153. Power Hungry Performance, The Diesel Aftermarket and Tuning Diesels w/ Bill Cohron

Having been in this game a long time, you can overdo the injector, and you can overdo the turbo, and have a completely undrivable truck. Well, I want to be able to pull a 20,000 pound trail, you know, with a skid steer. Then we can do this, and it'll make this amount of power, and this is gonna keep your EGT issues. Oh no, but I also want to, I want like 600 horsepower. That's not what you're trying to do here, you know? Pick something to do with truck and go in that direction.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and 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, finally not in enemy territory here, so.

Yeah, yesterday it was a GTI, the day before that was all Chevy stuff. I mean, we're finally. Yep, yep. Yeah, if you had a whoop like me, your anxiety levels would be way lower.

It's way lower right now, yes.

And today we are continuing our Georgia trip, and we are here at Power Hungry Performance, which, what city is this again?

Winder.

Winder. I was gonna say Wilmer for some reason, that's Minnesota, but a little town nobody's ever heard of.

Yeah.

Man, say what you want. That barbecue is good.

Yes, it was. That barbecue is real good. Yeah, Smokin Poor Boys, the barbecue of stars, so.

Yeah, so okay, I know originally I could kick it off with that, but you said they were filming a little bit of Tulsa King here too, right?

They filmed Tulsa King here, they filmed a Stephen King movie here, The Outsider, and a bunch of other little projects. Okay. Every once in a while, you'll go down the street and it's closed for filming.

Yeah. I wonder why they picked this city, that's just so interesting.

Very low-key, I guess. And there's a lot of historical buildings in the area. I mean, it's a good backdrop for a lot of things. Yeah.

Well, nonetheless, we're here with Bill, and I'm so sorry, I blanked out your last name already, but.

Bill Cohron.

So go ahead, tell us a little bit about the origins of Power Hungry Performance, what it is that you do, and we'll just go from there.

Well, so a little bit of background about me. I've been in the automotive industry in some form or another for over 40 years. I've spent a lot of years as a mechanic, almost 15 years as a mechanic, and then did some welding, fabrication, stuff on that. In 1997, I went to work for Superchips. I was tired of wrenching, my back hurt, my knees hurt, tired of busting knuckles. But it was a very good fit for me because I was very good at computers and very good at automotive performance. I understand the dynamics of gas engines and how to make them run well. They hired me doing Mustangs, F-150s, some of the more exotic stuff, the Cougars and Contours and the occasional Mark 8. But it was all 5.0 stuff, and the 4.6 stuff was starting to come online. It was a lot of fun doing that. And then we started doing the Power Strokes. And so we got a couple of OBS trucks in on the dyno, started writing tunes for that, and immediately just gravitated to that, because you make 15 horsepower on a gas engine. You can feel it, but it's not impressive. You put a supercharger on it, yeah, there's a difference. You put 100 horsepower in a diesel truck, you feel it, you know it, it moves. It's a big, big difference. And so as soon as I started tuning diesels, like, the homeless always gave up on the gas stuff at that point. And I did that for them for several years, got to a point where I was really looking to a little bit of change of pace. Everything as it goes on, you start with a company and it's a fun place to work, and then you start getting a little more corporate. It kind of takes the fun out of it. So I was looking for something different. So I ended up starting my own company in 2000, doing custom tuning for the Power Strokes. And I was the first person doing any custom tuning for it. There's nobody out there.

How did advertising look like back then, by the way?

It was all forums. Forums were starting to get really popular. fordtrucks.org and Power stroke.org and all those big forums that were real popular back in the day. And there's still a few of them left. But it was, you know, you could pay them $300 a year and you get to chat away on the forums and pimp your stuff. And I met a lot of really great people on there. Made a lot of good contacts that really helped move my business forward. People understood that I knew what I was talking about when I was talking about tuning, particularly on the Power Strokes. I understood how the shifting worked, you know, the transmission, how to get the power to the ground, how to make the power, modified injectors, how do you know, how do you tune for those?

Where did that credibility come from? Like, why did people trust you?

It took a couple of key people in like the sled pull industry that I started doing tuning for. They had nobody that could do any tuning for them. They eventually came across me. And a lot of it was really just me pounding through the forums, having conversations with people, and people started to realize I knew what I was talking about. John Anderson from Little Power Shop up in Pennsylvania was literally my first customer. I had been going to a couple of dyno events, trying to get people to let me tune their vehicles, and it was hard starting out, because everyone was unsure of what this was. And I tuned his truck on the dyno. He had been having a problem where it was like, well, I have the fuel tables set, but I can't get the thing to make any power. You hit the gas and it takes forever to spool. And I'm like, well, you love whose fuel table is stock. He's like, what's that? So we go and we change it, and immediately now he's got launch. He's like, wow. And so he started pushing us and pushing people to us, all the people that he knew with sled pulls and drag racing and stuff like that. Did a couple more dyno events over the years, and it's always in the Northeast, Pennsylvania, Ohio. And just started building a reputation for tuning. That reputation eventually led to a relationship with Diesel Dynamics in Vegas, which is where Edge Products got their start, was actually reverse engineering Diesel Dynamics stuff. And through my relationship with them, I ended up actually getting hired at Edge in 2004. Was there a Ford calibration engineer, there for product engineer for almost four years. Okay. And that really changed the game for me because there was a lot of things that I learned working with Edge. We started getting into, we got out of the chip market, got more into the flash programming market. So vehicle communications became a much bigger thing for me. We started doing the 6.0s, we started flashing the F-150s, and the, like the 04 and later F-150s were a lot of fun. Their engine management systems were different. And so you could pick up 25, 30 horsepower on an F-150 with a good high octane tin. So I still like doing the gas stuff. I got back into doing the gas stuff and that was, that was a really fun project to do. But I learned a lot working with Edge. Just didn't care for the climate. Utah's, I'm from Florida, I like humidity, I like green trees. There's not a lot of that in Utah. They have two seasons, white and brown, and that's about it.

This is just to put in perspective for people. This is still around 2000, 2001?

2004 was when I started with Edge, and then I left in 2007.

Yeah, so once ODB2 came out in 1996, all of this stuff is kind of still becoming new.

There's still a lot of market there. There's still a lot. So on the Power Strokes, you're looking at 94 to 2003, and that's the chip market for the Power Strokes. 2003, they split, and they went to the 6.0s, and then we got into reflash. So the technology changed, how we changed the tuning changed. The tuning itself really didn't change. It's all still the same fuel tables, timing tables and stuff like that. But how you get it into the computer was very different. And that was, everyone was learning it at the same time. We were all in all the different companies out there, you know, Bully Dog and whoever else was out there, was all learning how to re-flash these things. So it was a very competitive market back then. And then this, you know, all the way up into 2007, the Six Flores came out and then it all just continued. So 2007, I moved to Georgia. Just like I said, I didn't like the climate in Utah.

What brought you to Georgia again?

I was very familiar with the area. When I started my company, I was actually living in North Carolina in 2000 to 2004. Okay. And through a customer at a shop I worked at, that I was doing part-time stuff at, ended up getting hooked up with Pano's, which is here in Braselton, which is 10, 15 miles away. And we started doing custom tuning for some of their project cars. So they would get a car and a customer would want a built engine, so they would get an engine from Sean Highland out of Canada. And so I'd take a 4.6 and turn it into a 5.2 and put a big, fat supercharger on it, a Whipple or some other root supercharger on it. And then I'd come out and do the tuning for them. And so I knew the area, very familiar, and I already had contacts out here. And so when I looked at Leaving Edge and wanting to come back east, I didn't want to be in Florida anymore, and I really didn't care for North Carolina. So Georgia was a very comfortable fit, and I absolutely love it here. It's a great climate. And it's, for all intents and purposes, it's a really big Ford market here too. There's a lot of Ford trucks around. There's a lot of Chevy guys too, but I think rural Georgia is a lot for Ford guys. Yeah.

Well, there's still people everywhere that have a not quite all right in the head.

That's fine. Yeah. We just try to watch out for those. Yeah. Bless their hearts.

That's one of the things that me and Dan noticed. We traveled the country, we talked to a lot of shops. And even if they're a GM shop, they always for some reason have a Ford truck.

There's always one floating around somewhere.

Yeah.

Their race team is being told by a power stroke for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I've seen that. I've seen a lot of-

They need something reliable, right?

Well, this is true. The 7.3 is not as reliable as you're going to get. Which is why I still love tuning them and working on them. They've just always been a favorite for me.

Well, not to take you too far from your story, but how is it like, for example, the 7.3 has been out for a long time at this point. It's older than me at this point. How is it that you managed to keep a business 20 years later for something that's not in production today, for example?

That's a really good question. That's always been a concern of ours because I remember when I was working for Edge and they didn't want to get into the chip market because well, there's no market for that. In 2004, they considered the 7.3 to be old technology and an archaic platform. Meanwhile, they sold the heck out of Evolutions. The little Game Boy boxes, they sold thousands and thousands of those. So obviously, the market was still there. When I started in 2007, the TS Performance 6 position chip, that was the standard for the industry. That's what everybody was running. A few people were running like Motes chips and stuff like that. But they all kind of suffered the same shortcomings, which was, they weren't easy to program. The TS, you had to have a burner. And so for the average person, you buy a chip and you want to change the tunes on it, or you're doing custom tuning or whatever, it constantly meant shipping it back to somebody to get reflashed. And after a couple of years of dealing with that, especially dealing with customers, and I'd have to have their chips sent back and forth, it gets to be tedious. We started designing a better way to do it. And Moats kind of did this. They didn't, at first, they didn't have one that had USB on it, but they had a very inexpensive programmer that they could send with a chip. Well, we did, we decided to build something, and I used the technology that I had gotten from Edge, that what I learned about USB communication, stuff like that, and we just put USB right on the chip. And so now you can plug it in, and we have the software, and a library of calibrations that are on our server that you can download onto your chip. So it made access a lot easier, but we also kept things very open source. We kept the tuning as open source as possible, so that anybody, if you wanted to, could tune your own chip.

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We made the software accessible, kind of like SCT does. They have their tuning software, and you can write tunes for your programmer. We kind of did the same thing but for the chip. And that has actually worked out very well for us because we got to a point in our business where it actually allowed us to back away from the tuning. We provide the standard library and we do an extended library with common injector files and stuff like that, but it allows dozens if not hundreds of people across the country to write tunes and put them on the chip unrestricted. And so we've gotten some relations with some really good tuners out of that. Andrew Arthur up in Washington, Brian Jelish on the East Coast, and Dan Kropinac and Corey at CNC Fab. We got a lot of great tuners out there. And that, when we released the chip in 2012, it immediately took over the market. So, but the concern was, and the thing that we heard from everybody was like, why are you building a chip for a truck that hasn't been made in 10 years? Because there's still a market for it.

