137. Drag and Drives, Big Blocks and Turbos, Fabrication w/ Nathan Shaw

They see a big slick car, and they think, oh, that car can get down any track. If you take it to a radial track, radial prep track, that car is gonna suffer. In the world of 50 to $80,000 billet engines everywhere at the drag strip, a $10,000 big block with some $3,000 for the pair turbos is a budget combo. For the power that makes.

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.

Yep.

Mr. Gunner Garage in front of a Chevy.

In front of, yeah. In between a couple of b***** Chevys, but...

Yeah, so today we are out here in... This is in southern Minnesota. We still have a ways to go, don't we?

Yeah, you're flirting with the line.

I'm flirting with the line, yeah.

Well, today we're here with Nathan Shaw of One Guy's Garage. And we're gonna talk about a whole variety of things. You do some really cool stuff, but I'll let you do your own introduction. Tell us a little bit about what One Guy's Garage is, what it is you do, and we'll just go from there.

All right. One Guy's Garage started back in 2010. I was working at a GMC dealer. And when our first daughter was born, my wife and I had to make a decision, do we get daycare or does one of us stay home? And I decided to be the one to stay home and start watching her and start wrenching in the garage. Didn't technically start as a fab shop, started as whatever came in the door. But after doing a turbo kit on my own, on this green Nova, quickly turned into a fabrication shop and started fabricating all sorts of LS swap turbo kits and whatever made the phone ring, I guess. Started with the, I think my first customer was a third gen black IROC Z Camaro, you can probably know him as D. That was my first paying job in the garage. I lived up in Farmington, gradually moved out of the city, built a shop in Lakeville, sort of expanded it a little bit. More jobs kept coming in. Fast forward, I do a lot of turbo set ups, and I really like the chassis work now, doing not necessarily cages, but cater to more of the faster stuff, 25.2 or 25.3 chassis and four links and things like that.

Where did all of this come from? So were you welding when you were at the dealer? Did you go to school for any of it? You just always been playing around with a welder? Like how'd the fab stuff come into play?

Not always playing around with the welder. It was more the mechanical side of things. The dealership, I was doing heavy line at the dealership. So I did engines, transmissions, differentials. And a lot of the work at the time was 2000, 2002, right when the LS was starting to be popular and was in every truck and car. So I guess what started at all was an O2 Denali came in with a TIC and I ended up putting an engine in it. And that one sat in my bay in the dealership for a while until I figured out with the parts guy that that engine had a $300 core charge. And I knew it wasn't anything really serious. So bought that engine, started putting it in my Nova, built a turbo kit. And that's what spawned the ideas in my head to start offering these services for building turbo kits and doing that type of work.

It's really crazy how many, like, so I Googled this the other day because people were talking about B58 versus LS. I think they made like 100 million LS engines or something crazy like that.

Oh yeah, that's a phenomenal amount of them out there. They're everywhere.

And it just turns out that they're a great engine.

Right.

Like them or not, they're easy to work on, they're cheap. Well, now they're cheap, they're everywhere. It's crazy to think that they're 30 years old now, you know, back in 97. Just a great platform. I think it really has, it's really expanded the hot rodding world, allowed more people to get into something maybe they couldn't afford before. Now you can go to the junkyard, get a $200 engine, put a $200 turbo on it, make 700 horsepower, go have fun, burn tires, go to the track.

Is that still the case? They still, a couple hundred bucks, have pulled one out of the junkyard?

Yeah, you could go to Rosemount, you pull right now and get a $175 5.3. Might even be an aluminum block with LS6 style heads. But you could make a thousand horsepower with a set of valve springs.

Really?

So how did you grow the business then? So obviously you're getting more and more customers in the door. You switch shops, you grow shops and all that. What does that client base look like? Is it a bunch of cheap LS swaps, the $200 turbo like you mentioned? Or when does the clientele start wanting to chase faster and faster cars? Or is it a combination of everything?

I really didn't expand the business too much. It's always primarily just been me. I did have a few employees just to try it out. Okay, do I want to expand this business? And it ended up, not that it was a bad thing, it just, I couldn't concentrate my time 100% on the jobs that I was doing when I'm part of the time checking in and making sure their jobs are getting done properly in and out the door. So I decided it just needs to stay one guy's garage and just concentrate on doing really nice quality work. And the customers will follow. The customers will come. If you do quality enough work and stand behind your stuff, somebody breaks something, calls me up, it's gonna come in, it's gonna get fixed. They're gonna be back out and running.

Are you able to keep a pretty good turnaround time even though it's just you or?

Cars are very rarely in and out in a week. Most of the time, the projects are bigger, a couple hundred hours, when it comes in with just a bare-edged apartment and I'm doing engine plates and chassis work and a turbo kit and a bunch of stuff combined into one. So I would say that a typical job is 100 to 200 hours. Okay.

So you don't have something sitting here for a while?

Yeah.

It's not going to be like a two-year-long project typically?

No. Yeah. No. I try not to have something on the back burner, just sitting here and some people off of it's here for years and years.

So you obviously gave us a little bit of a tour of what's around here, just 40 episode, but what are some examples of people that come to you? We were scrolling through your Facebook on our live stream the other day, and what was it? That was a Fox body?

It was a Maroon Fox body. Is that the one that he picked up? Okay.

Okay.

Ooh, that thing was beautiful.

I did most of the work on that car. I didn't do the chassis. He bought it as a roller out of Kentucky, and then he brought it and said, I want to race Alter Street, which is a primarily Southern radial style class. 440 to 480 is the ET range in that.

Okay.

Yeah, single turbo or small pro charger, small box typically. So I did all the fab work on that. He had it painted. I wired, did I wire that one? No, just plumbed that one. And then that particular customer has a few cars, has another blue Fox body that's really nice and also a white 06 GTO that they built. That one was, I think that's the only car that I've built entirely from scratch. I did the chassis and the...

The GTO?

The GTO, yeah.

Is that the white one, the fastest street GTO or something like that?

Yeah.

Okay, I saw that on your YouTube channel. What's that car all about?

That was owned by Stuart, a guy from the cities. He brought it to me as a 20,000 mile basically stock car with an SDS turbo kit, which was junk. And that's why he came to me. He was looking for upgrades. That car had a bunch of revisions, 67s and then 72s and 76s, and then a big block with 88s.

It looks nasty.

It is nasty. Yeah, it's been 420s and the 8th, full street car. Other seats, power windows.

Really? Okay.

It's been 670, 220 in the quarter. I'm hoping Bill, the current owner, brings it on the drag and drive, or starts doing a little touring around with it. Right now, he primarily just races it. But it's kind of the way you get to the full potential of a car, too, is just keep racing it, keep racing it, until it's as fast as it's possibly gonna be, or you're tired of blowing up parts. But that car was taken from the... It probably had 25,000 miles on it at the time. It was fully gutted to just the bare, shell, OEM roof and quarters. Everything else has been replaced. It does have stock front frame rails, 25, two chassis, and then has a Brodix Big Block Chevy 540 with 88's Reed 400 that Adam originally built.

Okay.

It's probably the beefiest transmission Adam has ever built.

Really?

We said, do every option on this thing. It didn't have lockup. Lockup wasn't popular at the time.

Okay.

Five years ago. But everything that could be done to a Turbo 400 was done to that transmission.

Really?

Yeah. Everyone says they have a big main shaft 400 or a big input shaft 400, which is an inch and 3 sixteenths.

Okay.

So we ordered a converter from Dusty Bradford that does all the PTC converters. Got it. Wouldn't fit. And messaged Dusty and I thought this was a big main shaft or a big input shaft. It is. It's the one, it's an inch and a quarter, which only gets used in the 4,000 horsepower Pro Mod transmission. So that's probably, yeah, that was a crazy transmission. Other than, I'm trying to think of some of the other stuff on that car.

What's that one got for power? Do you know?

It's made 2,500, I believe. But that was around 30 pounds of boost. I think Bill has had it up around 40 pounds of boost. A little over 3,000-ish.

A little ballpark estimate.

Yeah, we're ballparked.

So, okay, so we talked a little bit about this as well, off camera. So do your customers kind of source their own tuning? Like, you just build it or how is it exactly? Does that work?

At first, I was doing some of the tuning myself on my own car with help of Shawn and Carl, CJ. Tunes.

Oh, okay.

He helped me a lot on the green car when it was LS. And then people have their tuners that they typically stick with or feel comfortable with. And a lot of them go to that tuner. I'll do the fab work. A lot of them get taken from here, pulled apart, painted, made nice, put everything back together, take it to the tuner. Matt Bell at Redline Motorsports in Illinois does a lot of Bill's cars.

Okay.

Steven down in Zumbura Falls does some of my stuff, helps me a lot. Does some of the cars that come out of here. A lot of the tuning gets outsourced.

Yeah, yeah.

I do do my own just because I want to be involved in it and learn how to do it. But it definitely, definitely slows me down. If I had taken, if I chose to afford to pay a pro tuner and took my car to the track, it would probably be three or four tenths faster than it is now. But I choose to kind of take the slow route and learn as I go.

Well, it gives you a chance to learn it a little bit. And then it's way better to experiment with your own car, right? So, because we all know if something goes wrong, it's always the tuner's fault.

Always the tuner's fault. So, yes, unless it doesn't hook on off the line, that's the chassis guy's fault.

Okay.

Okay.

So, I actually touch on that a little bit, and we'll talk about your car here momentarily, but on the chassis side of things, you said you're dabbling quite a bit with that lately. That's one of your favorites at the moment.

Yeah.

So, what's an example of it being the chassis guy's fault? Because that's like a whole, again, like me and Dan travel the country, like we like to learn about this stuff, and I know nothing about the chassis side of things.

Sure.

So, how do you make a car work?

Well, that's a tough one. Go to the track and watch the car and make adjustments, and watch the car, and just keep going over and over and over again until it works. The hard part as a shop owner is, if I build a car here and do the chassis work, maybe do a four link or something, the best way to go about it would be for me to go with that customer to the track. The downside of that is you're away from home at the track, away from your family, spending money out on the road. And I did dabble in that a little bit with some of the higher profile cars that maybe didn't have the chassis tuning experience, or maybe I was a little better at that. But yeah, it's tough. I went to Georgia and Alabama with some clients and was gone 12 days. And it was too much.

That's a lot of track support.

Yeah. Quickly figured out that I can't do that.

Okay.

Maybe a day or two here and there, especially if I'm going to be there with my car anyway.

Right.

It could help customer out. Yeah. It's just tough. It's just tough being away for that long.

What are you looking for though? Like, so I actually went out to GLD with a friend a year or two ago, and you know, taking video and all this stuff, but I didn't know what I was looking for. You know, we just passed it on to somebody smarter. What are you exactly looking for when a car is launching off the line?

A variety of things, how the shocks and how the car reacts coming off the line, how much rise you have in the front, how much rise you have in the back or squat, depending on your theories of how you have your rear suspension set up. A lot of the, most everybody is into separation now with the rear suspension, so the car separates and plants the tire, versus the old school thinking of swatting it on slick.

Okay.

Watch the tire, watch the suspension, look at your numbers, your 60-foot. Have a good camera person that can get a good consistent view of the side all the time. Yeah.

It's really cool. I saw a video from, was it Motion recently? Or like, I think it was inside of like Brett's car. And it's like, you just see this, like I think he had a GoPro or something in there. You watch the separation. It's super cool.

Yeah. The pros, you know, the top tier guys can just sit down and look at the laptop, look at the shock data and tell you exactly what you need to do. That's why they get paid the big bucks. Yeah. I know Steven down there has done a lot of that. But to get good at that also, again, you need to be at the track.

Yeah.

You're away from home, spending days on the road figuring that stuff out. So it's a balancing act between getting work done in the shop, spending time with my family and helping customers.

So the balance doesn't exist sometimes.

Yeah.

