156. G-Force Fabrication, the Hoonitruck, Purpose Built Racecars and more w/ Mark Mcdonald

This episode is brought to you by the High Performance Academy. More on them later.

Well, when you pull the brake, it does apply to the brake, but it also, when it does that, it applies that clutch, it disconnects their rear wheels. Help these guys out, help these kids out. Who the hell do you think you were when you were 15? You were that dumb kid too.

Hello ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minnoxide podcast. I'm your host, Harris AKA. Minnoxide, man of many automotive aspirations, and I am here with my never-ending Ford-loving co-host. It took us an hour and a half to start this podcast, because this guy cannot stop talking about Fords. But we are, you can guess what we're going to talk about today. And we are here with Mark Mcdonald of G-Force Fab. I get that right?

That's right, that's right. Nailed it.

It's been a nice long day and a nice long trip.

Yeah, yeah. It's been a day for sure. It's been rainy and hot and everything all at once. Oh, yeah. Weather is kind of s***** here.

Dude, we drove through a monsoon on the way here. That was on the worst rain I've seen probably in a couple of years. So nice. But anywho, you do some pretty cool stuff over here, but I'll let you make your own introduction. Tell us a little bit about what it is that you do.

OK.

And we'll just kind of go from there.

For sure. Yeah, I've been working my shop on my own for going on three years now. I left Detroit Speed after 11 years after Holley bought it. And, you know, pretty public. They didn't really do the best job at handling some of the business they bought. And a lot of us left or got showed the door or several things. But, you know, it is all good, man. I haven't looked back since and I've been doing this. But, you know, the job at Detroit Speed brought me up from Georgia. And before I worked at Detroit Speed, I was working for year one, doing the same stuff. And then, before that, I worked at a couple of Mustang shops, mainly Fox Body stuff. So Fox Bodies is a big part of my history and background. So, that's why me and him are best friends.

Our first, I think first car ever went and got with my uncle and my dad was an 80 Cobra. You know, the 2.3 carbureted, you know, turbo. It was a piece of s***. But it was cool.

It was the greatest car ever.

Yeah, absolutely.

It sure was.

It's like YouTube matched on like, it's like Tinder, but for Fox Body guys. Just like, oh, Sway Freight, this guy.

So, but it's amazing how those cars, this day, how much money they bring for a basic car. They're, as long as they're not rusty and beat up, they bring pretty good money, you know. I've like, I've got a 90 Coupe I've had since I bought like 97, you know, and I paid $6,000 for that car. And it's a SSP car and it's in pretty good shape. You guys seen it and it belongs to my youngest son, Charlie. Now he's, he's redoing it. But you know, that car right now, the way it sits, that car bring probably double what I paid for.

Oh yeah.

So I do love that color too. I hope somebody does a GTD in that color.

Yeah, it's a yeah. I mean, if you think about investment long term wise, that's not a very good return, but it is kind of nice that it is worth double.

And LMR, man, that those guys have really the last four years is just mind blowing at the amount of new products that's come out for these cars. And when I worked for Mustang Parts Specialties, and we'd get a Fox Body in that was pretty many, and there were specific things we'd get off that car and made sure that, all right, we gotta take care of this, this is a big money item, big ticket items, and we'd always take care of them. Now, you can just buy it.

Yeah.

You know, and it's, you had Dennis Carpenter, he has a lot of the Ford tooling, like we bought a bumper cover for my other son's car, and it has all the Ford insignies and everything on it and it is a Ford part and it fits really nice, you know, but it's just great. You know, you can buy all these parts for these cars now, and it just makes the market stronger in the hobby. It's way, way better and these kids are getting into it. You know, that's the car of our age, you know, so that's, we've got a little bit of money now. We're not rich, but we got irresponsible money that we can spend on them now, so.

They're, they're coming up with the, as long as you're not buying a Cobra R, they're still kind of with the grass.

Oh yeah, no, there's that car too, yeah.

So.

Well, take me back a little bit here, right? So I kinda want to hear your story then. So how did you break into this industry? What did this all begin for you?

All right, so I'm, I'm second generation heart rotter.

Okay.

My dad, he's a Mustang guy, he, at an early age, well, for my whole early age of childhood, and he had a, a 67 Fastback. It was an S-Code big block four-speed car. And that was his daily driver for forever. I remember as a kid, that's all we had to drive. We rode around in a big block Mustang everywhere, you know? So, and it just transformed into that. You know, my dad is, with you and me, we all, you know, you can't have just one, you know?

You gotta have more than one.

So, he got into buying cars to part out, cars to fix, and that kind of spurred my interest in it, you know? Because that's all, this is all I've ever known. I've never worked at a fast food restaurant or anything. I've done this, you know? So, but yeah, that's got that start in, and like I touched a little bit ago, you know, out of high school, I worked, well, part time in high school, I worked at a body shop, and he was a friend of my dad, and he was also a Mustang guy, too, so, you know, we all stick together, you know, but, you know, and it got me, it got me introduced into what the depth of things are, you know, how you do things, you know, we had wrecks come in, you take them apart, you straighten things, you put new parts on, you know, you fix things, and it was more than just mechanical stuff, it was everything, so that got my, it got me a little more experience on how cars were held together, how they're put together. Then in high school, I was in an apprenticeship program where they had a lot of machine jobs, you know, so after the body shop for a while, I got a job through the program. In high school, I worked in a machine shop.

Okay.

And that's where I really learned to run mills and lays and welders and stuff like that, you know, just hands-on working at different places and you know, and of course, you know, with any car guy, you know, you got the one friend, you always take stuff to weld things for you anyway. So, you know, and I always watch my dad's friend that done that, you know, and I was always intrigued by that too. And I can't say that I was always more intrigued about the fabrication stuff than I was actually putting cars together.

So, why do you think that was? Like, what about it?

I don't, I don't really know. I think it was just the fact of, you know, for a long time we were buying junk cars. By then, you couldn't buy new parts for some of these 60s cars. So, you know, you were cutting this piece off of that car, you take it to my dad's friend, he would weld this piece to fix it, and we put it back on there. And I was like, well, that's the coolest thing ever. If you can't find it, you make it. And that really took me at an early age, just knowing that you could do those things. And like I said, later on, I worked at those shops, I walked into a shop and I was like, I know what those things did, but I didn't know how to use them. And then I already know how I could apply those machines to do what I wanted to do. So, and that didn't last long, production machine and stuff didn't last long. And I had to, my brother started a shop, he had a performance tires wheel stereo shop in our local town. And, you know, I started working for him, doing a lot of, you know, weld on suspension stuff, exhaust, and we'd do super chargers, nitrous kits and stuff like that. And that really got my, got me into the high performance side of things, bolt on stuff, you know. Then we had a guy that came in, he had a 95 Cobra that had a built motor, had a S trim Vortech, and it was pulley-ed up and everything, big cam. And you know what that sounds like. You know, you put the, I forget what size small pulley on the top it was. I mean, it was super small, big cam, and you could hear, it was the old school Vortech that was a straight cut gear. So it sounded great. And you could hear it with the cam, you know? And I was like, what is that? You know? So he's like, oh, the shop in a few towns over built this. I was like, really? I was like, that's cool. He's like, they're hiring, they're looking for a helper over there. I was like, you serious? So I was like, man, I'm a dumb kid. They're not going to hire me, you know?

But that's it.

I don't know anything else with cars. And I walk in there and I was like talking to the guys and all, they're asking me questions. And they were really, you know, at that time, I was maybe, man, I was just right out of high school. I just graduated. So maybe I was like 18 at the time or something, 19. And they were like really impressed that a kid could talk the talk, you know, know what things were. And me, I'm thinking, I'm just a stupid kid. They're not going to talk, you know? So they hired me. And before you know it, you know, they was like, hey, could you, you know, we need to pull the transmission out of this car. We need to do that. And I was like, okay. And one particular job, I remember the first car, it was a long time ago, NMCA had a class, they had EFI 11. And there was a guy, had a silver Fox body coupe, 347. And it was a five-speed car. They converted it to a C4 with a trans brake. And that's the first time I ever introduced him to that kind of stuff, trans brakes and stuff. So they had me to put that car together. And it was like, they were really impressed that I could put it together and I've done it right. I didn't leave nothing loose. I knew where things went.

You didn't have a bunch of bolts left over.

I didn't have a bunch of bolts left over. And I put the quarter stick in with the trans break. And I read the instructions, the two step and the MSD controller and all of the thing. And I had it all wired up. And the guy was like, dude, did you really do that? And I was like, yeah. I was like, this thing's cool. It does this and this and this. And he's looking at me, he's like, so you understand how that works? I'm like, yes, I do. So at that point, I got it raised. And it just went from there. I got more and more complicated projects to do. So, but yeah. And then, you know, I worked there for a while. And then eventually I went to work at year one. My brother, he still works there. And they were building some, the Bandit Trans Ams at the time. And they were building some track cars for they were doing a TV series, Are You Faster Than a Redneck? So it had a, it was a 67 Mustang, a 69 Camaro, a 77 Trans Am, a 70 Dodge Challenger, you know, they had all these muscle cars, but they had to be caged. They had to have good suspension on them and a decent powertrain, but they were trying to get these two cars together. And they weren't show cars. These were purpose built straight to the point, you know, functional track cars. And I was moonlighting going over there doing cage work for them. And, you know, one thing led to another. It's like, hey, you want a job? I'm like, oh, well, maybe. So anyway, I got hired there. And, you know, that really got that next step of fabrication in the cars and building stuff like this. Sure.

If you want to learn more about fabrication and design, but don't know where to start, our partners at the High Performance Academy can get you going. With over 100 videos relating to motorsport fabrication, TIG welding, and 3D design, it's the perfect place to expand your skill sets. Listeners at the show get a huge 55% off discount, so go ahead and use the link in the description to get you started today. Let's get back to the show. So, when did you officially end up over there then?

I forget what year that was. That was in 2000 and 2006, maybe? Sure.

Okay.

Maybe. You know, so, you know, I'm skipping over a bunch of stuff. Yeah, we'll be back. Yeah, you know, I'm just hitting the high points, you know. So, but that really got me in there. And I worked there for a couple of years. And then through the TV show that we did, RU Fashion and Redneck, so Speed Vision had that show for a little bit. And, you know, I'm kind of embarrassed to say I was part of it. I got to drive the cars, one of the couple of the cars and stuff. So, there's a guy with a Subaru and I look back and I should have hit that kid. Like he, we were at Kershaw. I don't know if you've ever been to Kershaw. It's a Carolina Motorsports Park. So, the last turn before the straightaway, it is a dead flat 90 degree turn. The guy with the Subaru, he comes and cuts me off and comes in front of me, just cuts me off and I'm blocking the brakes up and try not to hit him. And I thought back and I said, I should hit this joker. It didn't matter to me what my car. They're not going to do anything. And then, you know, I lost the race, but it was all funny games. But he gets out and he's like, dude, I'm so happy that you didn't hit me. I said, he said, I deserved every bit of it. And I'm like, you know, at that point, I was like, I should have hit him. So anyway, but no, I did not. He had a lot of work in his car. And, you know, I respect that. But he was he was driving in the moment like we both were. So I had to be the nice guy.

But Subaru with work in it, who would guess?

Yeah, yeah.

But it was a fast car, man. It was fast, you know, he couldn't get me on the straightaways, but he could he could he could throw down in the turns and stuff. That's that's how he got got underneath me. But anyway, Kyle Tucker from Detroit Speed was there doing he was part of the program, too. He had his car there driving. And, you know, we would talk a little bit. And I knew him before we were doing some track days and stuff through other other events and shows. And we were we were talking and eventually he had me up for an interview. And I came to work for him. That was, man, what was that? Two thousand and eleven, maybe twelve. When you went to Detroit Speed? When I went to Detroit Speed. Yeah. And I came to work there. And like I said, I was there for 11 years. And eventually I was a project shop foreman. So I overseen all the builds, caught a lot of the shots, helped a lot of the guys out and, you know, just made sure the builds were on track with what they needed to be done.

