.

I have a great story with that. I come to the Bonneville car. It's actually, a goal of mine was to do a Bonneville car, and I actually had helped these individuals, I sold them an Atatronic when I worked for Turbosource. And I did a little bit of the tech support for them, helped them get the car running for the first time. I didn't tune it, I just was the tech support. And they just called me randomly throughout the last, it's almost been 10 years since I sold them the product. And like, they'd call me randomly every once in a while, and the last couple of years, I've been like, hey, maybe you should switch to Haltech, you know? And finally they did it this year, and then I in turn got the opportunity to tune it. And so, we tuned the car, we went 283 miles an hour, I think, at Bonneville. And now, to get there, though, you know, they first went out there, because every time they went to Bonneville, they blew up the car. But prior to me helping them or anything like that. And so, they were very touchy about going to Bonneville, because they're like every single tar, they would literally just destroy a piston. And so, I set up all the nannies, because I myself, and this is something I express to them, this is new to me too. Like, I'm helping you, I'll do the best of my knowledge, but this is new to me too. And so, we went out there, and they kept hitting lean cut. And it was like, but, and then they were kind of upset, and da da da, and then the guy I was helping, the main guy that interacted with me, he's like, you know, guys, the car isn't blowing up. It's hitting this lean cut, because there's obviously a change, and there was so many things. And like, at the time, I was actually at Ice Cream Cruise, and, because they didn't, they had not had me come out there, they wanted to do the remote thing. And the internet wasn't working really good, and their internet wasn't working really good, and I'm like, dang, like, this sucks. Like, I don't want this to go bad for them. They're, the owner of the car is 84 years old. He's not the driver, he's just the owner of the car. And so, to him, it's, he doesn't have the, you know, time is limited, in a way, you know? And I say that because that's actually what Jay said. And so, Jay, all of a sudden this guy named Jay, I didn't even know who it was at the time, and this is embarrassing a little bit. And he gets on the phone, he's like, what's this, he's like, why do you got a Haltech on this car? It should have a MoTec. And I'm like, that was rude. You know, like, who is this guy? You know, like, but he didn't say who he was. It's just, I just knew him as Jay. And that this guy, because the way they said to him, he's like, oh, there's this tuner for the other team, another team that he's willing to help us. And I was like, okay, that's fine with me. I'm a humble person. I'd rather see you guys be successful than have all the glory. You know what I mean? And so, and in reality, it was a team effort. There was like three or four different tuners that all had different aspects of things of the car that they had one guy do some AEM integration on them. I don't know anything about that. They did all that. And then there's another guy that helped them troubleshoot some of the trigger patterns that, you know, they got to a certain point, but then I ended up being I figured out it was really weird thing that I didn't I had to stumble on and figure out. There's multiple people that struggled at it.

And so an easy thing.

It's not an easy thing. And this is a custom V12 engine that Pete and his friend Kevin built in their shop in California. I believe it's in California. And anyways, so they're on Bonneville. They hit lean cut a couple of times. And, you know, all of a sudden I get this J guy on the phone. And he's talking to me and he's like, oh, why didn't you do this? And I'm like, oh, you know, I'm doing my best to stay within the lines that this group of old guys are kind of stuck in their way a little bit. And I want to be careful not to, I want to be a part of the team. I don't want to be just this person that says, we have to do it this way. And it's funny, Jay's like, well, you should just tell them what you got to do. You know, and that's the lesson learned from someone who has so much more experience than me. And-

Well, I'm sure you muted the microphone at one point. I was like, who's this f****** guy? 100%.

The mic makes the best. We get through it, the card goes 283 miles an hour, and guess what? We lost a piston. And I was like, f***, you know, like, god damn it, you know, this is, you know, let down on my side. I didn't do a good job or whatever we did, you know? And long story short, what ended up happening was actually a machining problem, is that the duration, because this is a 14 to 14.5 to one compression motor. And what was essentially not machined properly was that as it went down the track, and at Bonneville, it's so much longer than El Mirage, the heat in the engine built up so much that the piston expanded and actually hit the top of the head. Holy s***. Yep. And that's what happened. It didn't melt down. It just, all it did was it smacked the top. And I think it broke a ring, is what happened. And so no other pistons did it. It was just the one piston that got too hot. And it smacked the head.

Well, when you're running that high of a compression ratio, there's not a lot of room. Right, right.

And so anyways, a week or two went by where there's a little suspense there, because I didn't actually hear about the whole machining part debacle thing, thinking that maybe I had made a mistake or XYZ. And I should say, I in turn would admit to say a mistake of maybe being not as put my foot down in that situation where I should have been like, no, you guys need to have EGTs. We didn't have EGTs. The thing with EGTs, as you can see the heat rise, you can change the lambda to richen up the mixture to cool down the charge, which in turn may have prevented that piston from getting as big as it. It did. It may have not gone as fast, but at least we wouldn't have lost an engine at a time we would have learned from that aspect. Now, that's a learning experience there in something that I had no clue about. Then in turn, so as we go on with time, I learned that and then they like to make these cool YouTube videos. It's pretty cool. I can get the link for that later for you.

It's not the sandwich guy, is it?

No. I got to look it up on my phone. I don't have the exact thing on there.

But you've seen that video, though, right? What a guy makes puts a sandwich in carbon fiber or whatever, and then he actually, you know what I'm talking about? I have never seen. No, they do something with like a Lansby.