Right. The perfect customer is somebody that's educated and talented enough to adjust their own car. And the track, or send you a picture or a video and say, you know, what do you think? And kind of do what they need to do to get it down the track. But as the power levels go up, the skill level goes up to try and make that all happen. A 10 second track or car, almost anybody could get that down the track, any type of track. Where 3,500 horsepower car on a 275, very difficult. And you're going to need to be on a track that's very well prepped, which not very many of those around here. True.

Do you do a lot of no prep stuff then?

I don't. I kind of shy away from the no prep stuff. A lot of them are safe.

Oh, there's some black marks right out in front of your driveway there.

Yeah, that's the diesel truck gangs.

Oh, okay.

All my neighbors blame me.

Yeah, okay.

I saw you got your car out. No. If you see my black marks, they'll be about 600 feet long in a straight line. Right. Just hazing the tires, not sitting there.

All right.

Trying to hit both shoulders. So yeah, the diesel truck gang.

What's the quickest car you got out there that you've built? Do you know?

I don't have anything in the threes, which is a big, I would say a goal of mine is, they'll get there this year, I think. Some of them, I think for 14, 410, 415 area, and the eighth is the quickest. Okay. It's tough, as you know, that going from 410 to 405 is extremely difficult.

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Taking away, looking at your inefficiencies.

OK.

Say you look at the laptop and say, no, my torque converter slip is 4%. How do I get that to 3%? Or my 60 foot is 108. How do I get that to 107? Because that 107 will translate into a couple more numbers on the top end. So inefficiencies.

OK.

But a lot of times those inefficiencies come with the cost of making that happen. Making more power, what's it take to make 200 more horsepower? Well, bigger turbos. But now I'm cracking the mains in my $20,000 big block Chevy or something. So, again, a balancing act. How fast you want to go, how much you want to spend, how long is it going to last before you're doing it all again?

So when you get to that level, buying tenths of a second is very, very expensive when you're down to that.

Very expensive. Yeah. If you're much better off deciding how fast you ultimately want to go and just build that car from the start. Yeah. Even if it takes you five years to do it, just build that car. Just get the best chassis you can afford, the baddest engine you can afford, find the most talented people that you know that can help you source your parts and put it together and go from there.

One of the things you mentioned there was like, if you want to reduce your slip from 4% to 3%, again, this is a whole world that I know nothing about. So how exactly does that work?

Some could be talking to your converter guy and asking him because he's the pro. Most guys in their shop aren't cutting apart torque converters. There's a lot more that are on bolting their torque converters and changing their stators themselves, putting a tighter stator in there to try and get more power down. So I would say talk to the converter guy. You can do a few other things. Maybe you want to change the fluid and put a little bit thicker viscosity fluid in there to see if that tightness works or translates into a quicker time before you spend $1,000 having your converter redone.

Okay. And is there a case at all where you would want to have more slip or not really?

Yeah, no prep.

Oh, gotcha.

Those guys are running super loose converters or a dump valve, which a dump valve just bleeds off converter pressure. Okay. I wouldn't say a poor man's way of a looser converter, but a lot of guys will have a dump valve open on the starting line to just get through a crappy spot and then modulate that pressure back in. So it's a keyboard way of adjusting your torque converter slip.

I was going to say, because there has to be a lot of different strategies, too, to getting it off the line, too.

For sure.

There'd be like a slipper clutch kind of like strategy on a manual car, I assume.

Yeah.

Okay.

The worse the track is, the more you're going to want to just slip the car down the track to not upset the tire, especially on a shift. Another reason where you would choose a transmission with the tighter gear ratios, a lot of guys will use a power glide with a 180 first gear. Well, that second gear is a 1.0. That big difference in gear ratio changes is also a big hit to the tire. So if you picked a transmission with tighter gear ratios, it's going to upset that tire less and less as you get tighter and tighter.

Okay.

That's another thing I feel like we always overlook or don't talk about enough when we're talking about getting a little faster is the gearing set up too. I feel like that gets not talked about enough either.

Which it's interesting you say that, the Maroon car that I was working on with the Fox body, it had a pro charger on a small block Ford and went, I think they were running like 450s with that. And just going to a 88 millimeter turbo, the common person would say, okay, let's just put a turbo on it and go back to the track to see what it does. Customer gets on the phone, calls M&M Transmissions, Mark Mickey down south that does a lot of the high horsepower transmissions, especially in radial racing now. And just consults with him. And he says, oh yeah, that transmission won't work at all. You need to sell that one and I'll build you a new one. That ends up being a big cost hit to the customer. And he certainly could have just taken it to the track and used it as is. But if you want to get that car to its potential, you trust the big names that have been way faster than you to make those decisions, to put a different transmission in it with slightly different gear ratios that they know from experience can work better on a single turbo versus a blower.

Yeah. I had a whippled 2015 GT before this car, and I blew up the MT82 in it, which is inevitable in all of that boosted Mustang MT82 combinations. But so then I TR6060 swapped it, and then my gearing changed in that. So now the car was a dog. Like it really... First gear was absolutely useless. I was starting off in second. I was in sixth gear going 140. It was just horrible. So then I had to change out my rear gear just to kind of mess with things. But yeah, I mean, there's limitless combinations between the transmission gearing and the rear end gearing too when you start figuring that out.

Another thing that complicates things is as the cars get faster and faster, guys are shifting towards eighth mile racing. Well, you're gearing for your final RPM at the, through the traps in the eighth mile, which typically ends up being around a 410 or 390, 370 maybe at the very least. Well, take that out on the road, like a drag and drive car, and all of a sudden, you're stuck going 55 mile an hour because you're geared for the eighth now. So some trade off there, do you want to optimize your times, or do you want to cruise down the highway effortlessly? So that's why you see a lot of the gear vendors in drag and drive cars, because they don't want that compromise. But the compromise then is the gear vendor breaks all the time. So now they put a thing, they put an addition onto the car that made it less reliable.

Right.

I tend to try and think about combinations. How do I make this car the most reliable it can be? Well, that means the least amount of moving parts you can put on the car, the better. If you want to have like fuel systems, for example, a lot of guys have two independent fuel systems, two tanks, multiple pumps, all these switch valves and all this stuff. And that just adds a tremendous amount of plumbing and weight and complexity, where I prefer to have one simple fuel system that will support whatever you're going to throw at it and then drain the fuel at the track and put the fuel in and you're going to race on. This one, for example, cruise it around on E85, get to the track, drain it out, buy some methanol. Every track has methanol. Pour it in, race it, drain it back out. Very simple.

Well, it's not like a one size fits all thing that you're going for either. You have a very clear intention then. So what are you cruising at then when you're doing a drag and drive?

What am I cruising at?

Yeah, like just like on the street, like is there, I guess, I didn't even ask. Do you have a TH400 in there?

TH400.

Okay, gotcha.

So it's a 370 gear. So you're not going 80 down the freeway, like this pewter truck over here with the 4L80 and these crews in 80, which I like going on the back roads and staying off all the freeways is much more enjoyable anyway.

So the scenic route.

Yeah, the scenic route. Especially on our drag and drive, we'll pick the routes that are a little slower. Yeah, you don't want to get run over by semis all day. That's no fun.

Oh, yeah.

Well, if you're going out to like dragways out in, what is it, Milwaukee? Is that one of your pit stops too?

I was last year, the Great Lakes.

OK, yeah. Great Lakes. Yep.

We've been there before. Yeah.

So I'm guessing you guys probably take like Route 33 or whatever through Wisconsin or?

I'm not familiar with the road.

That's one of my favorite roads out there, man. Oh, it's it's a blast. We did it on the way to Niagara for Venom Rally, however, many years ago. You remember like the crazy elevation changes and everything? Oh, dude, I want to go back out there.

That goes from where?

From I want to say it's like halfway through Wisconsin. I mean, it's a little bit towards the goal.

You go lacrosse first, right? And then you shoot over. Yeah, yeah. It's in that southern corner of Wisconsin down there.

Maybe we have taken that probably a couple of years ago. We went from a little town Chester, Iowa, just south of Rochester and went to Great Lakes the first day. All back roads all the way to Great Lakes. It took us like six hours.

Yeah.

It was fun.

I like that track. It was fun to go out there. It was really fun as a spectator out there. So do you change your tracks up every year then?

At first, we tried to change them every year, and we still change them around a little bit. It's mostly in the Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin area.

Well, you only have so many to pick from in that pool then, right?

Yeah. And one thing, if it's a small event, low budget, we don't want to collect the entry fees that would be required to rent three tracks or four tracks. If you have 300 entrants and you charge them $500, well, you have a pretty good pool of money to go rent tracks like Hot Rod Drag Week and the big ones, where we typically try to keep the entry fees low, so almost anybody can afford to take three days off or a Friday off and put a hundred bucks into the entry.

Is that what the entry is?

It is. Oh, okay.

And yours is typically, what, like a three day event?

Yep. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, it's always been.

Okay. So three tracks or?

Three tracks. Sometimes it's two, right, based on the schedules and how it jives out. We just try and get in on an already scheduled test and tune or call the tracks and say, hey, would you mind 50 more cars showing up to your event? Yeah.

Is that about the entrance amount that you get, like 50 cars?

Yeah. The first year we had 10 and then 20 and then 30. It's gradually grown. This year it will be around 50 to 60, I believe. Yeah. My wife and I want to keep it around 60. So it's manageable with four or five people kind of running it.

That's the threshold. Like I used to run road rallies around here for a while. And it's like 30, 40. It's like it gets, I think I've had up to 35 cars on mine, but I've also done Crown Rally in the past too. And it's like 150 cars going down the road is intense. Yes, you draw a lot of attention.

Yeah.

You have slow cars too, in the 10 second range and all that stuff?

Slow cars too. We've had some index classes before in the 11 and 12 second range. We've had some classes that sort of cater to more of a bracket style car where it's a little bit slower. This year's a little bit of a change from that because Central Illinois Street Car Shootout and MKE and Radial... No, I know I'm going to screw up my name. MKE, Radial... I can't think of it. Anyway, the race that's being run at Byron on the same weekend that we're going to be down there is a very quick group of cars that are on a radial prep track. And we're going to just be involved in their event on Saturday. So everyone that's in my event has to enter a class in their event.

Okay.

So this year, I'm trying to take the best examples of the drag and drive cars that I can put together and show up with a nice group of cars. Not to say that some of the slow cars aren't nice, but all the classes are geared towards some pretty quick cars. And I want to show up with some pretty quick cars.

Well, there's also kind of like levels to it, right? Like, or people are in different phases of their build or whatever. Like, for example, you know, Dan's Hoop DGT 500 out there, you know, his slow car out there.

That would be a nice, slow car, you know, a nice car, but slow. Yeah, but it's geared for road course. Just like you were talking about your drag and drive stuff, there's hard to... You can't have a Swiss Army knife and...

It's not possible.

No.

Well, you can, but you're going to be slow on the slow end.

Yeah. Well, Aaron Miller from Enthimoto always talks about, it's like, you could do it all pretty well, but none of it's really going to be optimal.

Yes. You know, you're not going to be out there winning classes with your autocross car at the drag strip and vice versa. Yeah. I did dabble in autocross with the green car too. Oh, really? Vintage classes at DCTC. I don't know if you ever ran the track there.

I haven't yet.

Super fun.

I used to do photos at the events. I know the layout.

OK. Yeah.

You did autocross in this out there?

I did. Yeah. Picture over there on the wall next to the one that's in its current configuration, the one on the right is one I autocrossed and had. OK 17s and big sway bars.

So it's a little less intense than this.

Yes. Way less intense than this.

Yeah. I think you were thinking the same thing I was. Holy s***.

Well, then you also like we've done the Optima as well, right? So like some of the cars that you see out there, have you seen some of those guys?

I have. Yeah. It's like follow that.