And how many builds were getting kicked out like every month or year or whatever?

We would kick out about, I would say two builds a year, you know, and that's pretty good, man, because we would get cars in and strip them down to nothing.

Sure.

And, you know, full suspension, every built drive train, you know, tons of body mods, you know, just go through the car, every little thing about the car. The cars, as I tell everybody, we didn't build show cars. We built cars that you could show, but these were purpose built cars to haul a**. They weren't show cars, you know. If you wanted to drive from here to California with air condition on and 700 horsepower, you could do it.

Yeah.

And if you want to stop at the track on the way to wherever and throw down an autocross or a road course thing, you could do that too. And it would take it and just keep going. And that was the thing we tried to focus on, functional cars that performed as they were built to be.

You got any that rolled through there that were your favorite? Were you guys working on and bought everything?

Absolutely.

Yeah, all right.

So, you know, I first started working there. My first project was a 69 Charger for a guy, Mohamed, and we call him Mo. Me and Mo's still friends to this day. Anyway, it was a Gen 3 Hemi we got from Arrington and had, I think it was a 4-liter Whipple. The motor, it made 1,000 horse to the tires. It had a 4L80 trans controlled by Holley Dominator. That car, I put a Camaro, the Hydraform DSC subframe under, the Camaro subframe. Okay. And I made it bolt in so you could take it out. And I custom built the four-link for the rear. It was a really neat car. But again, that car, it made a, it couldn't put a bigger smile on your face. You're going down the road at 70 mile an hour. And I'm like, I think I want to blow the tires off this thing. You just put your foot in it and it would do it. And it would stay straight as long as you would hold it. And it was the most amazing thing. The car drove so good. But we put Bosch ABS, Motorsports ABS on it. It had carbon ceramic brakes, Forge Line wheels, air-conditioned Recaro heated and cooled seats. And it was a luxury built pot ride. It was really neat. But yeah, that was my first build and that was one of my favorites. But my totally favorite car was a 70 Mustang. Guess that, right?

Yeah.

But a friend, well, I say a friend because we're friends. Anytime you build a car for a guy like that, and these cars take about four years to six years to build. And you get to know these guys pretty good, you know? So Larry, he had this car, he bought in 1975. It was a real 70 Boss 302. It was a 30,000 mile car. He bought it from the original owner. The guy drag raced it and blew the engine up. So he bought it without him, he was a roller. He bought this car to us and I'm like, he was talking to us about the build and everything and he shows me a picture. I was like, is that a real Boss 302? He's like, yeah. I'm like, you're bringing me a real Boss 302 to cut up. Rust free, original sheet metal, original paint. I was like, we're gonna do this, right? He's like, yeah. I'm like, I'm your guy. So, but it turned out to be a really neat car. The key thing with that car, the coolest thing was the engine. John Mahovitz, the guy that owns Accufab. And at the time we were building that car, I got word that he was wanting to sell the engine master's engine he built. This was the 5.4 based 32 valve engine. And it was 406 cubic inches versus 331. So it had a GT 500 block, it was sleeve, Bryant crank, it was a custom Bryant crank, big stroke crank, supercar heads and a Cobra intake. That thing in a form made like 800 horsepower. And he changed the cams in it to put some more straightable cams in it, but it still made close to 700, just with the street cams in it. And a lot of people like, we'll talk about this car in a minute, but they talk about, you put a engine with these components, now that should be making 1,000 horsepower. Well, it could, but can you drive it with air on? Can you stop at the traffic light? Does it stink? You get out of the car smelling like raw gas. Those are all fun things to talk about, big horsepower, but at the end of the day, if you can't drive it, and like I said, a normal car, that's not any fun. You might drive it here or there, and you're like, all right, I'm putting that away. But when you can get in it, and you're like, man, I think I want to drive this to work one day, or you want to drive it on vacation, or you want to do whatever, you can get in and do it. And the motor's going to run good, yes, but is it going to make the maximum, max effort horsepower? No, do you want that? Yeah, it depends on you, but it's just not fun. It's really not after a while, you know. If you're trying to commute with this and just drive it normally, you know. It takes a lot of, you know, you sacrifice, anytime you do something, you sacrifice something else. Yep. So, but yeah, so that engine, he tuned it down, changed the cams, brought the power level down, but it made it a streetable engine. And it still was very fast. But putting the engine in a car, and I color coded everything in the engine, the valve covers, even the power steering pump, the pulleys and everything, of what, a 70 Boss 302, the engine was the same color for color. So when he opened the hood, the engine looked like it was supposed to be there, but it was a modern 32 valve engine. But it was really, and even my friend David Osborne, he owns Osborne Reproductions. He makes all those little stickers, you see, for restorations and on the Mustangs, so like the fan shroud stickers and everything. Yep. Well, I had him to make the stickers that went in the door that had the correct tire sizes, like the 345 19s on the rear and the 295 18s in the front. So he put those on there. And on those cars, this was my favorite thing. On the trunk lid, you had the sticker that says Space Saver tire on it. Well, I had one that says, No spare, call a friend. And it looked like the real sticker that went on there. So it's stuff like that. That was just a really neat car. So we didn't change a whole lot to change the car the way it looked. We cleaned it up as we did, like you see this one, it's a tuck bumper, flush mounted glass and stuff like that. Nothing that's going to change what the car is. It just makes it look a little better. But that was by far my favorite car the whole time. And then there were some really cool projects we got to participate in, like the Hoonitruck. I was the lead fabricator for that.

And when was that all going down?

That was in 2017.

Okay, yeah. I'm trying to remember when all those videos came out.

Yeah, so that happened behind the scenes. We had a surface plate in the shop. We had a canopy company come in and petition off the shop, had a curtain. I had to work behind a curtain the whole time. Nobody could come in, no pitchers. The pitchers we had there was the shop camera that we were sending to the Hoonigan guys. And that was the most exciting build I've ever participated in. Like you would need something. He'd called the project manager, which was Justin. He and him became friends. It's funny, you can't have contact with these people afterwards. You'd become friends. But you'd call Justin and say, hey, Justin, I need a so and so. Well, they would be there next day. How many do you need? Like, I just need, well, I'm gonna send you four. I'm like, all right. So nothing was a waiting game with that. It was just how quick could you get it done? And me being a Ford guy, and just getting to work on that for a project it was, and I was amped up on 11 the whole time. I worked, like the guys at the shop, there's like, dude, you need to chill out. So no, man, I'm gonna get this thing done. I'm gonna do this. And I probably myself built 70% of that truck myself. And then like I said, there's other guys at the shop, their specialties was, you know, they're painting body or hanging the bodies and making the body panel or stuff like that. They've done that, but the chassis work was 100% me. I've done the whole thing. They, you know, I worked with one of the engineers there, Ryan Matthews, and that's, you guys gotta go talk to Ryan. He's got his own business called After Dark Speed. He's in the Corvettes and stuff, but this guy, he races every weekend. He's out every weekend and he's got some fast stuff. But anyway, Ryan was the engineer there. He designed the chassis for all wheel drive components we use from Sedev, and we landed all that. So basically he said, all right, the motor and transmission's gotta sit here. Your control arms are here. And we had a bunch of laser cut parts, and they come in these tubs, and I had to weld them all together. Had to fixture and weld every piece of that together. And then from there, the cage work and how the body hang on, that's just like, all right, you're just pulling out of your head from experience, just making it happen and doing it. But yeah, that was really exciting to do that car, well, that truck. And we got to go testing with it. And then finally, when they done filming with it, we got to go out to Texas for a week with that. And that was, that was just mind blowing. You really don't understand how good of a driver Ken was until you see what he would do. He would, well, in this instance, when he had drifted underneath that gas station, there's a column. He had to come around that. He's walked over there. He looks at it. All right, let's do it. I'm like, didn't he walk over there? He just looks at it. First, first time, he nails it. He's like, all right, we got to get it closer. So that's what they do. They do it a couple of times and they get it to where, you know, all the shots, you see the bump or something, just do it. Well, the second time, you got a little too close. He took the whole corner off the truck. You know, that's what that picture is, you know, where we build the front of the truck, you know. So he tore the whole front suspension off of it, but we had all the spares and stuff. We got it together, but I was like, dude, I was like, this guy's no joke. I've never seen anything like it, you know, and there were several other times he would just size it up and look at it and just go for it and nail it every time, you know, and they would run it over and over until make it more sketchy, get him closer to something where it just barely misses it, you know, and it was just amazing to see that, but-

Well, he did that whole, that one up Pike's Peak. Yeah. There's no room for error there.

No.

So you better know, oh s***, I missed.

He, I genuinely, he had like a gauge in his head. He could, like, I swear that guy had micrometers in his eyes or something, he could see it, but yeah, that was cool. But yeah, when that truck, when it's talking about building it, I had to build the clips where they were modular. So you could take, we had three spare front clips. You could unbolt, put another one in the same with the rear and you had to make it so that it could be changed out. So the truck wouldn't totaled, to say. So it was, I think some of the drift cars are like that now too. You can bolt the whole clip off the rear or the front too. So, but I had to come up with a way to do that efficiently and make it so it was rigid too.

Were you building all of that simultaneously? So like, or did you build the truck? Okay, now I got to make all these other channels.

That's exactly right. So we built the truck and I was like, okay, I'm going to cut it here. All right. How am I going to make these pieces go back together? So I came up with this thing on the bottom. It was a, it was a clevis. It went into two or three and it clamped shell together. As you tighten it, they had, they were ramped. As you tightened it, it pulled itself together. So I came up with that and there's, there's stuff. I got the idea from, we sold these cage joints when you, a removable cage. And all they did was just clamp together. But if you put a ramp on them and some of that stuff, when you welded it draws and stuff and you, it's just so aggravating to figure out the heat draw. So with this is you get in there, if the bolt's lined up, as it tightened up, it pulled itself straight. So that's how we've done it. But yeah, build the whole thing, cut it there, weld these pieces in, fixture up the spare pieces and have them ready to go. So, but.

And was that for pretty much every side of the truck or mostly the front clips?

A front and rear. The rear was like that too. Sure. But the front and rear used the same differential. It was a modular SADEV unit. It was like a, I guess you call it. It had stub shafts that popped into it, but it was a really, really nice piece.

What was the Fox body part on that one?

That's a good one to see. I was telling you guys, every car that I've built, it became a running joke. What Fox body part was going to be on it? So the inner door handles were Fox body on that truck. Oh, really? So the door handles were Fox body on it.

I had to ask that question.

That was it.

Not the outer ones though, because you had to push down and roll again and open?

No, just the inner ones.

They were the two things you pulled open.

So that was the Fox body part on that. So every car I build has a Fox body part somewhere on it. And it could be as small as a door handle or a clip of something. It's just the part. It became the guys over at Detroit Speed, they always gave me a hard time because I was a Fox body guy, you know. And I said, all right, well, I'm going to put this and they come to, that's a cool little part. Where did that come from? Fox body.

So.

So did you have to manufacture all of those body panels then from scratch?

So we had to build one set of body panels for that truck out of aluminum because Ford at the time, they came out with the new F-150 that was aluminum body. So that was the reason Ford had to have the EcoBoost motor in it and then it had to have the aluminum body and it had to be a 77 F-150 because that was the first year of the F-150. So in 2017, it was kind of like the anniversary thing. So that's one of those items. You know, everybody always says, why didn't they put a V8 in that truck? Well, because Ford wanted to build this one with an EcoBoost in it. You know, it still made, jeez, I think it made like 1100 horsepower or something. It was the engine from their...

GT, the Ford GT.

GT, for DP program, yes. And those blocks were the front wheel drive, like, spore motors.

That's what they were.

My wife has a Navigator with the 3.5 EcoBoost. It's still, it's a twin turbo V6. So like, you got a V8, whatever, it's still pretty nasty.

