159. Link ECU and Motec Tuning, Ecoboost Swaps, Drifting, Helicopters W/ Jem Sport

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

I think the final number ended up being we took 300 pounds off the front.

People freak out over 20, 30 pounds, 300 is a huge number.

And that really livened the car up. One of the first things I tuned was a helicopter with a Subaru engine in it, with a Haltech ECU.

Hold on, wait, you would never get me in a helicopter with a Subaru engine in it, I'm sorry.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minnoxide Podcast. I'm your host, Harris aka Minnoxide, man of many automotive aspirations. And I'm here with my Ford loving co-host back in Ford territory because I can't get away from it.

Yeah, half Ford territory.

Half Ford territory? Yeah. Well, today we are here with Jake Minard of Jem Sport. Nailed all that intro.

Yeah, you did, good job. Great pronunciation, yeah.

I totally didn't practice it in the car the whole way here, just Minard, Minard, Minard, Minard, yeah. But anyways, go ahead and give us a little bit of an introduction about what it is you guys do and we'll just go from there.

So, yeah, these days we specialize in the EcoBoost swap. We make a line of products to make it easier for everybody to do so. It's kind of a new thing, not a very popular engine until we kind of started, you know, supporting it. And then on top of that, we do a lot of tuning and other motorsport related things, pretty much anything you might need from a wiring or fabrication perspective, we can accomplish that here. Obviously, Dino behind us, they do a lot of tuning and they do a lot of e-tuning, primarily Link Ecu. That's probably the number one thing. But we also support Motec and Haltech and ECU Master. I've named it ECU. I've probably plugged into it at some point.

So what is it you guys typically focus on here? Because I know you have some drift cars here. Do you have a particular niche you stick to?

Lately, it's definitely been EcoBoost Swap related. That's the niche that we stick to. But we were also pretty popular in the drifting community. We've spent a couple of years, myself and Josh, SD, who you met, as a driver, tuning and supporting drift cars. JZ swaps, SR swaps, you name it. I mean, we've tuned anything and supported LS swaps or whatever.

How do we get to this point though? Where was the first time you were like, hey, you know what we should try? Or did a customer come in? Or how do we get to where we are now?

That's a good question. The start was, it was kind of just like an idea, right? So we were supporting a lot of these SR swap drift cars, JZ swap drift cars, that engines that are getting relatively expensive. So like, you know, some people might say that a good quality used SR is going to cost you six, seven, eight thousand dollars, and rebuilding one is just as expensive, it seems. And so we realized, okay, there's a need for alternative engine swaps at some point. Yes, SR swaps are cool. JZ swaps, you know, some of our favorites, absolutely love them, but they're not cheap to maintain. And if something goes wrong, you're out a large amount of money. And so we were looking for a new, like a modern engine that was relatively mass produced, that you could get parts in pretty much any town in the country for it. You know, you wouldn't have special order or anything and support it. So we looked at newer BMW stuff, newer Toyota stuff and the GM Ecotec. It probably came down to those, Ecotec and Ecoboost.

When was this conversation roughly happening?

Probably like the end of 21.

Oh, OK.

Roughly. So somewhat recent. But yeah, end of 21 probably. Yeah, we were rocking. I mean, the dyno was super, super busy. We had three times, you know, two times the staff at least that we have now. We were really, really moving cars in and out of here and supporting people. But yeah, I decided like, OK, let's get into, you know, making parts. We have the skills to do that.

So what was it about the EcoBoost that was appealing for Swaps then?

I think so, like I say, I came down to the EcoBoost or the GM option, we the EcoBoost engine was a little bit cheaper from Salvage Arts. And we were talking about carpart.com earlier. We were looking at that. And it seemed that the EcoBoost options were a little bit more readily available, a little bit cheaper. I think we did some looking into like some common parts that you would get from a dealership. So we priced out some, you know, gasket sets, maybe a replacement throttle body, whatever it might be. And the EcoBoost was a little cheaper. And so we kind of went with that route. I think there might have been a couple of other things I'm forgetting, but we ended up, we did the first EcoBoost swap in an E36 and it went way too well.

What do you mean way too well?

Everything was like, everything lined up, we did it like didn't run into hardly any issues with it. And everything, for the most part, worked right off the get. So, you know, we just knew we were, we wanted to continue down that path just because, you know, it worked so well. And it's continued to work really well. The car behind me on the dyno has a, you know, sub $800 escape two liter engine in it that's done, I mean, probably over a thousand laps drifting at this point. I mean, it's been going for years, one of the first ones we did.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

So it has a little bit of reliability to it as well then.

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Can you say this one immediately right behind you? Is that the one you're talking about?

No, so yeah, the one behind me belongs to Vance Kearns. He's a drifter, he's on the same drift team, Bobby's crew as Josh Esty. And he's from Pennsylvania. We decided to support him and he's got an EcoBoost in it now as well. But the car behind that on the dyno was originally, it's actually the chassis has been passed around between a couple of employees of mine. But I ended up with Shawn Allgood, who's a media guy from the drift group. Okay. If you know, he built the car and campaigned it originally. Yeah.

So is there, if you talk to some of the Focus RS guys or Focus ST guys, there's the 2320 thing. I've heard that is the two liter better than the 23, one easier to get. What are the pros and cons of each?

There's a lot of generations these days, but a lot of people will say, you know, like the first gen two liter in the Escapes and any like Focus ST here, that's what we call a gen one two liter. It's supposed to be the strongest block from like a casting standpoint. So, and it's also the cheapest. So like that's where a lot of people gravitate towards is the first engine they go with. And it's a pretty good option because it then you already have a lot of the bit. Like if you want to build an engine for power, you already have a lot of the bits you need to do so. So you can take that engine, rebuild it. The two three, on the other hand, is a better option from the start, right? So like it'll make more power as soon as you put it in. If you don't change anything, it'll make at least a bit more power. You know, we're talking 250 roughly in the, maybe 280 in the two liter, 300 to 350 pretty much bone stock in the two three.

Okay.

So, but they're more expensive. That's where I was going with that. The two threes can be, you know, sometimes three or four times the cost of a two liter. They made a lot less of them. They're really only in the Focus RS or the Mustang. In that, we will drive for any configuration that you want to use. But shortly after, you started seeing them in Explorers and Lincoln MKCs. And that's the same two three. So you can get those for, you know, sometimes 1500 bucks, 1200 bucks. And it's the same two three with twin scroll head. Maybe the intake manifold faces down instead of forward. So intercooler piping might be a little trickier to deal with. But then again, you can buy a Mustang, an S550 intake manifold and throttle body from Ford for like 200 hours. Yeah, it's brand new. Yeah. So you can leg all these things together and pretty much get away with whatever. You can do it pretty cheap.

Have you messed around with the 2.7 and 3.0 at all too?

A little bit, yeah. So we do have, we support the 3.5, mainly the F150 stuff. So Jem 1 and Jem 2 there, we have a patch harness for that and an ECU. So just like the four-cylinder stuff that we support, you can take 2017 F150 3.5 from a junkyard, retain the engine harness and even the 10R80 that it came with, buy our patch harness and we'll program the ECU and it'll work. We don't support it as much, we plan to. I mean, we just haven't done as much with those. But with the new offerings from Link Ecu, we'll probably do a full stand-alone setup with those as well.