Yeah. It's like you see those cars, but they have like a Roadster shop chassis or something or a Schwartz performance chassis, and it's like those things are absolutely planted, but it's a completely different take on this. Like they both work really well, but for that thing.

Yeah. For that one thing, purpose built. Yeah.

And those things are so freaking cool. I love the Optima. You just see everything over there.

Yeah. Yeah. I used to follow that a little bit. Back when they had Car Craft, Rand Street Machine Nationals, and they had a three-tier, it was dyno, autocross, and start up a braking challenge. Yeah. I can't remember what they called it.

Yeah. That's the thing where you had the cone.

Stop box.

But it was just really cool, because I could take a car like that, that made 800 horse, and did all those things reasonably well, and go have fun. And then after Car Craft was gone from there, it kind of died out, and people started not attending with that type of car.

I think it's fun, too, to watch that stuff as well. Like, you know, nobody's going to be perfect. Like, there may be some of those cars where they're perfect at the road course side of things or whatever, but then they just suck at the autocross. That's where the competition is fun. Like, who can get the most balanced car? Like, yeah, we know you could destroy on Road America, but can you do this, too?

Right. Which I wish there were more events like that. I don't know if you ever went out to the Amory when they had the Amory Wisconsin Autocross. They ran it out of the airport, and you ran through the regular autocross course, and then you had a half mile straight where you could blast. And they recorded the top speed. So your goal was to go out there and get the top speed at the event. So they took the Nova a couple of times. We took that white GTO a couple of times. A few other friends, Justin Nall was out there, and his Bay Chevelle. Go out there and run 140 in a sea of meados and things that are going 80, 90. Yeah, it was fun.

The one year I was going to start going to that is when they shut it down. I had a bunch of friends of mine that were going to it for a couple of years, like I need to get out there. And then I was like, okay, I'm ready. And then from what I heard, it was the government had funded a bunch of airports. They had been getting some money. And one of the stipulations were you can allow automotive, anything on your strip anymore.

Sure. So it was getting a little hairy too, because it was a certain distance. People are showing up with faster and faster cars, started going off the end into the weeds, into the little creek. Oh, okay.

So maybe that was part of it too.

It was part of it.

They have contributed a little.

Yeah.

One of my favorite event, I guess this is the only event that I've done in my car, I think. So Michael Morgan used to run that autocross up at the St. Cloud, like the highway testing facility or something like that. It was super cool. It was like, it had all the little small autocross things, but then there was a couple really fast. It was super cool.

Sure.

Yeah. I wish he still hosted that. That was a fun event.

Yeah. You get a car like an EnthMoto Viper or something shows up and just I don't know about that event. just tries everything.

I think Adam mentioned on his episode that like his car is geared, like it, I don't think it will ever run this fast, but I think it's like it's geared for 240 or something crazy like that.

Yeah.

It's like, dude. Well, I think he did 218 and a half mile just. But again, that application, right? Like the half mile guys are not going to do as well. An eighth mile, you know, it's just right. Yeah.

It's kind of the reason why you see a lot of people transitioning to eighth mile. I don't personally, I don't want to go 220 in that old 70s era brick. It looks sleek, but even 170 is a little unnerving.

Well, dude, I was doing some highlights for my Calvo episode, and I found a video of the green Viper, and it's an in-car shot, and you could see the door shaking. And I'm like, I don't want to find out what happens when you go even faster. So yeah, something like this, it does great in the eighth, but if you get into that half mile, what is it, was the car designed to handle that?

Yeah, exactly.

So we kind of danced around a little bit, but tell us about your car here.

I've had it since I was 14, long time.

That's cool.

Yep. I got into Nova's because my stepmom had an old 70 four-door green Nova with a 307 with a flat cam in it. And my dad and I took the engine apart, put a new cam in it, got it running. That was my high school starter car. And then that led into, okay, I need a two-door Nova. The four-door was fine, but everybody knows they want a two door. So, went out, searched, found a 70 SS. My dad, back in the day, it was either, you went to the gas station and got a Wheeler Dealer magazine, or there was a local newspaper that had some listings. So, we found a car, a Nova and the Wheeler Dealer, went and bought it. I put a 350 or whatever small block I had at the time in it. Started doing some bodywork, figured out that it had two inches of Bondo in the roof, it had been rolled, and they basically molded a new car with plastic filler. So, the search for another car started. Found this one in the town that I lived in, $400 running and driving, complete car, bought it, and then just started doing minor fix-ups, and flat blacked it, of course, and went to the bank, got a loan, built a 383, had a four-speed. The typical story, the progression just keeps going and going and going.

But this is when you were 14?

I originally got it when I was 14, yeah. Yeah, I had fixed the green, the four-door, and then got that other 70, and then this one. And so this one ended up being the keeper car.

Yeah.

So eventually I put all new sheet metal on it. The only original panel is the roof and one of the rocker panels.

Was it rusty when you got it?

It was rusty. Yeah. Yeah, the guy worked at the local welding garbage truck manufacturing place and just drove it down the gravel roads wherever he needed to go, just a beater, just full of gravel dust. It was rough. So basically power washed 200 pounds of crap off of it and started driving it around until I could afford nicer things.

So what did iterations look like? What did it run the first time you ever took it to drag strip?

1250, I think, was with a 383 and a four-speed. That was maybe, boy, 2000, no, 1996, 1997, somewhere back in there. And then 2002, I put the LS in it, put the 6.0 in it. And then it had, I believe, six different combinations. That's how I taught myself a lot of the fab skills that I have today was just build a setup, figure it out, take it to the track, get it to its potential, or what I thought was the potential, sell it, start all over again. So 6.0, 5.3, single-turbo, twin-turbo. And it went on and on and on until... It eventually ran 7s in the quarter with the Aluminum 5.3. And then the decision to put the big block in it, I don't know if that was smart or not, because it led to where it is today.

When did you put that in?

I don't know, 2018 or 19, somewhere around there. And that was... I had thought what I... I had reached what I thought was the potential of the Aluminum 5.3, which now, today, people are going... John Capisi is going 4.15 with a stock block LS, which is nuts. So I was going 7s in the quarter, and I thought, well, I'm starting to reach the point of not being reliable anymore. So what do I need to take it to the next step? And I thought, well, I can buy a $20,000 LS or build a $20,000 LS with an LSX block or some next level parts. Or I can buy a used big block from, I think, I don't know if it was from Marketplace. A friend, friend Marcus had it for sale. And the PTC converter guy, Dusty Bradford, had a Buick Regal with a similar combo that went 420s in the 8th. So that was my vision of, okay, this guy's doing it with these parts, I'll find those parts, and I can do it too. And so far, it hasn't gotten there. It's only been 460s in the 8th, which is still fast, but not to the potential that I'm going to keep working with until it reaches that.

What did you do in the old setup?

Sold it, parted it down.

No, I mean, like, what were you doing in the 8th?

Five O's.

Okay, so it's still progressed, but there's still some more room to grow.

For sure.

Okay.

Do you have a rough guesstimate of how many motors you've had in that car? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Three. Four small blocks, six LS's, big block. Yeah, 11. Yeah. So it's been a progression like usual. The typical story.

Is there any part of a car you won't touch? Like you just are like, I'm going to outsource that, I don't want to deal with it.

I try and stay kind of tight to the fabrication aspect of it. If it's bodywork, I'll do almost anything on my own cars, just because I want to save money and not pay somebody else and then learn the skill and the process. So I've done almost all the work on that and sort of have transitioned back into doing, doing the transmission work, doing the engine work, anything I can possibly do to learn the skill and get better. Taking a Turbo 400 apart and knowing how to put it back together. Where before a couple of years ago, maybe I would take it to Adam and have him go through it. Sort of in the in the drag and drive community, it's a needed skill. You need to work on your own car and know how to work on your own car. Otherwise, you're going to be loading it on a trailer and not being able to fix it.

Especially when you're 100 or 200 miles away from civilization too.

Yeah, for sure.

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And there's one of the reasons why I haven't been messing with it because it's like, and it's basically stock form. It does what it's supposed to.

Relatively reliable.

Yes, I have done plenty of the like laying on my back on the side of the road, trying to put something together. I had in my GT before this, the little wire between the starter solenoid and the starter broke. So I would have to lay underneath my car just to touch it. And then my wife would start the car from the inside and then I could get out and get in. Then I was fine.

This is in Nashville, by the way.

Yeah, or I'd have to park. It was at least a manual car. And actually, I was surprised at the newer cars, even with all the bells and whistles in them, you can still pop start them. So I'd have to park and wife would get out and push. And I just pop the clutch and go for it.

That reminds me of a funny story, that old four door Nova. I drove that car for two or three months with no shifter. It was just in drive with no neutral safety switch. It started up, it was automatic. Started up and it would just move. No reverse, no other gears. Just move.

I mean, that works, right? I had bought a truck that the shifter cable had broke. It was an F150 and he's like, yeah, I don't know. So I was like, all right, cool. So I paid him and I started the truck and I put the parking brake on hoping that it worked and I rolled underneath the car. And I went to the side of transmission. I'm like, okay, we got reverse neutral drive and yep. Then I got in and drove it.

Whatever works.

Yeah.

So kind of continue on this then. So again, it all comes down to making things work. There's right combinations and there's wrong combinations. Is there any combinations that you've tried, it just didn't work in the past or not really?

Which was your least favorite of the iterations?

Gosh, I kind of liked them all. And some of the 800-horse turbo stuff is actually more enjoyable. You probably hear that a lot. Once it gets to a certain point, 2,000 horsepower, people tend to not drive them as much anymore. And it just sits or only gets raced here and there where a more streetable combo, guys are dailying them or driving them more. So I do miss those combos a little bit. And it makes me want to build a lighter, safer car than this to race, and put this one back to more of a street car. It's at the point now where it's still possible. It's still, I can take the doors in the front end off and the Lexan windows and put all the stock-ish stuff back on. But the chassis part of it is still there, still stock tubs and somewhat stock floors and all that. So you could un-race car it if I wanted to. Just, I don't know. How many cars can you have, too, before you...

Whoa, whoa, let's not be hasty here. I don't think there's a limit. Do you find yourself tinkering with anything, like even the dailies and stuff, too? Or are you one of those guys that can't leave anything well enough alone?

Yeah, I like all cars to be somewhat modified. Yeah? Yeah. I mean, we do have a CR-V that I haven't done anything to. But yeah, I do. I enjoy performance cars of all aspects. Yeah, I think that truck got a frame off restoration when I got it. It's a 15, but it was completely tore down and deleted and the frame coated and put back all together. So I like building custom cars no matter what it is.

Was it just getting rusty or did you do that just to prevent it from being able to?

To prevent it. But the basic story is I wanted a newer truck, but I wanted it to be a diesel that was deleted. And it's hard to... I wasn't going to the dealership and buying an $80,000 truck. It wasn't in the budget. So, how can I get into a newer truck and do some modifications for $25,000? So I found that truck. It had no box. It was used as an over-the-road, like, hot shot truck. Okay. Okay. Those, when they get high miles, they end up snapping the crankshaft. It's an LML, Duramax. So I had a snapped crankshaft, no box, and 280,000 miles. And I got it for cheap, brought it home, tore it all apart, got a 5,000 mile engine, takeoff box, blasted it all apart, coated everything so it won't rust, and put it all back together. So, a truck that looked like a newer truck at the time, I've had it for five years now, for a fourth of the cost of a new dually.

I think in that 15, 16 range, mine's a 16 Super Duty. And yeah, after that, they start to get where, first of all, the nannies and emissions and stuff, it starts to get harder and harder to delete them and stuff like that. Cause I did all that too with mine, all that went in the garbage right away. Yeah, for sure.

So much more enjoyable.

Just driving it on without all that stuff. It drives better, it gets better mileage, it has more power, you've just doubled the life of your engine immediately. So yeah, it's...

Right, especially on the Ford stuff, the power stroke.

Yeah. Well, those DPFs and...

