130. Calvo Motorsports, Streetcar Vs Racecar, Safety, Twin Turbo Vipers w/ Antonio Calvo

Yeah, what happened, she goes, you crashed. So I just thought I spawned or maybe hit something and said, is the car okay? And she goes, son, there's nothing left of the car. And I'm like looking around, holy f... So how much more of a streetcar can you get? That makes 2,600 wheel with a manual transmission, air conditioning, power steering, all that stuff. That's what I would call a streetcar. Like you said, there's only like 2,400 Gen 5s built, and we've turboed over 200 of them.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minnoxide podcast. I'm your host, Harris, AKA Minnoxide, man of many automotive aspirations, and I'm here with my Ford loving co-host, Dan, Mr. Gunner Garage.

I still don't feel as much as enemy territory as last night, but yeah.

Dude, yesterday we were doing a podcast, and it was really all Camaros, like staring him down. It was like a terrible...

Where'd you guys go?

The... Accelerated racing...

Racing solutions. Yeah. Did you say race ski?

No, I was gonna say racing solutions that you took over.

Yeah, that's okay. Yeah, those guys were awesome. That was almost a three-hour episode. So yeah, that was fun. But today we are here with Calvo Motorsports. Janitor. Yeah, I'm the janitor here. Yeah, I just feel like every shop owner, that's what they put...

Jaime's slave.

Yeah. Well, I'm glad we got connected, man. We'd be kind of chatting for a while. Justin White got us introduced. And I mean, you know, obviously we had Aaron from Enthomoto on, so it's obvious to get the other...

Get the other Vipers shop.

I mean, at the end of the day, right, and I'd be careful on how I phrase this, but like when people think Twin Turbo Vipers, on any TikTok, any Instagram post, everybody's like, is that a Calvo? Right, and I think that's just kind of what it comes down to. And what do you think is the reason that everybody thinks of you first, I guess? At least with common social media.

I think what happened was... First off, Aaron is like awesome. Him and I are buddies. We chit chat. His business model was very different than my business model. And actually, to be honest, I'm kind of envious of his business model. What we did was we went more for the street race guys, the YouTubers, the McRippins, and what that really brought me, it brought a ton of business. From a business standpoint, it was great, but what it also brought me was, a bunch of people that aren't true car enthusiasts or not true racers. And I mean that in the nicest sense about like, this hybrid of, I want a 3000 horsepower street car that has air conditioning, goes like f******, to sub to 60 to 130, you know, the Draggy Wars, and all this other like, you know, and never, you know, not have to refresh it for 20,000 miles because there's these people like Cisio now that offers a lifetime warranty, which is, I mean, probably the worst jump or worst marketing ploy in the history of one of these businesses, because how can you warranty something you did not build? Right? Like the new GT4 RSs, they're all having cam bolt snap and it smokes the motor, right? So how do you warranty that? Like what happens now? The Lambo V10 engines are awesome, right? But what happens if a lifetime warranty, what happens if that customer puts 100,000 miles and smokes it? You know, like, or just wears out or a waste gate line breaks or, you know what I'm saying? Like all these-

It turns into this pointing game, kind of.

Yeah, but how do you warranty something with a lifetime warranty? But back to the Enthimoto Me stuff, like I think I was more vocal on social media. You know, it was my first business. I was trying to, you know, grab as much business as I could. And what I wound up getting was more like YouTubers, Instagram guys, this, that. And like I have, listen, some of them are lifelong friends, but like, you know, that is kind of the audience. And they more or less ran with the brand and pushed it that way. You know, Aaron is actually really fortunate. He has some really good customers that are like true car enthusiasts. You know, to name a few off the top of my head, you know, Vijay, Will Dugas, Adam, you know, Minneapolis Mopar. Those are guys that like really will just listen to Aaron and understand like what they're doing and what needs to be done. Like, hey, we are way past the point of a sequential in life. Like, you need to put a Turbo 400 in it. Cool, done. You know what I'm saying? Like, I, you know, I have guys that don't want to put Turbo 400s because they don't like the way the Turbo 400 sounds. They want the pops and bangs of, you know, sequential shifts. And this ad, it's like, well, you want that, but you also want 3000 horsepower, and then you cry when the transmission breaks, right? Like, a sequential was designed for road race applications, right? We are way past, and all these sequential companies are now trying to really kind of reinvent the wheel to build a sequential that will hold, you know? But at the end of the day, like, a Turbo 400 has been around since, what, the 1940s, 1950s? And it's like, it's every bit of, like, just over-engineered, redneck engineering that works. You know, it's funny, I was talking to Tony Palo, because we put a Turbo 400 in the general. We're just stater stuff. Like, you know, we swapped, like, four staters in it and couldn't get it to flash where we wanted it to, you know, off the trans break. And I was like, man, you know, we were just talking one day, Tony and I, and he goes, dude, it took me a year to get the f****** TH400 working in Night Fury, right? And I'm like, because it didn't have a button on a laptop. You know, I was joking around with Tony. He's like, dude, it's like, it's got like nine moving parts in it. And yet, like, you know, we can't get this thing to work. And the most rudimentary thing is we're used to technology. You know, I don't want to say the Pro Mod guys aren't, but like their technology is just really coming in. I'm going to say like the last 10 years, right? Like everything's been like mechanical fuel injection, screwblower, just let it f****** eat as much as you can and figure out traction from, you know, suspend like mechanical, everything's very mechanical versus very technological, you know? But yeah, that's kind of the thing I would say why we, it's a blessing and a curse, but why I think we have like that that Viper stronghold market.

Well, you guys have a different approach to things too, then as well, right?

Yeah, I mean, like there's many ways to skin a cat, you know? At the end of the day, like I was saying, me and Aaron over the last, I want to say the last two years have been a lot closer than we have in the past. Like we have these two customers, they live down in Corpus, they're buddies, right? They're both farmers. One's my customer, one's his customer, right? So now when we go racing, like they both come, Aaron comes and he hangs out in our camp or like at TX2K, we're across the street from or across the way from each other. Like we're grilling food, having some drinks and everything at night. Like, hey, come on over, hang out with us or whatever. And, you know, there's more of a camaraderie, I think, there now. But yeah, I think it's, man, it's tough to like say how I do my thing a certain way, he does his thing a certain way. And, you know, without going into too much detail about like our engine programs and things like that, it's, they're two totally different things and they both work really well.

Well, at the end of the day, right, like you both make some really fast f****** cars.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, that's basically what you're doing here at the end of the day, right?

Correct.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, you're not, and I talked about those, Aaron, you're dipping into a pool of like a limited supply of vehicles, right? There was only so many made and they're not making them anymore.

No, and parts are becoming very like OEM parts, you know. I've road raced my ACR for like the last five years, and we're discussing this, I think, at lunch yesterday. Road racing is really hard on cars. You just stuff melts, brakes, you wear fender liners out, things like that. And it's like, I ordered front fender tubs and rear fender liners, and that little mouthpiece that goes in there, it was $7,000 and I waited like, I think 11 months for it. It's like, I don't want to have a car that's, I have a one of six red and white striped, like it sucks. I don't want to have another viper to build that I need to go road race. I want to road race my ACR, but it's like, it's just not, I don't want to f*** that car up and not be able to fix it, you know?

Right. Well, I don't know, I've seen some cars pretty far apart in here. I feel like there's not much that can be done, you're not gonna be able to fix it.

Yeah, the drag and drive cars, definitely.

Yeah.

So that's gonna be, that customer right there, there's that white and silver striped car back there. And then there's one or two others that I don't think are in this room, but those are the guys that are like, kind of the true racers that want to just go fast and don't care about like, hey, I want to listen to my radio while I'm in the staging lanes. Like, you know, and it's hard to like tell the guys that used to have like, really fast cars three years ago that their car isn't fast anymore, and it's just not going to be fast unless they change something and they, you know, they just don't want to. Like, the sequential stuff, like the motors, the rear ends, turbo systems, all that, like is down pat, obviously proven, but man, it sucks when every three passes, you have to swap a transmission, you know?

What's, where did the love and passion for Vipers come from? Was, did you start with one and begin with it? Or how did you fall into that market?

No, so I opened my shop and I had a black 97 Supra that made like 1,500 wheel and I, like, grenade-ed the transmission. And this was like back in 2013? And you couldn't get V160 parts. They, like, did not make them anymore. And people were asking, like, $12,000 for a f****** used V160. And, like, the whole Tremec conversions weren't out yet. And I was doing production work for Powerhouse Racing and Ross Baird was like, I have a brand new Getrag sitting upstairs. He was like, I'll give it to you. And he, Ricky Crossley, I guess, like, curb checked a Gin 2 Heffner car that he had and it slightly bent the frame. So they totaled it out and Ross bought it back from him. They parted it out, I guess, whatever. And then Ross had this shell that they swapped frames in. He bought a new frame and put a new frame in it. And he said, I'll buy the turbos. I have an intercooler core ready. I have wastegates and blow off valves. You pay, buy the material and you build out the turbo kit and I'll give you the transmission. Right, so I took the car home with me and the transmission was home with that day. We built that car. Ross did the motor in it. Him and his son put the car together. I did the turbo system, all that stuff. And the car's, I think, first pass and this is like, it was at some Texas Speed Syndicate event at Baytown, just some Saturday open track thing. First pass went 770, like 186 miles an hour. Holy s***. Yeah, this is in 2013, 12 years ago. And next thing I know, I had like three or four of them show up to the shop. And then you start looking at the cars and you're like, man, these things are like giant piles of s***, right? They're like flux core, MIG welded tube f****** frames. But then you start looking at the geometry of everything, right? Like the drive shaft is probably this long. You know, the where the motor sits behind the steering rack, the way the suspension is set up, the way. And it's like these are really well set up cars to do multiple things. You can road race them. You can drag race them. You can street race them. And they do all of it really well. Like, but the car needs to be set up for that. I think the big problem with the Viper and the stigmatism of it being like some tail happy, you know, like, remember the GT2's Widowmaker or whatever, they make f****** 400 foot pounds of torque. You're not killing yourself with that. Like, and it's got a 355 in the rear. Like you have to be a f****** moron to do that. I think the problem was most of the people that wrecked them were f****** morons. They shouldn't have had them. And the fact that like, you know, I had one come in here the other day. It had 20 year old tires on it. What do you do with 20, you know what I'm saying? Like, that's not a... You could wreck that going down the street. So I think that's been, you know, the bushings even on the Gen 5s, they go bad, the alignments get knocked out. There's just a lot of, I hate to say it, it's a Dodge and it comes with its Dodge quality issues. You know, when you fix all of them, you have a really, it's one of my favorite cars to drive. You know, I've owned quite a few cars and I've driven a ton of cars in my life. And like, man, I don't think there's anything on a road course as much fun as a manual Viper. Like, fun-wise, yeah, and they're very fun.