Okay. We'll go into that a little bit. I mean, you mentioned early on that you kind of dabble with a little bit of everything, but is there a reason that Link seems to be your go-to?

It's mainly just bang for buck. Sure. So, I've been tuning for like 11 or 12 years now, and actually Link Ecu was probably the rarest ECU that I had touched at first. I did a lot of Halltech and ECU master stuff, a lot of Holley, early days. And I think I did like my first one or two Link Ecu's I did, I was like, wow, this just, it clicked a lot easier. It made sense to me as a professional calibrator, it helped me out a lot. Whereas like you would say, I think a lot of tuners would say this, where the Holley software, the Halltech software is maybe a little bit more end user focused, while the Link Ecu software is still pretty good. And as an end user, you can work your way through it. It's definitely catered more towards professionals. And so we went that route and they, they just been super helpful. That and the big one is tech support. I mean, ECU master, Halltech, Holley, all their like, their tech support at the time, it might be better now, but at the time was not very good. And we, you know, we, I think we did our first like full wiring install of a Link Ecu. I had a couple of questions. I mean, it was like, you know, they were picking up the phone at midnight here because they're answering the phone in New Zealand. They basically have 24-hour tech support, more or less, and they're very, very good. They've always had been, they prioritize that. That's probably their number one feature.

Okay.

Yeah, I know those late night New Zealand phone calls, I know how they go.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just to add to that real quick, they're really the only company prioritizing direct injection, which is a key component of any new engine that has direct injection in some capacity. And I've had conversations with, you know, Haltech, Holley, you name it. And they've got no interest or no plans to support it in any way, it seems. So sticking with Link Ecu, and then Motec supports it as well. Yeah, we're a Motec dealer and, you know, their systems seem to work, but the Link Ecu is, you know, plenty effective at a much lower price point, it seems.

So that's kind of crazy in this day and age when direct injection is everything.

It's surprising. Yeah. I, every year at PRI, I try to get somebody from Haltech, somebody from Holley, you know, try to get them like, hey, you know, we're interested in this, we're looking for alternatives, and every year it's just nothing. I mean, ECU Master does have some support now. They're kind of getting that going, so we'll see how that goes. But for the most part, it's just Link, and Motec is supporting it.

Okay, so what about in-house? You mentioned you have a number of employees here then, so what does that all kind of break into? Like he has a little tour beforehand, you're showing us your wiring, your fab stuff. Let's say Dream Project, what's something you want to see come through here for a swap? And for what application as well? I should specify.

Okay, I definitely like working with the drift cars. Josh's S13, which is in here, is a built two liter big turbo. You know, it's good for, it's probably good for upwards of 700. We probably won't run it there, but I'm pretty excited to finally dial that thing in that maybe in the next month or two, we'll be able to make good power with that.

Is that a two liter version?

It is a built two liter, yes, but he has swapped a twin scroll head onto it, which flows quite a bit better. So like, or he's, I think he's planning to, if I'm not mistaken. Oh no, he put, that's right, he swapped the pump, he swapped just the cams, he's got two, three cams on it, but it is still a single scroll head, regardless big turbo, big turbo and whatnot. And on top of that, personal project of mine is the BRZ upfront, which we didn't really talk about that much, but I want to build that car for more of a grip car. Okay. So that's kind of the background. I spent many years in rally, actually. I'd love to get back to that at some point and do something EcoBoost related in the rally community. That would be great to get back to that. But then also I spent some time doing road course stuff and time and tech stuff that I hope that that BRZ will be that. It will be a little bit more of a road course car. I'm pretty excited.

I actually had a question about that earlier. So a lot of people will do the K-Swap into the BRZs, right? To be able to fit within classes and stuff. Would you be able to do that with the 2L EcoBoost and be class compliant?

Potentially. So there are some classes out there for that. I looked into, there are, depending on how you built it, you might, you kind of be in between a couple of classes. So I'm not, I'm not sure if there would be like a perfect class that it would fit into, but I also haven't looked into it that deep. I just kind of want to do it because I really like that chassis.

Right.

It's incredibly balanced. And I think it'd be great with, you know, proper four-cylinder turbo in there and yeah.

That's a pretty common thing we get with the BRZ and the FRS. It's, they say that that is as far as, almost like it was a purpose-built race car right out the gate. We've had Jeff Schwartz on who has one of the biggest chassis shops in the US and he's got a collection of cars that is very impressive and he can build anything he wants. He loves the hell out of his FRS.

His is also making like 500 or 600 wheel. I can't remember what's in there, but yeah. No, this is a guy that has a Lamborghini STO, has a chassis shop and he's like, I love it. The moment the FRS came out, like back in, what was it? 2012, 2013, whatever it was.

2013 I think.

He sat and he's like, this is it, right?

Yeah. They're such a good car and they're getting cheaper. I mean, I think it'll be a pretty popular swap.

Well, so I have a friend, Piero, who I know is listening, like he's been, he's at every color at this point because he just gets wrecked ones, fixes them up, flips them or whatever. And recently, I think he had one for five or six grand or whatever.

Oh, okay.

And I'm just like, that's when I started thinking like, oh man, have you messed around with any of the new BRZ stuff yet or not quite?

Not really, no.

They haven't blown up enough yet probably.

Yeah, that's probably the case. No, I'd love to get behind the wheel one.

Okay.

That sounds great. I hear good things about the new 2.4, right?

Yeah.

Make it a little more power.

Well, I'm excited to see what you do with that. So then overall goals, did you mention like what you're aiming for power wise with that or?

So a couple of things, I think the original goal is to just to get a 2.3 in it.

Sure.

Relatively stock power. We'll probably put all the Nostrum, high pressure fuel pump and direct injectors in it. Link Ecu will do full flex fuel around E85 and we should be able to, these engines will make pretty much whatever torque you want them to make, right? So it'll make 400 foot pounds and probably 360, 380 on the stock turbo. Something like that on the E85 for power. So I don't think I need anything more than that to enjoy it at first and get some of the R&D done, which like that's an interesting bit about that as well, is the Link Ecu makes a plug and play for the ZN6 and it supports direct injection. So we're just making an adapter harness for what would be the factory ZN6 engine harness that includes their DI driver. And then, so basically everything from the firewall back is factory BRZ. So all the, all your gauges will work perfectly fine, your cruise control, everything. You won't even be able to tell that it's been swapped. It'll be kind of what you were talking about with making gauges work earlier when we were talking. I mean, it would be seamless.

And that's something that you have now or you will be?

Yep, yeah, V1 is in the car. We've tested basic stuff. It doesn't drive yet, but we know that functionality will operate.

And will that be the same for an FRS then? I don't know how much they are alike. They are basically the same car, right?

Yeah, I mean, mechanically as the EN6 is the EN6, it seems. BRZ, FRS, 86, it's all, you know, they're all the same car.

Okay.

So you do, you mostly work with Nostrum stuff then?

Yep, primarily. They've been pretty good to us and they're just right over in Ann Arbor. We've definitely had to run parts, truck back and forth in a tight time frame. They've been super supportive and they make a really good product with, you know, as a calibrator, injector data is pretty important. They've been probably the best at supplying that.

Well, actually, as a calibrator, we always like to bring this up, especially when we talk to any tuners. What are you looking for when you're working with injectors? What does Nostrum provide for you to make your life easy?