Not the, the 6.7 had just come out at that point.

Oh yeah, the 6.7, it had been out for a year. And everyone was still building 6.4s and doing what not with that. 6.0s had had a bad taste in everybody's mouth because it had a problem. And, but even then, 6.0s were still starting to kind of build back up. And so we were doing 6.0s, and I still like tuning those. We had just come out with the Ficom tuning for those, which nobody else was really doing. There was one other company that was doing some Ficom tuning, but never got the tunes to the level that we were able to. So we've always looked at the chip market, and like even today, we're still like, oh, you know, this has got to end at some point. And it's always funny how there's this weird resurgence. Because when people had problems with the 6.0s and started having cracked pistons in the 6.4s and stuff like that, people were going back to the 7.3s. And there were people that bought the 6.7s, and they're great trucks, but then they started having the fuel pump issues with water, and then you just get tired of the DPF and DEF and everything else, and then they're like, forget it, I'm going back to a 7.3. So guys, my age in their 40s and 50s, they had a 6.7, and they're like, man, I was just happy with my 7.3, and I'll go back and find another 7.3. That lasted for about 10 years, and now we're in another changeover. But this time, it's guys that are my age or a little older, dads and grand dads who have this older truck, and now they're taking the trucks and they're giving it to their kids. And so now the Gen Zs or Millennials, whatever you want to call them, they're getting these trucks, and they're getting it for next to nothing, if not just completely free. And now they take all the money and put it into it. And the first thing they do is they put injectors in it and a chip and big tires. And the market has started over again with a completely different demographic.

There's just something about that generation, man. And the resurgence thing is so cool. For example, we have the R8, right? My generation, which is gonna be getting into 30s here soon, the Iron Man R8, right?

The Gen 1 R8.

Yeah, Gen 1 R8 is now, that's catching, you know, like...

And they're affordable now. Yeah. Affordable being a relative term.

Yeah, attainable. Yeah, but in the next few years, I guarantee you those will start. I mean, that's what classic cars are. After 20 years, they just shoot back up because that generation wants it.

Right. Well, like I was telling you earlier, we ran into a lady last night and her dad had... No, her granddad had bought a Power Stroke new in 1997. And he drives it to pull a camper every once in a while. At this point now, almost 30 years later, he's got 14,000 miles on this truck. And he's been offered 60 grand for this truck, but he probably paid 23, 24, 25 grand for it in 1997. And he's like, yeah, but I don't have, I don't need the money. I really don't care to sell it. And she's like, well, what are you gonna do with it when you don't want it anymore? So I'm just gonna give it to one of you guys. Give it to one of the grandkids and enjoy it. Yeah, so, but that's kind of the mentality. They, people like, my generation are a little bit older. We like holding on to things and handing it down to people. I don't sell anything. You know, I buy stuff. If I have to get rid of it, it's like pulling teeth. I don't care. I can think of a cat like that.

I'm in the same boat. Yeah.

Yeah.

When's the last time you've sold something?

Right? I sold one of my first Fox bodies last year. Maybe it was the year before.

Yeah, he's been thinking about that for a decade though.

Yeah.

So I had a 78 Bronco that I picked up from one of our local dealers that, I think I picked it up for like 500 bucks.

Yep. Here we go.

And I was like, I really want to build it. Because Angela really wanted a Bronco. And it just got, by the time we started looking at all the titles for vehicles we had, I got two Fair Lanes, I got a Bronco, got my 64F600, I got this, I got that. Motorcycle, it was just getting completely unmanageable. And so we just started parts up. And then I had three firetrucks and that's...

Just started playing title roulette, like, all right, which one's going today?

Yeah, I have a file at home that's probably this thick, full of titles, so yeah.

Actually, we had two of the firetrucks out here outside the shop, because we had done an event for FEMA, a FEMA training session over at the airport across the street. And so we'd allowed them to use our firetrucks for part of the training. And so they were sitting out here in a guide road by, it's like, you want to sell the firetrucks? And my wife's like, yes, yes, please, yes, please. And so two firetrucks, 10 grand, gone. Wow. And that was what I used for the down payment money. Great. So I got something out of it.

When you get car money in, it has to go back into cars. It does, it does.

You have to give back to the universe.

Yeah, my wife's always like, well, now what are we gonna do? I was like, obviously it's gonna go back into whatever we're doing here.

Circle of life.

Yeah, it is. It's a very vicious circle sometimes. So, but anyways, the fact that there's this whole new generation coming up and getting into these trucks and the enthusiasm that they have for it, it's absolutely amazing. The No BS OBS show we did last year in August, and we're going to again this year, had just an incredible number of beautiful trucks. I mean, there's some beaters out there too, but they're taking these trucks and it's not costing a lot to fix them up. It doesn't cost a lot to put a set of wheels on it and maybe buff out the paint. There's a lot of places that you can get door handles and spare parts for and trim and make it a clean truck. It just doesn't cost a lot of money.

How's the repop market for parts? Are parts pretty accessible or?

For OBS stuff, yes. So like, I don't know if you know LMR for Mustangs and stuff, so they do OBS stuff now too. You can get basically anything.

Complete Performance has tons of bolt-on stuff, door handles, interior trim, exterior trim. We deal a lot with them. There's a lot of stuff that's accessible for those vehicles. And there's still a pretty good salvage market, junkyard market for stuff like that, although a lot of that stuff's more and more getting crushed. So it's getting a little tighter to find some good body parts and stuff like that. But there's also, like I said, there's a lot of places that still do good new sheet metal.

Well, you're talking to about an engine. So if you ask any Ford enthusiast, like what's the GOAT? What is the probably greatest engine? Even though it's made by International, but anybody's going to tell you in the Ford family that 7.3 is one of their greatest things they have ever partnered with, whatever deals they ever did.

And the only thing that killed the 7.3 was emissions. Yep. The two, I really think that they had just kept the 7.3 and did a four valve head set for it. And the EGR, which is what the EPA wanted, they could have kept the 7.3 around for several more years. And I think it would have been a reliable, much more reliable way to go. But that's not the direction they went. They completely, the Navistar completely redesigned the engine and came out with the 6.0. And it wasn't a bad engine. They just had a lot of bugs. They had to work out the first couple years.

I think it had just popped a few more head bolts in or that would have been really nice.

Yeah, five or maybe six bolts ahead would have been great, but let's save on head bolts.

Yeah, that's how I got started in the diesel game. My buddy, he's like, you gotta get a diesel truck. My dad and I were pulling trailers for work. We're putting on many, many miles a week. And he's like, you gotta do it. So I got a 6.0 truck. I found a nice clean one and I drove it. And he's like, I'm like, dude, this thing just seems like, my other truck was faster. Like, that's cool that I can tow, but like this thing seems like a dog. And he goes, just wait. So then I get some tunes. Now my whole world has changed. Cause like you said, it is crazy where you can, you drive a stock 6.0 truck and then just give it a mild tune. It's a whole nother truck.

It's a different animal.

So I got bit by that bug and I never messed with the 6.4, but I did about everything else in between. I've had 6.0 and now I've got a 7.3 and a 6.7.

And we've done a lot of 6.4s and one of the things I really do, I get a lot of flack from people's cause we tend to be more conservative because I don't want to be the guy that blew somebody's engine up. You know, there's guys out, well, you know, I get a 650, 700 horsepower tune for this. I'm like, well, then go for it, man, because that's not what I'm going to do. I'm not going to do that for you. I want to know that you can make good power and you can still pull with it or that it's going to last you 150, 200,000 miles before you really have to do anything with it. I'm not going to crack your pistons or blow head gaskets. And there are other tuners that are more conservative than I am. Like Banks is known for their conservative tuning. They make power, but they're still very conservative. And we're kind of in between the really high horsepower guys and Banks. We have a good market and we have a lot of respect in the community for our tuning. So it's a good place to be, but the EPA being what it is, the difficulties that we have with that, we've backed off the 6-4 stuff. And it was probably at a good time. It was about time we really started getting into the Hydra stuff, and we just could see EPA starting to go after a lot of people. It was about the same time that Edge got hit, Superchips, SCT, all the big companies, the EPA was going after them, because they were the low-hanging fruit, and they had the deepest pockets. And I'm like, well, I think it's probably best if we back off some of the stuff. And not that we were doing anything that was not a mission's legal, but I just don't even want to be associated with it, because if they come after me, it's like, well, we don't even touch the trucks. I don't do anything for them. So it gives us a good excuse to just not be hassled by it. And so far, I've been very fortunate with that.

Well, I listened to your, it was like a Q&A you did three years ago or something like that. One of the things you mentioned on it was you don't exactly have a clientele that's rolling coal at every stoplight either.

No, we don't. We don't. And in fact, we got a lot of irritation from more than a few customers. Because when we first started coming out with the Hydrochip, and everyone was asking for this, and they wanted like a smoke show tune or rolling coal tune. And we did for a couple of minutes. And then I was like, this is not the image that we want. So we took all the smoke tunes off, the low vital tunes off. Because neither of them are going to be good for your engine. I mean, you're setting up your oil, you're setting up the environment, you're pissing people off. I just don't want that reputation. So we got rid of all those tunes. We just want to build good power, reliable power, and still make 120, 140 horsepower, but we can do it cleanly.

I have that argument all the time with people when they talk about the smoke. And I was like, well, if your truck is actually tuned correctly, it doesn't do that.

The biggest thing with that one is, honestly, it's like the low boost fuel tables are on the Dodge. It's the aneroid valve. You put the cam plate in there for the Dodges, and yeah, it will make a lot of smoke as soon as you hit the throttle. Still not going anywhere.

I can get mine to do it if I come off of the gas and right back on it, and then you get a little puff, and then that's about it.

That's only because the turbo's still a boost in there, and so it immediately goes to the full part of the table, not the low fuel part. So there's ways around everything, but again, we built a reputation trying to be clean, reliable, quality products, and that's just the way I like to do things.

Who is someone that was a mentor to you over the years? Or I guess in various stages even of your career?

So, that's an interesting question. I don't know, my first and my best mentor was actually my computer sciences teacher when I was in junior high school. It honestly, if it had not been for him, I probably would have dropped out of school in middle school. But I loved computers so much that, and he was such an accommodating teacher, he would teach middle school, he would stay after school three or four hours, and then he would teach at college at night at six. So, I had access to the computer lab, along with probably maybe half a dozen to a dozen other kids who were really good at computers and weren't there just there to play games. And he helped keep my interest going in computers and help, and that ultimately got me to stay in school. Because I was ADHD, I could not study, I couldn't pass my classes, I was really struggling with it, it was very frustrating.

How did you do on the computer side of things though?