How does it compare? Cause you have a GT3 RS as well, right?

Yeah, it just f****** destroys it.

Really? Is your GT3 RS manual as well?

No, no, PDK. It's a Y-Soc, so. Yeah, you can only, the RS's never came manually. You can only get the regular GT3s.

Okay.

So you have a GT3, which is the narrow body, GT3 RS, which is like the turbo body that has the scoops, but it's not turboed. It just goes to the intakes. And then that's the RS, and then you have the RS Y-Soc, carbon roof, all the suspension is spherical. It's like 75 pounds lighter, 45 pounds lighter, whatever the f*** it is, but yeah, that's all those are PDK.

Okay. So you kind of mentioned, like you've gotten to drive a number of things. You've gotten to work on a number of things. Like this is your Huracan on the lift behind us over here.

Yeah.

How does the Viper compare to the Huracans and R8s? Like in your opinion, what do you prefer?

I had an R8 and 21 Miami blue, all every option and I had it for like two months and sold it because I thought the car sucked. If you really want my opinion, like I got that Perfomante and I had it for like two days and I thought it was really cool for the first two days. And then I'm like, man, I just want to go drive my Viper like a f******, I have a 07 manual Porsche, a 997 Turbo. That's like, that and my ACR are probably like two of my all time favorite cars.

Really?

And I've driven like a ton of cars in my life. There's just, my red ACR is not turbo. It's just a nine liter, I have 20s on it for the street and I have 18s for the track. I have almost $35,000 in suspension on that car, but it drives like a Lexus and f****** handles like a f****** F1 car. It's just a really fun car. Is it the fastest thing at Coda? No, because-

There's always someone faster too.

Well, there's always someone faster, a faster car, but it's fast. For a Dodge manual car, it holds its own. With a pro driver, like if you threw Cameron Lawrence in that car, it'd probably be like a 214, 215 car. Cup cars go 210, 208, so like you're four seconds off a cup car in a manual Viper. Where I see the most difference in the carousel, which is like this double apex at Coda, it's like you enter it, you don't even hit the brakes, you just go left at like 80 something miles an hour, and then you hit the one apex, you kind of like drift out and then you come back in real tight to hit the second apex and come out. I'm hitting that second apex at like 120 in that car. Jesus. There's actually, I had a helmet camera on and the steering wheel was 90 degrees and it said 117 miles an hour, like this. I can't do that in my GT3. Really? No, even on slicks. Also, just the fun factor. The GT3's fun, but it gets boring. You know, the Vipers, it's a man's car. On a hot day, it's going to make you f****** very dizzy. It's hot. You know, you have to know how to drive it. It will overheat if you don't pay attention to it. Like a lot of people just want to sit in that like 6,000 to 7,000 range. I keep it in like that 45 to 5,500 range. I don't have any overheating issues, but you got to pay attention. You can push down a hot day, but the car generates a lot of heat. So when it's 110 degrees outside in your road racing, you're in a suit, you're in a helmet. Obviously, you don't have any air conditioning. You can put a cool suit on. That would be the smart thing to do. But manual car, shifting, turning, clutching, you get out and there have been times like I've gone in my trailer just f****** dizzy as f***. You know, like it just, it literally made me sick. GT3, like I can f****** go all day. No problem with the air conditioning on. I don't have the windows tinted, so I just roll them up like in the summertime. So like the flag people don't see you and like f****** have the air conditioning. It does the same thing over and over and over again. You know?

So you mentioned the suspension thing. What's your choice of suspension in that car?

Penskies.

Okay.

Penskies on everything.

Do you do that for your turbo cars as well?

Everything.

Okay.

Everything. So like if you look at one, there's just like a welded clevis for the control arms, like the lower control arms. And the frame winds up usually breaking there. So we like reinforce that whole area. And then it's got like just this little metal square strip, like brazed on it. And those like on a very, the clevis is like this very thin piece of metal. So with the rubber bushings, once they start to wear, everything starts moving. And you'll actually wind up on Fabricio's car, we wind up pushing the whole control arm through the frame. Yeah, so he calls me, he's like, hey man, there's something weird with the car. It doesn't want to go straight anymore. I'm like, yeah, you have that variable control arm, but like variable camber and mod going on, you know? But yeah, like so to do the bushings properly, like to do the b***** setup, like what's on my Viper, you got to pull all the control arms off, pull all the suspension off, disassemble everything, knock all the rubber s*** out of everything, right? That's like just a week of work right there. And then we send them off to this place that like they see and they basically with a CNC machine, like born, like since all the cars are slightly different, you have to measure everything on the cars. Like so basically the spacers are going to kind of all be different car to car. You have to measure it. This is like the b***** setups, like what's on my car. And then they CNC like a little circlip, you put a spherical bearing in there. You know, same thing, you put a roller bearing for the ball joints, you know, trying to think what else? Penskis, all that other stuff. And then once you do all the heat insulation, everything, like you got, you know, a three day alignment, ride height alignment, corner balance, and like another, you know, I don't know, f****** let's say 10 to 12 days of work, right? And then another 15, $20,000 in parts. So yeah, it adds up, people don't realize it, it adds up really quick. You know, we've been using lately the Doug Shelby kits for like the street cars. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of like a hybrid spherical Darylin kit, much easier to install, but it's still like a 30 hour job, plus the alignment, plus ride height, plus, you know, so you know, you'll be like 25 grand into that set up.

But they must be fun because even talking, we already talked to somebody about Vipers, the amount of work that has to go in and the money that has to go into making them do what you guys can make them do, it sounds painstaking. So it must be worth it.

You just need to know exactly what you're getting into. And that's the problem with the Viper. You know, you need to know it's a Dodge. You need to know that like, it doesn't matter if it's a low mileage car, the rubber bushings are eventually going to crack. There can be, you know, we had a car, this guy from like South Texas was here in Austin with his wife, calls me, he's like, dude, my windows are rolling up and down, the doors are popping open, closing. Like, I don't know what's going on. I have like a seven hour drive home. Jaime came over here. They had the can bus issue. It was just a pin that wasn't crimped right. Jaime found it, pulled it, re-crimped it, everything worked again, but that's your typical dog s***.

You know, that happened to one of my buddies too. We, the door would not close. And we were on a cruise like an hour from the city.

Yeah, it just starts. I put an anti-gravity battery in my car and all of a sudden, like the f****** window started moving up and down and like the dash was flickering and well, but I want to actually, we were in Florida. I want to buy just a normal battery, throwing a normal battery in there. I drove, I drove the car from Tampa to the Keys and back. So I was like, man, I don't want, God forbid, it starts pouring. My wife, well, my girlfriend at the time was in the car and you know. But yeah, that's you got to know what you're getting into. It's like you. It seems like a pain in the a**, right? Well, look at how much money people sink into f****** resto mods, right? Like you have, you know, what does that place up in Detroit speed? Dutch Brothers, like all these places and like granted, it's like some of the best bodywork you've ever seen, but they're just taking your standard LS engine, whatever thing, right? Conversion kit, dropping it in with some split wire loom that's not concentric wrapped and you have a half a million dollar resto mod pretty easily, you know? So if you do the math on what you're going to spend on all this, like all of it's expensive. Like it doesn't matter what chassis you buy. I bet that guy's got f****** a quarter million dollars in that Supra. You know, he loves his Supra. So he just, you know, it's one of those things like if you love the car, he's kind of deal with none of this s***'s cheap or painless. Let's be real, like all of it has its headaches, all of it has its, you know, every platform, you know? But yeah, that's, I don't know.

I got to give props to Noel for the highlight he did of when they did the go hard episode with you. That quote has been living rent free in my head. You think building 3000 horsepower is f****** cheap?

Well, that's, you know what's crazy? I actually, I called Aaron the other day because somebody called me and they wanted a quote on like 2000 horsepower, cage, all this stuff, or maybe 1900, whatever it was. So I called Aaron, I'm like, hey, not to dig too much deep in your business, but if somebody called your shop and asked for XYZ, what would you be like, dude, we were within a few dollars of each other, right? And I was like, cool. And he goes, why? And I'm like, because this guy called here and he was like, is that with the car? And I'm like, no, like, what do you, I think the quote was like between 275 and 300. And he, for like an 1800X package or something. And he's like, you know, nobody realizes how much time goes into this, but it's not the time that goes into the car, right? Like that's one thing. It's the time that goes into the development of the motors, the turbo kits, how many times I've pulled the motor, I'm sure Aaron's pulled tons of them, developing, you know, his engine program, our engine program, cam profiles, all that stuff. Like, you know, it's like your iPhone. That's probably a f****** $9 f****** thing made overseas, you know, but you're paying $1,500 for it because of all the development that went into it, right? But that thing probably has like a thousand percent margin where like me and Aaron are working like 15 to 20 percent, you know? That's, I tell people, if you don't have the car and the build in your bank account to not care if it's gone, right? Like complete utter total loss, this is not your game. Yeah. That's the reality of it. Like if that's your baby and you want nothing to happen to it and this and that, like have a very low power car. Like our 1300X cars is a low power car. They make 1450, 1500 wheel and they last f****** forever. Right? Don't try to go compete. And I have this, I want to compete at TX2K in the Elite 8. Cool. Put like six, $700,000 away, you know? And they're like, they're like, what do you mean? Like how, like you're going to need two transmissions, two diffs, right? You're going to need if you want f****** a clutch car, two clutches, but either way, like if you don't want that car to be down, you need to have two of everything, you know? And that's the reality of a race car. Like Billy Stockland has been hanging around here a lot and he's become a good friend of mine, you know?

Is that the guy from T1 or I'm blanking on someone else?

No, Billy Stockland is like this seven time NHRA World Champion.