Just really accurate flow rate data sheets. So, for a given pressure in this, an X opening time, you're gonna get a certain volume of fuel, right? So, that's pretty key to know, right? And then on top of that, injector dead times. So, if voltage changes, how much time does it actually take for the injector to send and receive that signal and actually open that, complete the job of opening the injector, that split second, half a millisecond, dead time is key. If you don't know how long it takes for that to actually happen, then that affects the tune. All those little bits that you get from quality companies like Nostrum or Injector Dynamics is obviously a big name, maybe a little more pricey, but the data you get makes my job so much easier. You'll save that money. It's worth just paying for that.

Well, who was it we were talking about? It's like, you're just basically just throwing s*** at the wall to see what sticks.

Banish. Banish also very much so that information is needed. Otherwise, you're just kind of guessing at that point to see what happens.

Yes. I've definitely tuned a couple of cars where I had to completely guess. And I probably, hopefully at this point in my career, I'm at the point where I won't have to do that anymore. I can pretty confidently say, buy a new set of ejectors, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

Well, it's time consuming, right?

It's very time consuming and it'll never be perfect. That's kind of the big thing. And if you're calibrating a modern ECU properly, you're doing it based on airflow. The VE table is actually VE. It's not just a pulse width table. You know what I mean? So, you can tune any set of injectors if you just tell it to do X amount of pulse width. But the airflow will be wrong if you don't have injector data right. And that affects any myriad of other features that you want to set up. So, yeah, it's the most important aspect, yeah.

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So for the most part, mostly stock stuff lately. The two BMWs behind me are completely stock engines.

Oh really?

Yep, completely stock engines. Both of them have stock turbos on them, stock escape turbos with a bunch of miles.

No way, that's awesome.

Yep. Oh yeah. Pretty much as you see it, and if you look at any of our videos of these things drifting around, it is an escape. You know what I mean? That's what's doing it. With maybe our programming on it, but that's about it.

Different intercooler, probably. I know that's one of the big things that you would upgrade normally.

Yes. So yeah, outside of engine bits, that's a key one. You know, the escape and even the Mustang EcoBoost stuff, they're generally equipped with an intercooler that's subpar. It's pretty small.

When you actually take it out of the car and look at it, you're like, that's kind of sad.

Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty small. I mean, you get why Ford does it, packaging reasons and stuff like that and whatever, but upgrading that goes a long way. Yeah.

When do you start upgrading engine bits? Like what power figures, I guess?

So it seems the base rule of thumb, we actually haven't broke anything yet despite pushing. I mean, these escape engines we've had, we basically just maxed out the waste gate, right? Just like it's just doing everything it could possibly do. Turbos are so small, it doesn't make enough power to hurt itself anyway, right? So the accepted rule of thumb for like a 2-liter is pretty much no more than that, like high 300s, maybe 400, something like that. And then you start getting into the area where you need to upgrade pistons and head studs.

Okay. I was going to say, what starts to give out first?

Yeah. The 2.3 is a little bit more than that. The 2.3, I think I was telling you earlier, Dan, that Denofa had, Chelsea Denofa's drift car had a stock 150,000 mile 2.3 that made 500 horsepower and 500 foot-pounds of torque at some point. And it was fine. I think since then, we turned it down to maybe like 450, something along those lines, and it lived plenty fine for that. And that's pretty much the accepted standard is, if you're going for over 480, 500 on a stock 2.3, it's time to build it.

This bug is massive.

Yeah.

Star of the show, dude. Star of the show.

All right, cool.

So we were kind of talking about this off camera just while you had to step away for a second, but do you do any like remote tuning?

I do, yeah. That's been super popular lately. Threw up just a little service on our website. It's right around 500 bucks to get the process started. And for the most part, if your project starts and runs and has a few required sensors and you have good ejector data like we were talking, that covers a Link Ecu remote soon for the most part.

Is there anything you won't touch with a 10-foot pole? Like certain injectors, for example?

Yeah, so there's definitely some injector brands that it doesn't really make any sense to even try to use. Their data is just never consistent. Or even from injector to injector, the flow rates are so different that you can't really do a good job with any of that. I think at this point, we were pretty much done with tuning a lot of OEM ECUs. So pretty much anything like HP tuners with Dodge ECUs, like a new Challenger charger or something like that, we're not going to tune that, not any longer. And then just a lot of OEM ECU stuff. We do a lot of internal testing, obviously. We support the OEM ECU or the Ecoboost stuff. But as far as tuning, those are like offering our remote tuning services for those engines. There's definitely tuners out there that are better equipped. And it's what they do all day, every day. They, you know, we were talking about Ryan Martin earlier at EMS, day in, day out, he E-tunes, Ecoboosts. Okay. So, paying him whatever he charges to knock it out is a lot more efficient than paying me to go back and forth between a certain software. It seems like most calibrators kind of find their home, right? They dial in on something eventually, and it's just, they perfect it. They keep going on that. And that's Link Ecu for us, I think.

Okay. Do you have a... Like, what's the easiest car to swap with the EgoBoost?

Probably the E36. Okay. Because with our engine mounts and our adapter plate to the factory ZF trans, everything else stays factory. So you can take a 2-liter, take our engine mounts and our adapter plate, bolt it up to the trans that's already in the car, and everything else stays stock. They're back. You don't need a custom drive shaft. The trans mount stays stock, even shifter's stock. Everything stays the same, and then you just replaced your engine with, you know, a four cylinder turbo.

So fuel lines, wiring, dash components, all of those type things, you have a solution, then all of that goes.

Yeah.

Other than just bolting the engine in, there's a few other bits and pieces there that are...

Yes. So especially like in the E36, in case the E36, a lot of like, what am I saying? The chassis side of the equation, your headlights, your interior lights, the dash, whatever it might be is relatively separate from the engine stuff. So it's pretty easy to just put an EcoBoost in it. One of our harnesses took the EcoBoost ECU away somewhere and the rest of the car will still operate. Obviously, you'll want to, you know, figure out a fuel solution. You'll probably want to get some sort of aftermarket fuel pressure regulator, run the factory lines to that, run, you know, a line from the regulator to the EcoBoost, it's a high pressure fuel pump.

You guys have, if somebody called you and was like, hey, this is what I want to do, would you have a parts list or like a package that?

Yeah, we, so we started putting some packages together, but it doesn't seem like, you know, a lot of people are doing things just a little differently. And so, it's hard to get, it's almost impossible to get every single little thing that you might need, right? Because everyone's going to do something just a little differently or whatever it might be. But yeah, at some point, I think it might make sense to do, okay, this is how we do in A36. This is a master parts sheet of every single thing that we use. Like we were talking about the Fox body that we did earlier. That's a project that we did from beginning to end. And so, we have, we know exactly everything that we had to do to that. And so, it might make sense to maybe make that a kit and maybe lay that out for people. And they might be interested in just spending one big lump sum and getting every little piece. I guess it's just an avenue I haven't seen a huge market for yet. But maybe there's more interest in just a one. I want to buy one item that's a full kit. Maybe there's more of a market for that.

Right. Well, that's the thing when it comes to like popularity, right? Like first, you gotta do the hard part, which is actually putting the 100 in there.

Yeah.

Then you gotta figure out everything else. Like that market, I'd imagine, is probably going to grow more and more. I mean, has the adoption of the EcoBoosts in general just grown?

