12. Building a Mustang for Road Course, Drag Racing, and Autocross w/ Dave Rasmussen

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Minnoxide Podcast. I believe this is episode 12, I think. But either way, introducing my co-host, Mr. Sean.

Yeah, hey guys, what's up?

Yeah, we'll just kick it off right here. So we got a special guest today. I've kind of, I've known Dave here for maybe like two years, known sort of, using that term lightly, but Dave Rasmussen from Moe's Performance. I think I said that right. But yeah, he is our guest. He is kind of like the guru around here when it comes to what, Mustangs and I guess Camaros and whatever.

GTRs.

Everything?

Yeah, quite a list of cars.

Yeah, it makes things go fast.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean.

Performance.

What's your title? Like I'm sure you have a LinkedIn.

So technical title at Moe's is shop foreman. Basically in charge of day to day operations and my own portion of work in the shop.

So that makes sense. What do you mostly work on then?

It's a big swing of things. So a majority of our work, obviously I've raised a Mustang.

Yeah.

I have a Mustang and I get a lot of Mustang clientele, but the BMW side, Porsche side, we also do a ton of that. And it's pretty much anything performance related, except for Dodges, we leave that for Bryce.

Yeah, that was the one thing that we touched on. And so some of you might remember that we have Bryce on episode four, I believe it was, three or four. And they're kind of coworkers. So they brought Bryce in to kind of deal with all the hemi-mopar people. So that's kind of like his little niche, but Dave does pretty much everything else from my understanding.

Yep, yep. Bryce definitely has that niche and then we actually have a really cool project that we're starting on in the shop right now that is kind of gonna be a conglomeration of tuned by Sean, myself and Bryce. It's a 1983 Consolaire race car with a 2.4 SRT four swap in it.

Oh yeah, we saw a photo of that. That looked awesome.

It's a gnarly looking car.

Where do you even find something like that?

So again, through the racing world, this customer has a Janetta, he has a Riley race car, he has a Ford GT40, he's got several other cars, and this one is just gonna be his street toy, and the factory anemic 175 horsepower turbocharged K car engine that they came with or what they're based off of was just not cutting it. And he's like, 400 horse sounds nice, so let's do an SRT four swap to keep it along that Chrysler line. And then we're doing a Haltech Elite 2500 in it, IC7 dash, CAN bus keypad for multiple boost levels, flex fuel, traction control the whole night.

And this is gonna be a street car?

Street car.

Oh my Lord.

So those are SRT fours. I mean, the fastest one I've seen was kind of that one guy that wanted to rally with us, which had about like 500 wheel.

That one was the most reliable one that I've ever seen. Usually, they're usually pretty clapped out.

So, I mean, what kind of power figures can we expect from this thing?

We're gonna cap it at 400.

Okay, that sounds good.

400 is kind of the limiting factor on factory connecting rods. You know, it's a stock long block, no cams, nothing like that. It's just gonna be fueling in an upgraded turbo.

Okay.

And then some custom intercooling stuff because it's in a race car. It's rear engine, you know, reverse mounted engine in the rear of the car. So it's gonna be really interesting, but it's gonna be really fun.

It's gonna be nice. That thing's got to weigh less than 2,000 too, right?

It is 800 kilos, so right around 1,900, 2,000 pounds.

This is where our international audience will kick in. How many bald eagles does that weigh?

It's sub 2,000 pounds.

Yeah, that is ridiculous. That's gonna be one fast car. I mean, for reference, I mean, that's like 1,000 horsepower Hellcat, kinda. Like, power to weight wise, outside of other things. But that's gonna be a gnarly track car. Did it have a big, pretty, you had some aggressive arrow on it too, didn't it?

Yep, yep. Yeah, it very much looks like a...

Where are they, the super lights?

Yeah.

The SLCs or whatever?

It really looks like a Le Mans prototype car.

Yeah.

You know, like the Rileys and the Janettas, but smaller.

It looks really tiny, dude.

It is.

It's even smaller than the, like the Noble was the first thing I thought about when I saw that thing. And then I was like, that's even smaller.

Yeah. It's longer than the Noble, but it's lower in a little bit narrower, I would say. I think the Noble, it's been a while since I've been next to Jeff's Noble, but they're, they're very similar in size. Yeah.

That was a really cool car. So I guess that kind of brings up another question. How many like street versus track, what's your kind of like ratio of cars that you work on? Like how many cars do you guys work on that hit the track versus just everyday consumers?

I would say a majority of my customers do track their cars. I would say a majority. So over 50% of them actually do take them to the track, do track stuff. We do do corner balancing.

Do do.

Yeah. Yeah. I love that. We, we corner balancing. I send all my alignments either to JWP or Norm's tire. And have them get that part set up, but I'll do the corner balancing on the scales and get them all set up there. And it, it's a, it's a good amount of work that we can do in that small shop.

Yeah. I mean, you guys don't have the biggest of shops I've seen, but you guys seem to crank out a bunch of stuff. And especially when I watch like the dino videos. So do a lot of people just come up for dinos and tunes or what exactly do people come to you guys for? I mean, full stack?

It's so a majority of the work that I do is full builds. Everything from engine builds. I'm sure you saw the video I shared the other day that Steve Moore did from Ford Hub, did a shop shop walkthrough video with me tearing down his coyote. Obviously, I built my coyote. I've got two. We're an RPG dealer for the Mustang line. RPG race engines out of California. We've got two cars with RPG engines on order right now. One should make about 1300 horsepower and the other one is just an 800 horse GT350.

Is your dyno rated for that high?

2500.

2500. Yeah. OK, that makes sense. Well, so that's the other thing. What do you have to really worry about when you start getting into higher horsepower, stuff like that, because like you don't want to damage the dyno. Like what's the damaging or the limiting factor?

Mile an hour is more the limiting factor on the dyno. 200 miles an hour is kind of the limit on the drums themselves.

OK.

From there, horsepower is mainly software. But the limiting, the mechanical limiting factor is the mile an hour. As you know, we have a 424 linked dyno, meaning the front roller and the rear roller are linked together with a massive serpentine belt. Think of a 12 rib serpentine belt, but it's 18 inches wide.

Right.

And, you know, an inch and a half thick.

That's insane.

And it links the front and rear rollers, and we disconnect one side when it's front wheel drive or rear wheel drive. And what it allows us to do is dyno cars like Nissan GTRs, for example. The ETS in stock form that transfers power to the front really only transfers 200 foot pounds of torque. That's kind of its limit. So on a non-linked dyno, you can actually damage the ETS trying to dyno bigger power cars because it's overworking the ETS trying to get the front roller to spin at the same rate as the rear roller. Whereas our dyno, being a linked dyno, allows you to put those bigger power cars on it. We actually have a GTR in the shop right now that should break our dyno record Monday. The current record is like 1,590 horsepower. We had some ignition coil issues with it last week, but it made 1,300 already. On map two. Of nine.

Of nine. Are you able to share any details on who built the car or anything like that?

I'll leave that up in the air right now. Okay. It was built by another shop, and I'm just fixing a bunch of things that were missed or overlooked, and I'm never one to badmouth another shop or bring names up and involve them in anything because I just let my work speak for itself.

That makes sense. Yeah, and it was a no drama podcast anyway. Yeah.

So I just fixed a bunch of things, cleaned things up. The car had an engine failure before. The shop that built it, it's not in Minnesota. It's not even in the tri-state area. Didn't even clean the engine bay from the engine failure before, so there was still oil and antifreeze on the firewall and stuff like that. We cleaned that up. Sam loves to clean. I like clean engine bay, so we got in there with the engine out and cleaned everything up, tidied up some frame rail modifications that were done before and boxed the frame back in. But it should set our dyno record and then some.

That's gnarly.

That's awesome. Do they get a prize?

We give a sweatshirt away for anybody that beats the horsepower record on the dyno.