Okay, someone else, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, he was Stevie Jackson's crew chief, he was crew chief for Al-Nabi Racing. He's probably like one of the baddest m************ on the planet for like chassis set up and knowing what's going on, right? Okay. People would pay him a lot of money to chief on their cars and he like lives up the street and wants to come over like on Saturdays and like drink beer and hang out. And then obviously talk about cars. But he's a little older, so his wife doesn't like him traveling as much and he's got a daughter in high school now and everything. So he comes here and gets his car fixed here or whatever and hangs out with me. But they would have three motors, right? They used to run like big Pro Mod stuff. Then have three motors and like this f****** gantry that would come out. And basically they could swap a motor in 40 minutes in between rounds on a Pro Mod s***. It's like that's a professional race team. Like you want to go professional racing, but you want me to have motors in stock for you. You want me to like put you to the front of the line. Like cool, pay for it. You know, like that's the reality at the end of the day. This is still a business. Like friends are friends. And like, you know, I was talking to actually one of Aaron's customers the other day where he lives in here in Texas, kind of old buddy of mine. We're just, I forget what he called me about. It was something, we're laughing about something we saw on Facebook. And he was like, yeah, I don't want Aaron to go out of business. I love him building my car. So like my homie hookup is like, he sometimes puts me in front of other people, right? But like, I don't expect my friends to lose money to work on my fun stuff, you know? Right. So it's kind of like the same thing we were talking about yesterday when you guys were here for lunch. Have you ever seen a broke contractor, a broke plumber, a broke roofer? Like, no, they have zero overhead compared to what we have. Yes, they have trucks, they have this, they have employees, but they don't have a $10 million umbrella garage keepers policy. If this place burns down, I have to replace all these cars. You know what I'm saying? Or they don't have payments on CNC machines, $130,000 dinos, like R&D cars, you know, all this stuff. And then if a shingle is not perfect, it doesn't matter. If your door frame is off a quarter inch, like you're either going to notice and they're going to come back and reshimm it, they're going to get this at, like, if we're off by a few 10,000ths of an inch, like that's a good motor versus a bad motor, you know? Or if like you don't hone a block right and it's tapered, that's the difference between a good motor and a bad motor. And it's like, or like, I'm just going to use an example that, a theoretical example, but like, let's say you get a bad batch of rods, f****** you break a rod, who's on the hook for that? The customer is going to want you to pay for it. He's like, well, why did my rod break and all these other people didn't? It must be something you did. And that's the thing, you want to give a good product, but like you have all these other variables. So it makes it very difficult to.

Well, not to mention, even if it's the company who made the rods fault, they're going to be like, oh yeah, sure. Send it back, we'll give you new ones.

New ones, yeah. Yeah, that didn't stop from windowing my block and like having the customer up my a**. And then you got to stop what you're doing to work on all these other customers' cars to work on this car and, you know.

We have another friend like that. Yeah, we'll send you a new set of wheels. Well, everything else is toast.

Yeah. Yeah.

If you can't just slide it in, get it to fit right or it bends a little bit funny, it's time to get some proper mandrel bends. Whether you are a weekend warrior or a shop owner, Haze Performance has what you need to get your charge piping or exhaust dialed. From flex couplers to T-bolt clamps, if you want to lay down some pipe, go to hazeperf.com and use Minnoxide 5 to get 5% off any Haze Performance products. That's hazeperf.com. Let's get back to the show. So you're doing a lot of the billet stuff now, right? For example, you had the billet blocks. Can you touch on that a little bit?

Yeah, so that's been a long kind of R&D project that's coming to its final closure. So I didn't realize when we designed it, we don't have main caps on it. So it's a girdle. And the way we used to do main caps at the machine shop is you take the stock cap, put it basically the centering tool, right? I think there's like 58,000, 60,000 left on the caps, like the billet cap. So we have a fixture that bolts to a lathe and you bolt the cap to that. And you could take, let's say, 50,000, leave like 10,000 on it, right? And then we'll bore the 10,000 out of the middle first and then move the centering tool and do the two outsides, right? And then you can hone it in. It's always been great. The Viper block is so long, it's very difficult to do main caps on. People are like, you want $3,500 for main caps? I'm like, well, the caps are $1,200, $1,300, you know? And then, yeah, it's like a f****** two and a half, sometimes three day job, right? Because sometimes you got to go in, like you took too much out of one cap and the other caps weren't enough just because of how long the block is, you know? And then you have aluminum on a chromoly cap. It's very hard. We flip the motors right side up. You're supposed to do them upside down, but like, so it's riding on the chromoly, not the aluminum, but it's just a very cumbersome process. So anyway, back to the billet block. The problem we didn't foresee was it's just bored. There's no caps to center it on. So we're making some fixturing plates for like a boring bar to get the proper machine to do a Viper motor. They're very hard to find used or they're very, very, very expensive. So we've just always done it that way. And then we have a son-in-home that hones them. That's not the problem. But yeah, that's pretty much the only thing the billet block is waiting on is these. They're being made now. They're basically like these end caps we're going to put on a fixturing table and then make our own kind of line bore deal out of that.

So what made the need for those then?

Well, we didn't realize how we started that project in 2019 because we twisted one block and cracked another. Okay. And then the Lambo guys all had billet blocks already. So it was actually Fabrizio that was like, I want a billet block because I think he... We were like refreshing the motor and I forget what we did. We had to put a sleeve in it or something. When we indexed it, the motor was twisted, but the block wasn't cracked. It was like twisted three thousandths. And he's like, we need a billet block. So that's kind of what started it. And over the last few years of developing the billet block, we've just kept pushing him harder and harder and harder and realized like, man, we can make 3,500 horsepower on the stock block.

Which that is crazy by itself too, right?

Do look at Brett LaSalle. He's got to be making 3,000 plus wheel on a f****** OEM. What is it? A Coyote motor?

Coyote, yeah.

That's f****** nuts. Eight cylinder stock block and they're not, I don't know how many motors he goes through, what's behind the scene, but it looks like he did a whole Dragon Drive thing with, you know, went what, 607 at 232?

Yeah.

That's f****** flying.

Coyote swap Vipers, is that what I'm hearing? Yeah.

Well, it's also Dragon Drive is kind of like the other one, those like ultimate ones that shows you like just how much you could beat on a car, because like what, it's four events, five events.

Yeah, but you got to drive through the event. It's not even like the car living through the event. The car's got to drive down the street, you know. I forgot who it was. I think it was like Bob Lutz or something. He would like go to the track, pull the radiators out of the car, take all the coolant out, put it back on methanol, and then run the car and then put coolant back in it or something. I don't know if it was, don't quote me on that, but I remember seeing something crazy like that. It's like, man, you guys are taking, it's kind of like the whole street outlaw stuff. It's like, those are supposed to be street racers. No, you have a full blown f****** pro mob that you're just racing and f****** somewhere that has telephone poles near you. The only thing you guys are doing is being really f****** dumb. Like, that's about it at night.

So, do you, what's your thought on the whole street car debate? I know it's all over Facebook every day, like, you know, this is a street car, this isn't. What defines it for you?

Can you valet it at a wedding?

Well, hold on, most people can't even drive a manual if they valet.

Can you valet the car if the valet can drive a manual? My thing is, would you be embarrassed to valet it at a wedding? You're not going to valet Brett LaSalle's car at a f****** high end wedding.

No.

You'll take a f****** nice 97 Supra valet, you'll take an ACR and valet, you'll take a f****** Lambo and valet. Are you going to take a methanol f****** billet block f****** on 15 drag car with a drag wing and valet it at a wedding? No. It smells. You're not going to want to smell. You know what I'm saying? That's what I would say is, can you valet the car at a wedding?

Oh, I've never heard that approach to it. I like that one.

That's different. Yeah, I agree.

Because everybody's definition of a street car is like some f****** b*******, you know, like, right. The true definition of a street car is like, bro, does it pass inspection like a state inspection? There's nothing that does, you know, so that in that theory, everything's a f****** race car. You know, that would be my my my best description of it. Like, you know, does it have power steering? Does it have air conditioning? Can you take it on a 100 mile round trip without having to fill up, you know, on methanol or, you know, put ice in the tank every three seconds? I think what's really cool about the Lambos is the fact that they're all drive DCT, you know, so you can still something Porsches. You can get them to drive so smooth, you know, with the DCT stuff versus like, you know, you want some crazy power stuff. The sequentials, like, that is a driver's transmission. Can it be smooth? Yes, but it's always going to be a little loud. It takes a lot of the Streetcar attributes away from it versus like, you know, keeping it manual. We have a lot of guys, that great car over there, Ralpho, that's a 2,600 horsepower manual, non-dog box manual, like PPG manual gear set inside of it. So it's kind of funny because at the half mile, there's now this big debate, should they allow dog boxes? Cause there's still H pattern versus clutch cars, right? Like synchro cars and everybody's arguing about it. But like at the end of the day, the cars came with manual synchro transmissions, right? So how much more of a Streetcar can you get? That makes 2,600 wheel with a manual transmission. You know, that car can drive to Houston and f****** back, you know, like air conditioning, power steering, all that stuff, you know. That's what I would call a Streetcar, you know. Yeah, it makes a ton of power. You put a sequential in it, I would say you're taking a little of the Streetcar attributes out of it. Like that's where I guess the Lambo guys, you know, they're, you have four driven wheels versus two driven wheels. You know, you have a DCT transmission, you have, you know, a ton of technology in those cars versus like the big dumb Dodge, you know.

Well, we were talking about that yesterday too. You said that the all wheel drive unnerves you a little bit more than driving a real world drive car.

I can be, I've been f****** sideways through the traps, like where the f****** back end is like, you know, going in first at 215 miles an hour in Hondo. And like you see the in car video and I'm saving it, right? But I'm driving it, right? I'm physically driving it. It looped and, you know, I did whatever I should have let off. The bumpster was off in the car and it just f****** got away. I stayed in it. I shouldn't have. It was me being stupid. The all-wheel drive car is like, man, when they lose it, it's like, you're just along for the ride. There is no like, they do this weird s*** where like, I guess like the best way I can describe it is like, the front end will start torque steering this way, but the back end feels like it's still wanting to go straight. You know, so it just, and there's no correcting it. It's like, it's very, very, very difficult. We're like a real-world drive car. I mean, it's a real-world drive car. You've done donuts in your life. You know, you can figure out how to save it. They just come, I was testing that orange Perf we did, and Cody had the anti-lag a little too spicy, and I came off the anti-lag at like 18 pounds, which is probably all in, you know, 1400 wheel. And it just, I wasn't expecting it. It just was like, it threw me like three lanes, you know? Yeah. And it was like, I let off, tried to get back in it, then it does this thing where it starts like, you know, moving around on you. It's just, yeah, it's very difficult. I definitely feel like the Viper is a 10 times more stable car.

Which again, it goes the complete opposite of what people expect, like you talked about earlier.

I think what's happened is, you have, this goes back to the driver, right? What I was saying here in my YouTube-ers or whatever. If you have a really good driver that knows what the f*** he's doing, and you go to a racetrack, do you see all-wheel drive top fuel cars? No. Do you see all-wheel drive f****** F1 cars? Right? Everything's been real-wheel drive, right? In racing for a reason. Now, these cars are all-wheel drive, and it's like, I believe it's there to save your a**, right? Have a car that you can drive in the rain, like a really cool, nice street car. It's all-wheel drive. Launch it, do this stuff. You know, and yes, they're very fast, but I think people start to use that as a crutch for not being a good driver, right? And you have these Draggy Wars, right? With all these guys, Draggy Racing shops, with DCT cars or air-shifted sequentials or this or that. If you want to see something cool, put a bunch of manual guys together and see who has the fastest Draggies, right? In a rural drive car.

True.