My Transit 350 has the EcoBoost V6 in it. And it's a 350, and I can pull a car trailer with it, like it's not even there. And the 10-speed transmission, the way it's geared, like it's amazing, you know, you'd never think something like that was possible, you know, back in the, I don't know, early 90s, or even older than that.

I'm gonna use my Navigator to tow my 96 Bronco out to Michigan in a couple weeks, and I'm gonna have air-conditioned seats and everything while I'm doing it.

Yeah, and it'll do it, man, it will, you know, as long as your trailer brakes are good.

Yeah, well, they're good, I got one of those in there.

Good deal.

You're probably going to need to ship your car soon or know somebody that will. And as someone who used to work in freight logistics, I understand the difficulties of finding reliable transport, especially when trying to make it to rallies, racetracks or the warehouse to hydro Corvette, because you're going through a messy divorce and when she says everything, she means everything. Anywho, Nick Shearer is the proud owner of SureThing Logistics. Having traveled much of the country with every type of vehicle you can imagine, he's got the experience and reliability that you want to ensure a safe journey for your pride and joy. If you want to find out what it takes to ship your vehicle, go to surethinglogistics.net, fill out the intake form, and be sure to let him know I sent you. Let's get back to the show.

But there's something that a lot of people don't know about, you know, with the handbrake, okay? That's not just a handbrake, and that goes for the Hoonitruck and the truck. So there's a thing called a peel unit that goes in place of, it goes in line with the rear drive shaft. So what it does, it's about 10 inches long, and there's about 40 clutch disc inside of it. It's about 5 inches in diameter. So there's a hydro controlled hydraulic unit that controls that. Well, when you pull the brake, it does apply the brake, but it also, when it does that, it applies that clutch, it disconnects the rear wheels. So the Hoonicorn and the Hoonitruck are primarily front wheel drive. You have to disconnect the rear, so it'll turn and slide. Because the thing about having a shopping cart with four fixed wheels, you can't turn. So, you know, you disconnect the rear, it's how you get it to turn sharp, and then the fronts are spinning and everything. You pull that loose, and it's basically breaking it loose, and you're dumping the clutch and getting the slide, but you can't get it to turn without doing that.

So that's cool.

But yeah, it's not just a handbrake, it disconnects the rear tires.

So is that a standard system in that kind of stuff, or is that something that you guys had to develop?

So no, that came from Sodev. They used that on the rally cars and stuff.

Oh, that makes sense.

That's how they get them to turn. You see the guys come over, they hit a handbrake. Yes, handbrake, but it's also that peel unit. It turns, it freezes the car up, so it'll turn really sharp.

So we just spent two hours talking about sequentials, by the way, because we were just at 6XB over there.

So yes, the guys that made that, they're out of France, but they got a place here in town. My friend Fuzzy works there.

Really? They have a place out here too? This state has everything, bro.

It's this town, man. Mooresville, North Carolina. There's only two places that work like this in the world. Indianapolis, Indiana, and Mooresville, North Carolina.

Really?

Concord, yes.

So we've yet to make a trip out. We've done PRI, but we haven't done podcasts like Locals out there yet. So you're saying it's just like that out there?

Oh, yeah. Let's say I want to go get this car plumbed, okay? I get everything mounted and everything, and I call up Brown and Miller. And Mike Stipp, the mobile guy, he pulls his trailer up right here at my front door. He plumbs this car, pressure tests all the hoses, and leaves. It's done, you know? And Brown and Miller has an office in Indy as well.

Okay.

So that's what I'm saying. They cater to the Indy car and the fuel teams up there. Here they're catered to the Cup cars, Sprint, you know, stuff like that. And there's Sprint cars here too, but there's a lot of Sprint cars in Indy. But that's what these companies cater to those guys. So like DC Electronics, the wiring people, they make wiring harness looms. So, you know, I can say, I want this car wired, you know, they'll build a harness for it. So my son works for Modern Racing. He installs, does final assembly and installs wiring harnesses over there. And they do the same thing, but they're, they build pro mods. I'm sure you guys heard of those. They do a lot of pro mods and door cars and radio cars and stuff, but they're a full on chassis shop and they got a hub dono, but they do wiring there too. And like I said, if you wanted to go over there and say, hey, I need a DTM connector, this color, whatever, they have, this many pins, you go over there, they have black ones that you can only get black ones from them. You know, they do some process, they turn the gray DTM connectors or the DT connectors black, but you can go over there and buy them with all the pins and everything. You know, you can't, any other place in the world, you have to order those offline. Well, they're five minutes, you just go over here and get it, you know. And then you have SRI Performance, that's where all my welding supplies come from, all my braces, everything. And the coolest thing about that, you can go in there and you guys gotta check, if you got time, they gotta use the NASCAR stuff. If you go in there, it's like big lot, everything, you know. So it's cool, like I'm working on something, I'm like, dude, I need a bracket, something to do that. So I go over there and rummage around and I find what I need. And it's, you know, it's surplus pricing. They don't use it anymore. And it's there to get rid of.

So it's like a NASCAR junkyard type thing, yeah?

It's not so much that, it's just like used parts bins and stuff. You never know what's going to show up over there. And, but this town is so full of that, you know?

All right, I'm moving here.

Like raw materials, like the Camaro behind you, all of that tubing, you know, I just made a list and I was driving over there and get it, or if it was a lot, I'll just say, hey, you guys drop this off tomorrow. I was like, what do you need it? What cut do you need? It's like, they'll do a cut list. They'll be here tomorrow. And it goes, I don't care if it's titanium, aluminum, steel, whatever, they have it, you know? You know, Concord down there, you can go to Pro Fab Headers and you can get header tubing, you know, that's 30 minutes away. There's nothing without a reach of getting something done. That's the reason Detroit Speed moved here from Michigan. They moved down here because of the resources. And when he did, that was the bottleneck of anything, getting stuff done, getting it available in a timely manner and making things happen. Well, here it's not like that, you know, it caters to all this stuff. So it's really neat living here.

Does that help you kick some of these builds out a little bit quicker too then? Because you're not waiting on stuff as much?

Absolutely, you know. So when building stuff like this, you got to be thinking three, four steps ahead, you know, just keep busy. You're like, okay, I need to order one of these. Or I don't have this. I'm like, man, I got to order that from here. That's going to take two weeks. Man, I got to get this going. What else can I be working on? Well, it's not the case. I was like, all right, in the morning, I need to go over there and get this, this and this. And you're starting to work, you know, and it just keeps rolling. Yeah, absolutely. It does. It speeds the process of getting things done quickly. And there's a lot of things. Like I said, I'll go over to SRI. They sell a lot of new parts. You go over there and you're looking through the bins. You're constantly keeping a visual catalog of the things that's like, okay, that's cool. I can use one of these for one of those when I do another one, something else. So, you know, you got to keep that mindset of looking and finding those little specialty things. And those things are only available in this area, you know. So there's a lot of, and that was the thing at Detroit Speed when we were building cars there. There's a lot of things that people took notice on the project page. You know, it looks like, hey, where did you guys get that? Well, we get them from CNR or, you know, SRI or CV products or something like that, you know. And it's just a really neat thing.

Last time we were down here, we had ProWire on.

Yeah, Abdul.

Yeah. And that whole community that we drove into. That's right. At the racetrack, then all of the shops there, you could literally, you could buy or have a race car built and then race it on that track and it would never leave that facility.

So what people don't know when you pull into that part, there's a place called LDI is on the left. All right. So every, I'll say every NASCAR team or any race team around here, even Detroit Speed and all, they use that guy. So what that does, that guy has, he laser cuts flat plate and CNC bends product. And it's very nice stuff. But that guy, he pretty much owns the town in some sense. Everybody uses him, you know? And it's just amazing that the stuff that comes out of there that you're able to do. But that race park is pretty cool. So you have Abdul, the wiring guy, you have KB Racing, which is-

Are they in that park too? They are too.

Yeah.

Okay.

So they moved there because of the drag strip. So they were using that as Greg Anderson and Jason Lyne were using that as their test facility right there. Cause it was right there, you know? So yeah, KB Racing's over there. They build pro-stock engine and Greg runs his pro-stock operations over there too.

Who's the guy I was talking to from G-Sport? From like whatever the emissions is, what was his name, like Mark Latino or something? I don't know. I was trying to get the, they make like the Jezy Cats and all that stuff over there. Or that's like one of their facilities. Yeah, but yeah, that's a tangent.

Yeah, you're completely right. So there's another guy down there. It's Nitro Manufacturing. Nitro, they have the contract to make all the templates for NASCAR, like the gauge templates to put on the body and everything.

Oh, s***. Okay.

So they make them there. So he also makes surface plates too, like to build cars on.

You mean those templates like to make sure cars are within spec?

That's right. He makes a lot of that stuff down there. So, you know, there's all these little businesses in that business park. And then on this side of town, too, you know, you got MoTec here in town.

You know, they have a satellite out here.

Yeah, they're they're here in town. So but it's just y'all got a yellow pages I can look at. God damn. Yeah, for real, man. But it's just endless, man. It's like if you're into doing this stuff, building race cars or hot rods or anything, this town is catered to that.

Sure. You know, so we'll touch on support a little bit, right? Because I can't imagine it's just always you in this shop, right? Do you constantly have people come in and help you now?

Yeah, my son, like I said, he works for modern racing over there. He comes and helps me out. And my younger son, Charlie, he comes and helps me a little here and there. He's 15 and he's getting into this stuff. And he helps me a bit. But I got another friend of mine that worked with me at Detroit Speed. He went out on his own and he does residential fabrication stuff like brass handrails, steps, fire, just all this crazy high-end stuff for big houses.

But like those stupid swirly stairs.

Yeah, he does all those.

Spiral staircases.

Dude, he's building.

The swirly stairs.

Yeah, that's the McDonald's stairs, playground stairs.

Yeah, there you go.

I can't, the spiral stairs. I can't. No, no. What's wrong with going straight, maybe taking a right?

Well, it takes less space anyway.

Yeah, less space for my fever pole.

That's only for going down, though.

Anywho.

But Matt comes by and he gives me a hand on some stuff. Like the IROC behind us, you know, I was like, hey man, I'm going, let me tell you, these cars have no reference point on them at all. The frame rail from each side to the other is not the same on the car. Not at all. And I'm like, you know, I'm jigging this up, I'm measuring stuff. And I was like, dude, this is not mathin out. And I am going crazy. Now you're here by yourself, and you're looking at this thing, and you're getting pissed off at it. Sure. And you're like, f*** this thing. So I was like, hey, Matt, you got a minute? And he don't live far away. He's like, yeah, what's up? I was like, did you come over here and help me look at this thing? He's like, yeah. So he comes over here, we draw some plumb bobs up and everything. And it's a fresh mind. You know, he looks at it. And he's like, no, you're good. You know, you're good. I was like, good. So, but, you know, it sucks sometimes by yourself, but you got to have that second person or second view.

Right.

You got to have them. You got to have, what is that? The game show. You got to have a call or a friend or whatever.

You have to phone a friend.

He's on standby all the time.

I'll do that stuff all the time with my dad, where we're working on something. I'm trying to put a bolt in up here, you know?

Yeah.

I got doing a header. I'm trying to start a fricking manifold bolt and I can't get in and run. I get pissed off and get off. I throw the wrench. My dad walks in and goes, just like, son of a b****. Sometimes you just need to step away and let somebody else try.

That's right. That's right. And that's the work. You know, you guys say I work from home. That's the worst part about doing this is there's no separation. You know, I'm 50 feet from where I live, you know? So I come out here and work and whatever. There's no windshield time, you know, to forget about it.

Oh, yeah, to calm down before you go home.

Yeah, so that's the worst part about it, you know?

Sure.

And losing what day it is.

That's the worst.

Yeah, I know that one.

Yeah. What's the day?

You know?

So...

I thought it was Saturday two days ago. My mom's like, you are way off.