So it's just going to get harder and harder to get that sweatshirt.

Yep, exactly. The current record was set last summer or last fall on a dyno day by a car that makes significantly more than that, but that's what his tuner would allow him to put it on the dyno.

Who was the record holder, and what kind of vehicle was it?

It was a drag car. The name escapes me right now, but it was 1590-some horsepower, and it drew a big crowd when it went on the dyno.

Was it a Viper?

No, it was like a 60s muscle car.

All right.

So, yeah. And this GTR has fueling to support about 1900, so we'll see where we get with it.

Yeah, that's actually a good question. So I was talking to one of our upcoming guests who was going to come on this week, but didn't end up having to schedule. But anyways, he said that's one of his limiting factors is fueling. So take us through, because again, I'm a dummy, right? So if I were to build a car, and I wanted to upgrade some things, and I'm sure it varies from car to car, but what are some of those hindrances? Fueling is a big hindrance once you get to a certain level. What are some key factors that people can find that extra horsepower in?

So the biggest fueling limitation these days is the DI systems in these cars. DI injectors aren't an easy swap in comparison to port injection. Chaz's car, for example, you know, 911 Porsche, it's a DI system, 997.2, and on stock fuel, limiting factors about 600 wheel. We were able to get it up to 800 wheel with the addition of methanol injection and race fuel. So the additional fueling in that car came from methanol injection and some higher octane. We ran 105 octane fuel in it, and we were able to push it quite a bit further with that.

And that's on the stock fuel system, right?

Stock fuel system, yep.

And now, I think he was telling me about this, like to go up into that next tier of horsepower gets very pricey apparently.

Yes, the next tier on a car like that is typically a standalone. There's no additional way to add really port fuel to that car without going to like a Cybex standalone unit, different intake manifold with port fuel, different fuel system. And then he's at the limit of the factory clutch baskets, the factory trans, all that stuff. So then it's a compounding thing. And the stock short block is, you know, comes into question at that 800 wheel area too, you know. 750 is really safe, 800, he knows it'll make it. And it's if I need to run it.

Yeah, kill kill is how he defined it.

Yeah, kill map. Only run it if you absolutely have to.

Yeah, he came over here and told me he's like, and we're gonna have him on the podcast in the near future too, but he's like, I have a kill, but I also have a kill kill. And they're like, do not race this unless you have 20 grand on the line, because you will kill that car, you know. That's how he made it sound.

Yep, yep. And you know, we'll give the customer what they want with the exclamation point and the star star dot dot at the end of it. It made this, but you need to be, you need to make sure that the fuel is right in it. Your methanol is topped off. Your oil temperature is at the right temperature, you know. Make sure that you're doing it smart if you're going to do it, and don't run it on that map all the time. Which is kind of why I changed everything up on my car this year, you know.

Yeah, tell us about that a little bit.

So, 2020 Mustang GT, PP1, 10 speed.

10 speed, sorry.

PP1 car, so the performance pack with the Brembo brakes. The car's on MCS TT2 coilovers, so double adjustable motion control coilovers. It's got some fancy billet spline sway bars in it. Cortex Racing bushings that replace, or monoballs that replace bushings in certain portions of the suspension. And last year we had it on a Vortec V3 JT trim, like my Johnson's car. And we made 901 on it, and that was maxed out on that blower. And we set it to about 824. We pulled some of the power out of it for road course use. And at Proving Grounds 2 last year, I went out and the car would fit in SU class, which is like the street unlimited class. But I wanted to be able to run the drag slick, so I entered into unlimited class. And it was me, Ronnie from RS, and Jesse from JM Auto in unlimited. So it was like three big shops, three completely different builds, Mustang, Subaru, Evo. And it was a learning experience. The transient throttle with a blower on the autocross is atrocious. The car was just uncontrollable. And it's not a tuning thing. It's a bypass valve issue with going from no boost to boost. So drag course, the car took first. I beat Ronnie in his nasty Evo. I mean, that thing is just quick. He's an incredible driver, incredible build on that thing. And the car went 1032 at 138.8 miles an hour. And that was at 707 horsepower for that event. I put a bigger pulley on it to turn the power down. Did the autocross, got third in that, and then went to the road course. And I believe Ronnie had something come up and had to go home, so it was just Jesse and I battling it out on the road course. I went out and did my warm-up lap, because we do time attack style or standing start. And went out for my warm-up lap and set a PB. And I was like, all right, this car is going to move. Went out for my second lap and came in to turn two at like, you know, on the straightaway between one and two on the 2.5-mile comp course. Actually had to hit the brakes coming into second for the first time. Like looked down 175 miles an hour between them. I'm like, okay, we're going to, we're on pace. Got up to turn three and went to make the turn, and the trans said, I'm done. And that was the end of my day. It, I went through and scrolled through on the digital dash in the car and found the trans temp, and we were at 301 degrees.

Geez, that's cooking.

What's the normal temperature for trans?

205 on those cars where the factory thermostat opens up. And normally when the car was NA, it would stay like 210, 215 pretty easily at 477 wheel horsepower in NA. And we were at 301 and at 275, they start putting them into limp mode.

Yeah, that happened to Mark too, remember, at Pikes Peak International Raceway. So he brought this GT 500. I think it was the first GT 500 to go on a rally, like the new ones in the country. And we were over there. We couldn't even do a burnout because the trans is overheating or whatever. Like the entire car was like, f*** you.

I think it was because it was so brand new. It was, he just got it.

No, but it was overheating too, because you remember he was whipping it on that track.

Yeah, he was driving.

Yeah. So do you know Mark Molstein or no?

I don't know.

Yeah, well, you might have seen him at some other events, but don't know him. But yeah, he he tracks the s*** out of his cars. So yeah, that was a wild event. But 301.

301. So this is that was 40 days after putting the blower on the car. Three iterations of fuel systems, because I did a bunch of fuel system testing as I developed one for myself. And I was like, you know what? I'm done. I'm pulling it off. So that was beginning of September, October 1st. I pulled the car into the shop and we dropped the motor and trans and I sent the trans off to Performance DriveTrain Solutions and had the upgraded or extra capacity clutches done and Raybestos GPZ frictions done. We had a thermal bypass mod done that basically eliminates the thermostat and the transmission. So the fluid constantly circulates through the external cooler instead of having to warm up to 205 degrees. So what we're finding is once it gets to 205 degrees, there's so much heat in it already that even with an external larger than stock cooler, it can't bring the temps back down.

Right. So you want to start it as cold as possible.

We want to start it colder. And the big thing that a lot of people do is they don't take into account that there is such thing as too cold of fluid. So I have an improved racing external thermostat, inline thermostat, that is like a 90-10 style thermostat. So when the thermostat is closed, 90% of the fluid makes its way back to the transmission. The other 10% still circulates through the cooler, so you don't get what's called cooler shock. When the thermostat opens and all of a sudden the trans sees an influx of super cool fluid for that second. So it keeps the fluid circulating, it all comes up to temp, and then the thermostat opens, and then the cooler takes over the cooling portion of it. And we went with 165 degree trans temp for that.

That's pretty, that's a pretty, I learned so much about thermostats down in Texas.

Yeah, I know, we had to replace mine in the Durango, and he's never, he had no idea what was going on. He thought it was going to be like, you know, in this long ordeal of like taking apart like the engine.

When he told me 10 minutes, I was like, f*** you, I don't believe you.

Yeah, it's two bolts on the Hemi. Yeah, and it's right there.

It's right in front. Yeah, it took longer to wait for the coolant to cool down. So you actually take it off.

Yeah, those damn V8s take forever to cool. That was the biggest factor. And we, you know, we threw that in there. I say we, I was the water boy. But yeah, he threw it on in there and then we went out. That was the night we went street racing, I think, right?

Or tried to.

That was the 1320 meet that night, I think.

Well, we went somewhere.