That's what I would say is the true testament. Like you have two driven wheels and a clutch and a foot, and two hands. Like that's what kind of like, that car was cool. Like I told you the first two days and then I was like, man, this s*** is kind of boring. Like if you really enjoy driving a car, a manual car is kind of the end all. And you can't, what sucks is, there's no cool new manual cars to modify these days. Like, cars have just, like we were talking about this the other day. If I had to get into a different market right now, what is there to get into? And we're like, dude, there's no really cool cars. Like, what are you going to do? Turbo a Pista or modify an SF90? Like, they're not going to be what, like, a Lambo, an R8, a Supra, a Viper or a GTR will ever be. You're never going to get the performance out of it that way. Yeah, you'll have a cool street car to go cruise around in, maybe 1,000, 1,200 horsepower if you want to go nuts, but it's nothing iconic that you're going to have. It's going to make a statement, like one of these cars, for going fast and big power. And there's just nothing out there. We were thinking about it. Like, if I had to get into another platform, there's nothing I would think is really f****** cool, you know? The 992 Turbo Porsches are awesome. Like, I love Porsche. I think it's one of the best brands out there, you know? But AIM has that whole thing locked down. There's only so many people that want to do big power, 992 Turbo Porsches. Most of those guys are like your 1,200 horsepower range, you know? But they're very fast. They're very, Sheepy called me the other day and he did like some bolt-ons and a flash on a 992 Turbo S. And he's like, dude, these transmissions are way f****** better than the Huracan R8 Trannies. I was like, yeah, they're f******, it's a DCT, but it's, you know, the PDK stuff is, you know, best s*** out there. So, so-

Well, it's kind of funny that I feel like you would definitely have an opinion on that because I think you have a problem saying no, because there's some weird s*** in here that I don't think anybody else would work on.

Yeah, that is true.

I'd say when it comes to exotic s***, you've got it down.

So, the Supra is my buddy's car. He's just doing a transmission. Jaime was doing it for him. He was rebuilding a sequential for TX-2K. The saline, we thought was going to be a cool, easy project to u***** it. And we just opened up a can of worms. And then we opened up another can of worms. And then we probably opened up a coffin with a dead body full of worms. But, but yeah, that's, it's coming to a close like yeah, we fired the car off and it f****** shot like a three foot stream of water out the back. So, motor had to come out and like the problem with that car is it takes up when you're working on it, it takes up three car spaces. Yeah. So like you need to have an empty shop. You need to, you know, it needs to be like nothing around it. You need to have everything laid out. There's no, we're lucky, Saleen moved down the street from California and they were pretty cool with helping to get us manuals and all that stuff for it and any of the information we needed on it, but still like it is a pain in the a** to work on that car. And then what else do we have in here that's a pain in the a**? Oh, that f****** nightmare from Andy House at GT2. Like it's on a Motek M800, it came here. I guess Ben Beckhart bought it on Bring a Trailer. I don't know. That's where the story differs, whatever, right? I think there's probably some intoxicated f****** Bring a Trailer purchasing going on. That car is a f****** nightmare. Whoever built that car, like you can Google 996 Turbo f******, or 996 GT2 RSR, and that thing came up, and I will f****** gladly say this to your face, whoever f******, if you know all these magazines, you should never touch a f****** car again in your life. You are a dumb m***********, right? Like I will say that to your face and f******, for the nightmare you built out of that car, you bastardized the car and ruined it.

If you're a young enthusiast learning to wrench or an experienced shop owner already running 7s at the drag strip, the High Performance Academy is a resource where all horsepower junkies can go to expand their skillset. Whether you are learning how to build an engine, tune your ECU, or dial in your suspension setup for some weekend autocross, the HP Academy has the perfect step-by-step course for you. They provided the listeners of the show with a special 55% off discount code that you can use risk-free on any course that you're choosing. Use code MINNOX to get 55% off, or click the link in the show description to choose a course of your liking. Go check it out. Let's get back to the show.

Okay. And then I have to fix all this s***. Like you're talking, it's got an M800, so the roof scoop, right? Porsches don't have problems overheating, right? The roof scoop goes to an inner cooler on top of the engine. You want to talk about high and low pressure zones. The inner coolers, where they used to go on the side of the car, are now oil coolers. There's like seven fuel pumps inside the car, because they put like some CupCar hybrid bladder thing. So it's got four fuel pumps sitting in the corners of this thing that all feed this tank inside of a tank, right? But it's where the float is. So like you have your tank here, and then you have this tank in the middle, the fuel pumps feed it, and the top is all open. So like when you fill it up with gas, it's always filled, right? And then there's two fuel pumps in there. You can't get to any of it. It's all welded inside the f****** car, right? So like when we got the car, it supposedly made like 1125 wheel on ethanol, right? It didn't have enough fuel pump to make 500 on pump gas. All the boost tables were zeroed out. It's got some sequential shifter in it that goes to an electronic box. It does have some cool s***. It's got a cup car engine in it, you know, upgraded turbos and stuff, but like things showed up here, smoking its f****** a** off. They had no check valves on the turbos. Like, it's got ITBs on a turbo car, right? Like, why did you do all this s***? You took something, oh, it's now no longer drive by wire either. It's drive by cable. It's like actually got a manual cable in it, right? Because it's got an M800 on it. M800, you need an expansion module, like the drive by wire controller to get that to work. So like they didn't even piggyback the stock ECU and try to take over boost or something. They just got rid of stuff that was really well engineered by Porsche and put whatever f****** disaster they came up with in their f****** head.

Just going backwards in technology.

Dude, like just, I mean the fuel rails look like f****** utter s***, like bird welds on f****** fittings and f****** just, I mean, the people should never touch a f****** car. And I'll say that to your f****** face, like you are a f****** moron.

Do you want to kind of touch on what got you into that whole Huracan development? Cause have you worked on Huracans quite a bit in the past or is this kind of you venturing into that world?

So we did Andrew Chan's, we've done a four or five bolt-on cars. We're using BoostLogic TurboKits, tuning them, stock ECU. Andrew's got a MoTec fuel system, all that stuff. And then, you know, my customers were like, we've been waiting for you to get into this cause we want to have both, right? We have a great relationship with you. We have been building motors for other shops that have been for the last year or so, that have been doing well, right? So it just kind of made sense to kind of venture into that market because our customers that we already have good relationships with don't want to venture out there. We've kind of already have the motor thing figured out. So yeah, I got a shop development car. And yeah, so we'll see how that goes. But the Vipers stuff is definitely dying out. Like you said, there's only like 2400 Gen 5s built. We've turboed over 200 of them. So, you know, f******...

That's pretty legit, by the way. That's a cool thing.

Yeah, I think we're like 190 something. But then you have like head cam cars, 9 liter cars, cars that we've pulled engines out just to rebuild the motors, like, you know, stock bearing failures and stuff. But yeah, it's just like at some point that pond, that small pond you're in is already shrinking. And then I'm going to say, like, you know, the economy, you know, the last four years has not been the best, right? It's for, we're a luxury item. Like luxury items are the first things to go. Like, look at Rolexes. They f****** plummeted the last two years, you know? So it's just something else to venture out, supplement our customers. Like, you know, I just, everybody's kind of doing it, go that way. Like, I like the way they look. You know, they're cool cars. They're fast. There's no doubt about it. Like, you're not, you have four driven wheels and a DCT transmission with a motor in the back. Like, how are you going to f*** that up? Yeah. It's really nice getting into a car that doesn't, like, creak, rattle, the interior's in one piece. Like, you know, the Viper, you close the door, the window falls. Like, when Colin went 233 and a half mile, the f****** window was in the door. Yeah. Like, it fell in the door. Yeah, it was making 200 plus mile an hour hits with one window.

Well, I know that was a common complaint at one point in time in the Vipers. I know the interiors got better, but it was like you were sitting in a PT Cruiser or a Viper. You couldn't tell the f****** difference.

The Jim 5 is a lot better, but like it's still like it just falls apart, you know? But I mean, you know, like the dashes peel, but f****** Ferraris do the same s***. My wife's Kayan, it's got f******, we bought it brand new in like the first f****** year, started to get a wrinkle in the dash and it's got the UV protected f****** tint. It's got, it's garage capped, all this s***. I just, I think it's most of the s*** quality has just gone down, but Dodge is notorious for not being great, you know. Just little s***, like creeks, rattles, interior panels, like they glue the clips onto like, there's these little, your B pillar, I guess, you would call it right there, that goes to your quarter panel. There's these, they kind of look like this. It's like a little S looking piece of, you know, carpet or whatever. And it's got these metal, like, prongs, right, that go into, like, just literally some stamped piece of f****** thing that they put a sheet metal screw through or something, right, and boom, they put that on there. Well, like, you have to be insanely f****** careful pulling those out, because if not, the glue breaks. Who glues a f******, a piece of plastic, right, to a clip that is put to metal? Like, obviously-

That's what you do after you already broke it once, the first time.

Correct? Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly, you know? Like, you could be as careful as you want, you still break them, you know? Just little s***, the f****** gas caps fail all the time, so you gotta stick that little white plastic thing in there, and like, you know, customers get really frustrated about that, oh, you did the fuel system on it, now I'm like, dude, it's a common problem with the car. Like, you know, my car, my ACR, I just have to hold, like, one inch pound of pressure on the gas hose for it not to f****** trick that little, I guess there's like these three prongs in there and one of them breaks or something, but it's just, it's your typical Dodge s***, you know? That's the one nice thing about like the Huracan R8 thing, like you get in them to move them and you're just not like, oh, this Dodge, you know? The other thing is we're starting to see a lot of the cars, you know, the Gen 5 was from 2013 through 2017, up until about 2021, most of the cars we were getting were like some 5,000 miles. Now we're starting to get a lot of the cars that are 25, 30, 35,000 miles, and you're running into just a lot of like OEM junk, you know? Like they're falling apart and people want you to like stock motor turbo cars. I'm like, dude, like your car's got like 40,000 miles on it, it's probably going to kick a rod out if we, you know, if we turbo this thing, they just don't, well, you know, you've turboed all these other cars in the past and this and that, it's like, I mean, it's an expensive car to own. Like it's, I'm going to venture out and say, like once you start getting in like the crazy big power stuff, like it's all the same s***, right? It's all the kind of the same realm you have. The only thing that sucks about the Huracan R8 is like the transmissions. They are very f****** expensive. I think like, I got a quote to do this white car. I was going to send it to Boost Logic and then I wound up working out a deal with PPG, actually Precision Racing where I can install the PPG gear sets here in the United States or actually sell them to people. But before I did that, I was going to have Boost Logic build this, that white car's transmission and to do everything, just the whole Datsun catalog with Boost Logic axles, stub shafts, all that s*** was like $92,000, right? Like that is f****** insane, $92,000, which makes you go back to like your $25,000 fully built M&M trans sounds a lot f****** better, you know, and when you smoke it, it's f****** $1,100 in f****** clutches, you know? But that's that's the kind of the caveat with those things, right? That's the Achilles heel, right? Because they still break, you know?