What was it, the EGR cooler?

Yep, I got rid of that right too. I still have all this stuff, I don't know why. I should just throw it in the scrap pile, but...

Put it on racing junk. I'm sure a lot of people buy it.

Well, I think I missed out on the DPF bubble too. Like for a while there, I probably could have got 1500 bucks for my...

Yeah, people were buying them.

Yeah, but now it's not, they're not as... I think I get maybe six, 700 bucks out of it, if I'm lucky, but...

No, yeah, still a steal for me.

Yeah.

I really do wonder how much stuff you could sell off in a China shipping container of yours.

Oh, I have a lot of stuff. The problem is all my 93 Cobra stuff, I really, really enjoy and I don't want to get rid of, so...

Parts stockpile, like Cobra parts stockpile.

Well, I have three Cobras themselves and then lots of parts that I've collected, just because the Cervini makes like repop stuff, but it's just not the same. A lot of the body parts and...

I would assume the value on that's going up.

It's gone up. I've already, the Cobras that I have are close to double what I've paid for them so far.

Wow.

But it's not like, you know, stock market money investing, but it's car guy stuff that I know. Sure.

I just saw one on Facebook for sale, 400, one of those pages, Low Miles, No Miles, Facebook page, there was one on there for 110 or 120. 400 miles on it. Oh, it's crazy.

That's intense.

Yeah. Those are ones where somebody bought that and just put it away like someday. But even then, if you look, like that was pretty good. But if you look at it in an investing standpoint, how long it took you to get to that number, it's still not a smart, smart move.

But 40 years later, I made 40,000.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Well, the freaking guy that we met in, just outside Dallas, like he found three stolen cars that were stuck in a shipping container or whatever for three decades. Since 1995, I think it was, right? They were straight out the dealership floor.

Yeah, he's been bad for my health, by the way. He has a waffle page, and I've already been spending money trying to waffle things.

I'll enter in with you if you want to get me in it. It's probably not a bad idea. I'm already doing prize picks for the playoffs. That's another spot. If I ever get sponsored by prize picks, by the way, you know I made it. Yeah. What is it? Bluechew, prize picks, what are all the big ones in the podcast? You know what I'm talking about? But anyways, back to combinations and such. So you're doing a lot of the fab stuff and you're learning a lot of stuff along the way. I know this is a really basic question. I promise we'll get into depth from it. But what are you running for turbos?

Well, they are Precision Pro Mod Gen 1 88s. They're old tech compared to what's out there today, but they were in my budget.

Well, you're throwing them on old tech engines. Big black, yeah.

Yeah, a lot of my stuff is... People look at the engine combo and they're like, oh, that's not a budget combo. But in today's world, it is. In the world of $50,000 to $80,000 billet engines is everywhere at the drag strip. A $10,000 big block with some $3,000 for the pair turbos is a budget combo for the power that makes. True. About $15,000 total, I could probably duplicate it for around $15,000 and that's 2,500 horsepower. Okay. That's pretty good in my opinion of money spent versus return.

Do you look in to or dabble or keep up on any of the LT stuff or any of the newer stuff then too?

I do, a little bit. I've kind of wanted to build one, but I don't know. I just, once I got the big block, I sort of look at it like, okay, I'm going to spend $7,000 building this LT and it's going to be maxed out at $1,500 horse. In a lightweight, no-prep style car, huge benefit from that style of engine. I did build most of Carl TCP's Vox Body Mustang that's got an LT, did a turbo setup and a bunch of stuff on that. That's a very impressive car running 470s, I think, pretty budget LT combo. There's definitely some good combos.

That's what he has in there? We didn't even talk about that on our episode with him at all.

Yeah, it's a stock 5.3 block LT based, I think maybe an LT1 crank, I think is stock forged, really budget combo on that single 88. Vox bodies are light and they work, so it's cheater.

Yeah, cheater. You know you're trying to do with the brick, so.

Exactly. This heavy brick that still weighs less than 3,000 pounds, so it's not actually that heavy.

Right.

Well, you said you have Lexan and all that on there now?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, the doors are fiberglass, front clip, trunk, all the Lexan. It takes a tremendous amount of weight off, and if you're working on the car all the time, you don't know how much you'll appreciate a front clip that's removable until you have one. Yeah. It's a nice perk to have and you got to work on it.

Well, I'm sure it's pretty quick to just take it off as well, right?

Yeah.

Just jump on in there.

30 seconds.

Really?

One consideration with the LT stuff is I did think about building something that I could put in place of that if it has problems. Two years ago, I broke a couple of rods and destroyed most of it, broke a couple of sleeves and wrecked the crank. And I took it out, took it all apart, and said, oh, my season's done. So, in my mind, got me thinking, what can I build to put in there as a backup motor that's not another big block, something that's really light, just to go out and have fun with it. So, the 5.3 LT like Carl, Coyote?

Yeah.

I don't know. They're impressive engines, for sure. I just don't know nothing. I don't know anything about them. But, yeah, watching LaSalle's car, doing what it's doing is... It's crazy. It's next level.

Oh, for sure.

Yeah.

We wanted to go up and talk to him at Texas 2K, but...

We have a chance next month.

Yeah.

That he's going to be at Bragg & Wrights.

Okay.

He's a part of the roster. So, it's like... That's one of the things, like... So, one of the reasons we're going out there, I want to watch Enth Moto Race. That's a big reason for me. And then, just because the showing at 2K wasn't, you know, the greatest, you know, what was it, the spark-bug issue?

Yeah.

That broke off and all that. But it's like...

Sounds like a Ford motor.

Yeah.

That street car bragging rights is a very neat class. He's doing some big things to kind of bring high-level street cars, streetable cars, into high-level drag racing, bringing them into events like Donald Long's radial events down south.

Okay.

It was neat to see him bring that class in there. So you got Pro Mods and Radial vs. the World cars running 360s, and then you bring in some top-tier street cars running quarter mile and show people streetable cars running 220, 230 in the quarter, like Devin Van Roof's Mustang.

Okay.

If you're familiar with that one.

Maybe. If I saw it, maybe.

It's the same level as the Snot Rocket. It's just in a Fox body convertible.

Convertible, too.

Yeah, mid-six is too...

Geez. Okay, I'm not familiar with it.

Okay.

You'll be a good guest, by the way. Okay.

I'll have to look him up, for sure. I'm really excited for that, because that event looks like it's growing. And again, we just love learning about this stuff, man. It's really cool to see what's out there.

Well, before we move on from street car stuff, do you have a definition on what would be street car versus full race car? Where do you draw the line at?

Mine's pretty radical, I would say. Yeah.

Okay.

If you can drive it.

It's a street car?

Yeah. Yeah.

All right.

Yeah. If it starts. If it starts. Yeah. If you can get by with most of the cops not pulling you over or drawing attention to yourself and you can drive it on the street.

Okay.

It's a street car.

Do all the sheriffs in town know you're here?

No, not really. I don't go out and cruise it that much.

Okay. As I say, it's not like three cops pulling into you. I texted them, like, hey, watch out. They're all over the place.

Yeah. They like to hang out down here at the little parking lot.

Yeah.

Yeah. For the most part, small town cops don't really hassle you too much. You know, if you drove it through the middle of the city, highway patrol probably would have a problem with it.

What else are you going to do out here with all these completely straight, flat roads that just have cornfields on either side?

Yeah. Well, I got an eighth mile long driveway, so when I do testing, I can just do it in the driveway and I can't do anything. Yeah. It's fun to do. 60-foot launches out there, dial some things in. Back to the suspension part of it that you were asking about, I should probably touch on that a little bit. Sure. Like the different varieties of suspension, especially rear suspension, there's leaf spring and four-link, and the reason the Fox body and the Mustangs work so well is because of the unequal-length four-link in the back. It just hits the tire the perfect way, and it's easy to put some adjustable brackets in there and adjust it if you need more than that. Yeah, just getting it to hit that tire. Leaf springs do it really well with the cal tracks. It's about the simplest rear suspension you could have. The old school ladder bars, you don't see as much anymore. Everybody's pretty much moved to four-link. This four-link is, the possibilities are endless as far as your instant center and how you can move things around to get it to do what you want to do. But it's probably detrimental to a lot of people because there are so many adjustments.

Okay.

Going back to what to offer to customers at the track, is they expect you to look at that four-link and tell them, okay, put it in this hole and that hole, and it better work the first time. If it doesn't, you're like, what the hell? You put it, no, you're supposed to have the perfect setup. So even the top guys still are moving their stuff all over the place. It's just, I think the top tier guys aren't scared to adjust a whole bunch of things all the time. So they'll take it to the track and just spend a whole day adjusting the suspension, adjusting the shocks, and getting it to its perfect or its potential at that track. And then go to a different track, pretty much throw all that out the window and start all over again.

Well, when you're, like you were talking about earlier, you were talking about moving things up by 1% or chasing tenths. Like when you're little tiny fine adjustments like that too can be all it is. And if you're not willing to mess around with that, then how are you going to find that limit or that little extra?

Yeah, yeah. And not being scared at the track to try those things.

Right.

I've struggled with that for sure. It's, you know, you have, a lot of times you'll show up to the track, especially around here, and you might have what appears to be one of the fastest cars there. Everybody's watching you. So then, you know, it wears on you a little bit. Like, okay, you're expected to be the fastest car down the track that day, or perform really well. And then you go up there and spin the tires four times, and it gets to be frustrating.

There's so many times, though, where I've gone and supposed to see the fastest car there. And that's typically usually the one that goes, brake off to the side. You know what I mean? Like they, there's a reason why they're the fastest car, because they're taking everything to that limit. So I feel like I'm seeing a lot of those cars broken a lot of the time.

More power, more problems.

There's just so much to the set up side of things too. That's why Texas 2K has five days of qualifying.

Yeah.

It takes a lot to get that. But then once you get to the actual eliminations, everybody's just running absurd times.

If they can keep it together.

Yeah, there's that too.

It's just like the radio racing. Now three days of testing, a day or two of qualifying. If you don't have it sorted out and going fast, or you're broken and can't fix it by then, that's a lot of days to have a shot at it.

What's your checklist look like when you get to a new track?

I have a guy, Eric, that helps me out. I actually met him on the first year of Drag Weekend. He approached me and said, Hey, is there anyone ever helped you line up your car in the groove or help you get down the track? Not really. At the time, I was just winging it and putting the car in what I thought was the best spot on the track. And he really taught me a lot about getting to the track, walking down it, looking at the groove, seeing how sticky it is, seeing where the transitions are and how the track looks at all aspects of it. You know, if you have a big transition and that's right where your car is shifting, that's going to give you problems. So take all that into consideration.

What do you mean by transition?

Gaps in where they've laid down.

Not all of them. So Texas 2K is unique in that it's poured all in one pour.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that track in particular.

Yeah, yeah, it's hard to get that.

It might be fully concreted, but there's still going to be expansion joints that are cut in it. But then the rubber gets laid down over it.

Okay.

Like, Takeda Falls, for example, has a big gap where maybe they've re-asphalted the first 200 feet, and then there's a little bump. So that's what I would call a transition, a bump.

And that's something that you're looking for. Like, do you like walk the track?

Walk the track, yeah.

Okay. Interesting, okay.

You kind of have an idea how far out you're going to shift then. I assume that you kind of know that just by looking at it.

Well, you're probably not going to adjust your car bit off of what it normally is. But say you run and it unsettles right at that point. You know, okay, yeah, that's right where the shift, you could adjust it then.

Interesting, just added a whole new onion to the layer of the things I have to think about. I guess I never thought about it yet. Okay.

So that everyone, I shouldn't say everyone, a lot of people make fun of these teams that go up there with three or four guys. And they're all kind of walking around the starting line and at some of the bigger drag races. And there's usually going to be always one guy, that's his job, is to look at the track, go push his foot out there. It's for a reason. You're testing it, he's thinking, yeah, that's about the, it's a little different friction than the last track had. I know I can't put everything to it yet until later in the night when maybe it's better or worse. A lot goes into where the car's positioned on the racetrack and what the current condition on the racetrack is, especially with a car on a small tire.