I love it. I consider and focus on myself for hours and I still do. Some of my most peaceful brain moments are when I'm sitting in front of a computer at two in the morning writing code for something. I get stuck on an idea and I just pound through it until I've had days where I've been on the computer 48 hours, get up, get something to drink, go to the bathroom, come back. Because you get in that zone and ADHD brains are a very different thing. It's a struggle sometimes to function.

Well, that's one of the things that I keep seeing more and more, especially when I listen to podcasts, right? It's like, it's not a matter of like, oh, this person cannot learn. They're just not learning the right thing.

Exactly, they're not learning the right way.

You found the passion and it's like, oh, you can just zone like 48 hours, right? And just zone in on it, so that makes sense.

I had computers and then the other thing that I loved, I always loved dirt bikes and motorcycles. And so by the time I was 12, I started getting into like motorcycles and a lot more small engine stuff. I found out this is a lot of fun. I love taking things apart. I can put these back together and they work. It's amazing. And so I got into, actually by the time I was 13, I was fixing lawnmowers for people in the neighborhood. I was fixing dirt bikes for some of my friends. Finally, you had made enough money, I bought my own dirt bike and got into riding dirt bikes and then got into cars and it wouldn't be anything to come home from school on a Friday night, rip the heads off my car, and just to see what's going on, change your head gaskets, put the heads back on, or have a friend that's got a machine shop and take the heads over there, and we're going to port them a little bit, or we're going to do this. It was not an unusual thing. Change an intake manifold in the afternoon, no problem. Small block Chevys were easy. And that was when I was going through my Chevy phase. I had that issue too. My first car was a Chevelle, a 72 Chevelle, and it was a great car. And I missed that car terribly. But being able to focus on the computer end of things, and the mechanical end of things, and performance and stuff like that, I really enjoyed that. But yeah, so my biggest mentor was my computer teacher. Now, I have a lot of friends in the industry that I've learned from. I wouldn't go so far as to say they're mentors, but we have very good relationships. Probably one of the best examples of that is Dennis Perry from TS. Performance. We've been friends for 20 years, and he still calls me up, hey, what are you doing? When you're coming by, when's the next time you're getting up to Kentucky? We'll be up this way probably in a couple of months, and we'll come by and have dinner and stuff. But I get a lot of people who are like, Dennis isn't mad at you that you took his chip business away? And I was like, well, his chip and my chip are two different markets. He's a less expensive product, and it fits a need. People who are a little more budget conscious, that's great. At the end of the day, it still does the same thing. It takes a tune and it puts it in the truck, and it's adjustable. It's got fewer positions, and if you need to change it, you have to send it off. But in that, it's perfectly functional. We have a lot of customers that enjoy that. But no, we've never had any animosity about it, and he still sends me customers, I still send him customers. But there's been a lot of relationships that I've had in the industry that I really appreciate. Friends that I still work with from Edge, some people even back from the Superchips days, I still stay in touch with. It's been a great industry, and I think most people find that the automotive industry is like that. You make those lifelong relationships and you learn from each other.

But he primarily just does chip stuff then?

TS.? Yeah. They do. Actually, so they're agricultural stuff. So they do a lot of stuff like John Deere and stuff. So they have their MP8 box which plugs into the system. I think their bigger market right now is their agricultural. They're agricultural and they're on highway, the Class 8 trucks. Okay. They still sell a lot of TS chips, I'm sure, but I don't think that's their big driver anymore.

Okay. Because you kind of found a way to bring the old and new together, which is crazy. I should have showed you the website before we started because it was really cool. When I bought your chip and I get it, and then you open it up, it's an instructions and you go on to the website, then you got a drop down box. You get to pick what you want. What do you feel like in that?

You want a 25-toe in position too, you just drop it in there, 80 horsepower daily driver.

I had to write myself a cheat sheet and it's that, the little sunglasses holder, that's where my cheat sheet sits and then I can go down.

I can't tell you how many trucks have come in there and you plop it down and they have a little list up there. We'll print it out on a little sticker and stick it right on the mirror cover. Yeah.

That's hard to remember because I think it's what, 10 you can have on there?

We can have 15 customizable positions, and then there's the stock position, the factory stock, and then there's the no start position. The no start is nice for people who live in high-crime areas. You can put it in that position and when you pull the switch off, they can't get out of it and the truck won't start. We've had quite a few people who called us and told us that it's actually saved their truck. They've had their truck broken into and the lock cylinder snapped off and they couldn't get the truck to start. That's awesome. Yeah. Anything that we can do to help the market. There's something that we can fit into, that we can help with. We try to do it.

Yeah. I will say I tried your Whisper Tune on my wife's excursion and we still kind of have to, sometimes we have to shut the truck off when we're in a drive-thru because that's...

It depends. It depends on the sensitivity.

Oh yeah.

The sensitivity also depends on temperature because the Whisper Tune really only works well when the engine is like fully warm, the air temps are warm. If it's colder climate, the calibration is still going to advance the timing a little bit. And so we can only pull so much timing out without starting to create clouds of white smoke.

Yeah.

So yeah, so I mean, we've run into that, you know, I mean...

I think when I tested it was in the winter time.

It was a PRI.

No, I did try it once, that PRI.

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, if the ambient air temperature is cold, it's still going to add timing in there. So the timing that we're backing out...

Well, how's four degrees? Is that cold enough?

Yeah. And that's why I left Utah.

Yeah.

Because I don't like single digit degrees. That doesn't work. And triple digits don't work for me either.

Negative isn't great either. What do we get to this year? Negative 30, one boy? Negative 20?

Yeah. And I will say that that's the one thing about the 73. Although I can usually get her to start, but she hates it when it's... Yeah. If I don't plug it in for sure, I'm really hosed. Yeah.

It's just the nature of the beast of owning a diesel. Yeah. Again, with the international stuff that we do, one of the hardest ones that we struggle with is the DT466 does not use glow plugs nor does it use an air heater. So if you're below 20 degrees and you don't plug it in, good luck.

Oh, really?

Yeah. I don't know why they didn't do that, why they didn't put any kind of a heating system for the air in that. But yeah, they really struggle starting cold. Now, the truck that I have that we use to pull our camp is a DT570, and it's got glow plugs in it. But I was thinking it's basically the same engine. Right. But I don't have any problem with that thing starting cold.

Well, we know engineers always make the best decisions sometimes.

Right. Yeah, I just never could get my head around why they did that. So it's one of the quirks of it, and people who own them already understand it, and they already know they have to work in the night, and that's just what it is. And you just don't take it and park it in a parking lot for two days and expect it to go out and fire right off. So, yeah, the engineering side of things can create some challenges for us that we have to try to overcome.

We've talked to people in Detroit, man, and it's like this guy in this department just created the coolest thing ever and it's not work great. And the guy in the next department is like, well, we have these restrictions, so your stuff is not going to work as well. And it just goes down the line from everybody we've talked to. It's just a joke sometimes.

It was one of the hard things that I struggle with, it's because there's all these fun projects that you want to do, cool things you want to make. Somebody's like, somebody made this for this. And as a small company, we have the ability to try to address some of those things. One of the hardest things that I had was working for Edge when I first started there, it was a very family, enthusiast driven company, everybody there owned a truck, and everybody, you had your Dodge guys and your Duramax guys and stuff, and I was the Ford guy. Got a lot of grief for that, but it's okay, it's okay, appreciate it. But it was a very fun place to work, because everything was enthusiast driven.

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And then a little bit after I started working there, MSD bought them, MSD Ignition, and it became corporate. And now it's like, oh, you got a great idea? Well, let's run it past a board of people to see if that's something that we want to do. And it's my understanding, today it's still that way, now they're owned by Holley. But you got a great project idea? Well, we need to see if it's something we want to get into, and they kind of pick and choose their battles. And it frustrates me because it makes you almost not want to come up with any ideas for anything. It kills innovation. Yeah, because they're just going to shut it down anyway. And the one that I experienced firsthand with that was we had found a way to use their juice module and have it talk over CAN to our EVO and run output drivers to nitrous solenoids and control it with the EVO. And it was a great idea. We already had the hardware done. All it took was a change in the firmware, some output, and we just tapped into the CAN communications lines on the ECM. And we could control, we could do purge, put a little button and it was fantastic. We made one prototype and it got on one of the truck shows. The one with Stacey David. You've been back in 2006.

Yeah, I don't even remember.

Anyway, and so they, we had this F-150s, a big nitrous bottle in the back, and they go and show all this, and people are calling like, when can I get this? And they never made it. And I'm like, people are asking for it. You've already got all the hardware, just make it. And they walked away from it. And I was absolutely heartbroken that they did that. I was like, this is a fantastic idea. But then, and it made it kind of hard for me because then it's like, well, you know what, I'm not going to, I'm just going to do what you tell me to do. And it took all the fun out of it for me. So then I just spent my days on the dyno, and I would dyno test tunes and write calibrations for different Ford trucks. And we were getting into the six, we were finishing out the 6.0 stuff, and I still did some 6.4 stuff for them even after I left. But it just wasn't the same, it wasn't fun anymore. And so when I came to Georgia and we started this company, our biggest focus was to always try to keep it as family-oriented and as fun as possible, but also still listen to everyone's ideas. And even if it's not in the 7.3 market, even if it's not in the diesel market, what can we create that would fill a void? And that's where we're at now. We're really trying to get back into the innovation part of things.

So if you take that mentality, for example, what's come as a result of that?

We've got two projects that we're working on, that we have going on right now. One of them is actually a new handheld, it's a wireless device that will plug into the Navistars so that we can flash and data log from a phone, iPad, whatever. So it would be nice because we've had a lot of people that would love to be able to like mount their iPad up on the dash or something and have a gauge display, monitor ICP and stuff like that. And we're working on that. We're about two years in development on that. We're the very limited engineering team. And we're hoping to have some prototyping stuff done before the end of the year. I've got another project I'm working on, which is kind of going back to the programmer side of things like the 6.0, 6.4, F-150, stuff like that. We're working on some hardware that's Bluetooth capable. Not that it's not already out there, but we're just looking for something that's going to specifically fit what we want to tackle. And then two of the other projects, one I've always wanted to build a nitrous controller just for the market that we're in, but make it as flexible enough as possible that it'll work on anything. But completely tunable, 3D mapping, how you want your nitrous curves, or when you want them to come on and be able to even monitor the CAN data so that you can anticipate shifts and back the nitrous software shift and then come back in. Different things like that. And the other one is a turbo controller. To be able to take either the VGT-60 turbo and put it on anything, including a 7.3, or take the twin turbo pack off of 6.4 and put it on anything, and have a standalone controller runs the VGT. There's a few people out there that have made some stuff for that. I personally have not been impressed with the hardware or the tuning capabilities of their software. And we're looking to be much more in-depth with what we're offering. So, and that's a project that we're just starting on right now is the turbo controller.