Do you see yourself going into full blown competition with these? Are you just building streetcars for people that want 13, 1400 horse, the whole gamut, I guess?

I would like to, you know, we have a few customers that want to build big power cars. What we're going to do is get that 2000, 2300, 2400 range really dialed. And then I heard people are having some issues, overheating issues with the some of the billet block companies that are out there. Okay. We'll see when we get to cross that bridge. Right. Hopefully once we get there, you know, they're for sale for everybody, right? So anybody can buy them. Maybe that will be more lined out.

Okay.

But yeah, I think, I mean, listen, one of these cars that makes, like Chen's car, that makes 1450, 1470 wheel, that is a very f****** fast car. Like with a 30 mile an hour headwind, his first time driving, he went 208.5 miles. So, you figure a 213, 214 car somewhere, like all the cars were down seven mile an hour that day. It's fun as s***. It's not lazy. Just get up and go as it makes all the right noises, right? So like you have something at 1450 to 1600, that's just like a really fun car. And I think that's like one of the things a lot of people are losing sight on is like, fun street cars don't need to be a hybrid race car. Have a race car, have a street car.

Does that scare you how accessible 1000 or 1200 horsepower is now?

No, because like you drive a 1200 horsepower car and it feels like it's broken. Like it's f***** up, like, you know, like I forget whose car I was in the other day, but I was like, man, this thing's f****** slow. Like, and you've driven, once you've driven 2000, 3000, 2500, over and over and over again, you've gone 230 and a half mile. You know, you've made, you've rolled a car at 200 miles an hour f****** 10 times. Like nothing really feels fast anymore. Unless you start getting, listen, there is nothing about 2500 to 3000 horsepower that will ever feel slow, but 1200 horsepower feels like the cars are broken. And now you have Teslas that make 1000 horsepower. Like, you know, you have an electric car that you can get in that literally makes 1000. What does the new Honda Civic Type R make? Like f****** 350 wheel, 400 wheel? Yeah, so you have like a car you'll buy your high school kid. You know, a high school kid f****** that makes more power than my 300 ZX Twin Turbo did in the 90s.

Good point.

You know, so yeah, I don't think 1200 horsepower being, plus all the technology we have today, it's not like, man, I f****** like, I put a 410 in my f****** Fox body with a f****** like whipple on it and f****** has no traction control on them. Just banging gears and zinging to the f****** limiter every time. You know, it's a different, it's a much different game than it was like, you know, when I was in high school, you and me went to high school more at the same time, I guess you were what, 15 years younger than us.

Yeah, no, I remember when 220 horsepower Fox bodies were like, King of the f****** street.

Yeah, if you made 350 wheel, you were the s***, right? You know, we used to f****** pull, I had a 300 ZX Twin Turbo in high school. I used to f****** just put C16 in it and pull the wastegate lines. Car made like, I don't know, 411 wheel or something. When I did that, that thing was like unstoppable. And I thought it was the fastest f****** thing in the world until I put bigger turbos on it. Made like 550, I'll never forget the first time I laid into 550 wheel, I was like, this is so f****** fat. I let off, it scared me. And I'm like, and then by the end of the day, I was like, okay, I need more power. But no, I don't think, if you look at everything I've done, I think that 1500 horsepower is the sweet spot for all street cars. You're not going to something f****** crazy, you're gonna have something that's super f****** reliable and fun. I think the biggest thing everybody's lost sight of in the last few years is the fun factor, right? Have a car that's really fun and reliable, and then just build a race car to go really f****** fast. Don't have your street car be your race car, so when your race car is broken, you don't have a street car.

Yeah, when it's broken, you're not having fun.

Yeah, you're not having fun or, you know, like, oh man, this thing smells like s*** or puffs f******, you know. So, yes, your wore out race engine after f****** two years of spraying a 400 shot with 288s on it is gonna f****** puff oil. Like, you know, I'm sorry, like, we're gonna, that's something you're gonna have to re-ring and put a f****** set of pistons in every two years. Versus like, you know, Arthur, Kirk Roliano, he owns Boost Live. I think he's got like 20 something thousand miles on his 1300X car. And besides him breaking the stock trans, we put a PPG in it, it's never had a problem since. He's had a relay go bad on that car. That's it. Like, you know, he puts oil in it, spark plugs, and just beats the f*** out of it. And it's, you know, that's fun, right? It's a manual car, it's fun. You're not gonna have to worry about the f****** reverse lockout breaking on a f****** sequential. Or like, you know, you're going out on a date and you wanna go like take your Viper out, like then the f****** chick's like, is your transmission broken? Like 50 years sounds like it's f****** about to fall out of it, you know?

It vibrates nice though.

You know, but it's just like, we tried to mesh those two things for so long, have like these b***** street cars that would keep up with race cars, and then like everything became a f****** race car. Like, you know, we were going back to the f****** street outlaw guys, they're racing pro mods on the street. There was nothing street car about that. Like if you guys wanna go race street cars, go build a f****** Fox body with a full f****** interior. You know what I'm saying? Twin Turbo Fox body that makes, you know, a small tire car or something and then go race yourselves or six speed cars or something, you know? I don't know. That's just kind of like my view on it now. Maybe I'm getting old.

Well, some of that s*** gets ridiculous for the street too. Like you said, just being idiots. We went to some cash day stuff where I'm like, I'm gonna rolling s*** off a trailer and doing this in the middle of the night and there's people standing all over the place. I'm like, this is f****** insane.

It's intense.

Yeah.

Look, I'll never forget. We were in Oklahoma at a street car takeover in 2020 and this guy with a fox body wanted to race McRippins. We're like, cool. We go out and the guy had to pull over three times to full his, he had a truck following him with a 55 gallon barrel of methanol. He had a five gallon fuel cell and the dude is literally wearing a helmet with no hood, right? F****** some, I don't know what the f*** was in, what motor it was or whatever, right? But a methanol turbo f****** TH400 car on an X275. McRippen's put 30 f****** cars on that thing, but if you take that car to the drag strip, it's going to f****** smoke McRippen's. So there's your, do you want a race car or a street car? McRippen's car at that time was making 1650 wheel. That car was f****** fast and it lived f****** a very long, nice life. Well, not nice life, but it got the s*** kicked out of it. But it's one of those things like at 3,000 horsepower, you have to have multiple cars. You can't have one car that does everything you want it to do. It's just not a reality anymore. The Supras back in the day, everybody had a 1,250 horsepower Supra back in 2006, 2007. Manual car, that's more of a street car, fun. And now that's where the top dogs back then, right? Now a 1,200 horsepower Supra is a dime a dozen. But back to what you were saying about the touch on the subject of fast cars too is, look at that dude that died the other day in that BMW in New York.

Oh yeah, I saw that one.

Oh yeah.

That kid with the dreads or whatever, that is a total f****** waste of life for what? To show that you're a f****** b***** street racer? If you look at the car, if he had even the remote amount of proper safety equipment, he probably would have lived because it looked like the car was split in half behind the seats. He had no seatbelts, he had a f****** carbon bucket, no interior, no cage, no nothing, and you're driving a tin can 180 miles an hour on a side street with trees. A tree is going to win. A tree, a pole, a building, you know, f****** multiple parked cars is going to win over your car going f****** 190 miles an hour. And you're like the pro mods going 200 miles an hour. I can't see at night, right? So those guys are running with no f****** headlights on them. I don't even know how you can, I can't drive. It was funny, I didn't drive my ACR for like a really long time. I gave, it was back during COVID and pistons were backordered and I would build a short block for the car, a nine liter, and then a customer would come want it and I'm like, f***. So for like, I was like two or three short blocks, finally the guys for my birthday f****** put the car together and like surprised me at my house with it. And I didn't drive it for almost a year. And me and my wife went out to dinner. She took my GT3 and the f****** front windshield center on my Viper. And she's called me, she's like, what the f*** are you doing? I'm like, I can't see out of the front windshield. So I was in the right lane going like 45 miles an hour on the highway. So I can't imagine racing a pro mod with orange street lamps illuminating a f******, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's stupid. It's like, if you want to kill yourself, like sure, but like you have the younger generations of kids that look up to you, you know? And it's like, as you start to get older, you got to realize like, you have to set an example and like being some f****** dumb redneck that f****** is like trying to just be some machismo is like not the look people want to do anymore, you know?

Yeah. Well, have you seen what's popular out there now? The girls don't give a s*** of your macho anymore. You can wear skinny jeans and yeah.

Don't even get me started on that s***.

Flip flops and s***. What the f***?

Yeah. I like wearing flip flops, but.

I saw the pink one out there. I'm like, it's a singular pink flip flop.

Dude, I don't know where that showed up. Nobody's ever thrown it out. It just sits in the f****** parking lot. But yeah, Austin, man. I remember Austin, you could just wear flip flops and board shorts right off the lake and go to the nicest steakhouse. And now it's like, f***, I don't know if my f****** server is a f****** male that turned into a female, a female that turned into a male, or just a f****** whack job. Like, this city sucks.

Yeah. Okay, so you touched a little, a lot on safety there, right? You had a pretty nasty crash last year too, though.

Yes, two years ago.

Was it two years ago?

It will be August this year and a half.

Okay, yeah, yeah. Sure. Yep. So, I mean, obviously that was a half mile event. I mean, that was at pretty high speeds. You want to kind of touch on that whole deal?