Seems like it. Yeah, we obviously, we got quite a bit of flack at first. You know, why would I want a throwaway Ford engine in my drift car? That sounds horrible, right? And obviously, all the Internet horror stories of them blowing up. But we haven't had a single issue. And, you know, we campaigned that first E36 and then Josh's S13 with EcoBoosts at drift event, after drift event, after drift event. And I think the people just saw that we weren't having any problems and they were doing the thing. And, you know, yeah, I think it's growing pretty rapidly.

What comes, so again, hardcore Ford guy, what comes in an E36 and why would I want to make that swap then? Is that, I mean, is that what's in it, not making up power, buying parts for it, just a pain in the a**? Like we're...

So there's definitely a lot of, okay, so it is a pretty good engine. The six cylinders, the...

What is it, the M50 in there, right?

So yeah, M50, M52, six cylinders from, you know, 2.8, the three liter NA, they make, you know, decent power. And they have a really good following. There's a lot of people that just really like those engines and they do a good job. I mean, you can slap a turbo on it and make decent power. Parts are available. They're well supported. They're incredibly heavy. I don't know the exact weights, but I know we at least, I think the final number ended up being we took 300 pounds off the front. Holy s***. Yeah.

People figure out over 20, 30 pounds. 300 is a huge number.

Yeah, yeah. I think all of a sudden, it was something a lot. It was like, maybe it was 280. Okay.

Quick call Gus.

Yeah, it was a substantial. It was way more than we thought it was going to be. You know, all of a sudden done. And that really livened the car up. Like the chassis are just. We, so we did that. We took it to a Drift Indy event and we basically took all the like some of the best, like well-known drivers and put them in the driver's seat.

Oh, cool.

We probably had at least six or seven different people drive it. I think we did a video of it. It's on our YouTube channel. And they were all blown away by it. You know, they were all skeptics. I mean, why wouldn't you be right? But they loved it. Everyone was calling it a cheater car. You know, it was cheap to build and it's so effortless to drive that like if everyone could learn in that car, everybody would learn how to drift.

Which specific car was this by the way?

It was this car, the one on the Dyno. Oh, okay. Yeah, the E36 on the Dyno. Yep. Yeah, it was that car for sure. And it's like first version. That we just kind of threw together.

That very much intrigues me because I like the looks of those cars. But again, being a Ford guy, I didn't know much about them or whatever, but I did look into those at one point in time. But if I found one now with a high mileage or engine issues that you're telling me that wouldn't be a very hard... Even if I just wanted to drive around in one of those and have a nice reliable engine in there.

Yeah, we've got plenty of customers. They just do that to their daily. Yeah. And I mean, it gets twice or three times the gas mileage, the ancient 90s engine used to, and it makes quite a bit more power. I mean, it makes at least twice the torque.

Okay.

Probably 50% more horsepower or something like that.

What do you just get for miles per gallon anyway?

So...

If you're not a lunatic, that is.

So, I have a 2019 Lincoln MKZ with a 2-liter in it. And that's like, you know, it's fully loaded. It's super heavy car. It's probably 5,500 pounds. It's like really heavy car, right? And I can see like 36, 35 on the highway. If I'm chill with it, you know what I mean? If I'm doing 68 miles an hour or whatever, that's like the best case. Well, on average, it gets 30, you know, 30 miles an hour. They do pretty good. I had a 2018 EcoBoost Mustang that I loved. One of the, to answer your earlier questions, one of the main reasons why we got into it is I bought an EcoBoost Mustang and loved the engine package in it. But anyway, I was able to see almost 40 in that, even doing 80 miles an hour. You know, Mustangs aren't light, S550 isn't light either.

Did that have a 10-speed in it or not yet?

It was a 6-speed car.

6-speed?

Yeah. Yeah, I think the manuals, their gear ratio makes it a little bit better for fuel mileage, I think.

Sure. Yeah. All right, so that's your easiest swap. What are you getting calls for most often? Is it Fox Body or is it BMW or?

So, surprisingly, lately, a lot less BMW attention. Fox Body is probably the most popular as far as like inquiries go. Okay. People seem to be drawn to that. I think it's a really cool swap, like you and the Thunderbird or whatever, right? It just seems like a good idea.

Don't encourage him.

Well, I had had this idea. I had wanted to do it way back. Like I've been a Turbo Coupe fan for a long time. And when the new 2.3 came out, I was like, man, that seems cool. But nobody until recently, nobody gave a s*** about it at all. It was like not even on the radar.

Yeah.

I, when I really noticed is that dude in blue did a video with a gentleman's car. Was that one that you were involved in or? Yep.

He's a customer of ours. I'm going to blank out his name. Stroup. Stroup Performance. Built a Fox body. He was one of the first. I think he was kind of like alongside when we were doing that one for the customer and developing our mounts and stuff. He, I think he ended up using a set of our mount plates. But yeah, that car is great. That's LWM ECU. And just tuned with HP tuners. It's nothing super crazy. And they, there's another good point for the Fox body is they, you know, it takes a lot of weight off the front end. Pretty much any engine option in the Fox body weighs a lot more than any four cylinder EcoBoost does. So it really livens it up.

Well, yeah, when you see them sitting on an engine stand, there's really not much to them.

No, they're super simple to work on. I mean, Ford did such a good job making those things just so easy to replace whatever you want, you know.

So, okay, so you got the BMW option, we have Fox bodies. What else do you have kind of, I guess, a simple swap for people to know about?

So G35 350Z is something that's come into light. There's one right behind Dan there.

I try not to look at it.

Yeah.

They cut me off in traffic too much.

Yeah, well, that will be a similar story to the E36 in that you can leave the transmission, the factory CD manual transmission alone and the driveshaft and the shifter and everything, use our adapter plate, our mounts and the things in there. So, yeah.

Well, let's talk about transmissions for a second then. What's the secret sauce out of the ones that you play around with, which is your favorite?

The CD is great for, you know, it's going to hold plenty of power and Nissan still makes them. You can still buy a brand new CD from Nissan for sub three grand. Some of them even a lot cheaper than that, depending on the version of CD that you get. So that's a really good option for someone with a decent budget. And even a used CD isn't all that much money, but they are coming up there. The BMW ZF five and six speed is a pretty good option. They can be had for pretty low money in junkyards. They're... You know, I guess I'd probably look into what sort of gear ratios you want, what's the use case for the car. And between CD and the ZF options, you can get there pretty much no matter what it is that you're doing. I think both those transmissions are pretty good.

Well, it just sounds like these are all... I mean, I don't know if the Fox body falls into that category, but these are all like drifter cars, right? So what's the advantage? Because those come with the VQ.

Yep.

Why... Is there an advantage going EcoBoost in those?

Again, weight off the front is a pretty big one. And power, you know, you can get... I just tuned a VQ that was, you know, fully built cams, a whole like full NA build, probably about as much as you're going to make, you know, NA. And even with nitrous, we're... I forget what the peak power was, but we would have to really struggle and spend a lot of time to make over, you know, 310 horsepower roughly, right? 2.3 does that stock without any tuning. So you can take, you know, Mustang 2.3, don't even tune it, and it'll do 310 horsepower and a lot more torque, a lot more torque.

Okay.

These things make torque as soon as you want, as soon as you want to do it. That's the main killer of the engines is people don't really know how to tune boost control. And so they let it eat and it makes 800 foot-pounds of torque get too grand and it shoves the rods out the side.