But also, he puts his video together, and then he comments on all the people that were a part of the project. Then there's Jay, and I obviously know his face, and I'm like smack on my forehead. I had his phone number because we were talking, and I texted him like, oh man, I'm sorry I was a little spicy to you. And he's like, yeah, you know, I understand because I kind of was attacking you in regards to Haltech. He's like, I hadn't used a Haltech in like six years. So he was back when it was ESP, and back when they were a smaller company. And that's his experience was that it wasn't as good as you know, what he thought it should be good, you know, in a certain way, and did certain aspects. And he even admitted that it was so cool and so humble of him to say that. And then I even got to see him at SEMA, and we got to talk to him, I got to shake his hand, which was really great, cool experience. And you know, he's so funny, because he's like, you're young, and so you got a lot to learn. And I'm like, yeah. And he's like, don't take this the wrong way. And I'm like, yeah, I know that. I know that. And it was really cool and humbling in a way. So, but anyways, so Jay, you know, told me about some of the timing stuff on, you know, having a two valve and a four valve and things like that. And just things that I, you know, obviously I learned certain things through, you know, like I was explaining earlier is I learned through experience. And it, and that is the struggle sometimes with tuning is for me, is that a lot of it is purely experience based. And, and I just happened to be really good at learning really fast. And so that's, that's one, you know, to come back to that. But anyways, so we, we went to El Mirage. I haven't actually gone to El Mirage. Hopefully next year I'll get to go there physically. I really want to. I think I'm just going to, if they don't want to pay for it, I probably will just do it myself. I know I'm meeting this on the podcast podcast here now.

But don't worry, I always tell everybody three cuts.

But no, I don't care. It's something I just want to do and be a part of.

And were you remote tuning for the Bonneville one then? Did you fly in?

No, I remote tuned it. I remote tuned it. There's a Dyno video of it. I have it on my Facebook. And then they have a full, they have three videos of it. And then they have the racing videos and things like that. I think the exit speed was, I think, actually 286.

But the, like, still slower than the average Altima on 94.

Yeah. But the, like, the average speed or whatever they, they calculate was like 283. And then that was at Bonneville. And then we went to El Mirage, they went to El Mirage twice. The first time they did 235 and they, they were down a piston, but it wasn't an engine failure. When they had put the engine back in after Bonneville, they nicked one of the wires for one of the coils. And that's where it is with the 12-cylinder engine. It's extremely difficult to see the difference. Now, I'll get into that a little bit because a dead hole on an engine, it kind of does something differently than what you would think. You'd be like, oh, it's gonna be rich because it's dumping in fuel and it's not burning it. No, it actually, what it does is it makes that bank look extremely lean. So like if you have close up fueling on, it will just dump a bunch of fuel in and one bank will be completely saturated by fuel and their trims will look way off because it's just, what it is, is the best analogy here is an engine's an air pump. And what it's doing is it's just pumping a f*** ton of air in that's not getting burnt. And the wideband sees that as a lean condition. And so, it's one of those things where you kind of go, oh, you've got a dead hole. It's so weird how I grow as an individual that over time, it's like, all of a sudden, it's like, I'm saying that to people all the time. Oh, you have a dead hole right now. Go figure out what cylinders, like that, that's your problem. Like you got a dead hole. And you know, cause even an end user, they won't sometimes, they start their car, they've never even heard the car. They buy the car, they want that engine. They've never even like had the car run before. Or it's been so long that they've even heard the car. The car running at any fashion is amazing to them. They could be running on one piston if that was impossible. And they'd be like, it runs, it's run, sounds so good.

Like a Briggs and Stratton.

Yeah. But yeah, I find myself saying that, oddly more, maybe it's because I just do bigger, as my experience grows, my people see me more, I do higher end stuff, bigger engines, and I see those things come up. Maybe that's a correlation, but now I see myself telling people, oh, you got a dead hole. It's just an instant thing.

Go fix that real quick.

You got a bad spark plug, bad something. Anyways, so that was that. And then we went back to El Mirage again, and they ran, their goal was 245, or that was the record, which is, I guess, according to Jay. See, I don't even know these things. He's like, 235 is actually pretty fast. And so they went 244 and a half on this last one, which is the last one of the year. And of course, the record was 245, but they had a cam seal that failed, and they couldn't push for the record. And so, hopefully next year, they'll get it. And it's a crazy opportunity to be a part of a team that they obviously have, I keep saying they're old, but they have more experience, almost more than I was even thinking about cars, you know?

But what you're saying is the fastest they've ever been has been on a Haltech. Yep. Okay. Just, I just want to put it out there, yeah?

You put it there, yep, you did. So, yeah, so I mean, they actually still have the ability to do nitrous, but I think they're trying to get the naturally aspirated records right now.

Okay.

And then-

Holy s***.

Yeah. And so, I really don't see why through, like, you know, explain this to them is that when they were on the Adoptronic and they, they're the one that had the original record holders, they did, they set records on the Adoptronic and they had nothing. Like there was, it was just literally as if it was just a factory computer that was running the engine. There was very little safeties. I don't think they even had any of the safeties that you could turn on, turn on at the time. And like, so it was, it's a very impressive group of guys. And having the Haltech on there now, and it's improved immensely. They've already, like I said, they've gone faster in the car. They seem to be happy. And next year, I think that if we just apply some of the things that we're seeing, like I think doing some traction control, having the EGT stuff, having that consistency to be able to do a run and be like, oh, this is where we can improve. This is, you know, having that ability to learn from what we see is going to be improved vastly beyond that. So I think even naturally aspirated, I could see maybe a 290. I mean, that might be a little zealous, but it's it's possible. I think I really think it is. And they just really have to get pushing to the car to that point and really dial in every aspect of it to be able to get to that point. They'll be close. It's going to be a challenge for sure. Sorry.

Are you doing some transmission tuning on that then too? Or what do they use for a trance? Because gearing comes into play on when you're doing stuff like that too.

I forgot the name of it. I believe it starts with an L. The trance has a separate controller, but I believe the intention is to switch it off to the Haltech. The Haltech does have control strategy for that particular transmission. I don't have the name in front of me because we didn't really focus on it. It was kind of like, it works and I don't have to deal with it or even think about it. So I haven't been. But yes, there is some aspects to that. So the first time we went to the dyno, we started in third year. Well, we only got to like half of a pole and it was doing 200 miles an hour.

Holy s***.

And so right now in second year, it does about 208 miles an hour at 10,000 RPMs.

Wow.