That turbo is one of the things that makes, in the 6.4, that compound turbo setup, that's one of the things that makes that such an, like that engine can make some major power from what I understand. What are the shortcomings of that engine? Because I hear that something about what the way they have it put together in the inside. When I read on the forums, people say 150,000 miles throw them away.

Yeah, the bottom ends on those, since they're basically a 6.0 at that point. I just don't think the bottom ends are strong enough to handle a lot of power for a long time.

Okay.

You know, you take a 7.3 and you can build it and you can put 650 horsepower on it and it'll last 200,000 miles, you know, unless you do something really stupid with it. And the 6.4 is just, they just don't handle it well. That and everyone revs the crap out of them because, you know, they're a shorter stroked engine than a 7.3, so they're running them 3,800 RPM and one of them wonder why they fall apart, you know. But the, you know, the turbo setups on those are fantastic. And I've got a friend that's actually put a, that twin turbo pack on a 7.3 and running a rudimentary turbo controller on it, and I'll tell you, man, it's impressive, you know, for just a beat up old 7.3. So it's, you know, there's a lot of opportunities, you know, it's not just, you know, what can I make that'll solve one particular problem, but it's also like, what can we make that we can help other people with their products? And I think that's one of the things that often gets overlooked is, there are a tremendous amount of people that still create products for the 7.3. It is a very well-loved platform, and, you know, there's blocks, heads, all kinds of internals, anything you can bolt onto it, there's somebody out there to make something for it, because there's no factory support for it anymore. And so the aftermarket is all we have. And so we really strive to try to create relationships and build relationships and networking in the industry. Two years ago, we started Summit 73, just to do that, to get all the 73 guys in one place in the same room talking to each other. So we just had our second event in March, and it was phenomenal. And we've had some other stuff come out of that, but it's been great, you know, to have everybody go back and look and say, what are we, you know, where are you seeing the market go? Are you still seeing business? You know, should we still keep making this stuff? And yeah, we really should be. There's still a lot of market out for it. And I said, with the new generations coming in, there's just that much more interest, and we haven't seen it slow down yet.

Well, it's probably easier for you down here to see more of them around up where we're at, the trucks rot away before the engines quit. But for the 7.3, like half a million miles is like a walk in the park, right? What's the highest mileage one you think you've seen?

I've seen several over a million.

Really?

Yeah. Now, these are well maintained. They might not have been driven the easiest, but they're maintained well. We have several cupsters with over a million miles on their trucks. And like I said, the northern rot is a huge problem.

What does it take to get a truck to a million miles? When you say maintain, what does maintain mean?

Regular oil changes. I mean, there's going to be some replacement stuff that comes along. You know, the 300,000 miles, I mean, the HPOP is pretty well shot. You may go through a set of injectors. But for the most part, as long as you keep the oil change on it and don't constantly push it to 3,600 RPM, they'll last forever. They were designed as million mile engines when they put them in the international trucks. True. And the DT 466s are the same way. Now, the 466 has an advantage of being a wet sleeve, and you can change the cylinders in them and stuff like that. But the 7.3, when they put them in internationals, they make 175, 195 horsepower, they don't ever break. You're not going anywhere. Yeah.

I will say that there is some maintenance. And again, we have the oil pans rot through up there. And every time I fix an oil leak, I find another one. Yeah.

And the dipstick leaks.

Yeah. I think I'm finally at my last one. My HPOP leaks slightly into the valley and then it comes out the backside of the engine.

Yeah. Down through the transmission.

Yeah. Yeah. It's fun. So I think it's my last. I replaced about everything else. The whole engine has been out, regasketed.

Now, I found an interesting one on that. I had a customer several years back that we kept chasing an oil leak in the valley. And we changed the gasket on the H-pop and everything. But the engine was so messy, I couldn't really tell anything. And I finally went out there and I dunked the whole engine down and pressure washed the whole thing. And then I let it sit for like two days to completely dry out. And I started it up. And it was actually the little plug in the head along the oil rail, because there's the high pressure oil line and then the three plugs. And it was the plug in the back, the O-ring had gone bad. And it was just trickling down. And I'm like, of all the things, so after we'd had this high pressure oil pump off twice, and just like, I don't know what's going on here. But yeah, you can be chaste on oil leaks for a while. It's always a frustration, but outside of that, they're reliable. They don't really lose a lot of oil.

Well, and then when they do, because I've also had the oil going into my fuel, I think I had an injector cup problem.

Yeah, that's the other problem.

Yeah, so that I didn't know it was going anywhere, right? And I was like, my fuel level didn't seem like it was going down as fast as it was.

And all of a sudden, you're losing a lot of oil.

Yeah, well, it just quit running, right? So that's one other thing about them. When they get low enough on oil, they just shut off. And then they don't really grenade themselves or anything.

So yeah, fair enough.

Yeah.

So I had that happen to me in my excursion. It wasn't the injector cup, but I had actually, the injector itself had suffered a failure. And it ended up pumping all the oil into the fuel rail in the injector and filled my tank up with 15 quarts of oil and stopped on the side of the road. I pulled the dipstick out, it's bone dry. I grabbed two gallons of oil, which is all I could get from walking up to the gas station. And I put it in there and I could not get it to start because I couldn't get it to build oil pressure enough to run again. It would build like 110, 115 PSI of oil pressure cranking. And it ran fine until it didn't because the engine was spinning fast enough to make pressure. But once it stopped, I couldn't get it started again. And towed it home and pull out and grab the top of the injection and went like that. I'm like, ooh, that's not right. Send it out, get a new injector back and ran fine after that.

Okay. So let's talk a little bit about injectors because that's one. So we, again, in the performance, we've had like Nostrum Performance on, and they build injectors on the gas side. And we talk about not overdoing your injectors. It's like a lot of times when you build an engine, right? You'll overdo something, expecting to turn it up. Is it in the diesel world is the same thing? Do you not want to go too big until you're ready?

It is absolutely the same way in the diesel world. And having been in this game a long time, you can overdo the injector and you can overdo the turbo and have a completely un-drivable truck. It would be completely inappropriate for the application. And I'm not the only one that suffers with this. Many of our dealers and warehouses, they have to try to guide somebody. What are you trying to do with the truck? Well, I want to be able to pull a 20,000-pound trail with a skid steer on the back or whatever backhoe. Okay. Well, then we can do this, and it will make this amount of power, and this is going to keep your EGT issues. Oh no, but I want 600 horsepower. That's not what you're trying to do here. Pick something to do with truck and go in that direction. And again, for the most part, our customers tend to be more interested in the usability of the vehicle. And so, usually we're recommending like stage ones or stage one and a half to 160 to 100 ACC injectors, stock nozzles, that's going to give you the best torque curve, best fuel economy, and still great power with manageable EGTs. We do get some people that want to, you know, where they kind of split, and they may be not tow so heavy, but want to have a little more play truck. And then we look at like a stage three injector, small injector, small nozzle, again, to try to keep the atomization up as much as possible without getting a lot of smoke and getting a lot of heat. And then you have to pair it with the right turbo that's going to use what the injector has and provide enough air flow without killing it, either being too tight, too tight of a exhaust, exhaust housing that will spool quick, but it's not going to be good for towing or getting the heat out of the exhaust or getting one that's too loose and it just takes forever to spool. It gets really laggy. So that's why we work with KC Turbos and I don't even try to suggest turbos anymore when somebody's like, I mean, I'll suggest an injector for an application and then we send them over to KC and they will look at, okay, well, from the turbo side of things, this is what you want to do, this is the turbo you want to run. And I know what I do, I'm good at what I do, he's good at what he does and I always like to defer to the professionals.

Yeah, they make it really easy when you go, my wife's truck got a KC Turbo on it once hers went out. Yeah. I was gonna rebuild it and I'm like, why? So I kiss Casey that I got one now that has it.

Yeah, they got to drop in at the same price.

Yeah, and I was able to get rid of the pedestal and all that stuff. So it was, and it sounds good now. It doesn't sound as good as my 6.0 truck did, but the BGT is always going to have a great sound to it. When it used to just sit, I could just get in a lawn chair and let my 6.0 run and just listen to that jet engine sound and just drink a case of beer.

Yeah, it sounded like an F-14.

Yeah, I was like, oh, it's about to take off. Yeah.

Well, I mean, in the grand scheme of things, that's kind of what it is. It's a little bit of a jet engine.

I really loved that truck, except for after I bulletproofed it, the coolant started to go to that secret reservoir that nobody knows where it is in the 6.0 again. And once that started to disappear, I got rid of the truck. I'm like, I'm not going through this again.

Yeah. So unfortunately, that's kind of what happened. My 6.0 ran great. And I was running R-Fit Comtuning and stuff on it. And I had the weirdest turbo in the world. It was, the truck was an 04.5. It was kind of a mid, you know, right?

I had one of those. It had the better HPOP, but some of the other stuff.

But the turbo was really weird because for an 04, I forget what size the compressor wheel was. And so I got it, the compressor wheel for an 04, but it turned out to be smaller, which is what I believe the 05 and later is. And so I put the wheel on and never even looked at it. When I put it in there, I just put, I put the turbo back on and I threw it on the dyno. I'm like, man, this is making great power. I was making like 480 horsepower. Just absolutely tickled with it. And then, we had a dyno day at the shop. And one of our customers, Matt Wilbur, will remember this. We were dynoing his truck and we had a guy that came out that was modifying turbos. And the turbo that he had brought with him, the oil passage was damaged. And so, we couldn't use the turbo. So, he's like, well, I'll take your turbo back with me and I'll redo it and I'll mail it to you. He's like, well, that's great, but how am I gonna get home? I'm like, well, just take the turbo off my truck. My truck's sitting outside, I don't care. I got my 7.3, I'll drive home. And so, I take my turbo off the truck. We bolted on his truck. He goes driving home. He's running down 85, calls me up, says, I don't know what is with this turbo, but I cannot keep the boots. The intercooler boots on keeps blowing the pipe off. By the way, this thing runs awesome. And I'm like, I don't know, dude, that is just the turbo that was on my truck. I mean, it's a turbo. The only thing I did was put a wheel on it. And so, we finally stopped at the grocery store, got some hairspray and got home. He lived two hours away. So, he comes back out two months later. We got his other turbo and we swapped the turbo out. And then, I got the turbo and I got it standing up on the end. And all of a sudden, I looked down in it. And I'm like, man, I got a big gap between the wheel and the housing. And I was getting out and I'm measuring it. And I'm like, well, yeah, that's the wheel. I called Bob at diesel site. I'm like, the wheel you sent me is the wrong one for the turbo. I said, because it's this many millimeter, but my housing is this. And he's like, yeah, that's an 05 turbo. And I'm like, but it's on an 04. He's like, yeah, at the end of 05, they were pulling parts from wherever they could get them. And so, I ended up with this wheel that was smaller, considerably smaller. I had like two millimeters between the wheel and the housing, which usually they're right up on there. And this thing just made the most incredible boost I'd ever seen out of a turbo. And so, and then it got me thinking. I was like, well, maybe pushing the compressor wheel right to the edge of the housing is not the trick. So, I've never had another turbo run that way since, and I think I still have the turbo sitting on the floor. But it was the weirdest thing, you know? But anyway, so, you look at turbos, getting the right turbos is gonna make all the difference in the world.