Yeah, that's somewhere. Who the f*** knows? That was a long week. Oh, you've been to Texas 2K.

I've been to Texas 2K. 2010 was the last time I went.

2010?

2010.

Wow. A lot has changed.

Yeah, a lot's changed. I mean, 2010, I don't know if they still stay at the Omni Hotel. If that's kind of like the hangout, or that was the hangout when we went down there. But recently I've been going to Sebring for the 12 Hours of Sebring IMSA Race and the WEC 1000, which happens to fall on the same weekend as Texas 2K every year. So...

You have priorities.

Yeah. Yeah, road race or go out and street race.

Dude, those Sebring events are pretty cool. Well, we have a Minnesota team over there, like the people... I forgot what it's called. I think it's JM Motorsport or whatever. I think they...

JMS.

Yeah, do they compete in that or no?

They have a Le Mans prototype car, and then I believe they have a new GT4 car coming. I'll be honest, I don't stay up on a lot of the stuff with it. I just go down there to watch it, enjoy it. I got family that lives in Florida, and friends, Joe Garofalo from St. Paul's Speed has a house down there, and he came up and met us at the racetrack. It was his first time at Sebring. Rich Wilkinson from Tuligrid Motorsports up in Brainerd.

I met him like four years ago.

He and I go on the trip every year now, and it's a good time. We spent eight days down there, three days of Sebring, and then the rest is just vacation, go check out. We spent most of our time looking at storm damage from the hurricane down there. And it is wild. That entire Gulf Coast side is wildly different than what it was last year.

That's insane. Trying to think which direction to take. There's so many different ways.

I'm actually curious. Have you gone to school, or have you worked in any dealerships? How do you know so much about all these cars? Has it just been years of culmination and working and learning?

Yeah, I'm one of those people that feel like you'll never stop learning something. So taking on a new challenge, and I'm also a very competitive person. You know, high school wrestler, fought in the Army Combatives team, you know, did 10 years in the military as a combat medic. I'm just very competitive-natured, and if someone says that it's not doable, I'm gonna prove them wrong. So I've worked in this industry now for 21 years. Also worked in the medical field for a while. Had a lot of fun with that, and this is really where my passion is. And, you know, no formal schooling, per se, but it's been good. You know, I did PSEO in high school, went the business route back then, and then did some CNC machine tool and die stuff through Dakota County Technical College, and never really liked the field. I worked in it for six months, and I was like, this isn't for me. And just my fallback was always cars. In high school, I drove a, you know, I had a Harley motorcycle that I used for my CNC class. I built custom triple trees for it and made a widened swing arm, and that was my daily. And then I had a V8-swapped S10. That probably is what, the S10 is probably what snowballed into everything that I had. I had four or five different V8-swapped S10s back in the day. Everything from a bone stock 350 to I had a supercharged LS2 and a 2001 S10 Extreme, and that one made about 600 horsepower. And, you know, this was back in 2003, 2004, when 600 horsepower was fast. Yeah. And, you know, it's just gone from there. And it's fun, you know. It's my favorite part of the performance industry is taking someone's passion or their dreams and goals and making it a reality for them. So, you know, like your Durango, you know, bring it in. Hey, I'd really like to make 800 horsepower. Okay, well, this is what we need to do it, and it's going to cost this much. And we shake hands, and you come pick it up, and it made that much power.

Yeah, reliably too.

Yeah, yeah.

That's my favorite part about talking to people who are, even though I haven't been in the industry long, or at all really, but like knowing people in the car community rather, I picked up a decent BS detector. So that's why, like, I remember, like there's only a handful of people that talk like you. They're like, hey, what's your goal? All right, here's how we get there. Here's what to expect. And some people are like, oh, throw as much horsepower at it as possible. If you say so, you know, but then you like you're a fine balance of discovering, does the customer want to reliable or not? And what power, at least that's what I've heard from your shop. I've never heard anybody talk s*** about Mo's yet.

Yeah, let's keep it that way. I try to be, I don't know if you saw my post on Facebook a while ago about, you know, just telling customers like, hey, you know, give me your feedback on this. I've heard some positives and some negatives of the actual technician talking to you as the customer. My personal view is, is I want to have an open line of communication with my customers, whether that's from start to finish or just an initial goal planning to the final handshake at the end. And I want to know from their mouth what their goals are. And then I can help steer them too, because you do get some people that will only look at one aspect of a vehicle and they'll only look at horsepower. They won't look at a brake upgrade or something else that's also going to bring safety into that. Or tires, for example. Tires are huge. Tires are the only piece of equipment on your vehicle that actually makes contact with the road. So you can drastically change the way a vehicle accelerates, brakes, handles, turns, just by changing a tire or a tire and wheel setup. So having that total picture of what they want makes a big difference in the end goal and the happiness of them when they get the car back. So you can make 1,000 horsepower and have a 255 on the back, like all season tire, and it's going to feel slow. You're going to get beat by 400 horsepower all-wheel drive cars all day long, because you just can't put the power to the ground.

Yeah, I mean, being around Sean, but also just a lot of people who are in that 1,000 horsepower club, you start to realize there's a lot of important s*** that goes into this besides just throwing a blower and calling it a day. Actually, this year in Texas 2K, the one thing I realized a lot, or even just a few months prior, is suspension is such a key component, because that's like the next thing after the rubber meeting the ground. Do you guys do a lot of suspension work?

Yeah, I try and set people up with the car to do what they want to do. Like, for example, my car. We'll kind of circle back to that here with what's done to it. And my car is mainly set up for road course stuff. That's what I enjoy, that's what I have fun. I also like going fast in a straight line. I know that with the suspension and alignment set up in my car, it's not going to be as fast as, say, Mike Johnson's car in a straight line, because I have 2.3 degrees of rear negative camber. Whereas I have his car set up at 0 degrees of camber, so he gets a full contact patch of his tire. So knowing the differences in those and, you know, different shocks, just a rear shock change on an S550 Mustang can make a drastic difference in how the car hooks, because it's either going to plant the tire or it's going to blow the tire off. So that's kind of my fine line with my car this year in why we pulled the blower off of it and went to Twin Turbos is with the supercharger, I'm stuck at whatever horsepower the pulley is on that it makes. I can't adjust that without going through crazy, you know, crazy electronics to put like a wastegate on the charge pipe to control boost levels based on what power you want. So with the Turbos now, we can run it on wastegate at, say, 5-pound springs, make 650, 700 horsepower, or I can grab a handful of scramble button and be at 1200, 1300 horsepower on the straightaways. And or have the boost control I'm running has seven different maps built into it, so I can change the ramp rate. I can change it. It's got boost by gear, boost by speed. It all pulls it in via the factory CAN bus module in the car. So it pulls that data into the boost controller, and it'll allow me to have a car. Again, going back to that, somebody said you can't build a drag car that'll run eights and road course it and go out and do autocross. And I'm like, bet.

Well, it's tough though. I mean, it's definitely a challenge, right? Because like, you know, we're going to do autocross for the first time ever this year, at least I am. So it's like, I want to figure out all that. Because like, I've driven fast cars on the street. Like, I drove a 1000 wheel GT 500. That was a blast, right? And just, you know, a dummy could drive that car. But that being said, when you try to do all these different things together, that's when you start running into real challenges. Like, I remember talking to Adam about his Viper, and I was like, would you ever road course this thing? You know, it's 2000 to the wheel. And he's like, if we set it up, but it's just such a difficult challenge, because there's just so many... I'd love to see what you do with that. So what are you going to do when you go autocross?

So autocross, it'll be on... I'm still up in the air. We'll see what it makes. The turbos that I went with are sized on the small side for what people in the S550 world do. They're only a 58 mil compressor wheel on the reducer side. Most people start with like a 6262. I went smaller for better spool characteristics, but my exhaust wheel is a custom exhaust wheel size, so it still has the turbine flow on the upper end that the coyotes spin, so I'm not choking the car down. The turbos are gonna max out around 1200, 1250 horsepower.