So we can't even do a full pole on the car, on the dyno, because all dynos industry wide, at least to my understanding, have a speed limit of 200 miles an hour. Maybe I should say, maybe a hub dyno, like an actual hub dyno, I think they allow that to go faster, but an actual roller, the speed limit's 200 miles an hour for most of them.

Oh yeah, that's a lot of mass to be throwing around. Yes. 200 miles an hour.

Yes, if that thing came undone, it would just destroy the room. It would be like a bomb going off, honestly. And so, what I was going to say is, yeah, so we had to deal with that, and just certain factors, you know, like it's just learning and being, I have learned over the time to try to be a part of the team. I admit a fault to me is sometimes I've been tried to be a part of teams in the past, and I've gotten essentially kicked off, and that's a lesson learned, you know, a growth that I've seen for myself, and so I've been trying really hard to just be a part of the team, but also kind of, I guess in a way, a leader in the aspect of the engine side of things, and so that's definitely a challenge and something, a goal for me to continue to grow with, you know, so.

You're trying to not be a, uh-uh guy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but also to be like, well.

Hold on.

Hold on, you know, like maybe we can do that, but let's, let's, you know, let's crawl first, let's walk, then run and then sprint, you know, and, and, and that's, uh, that's, uh, understanding that and learning that and knowing your faults is, is a challenge for sure.

So where do you, when it comes to tuning, there's a bit of a spectrum, right? We talk to people who like to be conservative, you know, let cars live, you know, but it all comes down to what you're trying to do with it. Where do you fall on that spectrum? Are you trying to have a car make it a hundred thousand miles? Are you just trying to be as, you know, as much power as possible for this small amount of period? Who cares if we have to rebuild it? Gus, anything in between?

Yeah, so I would say 95% of the time, it is as safe as physically possible and to, while meeting the customer's goals.

Okay. And then, and that could be very difficult.

That can be very, very difficult. And I have fallen into traps sometimes. I will admit that where the customer gets happy, I get happy, and next thing you know, we're 700 horsepower and the car lives through it, but then we have a problem, you know? And I try to learn from those things and to understand. And a lot of times it's not, it isn't me on an ego. I never do it where it's like, I want it, and I'm going to do whatever the F I want. It's more like, it's this mutual group thing. We're all kind of like excited and the car is doing so good. And so it kind of like we talk about it. We discuss about it. And I guess as I grow in business and popularity and all those things, I tend to unfortunately have to be the dad and just be like, you know what? As exciting as this is, we've already met your goal or we're close enough.

And I've been around for those phone calls, by the way. Like I've heard you mention that to customers like, hey, we did your goal. We did exactly what we wanted to, you know?

Yep.

Yeah.

And it's like, as exciting as it is to make a number on the dyno, it's so much more exciting to see someone just get to use their car every single day and to get that text message randomly and be like, hey, just wanted to let you know, my car runs amazing. I love it. I'm so happy. Like that right there is winning right there. That is the best feeling ever is to hear that someone just gets to use their car every day. And so I really try my best to just offer the overall experience like a good driveable car, try to focus on driveability, making sure all that stuff is going there. Sometimes we get carried away. We're all human and we all make mistakes. And sometimes what I find is, I guess another challenge in tuning is that you, let's say you're troubleshooting this problem. You're troubleshooting it, you're troubleshooting it, you're troubleshooting it. Sometimes some of the other things that need to also get resolved, they get missed and it's about being able to circle back around and be like, hey, great, we fixed this. We need to come back around and actually continue to tune the car here, which in turn makes more work for me, which is perfectly fine because in the end, I want to have a great product for the customer.

You want a happy customer at the end of the day.

Yeah, that's all I want.

That makes sense.

Sometimes you get people who are upset and this is understandable that they'll be like, oh, you're just money hungry, you're just trying to make a dime off me. It's like, that is the-

How do you counter to that?

My counter is that is that if I only did that, I would be out of business faster than I am growing.

Well, you look at certain people who are still around too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yes. But in, I guess in the tuning perspective, I find that, you know, word travels, things happen.

It's way faster when it comes to tuning, you're 100% correct.

It does, yeah.

Shops can survive, like bad shops can survive for a while.

100% less.

Tuning, yeah, 100% correct.

You're the easiest one to throw under the bus. Yep.

Yep.

And I do take that to heart, it really does bug me a lot. Like, it's something, if you could say what you lose sleep over is an upset customer. Like, it does bug me and I don't want anyone to be upset. And, you know, I've had these tough conversations where people have brought their car to someone else and they did a better job than me and then they're mad at me and it's like, and then, you know, they start to bash me on the internet, but then I'd be like, hey, let's have a conversation face to face or on the phone. And I would say nine times out of 10, those individuals, after we get off the phone, they are apologizing to me and we come up to some sort of agreement to how we can resolve the problem. And it's about being honest and cordial and being like, hey, all I ever wanted for you is to be happy and to have a great experience. That's my main goal.

It sounds like a comeback story in like a rom-com.

Yeah.

All I ever wanted was for you to be happy.

Yeah, but it's the truth. It's the honest truth. And I want nothing more than every single one of my customers to be just happy with their car.

A better job is a spectrum, too, though, right? Define what a better job is. Is it better at this thing, but not this?

Yep.

100%.

And so if, like what we had said earlier, as long as I just focus on that you are having a great experience and then you in turn, you as a customer have a great experience, guess what? I will make the money then. Even if I have to go above and beyond to take care of you, you're gonna go then above and beyond to take care of me. I'm gonna make more money. The equation works every single time. What I've seen in business is that is how you succeed is, I see it through my mentors, other business individuals. The guys that I see that are killing it are the guys that do their best to make people happy. And they don't let people take advantage of them. There's a difference, but their goal is to make them happy. And as long as they consistently do that, or at least they at least try, other people see that. And they'll see if someone's being unreasonable and they can decide for themselves, you know?