Yeah. So, you know, you're just not away from it. Your mind's always on this, always on it.

So, okay, so how does this happen, right? So you're at Detroit Speed for, what was it, 11 years? At what point did you decide that, all right, it's game time, I want to do my own thing? Were you kind of doing stuff on the side a little bit?

I was doing things on the side. And at the time, you know, I was, I was supporting my oldest son was racing mountain bikes competitive. We were doing a lot of traveling and stuff. And I actually built him his two race bikes, you know. And we were competitive with him. He was successful. But, you know, I was doing side work at home, kind of funding that and doing whatever we wanted to do with the kids and stuff. And then, like I said, Holly came in and basically dismantled the company. And a lot of us was let go, or a lot of us was, you know, just left on our own, you know. And I got let go. So it was a, it was a eye-opener. You know, it kind of sucked there when all that was going down. But then, you know, tons of people reached out to me that stepped out a long time ago. And just like, good, that's the best thing that's ever happened to you. You're going to be fine, you know. And it has been, you know.

Who, is there a person or a voice during that period that kind of like pushed you towards it?

So, absolutely. I do side work for a guy named Zack Ingram. And they, he has a shop in Indiana called Z-Rod.

Okay.

And at the time, he commissioned us to build a chassis for a truck they're building. And you've probably seen this as a 67 C-10, it's a full carbon truck.

Oh.

Everything's carbon.

Was that like SEMA or PRI?

It was, it was, yes. And, you know, Zack's shop, his guys build that truck, they have the molds and everything. He built that thing from scratch, you know. And at the time, you know, I got let go and I called him and said, hey man, you know, let you know if you guys need any help with something, let me know, you know. And he's like, you know, you guys come on up, you and Matt. And Matt left the same time I got let go. And that was a funny story. They let me go and Matt's like, you're letting him go. I'm see y'all later. You know, it ain't gonna work without him, you know. So anyway, Matt's a, he's a good soul, man. And me and Matt's really tight and, but he, me and Matt went up there and he's like, I need the cage done on the truck. We're gonna finish mounting the body, tons of things. We're thrashing to get this thing done.

And this is in Indiana?

Indiana, yeah, it's not Indiana. So it's a north, northern Indiana. Yeah. It's pretty far up there.

So you travel up there and how long are you up there for?

I was there for about a week.

Okay.

And in that time, you know, you go in there and Zach's shop was just so laid back. His guys are super nice. It was just a, cause what me and Matt were used to, it was always just tension every time. And a corporate entity does not need to run a hot rod shop. Doug Cook with Motion Race Works. Yeah. He had, he was on a podcast with-

Baguette probably. Yes.

And he talked about that whole deal and he hit it right on the head. He understood it, he said it, and he's the first dude to speak out about this crap that went on.

I didn't, he listens to that episode, what did he say?

So he basically called it out how the corporations are buying all of these companies and were running them in the ground and ruining the industry. They are ruining, single-handedly ruining the industry.

Sure.

And I'm probably going to get yelled at for this, but I don't care, they ruined Detroit Speed.

Sure.

They did. Well, QA1 owns them now. So QA1's bought it, they're bringing it back up to where it should be. They're doing the right thing. But Holley, they've done more than just Detroit Speed. They've done several other companies that way.

Yeah, they were gobbling them all up.

Oh, they were. And they really hurt a lot. And the amount of people that I knew that worked at these other companies, even at Holley, they got let go, man, just because of numbers of some sort. These dudes work hard every day. They contributed to making these companies what they were. And then it's just like, we don't care. They don't care.

That is strange when a corporation takes over. It kind of sucks the passion. Listen, this profession is already as hard as it is to make a buck.

Yeah.

Like, no shop owner gets into it to make a buck.

Oh, and they don't. You know, it's not. It's not. They do this because we like it.

Right.

This is what we do. You know, we can't do anything else. We would, you know, I joke a couple of my friends. I was like, man, I want to go flip burgers and do some mindless work. I'm burnt out.

I miss shipping packages sometimes, just mindless packages.

But then as you're sitting there flipping burgers, what's your mind thinking about?

Yeah.

Race cars.

That's it.

Yeah.

You can't get away from it. It's ingrained in you. If you're in it, you're in it. You can't get away from it no matter what you do.

Okay.

So you go up there for a week and what are your thoughts at this point?

Well, you know, and me and Matt were, we were still pretty sore about that whole thing, whole Fiasco.

Well, this is still probably fresh at this point.

It was, you know, really fresh. So we go up there, we work with Zach and those guys, and we're like, dang man, this is what it's really like? These guys are like, this shop is totally different than what we were used to. And we go to lunch and it's like, dude, we're looking at each other and we're like, we were kind of pissed, because we've been drugged through the wringer all this time dealing with stuff.

We kind of have like these velvet handcuffs, like it's good enough to not leave, right?

Yeah, exactly right. And it, we're looking at it, it was like hell over a head of the time. You're working for Detroit Speed. You guys should be grateful. Sure. You know, that's not what it, you know, these guys like Zach and I'll get into this too. So we were up there, Zach's just the, a genuine dude. He gets us up there and we had a bunch of conversations about a lot of things that it, it, it stepped, it stepped you mentally back a lot of things that you go through. And we talked about that. And Zach's been at those places and Zach's done those. And he, he, he talked, we talked some stuff. He's like, dude, you got to move forward. You know, I get my guys in here, we do this and this and stuff. I was like, man, that's cool. You know?

And how big is his operation or at the time?

He's got a pretty big shop. You know, he's got, I think he's got about 15 employees there and you know, they, they build, they build carbon bodies and stuff for people. They, he's doing stuff for the new, he's done some stuff for Steve Watts, the, build the new, the new Speed Demon car. They're out there at Bonneville with him now. Zach made some stuff for that. He made a bunch of stuff for Rad Rides by Troy, Jesse Greening, all of these predominantly roaster shop. He does a bunch of stuff for roaster shop. You know, and Zach's like, look dude, I'm not here to work against you. We can do this together. We're, we're, we're a team, we're an industry. We need to work together. We need to make sure we're all successful. And that's that dude's mindset, you know? And, but when I was up there and I've never been to Troy's shop and Zach knows Troy very well and he's only an hour from, I was like, you think we can go up there and visit? Cause I'd like to see some of the stuff they're building. He's absolutely, we go up there again. We walk into Troy's shop and in my eyes, Rad Rides by Troy is the top of the pyramid. They're the best car builder in the world to me. You know, they make some of the coolest things. The stuff they have is labeled perfection. It is, you got to see it. So talking to him, he's showing us, he's acting. And the guys in the shop was like, talking to them, how long have you been working here? And they're like, years. These guys have been around for a long time. And they're just the happiest people. And Troy's goal is like, look, I want these guys to come in and give me their best and not have to worry about nothing else. And that's what he does for them. He buffers all that, takes care of that. He don't, they don't deal with the customers. They don't have to, hey, Max, how much is it going to be? How long is this going to take?

And a little like that.

Those guys don't have to, the only thing those guys have to worry about is making the absolute perfect, over the top piece that nobody else is doing. And that's what they do every day. And those guys are so at peace, like you can just talk to them. They're just so laid back. And their mind's able to be creative at that point. You know, you're not stressed out about corporate meetings and all this bull crap, you know, it comes all that.

Do you feel like you got that back now?

It's took me a while, man, to get back to that, you know? And that was a real eye-opener going to Zax and going to Troy's and talking to those guys and just seeing how a shop is really, those shops are really ran and how those guys are really allowed to do the best they can do, you know, without all the drama. So it was, that was by far the best thing I ever did was go visit with those guys.

It's a pretty common thing amongst most successful shops is it's the team you have, you know, beside you as you're doing it. And you were at Detroit Speed for 11 years, you're a part of what made that shop what it was.

Absolutely.

So when a company comes in and makes you, you know, Oh, it's personal. Yeah, exactly.

It's personal. It is, it's personal. You know, and there was a couple of us there, like a good friend of mine, Paul Morgan, he was Detroit Speed's first employee. He went to work, he stepped out of GM with Kyle and went to work for him in his garage, moved down here with him. And to see that dude right there, to see how, watch the company go in this direction and what happened, that guy right there, you can see it in his health, like how, how discouraged it was for him. And that guy had as much stake in that company as Kyle did. He actually, he was the guy behind the curtain building stuff, making the things, you know, doing the grunt work the whole time. And, you know, there's a lot of people that don't know that. There's always, you know, like, let's say Bill Gates, really, he's got a big number, but who's the guy that done all the hard work?

Right.

You know, there's always that guy. And, you know, when those things happen, those guys are more personally attached to that stuff than those other, the corporations are, you know? So, but yeah, you're absolutely right. You know, it's personal, you know, when stuff like that happens.

So now you're, what, two years into doing this full-time yourself then?

Yep.

So, okay, so, I guess what's next? What's your kind of go-to build around here? Is there anything or?

Yeah, anything that comes in the door. So, through the Hoonigan build again, the guy that we were using to do some of the carbon work on it, he done the carbon work for them on the Hoonicorm before, so they already had a contract with him and he's local to us in Concord, Joey Britt. And, you know, through me doing this and Joey coming over to shop, and it's like you build relationships and like somebody comes in, I was like, yeah, I know a carbon guy. So, I called Joey up, he done some things for me, you know, from builds I was working on, and he had a customer come in that had a 1965 6 GT40 Roadster that Ford built that was all aluminum. They only built one, it was a 110X. So, it was a real car, but there's a long story about, you know, it was dismantled when it was built because it was an experimental car and it just didn't fit what they were looking for. So, instead of paying the taxes to ship the car back, they parted it out and sent it back over here. Well, a long time ago, you know, the parts just laid around, Hull and Moody had this part, Bruce McLaren had the body, this and that. It was a lot of stuff scattered around. Well, there was a doctor, he set the task to find all these parts and put this car back together. In the meantime, he had a guy named Tex Powell finish the car, which was, Tex Powell was Tex Racing Transmissions, Tex Rear Ends and stuff. So, he was a really neat guy too. He had a lot of history with Bud Moore. He had some, he's a NASCAR crew chief and stuff back in the 80s, 70s, 80s and stuff. He raced a lot of Trans Am series stuff. He had a guy named Gene Felton driving for him one time. Gene Felton was out of Georgia, but these guys were like hardcore drivers. I mean, these were like grown a** men, you know? So, but anyway, he had Greg, the owner of the car now, had Tex. He got, Tex finished the car, but there's a little story between that too, but we won't get into that. But anyway, Joey worked for Tex at one time and he had his car shop, so he still had to build the windows for this car. So the car was there and Joey was building the Lexan windows for it. And the car didn't have the right set of headers on it. So he's like, hey, do you know anybody builds headers? And Joey's like, yeah. So, you know, I do a lot of headers, exhaust work, and a little bit of anything fabrication-wise. So I get the car over here and I build the 180 degree headers for it and everything. Then I built the relationship with the guy that owns the car now. And the car's got the wrong nose on it for the big block. So it needs a long nose. It's got the short nose, which is a small block nose. We're working on that right now. There's a guy named Kevin Grant. He does a bunch of 3D modeling and work. He does a lot of stuff for Ring Brothers. He uses them on everything they do. And Kevin is like... You see a lot of people do it in rendering the cars. They draw them out. They look pretty good. Kevin does it the other way. He'll take this car, he'll scan it. Every body line has a number now. Like, all right, Kevin, I want to move this body line down two inches, down two inches forward. He'll do all that and put it in CAD work. And when it's done, everything's got a dimension on it. Everything, every line, it's not just a rendering. It is a 3D model that has dimensions. So that's what we did with the nose. We didn't have the actual nose, so we were working off vintage photos of this car. And I actually found a guy in Europe, him and his dad had actual photos of this car when he was a kid, and this guy's making scaled model cars out of them. I was like, dude, I found this model car. I told Greg, I was like, he bought it. We got there. Then we had the model car there. We kind of scanned it and then backed it up with the photos we had for reference. We've dialed all the lines in, pulled them in. Well, Kevin done all this. Then before we know it, we have a 3D model of a nose that's basically a SolidWorks form. So, Zach and Z-Rod's up there, he has a company, FiberForce, too. They have the carbon stuff. He takes in the information and he's got a router that will hold a 10 foot by 10 foot piece of rim foam. So, he'll route out that whole nose and make a buck. So, we're in the process of doing that now. He ordered the foam the other day. When it comes there, we're going to make it out of two pieces and put it together, because one that big is going to be hard to deal with. So, you have it two pieces and you have it where it pins together. So, I'll have a life size buck that's 3D print, CNC routed out of the foam. It's hard, has all the body lines, everything about it perfect. And we had it scaled down 60,000th for the aluminum thickness. So, once I just lay it over it and get everything fit, then that's my buck, you know. So, I'm getting into that, you know. And then when we're done with the car, I put it on the car and then it'll be as it's supposed to be. But, you know, that's the stuff I get into. You know.