Oh no, so slow.

Which is fine because the trans limit with having a 10 speed, even fully built, is that 1200 range. You know?

Okay.

So the car is really only gonna be at 1200 horsepower for drag events. I'm doing a drag and drive event this year that the class, the fastest car in the class last year went 931. We went 953 last year on the blower at 901 horsepower. So it should be, and it's a heads up class, and their limit is 58 mil inducers for twin turbos on a street car. So the car perfectly fits the class, you know, and having 10 gears and putting a converter in the car now this year, it should get there. But then on the street, I just dial the boost controller back, and it will drive as close to stock as 5 pounds of boost on a built Coyote will, and cruise to the next event, put it back on kill mode if the track's there, and go out and have fun.

That's a very sweet setup, then. That is, you know, probably what most people would imagine, like, how they'd want their race car setup to be. Like, their dream setup would be able to go to the drag strip or to the track, be able to turn it up, and then get to go home and turn it down and be a little bit more reliable, and, you know, you're not going to hit it and, you know, send yourself into a wall or anything.

Yeah, and the other cool thing about the S550 platform is when you're doing your wheel and tire swap from your street tires to your drag tires, the way I have my rear suspension setup is it's a true coilover. So the spring isn't mounted on the lower control arm to the body of the car like a factory S550 is. It's mounted on the actual coilover. It's four bolts for me to change that entire coilover assembly in about seven minutes with the wheel off, so I can have my track suspension in the back swapped out to my drag suspension in the time that it takes me to change the rear tires. And now I go from MCS TT2 Road Race coilovers with extremely stiff springs, extremely stiff dampening to a, like a Viking double adjustable with a lot softer springs, so now the car weight transfers. I don't change the front struts, I just loosen the rebound all the way up on it because I'm not chasing tenths of a second with the car. It's not a drag car. That's not the purpose of it. It is an all around car. But I'll change rear shocks for drag stuff versus, you know, autocross or street.

That is, I don't even know how to describe it.

You're blowing his mind right now. He's never been so speechless. Like, he's usually always got something on his mind. He's always thinking a million miles an hour. But right now, he's just taking in so much information. It feels like he's back in school right now.

Well, to even blow your mind more, like the thought process that I've done on this car with talking with some, like, one of my good friends. Well, good acquaintance. I won't say friend. I've never met him in person. But Alessandro is, he races a 2020 Mustang GT, 10-speed in NASA TT2. He's the defending national champ in NASA. So taking his experience with temperature control on the trans side and engine oil and all that and spending a lot of time on the phone with him, figuring out a plan to keep engine oils temps in check, trans fluid temps in check. I'm actually running the thermal bypass mod in the trans as something that he designed. So taking all that into account, I have dual 40-row coolers stacked in front of my radiator that are the size of my regular radiator. One is a trans cooler, one is an engine oil cooler. Then in front of that, we have the inner cooler. All of that is ducted, and then you've seen the hood vents on the car. So the radiator is laid 37 degrees forward, kind of almost V-mount-like. The upper grill is actually blocked off. All the air comes through the bottom, and then it extracts out the hood. So we get full cooler flow all the time on the track, and then it has some additional benefits of negating lift and creating a little bit of downforce on the front without having to run a big aggressive splitter. So the car, you know, all the thought process, then the entire header system, turbo system, is all getting coated by header shield out in Chicago with their, like, Inconel heat shielding, like the Formula One cars have on their exhaust, to keep underhood temps down as well, because this thing's twin-turboed, it's gonna get driven on a road course, and I'm gonna do 20-minute sessions. So it needs to keep everything in check. So, you know, total capacity for coolant and oil are huge. I think the thing holds... Based on the math, it should hold about 16 quarts of total oil capacity, which is a lot. You know, and same thing with the Trans. The Trans is gonna hold probably right around that 16 quarts as well. And coolant capacities stay in the same, because it's a PP1 car, it's got the thicker radiator already. But it's got direct airflow all the time.

Dude, I'm gonna have to listen to this podcast six f****** times. Yeah, and somebody smarter than me is listening to this right now, probably with more in-depth questions. The one thing I was thinking about, so switching from the supercharger to the twin-turbo setup, what do your temps look like, I guess? Because if I remember correctly, don't supercharges run hotter overall?

Yeah, I mean, so the one time I did take it out on the road course, you know, I only got two laps in. But my cylinder head temps, because the car has a coolant temp sensor and a cylinder head sensor, and your cylinder head temps always run hotter than your coolant temps, the car runs 170-degree thermostat. I was seeing 247-degree cylinder head temps on track, which I saw NA as well. IATs, however, would get on track with the other intake in NA. I would see maybe five degrees over ambient, just because of some of the heat that it would pick up from under the hood as it's entering the engine. With the blower, we were seeing 40, 50, 60 degrees over ambient. So not a lot, but that's another thing with the turbos that I'm hoping to eliminate. The intercooler now is considerably larger than what the supercharger intercooler was, and it should be more efficient. The blower took 15.9 pounds to make 901 horsepower. I should be able to do that on 11, 12, 13 pounds now. And then road course, like I said, keeping it around five pounds, six pounds for whatever the wastegate springs I decide to run, it should be significantly better for temperature control.

Sean, please talk, man. My head is f****** cooking over here.

I'll be honest, you are the most technical person we've talked to, so even this is like jarring for me.

Thank God for energy drinks.

You were hitting us with so many buzzwords, and it's just been kind of crazy. It feels like I'm also going back to school right now. But you have more experience than probably anybody that we've known. How long have you been racing?

So I started doing like autocross stuff probably back in 2003, 2004. Autocross wasn't what it is now. You had to really search and know somebody that knew of an event back then. Social media didn't have its presence back then that it does now. So finding things to go to. I had a 1998 BMW M3 that I would autocross. And that was just a real basic car. And it's funny because the company that I got my suspension for my Mustang on is also the company that built the suspension for my M3 back then. Vorschlag out of Texas. So he was one of the first people to do an LS swap in an E36 M3. And because of the additional power and speeds the car was, he had to redo some suspension stuff in it. And that car was really fun. And I put 200,000 miles on that car and just drove the ever-living snot out of it. Had everything from the stock S52 in it. I put an S54 in it at one time. It had two different LSs in it. I had a stock 5.3 with a cam in it for a while, and then I built a custom de-stroked LS7 for it. That was 388 cubic inches and spun 9,000 RPMs. And that was the final iteration. It was, you know, a 700 horsepower naturally aspirated engine that was just wild in the car. And the car weighed nothing. It was gutted, completely gutted, bare interior, two race seats, VAC floor plates, because the BMW carpet is pretty thick and your feet would be below where the gas and brake pedal is. So you got a plate that fills the floor panel back up. So I started autocrossing back then, and then kids, family, military took that away from me. And then probably seven years ago, I got into the off-road world really big. In 2015, I got into the off-road world really big with razors, Polaris razors, and that's when I started Snafu Off-Road Products, my fab company that I run. And I was building, you know, rock slider bars and winch plates and different control arm options for the razors because we were going out and we were finding the weak link every weekend. We were breaking something. It's like nobody... I tried everybody's stuff and nobody's stuff worked. So I started building my own stuff. And then people were like, hey, can I buy that? I'm like, sure. So that rolled into that. And I sold the razor when my daughter was born and kind of just got out of racing for a while and just I got out of the military, got out of racing and just I missed so much with my boys when I was in the military when they were growing up. I didn't want to do that with my daughter. So I just kind of took some years off. And then August of 2020, I went and I had a wild hair up my a**. And it's like, I was talking to Joe DeVito up at DeVito Race Compound. And I was like, what do you think of the new S550s? He's like, buy one. I'm like, really? He's like, yeah, do it. So I called three dealerships and the first two were a******* to me. They're like, oh, this guy's just pounding sand. Cause I was very specific. I wanted a 2020 Mustang GT, 401A premium with active exhaust and performance pack one. And it had to be Velocity Blue or Oxford White. And they're like, that's impossible. Don't you know it's COVID right now? I'm telling you, I have the money. I want to order it. No dealership in the cities would help me. So I called 1040 up in St. Cloud and the salesman's like, that's going to be tough, but I'll see what I can do. And that was on a Monday. That Saturday, they had my car imported from another dealership in South Dakota that they worked a dealer trade with. And I went up there and I paid for it and I drove it home.