Yeah, when it comes to tuning, it's also, you want to know what the customer's gonna do with the car, right? So let's take this whole thing where you said somebody did it better or whatever a second ago here. Technically, you can make a car have more power on the low end, which might feel snappier to somebody. Maybe you want a more linear line where it's got a nice solid pull throughout the entirety of it. So that can all be tuning is such a like, does one do it better than the other is such a subjective term. And somebody could just have a different style of how they want the car to operate than another one does. I see this all the time in the Ford world between like London, and Paul Beane Steino and people are like, you can't, if you ask that question, you're going to get 50% either way, one bashing the other over the other. And to be honest with you, they're both huge. They do a great job. Just one might do it a little bit differently than the other.

Yep. And so a lot of that is, and this is something that I do, I feel like I'm pretty good at is getting an understanding of what the customer wants and what they're going to do with the car. All of those aspects. I wouldn't say I necessarily tune it differently, but it's more of like...

Expectation setting.

Yeah, expectations, understanding what the customer wants. And I'll be honest, and I've learned this over the years, because when I first started tuning versus now, and this is something I always kind of stumble upon about people who, let's say I had a bad experience when I first started tuning with someone and they're still bashing me like eight years later.

Those people are exhausting.

And I'm like, don't you think that after eight years, I would have grown? But in the same sense, I got to eight years by having people saying to me, telling me, my car runs amazing. And sometimes you can go so long and be like, everyone's saying the car runs amazing. And then all of a sudden you get a customer who says it doesn't run amazing. And then in turn, I actually find that as a learning experience. I don't want everyone just to be like, you're amazing, you know? I want some to actually be like, hey, I want this to be tweaked a little bit differently. And give me that opportunity to understand what you're having troubles with. And then we work towards getting to that. Does it always work out that way? No. But I have found that anytime, almost every single time that that circumstance has come up, where the customer is unsatisfied, they go to someone else, XYZ, or they just don't even give me the opportunity to try to resolve the problem, I generally learn from that. That those are actually my most learned experiences is when people are unhappy, and I really have to rethink and go back and be like, all right, what could I've done differently? What could I've done better? Like, that's why I say the most, you know, I guess what keeps me up at night is me coming back and being like, how could I have done differently? And not that I have to reinvent the wheel every single time, but with tuning, it's an art. It's something that, yes, anyone can do it, but you also need to have the experience to do it. And because when I started tuning, I never tuned a car before. I should say I learned the software first. I learned, you know, how to set everything up. And a lot of times, that is 90% of the work. It's just setting it up. Once everything's set up, then after that, it is as simple as just adjusting timing and adjusting air-fuel ratios. But then in turn, you get into those different scenarios and how's the customer driving? You know, what's a good, you know, what's a good air temp where there's a, you know, you need to start richening up the mixture because otherwise it might, you know, crack a ring land or, you know, do this type of stuff. You learn that over time and it is difficult to, you can take a course, you can learn. If you're a book learner, you can learn all that stuff. You can go to school and study all those things and there's people that are just savants and they're just amazing and it all comes around to the individual and how they want to learn and to... Now, getting back to your question about the different users and different things like that and just really understanding. There's people that literally... I've had guys that they have this 1,000 horsepower capable motor, their setup is just to the T. They just want to drive, they just want to cruise the car. They don't even want to go full throttle. I've had guys where they're like, we'll get into it a little bit, but then he's like, I don't want to go to the dyno, I just want to make sure the car gets from point A to point B so I can go to the car show. And this is someone, I didn't even do a free consultation, they just went on my website, paid for the product, and I was like, okay, if you want more, just let me know. But there are people like that, and then there are people who, you know, they race their car, that's all they do, is race. You know, and you have many different aspects, and you have to focus on more of the preventative things, because like, a race car driver, they obviously want longevity, they don't want their car to blow up all the time. I should say, there's a balance to that. There are some race straight car drivers, they want the bleeding edge, they want every little ounce of power out of it. They don't care, they say, you know, do your best, I want you, I want it to be as wild as it can be, just make sure that I at least go to the track a couple of times, you know, and it, those customers, you feel a little weird about doing it that way, because it's like, all right, I'm going to do my best to give them what they want, but I'm going to try to, try to be safe about it, you know?

It's different, like when the bill actually comes, right? Like Dan mentioned this on our episode with Sam Barrows, episode 110, fantastic episode. And he's like, yeah, well, blow up two motors and you tell me how you feel then, you know? It is different once you actually blow up.

You lived through that a couple of times, it's not as exciting as it sounds.

No, no, it's not. And a little back to the gust thing, I mean, like we did get to a point where we mutually wanted to see how much horsepower we could make out of a stock block.

Right.

And we made 850 horsepower on a 1990, I think it's a 1991 or 1990, the first gen M50 non-Vanos motor. And literally, there was like a quarter inch of rust on the pistons. And all we did was put a fresh head gasket on it, ARP head studs, and put about $30,000 worth of accessories on it. And no, no, you know, I should say we did have big cams on it. And, you know, we made 850 horsepower with stock rod. And it lasted, you know, about a month. And this was doing really stupid, silly stuff. Guss things. I mean, we cracked the head, but it was still running and everything on the site. So we said, ah, you know, coolant's going on the combustion chamber. All right, let's just fill the whole coolant system with oil, just to see what would happen. He ran about three weeks with just, I think it was like 15 quarts of oil in the coolant system. I think it was like zero weight, 10 oil or something like that. It was, it looked thinner than actual coolant. And yeah, the funny thing is it took a long time to warm up, but once the car warmed up, it didn't overheat. It actually stayed consistent heat the entire time. Everything worked great.

Really?

Yeah, it was, it was a, we had so much fun with that. It was a good experience.

Well, for you guys though, like doing stuff like that, you're in the industry, right? So it's R and D. Somebody had to blow up the first B58 at one point in time, right? They bought a brand new car and they're like, all right, let's see where the limit is. And that was literally their job because they're going to build them, right? They want to know where that's at, where they can do it, and they're doing it for that purpose. You have to know where that limit's at. Somebody has to find it. Might as well be you, right?

Yeah.

Which one are you in the R and the D? Are you the research or the development?

Both, you know?

Yeah.

All right. So you have a couple of ideas to bring to the table, too. Yeah.