Right.

Yeah. And it changes from a slick to a radial, too. A lot of guys don't understand that if they see a big slick car and they think, oh, that car can get down any track, you know, it's got a 16-inch wide tire. Well, if you take it to a radial track, radial prep track, that car is going to suffer.

Really?

Because that, any slick needs, needs, what's the word I'm trying to think of? Needs to slip, the slick needs to slip. If you put it on a killer, killer track, it's going to shake the tire and...

Oh, interesting, okay...

. do happy things.

Too much prep on it, too much traction.

Too much prep, yep. So I saw some stuff on the internet, this latest, was it Sick Week? So the big tire slick cars were kind of pissed that all the tracks this year down there were like Bradenton and some of the other ones that are, they can't hardly, they can't really unprep those tracks because they're so good. So then they were prepping for these small tire radio cars like Devon Van Hoof's Mustang. And then the big tire cars were suffering because of it. Because they need that slick.

It's interesting to work.

Is there something you can do to the slick? Can you add more air or some things then?

Could add a little more air.

Okay.

Yeah. I don't know a ton about big tire slick racing or big tire cars because I have, most of everything I've done is small tire.

Okay. Is there like a line in the sand of what small tire was big tire? Like a...

My opinion is 28-10-5 is small tire. Everything else is big tire.

Okay.

But for some reason, Minnesota and the Upper Midwest, we decided that it was 29-10-5 was small tire. But if you go to the south, that's different.

That's interesting.

28-10-5.

Okay.

Different criteria, I guess. If you go to Cash at the Creek, you can run a 29-10-5.

Okay.

29-5-10-5.

Interesting. Okay. Is that event, how many times does that go on? Is that once a year or?

Used to be three times a year. I saw this year's two times a year.

Two times. Okay. I actually haven't been to that one yet. I hear a lot about it.

It's really good. You would enjoy it, I think. Okay.

What is that, at Rock Falls?

It's at Grove Creek. Grove.

Yeah.

Okay. Gotcha. Now, my wife and I started the DOT class there, a long time ago, several years ago.

Okay.

It was just a small tire, a big tire, and then I approached Aaron, the promoter there, about bringing in more of a street car class to that. So that's when the DOT class was added. And we helped out there for a little while, and then Aaron ran it from there.

Okay. Have you done some of the national events at all? Like a sick week or anything like that?

I haven't done any of the big dragon drives. We used to travel around a little bit, went down to LS Fest and Bowling Green, and went down to Tulsa, traveled around a little bit, mainly just to see different tracks and experience some of that atmosphere. I don't really chase around events too much. It's too much time away from home and expense. More of a, people call them professional test and tuners. I just like to go out and have fun and get a new personal best and chase personal goals versus chasing trying to have the fastest car in all these classes because it's an expensive endeavor. I would rather try and help my customers that are trying to chase that and help them with their cars and then let them go trying to do their thing, win events.

That makes sense. When you switch to drive on the street, what do you drive on on the street?

E85.

No, I mean, like tire wise or same thing. Oh, same thing. Okay.

Gotcha.

Okay. So you just do the same thing all across the board.

There's two different people in the drag and drive world, people that just get in the car and drive.

Okay.

And hope for the best.

That's where you fall. Okay.

I feel like that's where I'm going to fall.

I was about to say that for you, Red.

Yeah. I don't have a spare transmission. I don't have tires that I swap out. I have a small toolbox of tools, an aluminum jack, and some stands. And that's about it. I don't have a trailer.

I was going to say you don't have a trailer.

No, I don't do the trailer thing. Back to the more moving parts. I've seen more people with Harbor Freight tongues fallen off on their trailer and wheel bearings, and tire blowouts, and trailer flip-overs, and I don't know. I just try and keep it simple.

Well, I'm sure you could come up with a good solution for that, though, too.

You could.

Yeah.

There's a fine point between it being fun and it being work. That's kind of where I was at. Do I even want to switch my tires? After I get off, I'm going to want to go talk to people, and I want to crack a beer when it's all done, and not have to worry about switching my car over.

That is one benefit of the trailer, though, is a lot of those guys get to the track, unhook the trailer, put their gear on, they're ready to go. Versus if you don't do the trailer...

You got to unload everything.

Getting everything out of the back seat, the small things that I do have, a couple of fuel jugs. So I didn't see the benefit of the trailer. I just don't want to do it.

So the other camp, so you're the guy that's on the regular tires, and then what's...

Yeah. The other guy's got all of it. He's got everything. I would, what you would say is the most repaired. He's swapping out four tires, and has all the spare parts of the trailer.

Okay.

I don't know if you've seen any of the big extravagant trailers where they flip up the sides, and it's got an oil change for every day.

Well, Michael Nair said that they had to start putting a limit on the trailer size, because some people were getting like crazy.

Well, all of the events have some sort of restriction on trailers, I think, at this point, right?

They do. They didn't use to, though. You probably don't remember when Drag Weeks first started. There was a well-known street racer called Parrish from Lincoln, Nebraska. He had a regular cab Silverado that was stupid fast. And Drag Week came out, he signed up, he shows up for the first day with a Silverado, pulling a full-size car trailer with basically his whole shop on it. Like bench, welders, the whole thing. That's kind of what started the trailer size rule.

That's intense. When you do your fuel switching out, that's still not, you just got a spot where you can like, do you have like a little Y-valve where you can pipe off the fuel line and just run the pump then to run the whole tank dry or how are you doing that?

Yeah, there's a ball valve on the back of the cell, drain it out into a pan, and then I'll key it up to try and, there's a little pump that pumps it to the rest of the cell and then drain that out. You're not getting 100% of the fuel.

No, but enough.

Enough, yeah. Just keeps it simple.

No, that's not a bad, when I was thinking, when I was hearing about people with dual tanks and all that stuff, that's actually pretty simplistic, not that bad way to go about it either. Do it that way.

Yeah. If you're using, I would never use a fuel that you can't buy at the track because carrying your fuel with you, not a good...

We've seen people have to do that on rallies, and not only that, but sometimes they're carrying like an absurd amount of fuel with them, and that just gets unsafe also, because you're doing, you know, fast car things in between places, and yeah.

Yeah.

We're going to have the Pinto's all over again, people getting rear-ended and blowing up into a ball of flames.

Right. Yeah.

I never thought about that when we used to run to road rallies, because we used to have... Oh, you didn't?

Oh, my God.

I never thought about somebody that was... Because like we used to have a support vehicle carrying fuel, because like there are some guys that could only do E85, which is exhausting on road rallies. Like we were going out west towards like Colorado, right? And I don't know if you noticed, at least at that time, E85 was few and far between. And that's only in assuming if it's good or bad E85, or if it's out there at the gas station testing it. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, this is 83. That's no good.

Yeah. So it's like, yeah, we just brought some or whatever. And I never thought about somebody rear-ending us.

Oh, yeah. No, it's... Well, maybe it's I'm a little gun shy because I come from the Ford world, and we kind of had a bad rap for that there in the 70s. It was kind of a thing, even though it's probably only a few fireballs, but that gets a bad name.

We did put a lot of fireballs in that event.

But I always think of James, and when they were... He was trying to... We were trying to roll in, so we're rallying, right? We're in between point A, checkpoint, and we're trying to get in, and he's almost out of fuel. So he's got his partner in the back seat. You can lift the seat off and get to the fuel pump. He had his buddy trying to take apart the seat, open the fuel hat, take a jug of race gas, and pour it into the tank from inside the vehicle while it's driving down a road in Colorado. So I'm like, that was a little intense.

I forgot about that.

The fumes. Yeah, right? That's what I thought. As soon as you... Or then you get that fuel hat apart, any little spark, you start getting it. Now you're in enclosed space. They're wild like that, though. I could see them.

I think you would enjoy a freaking dragon drive, dude.

I think so, too.

There's a lot of people that would enjoy a dragon drive. It just, you don't... I think a lot of people are nervous about, oh, what could happen? My car could break down. Once you're out on the road with a bunch of your buddies, you don't think about it anymore. You're just having a blast.

Well, also, it's not like you guys are doing like what we do on road rallies, allegedly, going like 120, 130 for six hours straight.

Yeah.

Well, hear me out. Is there anything for getting to the next track before anybody else? Do you do any of that? It's literally just everything is at the...

Damn it.

I was thinking that's where I'd really shine between tracks.

Yeah. There are some shenanigans, though. There's some role racing on the four lanes and some fun stuff if you want to.

Right.

Yeah.

My favorite is like when people do the rolling burnouts with the trailer.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Which is sketchy.

Oh, I'm sure.

Yeah.

The king of trailer burnouts just lives over here, 15 miles.

Oh, really?

Yeah. Known for a mile long trailer burnouts.

Jesus.

Yeah. Yeah. 2,500 horsepower car just letting it eat.

What kind of car?

It's a Nova.

Oh, it's a Nova.

You know a Nova, guys. I know.

Okay. So we touched a little bit on the suspension side of things. Trying to think what else. I mean, there's a whole lot into it. What was the most difficult part of all this that you had to learn? What was the biggest learning period?

Finding good customers, I would say.

Oh, on the business side. Okay.

Yeah.

Okay. What does a good customer look like?

Somebody that's mechanical enough to do most of the things on their car, but recognizes that maybe they want it a little better in some areas, like the fabrication part of it. They want to be a little nicer and will spend the money to do that, but can do a lot of the other work themselves.

Okay.

And somebody that doesn't choose every part based on price, they base, they want a good value maybe, but aren't against spending some money to put some nice stuff on their car.

See, I like the nice stuff, but I like to wait for the Black Friday sale. So that's...

I just finally got some heads for that car from Black Friday. I only showed up five months later from Mast.

Around December time, the stuff starts piling in at my house from I do a lot of Black Friday shopping.

Nothing wrong with saving money.

Well, you know, race car parts add up, man. If you could be... even if it's 10%, that could give $1,000, $1,200 there sometimes between what you're spending.

Right. Yeah, I've had some bad customers in the past. I've had a restraining order. I've had death threats. I've had cars getting... Yeah, all sorts of stuff that you learn as you go.

Okay.

The type of customer that you want and don't want.

Well, one of the things you mentioned is you don't really do much LS stuff anymore. All right, you mentioned off camera.

Yeah, not a lot of LS stuff. And a lot of it is... most of the LS guys are do-it-yourselfers.

True.

And they don't typically care if their turbo kit is mig welded and exhaust wrapped. They're more on the budget end of things and want to go fast for cheap. And the amount of guys that want really high-end fabrication custom headers or an extravagant turbo kit have moved on to other engine platforms that make more power, typically.

Okay. So what are people typically coming to you? Because you kind of offered a full gamut here, right? So what platforms are people coming to you with?

Recently worked on a lot of small block Fords and big block stuff. One of my favorite ones was a 70, 71, 71 Nova I did, a red one that had a 481X, which is a big block style engine, but it's a from scratch billet block and no water, external oil pump and meant to make 4,000 horsepower.

Yeah, that doesn't sound like a cheap build.

No, no. And a guy brought me that and said, here's the engine, here's the car. That's my favorite type of build. When they have a general direction, okay, I want to go race this class, and this is what I want to do, here's the parts that I have, make everything else happen. So it's up to me to put the engine placement and set up everything. And that's my favorite, just a blank canvas to make everything else work. Okay.

Are you using 3D scanning or CAD or anything to do anything around here?

I'm not.

Just cardboard and a Sharpie?

Very low overhead around here. Okay. Some very basic machines, but nothing computerized. Okay. I just never, I never went to school for any of that, and I never learned any of that. So, I'm not against it. I just, I'm not going to go out and buy a whole bunch of machines because I'm still just one guy. Right. I can only make so much money being one guy to try and make that all worth it.