That's awesome. That guy was fighting for that sale. He was like, COVID's hit me hard. I need this sale right now.

The guy was awesome. Everything was handled over the phone. He sent me the window sticker via PDF file. He's like, everything checks out. It's velocity blue. It's got all the packages you want. The only difference is this one also has safe and secure, which is like the blind spot monitor and the auto braking and the auto pilot stuff.

So you took that off?

No, it's on the car. And actually, it's kind of funny because the auto cruise control and lane keep, I drive the X5 and that doesn't have it. And I get so used to driving the Mustang in the summer. And you can take a nap in that thing, basically. It'll slow down, it'll speed up. You just set the cruise control wherever you want, and it's almost like autopilot. Not quite like a Tesla autopilot, but it's pretty good. Then you get in a regular car without adaptive cruise control, and all of a sudden you're four inches off someone's bumper because you're not paying attention. It's like, whoa, this car doesn't have that. I should probably pay attention. So yeah, it was just going to be a street car. That's always the famous last words. I'm just going to keep it stock. My company motto for Snafu is, stock sucks.

Yeah, I can see how that could be a problem.

So first thing I did was the suspension and wheels and tires, and went out and did Morgan's events and swept the series. I was like, okay, it's time to step the car up. Started doing some road course stuff. Went up and did a bunch of the slow pokes days, open track days up at BIR. Started doing some HPD events, and I was like, okay, the car needs more. So I got on the phone with Terry down at Vorschlag, and I was like, hey, so I just bought this car. Used you guys in the past. What should I do? He sent me the quote for the MCS and a few things to do to the car, and ordered it up and put it in, and it's just snowballed from there. The same thing with the blower. The blower was, I pulled it off a customer's car because they were trading the car, and he's like, I'll give you a killer deal if you want to buy it. I'm like, how good of a deal? He gave me a number, and I was like, okay, I'll go get cash. Put the blower on, and that snowballed to a fully built motor, fully built trans, and everything else that's in it this year. We even went as, I mean, this winter I even went as far as, it's got a Steeda Road Race K member in it now that shaves another 50 pounds off the front of the car. Basically cut the car off from the strut towers forward and tube fronted the front, so that shaved another 75 pounds off the front of the car. But the car still has all the creature comforts. It's got air conditioned seats, it's got cruise control, it's got Apple Car Audio and all that.

Yeah, oh my god, you don't have to trailer this thing, you can just drive it.

In fact, I don't trailer it. I have somebody else pull my race support trailer to the race, and I drive the car.

Race support trailer, I love how you...

Well, just in case the tranny blows out again.

Yeah, and it's a 7x14 enclosed, so if the car breaks, I have to figure something else out.

But you have everything you need.

Because I do these TTS events, so it's triple track showdown, drag, autocross and road course. So I have to have a different set of tires for each event. So I have three or four sets of tires in the trailer. The car runs on one ethanol S, so I keep a 55-gallon drum of that in the trailer. I've got a transfer pump set up in it. I sleep in the trailer. I've got it set up so it's like a cot, basically goes from Eclipse that I have mounted to the wall, corner to corner in the trailer. It's got a tool box in it and jacks and jack stands, brake fluid, coolant, basically anything that you would need at the track.

Okay, yeah, so you could basically service the car for anything.

Yeah, and it actually works out because there's always somebody that didn't come prepared to a track event, boils their brake fluid, didn't know that they needed a higher-temp brake fluid, and they're like, does anybody have brake fluid or a way to flush this? And I'm like, yeah, you know.

Yeah, I think that's probably the best place to break down, is at a track, just because there are so many spare parts, and even if there isn't, somebody knows somebody.

Yep, yep.

They're like, yeah, we'll get on the phone, we'll get it down here, like in an hour.

Yeah, and I worked in Brainerd for five years, and then Rich's shop is just in Merrifield, which is 20 minutes from the track there in VIR. So, I mean, we've like, the same weekend that my trans broke, my son's water pump went out on his A4, leaving Brainerd on Sunday. The only place in Brainerd that had a timing belt water pump kit for a 2007 Audi A4 was AutoZone. We started on it at 6 o'clock at, or got the part at 6 o'clock, and at 11.30, I'm the dad that makes my son do everything. You get stuck, I'll help you, I'll give you the guide through how to do it, but you're gonna do it yourself. And I don't care how long it takes you. That's just, you're gonna learn. 11.30, he's got the car running again, and we drove it home, you know? But we did it at my buddy's shop right there in Brainerd, instead of in a parking lot somewhere, because it's an, you know, B7A4, so you gotta pull the whole front clip off to do timing belt on it. And, yeah, just knowing people, you know, I worked in Brainerd for five years, and, you know, I know quite a few of the shops up there and quite a few of the people, and it's nice having that fallback of, um, hey, you know, I broke my exhaust. Does anybody have a welder? Well, yeah, I know, you know, Eric Helm's got one or this person's got one or this person's got one, and what do you need made or do you need, you know, do you need them to come out here with the welder or can you drive the car in there and we can fix it on their lift, you know? So that's always been nice with having worked up there and lived up there.

It's been a while since I talked. No, man, that's the thing. I know when to listen. That's the thing. And this is one of those times where it's like, man, I got to really pay attention because if you stop listening for two minutes here, it's just like, damn. For example, in third grade, I wasn't paying attention during the nouns, or not nouns, what is it? Vowels versus consonants lesson. 15 f****** years later, I didn't know what a vowel versus a, you know, what's the other thing? It's not consonants, is it consonants? Yeah. See, this is my problem, right? Because I didn't pay attention in one class in third grade, so that's why I'm just absorbing it all.

English is not my strong point either.

It's my second language, so.

Math and science. So it was, my grandfather was a math and science professor, and math and science runs in my family, we're good at it. English, terrible. I finally, at 40 years old, have figured out the proper use of there, there, there, your, your, your, you know, like. But it's funny because, you know, I've performed surgeries and done stuff like that in the medical field. And that comes easy. Cars rebuilding engines, miking out tolerances on things. It's all easy. English, wow. That blows my mind.

That makes sense.

I mean, well, and English is such a weird language, too. It's probably I think is one of the hardest languages to learn. If you know, like if you're coming in to learn a second language or whatever, just because of that problem with there, there, there, your, your, your. And it's just it's confusing to people because it's a month in other people's countries. They only have one word for that. And we have, you know, sometimes four or five different words that we can use. And plus, then we have slang that people have to learn. It's got to be one of the most difficult languages.

Yeah. And I took four years in German. And that's that's another language that's like extremely difficult because all their words are gender based. So you have der, die, das, mir, mich, mich. And I don't judge me if I'm getting that wrong. It's been 20 years since I've been in school. But, you know, it's everything is is kind of gender based as well.

So they're a country that believes in gender.

Yeah, yeah. That's a whole nother topic.

Different podcast, different podcast.

But yeah, English is it was difficult. And but thankfully, the automotive world is not for me. And it's where I found my passion. And I just keep trying new things and learning new things and pushing boundaries and you know, even even my Subaru back when I worked at, I used to work at MAP for a while. And I built a 04 WRX STI. And what started off as just a rods and pistons build in true Dave fashion turned into a 64, 66 precision rotated setup, fully built bottom end. So billet crank, manly turbo tough rods, you know, good pistons, darton sleeves, ARP case studs, but fairly stock heads, you know, no cams, no porting, stock valves, just a valve spring upgrade, and then a big turbo and an aftermarket top mount because I wanted it to be a sleeper. And everybody back then was like, oh, to do 500 horsepower in a Subaru, you got to have a front mount, you got to have cams, you got to have all this stuff. And here's my car making 637 wheel horsepower for 60,000 miles untouched with a top mount and stock untouched heads, minus valve springs.