Okay. You know, one time, this is back in the Adeptronic days. Adeptronic didn't have rolling antilag, and Gus really wanted rolling antilag just to do Gus things. And we went to go get some food at a car meet, and I had my laptop with me. And so we went to go get food on our way back. I had wanted to do rolling antilag, but I tried to do it like how we did our launch control. And there's a video out there of me doing Alex's car on launch control. And it literally shook the building so much, it just came down, all of the packing and the muffler blew out. It was ridiculous amount of fuel that I had put in there, but it was standing still and had no load. And I was like, well, I didn't know any better at the time. So I was like, oh, I'm going to do the same thing, and this is going to be great. As soon as he hits it, just totally bent rod right then and there. And so obviously, this is, this is, this is like, here's the research part.

The development is don't do that.

Don't do that. This is about four years, three, four years ago. But yeah, just that type of stuff where it definitely Gus was not happy with me at that time. But, you know, same thing, literally that next day, we went to the shop, took out the motor, already had a fresh, you know, I should say fresh used. We call them free motors because we, we would buy them for about 200 bucks, 150 bucks, take the bottom end that we needed, the head you sell for more than what you bought the whole engine for. And then it was a free motor. And we did that at least one summer, probably five, six, seven times.

Holy s***.

And so it, it, it was a great learning experience. And I really do appreciate Gus's ambition and ability to allow me as an individual, cause I learned a lot from that. And he learned a lot from that. And we both grew together and, and we're, we're great friends and we, we keep pushing his car beyond, well beyond the limits of we ever thought it could be.

So well, after this podcast is done, we got two objectives for you. LASIK and a bald head. You two are going to be the wonder twins.

Yeah, exactly.

I'm just saying, can you imagine them showing up to power crews? Just looking exactly the same.

Hey, I got to match Dave, you know, so that's, that's, that's what I got the vibe going on. I can't, I can't, I cannot ever be as pretty a face as him, but that's okay.

We all aspire to be as pretty as Dave.

Well, sweet man, while we're getting ready to wrap up here, I mean, do you have a hard leave? I mean, we can keep going.

We can keep going. I don't have curfew.

If you have more f***** stories like that, I'd love to.

Well, I have a question cooking here. So again, I'm going to bring up my Ford bubble because that's, we live in our own little world.

I was waiting for it. I was waiting for it the whole time.

But when you get into something like this, you obviously tune across multiple platforms as long as they're going to switch out to this. Is there a, so where I'm getting at, I was going to ask you this off air, but I have a Bronco 2 that I want to swap something into. Is there, well, I thought about that. It doesn't quite fit. I want to do something totally different. Right? Like I want to play in this world a little bit. So I'm like, let's take a Ford and let's put something in it. Yep. Is there between like an N54, a B58, a 2JZ, an RB26, is there a platform or a motor that you think is like, that's the goat or like they're easy to tune, they live a long life, they make good power. Across all the ones you've come across, is there one that you would pick?

I think it's all subjectively of what your perspective of horsepower rating that you want. You know, so if you want a 500 horsepower car, literally you could pick almost any engine and within reason and almost even in stock form, you might get away with that. You know what I mean? Give or take, you know, there's some four cylinders, there's some cars that just, they don't, but all the ones that you listed would work fantastic. Hell, you could even do something silly and go with like a built 302 or something like that and put a Haltech on it, turbo it, supercharge it, whatever, you know, you could do, that would be pretty rad in a Bronco, you know what I mean? Something fast revving engine, I think in that perspective is what sounds best to you and got the cool factor. So in a lot of the things that I've been, you know, playing around with and doing is the higher end transmissions. Like when I say higher end, I mean, not really higher end, but more new age transmissions. And so like the DCT, I've worked really big with developing a strategy for, it's called an AA-ADE, which is an eight speed automatic from Lexus, Toya Lexus. It's in the ISF, GS460, LS460. And those transmissions, they all shift. Even the 8HP, Dct, the 10R80, and the 6R80, all of those, they all shift very comparably. They're all within probably 100 to 200 milliseconds, which is still a pretty big range, Dct being the king, the fastest. But the Lexus transmission, 8HP, and the 10R80, they all shift very close. We're talking within 50-ish milliseconds, like Dct being around 50 milliseconds, and then the A80 probably being around that 100 to 125, and then the 10R80 and the 6R80 probably are just slightly beyond that. And most, unless you're an F1 driver, you don't know the difference between any of them. And they just shift fast. And so, to me, if I was going to do a Bronco, I would...

No, mind you, this is a baby Bronco. This is a Bronco II. It's not the big-a** truck. They're like a little hatch, almost.

But still, I still would go with an 8HP or a Dct E or A80E or whatever trans, and then I would do whatever motor sounds the best, and you would just have an absolute blast at 500 horsepower.

Did you want to tell them what the original idea was?

I was going to 2JZ swap it.

Which would be amazing. I mean, it's just like doing probably... What are those really small... Why can't I think of a car? A Zuzu or a Suzuki.

Oh yeah, like a little Zuzu Trooper or whatever.

And they put big motors in those or like a three rotor or something like that, and they're just wild.

What about a 1J?

So my goal would be like 500, 600 horsepower is where I'd want to be at with it probably. It's not anything needs to be crazy or...

Honestly, a 1J, 2J, K24, any of those motors are going to work just fine for that.

And could you still put that trans behind it too? Oh yeah. Yeah.

And so like I personally, like, you know, the RB guys, RB guys are RB guys. They're going to argue on this is that they do sound good, but my experience, they haven't made as much horsepower, but I haven't really had so many people that have really gone wild on them. I do see obviously we just saw GTR Fest and there's a ton of fast cars out there and...

Some faster than they said they were going to be too. I'm sure you saw that drama too, right?