Well, I don't know if I finished this or not, but KC, their website makes it super easy. You go on there and they're like, again, what are your goals? Where are you at? Stage one, stage two, and yeah, then you can start pairing injectors and stuff like that at the same time.

Yeah, and that's, you know, I've talked with Charlie a lot about that. We've had a lot of conversations about turbo kits and injector kits and stuff like that. And so we worked with him a lot of that stuff. But it really does come down to, it's people get an idea in their head what they want, and you have to guide them into what's feasible or what's reasonable. Because if you let them do what they want, they're almost always going to end up being disappointed, and then it's your fault because your tuning didn't work, or your injectors didn't work, or your turbo didn't work. No, you picked the wrong turbo for the application, or you picked the wrong injectors for the application. And so it's just as important, you know, one that we be good at what we do, but we also make every effort to educate the customer why this will or won't work.

You know what breaks my heart? No, it's not the 2% female demographic. It's the fact that 80% of you guys are not subscribed and following the show. So go ahead, hit subscribe or follow. And of course, if you're on YouTube, hit that bell so you are notified when we drop a new episode. Let's get back to the show.

And there's a lot of people that are just, you know, they're just happy to sell you whatever, and if you don't like it, well, that's tough on you. And I just don't, I can't run that way. I like people to be happy with what they have.

Can you, so as somebody who tunes both gas and diesel, can you, is there some major differences between the two, or are they two totally different worlds, or?

Two completely different worlds. You know, the biggest thing with gas over diesel is we're constrained by air flow, air fuel ratio. There's only so much you can do with a naturally aspirated engine. And, you know, there's torque management stuff that we can do to change the feel on a gas, you know, make the shifts a little more aggressive and change the shift points a little bit. So they run out a little more, you feel like you got a little more, a little more pep and stuff like that. But ultimately we're restricted by air fuel ratio. You know, and timing can only go so far before you get detonation. I mean, nox sensor, nox sensor will back out any more than you put in, but you're really not getting anywhere further ahead. So, there's a lot of more finesse in gas tuning than there is in diesel. Diesel, you throw fuel at it, let the turbo do what it wants, and it makes power, and there's no air fuel ratios to speak of. I mean, it's just going to do what it does.

Well, there will really be much for ignition timing then either, because there's no... or how does that work?

Well, yeah, so there's a lot of things that weigh into the actual combustion event. So, we do have to be critical about start of injection, start of injection and the pressure at which you're injecting, because that affects when the timing occurs, it also affects when the actual combustion process starts, because it doesn't always start right as you start injecting, there's some delay. If the pressure is lower and the engine RPMs are lower, the heat in the cylinder is not going to be quite as high, so there may be some associated delay with the combustion process. But we have to be very, very careful. Larger nozzles will change that, higher injection pressure will change that, changes in if you machine the block and machine the heads, the heads not so much because almost all of them are flat. Whether you're running O-ring gaskets and that changes the compression ratio, there's a lot of things that relate from a mechanical aspect how that's going to, how the combustion event is going to occur. We do want to make sure that we're getting the combustion event early enough, that we're making good horsepower and we're not getting a lot of EGTs. The later you push the combustion event, the more EGTs you're going to see out the backside. But you start getting too crazy with the timing up front, then you'll get huge cylinder spikes, you're lifting head gaskets, breaking rods. Timing is a critical thing on it, but it's just understanding where in the rotation and the crank that those events occur. And then tuning it to achieve the best combination.

But there's no spark timing, so that's a little bit of a difference.

Not so much, I mean, there's a timing value for what it's worth, and it's still measured in angles of crank rotation, but depending on how fast the engine is spinning, that changes. So, because the combustion event's still going to occur at a certain rate. And if you're at a slow spinning RPM, and you run a static timing, you'll get a lot of your combustion process before top dead center, while at 3200 RPM, most of it's going to happen after top dead center. Just changing the RPM changes that, if you don't change the timing. So, it's not really that much different in the gas in that respect, but there's a lot more to consider, because I can't just say, it's going to start at this like a spark plug. You know, so, it's a lot more tricky.

Okay. So, another big thing that was, again, when I'm playing in the diesel stuff is monitors, right? So, I have an EGT, one on my wife's truck, even though I could not tell you if what number is good or bad, I just have one in there. What are the most important things we should be monitoring and kind of wear? My 6.0 truck, I watch my coolant and engine oil, and I watch new deltas. What would you, if you had to pick three or five of them, what are the most important things?

For most driving around town stuff, EGT is negligible, because usually, unless you're just a really heavy-footed driver, you're really not going to see EGTs high enough that they're going to be a problem. If you're hauling heavy loads, or you're hauling to mountains and stuff like that, EGTs are very critical, and that'll be hugely important to prevent damaging the turbo or the exhaust valves. So for people who are driving more aggressively or pulling, EGT is always number one for me. On a 6.0, Delta is just... because that's just the health status of your oil cooler. But engine oil temp in general, we monitor. You don't want that getting too high. Most of the vehicles are automatics. We want to monitor training oil temp. Try to keep it 180 or less if possible. Even up to 200 is kind of okay, but start getting above that. And it's like every 20 degrees or something like that, you lose half the transmission fluid life. There's some formula for that. The higher you get, the worse the training fluid out really quickly. And boost. I always like to know what, but boost and back pressure. Your back pressure to boost ratio is gonna really tell you a lot about the efficiency of your turbo system, whether you have too much back pressure. Because you can make 40 pounds of boost with 50 pounds of back pressure, or you can make 20 pounds of boost with 50 pounds of back pressure. And 20 pounds boost at 50 pounds of back pressure is not always gonna be the best. You're getting a lot of restriction on the back end. It's not driving the turbo as hard. The one thing I will say about boost is a lot of people misunderstand what boost is, and they go with the idea, well, my truck's not making 35 pounds of boost. Well, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's not running well. I mean, does the truck run good? Oh, man, it runs great. Then why are you concerned with the boost number? Boost is a measure of restriction. And you can create 35 pounds of boost, but it's not going anywhere because the air is being compressed into the engine, it's not going out. And that's not efficient. If you're getting 20 to 25 pounds of boost, 28 pounds of boost, and your EGTs are 1,100, you're making great power, then that's where you want to be. Don't overthink it. Don't get stuck on a number because that'll mess you up.

Well, yeah, we talked about that with dyno tuning too, right? You could do three pulls, they're all going to be different, and if some people don't hit that number, then they freak out. Right.

Well, dyno tuning is always a fun thing because there's heat soak, and the room temps warm up, your air temps warm up, and the first run is going to be your best one, the rest of them get worse after that. But I always look at the third run as a solid number. That's the number I go by because at that point, that's going to be what you're going to see in your truck. Because you're going to go out, you're going to hit it a couple of times, and then the engine is going to be hot, the air under the hood is going to be hot. And that's going to be a more accurate number than cheating and trying to get a good run on your first run before everything's really hot.

I was like, damn, you're a roll here.

Yeah.

No, and this is the one of funny things in episodes. Sometimes one of us just goes on a 20 question run. I'm like, all right, Dan's got this from here. I'm just going to story time. One question I had earlier was, so you mentioned you have customers that just want basically a race truck. Let's just call it that. And then you have the guys that are just working it hard. What's the ratio of the type of customers you have? Well, I guess what is your demographic?

It's changed over the years because when we did a lot more custom tuning back in the mid 2010s, we were a lot more involved in a lot of the competition trucks, sled pull trucks, drag trucks and stuff like that. The bulk of our demographic now is people that just want to pick up a little more power, a little better fuel economy.

That seems to be the case right now, yeah.

There's still competition people out there, and there's still a lot of sled pull guys, and we're still in an ancillary capacity. We still stay involved with some of the sled pull guys, but most of them get their tuning done from elsewhere. They either do their own tuning or they've got the people that work in those markets that do tuning. So for the drag stuff, a lot of people go to Brian Jellish. Because Brian Jellish has his drag truck. He's got one of the fastest 7.3s in the US, but not the world. And it's a beast. And so people who want to build a drag truck often call him for their tuning, because he knows what it takes to make a 1500 horsepower truck. And that's just not our market. You know, I don't spend a lot of time in that realm.

Sure. How difficult is it for, would you advise for somebody to pick up tuning? Diesel in particular, that is.

What's that? Yeah. And this is what I tell people, like, when they call up and they want to buy the software. Let's say, I want to get my 7.3. Do you understand the dynamics of how an engine works? Do you understand how compression works, how fuel expands, you know, how timing affects that and stuff like that? No, not really. Then it's not for you. I mean, it's not to say that you can't learn it. Sure. But do you want to take your $20,000, $30,000 truck and-

Experiment with it.

Experiment with it? And if you're okay with that, that's fine. Because, you know, when we provide the software, we provide the base calibrations. And the software is actually very flexible because it gives you the ability to load modified calibration and then load a stock calibration over it. And you can see the differences. You can see what's changed, what the timing maps look like, what the fuel maps look like, stuff like that. And if you want to take the time to learn how to do that, then that's great. You know, and I would encourage anybody who is very interested in it to go ahead and do it. But I strongly suggest that you have some sort of fundamental knowledge of how an engine works.

Okay.

Because if you don't, then...

It's going to be a long road.

It's going to be a long road and it can be a very painful road.

Yeah.

Very expensive road.

Well, Dan always talks about like, all right, well, you blow up two engines and you let me know how you feel about tuning. Yeah.

It gets to be an expensive...

It does.

That's a great topic. What's the most expensive mistake you've made? Do you want to put it out there? If there is one. Being a Ford guy?

No.

Okay. I really don't know.

Well, how about the flip side? What was the best investment you've ever made?

I mean, aside from hiring Angela, I will be honest, that was probably one of the best business decisions I ever made, was bringing her in.

And just for people listening, that's your wife, right?

That's my wife, yeah. She's the CEO of the company. She's the one that keeps the lights on and keeps my wallet under control. Yeah.

Even though she bought us lunch today, so yeah.

Well, big heavy spender.