You're the guy that people would laugh at on forums. They're like, there's no f****** way, but somehow you make it work.

Yeah, yeah. Again, it comes back to that, tell me I can't and I'm going to show you you're wrong.

Well, that's another thing that I kind of learned, again, being around the people I've been around the last two years especially. It's like all these different things like flow and all these little small things, the little stabilizing factors in your builds are so important, not just like the big figures that everybody loves to throw around, especially on social media. Because down in Texas, everybody had f****** welds. Like every 22-year-old that had some sort of, I don't know, leftover money or whatever, everybody just had these high-end builds.

It's like you turn 18 and they're like, congratulations, here's a set of welds and a Corvette or a Mustang, and here's some cams while you're at it.

Yeah, it was gnarly, man.

Well, that's like boost. Boost is the biggest misconception in the automotive world. People think that 22 pounds means 22 pounds. Well, 22 pounds from a ProMod 98 Precision is significantly different than 22 pounds of boost from a TDO4, for example. They are two totally different worlds, even though it's making the same boost pressure, the volume of air, pounds per minute of air that it can move is significantly different. I went as far on my car on Nasiac and posted a dyno video of it with 22 pounds on a VF39 and then 22 pounds, same 22 pounds on a 6466, and at Redline, it was a difference of almost 200 horsepower. Holy s***. Because the factory turbo flow runs out just like factory BMWs. They taper off up top because they've got a really small turbo because they don't want boost lag feeling, and they don't have the airflow up top, and they run out of air. They just run out of airflow. Whereas with the 6466, 22 pounds, it's barely into the compressor efficiency map. It's like, okay, we're just getting started. This is an easy day for me. You know, in that car, we ran 31 pounds on E85 and 22 pounds on pump gas. And now the new owner that has it, I just got done refreshing the engine for her, and she's planning on running like 45, 50 pounds boost in it this year. So it's finally got cams, it's finally ported heads, finally a front mount, but she wants it more as like a fast street car slash power cruise animal type car versus what I did with it with autocross and road course and all that stuff.

Yeah, it comes back to purpose.

Yep, her purpose changed with what she wanted out of the car versus what I wanted out of the car. And we had Dan up at PRE go through the engine and just refresh it. There was nothing wrong with it. It was just 60,000 miles. It had lifted ahead, and I found a little bit of bearing material in the oil, and I was like, it's probably time to refresh it. We're already here, the engine's already out. Let's just refresh it. Dan re-machined everything. We re-ringed it, put some GSCS 2-billet cams in it, some free super alloy valves, and pinned the mains, and now we're going to see what 800 wheel feels like in that car.

That's gnarly. Tell us a little bit on the tuning side of things. So like one, I'm trying to understand more about that, like just seeing like, I started reading more, what's it called, dino charts, and just kind of seeing like, what does a good dino chart look like, and what's that look like on the tuning side of things?

So the biggest thing with tuning is, and I don't handle a lot of the tuning, I'll tune NA applications on like Holley or, you know, some of the, I'm playing with HP tuners just on my own car, but Holley is very, very easy to tune on, so I do a lot of the NA Holley stuff. You're just, you're looking for a good air-fuel ratio, you know, and I'm in my infancy of it, so I do a lot of plug reading. I'll make a pole with a fresh plug in one hole and pull it out, look at the timing strap, look at the fueling strap, or the fueling lines on the plug, and, you know, you can adjust things from there. You're looking at your wideband and looking at the dynograph. So guys like Sean that tune every day have a lot better understanding of the base settings that they need, and they spend a lot less time on it. But again, you know, even the big power cars, when pro tuners are there, when we start pushing them to the limit, we'll make a pole with a fresh set of plugs in it, shut it down right at the top of the run, pull the plugs, read them, and you can adjust from there because the spark plug itself tells a big story of what everything's doing in the engine. But to answer your question, the smoothest dyno graph is what you're looking for, you know, not a lot of jagged up and down lines and stuff like that. And, you know, it varies whether it's NA or turboed or supercharged, what that graph's going to look like. But the big things you want are proper timing and proper fueling. That's what's going to make an engine live.

Okay, that makes sense. So then, just because this is a little bit more new to me, so what causes something to be such a jagged line when you look at those graphs? I mean, I'm sure there's a few factors, but...

Yeah, there's a lot of factors. So a lot of the newer cars, and this is me speaking on a topic that I'm not 100% with because I let the pro tuners do that, but from the conversations I've had, a lot of stuff is people playing with tuning that don't know what they're doing. So a lot of new ECUs are a torque model-based ECU, like the BMWs, for example. So the ECU is commanding a certain torque output at a certain RPM and a certain throttle input, and it has multiple ways to do that, whether it's ignition timing, boost, curve, things like that, and people will go in and make changes to one parameter, not knowing the effects it has on the other parameter. Whereas you look at somebody like Brian May, you know, when he tunes a BMW, and the torque curve and horsepower curves are just perfect, and he'll set up multi-map where it'll be like a low torque or a medium torque setting on one map and then a max torque on another map. And the only, the horsepower never changes, but the way the torque comes in on the graph or the way the turbo spools is significantly more down low, so the car is going to accelerate faster, even though it has the same peak horsepower number because torque gets you moving, horsepower keeps you there.

Right, yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah, it's, there's a lot to be learned on that side, and that's kind of my next quest in my automotive knowledge world is gaining more on the tuning side because my body is not always going to be there, you know, but hopefully my mind stays fresh well into my old days, and I can sit back behind a keyboard and still make people's dreams come true just in a different avenue.

Okay, so you're saying like less of the physical work and more of the, okay.

Yep, yeah, and you know, at some point, I'll hang up the wrenches and I still want to be in the performance world, but on the electronic side, because let's face it, everything's going that electronic route, you know.

One way or another, yeah. Well, you'll be the wise one.

Sitting in my chair, remote tuning someone, drinking coffee, somewhere warm, not in Minnesota, where we get snow on April 1st.

What a f******... Quick rant. Not as long as the rant that I posted today, but it's like I cleaned up my driveway. I was ready to leave my house today, and I'm like, sweet. So I text to Sean, I'll be there in half an hour or whatever. And right as I'm leaving, I look outside. I literally heard the snowplow come by. And I'm like, before I even looked out my window, my mom heard me b******* in Bosnia. And it roughly translates... I'm not gonna... It's so foul. I don't even want to say it on here. But I was b*******. And I look outside, and I'm cursing a million different ways because I have to go out and clean what the plow threw up on my driveway. And I made a nice rant for TikTok or Instagram, whatever. And I'm just like, Minnesota Department of Transportation's got jokes today. I'm so mad.

I was driving home last night when it was still raining. And then from the time I left St. Michael to the time I got home, it went from rain to sleet to snowflakes that are three quarter inch snowflakes. And I'm like, tomorrow's April 1st, isn't it? This is the cruelest April Fool's joke Mother Nature could have ever given us. And we got, my calibrated eye says between 10 and 12 inches of snow. And it was the wet, heavy stuff that...

You can't shovel it.

Yeah, like it's a workout. And I enjoy shoveling snow because I like the physical aspect of it being outside. I was swearing in my driveway this morning, and I guarantee you, every one of my neighbors heard me going, enough. It's enough. Just stop. We've had enough.

That was me today. The snowblower kept dying on me. And there's kids across the street, and I yelled, cocksucker.

I was like, oh, sorry.

All right. Well, we want to be respectful of your time here. I think maybe just do one more quick topic here.