Yeah, definitely. It's like everyone's growing in how they... You can pick a platform and for the most part, unless you're doing something way out left field, you're going to be able to make that horsepower goal and have it reliable and you're going to have all the gobs of support. So to me, I always just recommend whatever sounds the best to you. And if you're a rotary guy, they're going to be like, I'm going to put a three-rotor in it or I'm going to put a two-rotor. But now, I will say this, rotary guys, RB guys, 2J is kind of coming around in cheapness now that people are kind of understanding that they can use-

Let's get my follow-up question. What's the most affordable?

Yeah, they obviously LS or, you know-

We said no swearing on the podcast.

From what I've seen in a cost breakdown, rotary is going to be the most expensive.

I'm also not a glutton for punishment, so we're not going to do rotary.

Okay. That's a good point. I think RB is probably the next most expensive from my understanding. What grows a community is all these different companies competing and really coming out with these amazing products. I see PRP and that's just one of them that I've bought and I've got some friends that push their product lot. They're making some really cool products, really nice products. I have a motor over there that's a couple products of them, and it works, they follow the instructions, and it's just things like that, that community growing allows people to not spend their life's fortune, even though we still do.

You'll find a way.

You'll find a way to really accomplish that goal. What I was getting at the 2J is like you can, I see all these videos now where you can go to the junkyard and buy a $300 block, you can buy a crank, and you just get some pistons and rods, and unless you're going to go above 800 horsepower, you're probably only spending $2,000, $2,500 to have a built motor.

So you're saying those are getting cheaper then?

It's getting cheaper because of how people are going about making the combination. You can buy a brand new head for $1,500 from Toyota and build all the components, and then at the end of the day, I'm talking about what you just did there, you might spend, let's say, $7,500, but you have 1,000 horsepower rated motor. And not saying that what you want, so I'm kind of shrinking that down where, let's say you just go get a $300 motor, a 2JZ from like an IS300 or whatever, that's in the junkyard for like two, 300 bucks, and you spend the three grand on, maybe three to four grand on parts and machining, you have probably an 800 horsepower motor that you're gonna live, that's gonna live forever at 500, 600 horsepower.

That's with a turbo on it, I assume?

You're right, there's more to it, you know what I mean? But I'm just saying building the engine for 500 horsepower. And now, you can also just go get a Toyota engine, but you're gonna spend a fully built 2Js, like a short block or long block from Toyota is like what, nine grand or seven grand or something. It's more expensive than piecing together something. And all of these other companies making parts lowers the price of it. It's kind of becoming, these cars are becoming what our fathers or grandfathers, fathers and grandfathers were like, maybe not our grandfathers, but what our fathers experienced with like the V8 parts being readily available, pretty cheap to do for a DIY person. Like that's all coming around. Like that's that community and these, it just keeps growing. It doesn't seem to be shrinking in my opinion.

I heard you can get a 2J at a junkyard out of all that, by the way, I haven't heard junkyard 2J in a while.

Yeah, yeah, like that's what they...

I just did, was talking to our buddy of ours that has an RX7, and he was trying to figure out what to do. So I was literally Googling these things. And to be honest with you, the K-Swap seems like it's the cheapest option out of all of them. But there were some 2Js out there for, there was one, a turboed one for 3,800 bucks. You could buy the motor.

Yep. And you can find that. And like I said, you can get a cheap block that normally would have really weak rods, but everything else works fantastic.

Yeah, true.

For the 600, let's say IS300 motor, usually they say they bend the rod, like anywhere between, I've heard 350, I've heard 450. Like I had one customer that drift car made 400 horsepower, he beat the living piss out of it day in and day out, never bend the rod. But then you get the next person, they bend it right away. But what I'm getting at is that you can buy a cheap block. You don't have to spend $4,500 on a dart block. You'd only be doing that if you wanted.

Yeah, like piece it together sort of deal.

Piece it together. And that's what I've been seeing. And this is just Instagram and reels and things like that. But you see that because that affects me because guess what? All these people are doing these swaps. And what do they want? Haltech. And then they want the tuned. And they have that ability to do all of this in their garage. Or they have at least the ability to have someone build them a short block, build them a head, they put the head on the motor, they time it. But they have like, you know, all the shims and stuff done by a machinist, the things that they don't specialize in. But, you know, you yourself could time a 2J. I've done it.

And well, I've timed a coyote, so I'd like to think I could time a 2J. Yeah, exactly.

It's like, you know, I probably have time to K24, so that's only half of a coyote. So I probably could do the other half.

Yeah.

But yeah, so it's, all around, I think the amount of people that are getting into this and the companies that are, they're really true companies that really want to just grow their brand and do a great job, grows everyone else's pocketbooks and their, and when I say everyone's pocketbooks, I don't mean just business owners. I mean actual individuals because they're actually spending less money because there's more options out there.

So much support.

Yeah. And there's so much support. And the people who do the best is making the best product. And sometimes they can be the most expensive, but they have the best products. And so people pay for it. And that still, what's nice about that is it gives people, they strive to be better, you know, and other companies. So all around, the competition is great, you know, so.

Yeah, if there weren't us car people, everybody would be riding around in a four door SUV crossover of some sort.

We're all going to have Teslas right at the end of the day.

Hey, say what the f*** you want about Teslas, man. They are, you can get a plaid for like 45,000 right now.

I'm not going to lie, I Googled that. That one came on my marketplace today too. I was looking at them just for, I'm looking for a daily for my wife, something that's all wheel drive that she can go to work.

I'm just saying, when one of the baddest, like Corvette tuners in the country tells you, yeah, dude, f****** plaid is awesome, or however to f*** those Houston people talk. Go back to that episode, you know what I'm talking about.

He likes to claim is he's Puerto Rican, so I guess that's fine.

Yeah, go listen to the episode of Justin White, you'll piece it together, I promise, but the whole state is beige, as Ed likes to refer to it. Yeah. But, f***, I lost it. Damn, I lost it. I'm good.

I was just gonna say something about the Tesla, but I...

Yeah, it's amazing.

I really actually do look forward to the day that, you know, Hopeful Haltech does a, you know, vehicle control unit for EV.

Okay, I'm glad you bring that up, because technically wasn't AEM doing something like that?

Yep, they still are.