Can you kind of, at this point, then you got to the point where you can kind of just see it and be like, okay, I need this bend. Headers always baffling me how somebody can be like, okay, I know I need this degree. I've seen people use the like Lego thing to put together. Are you using any of that kind of stuff too?

I did a little bit, but mainly just a vision in my head of what it would look like. And you gain that knowledge as you do them over and over.

Yeah, after you've walked over three or four times and went, son of a b****, you start to get better.

Cut that too short, grab another mandrel bend, cut it again.

Yeah.

Then that one's too short and you go to lunch.

Yeah.

By the way, I'm 100% putting a High Performance Academy ad right there.

Yeah.

That's cool. Like when we were watching Brian May had ratified, messed around with those little things, like he's designing all this stuff for the Dazs. And it's just, it's so cool, man. Like when you get into that, like these are just kind of like big Legos sometimes.

Yeah. It's an art project.

Yeah. Well, you see it enough times to, or not to see it, like you do it enough times. You kind of get that, it's a skill.

Yeah.

Well, there's some people, that's why I asked you, because there are some people that just go, this is what that needs. And you know, when it comes to chassis stuff and like piping things like that, that's where my brain starts to hurt when I go to look at it. I'm like, okay. I mean, I can understand, I've taken cars completely apart and put them all back together, and I can handle all that, but I'm working off somebody else's blueprint already but to make something from scratch is where I go, oh, it seems daunting.

That's my favorite part by far. Yeah. Just the freedom of just an open canvas like that.

Right. Do you have your chassis and something? Do you have a certification or how does that work when you need to get something started then? Do you, you've gone through?

The, I think they call it the division, the central division chassis inspector will come out and look at it. He makes house calls. So say, Jim, I got a 650 chassis that I need looked at and come out and look at it and shoot the s*** with you for a little while.

Yeah.

Stick around it.

I'm assuming they get to a point where they've seen enough of certain people's chassis where they go, okay, they know that your stuff's quality, they're not going to.

Right, right.

Okay.

They walk in and they see a clean shop and well put together cars and have an assumption that the work is done nicely too. The crazy thing about chassis certification is they, you can have the worst booger-welded caterpillar weld, and as long as the bar placement is in the right area to meet the spec in the book, it passes.

Well, I was going to, that was another question I was going to ask, do they x-ray welds? They don't do anything that fancy?

It does have a sonic checker to check the tubing thickness. To make sure it's the right, it's thick enough.

You're not using some pop metal?

Yeah, not using the conduit to make a little cage.

Okay.

Yeah. But as far as the welds go, I've seen some ridiculously crappy welds, just, yep, good enough.

So here's, this is actually something I'm surprised I've never asked any of the previous fab guys we've had on the show. Because there's obviously, yeah, like cages come in levels, right? So can you kind of take me through like a basic cage to what an intense one looks like? What are the changes along the way? Because that whole world is different to me as well.

Yeah, the basic roll bar from 10 to 1150 in the quarter and an 850 cage. Personally, I would only do an 850 cage in chromoly. You can do it in mild steel. I just use chromoly and TIG weld everything. I don't think I've used my MIG welder in four years. Just TIG everything. If you want to go faster than 850, you can add on to an 850 to a 750, which is known as a 25.5. That can still be mild steel. Just a few more bars in the floor area, in the head area.

Yeah, kind of like right... Okay.

What people call the funny car hoop. You have to add that to go 750s. Okay. Past that, everything has to be chrome moly tubing and TIG welded.

Really? Okay.

Faster than 750, all chrome moly.

Really? Okay.

Which is considered a 25.3 at 3,200 pounds and heavier. Okay. A 25.2 at 2,800 pounds and heavier. If you want to go faster than that, a 25.1 would be virtually limitless. Just the best you can do. Okay. And there's really not a lot of variation between those fastest three. It's just some minor differences in the tubing thicknesses and sizes. Most of them all have a ton of floor bars, door access, roof access, the funny car area. One interesting thing about chassis is the NHRA only really cares about the driver's compartment. They don't really care about what's forward of the firewall and what's back of the main hoop. You can have a 25-3 chassis meant to go 650 and just have two inch and five-eighths bars to the back frame rail and nothing else, if the car fits certain criteria.

Okay.

So the theory is you're strapped into this little man cage and you should be fine, no matter if you come tumbling out of it or not? Right.

Well, it's meant to keep you in there.

Yeah, yeah, okay.

If you're tumbling out of it, things have gone very wrong.

But I don't know, I saw Calvo's car come apart, my god.

Probably find a new chassis fabricator for that. Okay. Yeah.

That thing is crazy. Well, also seats are also an important thing. Are those kind of overlooked?

Absolutely overlooked. I like to use a seat with some head containment and some padding there. Even a KERKE, you can buy a KERKE for $400 that has really nice containment. It protects your head from banging off those funny cage bars. And a lot of it goes back to the fabricator and how he's positioning those bars in there. Oh, yeah. Any build I would do, the cage either needs to be dropped down through the floor or the body lifted off to fully weld it. I'm not doing anything that I'm building as I go and then trying to weld the tops. Okay, so it's another thing in the rule book. You can three-quarter weld a joint up on the, say, the main hoop to the rear bars because the headliner is in the way, as long as you have a gusset on it. There's several areas where, oh, if you put a gusset on it, you cannot weld it all the way. I don't do things like that. Every bar is getting welded all the way, no matter what you have to do.

Well, that creates a weak point no matter what.

A lot of times, they'll get built and then drop down through the floor, fully welded, put back up in the car.

Okay, it kind of goes back to that quality thing and the right type of customer you mentioned.

Yeah, you're sending your, like that GTO, for example, that I did the entire chassis on, that guy's running that thing down the corridor at 220 mile an hour. If he crashes that thing, those are my welds and my tubing in that car.

Right, you want to blame the tuner, not the fab guy.

Exactly, too much boost.

Have you had any cages or chassis that have been through the test? Have you had some people, customers crash yet?

I have not had any big crashes, no. So hopefully it stays that way.

Not gonna wet here.

Yeah, seats, seats definitely could be improved upon. People bolt and throw in a couple 3-8 bolts and a curvy through the floor. Not the right way to do things.

Is there something in going to the drag strip that you see is most overlooked?

Safety in general.

Safety in general.

People spending 40,000 in the drivetrain and zero in safety. Yeah. At least a jacket and a helmet that's not 20 years old. Yeah. A lot of the fast guys are doing a good job. They have fire suppression systems and a HANS device and good belts and good safety gear. Yeah. But there's a lot of people that, it's their last thought on the build. Yeah.

We don't think about it. Again, to reference the Calvo episode again, we asked him in the episode, has this crash taken the dog out of you?

Sure, the wind out of your sails.

Right. Yeah, exactly. Because some guys, you know, Ricky Bobby, man, like you saw him in the movie. It took a while to bounce back, man. But he's like, yeah, just a big emphasis on safety. He's like, yeah, all our big power customers are getting this level of cage now. So, yeah, no, that's...

Which is tough in those style of cars. Yeah. It's easy in a Nova or a Maverick. You can put a chassis in that, no problem. But a Viper or a Corvette are really tough.

Okay.

Yeah. And the ones they put in those Vipers are, you can hardly see them. They're great. Yeah.

All tucked up and nice and everything. Yeah. It's really, you really have to look at it in some of those cars. Yeah.

But still the roof lines are so low in a lot of those cars.

You're telling me, man. I barely fit in that damn thing.

Well, and then put a helmet on, on top of that, that's...

I can't fit in a Viper with a helmet.

Yeah.

I have to get the seat lowering kit, which I can fit. I haven't tried it with a helmet yet, but it adds a little bit, because I have maybe an inch and a half of headroom in a stock seat, as is. So, yeah.

Another thing you don't see is companies are... You see a lot of, oh, you need this turbo and this fancy engine part on social media being advertised. When's the last time you saw anybody advertising a fire suppression system?

True.

Yeah. I don't know why they don't, but somebody's saying, this race tech seat could save your life. Yeah, it's $2,500, but it could save your life. No one, for some reason, no one shows that stuff off.

Safety, boring. Boring.

It's boring until it's not.

Yeah, right.

What do you run for seats in that? I didn't even get a chance to see.

It's a KERKE. KERKE? A basic KERKE.

Yeah.

Yeah. I would like to have a containment seat of some sort. It sucks on the street though, because it blocks your vision.

Right. You know one of those fancy Tesla cameras that are catching everybody keying their s***? You'll see everything.

That was a good idea. Yeah.

Until it lags a little bit. Like, I don't know if you've ever seen the semis that have the screen on the back so you can see cars in front. I don't know if it was like a real thing, but I remember seeing it on social media a few years ago. And everybody's like, oh, it's fun. All fun and games until the screen lags for a second. So then your car is all caged up and everything too then, right?

Yeah. 650, sir.

Oh, 650.

Okay.

Okay.

A lot of the bars are pretty well hidden by the super dark windows.

Yeah.

There's a lot of floor bars underneath though. A lot of hidden bars.

Well, it's an awesome look too. Again, social media doesn't do justice, but I do love the color. It's all tinted up and everything.

Thank you.

It does look sweet.

Thank you. I tried to make it look unique. It's somewhat like a fox body. There are a lot of Novas out there. You go to the track and there are a lot of Novas.

But I feel like Novas and Chevelles, like, yeah, I see.

Camaros.

Yeah.

Yeah. But try to do touches that no one else has. No one else, a lot of guys don't have flush-mounted windows, especially on a Nova because it's hard to do. And being super low, everything's got to be low. That's one of my criteria. Yeah, the car is going to come in and get the work done, get chassis work done. It's got to be low, just looks nice. Oh yeah.

What's your choice of suspension, by the way?

Still leaf spring.

Okay.

So the stock style leaf spring Calvert is the brand. And one thing that I'm doing that's a little unique compared to a lot of other people is it has Viking shocks.

Okay.

Which I would say around the 450, 470 range, people tend to shy away from QA1, Viking, some of those other companies that have daily driver shocks as well and shift towards Sandthuffs and Mensers and some of the Penskis, some of the other bigger name, track racing specific shocks. But I've worked pretty closely with Viking, they're just up here in Lakeville. Yeah. They do really well at assuring me that those shocks that they have or they build can do anything that I need them to do. So we'll see. We'll see if it goes 420s, still has the Viking shocks on it. I'd be really happy if it does.

Aaron Miller made a post about that one or two months ago, because they used that as well. Yeah. I'd reached out to Chris to have him on. I haven't heard back yet, but it'd be sweet to get those guys on. Yeah. It's fun to learn about that too.

Yeah.

It's black magic.

Yeah. It is a lot of black magic. They assure me that they can do anything. It's all about the shaft forces and the valving. And there are some guys that are revalving the Vikings. I haven't had that done. I've just been dealing with Viking Direct on everything I need.

Okay. So what about after a run? Right? Like, you know, you went through all your setup, you did your pass. What's next? Are you pulling data or somebody pulling data for you? What's that look like?

Pulling data myself, laptop, looking at the basics, the RPM, the boost, the O2 sensors. Put the normal data points in there and see if anything is out of the ordinary.

Okay.

If it's not out of the ordinary, the no problems, then you just decide how to go faster.

What's that look like?

If the car didn't spin, just put more power in it.

Oh, okay.

Tell it doesn't work.

Okay. And then are you messing around with any suspension stuff too, or not really?

Yeah, adjusting shocks. Almost everyone gets some sort of, you try not to do too many things at once because you don't know what actually is making it work. But usually end up doing more than one thing at once. Put a little more boost in, click or two on the shocks. Maybe a half pound of air or a pound of air, depending on what the track looks like that day. If the track's a little crappier, you might run a little bit less air pressure.

Okay.