I actually was wondering, what are three cars that you would pick? It'd be your daily, your track.

That's a good one.

And what is it?

Supercar or? Show car.

Show car. And all three can't be Mustangs.

Well, so I'm not a huge Ford guy. I've owned them all. And I'll tell you the truth. I was going to buy a C7 Z06 before I bought the Mustang. However, one of my criteria was I need to be able to fit my daughter in it.

Two-seaters can't do that.

I can't do that with a two-seater. And, you know, I've got an 18-year-old and a 16-year-old son as well. So we do go out and do family stuff. So four seats was important. And at the time, Porsche was way out of my budget. So 911 was off the list. Camaros, I absolutely cannot stand the visibility aspect when you're sitting there. Sixth gen is a lot better than a fifth gen, but a fifth gen, I feel like you're driving a tank. You know, there's the belt line so high, there's blind spots. And, you know, I was talking to Joe again, and he's like, dude, just go get an S550. It'll do everything you want. The IRS set up works for drag, it works good on the course. Started talking with Terry down at Vorschlag, and he was like, you know, yeah, we're having really good luck with it. And so I was looking at the ZL1 and the Mustang versus the Corvette that I really wanted, and the ZL1s were bringing like 10, 15 grand more than what the Mustang was. This is the first brand new vehicle I've ever bought. Like, I've never bought a brand new vehicle. I'm kind of a humble person in that aspect. I'm gonna let somebody else take the huge depreciation. However, I feel I bought it at the right time because COVID hit and, you know, value of these cars has stayed pretty consistent throughout all of that. You know, when the big Carvana and all those different, you know, we buy cars, things were going on. I just threw the car in there a couple times over, you know, the two years of COVID BS that we dealt with. And I could sell the car for what I bought it for pretty much the entire time. So I think I got lucky in that aspect. But to answer your question, the daily, I'm really at a point where the daily doesn't really bother me what it is, per se, and mileage is kind of a nice factor. I'm not sold on electric cars, but something even like the Camry hybrids, they pull 45, 48 miles per gallon, just something for daily driving that keeps your cost down, it's cheap to insure. Right now I drive a 2009 Volkswagen CC as a daily, gets 30s, 30 miles per gallon.

We should have said unlimited budget, by the way.

Even with an unlimited budget, for a daily, I'd probably find something that just gets good mileage and is comfortable to drive.

He's letting us know what his insight to a daily is. Like he said, he's not worried about any of that other stuff, he just wants good mileage.

Yeah, I'm not a stigma person. I don't need a car to show an outward persona or something I'm trying to portray. I don't give a s***. I could drive a 1980s Buick LaSaber and be happy driving it, because it's still got me.A to.B, and it doesn't cost me anything.

That's something I've noticed with a lot of people who actually track their cars, is that those cars, that's important to them. And then they'll normally daily drive something not too crazy, like a Prius or a Malibu.

And the new Prius is actually a fairly good looking car.

I don't know what happened with the Prius, but it glowed up.

Yeah, it went through puberty. Finally, after how many years that ugly thing that always hogs the left lane has gone through, they make a car.

I cut one off yesterday.

I'll still cut it off, I already know.

You watch my Snapchats enough, it's usually me b******* at a Prius, hugging the left lane, and it's like, if you're not ready to commit felony level speeding in the left lane, get the f*** out of my way. But for a daily, you know, it's still got to be fun. Like, my CC is a stage one tuned, just no bolt-ons, nothing. But it's just stage one tuned, and it gets up and goes okay. I mean, my son took third in autocrossing it at a couple events last year, because it was before he got his Audi, and he's like, I just want to try autocrossing your Volkswagen. And I'm like, sure. Goes out and takes third place in the four-cylinder class, and I'm like, either you're really good at driving, or that car is better than I think it is handling. And I put 50,000 miles that would have been on the Mustang, I put on that car now. And it doesn't owe me anything. I bought it for cheap. It costs nothing to insure, and it's ugly, but it works. It's got heat, air conditioning, radio. What else can you ask for? Unlimited budget track car. Boy, I would probably go some sort of LeMans prototype car, like a Janetta or a Liger formula car.

Okay, I was going to say, maybe keep it to some sort of standard.

No, no, I want to hear this.

Well, I mean, I have no idea what a, what do you call it? A Jena? I don't know what a Janetta or a Liger is.

So a Liger is like a Formula 3 or Formula 4 car. So it's like the precursor that drivers drive before they get to Formula 1. So you got like Formula 4, Formula 3, Formula 2, Formula 1. And you've got their open wheel, single cockpit track cars.

Are they actually available to buy?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And the Janettas are, you know, it's a gorgeous car. They're exposed carbon bodied car and they, you know, you can get them LS powertrain. So super easy to modify and tune, or you can go with the crazy like, you know, Renault race motor or a Nissan race motor or something. And they're really fun.

What motor would you do?

I'd probably do like a Judd V10.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, you got, if you got unlimited money.

Yeah, unlimited money. I'd want something, you know, God, that would sound amazing. Big, big cylinder count, small displacement, high revving. Earlier era formula.

What does that rev up to? Like 14,000 or something?

Yeah, well, we're gonna spin my Coyote this year, 9,500 RPMs. Geez. That's the plan.

350 levels, huh?

We're, yeah, and then some. 350, 8250.

That's right.

We spun at 8,400 last year on stock springs, and we found, when I did, when we built the motor, we found that we're surpassing the valve springs capability of keeping the valves in control. They were showing early signs of floating the valves. So the springs that are in it this year are significantly higher spring rate and a lot better design. They're a packed 1281X ovate race spring, so it's kind of the go-to spring in the Coyote heads. But yeah, that high revving in a V10, V12 something. I've never had that budget to really look into, like, this is exactly what I'd buy because I like to keep things realistic for me.

Well, you're answering this in spades. This is the most unique answer we've ever had.

Well, we've only had a few questions, and our last podcast was when we talked about it.

But also my comment section for the giveaway, which you f****** aren't entering, by the way. But yeah, a ton of unique answers in there, but this has got to be the most unique.

Yeah, so daily something that hits mileage, something actually track-dedicated. Obviously, that would be, part of that package would be a nice, like Super C motor coach, diesel motor coach with a nice trailer with lift built into it so you can do all your trackside repairs, keep your spare packages in there, and just travel and race and have fun.

Alright, we'll give it to you since it is on limited budget and it's part of the track.

Yeah, it's a track package, you know. You can't just...

You can't have one without the other.

You can't drive the Liger Geneta on the street, you know. And then Supercar.

No, Showcar.

Showcar. I'm a huge Muscle Car fan, so it would probably have to be something wild, like, you know, I really love 67, 68, 69 Camaros. However, it's too me too for me, which is one of my problems with the Mustang and why I'm doing everything I'm doing to it to make it less me too. I hate going to a car show and somebody saying, you know, you got a 67 Camaro there, and they're like, oh, me too. I don't want that. So I would probably do... God, I really... That's probably the toughest one for me to answer because I would have to find something that's so unique, like that counselor that's at the shop right now. You know, that's one of 63. One of 63, no one. The company claims they made 85 of them or 83 of them, but there's only 63 documented sales. So I would need to find something like that to have as a show car. What that is, I don't know at the current time.

Something unique to you, you know, custom made. I mean, if you took something like a... Like one of our answers on the last episode was kind of like a Hoonicorn style car, but not Hoonicorn.

Oh, yeah.

Something like that.

Yeah, something like that. Something that, you know, I have a lot of build time and individualization of, but also something that's got gobs of power and...

Naturally, yeah.

You know, just something that you can't walk by without doing a double take and going, whoa.

Yeah, like that V12 R7. Yeah, like SEMA, I mean, even though some SEMA quality builds aren't exactly the best, but for example, that Pagani swapped RX7. Yeah, yeah. That's just so unique.