They probably got gobbled up or whatever.

I think they are still keeping that line alive, I think. I don't, I hear things from the grapevine, there's another shop here, Patience Metal Fab, we work with them too. Great group of guys. They've done a couple EV stuff with AEM stuff.

That's why I brought it up, yeah.

I've been over there a few times while they're doing it, I was like, Yeah, the Porsche. Like, yeah, that thing's awesome. And the, I, you know, I love to do it. It's something that would be a challenge for me, and that I would, I can't wait, but I subjectively wanna work with the product line that I'm most familiar with. Obviously, it'd be a new thing, but I know that when Haltech, if they do it, it's gonna be done in a way that I'll understand it, and I'll be able to-

You'll have to learn a whole new language.

Exactly. And that's something that I find that I'm so busy. I have created the ability to be so busy that I don't have the ability to learn anything else. And that's actually something we're talking about, is like, why don't you tune Haltech, or why don't you tune, you know, Link or, you know, Emtron or Cyvex and all these other engine management systems is because when I first started out, I was trying all different things. And I was experimenting and I was finding that I couldn't deliver consistency across the board from ECU to ECU on the same level as I could with a product that I used every single day. And I just didn't get enough, there's not enough time in the day to do each ECU, in my opinion, in the way that I get the experience now. And people will be like, oh, why don't you tune my FieldTech and I'll joke around and be like, sure, give me 20 grand. I will only touch your car for the next two months and it'll be perfect because that's how long it would take me, I feel like, to learn everything and to understand everything and to do all of that. And some people will be like, no, no, no. But there are features that, depending on the car, I'm not going to know how to do it and I'm going to have to figure it out or I'm going to, you know, even with the Haltech product, there's many times like even boost control back in the day. Like, I didn't do closed loop fuel or boost control because every time I did it, it would just go all wonky all the place because I didn't know how to do it. And it wasn't until I got to, I had some of my mentors and people that I work with teach me how to do it, show me how they do it. And then I grew from that perspective. And that took many years of being like, hey, can you show me that? And then finally they did, you know? But it's really difficult for me, at least, to change to a different product or to offer support to another product because I feel like I just can't offer, at my level, the same quality.

And 100%.

It just would tarnish, I feel like it would tarnish my name and give people a bad taste in the mouth. And the times that I did tune those other cars, I still to this day have been trying to get those people, I've even tried to give them free stuff, just to be like, hey, I know this didn't go as well, like, I want you to be on this, because I want to show you how I can do a great job for you. And it's not for everyone.

BG's just playing in the background.

Yeah. And these people have paid me thousands of dollars. And it was one of those customers that gave no f****, and it was like, I want to be the most horsepower, I don't care if it blows up, just push it to the limit. And I'm like, okay. But I feel like it could have been...

Sign here, please.

It could have been better, is what I'm getting at. I think it could have been better. And so it's, yeah, that's kind of what the gist of why I only do Haltech is because I don't see that unless... I just don't see me ever having the time to be able to learn something as well as I know the Haltech product.

I'd completely get with that. When I was doing photo and I started doing video, I was like, everybody's like, oh, it's probably the same deal. And it's close enough, but I was never gonna be as good at it as I was at photo. So I totally get that.

Yep, yep.

Well, sweet dude, we're about to cross two hours.

That went faster than I thought.

Dude, trust me, you guys... It's like I'm getting PTSD from some country plane ride. Yeah, three and a half hours of listening to you and Dan. And then I had the professor from Mankato State, which I should probably email back. But like, that was the best plane ride ever.

It was, it really was great.

It was great to you guys, Chug. And I'm just in the middle of it all.

And the funny thing is, is we even went out to dinner and we had same great conversation. And we just knocked out another two hours of great conversation. I feel like we talked about some things, but we talked about a lot of different things.

Yeah.

I got comments on that, but that's going to be an all fair comment. Well, Dan, on that note, do you want to pop the usual three? And then we could probably go find the nearest Cain's or something.

Yeah, I need to eat. Okay, so at the end of every episode, we like to ask our guests to pick three cars. I need a daily driver. I need a track car.

That's right.

And I need a show car. You can build whatever you want, swap wherever you want. Money is no object.

Okay, you're going to laugh so bad at this.

I'm sure.

So I do daily afford Raptor right now. But in reality, if I could go back, I would enjoy my Toyota Corolla. I just love it.

Unlimited budget.

I don't care. I would still have a Toyota Corolla.

I mean, talk about a car that's like a cockroach, right? Like you can't kill it. They just come around.

Yeah, and it's consistent.

It's comfortable. Great gas mileage. Super easy to repair. Like I honestly, I love, I really like enjoying my Ford Raptor, but it's costly. It's, you know, every time.

Which one do you have? The 6.2 or the 3.5?

I have the 3.5.

Okay.

And we've done all the maintenance work on it. I got really lucky with the extended warranty. Like I bought it at the right time where it was going to need all these repairs and it filled in with where the extended warranty expired. And I think I got pretty much most of all the repairs done at the like the last thousand miles of my extended warranty. So it worked out great. But yeah, so in reality, I know that sounds silly, but I'm a Toyota Corolla guy.

There's something about having a cheap car where somebody could just door ding you and you'll be like, yeah, exactly. And if somebody parks like an a******, you could just go extra close. So then they have to go in through their passenger side. My brother's done it. It's great. It's perfect.

Yeah, I used to have a, you know, I'm reminiscing now. I had a sloth on my on my Toyota Corolla and it was the it was the amazing thing that it made so many people smile and I just couldn't get enough of it. And it was, I've even had people, I've had a full grown man shriek at the top of his lungs at the gas station, cause this gas station was parked so close to each other that when he got out of his car, he turned to look to get out of his car and there's a sloth there.

Those ones that are like on the rear window, yeah. Yes, yes.

And he literally let out a shriek and I was like. Instant smile, like this doesn't happen to individuals.

You should buy one of those stickers and put it on Gus's car.