Yeah. Well, in the grand scheme of things, when I looked at what I've got invested in the dino here, at $200,000 on this dino, and then other things that we've purchased, this equipment that we've purchased, she kind of at least keeps me in control. Best investment has probably been, for my business, has probably been the staff that we've hired. We've been very fortunate. We've been blessed with a great staff. And we hit bumps here and there. And from a professional standpoint, probably the best investment of my time was the time that I spent at Edge, because I learned a tremendous amount of stuff there. What I've learned from there has been invaluable in me running my own company and the development of projects and products that we have. I, you know, there's a lot of people, you know, that will spend money on tools and equipment and everything, and they won't spend any money on training. And I got that training for free, and I got paid to get that training. That's, and that was huge. So, yeah, moving to Utah and going to work for Edge from a professional and educational standpoint, was probably the best investment I ever made. And I'm grateful for that. And I'm grateful for the relationship that I still have with Edge. You know, 18 years later after I left the company, and I'll be out in Utah in two weeks, and I'm going to go over to Edge and have lunch. And you know, it's still, there's still good people out there. I just...

It's beautiful. It's beautiful out there too, isn't it?

It's...

I haven't been out there yet.

If you love outdoor stuff... Okay, that's a plus. And for me, outdoors is like dirt bikes and four-wheelers. Sure. Because I don't ski, I don't have any coordination. Yeah. And the summer times get a little warm. But I mean, it's beautiful outdoors. I just... It's just everything's brown. I got to have green.

And cause a beige.

Yeah. So that's what I struggle with. And it's just so dry.

A Florida guy, that's going to be anything outside.

Like a fish out of water.

It was... I was like itchy all the time. It's getting so dry all the time. So, I mean, it was great. The three and a half plus years I spent out there were absolutely fantastic. And the people I worked with were fantastic. And I love dirt biking. We used to go dirt biking in the morning. There was a private track out there that was like a semi-pro track. And we'd have like four or five of us guys go out at 5.30 in the morning and go dirt biking for a couple of hours. And then we had a shower at work, so we'd just go to work, take a shower, and sit down and go to work. And we did that two or three days a week, you know, when the weather was nice in the winter, not so much. But it was a lot of fun out there. I really enjoyed it, but it's just not the environment for me.

I get the whole coordination thing. I was actually telling Dan in a truck yesterday, I'm like, I can't go skiing because I can't turn my right leg into pizza, so I just keep going, you know.

I think it's called snow plowing, but that's fine.

No, it was a French fries pizza, right?

I have no idea, I don't ski, I'm just no...

I was taught by immigrants, okay, so that's fine.

Oh, okay, sorry.

Well, same reason I don't water ski, I just don't have that. Right.

I'm a land mammal, man. I don't do air, I don't do water. Right here, I'm like a cow, just right here, just feasting the grass.

He's a grazer.

I'm just a grazer, yeah.

Well, speaking of water ski, I gotta shout out Ryan Dewey real quick for at least, you know, putting us in touch and telling him he's here, yeah, he's a great guy.

I keep hearing this school bus thing, what's this all about?

So they raise school buses, and it's a program he does through the school, right?

So towards the end of the school season, the school system retires buses. And one of the things I guess that they do in their program is they will take the bus and they will donate it to a school and they will let the mechanics shop teacher, let these kids strip out the bus and then reinforce whatever they need to and paint it up or whatever. And then they take it out and they have a school bus race night at one of the tracks. And so, they will do a track race. Whoever has the best time getting, I think it's halfway around the track or something. And then they do, there's another one where they do laps and whoever finishes first. And then they have a demolition derby.

Okay.

They have an L-card called Eve of Destruction. Yeah.

Oh, okay.

Gotcha.

So, they do that. And then once it's done, they go to the buses there and they go off to the scrapper. Okay. So, we've worked with him three years now. He just had his event a couple of weeks ago. And it's been absolutely great. We donated the tuning software to him that he shows to the class. And it's like, this is how the tuning works on this stuff. This is what the maps look like and stuff like that. You're going to see if there's anybody interested. I don't know where an intern is going to come from.

Well, yeah, it's the next generation, right? So you don't want that stuff getting lost. For example, we have those air-cooled Porsche guys. How many of those guys are left? That knowledge has to get passed on somehow, right?

Right, yeah. There's a lot of that technology, especially carburetors, distributors, stuff like that. Nobody knows how to do that stuff anymore. And I get calls all the time for it on my own time. I've got friends that I say, I don't know what to do with this. And so, we'll go out and I'll rebuild the carbs, and check the distributors, check the timing curves on it and stuff like that, if we have to recurve it or whatever. It's fun to have that knowledge, and having had grown up in that era, and that's why I still have all my old equipment. It's useful for that stuff, and then everything else is all on computer. It's all data logs and reflashes now.

So what about as we can move closer to 2030 every day? Oh my gosh. As things continue to develop, that's not good.

That's not good.

Do you see yourself dabbling with any of the newer stuff or not so much?

Absolutely. Our biggest thing for us is, we've been trying for a couple of years now to one, start building a relationship with CARB, because CARB is not going away. I don't care what anybody says about what administration or whatever. CARB is not going away. EPA is not going away.

At least for the time being, it's simmered down, but you never know.

Well, it has. And so when we had our summit event, we had somebody from SEMA come out, we were talking to them, and they said, at least the one thing that we've got going for us is that the automotive industry, particularly tuners and stuff like that, at least we're not on the hit list anymore. They're going after other things right now. That doesn't mean we can't get back on it at any time. But right now, we're not a prime target, the automotive aftermarket industry, which is good for us. It means that there's a lot less door knocking going on. And I've got a lot of friends that have had that happen. And despite whatever it is that you're doing in your business, even if you try to keep everything as clean and aboveboard as possible, they're going to find some reason to find you for something because they're not walking out of nowhere without a paycheck somehow. And it's difficult. But so we're trying to figure out how to work with EPA and CARB in a way that's beneficial for both us and our customers. And once we can get the relationship, it's like when we do our hydrogen, we're actively in the process of getting that certified, we're actively in the process of getting our pit-cum-tuning certified. Once we build that relationship, it makes it easier to come out with products for the newer vehicles because they're like, well, they've already made the effort and they pass this, and we don't have any reason at that point to not trust their findings or their research or their testing.

You show that you're willing to play ball.

Yeah. That's exactly it. And that goes a long way with them. If they show that you're trying to be above board, then they're willing to work with you on stuff too. And sometimes it means being able to get stuff through a little quicker, or not have to be as stringent on a testing process. We don't have to jump through five hoops when we only have to jump through three. So it makes it a lot easier at that point. But yeah, I see us getting into six fours again, six sevens, branching out to maybe Duramax and stuff like that. A lot more of the medium duty stuff. There's a lot of markets out there, and there's a lot of room for everybody. There's still millions and millions of trucks on the road. Even the seven three, there's still well over a million of titled registered trucks on the road.

Really? Yes. Do you know how many hydro tuners you have out there?

Hydrochips, since 2012, I believe we're at about 125,000, 130,000. Okay. So there's still plenty of market out there. So we've hit a little more than 10%, or right about 10% of the market. And that's just on the seven three application. That's not even getting into doing, going back into the older F-150s, the older Fox Body Mustangs and stuff like that, which the hydrochip will work on just fine. Oh, really? Okay. It's the same ECM for all intents and purposes. It's just the memory on those are smaller. So we just use a smaller segment of memory on our chip. So yeah, so I've got several customers that run them on Mustangs. We did a tune for, there's a guy that's got a Ford Ranger that he runs at the track, well, a three liter Ford Ranger. And it's so old and nobody does it anymore. They didn't even check for a chip in the ECM. They don't even look anymore. 20 years ago, they checked every computer to make sure it wasn't modified. Now they don't even bother anymore. And he's out there tearing up the track and he loves the tune on it. So we can do applications like that. And that's exponentially larger because that covers anything from basically 88 to 2003. Any gas engine. No, I wouldn't put it on an Aerostar, although I've done ships for Aerostar, believe it or not, 2.9. I don't know who wanted one of the Aerostars, but whatever.

So is that something where, is that still more custom or does it like, is there a drop down box? Do you have like canv type tunes for that stuff or?

We're working on some of the more popular stuff. So like for the Mustangs, for like the A9Ls, A9Ms and the, you know, the little curvy body, mid 90s Mustang stuff. We can, you know, we can definitely do chips for that. I have a lot of calibrations for those. The, the Gen 2 Light Names.

Okay.

You know, we've done, we've done lots of tuning for that. And I've got some tunes that'll make, you know, 600, 657 on the horsepower on those. They're brutal trucks, you know, when you, when they're tuned right.

Oh yeah.

So especially, you know, you put a, you know, an underdrive pulley on it, you know, 2.8 pulley or something that those things are just mean.

They sound good too.

What's that?

They said they sound good too when you're getting on.

Yeah, they do. Yeah, we've done, you know, again, I had a lot of things that I got to do that were a lot of fun when I worked at Superchips and worked with a couple of Lightning guys. There was a real big racer in 2009, 2000, Johnny Lightning had a really nice Gen 2 Lightning water cooler in the back for the inner cooler, and kept bags of ice in there, and he was 750, 800 horsepower. Yeah. Out of this ridiculous truck, man, it was just awesome.

Where did the name come from for both the tuner and the company?

Power Hungry kind of came out of a necessity just to try to find a name. A lot of companies that we deal with, we start like Diesel, this Diesel, that Diesel, West Coast Diesel, a lot of that kind of pigeon holes you into that market. And so, but when I started the company, I mean, I was already kind of known for the Diesel stuff, but I wanted to also show that we could still do gas. I had a lot of gas experience when I was working at Edge, and we wanted to carry that carry into that market. So, Diesel was out. I liked the idea of using the word power somewhere or performance somewhere.

So just one word left to choose.

Well, yeah, and we were like, Southern Performance or something like that, but then there was Southern Performance Warehouse. So I was like, well, okay, well, I can't compete with that name. I'm not gonna fight with that. And really, and after that, it was just, what can I find a website for? What can I get a URL for? And it was not a lot of options, so we stuck with, but it just ended up coming with Power Hungry Performance. And I had actually bought several URLs for different names and stuff like that in 2007, and then finally tried to find one that actually rolled off the tongue well, and that one just seemed to work for me. And you know what's really good when everyone just calls you PHP now? You know, and so when they shorten your name to something that's digestible very easily, digestible and memorable. So we're very happy with the name. All of the product names generally come from Greek mythology. So we have Orion, we have Hydra, we have Pegasus, we have our version, when we were probably labeling the Evolutions for Magic, we were calling it the Griffin, and stuff like that. So we found a direction to go that we liked, and our software is Minotaur, you know. It's all Greek name based mythology.

I like it.

So, well, it just kind of keeps everything on a theme, so.

Right. Is the gas stuff something I can get on your website still too? Like you go on there and you have all that information on there too?

For the? We're working on that. We're going to be adding that stuff on there, because it's something that we've been working to develop and release in a digestible format, like we do with the 7.3 tuning ever since we got back from No BS OBS last year.

Yeah, because it's not just the 7.3s that are still popular. The OBS market has gone insane. Fox bodies now are... I have several of them there.