Or the reason I bring up that Judd V10 is the one Drift guy's got that Judd V10-powered A90 Supra.

I saw that.

That thing is wild, and they're doing the dyno pulls with the sequential behind it. It's like that, that, that is cool. It's a car that still garners a lot of attention. A90, 91 Supras, still people are, oh my god, it's a Supra. And then that's taken to the next level of, oh wait, that's not a V58 in there. Wait, that's not even a V8. That's a V10. And it's got ITBs. That to me is along the lines of something I'd have to do for a show car.

Okay, ponder on it. Well, you're definitely one of the people we'd love to have for a second episode in the future too. I mean, the way we kind of structure this is kind of going beyond the meat. It's one thing if you show up to a car show, like let's say the Coon Rapids cruise, which is where I've met you, but then you have six or seven other people come up and interrupt a conversation. You don't get as deep as we do here, so that's kind of what we do here.

And sometimes it's hard to ask these questions. It seems like it might be a little bit too personal, or like, I don't know, it's just like in this setting, it's warranted.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so it really gives a deeper insight to who you are. Because I've talked to you a few times at the shop at Moe's, and I've talked to you about what you're working on, what's going on in the shop. But I'm not going to ask you, oh, so how did you get started in this? You know, just, this is a great...

He would look you dead in the eye, and be like, I got f****** work to do, Sean.

Let's get personal.

No, and AirPods are the greatest thing ever. I love having AirPods, because I can talk to people while I'm working on stuff still. And I'll only put one in so I can still hear what's going on in the shop or the phone. But being able to have a conversation with someone or anything like that, I don't mind talking to people because I can still focus on what I'm doing. Now, if it's something very intricate, then obviously the phone's down. And a majority of my work is that way. But it's nice having that ability as well. And I love when people come in, like the first time you came in with the other Jeep to dyno, we had some good conversation. And I feel that building, there's that old saying, it's easier to make a customer a friend than it is to make a friend a customer. And I try and treat all my customers as friends in the sense that they're going to get my full respect and my attention. And I build every car as if it's my own. When a car goes out, the final product is something that I'd be proud to drive. It's the only way to do business.

Not everybody can say that, though.

That's because a lot of people are tied by corporate structures and the hierarchy of wherever they work. And it's one of the main reasons that I'm at Moe's now is they...

They're proud of their work.

They wanted somebody that would come in and take control and have that ability to control the final product that goes out instead of just coming for a paycheck. Like, the people that show up and collect a paycheck aren't the people you want building your fast cars and your performance stuff. The people that care about it, that also race, that understand, you know, stuff breaks, but these are what we've seen break in the past, and this is what I would upgrade, this is what I would do, really are what sets a good shop away from a great shop.

I think that's a good way of putting it, too. Like, that's a common excuse I've heard. Well, it's a race car, it's gonna break. And I just feel like that's just a way to just throw bad work out there. It's like, oh, well, it's supposed to break. I don't know, it seems like you don't follow that mindset. Like, it will break, potentially, but...

Yeah, I mean, there's limits to everything, and you can't avoid the unavoidable with a mechanical failure. Sometimes mechanical failures happen. But I would say 80 to 90% of the time, that can be avoided by proper procedures and processes before doing things. Like, one thing I always tell my customers is, when we start making power with your car, don't put... if it's got an oil temp gauge, don't make a pull till the oil is 160 degrees. Oil in a cold state doesn't have the lubricity that it has when it's warmer. I actually commented Vibrant Performance just came out with a new oil cooler sandwich, and it's got 180 degree thermostat. And I said... I commented on their post on Instagram, and I was like, do you offer it in any other temperature, because we don't want our oil 180 degrees. Like, road race guys, we open our thermostat, so the oil cooler on my car opens at 230 degrees. I want the oil hot.

Oh, okay.

I don't want it cold. I want to keep it as close to that 230 degrees as I can, so I run a thermostat with a very large cooler so that the thermostat's modulating the temperature, but I want it hot, because hot oil lubricates better than cold oil.

Interesting, okay. Yeah, that's pretty freaking hot, 230, but if you can keep it there, that makes sense.

I mean, modern oils have come so far. You look at Motul Sport Ester 300V or the Sport Ester, they're both an Ester-based oil, full synthetic, and they'll take 300 degrees. It's not uncommon for that, and it's not going to break down like a conventional oil is. I run Motul Sport Ester 5W50 in my car, and the only reason I run it is I've sent it to Blackstone several times, and they just say, it's working. The wear on this engine is less than we see on most street cars with the factory motorcraft 5W20. I run 6th. I change the oil whenever it needs to be done, but I've gone as much as 6,000 miles on one oil change with 5,000 of that being track miles. Wow.

That's impressive.

And I send it off after each event. They'll do a little analysis, send it off to Blackstone. They'll send it back. We do base value numbers, and as long as it's good, it'll get run at another event. And I won't ever go over one season with it. You know, last year I only put 2,500 miles on the car. I won't go over one season, but why change something that's not needing to be changed? It costs money to send it off to get it analyzed anyways, but it's a lot cheaper than $13, $14 a quart oil at 16 quarts.

Yeah, that adds up. So... Well, I think we should... I mean, we could talk here for another 3 or 4 hours. I mean, just because you got so much... So many years of knowledge, I suppose, but I think we should probably wrap it up here. So...

Yeah, next time the car will hopefully be together, and we'll bring it down here and show you guys at the same time.

Tear it up.

Yeah, that'd be awesome.

We'll do the usual outro, Sean.

Yeah, so thank you so much, guys, for checking us out. We currently have a giveaway going on. If you visit Minnoxide's Instagram page, I believe there are some instructions.

Yeah, yeah, for that. So basically, I'm giving away... What was it? Two prints and then one Fast and Furious Hot Wheels, which is worth more than it should be, in my opinion, but apparently it's worth something. Basically, just make sure to comment your favorite... The instructions are on the Instagram post, but basically, it was daily, track car and show car. And that's on my most... That's on my pinned post on Instagram. We will be announcing that next week. So that'll be pretty cool. So first place gets the Hot Wheels and a print. Second place just gets a print. So that's that. But I was referring to the usual comment that you make. Where can people find you, Dave?

So Moa's Performance is where I do most of my work, and Instagram is Snafu Racing. It's just what it's under. It's a conglomeration of personal posts and my builds and fab work that I do. Yeah, it's just kind of a... Instagram's kind of a fun place to just post pictures and reels, and that's where I... I don't really post anything on Facebook for the car stuff, but I post it all on Instagram, and it seems to be a fun place to be.

And then we could find Sean here at 1MN Mopar for any of his tomfoolery, which we will be doing plenty of this season. Dude, people love that f****** Durango. Today at Chick-fil-A, he just rev bombed it like twice, one at the order place and then once at the window because people were like, yo, it's a Hellcat.

Yeah, the employees were going crazy. They were like, whoa, dude, is that a Hellcat? And I'm like, I gotta do it. I gotta do it for them.

They love it, man.

And then same thing with the TrackHawks, you know?

Yeah.

So just a little side caveat here. Jess, Chas and I all went to that caffeine and octane at Medina.

Yeah.

I believe it is. And Jess was driving my Mustang, and Chas was in the TrackHawk. I didn't get a single look at the Mustang. It's on the full on track wheels. You know, it's got the hood vents. It's pretty loud looking car, especially the bright blue. And Chas' TrackHawk is gray, and they're just like, Oh my God, look, it's a TrackHawk. It's a TrackHawk. Like, just chop meat back here.

They see the 5.0 badge, and they're like, man.

I'm going to stay out of that car's way. They like to go into the crowds.

Perfect, man. And then you guys all know where to find me at Minnoxide. Otherwise, I don't know how you found this podcast. But until next time, Dave, I'm sure we will have you back on in the future to see what meets and stuff.

Thanks for having me on, guys.

Perfect. And I'll see you guys next time.