Yeah. Two trains of thought, some guys take their car to the track and put it on wastegate and run it down the track and just gradually creep up. And then the pros take their car to the track and put most of the power in it and adjust the suspension until it works.

Okay. Interesting. I've only seen the start on wastegate side of things. By the way, a question I had earlier in the episode, I never heard you go down the route of superchargers. Did you ever do that?

I've built a couple. I put a Whipple on a Chevelle once.

Just not your thing, huh?

Just not my thing.

Okay. You like efficient power.

Well, there's that. And then being a fabrication shop lends itself to being a turbo system builder. True. Almost anyone can bolt on a supercharger and order an intake for it and make it work.

Okay. Yeah, that makes sense.

The number of mail order turbo kits are a lot fewer than superchargers. True. Yeah.

And then to get one that actually is good and works well.

Exactly. A lot of them look good on the Internet until you get them.

Put the two pipes together, you go, what the hell?

Yes. And I have considered doing mail order. I did do Nova mail order kits for a while. And I shifted away from that once I figured out that I enjoy going into the shop and working on a project that is a blank canvas again. And those problem-solving skills of how I'm going to design this turbo setup versus going in the shop and building the same turbo kit for the same Nova and shipping it over and over and over again. The money's better for the mail order. There's a lot of shops that have shifted away from car builds and are just doing in-house parts and shipping them. That's where the money's at. But that doesn't satisfy me.

I was going to say, have you thought about even having a secondary guy or outsourcing it and just replicate this kit sort of deal?

Yeah, but it goes back to the quality control. I have had a few people work for me and help me out. There was one guy that you could just cut loose on a job and say, this one needs a turbo kit, and he knocked it out, but then he moved out of state.

The one that got away.

The one that got away.

Talent's hard to find, man.

Well, that's any business. The worst part is employees and customers. Yes. Unfortunately.

The more of them, the more the stress level raises.

Exactly.

I try to keep my stress level low by just being me. Yeah.

So how much of what you have in this car, for example, is you figuring things out along the way versus just taking something that's already kind of like proven and adapting it?

Most of it is just me.

Just figuring it out?

Yeah. I took the big block combo, was somewhat copied off of that Dusty Bradford setup, but not much is the same other than being a big block turbo combo.

Okay.

Put my own spin on it. Okay. Eventually, it'll go real fast.

Do you enjoy engine building?

Yeah, for my own stuff.

Okay.

Just because I know how to do most of it, and I'm not going to pay somebody $10,000 to put my engine together when I can do it. The reason behind most of it, I wouldn't typically do it for a customer, because then it takes away from the fab. Right.

Is that most of your business then, fab work?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. If it was just, if I could just do fab work, I would love it. Okay. Most builds end up adding on two or three things on top of it. I'll do them just to be courteous to the customer and help them along in their building.

It's here. You can do it. Yeah.

I'll knock it out quick.

Okay.

Yeah. If I could just build headers and turbo kits and chassis all day, I'd be in heaven.

Yeah.

Yeah. As long as it wasn't one after the other.

Right. I've just got myself a better welder and I'm going to start tinkering with some of that stuff. Already, I've gone from a Hobart Fleet Farm, no gas flux core to a nice Lincoln multiprocessing unit. And so my MIG has already gone light years and I'm like, oh s***, I'm a professional.

Yeah.

Now that I'm actually using shielded gas and everything, it's been great. But I want to start messing around with TIG here. Is there any pointers or anything like that? Because you seem like you're kind of a self-taught, just pick up the...

My biggest pointer would be to weld every day. Just weld something every day. And go to Cormark Metals and get you a wide variety of metals, thicknesses, types. If you don't know what filler rod go on the internet, figure out, okay, what filler rod do I use when I'm welding mild steel versus stainless? And just tackle something every day. Okay.

I have learned quite a bit just from some YouTube videos. There's lots of guys out there that are putting that stuff out there.

There's some really good ones out there. They each have their own pros and cons, or however you would say that. Mild steel is very easy, but mild steel isn't used in automotive fabrication that much really.

No, it's not. I'm learning that as I'm like, okay, I've got this now. I can't really weld anything with it. Most of the stuff I'm working with is aluminum or stainless. Sure.

And a lot of the automotive things you would weld are somewhat complicated to weld. Say you're putting a cage in a unibody car, and you're going to be welding a thick plate to a thin sheet metal floor. That's a hard scenario to even with a MIG welder to pull off correctly. Yeah, chromoly TIG welding is fun. That's, I would say, my favorite. Yeah, get some aluminum, get some stainless, just try it all.

And with the TIG, you can do all of that stuff. So it just depends on your filler rod, all that stuff that you're using.

Okay.

Obviously temperatures and all that stuff changes.

Yeah, temperature changes a little bit. Certain gas lenses, if you don't have a gas lens on the TIG torch, I would certainly get a gas lens. I use 332nd tungsten on everything no matter what it is, so then I don't have to change from one tungsten to the other. Okay. Aluminum, you would typically use a smaller cup, stainless, you're going to use those big, a lot of guys call them FUPA cups, big cups, back purge all your stainless, so you want to get another tank.

Yep. Yeah, I've got the CO2 mixture stuffer right now and I saw that I had to have a totally different gas for TIG.

Yeah, you'll want pure argon for TIG, for aluminum and stainless.

Well, good thing my handy-duty Harbor Freight Welding Cart has the second spot for another tank, so it'll be good. That's right. I just got a plasma cutter too, and my God, I don't know why I haven't had one of those this entire time because that is a hot knife through butter, man. It's been great.

Yeah. I need a little tube on right there. Yeah, very handy. I have thought about getting a plasma table, somewhat of an automated plasma, but I just haven't.

Yeah.

Space is always an issue. Yeah, as far as the welding, just weld every day and get a couple of people. I could be one of those people if you want to say send me a message and hey, what am I doing wrong? Send me a picture, I'll probably tell you what you're doing wrong or guide you towards a better product.

Well, my 15 year old daughter is, she's kind of gotten into a little bit. So that's why at PRI, I ponied up and got a nice welder and stuff. So her and I are going to do this together.

So it's kind of fun. Same, similar scenario. I got a 12 year old that wants to learn a little bit, building a truck for her right now or starting to build a truck for her.

She just got for her 15th birthday, a 95 OBS F-150 5.8, nice truck. But it's an old ranch truck, so it's a little beat up, but it's from Montana, so there's no rust on it. So we're working on fixing it up. And it's been a lot of fun.

Nice father daughter project.

Yeah, of course, between me being busy and her being in all kinds of sports and stuff, too, we don't have a lot of time.

Nope, similar scenario.

Yeah, all right.

Yeah, I told my daughter the other day, we got a lot of work to do on your truck. Well, instead of going in the house and getting a snack and dinking around, why don't you come in the shop and we'll spend an hour or two every day, kind of like welding. If you want a project to get done, put an hour or two every day into something and it'll come along quick.

Do you find it hard to, this is just a dad-daughter thing now where, because I have some time, like you're here, right? And she's probably at school, all that stuff. So I find myself tinkering with the truck sometimes. And I'm like, dang it, you got to stop and like do this with her. And otherwise she comes home and it's some parts are done. And it's so I've had to kind of tell myself to back away from it a little bit.

Right. Yeah. You kind of got to think in your mind. OK, what's the project that her and I are going to do tonight and then get that laid out so it's ready?

Oh, yeah. There you go. That saves you some time that way.

Yeah.

OK.

OK, tonight we're going to unbox these parts and, you know, put them together or whatever the project is.

OK.

That's my plan anyway.

Yeah. Well, there's some things that I don't want to do. It's got bad tint on the windows. And I just spent probably an hour and a half doing two windows, scraping them and going on and getting all that. I know that's after I finished doing the one window. I was like, OK, it can be done. Now you're doing it because that was a pain in the a**.

I've never seen clear tint. I haven't in a while.

Yeah, it was rough. The truck's got like 218,000 miles on it or something. So it lived a good life.

Just don't give her the crappy jobs all the time.

I know, I know.

I don't want to do this crap all the time. Right. I do fun stuff.

That is true. Yeah, she already is my designated trailer loader. So I like I'll put her in the Shelby and I hate being in the car when unloading and unloading my trailer. I want to be able to see everything that's going on. So she pulls it in while I go left, right. Come on up. So she gets to do some fun stuff.

Very nice.

It's a wide car, too.

It's horrible, man. That that aluminum trailer is great. But I'm literally like half an inch on either side. It drives me nuts. I've already scraped a few things and went, oh, and you're letting her back it in the garage? Yeah. Oh, yeah, I will. She because I can go that much. Yes. It actually goes better that way than when I try and do it myself.

Props. Yeah.

No, she's pretty good backer up her. Yes.

It's funny. Like when we're getting ready for a trip or whatever, it's just the two of them. There's like a hair. She just sit there and look pretty. I'm like, all right, that's cool. I'll sit here. We can supervise.

Yeah.

She joins us for Texas 2K and whatever. Like it's like a second Dan. It's great.

No, it is great because it's hard to duplicate yourself sometimes.

Yeah.

That was the spitting image. Yeah.

Even if you make your own, they still aren't always duplicating you either.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I haven't taken either of my daughters on drag weekend yet. And I need to because it's hard to run the event and try and make sure they have fun at the same time and race a car. It's a lot, but I need to take them along because they would have fun just riding along in car road trip.

And that's where a second car kind of comes in. Like you have somebody else like, yeah, somebody else just to drive it, you know, at least like spend the time with Uncle Harris, whatever. Well, I do the race car s*** or something like that. You know, something like that.

But my wife's sister's in the car, so she'll probably drive that one. Okay, that's cool. Put a kid or two in.

Yeah, there you go.

How do we grow this sport? It is a sport at the end of the day.

Yeah, just keep get people out racing or whatever it is. Just get people out interested in the hobby. Like I was saying before, I think I said before, I think the LS engine brought a lot of people in because of the budget aspect of it. Yeah, I think there could be more people creating events and not just car get-togethers but all sorts of car events. One in particular, one's the last time you've seen anybody organize a swap meet, a big swap meet, where there's 300 car guys selling their parts. Wouldn't that be awesome to go to? I would go. But so things like that where people could organize it and get more people involved. As far as the drag racing goes, I think there needs to be a little bit more catered towards entry-level drag racing. But somebody that's willing to put in the time to make a rule set that caters to those entry-levels without making it bracket racing or index racing. I'm really one of the few that don't really like this new style of putting everything in an index because it makes it easy. Oh, you need to run 580s or whatever the number is, and who cares what the car is, it needs to run 580s or slower. I would rather see people putting in the time to make rule sets and adjusting those rule sets to keep it, keep the parity and cater it towards entry level.

Okay. What does that look like?

I guess, like you want to do a stock block class, okay, has to have a stock block, has to have, there's a variety of rules that would keep some of the race car stuff out.

Okay. So kind of have it for those like 10 second and slower guys. Like an event dedicated for those types of folk.

I think I agree with that though. That would bring, cause I go to like Texas 2K and I'm like, I would really like to go run my car and some stuff. And I know I'm in that 10 range, right? But like that's a slow car now. And it's like, if people need to realize if you don't go, even though you're not going sixes, like you could still go and have a good time.

Yeah, those rules have to be very specific though. And a lot of people don't, either they don't know what those rules are or how to manage it. I think it can be done. Not saying I have the time either to promote a bunch of races, but as far as making my drag weekend rules, I didn't, that's one thing I've always prided myself in is I don't go just copy somebody else's rules. I came up with the rules and then adjust them to see fit on how what the cars are showing up as and how the classes look. Like one of them, Factory Street, would be one that your car would fit in, and it's all stock body panels or stockish replacement panels, full interior, exhaust past the rear axle, 17-inch wheel or larger, things like that.

Yeah.

No Zeus fasteners, no race car stuff.

No, that would be that way you would get a lot more people, I think, interested to go in something like that.