Everyone's running a Fox body on 10.5s. That's just what it is. Everyone, they run a 5.0 or a built 5.8 or whatever. And the tuning, it all works on that.

And to be honest with you, the reason I haven't tuned some of mine is I didn't want to mess with it. Really, the go-to was Megasquirt, I think, was your other real big option for that. And it was just something I didn't want to get into or learn or do any of that stuff, so.

Well, I think for like the box body stuff or some of the older stuff, one of the big options was Tweaker.

Tweaker, that was another one I'm proud of, yep.

And they had software. I was talking to a guy yesterday, he's used Tweaker for years, and he's like, it works, but it's not the most reliable, it's a little glitchy, it's a little twitchy. And so we ended up selling him, and we have live tuning hardware that you can plug in, and live tune right from your laptop. So you can have the car running, make a change in a fuel map, and it's immediately carried into the ECM. So when it works on both the gas and the diesels, so it really provides a lot of option for people who want to do their own tuning, it's a good way to go.

If you've made it this far into the episode and have an interest in learning how to tune diesels, but don't know where to start, our partners at the High Performance Academy can get you going with both the fundamentals and practical tuning. Get access to hours of step-by-step content and dozens of videos using Code Minox to save 55% using the link below or to partner's page at minnoxide.com. Let's get back to the show.

It's a good hardware-software combination and provides a lot of flexibility.

I like that and I think that's going to be big.

Yeah, so we're working on that. We're looking to get that out there.

Well, as we start the wind down, I suppose, what are you most proud of?

I'm most proud of my family. Angela and I together, we have eight kids.

Somebody's got you beat.

I have four. So she has three. I have five. So we're a blended family, but we don't have any together, but that's okay. But I'm proud of my family and what they've been able to accomplish. And especially when we started this company, when I started this company, the sacrifices that they made for my time because I was trying to run a company. That was a very hard thing to deal with. And the fact that my youngest son works as our software engineer impresses the Heck Academy. Angela's daughter is our warehouse manager. It's, you know, we're really happy to see where they go. And I'm very proud of what we've been able to build and accomplish here, and the legacy that we leave behind for our kids and the impact that we've had on the industry. I love the industry. I've always loved the automotive industry. I've always been a gear head. And I don't do it for the fame or notoriety or, you know, for the headlines. It's always great to get them, but that's not what I do it for. And it's not for ego. I do it because I love the industry and I love to see people happy with what they're driving. So that's probably what I'm most proud of.

What do you think is holding our industry back, if anything?

Regulation.

Regulation.

You know, EPA is really hard and it's hard on the entire industry. You know, the hoops that we have to go through to just manufacture or sell anything anymore is, you know, especially when you consider how... Realistically, how small of a segment of the market we are, but we're so heavily targeted. You know, it's unfair, and it's really hurting a lot of the industry as far as people being able to have a job, you know, have a job that they don't have to worry about where they're going to be out of business tomorrow. So that's probably the biggest thing that's holding our industry back. And then, you know, if you want to get into, you know, a little more involved as the, you know, for the tuning industry, the ability to modify ECM's was considerably easier. And every couple of years, new architecture comes out and they make it more and more and more difficult for tuners to be able to reverse engineer what they've got. Everything's encrypted now, and, you know, unless you know somebody who knows somebody, it's getting to be almost impossible to deal with any of that stuff.

Yeah. Who do we talk to recently that said, one of the OEM guys is on like a special list, like basically a kill list, like it's like for giving out access or something.

Oh yeah. And that wouldn't surprise me.

Yeah. Like Snowden level, like, all right, yeah, we're gonna, yeah.

Yeah. It really, it's really gotten bad. And it's, and unfortunately, that's just, you know, that it's that kind of stuff. It used to be, you know, Ford, for example, had their performance racing program. They still do. They make programs. Like my wife just got a new Bronco, Bronco Raptor, and she just bought a Ford programmer for it. That comes from Ford. It's made by Ford, their performance division. And I haven't seen support like that from Ford in a long time, but you know, back in the nineties, with the Fox body Mustangs, they had their little epic box that you could actually control and then you could control nitrous controllers or whatever. You could do all kinds of fun stuff with the full blessings of Ford. And then they started getting tighter and tighter and tighter. And it's almost to me like being short-sighted because people want to modify these. Why don't you just let them do it? It would be a huge driving factor for sales for you if you just let people play with their own vehicles.

What's the deciding factor for some people for what truck they're going to buy?

Well, we still get a lot of 7.3 people. It's like I stuck with a 7.3 or 6.0 because I can still modify it. I go out and I buy a 6.7, especially the newer ones which are getting considerably more difficult to program. And there's reliability issues with the fuel systems and stuff like that. I just don't want to deal with that anymore. We've got a lot of customers with the Navistar stuff, the international trucks that we do, that they go back to the earlier stuff because there's no DEF, there's no EGR, there's no DPF, and the engines you can work on and you can tune, you can turn them up to 300 horsepower versus 175.

Yeah, and it won't get recalled by the millions.

Well, yeah, they're pretty well past that point. And like you said, those older engines, they're just super reliable. When Navistar went to the Maxport stuff, there was a lot of complaints about them, the reliability, and that's because they had EGR and DPF. It just became a much less reliable platform. But that's the overregulation of everything and really the lack of dealer enthusiasm behind the modifications and stuff that was really hurting the industry.

How do we, for example, whatever passed, what was it? June 12th or whatever. Seema said some 56,000 businesses reached out to allow for such change to happen, whether that's true or not or whatever happened. How do we get together as a collective to, I guess, fight for our industry? Do you have any insight on that?

So, we started Summit 73 two years ago. Actually, it was an idea about two and a half, almost three years ago. We did our first event two years ago, and with a very narrow focus just on the 73 industry. We just wanted to see what was available out there. We ran that for two years. We just had our second event. And but somewhere in between the two events, Angela got this idea for another organization that encompasses the entire diesel performance industry. It's called the Diesel Alliance. And the goal on that is to create a community that provides resources, advocation, and stuff for the diesel performance industry. There may be a point where that expands out even further, not quite to the scale that like SEMA is. So, we're trying to find something that may be a blend of the both of those. Something that deals specifically with the aftermarket performance industry, but is not just a big catalog.

We need a union, damn it.

Yeah. We need something because the only way that this industry is going to continue to thrive is if we all pull together until we have people that are able to go out there and go to bat for us. So, we have people like Corey Willis from PPEI.

I was going to ask you about that, because he just had something on Monday, something like some congressional hearing or something like that.

Yeah.

Did you watch any of that or hear anything?

I didn't get a chance to watch any of it yet. But people like him who are just tired of getting pushed around, and EPA come out and just empty your pockets. I mean, that's extortion. I mean, I don't care what you want to call it, that's extortion. And for him to go back and battle against the EPA, and battle against the legislation.

For like a decade, too, I think.

It's been a long time. Yeah. I mean, it's been ridiculous. And he's finally getting where he's making some headway. Certainly, people in higher positions are starting to take a lot of notice to him, starting to take him seriously. And that's a great thing for the industry. And so we need an organization with people like him on board that will go out and just not let this stuff happen.

Well, I think the big thing for him, at least in one of his recent posts I saw, it's just, and I'm sure it's the same for you, you're just tired of seeing your, whether it's a competitor or a compatriot, it's just seeing people get hurt as a result of it.

Yeah. I can't do that. I mean, there are companies that I may or may not be the best friends with or have the greatest relationship with, but we're all in the same industry. And anything that happens to them could just as easily happen to me. I don't wish that on anybody. But more importantly, is you're taking away someone's livelihood. You're taking away an employer, even if it's just a single person shop, you're taking away this guy's ability to provide for his family and provide food and keep a roof over their head. And that's not right, you know, because legitimately at the end of the day, I mean, how big of an impact are we having on whatever their view of global impact is? You know, how much of an impact are we having on that? You know, when you look at how many planes are flying around?

Yeah, if you add it up, it's a very, very small drop in the bucket.

It is, it is, but so we're being unfairly targeted, which is, you know, that's the problem. So, but, you know, with nobody to advocate for us and, you know, seem unfortunately, I mean, they talk with EPA, but I don't know how well they advocate for us.

It might be more of a, and this is purely speculation, I don't want to offend anybody, but it could be more like, oh, and it was like political, like you scratch my back, I scratch yours.

And it may very well be, you know, like I said, I'm not behind the scenes, I don't know what's going on, and I'm in no position, full disclaimer, to ever make any kind of judgment on what their motives are and stuff like that. But again, optics account for a lot, and sometimes I just, you know, as they seem a member, and I've been a same member for 20 years, I sometimes don't feel like they have our back. And, you know, there are things that they do and they try to keep us at least informed of what's coming on the horizon, and we're grateful for that.

Which is also a huge thing, right?

It is, it is. You know, at least so we have an idea of what we're dealing with, but I don't feel like they're on the front line of it sometimes.

Okay.

And so, like people like Corey getting out there and getting his hands dirty.

Very vocal.

Yeah, very vocal, and, you know, we need more people like that. And, you know, to stand behind an organization that's going to do that, that's going to get out there and just start pushing back.

Yeah, it's pretty brutal. We talked about at lunch about Quick Tricks and what they've done too. That was a nice family. I've talked to them and-

Wonderful people.

Yeah, amazing people.

Yeah, and to literally be treated like a terrorist is, I mean, it's the most ridiculous thing. And again, it put them out of business, you know. You know, they were trying to just make a living doing tuning, and they got treated like a domestic terrorist. And that kind of behavior is not acceptable. That kind of power is not acceptable. You know, everything should be taken with, you know, a grain of salt and with being able to look at the entire situation and not just come at you with a sledgehammer.

A little more nuance.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there are certainly nuances to the situation. And there are some people who are still, surprisingly, like on Facebook blasting DPF delete, da, da, da, da, da. And I'm like, what are you people? I mean, that's just ignorant. That's just asking to get hammered. But there are people who have never done a DPF delete in their life and are doing some minor modification or something like that. And the EPA comes after them and stops them with a $20,000 or $30,000 fine. That puts most people out of business. Most small shops can't afford a hit like that. I couldn't afford a hit like that. And it's just an absolute abuse of power.

No, I'm watching it somewhat closely to see what ends up happening over these next few years.

So, yeah. The big one is going to be, where do these electric vehicles go? Yeah. I'm more worried about that than I really am about anything else.

So when he crashed his excursion, we got in with a tow truck driver, and he was ranting about a billion things. I think he had to have been like 80, dude. He was ranting.

He was a different cat, for sure.

For sure, but he's talking about like, there's some tow truck drivers that will not even go to a call to pick up an EV vehicle because it's a whole other level of danger.

Yeah, they don't want anything to do with it.