Yeah, two things. If you ever feel like something's not right, just pull off. I felt like something wasn't right, and I made the pass anyway. I think, we can't really tell, but I think what happened was you have like at the half mile, there's obviously no water box, right? So you have where they're doing burnouts on concrete, and it starts to lay down more and more rubber. Well, it's a clutch car on a radial, so that's never a good thing for wheel hop, right? Especially you do your burnout on that rubber, it grips, wheel hops, you break something. Well, I would do my burnout way before the burnout box, right? So I'd get the nice dusty runway. So what I would do is I rev up the car really high and I start slipping the car. I start slipping the clutch really hard until it starts spinning, and then I just get on the f****** brakes and let it spin a little bit, and then I get off the brakes and let it roll out. Well, when I did that, I think I was too close to where the burnout box was, and it gripped and I felt it hop, and I immediately clutched in and the car rolled, and I was like, okay, cool. Everything feels good, I'm going forward. And I don't know if this is exactly what happened, nobody really does, but when I turned left, I heard a clunk, clunk in the back, and I was like, man, that's weird. Okay, go. I went and the car started doing this weird little thing, and I thought it was for, there was a really bad crosswind that day. So I let off the gas, when I got back on it, it was like the perfect storm of boost, auto shift, maybe something was already broken in the rear, I don't know. All I remember is the car was going straight, but it was just like I couldn't see my eyeballs were vibrating so bad, and then I got past the flags, and I knew the car was on a run, because I saw a 217, like half track, and I'm like, oh man, this is it, this is gonna be my 230, because I've got 229.8 in the car, and I'm like, I just want this f****** 230 number, right? So I got back in it, and I'm like, maybe I can make up the 12 miles an hour, and it just started f****** shaking, and I was like, what the f***? And then as soon as I let off, it's weird. So I was knocked out from negative Gs, nothing actually hit my head. Like my eyes tried to come out of my sockets, they were all black and blue. There wasn't a scratch on my helmet. And I guess when you get knocked out from negative Gs, it's not a concussion. You just, I guess, I don't know how to explain it to, but like a guy that's an F35 pilot was like, basically like, you just kind of starve yourself for oxygen or whatever it is, or like your brain's hitting your skull or I don't know. It's the stopping. It's not the pulling, right? And it happened over and over and over again, but I was only unconscious for like 30 seconds. And then I woke up and it took like, if it's weird the way your brain works, like as days went on, I started to remember more of the accident. And basically, yeah, it's just f******, you can see the video. I let off and then it just spins around, right? Like, if I would have pulled the parachute way early, it might have saved it. But there was nothing to save it at that time. It was 190 plus miles an hour. And then it just, it went off. It barrel rolled twice. And then somehow when it got in the grass, it started going front over back. And that's when I got knocked out, I think after the first one. But no concussion. I chipped my fingernail by hitting, I think, a cage. Or, I don't know, there's the f******, fire suppression was in the passenger seat, like f******, the battery was a thousand feet from the car. The parachute was in the engine bay. F***. The only thing holding the front of the car to the back was that the motor and transmission were still together. And there's no subframes in a Viper, right? Like when we took, when we cut everything out, literally I just kicked the f****** frame rail and it broke off. So like the transmission holding the main frame to the front, holding the motor was the only thing that held the two pieces together. I was very lucky I didn't get impaled by the steering wheel. I walked away with very minor, I got a few scratches, I think, from like something under the dash coming loose or I don't know. But that was it, you know. And after that, I was like, man, I look at all the people that we put out there with like stock seats, right? That their helmets are real close to the the roof and this and that. Man, like we do these tucked roll bars, these four points and these guys go out there with these tucked four points because that's the safety requirement to go over 200 and it's like that's not going to save your f****** life. You know, you need to get the passenger f****** low. This comes to where do you want a streetcar or do you want a race car? Like, do you want to die? You know, like think about 190 miles an hour as a stock motor bolt on turbo car in the half mile, right? It's not like I did some f****** 250 mile an hour run and f****** lost it at the end, you know? I did what a stock motor bolt on turbo car does.

I've been 180 in my stock GT 500. It's not very far from that 190.

No, no.

It was at 194, 197 I lost it.

Listen, we're all bragging. I did 150 in my GTI.

So, but yeah, that's one of those things. I think the safety stuff, we started making all the big power guys like, hey, we're putting cages in your car.

Did that car have a cage? Yeah. Yeah, I thought I saw it. Yeah. Okay.

That was the only thing left of it. When I woke up, I remember when I woke up, there was this very, very nice EMT lady and she was-

Was it the classic, are you an angel or-

No. I was looking, I was like, well, it was weird because I woke up and the woman was like, are you okay? I'm like, yeah, what happened? She goes, you crashed. But I was right side up, so I just thought I spawned or maybe hit something. I said, is the car okay? She goes, son, there's nothing left of the car. Then I didn't look around yet and then I realized there was nothing. It had the roof, but everything in my peripheral versus front was just open, and the hood's gone and f****** everything. I'm looking around and I'm like, holy f***. Then she goes, are you hurt? Then I was like, I'm not hurt, but I should be. That's when I freaked out and I grabbed my legs, because the first thing I thought, I'm paralyzed. I was just sitting there with my hands. When they got to me, I was just like this. Jason at Shift Sector was like, man, I thought you f****** was dead. So yeah, I freaked out. I started wiggling my toes and I'm like, I grabbed myself and I punched myself in the leg.

Did you want to keep bobbing?

I was like, I have feeling in my leg. I'm good. And yeah, we went to the hospital. I was in and out in two hours.

Really?

Yeah. They were like, you are, Marion, Indiana is a very small town. So like the doctor, I guess somehow the, everybody thought, because life flight came and they touched down and by that time I was already awake and I'm like, I'm good to like send that thing back. I'm not spending 75 grand on a f****** flight. So they took me in the ambulance and I guess the medic in the ambulance had the video already and showed the doctor. And then the doctor was like, I don't know how you're okay, but you got some f****** angels watching over you. That looked like a bad f****** wreck. I was like, yeah, yeah, so.

So has anything changed? Did you lose, I don't know what the kids would call these, do you still have the dog in you?

I don't know. Yeah, I love cars.

Okay.

Yeah, my wife asked me to chill down a little bit.

Because you have twins now.

We have twins now. I just got all my life insurance s*** kind of settled. So now I'm kind of like, I want to get back into it again, but like the safety is going to be like, you got to think that car had a basic 10 point cage in it and a f****** and a race craft or safe race craft. What's the f****** seat company? Why am I forgetting the name? But whatever the big seat company is, Craft had one of their seats in it. And man, dude, I'm lucky to be alive from it. I mean, I think if you start looking at some of these cars, like if you look at Fabricio's, you can't see the f****** cage in it. It's a 12 point fully tucked cage. It goes underneath all the factory panels and the door bars are removable. If you want to have your hybrid street car race car, there it is. Not that there's no, it's not like, oh, man, the cage is so intrusive. So when I go to the drive through, I don't want to be hitting my arm on a door bar. My wife doesn't like crawling over this or seeing this f****** clanky, it's not there. You see a f****** reupholstered Alcantara f****** factory A-pillar bar.

I haven't seen the inside of your cars here, but even when I've done numerous rides in Minneapolis Mopar, and it's like the car is beautiful on the inside. The cages are-

Well, look at that right now. Look inside.

Is it open?

Yeah. One of the A-pillar bars is off, or one of the A-pillar covers is off, but you can see on the other side.

Yeah. People don't realize that once you start getting over that, well, like 160 miles an hour, s*** f****** changes drastically. Even just looking out the window, s***'s flying by so fast.

The seat was race tech.

Race tech, yeah.

I think that's when Nick runs in his Porsche. Yeah, man.

There is nothing intrusive about that.

No. I can't tell there's one in there, to be honest with you.

Yeah. Imagine having a 10-point cage that you can't see. That doesn't take any of it. Why would you not do that? And then what you do is you have your comfortable GTS seat or whatever seat you have for driving around, and then you have your proper- I think those Tillet carbon buckets just got FIA approval in the last year or so, but people were putting those f****** carbon buckets in the cars, and it's like, dude, there is nothing that says that that seat can handle an impact. Look at the drag guys. They have literally this thin piece of carbon with a pouring seat, and you're strapped to a cage. You're not strapped to the seat. The safety s***, yeah, man. After I wrecked, I'm like, dude, I have a Gen 3 that's going to be my next race car. The whole body is carbon, and it's super lightweight. My goal is 2,800 pounds. It's going to eventually get a billet block, so I'm hoping 3,500 to 4,000 horsepower. But that car will be built like a proper race car. I have zero desire to go f****** 60 to 130 on the f****** highway or do any of that. You want to have really fast 60 to 130, go buy a Porsche or a Lambo, and then have a car that at 1,400 will do what a 2,800 horsepower Viper does, but it's not going to be as fun. It loses its allure in the first five or six hits.

I'm not butchering a number, but whatever UGR did, like you saw.

Two, three.

Was that what it was?

Yeah, and then it went one eight. No, I think they went a two, three, one.

Yeah, which is just insane. Do you ever see Vipers breaking into the twos on the street?

Yeah, we did two, eight, four.

Oh, did you?

Yeah, I think. I know Aaron posted a two, seven something, but I don't think there was a video, or I don't know if it was just a Photoshop joke or whatever it is, but I don't know, but I'm almost 100% positive we have the only verified real-world drive, two, eight something. I know there's a bunch of two nines. I have a bunch of cars in the two nines. He's got a bunch of cars in the two nines. It also might have been Kratos, so I'm not sure, but I'm sure he's more than capable of pulling it off.

Do you guys post everything?

My customers do. I don't have time to sit there and dial in cars here to get these f****** draggy numbers that all these guys want.

The micro records.

Yeah, because here's the problem. It's going to go somewhere else, and then I'm going to have to spend double that time. What we do is you have different maps and you get the cars, and most of the people are beyond happy with it. That 284 was with Greg Blevins, and it took me and him seven or eight nights of I'm laying in bed on my laptop, f****** around with his torque tables, he's f****** around with tire pressures, and imagine if every customer wanted to take up that much of my time for their street. I didn't know, we have a couple of customers in Vegas, and their draggy sucked, and we didn't know why. Well, the f****** streets are terrible there. Dusty. But not only that, they have a lot of oil in them, because I guess they're asphalt, for expansion and contraction of very cold to very hot. So you're just never going to get a good draggy number there. Like, yeah, maybe an all-wheel drive car will click something off, but you have to be so on point with a real-wheel drive car, and then gearing comes into play. The big power cars that want to go to the half mile have a tall rear end. You're dead in the water at 60. Their sweet spot is like 73 in second gear. So if you're starting at 50, you have to click that 60. Yeah, you're moving, but it's not. It's like, you want me to swap out your ring and pinion just to get a f****** number, or do you want to go fast at the half mile?

It is a tough game. You can't be amazing at everything.

No, that goes back to, you want a race car or do you want a street car?

Well, now you're even talking, now you have a race car, what do you want it to do? Because now that's a very specific thing to you, right?

Take your race car and sub-categorize it. Right, yeah.

Well, yeah, because now you're talking digs, roll racing, 60 to 130, which I guess is basically roll racing.

That's the great thing about the Lambo. You can have a very well-rounded car that can go drag race, that can go half mile, that can do 60 to 130s, and you can do it on f****** 20s. That's a cool thing. I'll be honest, I think a Porsche is a better car. But I think it's just, I like driving Porsches better. But same thing, that's a car that does everything very, very, very well. But remember when stick shift drag racing was huge, like f****** 15 years ago? Everybody was like, I remember you had SW, Kevin, and a few other people, Gary Java or something, they were all trying to get into the sevens with six-speed cars. I think that's way more impressive. You have a Supra, a Viper, or I think what was the other? Now you have, what was the Mustang guy that has a real fast stick shift car?

Oh, I don't even know.