Well, if you don't have the part make it thing, that's not in a pretty extreme scale, but yeah.

If you don't have a part, you make it. That's right. You don't have a part, you make it.

Yeah.

And that's about building these relationships. I've seen you guys put a post out in the car community.

What was it? The most toxic, what was it?

Non-toxic.

Non-toxic. That's right.

The most non-toxic, you know, and I commented on the post. I was like, well, there's a lot of people that overlook the before the car, you know, the network of builders and fabricators, you know, like I said.

Oh yeah. I remember that comment. Yeah, it's so true.

You know, that, like I said, Zach works with all these companies because you do it together. If you're successful and they're successful, we're all successful, you know, and it's the way you gotta be, you know.

That's one thing, ever since I started doing this podcast years ago, it's, I make it sound like I've been doing it for a decade.

You've been thinking about it for a decade.

Yeah, yeah. You don't realize, like from an outsider in the car community, you don't realize how connected these shops are.

Yeah.

It is insane.

Yeah.

For better or for worse. Yeah.

No, they are. Yeah. And word travels fast. If you're a s*******.

Yeah.

People know it quick.

Oh, dude. Somebody will call up, like we had a podcast happen next day because somebody just put in a referral for us.

Yeah.

And it's like, you know, these guys are good guys and word travels so fast.

Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, so the GT40, once that project set off and then the same guy's got a couple of Ferrari F430s. Oh, okay. Yeah. So I built a twin turbo kit for one of them, the coupe. He bought a spider convertible. It's already twin turbo underground done yet, but it's got an older Motec system on it. That's not supported anymore. It's very old, very old system. Underground said, yeah, we can't do anything with that anymore. It's because it had some drivability issues. It's like, hey, we can put a new system on it. You know, so the other car doesn't have, so those cars, you have to keep the factory ECU in them to run the transmission because it's got a, it's a manual transmission. It's got the F1 controller. So it's a hydraulic clutch and all. It's not really a DCT or DTC, whatever it is. It's actually, it's a manual transmission. It's converted with hydraulic stuff to make it work.

Kind of like the Audis, right? The R8s.

Yeah. So it's got that, and the computers actually run a lot of the other systems on the car. So you can't really disable it, but you can piggyback on it. And that's what, the other car has a MoTec on it. So what I've done, he'd give me the intakes off the cars and I've outfitted them with two sets of injectors, a factory injector and a set of Injector Dynamics 1050 XDs. You know, they're a super cool injector. You know, they're, I talked to the guy. He said the low RPM operation of the things are incredible. He said, I can put one in a jet ski or a dirt bike and it'll work. Even though it's a 1050 cc, he said, I can control it that precisely. So I used a common rail on it. So the one car, the Spyder has another set of fuel rails on the inside. So you have all this plumbing running around everywhere. Well, I was like, why don't we just put a common rail on it and put two injectors? He's like, can you do that? I'm like, yeah. So anyway, so I bought some injector bungs from Acufab. Got some black fuel rail blinks from Comp Cams. And the injectors, I got those, I don't know if you guys know Brad Brand, Atlanta Chessy, I don't know. He actually, I called him up and I was like, he's a tuner and stuff. He's done a lot of crazy stuff. But he's doing a lot of outies and stuff. I was like, hey man, what injector CC would I need? You know, to run with this and this. He recommended this and I called Injector Dynamics and they're like, yeah man, that's what we need. So I just got Brad to get them for me, you know. So done all the fab work on the intakes. And so the cars are going, both cars are going to modern racing over here and they're going to outfit them with a new FuelTech system.

Okay.

The FT550 Lite.

Sure, okay.

So that's going to be the piggyback on it. So they're building a harness for that. And we're doing the injectors with a common rail. And then I'm going to update the pumps and everything. So and then they're going to end up adjusting. They're going to tune them.

So is there anything that you don't do or shy away from?

Doesn't sound like it yet.

Let's see. Corvettes.

Corvettes.

Yeah, the Corvettes suck.

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They're only good for their parts.

I'm going to use AI to be like, Corvettes are the best ever.

Just plop it in there.

Corvettes suck.

Yeah, Corvettes suck. They're only good for their parts.

A particular part of a vehicle, it seems like you're able to do everything, or you just stick to the fab stuff?

I don't do wiring because I understand it, but I'm not any good at it.

Sure. Yeah.

So that's why you have friends that do that.

Sure.

I've seen it over to Modern Racing or something. You know, they do wiring. They do really good. But yeah, I don't mess with that.

Otherwise, you'll do the rest.

Yeah. I'll do anything else, you know. So as you guys see in my kid's car, you know, we want to put big brakes on it. And I got to go.

You guys like your big brakes around here?

Oh yeah. You can't have enough brake, man.

Those look pretty small.

Yeah.

I love going and stuff.

Those are custom too, you know. I welded the spindle and made... That's just a bunch of parts I had laying around. Oh yeah. You know, just, you know.

Man, that's so cool though. Like just be like, oh, f*** it. I'm gonna make it.

Yeah.

Right.

So our mutual friend, Rob Bowen, we gotta call him out because he get his feelings hurt at the parts farm. So he hooked me up with those S550 brakes for my kid's car. You know, I fabricated a spindle so we can put all that on there. And I think said and done, you know, Rob hooked us up with the brakes and I bought new rotors and pads from the parts store. I think I got like, I don't know, 150 bucks in that brake kit, you know? So, you know, four piston 15 inch rotors, you know, it stops, you know? It's actually too much brake. You'll wreck it if you don't understand it. You get out here and panic stop.

You look like you're in a ditch.

That sounds a little familiar. Sorry, Dan. Did I?

Somebody else do that?

Oh, no, I took his GT500 on a trek in the...

Flat spot the time.

I overdrove it a little bit. Everything was fine, but...

No fires though, right?

No, no, no.

No, no, no, no.

No, no, no, I just, I almost went into the grass.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, you understand that. Yeah.

Oh, he didn't know that.

You mean the car I got from Rob Bowen?

Oh, yeah. No. All right. Enough about Rob. Yeah, yeah. You don't want to give him too much credit.

Yeah, he doesn't need any more ego or any...

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

But yeah, no, I'm a challenge for anything. I like a lot of things. And build on what I talked about in the next words of people, there's a, like in a mainstream, there's a bunch of people that have, you know, get talked about a lot, you know. And that's cool. But at the end of the day, there's guys out there that they're a real deal, you know. And I'll reference again, like Steve Watts, the guy, the Maxwell Industries. He built Speed Demon, and he's got the new car going out there. You know, that car holds the world record for the fastest piston-driven car on earth. You know, these dudes are smart. You know, you can call them up, and like, hey man, I'm trying to weld. I got this aluminum, and it's this, and this. And he's like, well, here's what you gotta do. You know, you go through the steps, and tell you how to do it. You know, you're not gonna go find that on TV, or the internet. You know, you're not gonna find that. When I done those spindles for my kid, I called a friend of mine. His name's Scott Mock. He's the old welder out in Kansas. You know, hey Scott, how would you go about welding this? What's the, why don't mess this up? And he goes through the steps. He tells me, he's not telling me, I can't do this, or you shouldn't do this, or that. No, these dudes don't do that. You know, these guys come from that generation before that you can buy all this stuff. They were having to make speed parts. And that's the coolest thing. That's, we're getting, there's a lot of people getting away from that. They don't realize that Detroit Speed subframe right there. They don't know that that derived from, there's a guy named Mark Stilo, that's an engineer at GM, okay? Him and Kyle Tucker built a car to run one lap with. Well, the spindles and stuff went right. You know what they did? They cut them up and welded them. Welded the spindles up and made the spindle what they wanted so the car would handle right, you know? The car is still running around today.

Stilo, that's the pro touring guy, right?

Yep, yep, yeah.

I'm going to get hit by calling Camaro Jesus.

Okay, I got his book recently. I thought it was a reader or whatever, but somebody recommended I reach out to him. I need to get him, because we're going to be in Detroit here week after next.

Yeah, yep. And he does the same thing, you know? He's got a network of people. Mark's a smart guy. Mark can put together the right people to get what he wants. He can't do these things, but he knows people that can, you know, and he reaches out to them. That's so a lot of... And that's another thing, too. You kind of get some of my nerves with people bringing... Like, this guy bringing this... He wants me to build this car, you know, and it pays all this money to build the car. Good, you know? That's good for me. That's good for you guys, too. You know, I don't... What's the saying? Everybody says, built my ball or whatever they have.

Yeah, f*** off.

F*** off, you know? That dude, he can't do it, but he knows people that can do it for him, and he knows how to do it, you know? That saying needs to go away. It does. It's bad for the industry. It's bad for people.

Oh, I've been saying this forever, dude. I'm like, are you trying to put every fab guy out of business over there? Like, you go do it yourself, then.

Yeah.

It's like, you can't be saying that.

Or it's just anything, you know? It doesn't matter. These guys, we do this because we like it. And this guy comes to me to build this car, I'm not just building his car, I'm building my car too.

Well, the other thing is too, right? Like, if it was just for you, you would take two years to put on the parts you got on discount at PRI. I mean, you would take forever, you know? It's just, but somebody comes to you with a pocketbook in there like, all right, I want this. You make it happen, and you had the money. It makes sense.

Yeah, man. It's the same thing. So here's the other side. People don't realize about it. These parts, like I said, those derive from people doing, you know, building things on their own. Okay. How do you think they got here? You know, you got Cadwork stuff now, but how do you think those parts got there? You know, you got Ed Eskader, and you know, that dude held that guy this year. He's like 100, you know, it's his birthday. What is it? 110 or something like that.

The dude's old.

But back in the day, man, what is he, welding camshafts up, making things, and for you know it now, heck, you know, that, he, you know, you got stuff that's made that way. It ain't welded stuff, you know. So it's evolution of how we got here, you know.

Do you think that, are you seeing any young guys, or do you think that it may spark back up at some point in time, or do you think as your speed dial list that you're naming off right now, as these guys start to get older and-

They're all doing podcasts now, Dan.

Is it a dying art?

They're, it is in some sense, like you see, I see, I follow a lot of shops on Instagram, and you see a lot of them go through where, hey, we're hiring guys in the fab shop, we're hiring, they're all the time hiring, looking for talent, looking for talent. And it always says, pay based on skill set. So that tells me that they're looking for guys that can get stuff done, and I wished I could say, I see, my kids are into it, you know, like I was born into it, they're around it, this is second nature to them, you know. When my son went over to Modern for an interview, Justin was like, I don't need to talk to you, I know who your dad is, I know what you do. And you know, he started to work, he was like, you know, that's a good bit of confidence, you know. So, but yeah, I don't, I see, that's the problem is, a lot of people are getting out of it, so yeah, there's a generation coming up, but it's not as strong as it used to be.

Right.