Yeah, or like even if you look at like the Nuremberg Ring, recently they're doing some testing with the, I guess the new GT2 RS allegedly. And you could see that it's marked as an electric vehicle in the back because they had to identify it, like at the ring. So if they're going to tow you, you have to identify as a hybrid or electric vehicle. So it's just, there's a reason for it. So I'm curious to see what happens because it's not as friendly as people make it out to be.

Well, it's not. But the reality is on a global scale, we're way behind the curve on percentage of electrical vehicles as far as registered vehicles. Europe, China, Australia, they're so much further ahead and not only just the vehicles but in the infrastructure. I think with the petroleum industry still having a firm foothold and everything, I think there's a lot of pushback just from that. But Americans, we love our gas vehicles, man.

Don't forget, gas vehicles, tell me how you're going to make your plastic, too. People forget that all your plastic forks are also made out of oil.

I'm excited to see, I feel like what I've been reading is Toyota is making huge strides in hydrogen and I'd like to see where that goes.

That's very curious. Again, it's the infrastructure, the delivery of that. How are you going to have easy?

Hydrogen station?

Yeah.

Well, from what I understand is you can generate at the station itself. It could be like that little propane corner where they have a spot there, fenced off stuff.

But I don't know. Again, that's stuff I think anybody in this industry is watching because it affects all of us. But at least if you look at it from the standpoint, at least the hydrogen vehicles are still an internal combustion engine. Yes. They're zero emission, but they're still an engine. And that provides opportunities. Yeah. Right. Unless your vehicles, unless you're jacking with the controllers, there's not really much there for us, I guess. Unless you want to start selling wheels or whatever.

Well, soon on that note, is there anything else coming on the horizon that we should know about?

We're actually getting ready. So we're doing NoBS OBS this year, August, mid-August, August 14, 15, something like that.

Okay.

This should release by then, hopefully. We'll see where it goes. But we are doing a pre-tour and a post-tour. So we're taking our schoolie, speakeasy bus. Yeah. We're doing a tour up through the Midwest and then across, probably out I-80 into Oregon. And then we go into the event. Then we've got a couple of week hiatus where we come back, and then we're going to fly back out, and then we're going to do our southern tour. So we're going through Phoenix to visit Casey, and Complete Performance in Texas, and several other places along the way. So that's going to be a lot of fun. That's going to be a lot of time, but we're going to be able to get out there. And actually go to a bunch of shops and talk with people to kind of get an idea of what it is that they need for their industries. If there's anything, one that's summer 7-3, which is probably going to be a large focus on our little tour. But just in the diesel industry as well, what can some of these organizations help you out with? From networking, training, and stuff like that, as well as how can we advocate for you in the environment that you're in.

Okay.

Your summit 7-3, one, where is it, are you moving in each time, and is it something that the consumer can go to as well, or is it?

So, summit 7-3, the first year it was only B2B. So, if you're an installer, a manufacturer, warehouse or anything like that, we had those people come out. We were trying to see where it was gonna go. We weren't really sure what it was we had. The one we just held in March, and we've held it at the same event location. It's at the Lanier Conference Center in Cumming, Georgia. Okay. And all the information is at summit73.com. Okay. This year when we held it, we added an extra day. And so again, it's still primarily for business owners or people in the 7-3 industry. But this year we added a public day on Saturday and coupled it with a truck show. So we had a lot of people bring out their rigs, you know, their trucks and stuff. That's really, really nice vehicles out. But it was a day for people to come out and talk with the manufacturers and maybe, you know, find out, you know, what products are available for your vehicle. So, and we're going to do the same thing again next year. We're going to have another public day where the public is available to come out. I don't know what the format of that's going to look like. It may be more in the conference center, you know, where we're doing the general conference, or if it's going to be like another truck show kind of thing. But we still want to have a day for the people to be able to come out and meet with all the vendors and manufacturers. But it's, it'll be again, it'll probably be March, March 26th. The dates and all the event particulars will be on summit73.com. And if anybody would like to sign up, either come to the conference or sign up as a vendor, we would love to have you come out.

Cool. You want to rip the usual three?

Yeah, so at the end of every episode, we like to ask our guests to pick three cars or trucks. I need a daily driver, a show car, and a track car. You got an unlimited budget, build whatever you want. What are you picking?

Audi R8, Audi R8, Audi R8.

Oh yeah, okay.

And I say that to Jess, but I say that in all seriousness as well, because the Audi R8 is my daily driver. I do have an Explorer ST and that's fun, but that's more for like pulling the camper, or if I got to tote the dogs around. Yeah. It's a fun show car, and we do caffeine and octane every month, and we do club meetups everywhere. And then I'm actually getting to track my car for the first time in two weeks over at Road Atlanta.

Nice. Okay.

So I've been on that track several times, I've had a Focus ST that I've had out there, and it's a blast. I love the track, and I've had it at AMP.

Yeah, that's a fun track. I rented that one a few years ago.

That's a nice track. It's a tight track. It's probably not a good track for me to get the R8 on because I can't stretch its legs. Yeah.

I ran my Mustang on that track. I got black flag for noise though. So, yeah.

That's not funny. But, you know, Road Atlanta's got a couple of really nice straights on there. 120, 130, it's not going to be a problem. But, you know, the one thing that I really do love about the R8 is one, I fit in it. I have really long legs. And I've got friends with McLaren's, Lamborghini's, Ferrari's. You know, you pick the car, you know, Porsche GT2 RS, GT3, you know, I don't fit in them. My legs get cramped up under the dash.

It's not as comfortable.

And so, the R8 is one of the few cars that I've been able to sit in that I'm actually very comfortable in. And I can drive that car 10 hours to Miami and get out of it and I feel great. So, it really is an absolutely fantastic car, one of my favorite cars. One of the other things that surprised me about it was how much of a networking tool it is.

Oh, yeah. We've heard that before too.

Because having a car like that, and I don't mean to sound arrogant or anything like that, but it really puts you in a different...

It opens doors. It is a common thing amongst a lot of business owners we've talked to, that once they've made that move, it puts them in places where they get more opportunity.

It really does. And it's surprising how something is ridiculous, sounding as a car, you know, does that, but it really does open doors. But it's just a heck of a lot of fun. And at four years old, and I've got 32,000 miles on it, and I drive it.

Did you buy it in 21?

I bought it. I spec'd it, and it has every option on it, with the exception of the red calipers, because the performance package it came with, came with blue calipers. But it's got the carbon fiber, it's got the racing seats, it's the V10 Performance, it's everything. And I ordered it, and they built it, boated it over. It was the ship before the one that sank with all the EVs on it. And because when that happened, I was like, I hope my car wasn't on that. I was, that was a, it was a real, I kept bugging the audio, I said, where's my car? Where's my car? Can you tell me what boat it's on? Well, it wasn't that one.

I had friends that were ordering, they're trying to get a Merlin Purple, I think it's called, what was it, RS3 or something? Or no, TTRS at the time. And their order got canceled because of that ship.

So they didn't even let them build another one, they're just like, sorry, yours is down there, if you want to go get it.

It was also like the remainder of the COVID BS that was going on at the time with production. It was just like, yeah, we're not making this anymore.

That Merlin, is that like the denim one?

It's like that dark purple, that's just a really good looking color, yeah. All right, so what are you locking in? Daily show and track.

Do you want the ST for daily and R8 for track? You're really going to lock all three of those in as Audi R8?

You're going to drag and drag with it?

Yeah.

Well, I said the thing with the R8 is it's such a flexible car. If I wanted to do a daily drive that I'm not concerned about mileage, the Explorer ST is actually a really fun vehicle. Okay. I really, really love the Explorer ST The Audi R8 is definitely a good show car and a great track car. It's just been a fantastic vehicle for the length that I've had it.

I'm not going to let them just do one for two. I'm going to make you lock something in for, what is it going to be, a show car or a track car?

You like the old cars, what show car are you doing?

For, all right. If I can't do the R8, you're going to spoil my fun.

Not for all three or two.

Okay. All right. So, Explorer ST for the daily driver, R8 for the track car. Okay. I really don't like anything else for that. I would probably, it's a project vehicle right now, but it's a 1964 F600. Okay. That it's going to be bagged. And the engine that's actually here on the dyno, this FV block was one that was originally going to go in it. But I think we're going to go with a DT466, Drive Sump. We're going to build the engine here on the dyno. And so it'll be a 98 to 2004 DT466, so that we can do the tuning on it. I have a wide variety of injectors to choose from. I could do twin turbos and I got the engine bay to fit it. I mean, we got a lot of room for that. So that would be my show vehicle.

Sure.

So anyway.

I knew there was something in there you were hiding.

Yeah.

Come on, no car guy has one car.

No. Well, obviously, I don't. I've given away more cars than I have now. I just needed to open up my property, please make it go away. I gave away a Fox Body Mustang just because I wanted it out of my shop. I couldn't work on my fairway.

I just gave away one as well. So, I guess we're going his house, going shopping after this.

Sure.

All right, cool.

Where can everybody find you?

If you need any information, gopowerhungry.com, very easy to find. Or just give us a call. We've always got somebody here to answer phones. It's one of the things that I love about our company is, we don't do the press one for this, press two for that. You dial the phone, and somebody answers the phone and talks to you. And that's always been something that's been very important to us, and our customers love that.

Yeah, or just Google best tuner for 7.3, and that's what came up, that's how I found them.

So, is that actually?

There's the big joke of, I have some now been named, and this is not a name I picked for myself, I swear. The godfather of Power Stroke tuning.

Yeah.

And so I have a little card holder on my desk that says that. That's what people have called me, because when I'm working at Superchips, we literally wrote the first 7.3 tunes out there. And that was mostly what I wrote. So, I think almost all 7.3 tuning out there, especially anything from Superchips or SCT, probably also has my copyright information at the end of it.

That's awesome.

So, and even other tuners who are using it that have swiped their tunes, it still has my stuff in it, because I still pull files off chips all the time. Yeah, that's my tune.

That's awesome.

That is awesome.

Dan?

You can find us at Gunna Garage with Two Ends.

You don't have to do a Two Ends thing anymore. People know already, man.

I thought so too.

How many ends?

Two ends. Two ends.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, Bill, thank you very much for making this happen.

Absolutely, man. Thank you guys for coming out, and thank you for sharing lunch with us.

Yeah, yeah.

Thank you. I had a really good time, and I'm sorry Sylvester's alone didn't show up.

Yeah, right. Yeah.

Next time.

Yeah. Next time. Next time. I'll make an appointment.

I thought it was going to be cool enough coming here, and then you tease me with the Sylvester thing, and then I've been disappointed.

It's fine.

Well, next time they're shooting Tulsa King, we'll give you a call, play it out.

All right.

Sounds good.

Every time I hear Sylvester, by the way, I think of the cat. Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

I don't know why. That's a big part of my childhood, was that cat.

Sylvester and Tweety.

Yeah.

Well, perfect.

On that note, thank you, 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.