You know, there's also Joel Grannis, that's more of a full-blown race car. Back in the day, these were more street cars. But to go sevens in a street car, with a manual transmission, not a dog box, they had clutches, you know, was f****** super impressive. So like, you have all these guys that are like running low sevens in a Huracán. I grant it, a low seven is way different than a high seven. We all know that. That is a f****** big window there. But you're also talking 17 years later with people that were driving it with their foot. There was no, the MoTeC, MoTeC was out, but like when SW went sevens, that was on an AEM version one.

A ton of the gifts that we've had on the show have standalone ECUs. And if you've been waiting around to get the right deal for the right ECU, now's probably that time. You can go ahead and go to tunebyseanshawn.com and you can go ahead and use code Minnoxide to get 5% off on a good old Haltech ECU. Get all the accessories you need. And here's the best part, you can also get some free merch. Let's get back to the show.

Like AEM version one, he had stock axles, a TRD diff, stock f****** trans and a Tilton. And he went a 7, I think it was a 791 at 189 miles an hour, a stick shift Supra. You know, like that's f****** flying. To this day, I think that's more impressive than some of what the other guys are doing now with dog boxes and carbon body panels and this and that and all that s***, you know? Yeah, but you have a Supra and you have a car that goes seven, low sevens, but if you break the trans, it's 90 something thousand dollars.

Who's someone that you respect in the industry or people, I guess?

Man, there's quite a few. You know, like I'm going to go Tony Paylowe, Aaron, Kevin from Underground, Hefner is f****** huge. That dude is the nicest, angriest man you ever meet. He really is, but he is so f****** anal. I've never seen somebody with attention to detail that is so passionate and angry about it at the same time. You know, he really, I think his quality in his brain is above and beyond what most people do, but Kevin at Underground has a f******, I mean, on the business side of stuff, you're never going to get better than him. I mean, look, how many shop owners you know that have multiple private jets. Yeah. You know, and that's, I mean, they started with Mustangs here in Austin, you know, and they got into Vipers and they built what they have now. They're very, like, their shop, I had a tech that left here to go work there, and he's like, it is, everybody shows up five minutes early, you listen to the same f****** music, you have one job. Your job is to pull the f****** bumpers off and put them back on. So like that person that's pulling bumpers off and putting them back on is just going to get super f****** efficient at putting, it's more of an assembly line than-

Taking the Henry Ford approach to it.

Yeah, correct. Just make sure that's on. Aaron, obviously, I respect him a lot. The guys over at AIM, I think they have a great shop. They do some really cool s*** with the Porsches. That's the first time I've ever sent my car to another shop, was I have my 997 at AIM.

What do you think makes all these guys, and this may include you as well in that group, what makes these guys spectacular, what they do?

I think everybody has their own little reasoning behind it. I'm going to say Aaron and AIM is, they do most of everything in house. They build all their motors. I don't think AIM machine stuff, but they do all the assembly, you know, blueprinting everything like that. Same thing, I know Aaron has that machine shop. I think it's like in the building. I think same deal with me, like I'm going to eventually take over the old man's, his name is Dennis, like an old man, but Dennis' machine shop when he retires, and I think Aaron kind of, from what I gathered, had the same deal. But I think, you know, if I need a motor, I can go machine it myself, you know? If Aaron needs a motor, he can go machine it himself. If Heffner needs a motor, I'm pretty sure that dude can, he's got CNC capability there. I don't know if he can, if he hones his own cylinders or valve jobs his own heads or anything, but like he does all of his own CNC stuff there. He does all of his transmission builds. Oh, Sean Ivy is another guy. I respect Sean Ivy, metric f******. He's just an OG. He builds all of his own motors, he does all transmissions, you know. Kevin, like they build all their transmissions in house, but like they've had such a long lasting relationship with Proline, why not go to the best? Why not use the best that you don't have to now have that over your head, you know? Like they get f******, if they need 10 motors in a month, they're getting 10 motors in a month. Like if I need 10 motors in a month, I have to go home those 10 motors myself, you know? So, you know, that's, and then either me or Tim assembles the short blocks and Jaime assembles the long blocks. We build all of our own transmissions in house. You know, it's just, I don't see too many people that can actually do that. I thought it would actually be really funny to go up to a lot of these shop owners at like TX2K, like with, you know, undisclosed video and ask them to go f****** mic out the Rolex wristband when they can't f****** say like, how do you build cars if you can't use a mic? You know, and I think there's a lot of that. I think there's a lot of fluff. You know, I think, you know, people throw this term in house around so much, and then you start to really dig into it. But I think out of all the names I just listed, you can get the shop owners to go do whatever the f*** they need to do to build a car, you know, versus like, I'm just going to say this, and I don't care if he gets pissed off at me. I don't think Sissio could put a car together himself. I don't. I don't, you know, I don't think there's some f****** other shops out there that, you know, they hire everybody, they do things. You know, and that's fine, that's business. But like, would you rather take your car to a shop that the owner can go in the back and knows every last thing, or that, you know, he has to rely on his employees. So at the end of the day, and I heavily rely on my employees. Jaime and Tim are probably two of the best f****** techs I've ever seen in my life. I'm very grateful to have them. Tim is, Tim is a f****** animal, you know. I mean, his wiring is beautiful. He can build motors. He can fabricate like 80% of what I can, you know, but like he, he's not a fab guy. You know what I'm saying? But he can't like, so you have, you know, high making f****** put motors together, build transmissions. Like, but we understand why all this stuff is the way it is. You know, like we don't just read a manual and like, oh, we're going to torque this to that because that's what the manual said, or we're going to, you know, I had a tech, I just let go not too long ago. And he installed a AMS fuel system in a car, in a Lambo. And the car was having a fuel pressure issue, right? And it turned out to be nothing with the fuel system, right? But when you see a big drop in fuel pressure, especially the Huracans have a very complicated, like a crossover. So it's like saddlebags, and then there's like a balance tube on the bottom. But there's like a manifold in the fuel pump here. So you get fuel pressure that comes out of the passenger side tank, right? That goes to your fuel system. And then it pushes fuel to the other side that goes down to these little jets that create a venturi. So it's, so you're pushing fuel here, sucking it from here to put it back in, in this pump here. So like that one saddle back always stays full, right? Well, he installed this system and when we were trying to diag it, I'm like, so how does this, I've never installed it. Like this is the first one. I don't know. I just read the directions. You didn't think that you're working on probably a half a million dollar f****** toy to figure out why you're doing all this stuff. And I think that's a, you know, you eventually did not cut it here, you know, multiple things like that and I let him go. But I mean, you're reading directions on something, right? You should have an interest on how it works. That's why, you know, when I was little, I took my f****** VCR apart because I was, or my dad's VCR, because I was interested in how, it was actually a Betamax, but like how it worked. You don't know what Betamax is.

That might be a little bit before.

Yeah, way before.

It didn't last long.

It didn't last long. It was like VHS but smaller. It was like, remember the mini, what are they called?

I don't know. There was LaserDisc too.

No, but the little, they were in like a little f****** case.

Mini, mini. Yeah, they look like a little mini CD. I know what you're talking about. Mini disc.

Yes. But yeah, that was way before your time too.

This is the boomer segment presented by Dan.

Well, there was Blu-ray and HD DVD too.

Oh yeah. But yeah, it's just like one of those things. I think a lot of people have these texts or they rely on texts, right? Because they have a business, that they had an investor, or the investor hired some people because he saw how much money. And this is another common theme I keep seeing is like, investor buys a f****** race car shop because he thinks or starts a race car shop because he sees how much money he's spending and then realizes, there's not a lot of money in this. It costs a lot of money to go racing, you know? It just, that's it. There's no if, ends, or buts. This is not, it goes back to my, if you don't have the car and the build in the bank to be just wiped out at all times, this is not your, stick to the low power stuff or have a stock car to go cruising, you know? It's not your house of cards or whatever. I hate to say it, but that's the reality, or else you just get frustrated with s***, you know?

Are you doing a lot of work yourself as well then?

In the machine shop, yes. The last like two months, I've been really tired with my twins keeping data, a sleep regression going on, and I think I was sleeping like maybe two hours a night, but I'm kind of getting back into the swing of things. I'm going to, I was going to try to get my Huracan ready for TX-2K, and I'm like, I just, I don't care.

What is the goal with that car, by the way? Do you have like a certain power threshold, R&D?

I just want, yeah, R&D, I want 2300 wheels. So we contacted a company called 3D Scan. They came and they scanned, actually this gentleman's wife's R8 in my Huracan, my Performante, and we're going to have a street kit and a race kit, race kits, big 80 mil plus, whatever. Same thing, the intercoolers are going to change, the mid-pipe changes or whatever.

What is your choice of turbo, by the way?

Zona.

Zona, okay. For the Vipers as well?

Yeah.

Okay.

We have Zona on everything. That's what I'm putting on the purpose, Twin Zona 8082s.

Okay.

So, I won't even be close to maxing out that turbo. We tried them on a Viper, that Ralpha Viper and f****** dude, they were awesome. Like, it's spooled not much slower than a f****** 68. Colin was, it's very hard to impress Colin and Colin was impressed. So.

What are you most proud of in your career?

Being able to say I've never f***** anybody over, you know, like I've taken it on the chin to make sure customers are happy, but like in general, like just our reputation, you know, I don't think you can find very much bad stuff about us or, you know, besides I'm vocal, you know, or we like to have a good time after the races. So, but even that's calmed down now. You hit 40 and everything kind of just goes. The other day I woke up and my foot was swollen for no reason. I'm like, man, this is it. You know, so, but no, I just, you know, we run a good clean business that, you know, obviously I had kids late in life, so I'm not going to be here to see a lot of like what my kids, you know, like, dude, when my kids are 40, I'll be 80, you know, so it's, I lost a lot of time, you know, 10 years doesn't seem like a lot. Most kids have, most people have kids, 20s, 30s or whatever, you know, me and my wife had kids in our 40s, and it's like, my kids will always have like a legacy. My dad, you know, did this, this and this, and you know, you know, we set world records and, you know, I think that's, that'll be pretty cool to, I hope they get into the car stuff and, you know, take over the legacy and do something even cooler with it. My wife's like, I'm always saying how, like, I can't wait to get him into like shifter carts and like, you know, dirt bikes and everything. And you can see my wife's just saying like, I don't want my little baby to be hurt or like, he doesn't need to do this. And you know, but I can't wait. Like, I think that's going to be the most fun.

But yeah, the other thing, sit him in front of an Xbox and wrap him in bubble wrap. I mean, that's not fun either.

Bubble wrap's comfortable.

Yeah, I just...

Now we know how hair has grew up.

But I think, you know, I think, I think that like just, you know, I've run a good clean business. Just basically like, we've kind of, I don't want to say wrote the book in big power, but we were part of the book, a good chapter in the book of, you know...

In the world of fast cars, your name will not be forgotten.

Exactly, you know. I don't know if I'll ever be like a Carroll Shelby or some of these other guys that, you know, got factory.