You know, and it's, I don't know how we're moving on from it. I can't say that we're, we're straying away from it, because now you've got a lot of the import guys, they're into it, you know, and there's a younger crowd, those cars are a little cheaper, and you get younger kids that's able to buy them, and they're doing things to their cars. And that's another thing that pisses me off, is seeing groups and stuff. If a guy posts a picture, even in the FoxBody stuff, a young kid gets his car, he goes on there, he posts a question. You know, Min, you know the answer to that. It's easy, but he doesn't know that. And these dudes are just ripping this guy's a****** and making fun of him. You know what he does? He doesn't ask questions no more. He doesn't reach out anymore, it discourages him. And you know what? When that happens, what does he do? He gives up, you know? Nobody wants to help him, because he figures like, man, these guys are a*******. You know, and that goes back to what you were saying. And that's with all the cars. I mean, these guys need to f****** stop, you know? Stop. Help these guys out. Help these kids out. Who the hell do you think you were when you were 15?

Yeah.

You know? You were that dumb kid too.

It's funny because most of the time, so like I know an absurd amount of s*** about Ford stuff. I can name off part numbers, VIN numbers, you know, engine code, s*** like that. And I think it's really cool when somebody asks about it. Like if you had your car at a car show, like I can tell you production numbers, when it was made, stuff like that. I love to share that information. And I don't understand why more people like, why are we trying to gatekeeper?

You're talking about Ford and all.

Yeah. Right. So like I get excited for that kind of stuff. The fact that people can just tear somebody down for that s*** is crazy.

And it's, you know, and you know, throwing throwing off on a guy's bill because he's got these set of wheels or so what, man? You know what? The guys out here doing it, you're doing it.

I'll rip on the OEMs time to time, but I think that's everybody.

The only time you don't want to share the information is when you're buying something that somebody has that's really worth some s*** that they don't know about it.

That's called the bargain.

Yeah, yeah.

What's the...

By the way, you just told me that's the only set of wheels ever made.

Part of the deal. That's it. Part of the deal.

Yeah. Or what about that bumper that Henry bought last time we were in North Carolina?

Yeah.

He's like, oh, that's like a super rare bumper. He's like, I'll give it to you for 300 bucks. He's like f****** done. He f****** had somebody fly out there.

Damn right, man. Yeah. No, man.

It's like a $3,000 bumper you got for 300 bucks or something like that. $100 something.

Speaking of bumpers and must... 94 to 98 Cobra front bumper covers. Come on, man.

Yeah.

You see how much those things are bringing? Well, they're not reproducing them, but...

What about the stupid amber taillights on the Cobras that... Dude.

So, Rob had that 94 5 that had amber taillights in the V6 car, and I was like, those are worse more than this whole yard is.

My dad's 99 Celine Cobra has them, and every time we're moving in around the shop, I'm like, just watch out for the taillights.

Now, the guy, the friend of mine in Norway, I miss, is a, hey, man, do y'all have these taillights over there? There's some junk yards over there, and I sent him pictures of it, and he's like, well, I don't know. I was like, well, you got any friends that's into Mustangs and stuff? And he's like, well, I'll ask, you know? I was like, you know, see if you can find them. You know, cause they're common there.

Yeah.

So, I can't wait for this car to be done, dude. This is such a good looking car.

So, let's talk about this car a little bit.

Yeah, so this car belongs to a guy in Norway. His name is Eric. His son is, I think it's Oli, but he races WRC. He drives Red Bull Sponsored Volkswagen. And, you know, those guys are crazy drivers, man. I don't think they have a fear of one of them just watching.

But anyway, so they're probably somewhere where there's less rules too, so they can be a little more ballsy.

Yeah. Those guys, you know, I've watched some of the stuff on Instagram, I mean, racing and stuff, all that, you know, just insane amount of talent and skill and just, I don't know, I guess it's the ability to react quickly, you know, but anyway, so Eric has had me to build this car. He had me to purchase the car. I got it out of Arizona. So this is all original sheet metal, something for the door. I replaced it because the door was like somebody rent a fence post. It had big rips and stuff in it. I couldn't fix it. So I put a door skin on it. But Detroit Speed, Luma Frame, QuadroLink in the rear, the subframe connectors, the wheel tubs in the back. It's got a floater kit on the back for the, it's a C6 floater kit. So if you understand what that is, conventional axles, you know, the axles bolt in, you have a bearing on it. Well, this uses the same hub pack on the rear. It's got a floating axle. Oh, okay. So with this, you can actually run ABS if you want to, cause the Exciter rings on it. But the brake package is, it uses all Corvette brake stuff on it. So, but these are bare brakes here, six piston, I got those from Rick Elam. Good dude, man. He runs bare brakes out there in Arizona. But anyway, it's got a bowler 256 six speed package in it. The engine, small block Ford 427, it's got a set of the Hemi heads on it. Hydraulic roller, vintage air front runner, air condition. Again, we talked about earlier, this motor could make a thousand horsepower if you wanted to, but this thing has air condition, it drives down the road, it don't trailer hitch. You know what trailer hitch is? The cam's so big going down the road and it's kicking me in the a**, you know? It ain't going to do that, you know? But in the torque curve on this engine, say at a thousand RPM, it's already at like 400 foot pounds of torque and it just goes all the way up. You know, the motor makes like 670 and 580 foot pounds of torque, you know? But the 500 foot pounds of torque is, you know, from about 1500 all the way up, you know? So it's going to be a very nice drivable street car. So, but, you know, I took the bumpers, shaved the drip rails, flush mounted the glass and I use stock glass. So if you ever have, you know, there's manufacturers out there that make oversized glass and stuff. But there's things about it that I don't like. It's not bad stuff, you know, but there's just things that I, you know, I'm building the car. I get to choose, you know? So I use a stock glass. So say it hits a rock going down the road and it busts the windshield. Well, order an oversized glass. Oversized glass, let's say, I think they're like 600 bucks or something. Well, that thing, they're like 150 bucks. So, you know, I've done all the work to make it flush-mounted and bring it up. But, you know, it's a stock glass. The same for the rear. So but there's a bunch of neat little trinkets. I showed you guys, like flush-mounting the marker lights. These 70, this is one of my favorite things about these cars is the marking light because it follows the body lines and stuff so much. So I can't really, I was like, I'm not going to do away with it. The rear marker lights, 68 Dodge Dart light. And the reason to use them is I wanted to dodge. Well, you ever seen the AC Cobras? You know what the marker light that is? Well, the bigger AC Cobras, they use Mopar marker lights in there. So that's what they, but, you know, it's still Ford. I did, but anyway, the door handles, I had those machine out of Billet stainless. They're not quite half the height of the original door handles, but those are, Troy at BBT Fab, he helped me out with those. Like again, it's a network of people. I call him up, he does them, man. I'm like, he made it happen, you know? It was like the coolest thing ever, easy. And, but yeah, you wouldn't know those are stock, those weren't on the market, you know? So, but, you know, it's just a bunch of cool things like that on this car.

So, so then when it's all done, you guys ship it out to him then, or what?

Yeah, so it'll go up and I'm having Zach up there at Z-Rod, they're at Indiana again. He's going to do the paint and body. Okay. He's Ed, his painter and body guy is Ed. He's going to do all that. And then once it's done, I'll have to assemble the car and drive it. And we'll put, you know, a couple thousand miles on it and make sure all the things are on it. Nothing's falling off.

That sounds like the worst part of the job.

The worst part of the job is the last assembly and driving and tuning is the absolute worst part. It takes forever, man. Yeah.

Who does the tuning, by the way?

There's several people that you can, that we use, I use. I got a friend that he's a mobile guy. He's a big LS dude, but he's in Georgia. It's Eric Evans, he, Queen City Speed. He does, me and him go way back, you know. He worked with us at Detroit Speed a little bit. So, you know, I'll probably get him to tune on a little bit. And, but this one has a Max ECU on it, not a MoTec, not a Holley or anything. So the reason is Max ECU is Holley over in Europe. That's really big over there for them. Okay. And it's very similar to a MoTec from what I understood. But, but yeah, it's a, it's, Max ECU actually has a, one ECU that's developed, it'll control, it'll do the stand alone engine. It'll control the BMW DTC transmission too. Forget which M, it's the M7 transmission.

Whatever's in Gus's car, I think.

It's a seven speed or something, but there's, yeah.

Is it the ZF, whatever it is?

I think it is, or something.

But anyway, my brain's lasagna right now.

Yeah, no, there's so many of that stuff going on now, man. But, you know, they make an ECU to do that. And one of these days, I want to do a build one of those transmissions, you know. I just think Kyle Cutchins, he's building a Corvette. He's putting one of those DTC transmit, the BMW ones in there. He's, there's another company, I think they're Sweden. They have a stand alone computer, if I'm not mistaken. I don't know if it's a stand alone, or they took a BMW one to dissect it. But anyway, yeah, Kyle's building that Corvette with that transmission and that controller. So I've been watching that, and it's really cool.

But Kyle, with the BMW trans?

Yeah, yeah.

Interesting.

Well, what's that company that we're having on in Detroit area? They do DCT, they do the DCT stuff. They take the BMW DCTs and put them on EcoBoost.

Yeah.

So they got adapter plates and harnesses and all that s*** that they're doing.

Brother, I know the answer, but it is not available at this moment.

I'll find it while we keep chatting. You texted it to me. I'll look real quick.

Yeah, that's... But yeah, wasn't it Gem?

It was Gem. It's something with a J, right?

I don't know.

I don't know.

Okay, let's keep chatting. I'll find it.

Yeah, sure. You got it.

Yeah, that'd be a... I really one day want to do one of those in a car here. It'd be really neat.

I love seeing the stuff where people just throw stuff together that just doesn't make sense.

Yeah.

Are you a... Like for example, if somebody puts an LS in a Mustang, does that break your heart or are you cool with it?

No, I'm just over it.

Yeah, over it. I understand over it. I understand.

I was like, yeah, dude, you done something really cool.

Like an LS swapped rotor, like a car that's supposed to have a rotary in it, it's like everybody's done it.

I'm like, I'm over it.

But damn it doesn't work.

Well, there was a term for something overdone. I was called... I saw it posted as called LS and they used the term. I thought that was funny, but it was just too much. It's just whatever, man. Yeah, good for you. I shouldn't be that way, but it's what the guys are into. But personally, I'm not going to go over there and take it in and look at it.

I was going to ask you this while Dan spends the next half hour.

I'm about to give up.

He's not a good looker-upper. What are you most proud of?

I don't know.

Having my own shop, I guess. Being able to do whatever, if you get an idea to do something, and just do it. Sure. Having the network of friends to lean on, that goes a long way. You can't do this by yourself. At the end of the day, you cannot. You can have your own shop, you can be on YouTube, you can have this show and this and that, but you can't do it by yourself. You gotta have those friends that has your back and help you out. And having a good network of friends is probably what I'm most proud of at the end of the day, because they understand it and they're there for you like you are for them.

Sure. GEM Sport, J-E-M Sport.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I almost said righteous gemstones. That would have been a dead giveaway. Yeah. Yeah, no, I need to actually probably finish.

Anyway, if they're, that looks like they've got some stuff. I'm excited to talk to them because I'm going to pick them up.

Yeah, that's some neat stuff though. But like your car has the Tremec one in there.

Yeah.

You can buy that transmission from Tremec, but there's not a controller for it.

Right.

So there's a guy, his name is Ed Siniff. He's out of Georgia. He does a lot of MoTeC. He works a lot with Oscar and MoTeC guy up here in Charlotte. I can't think of his last name. But anyway, I talked with him about possibly building a controller to run that Tremec transmission. He says, yeah, I could do that. I was like, well, what are you talking? He's like, probably 25 grand. Yeah. He said, let's just get started. I'm like, the reason I say that is I had a 66 Chevelle a while back. Had a Speedtech chassis, LT1 dry sump, and he put a 10-speed net. But I was trying to talk him into putting the Tremec DTC transmission in it and doing that way. Because he's building a car for his wife, a track car. So it's a really neat car. But she's got a BMW M-whatever with that transmission, and she was talking to him about it. I was like, well, we can put one of those in the Chevelle. She's like, really? She's, can you talk to Matt about that? I was like, then Matt's like, no. But yeah, it's, in all things is possible, you know, just if you got the money and the follow-through, you know. Yeah.