Sure.

You know, that's the end of it. Yeah, I'd say that's, you know, power is a big one, right? You're looking at putting a turbo on your VQ. That's quite the process. You're adding a lot more weight and complexity into a relatively tight engine bay. The VQs can be a little complicated to work on at times. That's kind of what I hear people say. So, just maintenance stuff becomes quite a bit easier. Turbo noises is another one we get a lot. I just want turbo noises, so.

Isn't it crazy how often that is a factor in things?

I mean, I enjoy it. It makes me smile.

Right.

Yeah.

I mean, it makes you smile. That's what it's all about.

Right.

Yeah.

People forget that a lot of the times.

They do.

Yeah. You can want a thousand horsepower all you want, but how often are you going to use it? How many smiles per gallon really does matter?

Right.

Yeah.

I do miss the sounds my last car made, especially the turbo flutter.

Oh, yeah.

Those were good times.

What was your last car?

I had a Mark 7 GTI. Oh, okay. Basically, it was making like 340 wheel, 390 torque. It was a fun car. It was a lot of fun. And I got the stock Mark 8 and I'm like, I hate this. I hate this so much, but it's got a warranty and I've used it.

So, yeah, warranties are nice, but a little bit more turbo noise would be cool, I guess. Yeah.

No, we'll be back there sooner or later.

Yeah.

Okay. So, you got the VQ replacements. Is there any other things that are kind of emerging around the horizon?

Yeah. So, we have an RX8 chassis.

Oh, okay. Is that the one that's outside?

Yes.

Now, I'm intrigued again. We're going to be best friends, man, I'm telling you.

Yeah. On paper, it seems like such a good idea because the RX8 chassis is fantastic and the engine is not, right? So, there's not really many people that are die hard about the engine. That's it. It's kind of like the BRZ stuff. Like, the guys that have BRZs aren't like huge FA20 fans, right? Because they're expensive. Sure. I mean, same thing with rotaries. They don't make a bunch of parts. Like, yes, it's fun. It's driven stock RX8s and it is fun. It's enjoyable.

All the way until it's not.

But yeah, for 20,000 miles until the engine gives up and then it needs a new engine. So what do you do, right?

Boy, I hope Antonio is not listening to this episode.

I know, yeah.

No, rotaries are amazing and I think it's great. They have their place. They definitely have their place.

Just not inside the RX8.

Yeah. I think that will be a very interesting swap to do. We got the chassis because, I mean, I don't know if you guys have looked on Marketplace or anything, but RX8s are basically falling from the sky.

I almost bought them for $1,000 the last time we were in Detroit.

You can get them for cheaper than you would get the engine for.

Exactly. Yeah. I mean, they're just giving them away in great shape. They don't really seem to rust all that much. They seem like a pretty well put together chassis that you can get for a low money. And so, we, you know, Shawn actually who was the original owner that E36 bought this RX-8, he took the engine and trans out of it. And it's not going to be as easy as the E36 or G35. You know, it's not going to fit quite right. And we'll have to make a lot more like getting it to fit in there and then develop a line of products around that and then provide quality support for that is going to be a longer process. And so, we didn't quite mothball it, right? But it's not something that's on our, you know, immediate radar. We have gotten a lot of inquiries about it because we have a listing for like a pre-order listing for those mounts at like a much cheaper price than it will actually be when it comes out. Just to kind of gauge some interests, I think we have one pre-order in the last year. So, you know what I mean? We're just kind of trying to feel that one out. But it will be cool. I mean, I can't wait to do it.

Well, I feel like for you, kind of and you probably already did this, but like are you just kind of looking at like everything that there's K-Swap kits for and be like, all right, we can do an EcoBoost for that as well.

Yeah. So, what did we... When we were first doing this, we actually looked closely at the K-Swap in S13. I think it was. Okay.

That's a cool car.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, K-Swap, S13 seems great. Everything seems great on paper. And we wanted to see if it was even worth doing. This is pretty early days. We weren't quite as deep as we are now. And okay, let's do our best to price out everything you would need for a K-Swap, everything you would need for an EcoBoost swap at different power targets, right? And just kind of see how they line up. And in every case, the EcoBoost was cheaper. So, it seemed to make sense. So, that's why we kind of support that. That swap, I forget what your original question was.

Oh, basically, like, is it just a matter of this Google K-Swap and it gives you 20 different cars and it's like, all right, let's just do EcoBoost for all these cars.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I can't say we've done exactly that, but.

ChatGBT, what does a K-Swap fit into?

Yeah, right.

With skimming your website, I saw something on there about 2019 Ranger. What are you doing to the Ranger?

So, the 2019 model year and newer Ranger comes with the 2.3. That's the second generation 2.3, which has its own group of issues to sort. One of those being wiring in the ECU. And so, what you probably saw on there was an ECU programming service to delete the paths and make it run outside of a Ranger, right? That has to be... Like, if you want us to do that to a Ranger ECU, it's a different service. It has to be Ranger specific. And same with the wiring. Those engines are a little different. But as far as supporting your normal road going Ranger, we don't really do anything there. But if you want to take the engine out of one, they're pretty cheap. I mean, it's a cheap 2.3. They're typically sub two grand for a pre-low mile one. They can be a little bit trickier to work with. The second gen 2.3 has a oil pump and balance shaft assembly that is kind of one unit in the bottom. It's right in the middle of the pan. And with the first gen 2.3 and any other first gen EcoBoost in general, you want to delete that balance shaft assembly because it makes the engine quite a bit shorter. It basically, the balance shaft assembly adds about four inches right where you'd want your subframe to be. So you want to get rid of that. But with the Ranger engine, you can't delete it. It's part of the oil pump. You have to have that. Oh, really? Yeah, so there's no deleting that. I mean, we could delete it, but it would be a very expensive R&D process and probably include a dry sump of sorts. You'd have to be really involved. So yes, the Ranger engine is maybe half the cost of a similar mile first gen 2.3, which is great, but it's probably not going to work with any of our mounts or anything like that.

So is that something we're doing on all? So I was telling you about my 2015 Mustang that I have and possibly putting it in my Fox Chassis turbo coupe. Is that something that I'm going to want to delete then? So you have a kit for that?

You have a 15? Yes. 2.3 out of a Mustang. You won't have to worry about. Okay. Oh, the balance shaft. Yes, you'll want to delete the balance shaft. Yes. We have a little balance shaft delete plug. It's simple. Four bolts comes right off the bottom of the girdle. And then we just have a single bolt plug with an O ring that plugs the oiling port for the balance shaft. And then you can do whatever you want. And in your case, you'd probably... You'd want to either consider our billet rear sump pan that basically moves. It makes it as thin as it can be until the rear, and then all your sumps in the back can sit behind your subframe. Or a nice inexpensive alternative is actually the 2.3 Duratec oil pan and pickup. So from like mid-2000s Ranger, a 2005 Ranger with a four-cylinder 2.3, that oil pan and its pickup tube bolts right on to an EcoBoost, and it's mostly a rear bias pan. It actually clearances. That's what's on that Fox body.

Oh, really?

Yeah. It's a Duratec pan. Yeah. Actually, that's what's on both of these E36s behind me. It's just a cheap Duratec pan, rock-auto, 60 bucks, bolted on a lot cheaper than our billet rear sump, admittedly. But yeah.