Yeah, that's kind of next level.

That's next level s***, but yeah, I just, you know, I hope that like, you know, to, like I was saying, leave a legacy that, you know, would make my kids proud.

Some of that's relationship too, right? They just happened to be met up with the right OEM people at the right time and doing the right... Carroll Shelby wasn't, I mean, he was doing some cool s***, but like he was fast. That guy could f****** wheel, right? And then it was like you just get in. That guy was also a salesman.

Yes.

He sold a lot of b*******.

So. But yeah, I just, you know, it's one of those things I hope. It's funny. Billy Stockland has a buddy, this guy, Al. Al's one of the nastiest chassis guys you can ever think of. And he was helping us with the Dragon Drive stuff. We were talking, he used to work. He was telling me how he got over to the Middle East and like, I guess, like the early 2000s, like, they were all working in, well, he first started in Dubai and then went over to Qatar and worked for the Sheik over there. But he said he used to work for Bob Norwood. I don't know if you know who that is. My name's not in there. Norwood used to take all these different 80s and 90s Ferrari chassis and like hodgepodge them together to build these like P4 cars, you know, Ferrari P4. It looks like a Le Mans car, right? A real one's like 20, 30 million dollars or something. I could be wrong. It's very expensive, right? But he figured out that they would use like, you know, the subframe from this car to do this car. And then he remade all the molds and he would build these Ferrari P4 replicas and it would have a VIN because they started off with another car with like some f****** Twin Turbo small block f****** Chevy motoring or something. Norwood, but back to the important thing is, Norwood is like in his 80s and I was talking to Alan. I was like, oh yeah, dude, like, you know, he's f****** 80 years old, can barely lift a cylinder head, but he's like, he's out there every day f****** around with something like, you know, he'll use the wall to bounce off back to like place the cylinder head on the car or something, but like, you know, it's one of those things like, you know, it's like when you're into this s***, you can't stop it, you know. I would love to just put my, we used to have a hammock in the f******, in the front room for TX2K, so we can take shifts and work around the clock. I would love to just f****** go f****** nuts on that car and get it done for like that s***. Like, it's almost like some of my customers, Blake and the guy that owned Ralpho and some others, they're like, man, you give Calvo a deadline, f****** he's going to get it done. It's like something about trying to make that deadline. He's like, you'll be done the night before the race and you'll go like, you know, beat your own personal best, win the event, this, that. He goes, but it's going to, you're going to get the car like the night before the event. So, yeah, it's, I don't know, but that's like the one thing I don't think I'll ever, it's like, once it's in your blood to tinker and f*** with s***, it doesn't matter what it is, you're just always going to f*** with s***. So I'm hoping, you know, I get some good years with my kids to f*** with s*** with them.

What's the hardest thing you've had to overcome?

I'm going to say the boundaries of friends and customers. That's a big one, and the word no. Learning how to use no, and just not feeling bad about it. That's, I think, like the two most important things that I failed at, like business-wise, is I always would hook friends up, and then they are employees that turn into friends. You know, I've had them come and go, I've had them, you know, f*** me over, I've had, you know, customers that are my good friends, that their wives are good friends, you know, I do all this work, and, you know, always don't hold me hook up, and then one little thing and they're m************ you, you know, or your, their car doesn't make it to an event, and it's like, dude, it didn't make it to one half mile event, and now, you know, you want to talk a bunch of s***, or this or that, like, for what, you know? After I've done all this s*** for you, you know? So, it's, that's like one of the things I'm having to learn. Business is business, friends is friends, and then you, like, that guy in Dallas was telling me, he's like, Aaron took up for me, he gets my s*** done first, but I pay full pop.

Yeah. It's funny how sometimes I have to think, like, do they really, are they vindictive like that, or do you think they just, like, I have no f****** clue that I'm being like that?

No, I think some people just f****** will take advantage.

Yeah.

Like, blindly take advantage. You know, it's human nature, you know, to try to get what they want or get what they can out of you, you know? But yeah, that's, I mean, I have some really f****** good lifelong friends from this business. You know, it's taught me a lot about human nature, let's put it like that. You know, same thing other shops, you help other shops out and then f****** find out that they're talking s*** behind your back and, you know, I don't know.

You can get some real tight relationships out of this, though. I don't know what it's like to be in a bowling league or anything like that, but I don't know if they're like that either. But this car thing is like this f****** community.

I've made some very lifelong friends. Like, you know, it's me and Fabricio have been f****** building that car going on 10 years.

S***, really?

Yeah.

I mean, racing it. It's always a constant.

That's a long relationship.

That's a long relationship, you know? S***, Blake Weaver was telling me the other day, he goes, this is the longest I've ever owned a car. It's been like three or four years. And he goes, the camaraderie we have and the good times we have going racing and like, you know, doing business with you has been nothing but easy, you know? It just, I wish I could find more techs to that I could, you know, there's too much work in here for three people or four people. Over the last two years, I've gone through multiple fab guys, I've gone through multiple techs. They either f*** everything up or on their phones or f****** take two days to pull a f****** transmission or you train them, teach them. They're good employees. They go to the next shop that they've pitched themselves that they're way better than they really are for more money. It's like the younger generations are supposed to come in and take the workload off the older generations. I don't see that happening in every industry across the board. I was talking to Jason at Shift Sector and his son was asking me, he's like, what should I do to make money in life like you dad? And he goes, be a plumber. And he goes, why? And he goes, because nobody's going to want to do blue collar work anymore. And when it's Thanksgiving and you can fix their f****** sink or their dishwasher and this and that and charge them two f****** grand, there's going to be nobody else to f****** do it. Yeah. That's the one thing I think that our country is lacking is the trades are down because everybody wants to be a TikTok star or this or that or you know.

Or a podcaster.

Or pod. No, but like.

No, but it's true, it's true.

But it's true, you know, how many of all the people make it, you know, and then you have now like OnlyFans, girls are making like four or five million dollars a month, like shaking their a** in front of a f****** camera.

Is this you announcing OnlyCalvo, by the way?

Yeah, OnlyCalvo, OnlyCalvo. But, you know, people see these girls on Instagram driving G wagons and flying to Dubai, like, you know what I'm saying? Like, and that's a very small percentage. And it's like, you know, or I see this thing now all the time, these life coaches or business coaches. And like the only thing they're coaching you, it's a f****** Ponzi scheme, right? The only thing they're coaching you is to coach other people. And then, you know, you've done your coaching, they've made their money. And it's funny, I follow this one page called Baller Busters. And it is f******, it's all of these-

It sounds hilarious.

Oh, dude, you can waste a lot of time on it. But it's like all these f****** Ponzi scheme people that are like trying to basically just sell their coaching programs. And like say how they're like, this one dude was saying, he goes, five mil? That ain't s***. I make that a week. I'll throw that. Five million dollars is a massive amount of money, even to a f****** billionaire. Okay, I have billionaire customers. Five million dollars, you never, somebody that has five million dollars, never says five million dollars isn't f****** s***. You know what I'm saying? And it's like, but like the younger generations see this and they f****** like, they think it's normal. They think it's going to find something or they think, you know, they're going to be the next big f****** stockbroker because they took some course. They're always looking for the easy way out instead of hard work.

Yeah.

You know, I think that's hopefully, you know, what's that saying? Like good times create, you know, weak men, weak men create bad times, bad times create strong men. Yeah. Like hopefully we're kind of re-seeing that circle of life with stuff and, you know, we can get some because the younger generations of kids today are a bunch of f****** morons.

No, I've been I've built my entire everything I have off of work ethic alone.

Yeah.

And I'm trying to raise my kids the same way.

So that's that's exactly I tell my wife all the time. I said both those kids when they're four or five years old, they're going to start coming here helping dad on the weekends, whether it's my my wife's like, you are not going to make my babies mop the floor. No, they're going to f****** clean my tools. They're going to f****** you know, they want all this cool s*** in life and do everything. They're going to f******, you know, work hard.

Yeah.

Oh, my wife goes nuts sometimes at home because she's doing all this stuff and I'll come home from work. I was like, you got four f****** slaves living here. Let's put them to work, dude.

Well, there goes social services, damn.

Yeah.

I don't care.

Show up.

But yeah, f****** come and take them.

You ask them where they want to go. You know, my kids are also spoiled.

That's it. You know, like I can't wait for my kids to, like, actually just even walk. I'll be happy just so I don't have to f****** carry them everywhere.

When you get rid of that car seat where you're carrying it.

Oh, dude, I think that's why my tennis elbow started coming back. I had to start wearing that strap the other day. And I think it's only one like this and this or the bottle up here.

Yeah.

F*** man, there's two of them.

Yeah.

You know, they like overpower you. So, but yeah, let's wrap it up.

Yeah, let's pop the usual three and get you going.

Okay.

Yeah. At the end of every episode, we like to ask our guests to pick three cars. You got it. I need a track car, a show car and a daily driver. You have an unlimited budget. Build wherever you want. Weld two cars together or whatever you want.

F***, man.

I feel like this is going to be a weird one for you. I don't know.

Daily driver?

Yeah.

Dude, I think I would just f****** take an S-Class, like an S63 AMG or something, like f****** something.

On 4G autos like the one we saw the other day?

No.

No? Not 4G's?

Bro, just stock. Leave it alone.

Okay.

Stock. That's how you know you're getting old. Track car, like road course, whatever you want. Pick a track. Oh, man. F***, I would love to have Mark Mickey's Pro Mod. That thing, I think it went like f****** hit like 270 something in the f****** quarter mile. And then if you wanted another track car, like to go around turns. Man, Ferris has this Corvette that's just absolutely, you know the one I'm talking about? That wide body.

I reached out to him. I'd love to get that dude on the show.

Yeah, so we did the transmission in that. I would f****** love to drive that thing. I think it's just f****** cool.

So would you choose that or the Pro Mod?

Can I have both? No.

I make people choose, yeah. You're not gonna be the first to get away.

Probably that.

The Ferris' car?

Ferris' car, yeah.

Sweet, and then Showcar?

Showcar? Pagani's on to F. Roadster.

That's that. Well, perfect, man. Where can everybody find you?

Calvo Motorsports Instagram, f******, or Calvo Motorsports Facebook group, or page.

Well, Antonio, thank you for making this happen.

Thanks for coming out, guys. I appreciate it. This has been great. Yeah, f****** awesome.

Dan, thanks for existing, and we'll see y'all next time.

See you guys.

As always, guys, be sure to check out all of our sponsors. They are what make this show possible. It allows us to travel and have some awesome guests on the show. So whether it's HP Academy, tuned by Shawn or Haze Performance, all these guys have awesome services, products, everything in between. So be sure to check them out. All the codes are in the show note description or on my Instagram or wherever else I've mentioned it in the show. So be sure to check it out and we'll see you all next time.