What's the time, so how long is this one gonna take before he gets it? And so you'd said something that builds can take four or six years.

Yeah.

What does your turnaround look like here typically?

On a build like this from start to finish, this is, these are about four to five years, from the time you start on it to the time the guy gets it.

Okay.

They're four to five years. So, and it depends on how complex the car is. So, like the car I talked about earlier with the 69 Charger, that car was very complex. It had climate control, heated cool seats, ABS and stuff. That car, we had that car about eight months, just sorting it out after it was put together, making, tweaking things, fixing things. One problem I had with it was the power steering would, it would lose power steering assist at a certain RPM, turning into a hard corner. Normal driving, it was fine, but we put the car through the paces. Like you guys talked about the post with the rest of the Corvettes, the Mustangs, the Nürburgring. Well, those GM engineers, they put those cars through everything. So that's what we'll do with this car. I mean, we won't, we'll be nice to it, but we'll go through the paces. We'll take it to a road course or something. We'll run it through it. Cause we don't want this guy to have any problems with it, or never, never.

Well, it's not like once he has it, he can just be like, hey, come check this out.

That's right. And here's what you run into with these kinds of cars. You know, this one in my eyes is not a very complicated car, but there's a lot of high performance things along with it. So if he has a problem with the car, he can't take it to the mechanic shop down there at the end of the road. You know, you got to take it to someone that understands how things work. You know, so there's that too. So you have to proof these cars and go over them and go over them and go over them and make sure they're 100% before the customer gets it.

Do you give them... So I've talked about this before with other shops that do this kind of stuff that you're doing here. Because like you said, this will be... You'll have Mustang brakes here, Corvette stuff here, whatever. Does the person get a cheat sheet afterwards and be like, okay, if you're going to O'Reilly's, here's what you need to say.

Absolutely, yes.

I need these from an 86 Monte Carlo. I need this from this.

That's absolutely it. So, yeah, so during invoicing and stuff, you go to O'Reilly's and you get whatever for it. The part number is there. There's a folder that every piece of paperwork that I get from buying stuff off Amazon, I might need a little clips or something, or go to the hardware store, go to the parts store, raw materials, everything is in a folder, everything. And I do a PhotoShare app too. So, I'm taking a bunch of photos of everything, you know. There's photos there you wouldn't post on social media. It's just stupid things, you know. But the reason you do that is you back up what you bill. So, I bill weekly. I got a sheet. I write down everything I've done that day and the amount of hours I have in it. That's all backed up with pictures, you know, on my phone. I load them up to that Photo app. And then at the end of the week, he's excited. He sees all these pictures. And I post some on social media, so he can show his friends and stuff. You know, you filter out the, show the good stuff. But he sees all that. He's excited. He sees the bill. He sees, you know, all that. You know, it's transparency. You got to do that, man. And one sound piece of advice I got from a guy when I came in doing this, he told me he's like, it was Justin Elks, the guy that owns Modern Racing over there. He said, all they do is do what you say you're going to do and be honest about it. That's easy. As long as you do that, he said, you'll never be out of work.

So I've literally built my entire, what I'm doing off of it. I have never advertised. I've never had a website. It's all just show up and say what you're going to do. And it gets you.

That's right. You do what you say you're going to do.

Yep.

And, uh, yep. But, uh, that's true, man. Transparency is where it's at. You can't... There were some scenarios from projects long ago at a place I worked at. The project manager would get a customer in and tell them the car was going to cost this, and there's no way in hell you could build that car for that. And it was a bait and swap thing. You get them in there, and all of a sudden, you're $100,000 over a budget. Well, how'd that happen, you know? You can't do that to the guy. You can't do that. That's not good business. He's not going to be a return customer at that point, you know? You can't do that. This is not, you can't. So, but yeah, that's a, and unfortunately, there's a lot of that out there. There is, though. But yeah, just be honest and move forward and do what you say you're gonna do.

Yep. Which is also a hard thing to find in this industry, too.

Yeah, yep.

I don't know. I mean, yes and no, right? Because you think about how many rooms we've been in with some bad people, too.

I'm sorry. It's not hard to find, but the overwhelming amount of hacks that are out there is-

Sure. And especially for the average Joe.

Right, yes.

Yeah. If you don't know what to look for, yeah.

Yeah.

That's for sure.

Yeah. And here's something, too. People come to you for your experience and your knowledge.

Sure.

When we're doing this stuff, like the guy I'm building the IROC for, he came to me because he's like, I want to put Corvette rear suspension. I want to run a Super 8.8. I have a GT350 in the rear. I want to narrow the track width so I can run a normal looking tire in the back. I want to put the Detroit Speed clip in the front. I want to run an LT1 dry sump, and I want to do this and this and this. And I was like, okay, I can do that, you know. I didn't say, I don't know if I can do that or not. No, I built a skill set to be able to do this. And I didn't do it on my own. You know, I had help, I had guidance. I had these people, I'll elaborate on that again. I had these older people with experience to balance these questions. You can't do it, I'll say it again, you can't do it on your own.

The next episode of Drop is with MthMoto, so be sure you're subscribed, and be sure to turn on notifications so you're letting know when this episode's out. Let's get back to the show.

You gotta have a network of people. But that's how you get there. And people come to you for experience, knowledge and know-how.

Speaking of skill sets, what are some of the more difficult ones that you had to learn over the years?

Not being so abrasive.

That's true.

Good luck.

With people, you know.

That comes with the territory.

Yeah. So, you know, working, you know, young guys would come in the shop. You give them six months, and then after six months, it's m*********** time. You know, I done showed you this once, showed you twice, I ain't showing you again. And, you know, it's time to get with it, man. Time to get with it. These guys, you know, shops pay, you know, your lab labor rate's $150 an hour, depending where you're at. The dude's coming to you, paying you $100. Would you pay $100 an hour for that? That's what you tell the guy. No, I wouldn't. Well, why did you do it then? You know, and you just get it. That's what I struggle working, working, working with some people, you know. It's not my fault you're stupid.

Yeah. I like the, there's a welding videos that I watch every now and again, where they rate them on what they would pay them an hour on their welds. I think that's kind of funny how you do it. That's like an $8 an hour weld.

Absolutely, you know, absolutely.

It's kind of a good way to put it in perspective for somebody, you know.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And that build the skills. The best thing that can teach you more than anything is learn how to fix your mistakes. That gets you through. If you're not afraid to mess up and you know that you can fix your mistakes, you can do anything.

Well, and then don't make some b******* excuses either, own it.

That's right. Yeah, own it.

That's probably the hardest part.

It is. Yep, you know, playing the blame game, you know. You messed up and figured out and move forward and fix it, you know, move on from it. And you learn a lot from doing that, you know. So mistakes are not necessarily a bad thing. You just, you know, you learn from them and do them and makes you better, you know.

I do, I don't, making a mistake doesn't necessarily piss me off, but doing it twice really pisses me off.

Yeah. I've seen you miss exits.

Oh, that's different. I do that all the time.

Yeah, yeah.

Kids yell at me.

That's what I'm thinking about something else. I'm just cruising by. Or my wife's telling me where to go.

Oh, yeah.

That doesn't work.

Yeah. But, yeah. But yeah, now you build a skill set and don't be afraid to try a thing. Do things. Ask for help. Build a network of people. Helps you out.

What's a mistake you think somebody new to this field may be doing?

Not listening.

Okay. Asking a question, but not listening?

Or not even answering the question. Just doing things and acting like they know it. And just not asking the question, or a guy walks up to you and says, hey man, that looks pretty cool. How did you do that? What are you doing it with? And they tell me, I was like, well, we hadn't had any trouble with that before. I was like, well, that's fine. Just because you hadn't had any trouble doesn't mean that's the correct way to do it. There's proven ways and reasons why you do things. And I fall guilty of that too. When I was younger, nobody told me s***. I knew everything. And you know, you mess things up, you fail or you go to somebody's shop and like rad rides or whoever, and you see something, it's just absolute perfection. And it's like, how did you do that? Well, you got to do this, this step, these steps, these steps, these steps. And there's a steps to doing things that you don't skip. You can't skip. When you do things, you cannot skip that step to get to the goal and some of these things. And that's something you got to learn, you know? And some of these younger kids, you know, my kids have friends, they come over, like, I want to get in doing this. You know, my oldest son, Corbin, he's 20. He's got some friends that come over and he's like, dude, I'd like to learn how to do these things. And Corbin knows how to weld. You know, he comes over and the kid's like, can you show me how to weld? And the kid's over here trying to weld and stuff. And Corbin's like trying to show them. He's like, no man, you're not listening. You got to do this, then this, then this. You know, they don't want to take the time to listen and do the steps. They want to get to the final goal. Yeah. You know, so, but I won't say that's a newer generation. I just think that's with anybody. You know, you just got to learn to listen.

I'm part of being young too.

It is.

Dude, I'm like learning, like, I'll use an awful example here, but like, for example, I tried to teach myself the guitar when I was in freshman year in college, right? And I learned a lot. And now I'm going back there with like a different mindset and like my entire world's just exploded. Like I learned how to learn.

Yeah.

Right? And that's the thing is like, people just don't know how to learn.

Yeah. That's right. You just got to learn how to learn. No, for real. Listening is free, man.

Yeah. I get frustrated with my kids. I tell them that I've been sending them to somewhere to go get something or go do something, and they take off halfway between, I'm in the middle of explaining to them and they're already on their way. I'm like, all right, now come back over here. So I can finish telling you.

And you're like, what was I saying?

Yeah. Damn it.

Damn, I had a good one. I lost it.

Sorry.

Damn.

I blame Dan.

Oh, no.

It happens.

Oh, I got it. All right. So anyways, OK. So obviously, you've been at this two years. What is the next two years? What is the next five? What is the next ten years look like? Do you stay here? Do you move? Do you grow?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's the other thing, too. So I'm 46 years old. And I tell a lot of people, I'm 10 years too late to doing this for myself. You know, I feel that way. You know, I was like, man, you know, I don't have the hustle I used to. I don't. You know, getting older and tired. And this stuff, believe it or not, this stuff is rough on your body. You're being over for hours doing something. You're doing stupid things you shouldn't be doing. Your back's messed up. Your knee's messed up. You know, so there's always that thing. It's like, man, should I be looking to work for another shop? You know, should I go somewhere else? You know, and, you know, that could be a possibility, you know. And like I said, I work with, you know, Zach up there, Z Rods and stuff. I go up there and do stuff for them, you know. And who knows, you know, might, you know, you might end up there or, you know, might continue to do this, you know. But it's a never ending projects. Need people coming in wanting something done. It's never ending.

Do you have a waiting list right now of some people? Oh yeah, I do.

I do. So, you know, and that's, that's what I tell them. I was like, look, I'm one man, man. I can only do so much, you know.

Well, when do you bring some people into this? Or do you, do your boys join the business?

Yeah, they made your own.

Come on, get them in here. You cannot have your kids working for you. Doesn't work. Doesn't work. Doesn't work. Just like you can't work for your dad.

Yeah.

You know.

My dad and I own a business together. So it's, it has its moments. Yeah.

Yeah. So, you know, and, you know, but I don't, if you can separate yourself, you know, if you're in a confined shop all day long, you know, it's like OCC all over.

Well, it is, it does work that when we go to work, we have our set things. I know he's doing what I know he's doing. I'm doing what I'm doing. So like, we don't have to talk much. So which is what helps a lot.