There's a use for everything.

Yeah.

Speaking of Duratec, when do we start seeing some more EcoBoost swaps into Nobles?

Noble?

Yeah, like the Noble M12, the GTOs, they use a Ford Duratec. You know, it's like one of the greatest cars ever on top gear. Oh, I know.

You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, I know what you're talking about. So have you heard of... Sorry, I go a different direction, but have you heard of Fields Auto Works?

The name sounds familiar.

Fields makes the Cardinal Coupe. OK. You know, they're a company in Ohio. They do like, you know, something similar, like, you know, how like Factory 5 has the, you know, basically a full car you can buy or whatever. The Fields Auto Works makes, you know, full bodywork like Turnkey.

Oh, yeah, I remember seeing you. I think I followed them on Instagram, actually.

Race car. Yeah, they do some pretty cool stuff.

Yeah, yeah, I remember seeing this thing.

Yeah.

No, you don't get to see them.

OK.

Sorry, they're just trying to get me to sign up for their newsletter. One second.

I don't want one.

Yeah, so like these sort of things.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think I followed them on, you said they're out of Ohio, right?

Yep.

Yeah, when I was looking to do some Ohio episodes, I think that's how I discovered them.

OK. Yeah, yeah. Rob Fields would be an awesome guy to have on. He recently, like earlier this year, we kind of worked a deal with him to where a lot of his customers are moving over to our equipment. So they use two, three EcoBoosts, I guess is why I bring that up and tie that in with that. But they were famously using some of the Ford OEM, the Ford Performance options that aren't quite as tunable. They're harder to work with. OEM ECU in general isn't really great for racing use. You can't make it do exactly what you want it to do. And so he needed to upgrade. And I think he's got three of those running our Link Ecu packages, wiring and everything. Providing remote cal support for all those projects.

That's sick. And that's like road course mostly?

Yeah, mostly road course customers. I think maybe they have one or two customers where it's just like a cool Sunday show car thing. I mean, they look pretty cool. But they are proper race cars. I mean, they've got some real drivers using these things.

Well, they're also, they look really light as well, so.

Yeah, they are very light. Yeah, I haven't driven one yet, but I would like to get behind.

Well, we gotta fix that.

Yeah, yeah.

In a certain number of kits, you get a car, right? That should be a deal.

Right.

Getting back to the Link Ecu thing, then you're talking about kit and ECU. What is, so like for my application, right? If I wanted to go Link Ecu, is there levels to it? Kind of like, you've been kind of putting it in that category with Motec, which is we, you know, Motec's like the creme de la creme, what most people say anyway. Where are we at with Link? Are there different levels to this? And when I would need one or the other? And what's the cost of something like that?

So they, so they had, I'll say a couple of years ago, they released the Voodoo line of ECUs and they only had the Pro, which is a relatively expensive ECU. And probably most people doing an Ecubu swap don't quite need that, that level. There's a lot more inputs and outputs and stuff. So I think this might answer your question. You know, that ECU's retail price point just went up to, you know, somewhere in the $3,600 area, just for the ECU. It's worth it, but it's a little overkill for most. It's still cheaper than a Motec, right? They just came out with the NEO 4 and the NEO 6, so the Voodoo NEO instead of the Voodoo Pro. The NEOs are much cheaper. You can easily take $1,000 off that for the NEO 4. And as far as controlling a 4-cylinder DI engine, it's more feature-rich, I guess, is what you'd call it. Yeah.

So which one, you would do the 4 or the 6?

I'd probably do the NEO 4. It'll do 4-cylinder with direct injection and port.

Oh, cool.

So it would do basically 8 injectors on a 4-cylinder, 4 of those being DI, 4 of those being port.

Is that like their entry-level ECU then, sort of, or not quite?

It's their... So not quite. As far as controlling a direct-injection engine, it's their entry-level ECU. Yeah, okay. But they do have quite a few that are, you know, the G, the G4X stuff, the Xtreme Theory. Those are more like around, you know, 1800 to $2,000 range. They won't do direct-injection, but still really powerful solution. And then they even have something down to what they call the Monsoon or the Atom, which are, I mean, sometimes they're, I think their retail price is as cheap as $600 or $700. And it's just a pretty little controller, but it can do quite a bit. Same software, same, you know.

Yeah, just not applicable for this sort of thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. You wouldn't use that.

Okay. So, most of the time, you'd refer... What do you get when you go up to the 6, just more inputs, outputs sort of deal or?

Yep. Just, yeah, more capability. Like in the same fashion, the Neo4 will do 4 port and 4 DI. The Neo6 will do 6 port and 6 DI.

What about like other features like, you know, like rolling anti-lag and all that stuff? Is that also kind of...

Oh, yeah, it's all included in any Link Ecu you buy. It's going to have all those motorsport features available.

Traction control, all that kind of stuff too? Yeah.

Yeah. Some of the lower Ecu may not have the, maybe the inputs and outputs to like, like you wouldn't, if you want to run anti-lag, you wouldn't be able to operate a fresh air valve because you'd be out of inputs and outputs and stuff like that.

Okay.

It all comes down to what the customer wants and then you can kind of guide them on that. Yeah.

For the most part, any Ecu for your normal project that they offer is going to have whatever features you want. They have it, yeah.

Sure. I just wanted to see if you had any more questions.

No, that pretty much answered my question. It seems to be a pretty common thing amongst all of them is the number of throughputs basically, in and out is what you can, the more you want to control the higher it goes. Yeah.

Yeah. They just add more pins or whatever. It's a higher cost.

What about communicating with the CAN bus stuff? Do you need an extra box for that or is all that integrated?

Nope. So every Ecu has at least one CAN system on it. Some of them have three. Okay. Their CAN is pretty good. It's relatively open. You can write your own messages, assign them to whatever parameters you want to assign them to. So in theory, you can talk to anything. I mean, it doesn't really matter what you do. And they support a lot of regular things, like pretty much anything you're going to be using that there's either a drop down menu for it or it's very simple to set up. So, you know, you could use a Link Plug and Play. We do get it all the time. A Link Plug and Play. And I just did a S13 with a JZSwap. Link Plug and Play has got an old AEM dash in it. Works, talks perfectly fine with that. You know, no worries there. Yeah, they're probably one of the best when it comes to CAN integration and just being able to set up your own custom stream and talk to whatever piece of equipment that you need to talk to.

Well, as a guy who's fairly mechanical, but really dumb at that kind of stuff, I love the word plug and play.

Yeah.

It's like my favorite thing.

Yeah, they've got a lot of plug and play. And the software is free, and it comes with a bunch of files. You know, it's pretty simple to do, especially if you find yourself a decent calibrator, you know, myself or, you know, some other Link expert or whoever to work with that's going to be e-tuning it, it's not going to, you know, you'll be able to breeze through it, you know.

Lots of Link people in Detroit, I'm noticing.

Yeah, well, I think it's been him and Andy McPherson have been the only two that we've really had on that really messed with that kind of stuff.

Their distribution center for the US is in Troy.

Oh, that makes so much sense now.

That's kind of a big part of it. I mean, they're all over the country here, but yeah, their main DC is in Troy, so it's a little convenient for us because anything we need from them is like, you know, we get it next day no matter what.

Right, right.

Yeah.

You can get it the same day, you just drive on over pretty much.