Yes, for sure. It's pretty canny between the two. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, no, so race car. You know, I will have to say that this Consolaire GTP, I drove it at 200 horsepower, and I was like, this thing is crazy. And it's right now making 350 horsepower and 350 torque. Unfortunately, it's like snowed right after I got done with a dyno, so I've not gotten to drive it on the street. And I probably actually at this point won't ever get to drive it, but I can't even imagine what it's going to be like on the track. It's going to be insane. So like I saw that that that Riley or that LMP3 car for a race car, and watching the owner of this, he owns all these cars, like watching him go through that, I think as a race car, that would be pretty sick to have something like that, or something kind of similar where it's like that, that almost like it could almost be a single cockpit type car as a race car. I think that'd be really cool. And just the engineering and everything that goes along with it, it's a fascinating thing for me.

And so I sort of be locking in perhaps a KTM X. I was thinking that's what he needs, yeah.

The purpose-built track car.

Have you seen those?

I haven't.

It's a full-blown carbon fiber monocoque, and it's running a Daza in there, making about high 500s, low 600 horsepower. Just full-on race car, dude.

I think if I was gonna do a full-on race car, I would do something where you kind of buy the chassis, almost like a kit car type thing, and just like how Patience has the, they partner with, why can't I think of their, I can't think of the name right now, but essentially, it looks like a super car.

Oh, I know what you're talking about. The partners in house that they have?

Yes, correct. That type of style car, where you'd buy either a mono cockpit and or this same type of similar, where you're literally, like you sit in this car, you're sitting on the ground. And I would love to have a car where I get to do all of the transmission, the engine setup, all the wiring. They just have a fully engineered chassis.

What about like an SLC or something?

You know, you keep saying these names and I will admit a fault. I am a car guy, but I am not a car guy.

The one that Schwartz had. You know what I'm talking about? He had a twin turbo LS in it.

Oh yeah, but I didn't know any of that until you showed me a picture of it.

No, no, I am talking about the Bentley. That's the other one. That guy loves his kick car supercars. So, you got to lock in one. I got to get a f****** answer. I am trying to think how to help you.

We are going to go with the Consular GTP.

Okay, next time you are on the show, we will have you do some more research and you can lock in a different answer.

Yeah, for sure. You know, when we do DRSC, I will come up with a better answer. And then, as for Showcar, honestly, I see a lot of RX-7s and I think that I see Showcar and I see all the low stance and that type of stuff. And I... Actually, I am going to change my answer because I just thought of this because it was so sick at SEMA. I believe it was the Mustang in Vibrant Spooth. That was a drift car, but it was a Showcar. It looked amazing. And the engineering in that looked top notch. And I happen to have a 64.5 Mustang that is currently pink with rainbow stripes. That's a whole other story we can get into another time of why it's that way. But I inherited it, and I kind of have a vision that have almost a Showcar slash street cruiser that is fast, that is still pink, that destroys people's hopes and dreams.

Okay. And that's going to be which car?

64.5 Mustang.

Okay. So yeah, just crank it up sort of.

Yeah, you know, do it right. And you know, kind of have, I guess for me in regards to a Showcar is I would want it to be functionally, but still something that is show worthy.

Yeah.

And that's just who I am. I wouldn't want something that's just to look at.

Yeah.

It's got to have some go on it. Just like some side vents with double sided sticky tape that are just doing jack all.

Yeah.

No, no.

So then the 64 and a half Mustang, the Consolaire and Corolla.

Yeah.

Locking it in.

Locking it in.

Well, on that note, where can people find you?

You can find me at www.tunedbyshawn.com. You can find me at Instagram at TunedByShawn or Facebook at TunedByShawn. In regards to DRSC, you can submit a request at www.drsc.automotive.com.

And that's just general repair but also builds. Like many of the things we see behind us here. So I think that kind of ticks that box for sure. You guys do a little bit of everything over here.

A little bit of everything. And like I said, you get the best of both worlds.

Maybe not. There's some cool s*** in here. Like this Grand National behind us is wicked. I mean, this thing was making like, what, 800 or 900?

Yep, it made, I believe, like around 840 horsepower and 1150 foot pounds of torque to the wheels.

You guys do a lot of variety from old cars to newer cars. Just JDM to not.

Yeah, we've done multiple, you know, early model Camaros, I should say, like 60, 70s. Like one, the one 1971 we did was just, it wasn't like super high. It still made like, I think it was like five, 600 horsepower on nitrous. And it, it was just, it's a machine. It's a driver's machine.

It's a machine.

It's, it's like we rode in, we get to drive these cars. I usually don't drive them. I'm a keyboard princess. I'll omit it.

Soft hands.

Soft hands, you know. That came full circle.

I think princess is a pretty good, like that's an accurate description.

Hey, I will be looking at the keyboard, going 180 miles down the road and be perfectly happy and content. And I know when the car's fast is when I have to hold the laptop monitor up. That's the, that's the gauge. That's when they start to get, when they start to get fast is when you're, when you're, when you're getting, you know, when you're in fourth, fifth, sixth gear and the laptop still need to be hold, hold back, that's when you know you're going fast. All right.

Well, sweet, well, this episode will air after the Black Friday sale, unfortunately. That's okay. Nonetheless, if you need Haltech stuff, reach out to you via all these platforms you mentioned. tunedbyshawn.com, Instagram, all that fun stuff. Well, thank you for coming on to the show, Shawn.

Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. I've been, you know, I, I've been following your stuff. I, I, I knew of you and I was honestly, I, I, you know, because my business partner has been on your show a few times. And I, I was like, I, I hope he asks me. And I, I don't want to be the person that asks him. And you just happened to ask me one day and I was like, yes.

And then, and then he set the record for, or no, you didn't set the record. That's right. You still haven't set the record on Flakiest.

No, no.

Yeah, you don't, yeah. We all know who that is. Yes. Behind scenes. Yeah. Well, on that note, thank you for coming on.

Yeah, thank you.

Dan, where can people find you?

Gunner Garage with two N's. Cool.

Thanks for existing. And we will see you all next time.

Sounds great.