Yeah. So that's the worst part, you know. And again, people bring me some stuff to do that's kind of out of the ordinary, you know, to build. You know, it's not, like I said, I don't, I don't build show cars. I build, like, I do a lot of different things, you know, you know, we're building a custom exhaust for a Porsche a while back. And then, you know, welding up a set of cylinder heads for Matt Crafton, you know, he had a set, he's, he's in a dirt car. The outer cylinder head bolts are a set of Yates heads, they're collapsing from the heat. So I had to weld all that up and machine that down and, you know, or, you know, building a, I don't know, just stuff all the time. That's the cool thing about it. You never know what somebody's wanting done. And it's always cool with different products, you know, building a twin turbo kit for the Ferrari, you know, building the nose for the GT40.

You don't see people doing twin turbo Ferraris ever either.

So, you know, you never know what you're getting into and finding someone to help you do those things is like, okay, like, I need you to get this Ferrari in here and we're gonna do this. Oh, I don't know how to do that. Where do I start, you know? So, but yeah, there's never a lack of anything to do, but that's just the one I'm worried about is I feel that I waited too long to do this on my own, you know, I was, I had people for years telling me, you should be doing this on your own. You should be doing this on your own. Oh man, I can't do that. I can't do that. I have no business doing that, you know, and I just like figuring, I can't run a business. I can't do that, you know, and that was the worst thing I ever told myself and the worst thing I didn't do is take advice from some of these people and do it sooner. And mentally, I would have been better off and financially too, you know, after I realized how much I was making the other people.

Oh, for sure. I bet.

That was disheartening, you know. You know, I'm getting all the profit now, and stuff, and you know, there's nothing wrong with that. These guys have these businesses, they take a big chance, they have to pay a lot of stuff, you know. But, you know.

You're not, your rate is very good. So you're not, it's not like you're out gouging anybody, you're not doing anything.

No, no, I'm $100 an hour.

Yep.

And you know, and I tell people, I'm not in a parts business, I don't mark up parts, that's not for me, you know. That's, I don't, it keeps me from having to get into, when you do tax stuff, when you sell stuff to make a profit, you gotta pay taxes on it, you know. Why, I don't have time for that. I'm a labor based only business, and you know, and I tell the guys, like I'll order the parts for you, you gotta reimburse me, you know. And I use my credit card, and I charge them the rate and everything else. But you know, and I'm still charging the time for me to do in that. So I'm actually getting paid to do it, and you're not doing it for free, but you know, and it's just me, and I'm not ordering a whole bunch, I'm not spending tens of thousands of dollars a week or so.

Well, now when you have everything hand made.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but it simplifies a lot of things by doing just labor-based only, so, but.

What you're thinking? Do you want to pop the usual three?

Would you have a couple more?

I'm really enjoying this conversation, but this chair is hurting my a**, like you wouldn't believe.

I used to be squirming this entire time.

I have that, what I call, Hank Hill a**. It's all shoulder blades to heels, man. There's no cushion there.

Or cotton.

Yeah, that's why I have a belt, because I have no a** to keep my pants up. Yeah, I think it's time, huh?

Sure.

Yeah, now that we've just.

I woke up a little bit about 45 minutes ago. I don't know if you saw at one point, I did one of these, I was like, oh s***. Yeah, I got a little woozy. I was like, oh, here we go. Yeah, I'll rip, and then we'll do a Minnesota goodbye for 45 minutes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, so this is going to be interesting. So at the end of every episode, we like to ask our guests to pick three cars. I need a daily driver, a show car, and a track car. You can weld whatever you want together. It can be 14 cars in one. You have an unlimited budget. What are you doing?

95 lot and daily driver.

Okay.

It's not a blue one, is it?

No, it's got to be a black one.

Are you leaving it alone with the 351? Are you putting turbos on? Are you doing some analysis?

No, I'll leave it alone. I'll put a manual, swap it.

Okay.

Manual, swap it. And change the wheels. Wheels are gaudy.

Yeah.

Daily drive, track car, show car, buy a 2000 Cobra R and a 93 Cobra R. Take the 2000 Cobra R stuff and put in the 93 Cobra R, and make one car from the two. So it'll be a track car and show car. That's three cars, right?

Yeah.

I mean, technically he would only have a pile of parts left over. So that could be just his track car. If that was your only track car, let's pretend you threw away the rest of the 2000 Cobra R.

So then that would be the track car then?

That'd be the track car. There you go.

So what's going to be the show car then?

Well, the 93 Cobra R with the 2000 Cobra R drivetrain, that'd be the show car.

So then what's the other show car?

No, let's say that.

That'd be the show car.

Sure, sure.

Okay.

Track car would be the 2000 Cobra R body with a, hmm.

Guy doesn't waste anything. I like it.

I would build a big-inch Cleveland motor in it.

Oh s***, okay.

Yeah. Big-inch Cleveland motor with a DTC transmission.

Sure.

You know, live axle because the independent would be in the 93.

Yeah, sure.

So live axle, you know, something like that. Yeah, something not too, I don't know, not too crazy.

Sure.

But nice.

I like all those. I put an 03 Cobra IRS in one of my 93 Cobras that I'm building right now. It's a very, you say it takes four to six years. This one's taking me 10 to 12.

So I worked for Greg Brigham, which owned Mustang Park Specialty many years ago. And we had a wrecked 03 Mach 1 came in. It had 5,000 miles on it. Automatic, quite automatic car. And that's the rare one of them, you know, quite automatic. But anyway, had rear end damage, totaled the car. So we had a little, it was a 91 Coupe. I was like, Greg, won't you let me put the Mach 1 drive train in the coupe? Cause he had the coupe sent off and got it painted silver. And he was going to put it back 302. I was like, Greg, let's put the Mach 1 drive train in.

You just swapped the K-member right over, everything just bolts right in.

I did. And then I was like, he had an 01 IRS up there on the hill. I was like, let's put an IRS in it. He's like, okay, do it. So Mach 1 automatic IRS and everything in it and built his car from parts on the yard. That was so fun. Going up there, picking parts off cars and building this car at the yard there. And it turned out pretty good. It was a 50 Mustang done an article on it. They call it the Mach Fox. You have to look it up.

Yeah, dude, I'm going to look it up.

It was a cool car.

It's such a crazy 79 to 04. The fact that all those cars right into their bones are the same f****** car underneath.

Oh yeah, they are.

Because they look so different.

Yeah, there's not many. Now, the 01, they changed the floor pan. Do you know that? When they went to the 3650, they're higher. So the floor pan or the seat is, it's got a higher tunnel in it.

Okay.

It's 01 to 04 taller right there.

Okay.

So.

Sounds like you could fix that with a hammer.

Yeah. I don't know why they do it. I don't know if they've done that for the IRS or the 01. Because it's me at 01, they put that transmission there, but I think they might have done that for the IRS. But yeah, the trans tunnel in 01 to 04 is different, it's taller than the other ones.

I don't know. I'm trying to kill the 2.3 turbo that's in my 88 turbo.

You ain't got to kill that car.

I know, it's hard, man, really.

He's been trying.

I've been beating a hell of a lot of it, but I've got a 2.3 EcoBoost that I want to swap in it, but again, that car underneath is all Fox body.

My dad's got a Crate Raptor motor.

Really?

Yeah, if you want to buy it, Brandon.

Yeah.

Lots of questions. What's your pops doing?

He's retired.

Just fun projects on the side or what?

He's disabled, so he just piddles parts, buys and sells stuff. He don't really build anything, but he's got a lot of Fox body parts.

Yeah.

Tons of stuff.

Yeah. Damn, we got a Volvo over there. We could fill that f***** to the top.

Yeah. I've already got a lot of Fox body parts.

Yeah.

You guys are using some of that.

I think between his dad and I, we probably could build a f****** s*** ton of cars.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, we go down there, and my kids, we're rummaging through the storage buildings and finding stuff when we're building their cars. It's fun. It's like a memory bank. You go in there, it's like, oh, yeah, I remember that part.

Yeah.

Well, sweet, dude. Where can people find you?

Mainly on Instagram.

Sure.

Yeah. It's G-Force Fab. Okay. Or my name, Mark McDonald.

Sure.

Yeah.

It's just so funny. I was like, what was it? Thursday night? No. Wednesday night. They keep commenting on my Facebook post. I think it was about the 01X or whatever. Yeah. It was yesterday. And I was like, well, damn, I have one more slot open. Let's do a podcast. That's funny how that kind of worked out, last minute. So I appreciate you making it happen.

I hope I didn't bore you guys too much.

No, you're good, man. That's the result of our own lack of proper sleep.

Yeah. To be honest with you, we would be a little more lively normally, but it's been a long day.

Well, this would be a 15-hour podcast.

Well, let's do it again.

Absolutely.

I am convinced I'll be coming back. We're about to go to Detroit for our fourth time this year. I think North Carolina is going to be another one of those regulars.

Yeah.

I'll line some guys up for you guys and what you said.

You folks are awesome down here, man. The hospitality down here is just-

Where are you guys from?

Minnesota.

Minnesota. You know Dan Schoonit?

Yeah. I was going to bring him up. So, my 2015 GT that I had before the GT 500, I popped a motor in it. This was my learning curve of trying to figure all this stuff out, and I didn't have enough fueling. Anyway, torched the cylinder. And so, I was about to order a short block from- Holy crap. Michigan, the Dan, the big name over there.

Dan Millen?

No. Oh.

I don't know.

Jesus Christ. Anyway, I was going to order a brand new short block from them. And then I just real quick reached out- Livenoy, yeah.

That's Dan. Yeah, that's Dan Millen.

Yeah, he's a Dan, yeah. Oh, is that his last name? I don't know.

I think it's Dan Millen, yeah.

So anyway, and then I was like, you know, I'm just going to reach out into some of the pages and see if anybody's got something later on. And Dan Shonick was like, hey, I have this fully built MPR motor that I was going to do this with. And he's listed off, everything is in it is what I need. I was going to basically go back to stock, this one's all built. So he was super helpful. I went down there, picked it up from him, got it in the car, and then I needed headwork done. And he's like, let me make some phone calls. He's calling people like, normally get headwork done takes forever.

That dude's got a network.

Oh yes, he does. Yes, he does. He is Disco Dan.

That's it. Why haven't y'all had him on your show?

Dan's scared to message him.

No, I talked to him. The problem is he's a busy guy too. So like trying to get it all to align is hard.

He's doing that new engine. You've seen the Calyphe motor.

Yeah.

He's doing that.

That's insane.

That is insane.

Every time I also think about hitting him up, he's taking like a 40 hour car ride to go pick up some 4GT parts.

Well, you see, you got the S7.

Yeah.

And he took it on a road trip and there's rain and mud and everything.

And he drives that f****** thing.

Oh, he don't give a s***. You know, everybody giving him hard times. Look at this rich dude faulting. It's like, you don't understand. Dan's not rich. He's irresponsible, right?

I go into it. The first time I walk into his shop, there's like four or five 4GTs just laying there all in different parts and take it apart. We go back in there to get some other parts in the back and there's one that's got two inches of dust on it.

Yeah, he doesn't give a s***.

Nope.

Yeah, but no, I mean, y'all got to hit him up, you know?

No, I've been talking to him. We're going to make it happen.

Funny guy, man. You got to, yeah, he's wild.

He's a wild dude.

Well, that was the other thing is I was working with a tuner and I was having trouble getting a hold of him. And then Dan's like, let him know that I'm here and that you're on my dyno and blah, blah, blah. So as soon as I dropped Dan's name, all of a sudden this guy was very f****** responsive.

Dan will call your ASL.

Yeah, exactly.

That's good stuff.

Well, hell yeah, man. Thanks for having us.

Oh yeah.

How do my outros go? Yeah. What do I usually say here?

I'll see you all next time.

No, we're not there yet. No, no, no.

We already did that. Where do people find you?

We already did all that.

Oh, we did? You didn't ask me. It's okay.

Nobody wants to find you.

Yeah.

Well, Mark, thank you very much for having us.

No, I'm excited you guys come by and listen to me. We ran on about stupid s***.

Dan, thanks for existing and we'll see you all next time. See, I figured it out.

Yeah, you got there.

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