That's helpful. Right, yeah, yeah.

That's about an hour drive from here, maybe less?

Yeah, somewhere in that area, about an hour, yeah.

I wanted to talk a little bit about R&D because we met, what was his name, Dustin, I think? Yes. He asked me if I'm doing some R&D or some CAD stuff back there. Are you guys pretty much doing all that in-house then?

Yep. So, yeah, Dustin Lee is our main engineer, and I dabbled a little bit with CAD, but I haven't really focused in other areas lately. And yeah, he pretty much, we have a cheap 3D scanner that we use, and between that and Autodesk, we just pretty much everything is designed here. We do have a good, so like we don't have any CNC machines here or anything like that. We've got a really good relationship with a CNC shop not far away, a pretty local guy, and he is quite the wizard with CAD and those items. And he's been a pretty big help. Just having someone to bounce ideas off of, developing a relationship with a good CNC shop that has engineers on staff that can say, hey, maybe don't do this or...

Have you had one of those situations?

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, I think everybody would if you looked into it enough, right? Unless you're staffing, you know, a lot of like a team of engineers or something like that. But for a small company like us, look, there's only three people that work here, myself being one of them. You know, we don't have the budget to have a 150k salary engineer on board all the time.

Well, the more eyes you have on something, the better chances you have of something being spotted.

Yeah, that's kind of where I'm headed. It's nice to have those relationships with people that know what they're looking at. And even, you know, we design something, okay, it's going to work perfectly fine. And then you get it to a CNC guy and he's like, well, that's going to be three times longer to machine, you know, design that way. Why don't we change this and this? As long as it works for your application, the cost of machining will be three times less.

They're like, why are you using billet? You want to just use plastic?

Yeah, it would be nice if everything could just be in plastic.

Yeah, I hear you.

Well, Ram definitely said that with the control arms or whatever are plastic.

Oh yeah, it started on anything now with coolant hoses and everything's plastic, unless if that makes sense, the heat cycle, that stuff. All right, so how long, what's our clock here now? Because just like everything else that somebody's like, that's cheap, this easy, how long before this stuff isn't affordable anymore? Just like the two JZs and all that stuff?

I'm not sure.

I think it's too early to really say. Yeah. Because-

Or is it so mass produced that it's going to be almost impossible?

Most everything we support is still in production.

Yeah.

They're still cranking these engines out.

Well, not to mention how many dead escapes and things that are sitting out there. Exactly. And they got to be piled up in junkyards like crazy.

Yeah. I mean, I think we've got at least a couple of decades of relatively inexpensive engines.

Job security for you.

Yeah. I mean, that was a pretty good driver too, I think. You know, they're still- I think maybe they just stopped making the first gen engine. They still had a plant in Spain that was making it. Not that long ago, even though they haven't put it in a car here in the US in at least five years.

How many genera- is it just two generations or?

So now there's three generations, three main generations of- we'll just keep it on the 2.3. First generation 2.3 being all the S550 stuff, and a lot of like 15 to 19 explorers and basically anything with a 2.3. And then the 2nd gen would be 19 up Ranger and like 20, 20 up explorers and MKCs and that kind of thing. They went to that 2nd gen. The Mustang never got the 2nd gen. They went right to with the S650 and 24, they went right to the 3rd gen, or what we call the 3rd gen Ford calls it the MPC engine. It's the first 2.3 to have both DI and port from the factory.

So, have you dabbled with that yet then?

Yeah, I mean a little bit, but I haven't... Oh, that engine specifically? Yes. No, I haven't had my hands on one yet. It looks like we will though at some point. Don't really know how much I can say about this, but yeah, maybe I don't say this, but I've got a good customer putting one in an S13, or I hope to be a good customer putting one in S13. I'm excited to play with. We'll be using our... We'll make them a wiring harness, and he'll use a Link Ecu, and we'll support that engine fully.

Well, that was kind of my question to even other people, right? Obviously, they just kind of opened up tuning on the S650s, right? But if you're just going to do a Link Ecu anyway, is it just a matter of you just writing your own firmware, or how does that work for a new engine?

So, the brand new engine, you... So, yeah, I mean, I've taken a Link Ecu and put it on plenty of engines that a Link Ecu has never been on before. And it's just a matter of decoding trigger patterns, lining things up and like, you know, if you really know what you're doing from and you understand all the basics, you can run any engine with a Link Ecu. It's not like Motec in that there's a licensed firmware package for a certain thing. It's all pretty much open when it comes to that. And then we've built, you know, basemaps before that and like help to link, develop certain basemaps for stuff like the EcuVeece basemaps you get with the software for free. Yeah, and there's no like firmware protection or extra cost with any of that. That kind of answers.

Yeah, no, that makes sense.

What are we doing when we're hooking up to an engine for the first time with something like that? I mean, basically just Googling the firing order and Bob's your uncle. Well, now we've got, you kind of have an idea of-

Bob's your uncle. I haven't heard that one in a while.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, a lot of that. I mean, whatever information you can find firing order-wise.

Because in the grand scheme of things, they all pretty much operate the same when it comes right down to just the basic science of it, right?

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, like I say, if you understand the core concepts, I think you mentioned Andre earlier, his courses are just fantastic. Anyone serious about calibrating it, learning those basics from him.

Run the ad.

Yeah.

If you want to learn more.

Yeah, you guys are, I forget, you guys are sponsored by him. Yes, of course. Yeah, that was, I wasn't even intentional.

Yeah, you see how good we are at working it into the conversation.

Yeah.

It's just natural. I mean, look like their latest ad has a million views. Like people know all about them at this point.

Yeah, no, and they are great.

It's, yeah, it's, it's fantastic. It's so worth the money. So, have you taken any courses? Oh yeah, I bought the VIP package in 2019, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I've, I mean, I've had, I've talked to, I don't know if he remembers me, but I've talked to Andre before, before that and whatnot. Sure. So yeah, I've been a long time customer, I listen to his podcast, it's great, great stuff for sure. But yeah, to answer your question, I've even had to, you know, figure out firing orders and trigger patterns just from scratch. I mean, like actually, you know, take the plugs out, put a screwdriver down there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's TDC, okay, let's mark that, how many teeth are on it, measure the thing. Yeah, I mean, we've, one of the first things I tuned was a helicopter with a Subaru engine in it, with a Haltech ECU.

I would, sorry, hold on, wait, you would never get me in a helicopter with a Subaru engine in it.

I'm sorry, as long as we hover four feet up to ground, maybe.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it.

If it's any saving grace, the engine was an old 2.2 liter EJ, so like super reliable, the most reliable EJ, as it get no turbo, you know what I mean? Just NA, you know, I had a Subaru that had, I think 350,000 miles with one of those engines in it, original, you know, no problem. So maybe a little bit of security there. But yeah, you know, it's, this kind of like, like you say, it kind of all works together. We've done, we put Link Ecu on a couple of stationary generators that were natural gas. They were like big, like you would run, one of them was running a school, a university.

He tuned a school.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I forget. I forget which one or where that's at. But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Their backup generator is this massive thing that we, we did exactly that. We had to figure out, okay, what's this? How does this engine work? What is the firing order? What, where does that trigger pattern land? Sure. And set it up. And Link Ecu is actually, I mean, keep plugging them. They have one of the best scope features built on board. So, trigger scope allows you to, you know, you wire it up and you have a crank sensor and a cam sensor. You can scope at a very high speed the actual wave, right, of the teeth and from that, you can gather, okay, you can set up a trigger pattern and make it run from that. And just the diagnostic ability of that is huge. And a lot of VCUs don't really have that functionality, yeah.