What I tried to sort of bring in at Cash at the Creek or one of my ideas was everybody likes to see the wild small tire, big tire, street car classes, but you're leaving out that whole, I don't want to call it the Hellcat crowd, but the Z06, the Saline Mustang, the Hellcat, all those cars that are making maybe 800 horse or 6 to 800 horse that don't really have a place to race competitively unless they want bracket race.

Right.

Right, it's still fun to see them, even though you're not trapping the same speed at the end, it's still fun to see two cars go heads up.

For sure.

Who cares?

For sure.

10 seconds, eight seconds, it's still fun. Who's gonna win, who's not?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, I don't think those guys have a, have a very good place to race right now.

At least locally here.

At least locally, yeah.

Interesting. Well, somebody else has to kind of just cop up the, it cost money to put on the events at first too. Like, the first year or two might not be profitable.

Yeah. If you want payouts. Yeah.

Well, and there's that too, right? Yeah. Well, also, what's it cost to rent a track?

$3,000 to $10,000.

Yeah. Yeah. So, it's a range.

$3,000 is at the bottom of the budget, or bottom of the spectrum. It's one of the reasons why we shied away from rockfalls, even though it was so close. I would love to bring people to that track as part of my race, $10,000 for a day. Is that what it is? It was. That was two years ago.

Yeah, but on a weekend day, too.

Now they've fixed up some things, too, so it's probably more than that.

$10,000?

Yeah.

You can't make that math.

It's tough unless you're charging, let's say, $200, $300 a ticket, and then you have $100 entrance. So, it adds up quick. Believe me, I've done many track day calculations for the rallies, so I know how that goes. I remember I was trying to get a track down, what was it, Bowling Green, the one out there, and I think it was $32,000 for the weekend, and you could only do two days, you couldn't just do a single day.

Yeah, that's quite a facility, though.

And there's that, too, right? So, it's like, yeah, of course they're gonna, they want to get their money's worth, too.

But it's a place you could bring in 500 cars if you wanted to.

There's that, yep.

Like Brainerd, you could take 500 cars to Brainerd.

Yep.

One thing I thought would always be interesting is a drag and drive that morphed more things together. A road course or autocross on a drag racing day, and, you know, add whatever your mind can think of. A show car day, I don't know.

Yeah. It's tough, though, because you're talking about a multi-track festival, kind of. Yeah. You already have grid life, but that's one track for the weekend. So now it's like, all right, how do we add another?

Well, that's something that I would really enjoy with a car like that. So that's where you got to go, okay, who are you going to weed out and who are you going to bring in?

Wait a second, that's what I was doing, though, when you think about it, right? For the rallies, and this is where the lines get blurry again, because I had a lot of people complaining, well, I don't want to do drag racing and road course because it's harder on a car or whatever, but like, yeah, I've done a combination of those two as well over a three-day weekend. I don't know, I've thought about bringing it back. It's just, again, time consuming.

How many years did you do that? A couple of years?

Four or five years. And then when I parted ways with my business partner and I did mine for one year, I lost 20 grand on that one, but on the last one, and I just paid that off last September. And it was a blast. It was an expense of education, but it's also a reason for a lot of my success now because I didn't fully commit. I committed financially, but I didn't put the work in.

So it was one day of autocross or rowing forks?

Depends on which year. So for example, Niagara Falls, what do we do for that one? We did autocross in Pennsylvania, and then...

That was the only track day, but technically that autocross was a combination of small oval track, because they let us rip the track too after that.

That was a fuster-cluck. But then also PPIR out in Colorado for my first Venom Rally, and then also a drag strip the following year. I don't know if we did an actual road course that year on that one. And then for me, we'll throw in... Oh yeah, go-karting, that's what we did. So it was also a Le Mans style go-karting, so teams of four for an hour. So that was pretty good. You can't get that locally. I would love to do that locally, the Le Mans style stuff. But it was a combination of things. I don't know, we'll see if any variation of that comes in the future. I guess I just didn't have the correct audience. Back then, I was trying to get all the exotic cars and all that, which some of those guys come out, but...

I know cars like I have. I would love if I saw somebody bring out an event that... I don't want to say catered towards drag racing more, but a lot of that style of events, the drag racing is just kind of a sideshow or side aspect of it.

Yeah.

It's not taken seriously, I don't know.

Yeah, that's why we were so excited to do our first drag and drive. And I know Michael is listening to this, and we're not going to be able to make the replacement date because Dan's already committed to Optima.

Yeah, I'm doing Optima Streetcar that day.

You're already committed to that, but it's like, that would have been fun. Because again, it's like it's just more of your people. You know what I mean? So it's a big happy mixer.

Well, I would love to have you guys on ours in September.

Lower the dates for that again?

26th through the 28th.

Okay, and do people read like, are all the spots taken? You said they aren't taken off all yet.

They aren't taken. It's not officially open yet, but I did an interest email.

Okay, because you don't do it through like a website or anything crazy like that. You want to basically vet the people and all that.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Keep it kind of pick and choose a little bit, even though I know that is hard to do and might offend some people here and there. But like I said before, I want to add some really nice fast cars this time.

Yeah, it's tough being in that position, even with the show. Like it's like, well, why won't you have this person on? Or why are you gatekeeping? Well, it's my event.

Yeah, you can kind of do what you want.

I want to see my friends and the friends of those people, you know. So it's tough.

You know, it's tough. Yeah, you can't you can't please everybody as the saying goes. No.

So start with yourself and then go from there.

I want that friend.

Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. Sure.

Well, sweet.

As we kind of start to wind up here, was there anything else that you kind of wanted to touch on? Any?

Not that I can think of right now.

Okay. Let's get the cameras turned on.

Let's turn them on after you leave.

Yeah. Yeah. The Minnesota goodbye for an hour and a half. Like we did the other day after No Tune Necessary.

Oh yeah.

I think what Mal say, it was 9.30 when we said goodbye the first time and then we left at 10.22. It's like, jeez. Well, sweet. On that note, do you want to pop the usual three down?

Yeah. So at the end of every episode, we like to ask our guests to pick three cars. I need a track car, a daily driver and a show car. You have an unlimited budget. You get a guy with your skill set, weld two cars together, whatever you want.

A track car. I'm going to go with the Nova. It's always been my favorite. Always been a Nova guy.

Well, would you do anything else to it?

Yeah, I would build a new chassis, light as possible, all carbon interior, carbon tubs and all that. All the latest and greatest stuff I could get my hands on with some sort of billet, big black Chevy, yeah, Triangle, 370s or something. Daily driver, I'd say we, does this mean it has to be driven year round in Minnesota?

Yeah.

Okay. Probably be the truck we're going to build for my daughter, which is a square body short box Chevy with a later chassis under it and a 604 L80. Just the underpinnings of a new truck or newer truck, but the classic looks of a square body Chevy, something that can just turn the key and drive it literally anywhere.

A Reston Mod type deal?

Yeah, Reston Mod kind of. A show car, my idea of a good day at a show, a car show, would be to bring something wild enough where I could just pop the hood and kind of stand back and watch the people do the Ed Bass Mastery. I'll just look at it.

Yeah.

Ten people are gathered around trying to figure out what it is. So I would probably change that show car build to one of my dream builds in my head, which is to take a mid-80s Chevy Chevette and build a tube chassis for it with C6 Corvette underpinnings with a Torrent Turbo, aluminum engine of some sort, making like 1500 horse, and basically a go-kart in a Chevette body. Everybody I tell that to thinks I'm probably half-crazy for wanting to build something like that, but that's what my mind dreams up. So that's what I would love to take to a car show and put around and show off.

Have people pointing and go, he's going to die in that.

Yeah, exactly.

Sort of like a Vette cart, Vette cart with a little bit more fab skill involved, with the body on it.

I had a friend of mine that wanted to do a crazy build in an AC Cobra, you know, old school Shelby, and I'm like, that thing is, that's a go-kart already.

Yeah.

With no roof.

Sure.

I guess one thing I would like to say is, you know, several people that I look up to in the chassis building arena, like Tim McAmiss and some of those builders that have made a name for themselves doing high quality work and very good craftsmanship. It's cool to see all these builders, whether they're in a little pole shed or a giant manufacturing facility, just using USA source materials and churning out these awesome parts for people. So then we can go online and order up cool stuff or have their shop build us wild cars. Tin Soldier Race Cars is another one there. USA made parts and building drag racing specific parts.

Any specific brands come to mind? Like USA made brands?

I'm talking more of just the base materials, like the tubing and all of that stuff.

Yeah, that's a big topic of discussion right now.

Yeah, China-sourced materials.

Yeah, well, like for example, we've had Apex Turbo on the show, and they do literally everything here stateside, except for the castings, of course, because that's very expensive to do stateside.

Well, because we've had to shut all of our foundries down for certain reasons, and we won't get into that too much on podcast time. Sure.

Same with the Hartz Turbo, I'm a distributor for them. Okay. Polshed in Missouri, guys churning out some of the baddest Turbos on the plate.

Really? Okay.

Just manufacturing almost everything in house similar to that. I don't think they cast their own turbine housings, but everything else is made on a machine in that building.

Yeah. I think that's something that we don't talk about enough. I know it's like a common arguing point, like, oh, we don't have t-shirts made in the States here, this, that. But can we not focus on what's not made here and kind of focus on what actually is made here? Sure. For example, I'm wearing Origin jeans, right? They make 100 percent American-made clothing. It's like 99 bucks. It's like high-quality stuff. This is not a sponsor, by the way. It's just like it's not impossible, and it's not going to be crazy expensive. It just needs people to do it. I don't know, man. Just something I'm passionate about.

Yeah. I'm not quite as passionate about every single component has to be USA made.

Which is impossible sometimes.

But when I have the choice to make it relatively easily, I make the choice to use that.

Right. Yeah, little bits here and there.

Yeah. I can appreciate the time that people are putting in to make it nice stuff.

Yeah.

Well, it is crazy. We've seen everything from one guy in a garage to Schwartz Performance. Jeff Schwartz out there with a giant facility kicking out chassis like crazy.

Yeah, 30 employees, I think. Yeah.

And then you go, Patience Metal Fab kind of an in-between you and him situation. And if you do quality stuff, the rest of it kind of falls into place.

The people will find you. Yeah, 100 percent.

Yeah. Any final shout outs to anybody else? Anything else?

No, not really. I appreciate you guys coming out.

Sure.

It's awesome to talk a little bit about what I do out here. And I love watching your podcast. And I like the podcast because I can come in the shop and find one that looks relatively interesting, put it on for two hours or two and a half hours, work at the same time, maybe learn a few things in the process. That's the beauty of podcasts.

Yeah.

Actually, I do have a question. Anybody that was a favorite guest of yours that we've had? He's had some feelings with this one.

I enjoy, yeah, the Aaron Miller one was good. I was interested to hear his perspective on things based on the level of builder that he is and how respected he is in that community. So, I was definitely interested in that one. Had Carl, TCP and Adam. I was interested, they're friends of mine, so I was very interested to hear what their take is on things. Yeah.

Sweet. Well, on that note, where can everybody find you? Do you want people to find you?

One guy's garage page on Facebook would probably be the easiest way, or a Google search. You can turn up my phone number and give me a call. Sure. Dan?

You can find us at Gunna Garage or Mr. Gunna Garage on Facebook. That's it.

Any snowmobile content?

No, no, no. I'm hopefully going to start doing this OBS truck stuff. My wife is yelling at me to make sure I film stuff, and I'm going to hold her to making sure it gets out to the world. So we'll see.

Well, sweet. On that note, thank you very much for coming on the show. That was awesome. Dan, thanks for existing, and we'll see you all next time. Thanks again for watching the show, guys. Be sure to go into the description down below and check out all of our sponsors. They are what make this show possible. It allows us to travel the country and talk to some really cool guests. So be sure to check them out, support them just like you support us, and see you all next time.