Sorry, your potato just rolled over.

He's loving that cold concrete.

Yeah.

It's a little toasty today.

So what other old cars are-

Well, what about Power Sports?

Are you, so like we just had FuelTech on and they do a lot of jet ski and marine type stuff. Are you guys, are they, Link messes with that stuff? You ever mess with any of that?

Not, not as much as I would like. So that was an area that we really wanted to get into early days. I actually had a Turbo Yamaha YXZ 1000R, the Paddle Show or anything about those, but they're fantastic.

Oh, you're speaking Dan's language now.

I'm a big Yamaha guy. So mostly snowmobiles, but you are in a very like power sports driven area as well.

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we had the YXZ, that thing was an absolute rocket. And we actually, we spec'd out me and my wiring guy, spec'd out an ECU, a plug and play package for these. And I even started writing calibration file. And it just kind of fizzled out, I think. It wasn't really something that like... You know, it was gonna take a lot of work, and neither of us were like super passionate about that. You know, I think we were kind of like bluttons for punishment, I think, around here. You know, I was like, man, this is like kind of easy to do. You know, like, and sure enough, it wasn't much long after that. There's at least two other known options that I know of that are plug and play YXZ options.

Yeah, they have a pretty good support on stock ECU stuff too. So basically the engine that's in that is the same one that's in my snowmobile. So the 998 turbo.

Is it the same?

Yeah, it's the same. Four, you know, dual overhead cam, four stroke, little tiny baby turbo. It's, you can get some tunes. You can get them up to 300 horsepower pretty easily, which is insane on something that small.

Yeah, yeah, it's wild. I think mine was probably about that. It was probably 280 or something like that. It was nuts. But yeah, the OEM ECU is, I mean, it's a standalone ECU behind some Yamaha, you know, securities and protections is all it really is. I mean, you know, the OEM ECU is pretty good. I think mine had some tune from DLP, Dirt Watch Performance. I don't know if there's still a thing or not, but it's just some factory flash tune. The thing ripped. It was so good. I mean, I was like, we're not gonna break any records here. No. You know what I mean?

They are an engine forward company. Yamaha makes an amazing engine and they happen to put it in some stuff.

Yeah.

They're not doing snowmobiles anymore, which is really sad for me.

Oh, lame. Yeah.

They were using Articat chassis for the last six, seven years anyway.

I see.

What was it you said the chassis suck but the engines are awesome? They're all right.

I mean, people just, they dog on Articat stuff, but it's-

Or is it something else you're complaining about? I can't remember. I don't keep up with your rants.

Yeah, it's fine. Yamaha makes probably one of the best power sports engines out there, in my opinion.

They make the best engines. I have two 1996 Yamaha WaveRayer 1100 jet skis. You know what those are? They're pretty rare.

I'm a land mammal, so I don't know.

I see. There's two stroke 1100 three-cylinder, you know, plenty of power, nice ancient jet skis. Fantastic engine. I mean, it sounds like it's half of a 2J.

Yeah.

You know, it's just three-cylinders instead of six or whatever. And I mean, JZs are fantastic. Yamaha engine, they...

People always forget that.

Yeah, yeah, they forget that.

What about the BMW engine?

Mimimimimi. Or the Tora show had a Yamaha engine in it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was all Yamaha developed. Yeah, they do a really good job. JZs are probably one of the most fulfilling engines to tune, I would say, because they sound fantastic. You can make pretty good power with them pretty easily.

I love a 1J swapped car for some reason. You say 1J, it has my attention. I'm just like a mop to a flame.

Yeah, we do a lot of like 1J and 2J, like E-tunes. Link Ecu, I do that all the time. Yeah, the customer is always satisfied. You know what I mean? Yeah, there's not a customer that completes their JZ and they're like, huh, I wish there was more.

Yeah, I hate it.

Yeah, they're pretty happy with it, yeah.

So that's one of those ones with a little bit of love and some tuning, you can get some pretty good results out of it.

Just the JZ in general. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Think about Max Odegaard's truck, I think it's awesome.

Well, I was thinking of, we just had on, my God, we didn't have a diesel, fricking power hungry performance on. And he started in tuning, gas, diesel, everything, but he, the results you can get on a diesel tune are far greater, right? Like you get a tune in NA car, you're gonna get 30, 40 tops, but you can tune up a diesel to get an extra 150 horsepower with just a tune. So he was, that's kind of the route he went, and just was more gratifying in the end to happy customers, things like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Small, you know, in the grand scheme, relatively insignificant expense for a massive gain. Yeah, yeah.

So, okay, we kind of didn't touch on this in the beginning, but how do you get here, right? So what's your kind of specialty? Cause I noticed you have a fab shop back there as well, but like, what's your background?

Well, it's certainly not fabrication.

Okay.

I can't weld, I can't, I could make it stick together maybe. That's about as good as I get. Fortunately, I've had some good friends and fantastic employees that have those skills and have interest in becoming better at that sort of thing. And I just, it doesn't click for me. I've always been a data guy and diagnosis, you know, kind of got my start in Subarus just mainly because I wanted, like a lot of people were almost scared to work on them, right? Like they're different. I don't know what's going on. And that attracted me. So I just really wanted to figure out why.

You see wet paint, you like touch.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So yeah, I worked at a Subaru dealership for a while. I met some good people and then had a pretty long career in rally, just supporting rally teams and crewing for them and do a little driving. And I've had, I don't even know how many Subarus I've had. I mean, north of 50, I'm sure, different ones, just playing with different stuff. And just got really good at figuring out, you know, the core concepts and being able to diagnose things. And that's kind of, that's what we, you know, we started the business basically just maintaining Subarus and doing rally car stuff. Sure.

So rally, so you did a little bit of driving, but re-traveling the country, supporting teams though?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, everywhere. There's not, anyone in stage rally knows there's every event is, you know, it's the average transit time is probably 10 hours to any event. You know what I mean? They're everywhere. There's a jibway by you.

I haven't been there yet, but I do want to go to an event.

One of my favorite events probably, probably up there is one of the best events as far as like a driver favorite. They really like, and that area is beautiful. That time of year in August, it's coming up, I think.

Oh yeah, that's right. Maybe that's another thing. So many things to make it.

This is like up in the Hayward area, right?

That's Detroit Lakes.

Detroit Lakes, oh okay.

If you know where that's at, yeah.

Yep, oh yeah.

Yeah, Detroit Lakes is one of like host cities, and then the stages are maybe 300 mile diameter, 250 mile diameter around that somewhere, all in that area. But yeah, I've been, it's pretty much all the national rallies at one point or another, all over the country. We did WRC Mexico twice, that was cool. That was a really good time. Yeah, I'd like to do some stuff in Europe at some point. Maybe if I still do WRC Finland, that would be cool, and all that kind of stuff.

Do you support someone actively still, or anyone?

Yes and no. Not so much. That side of things kind of fizzled out. It's so expensive to do rally.

Sure.

And so, I think the field is mostly separated by guys with a hell of a lot more expendable income, right? That, you know, they're all on Motec's and they...

I was going to say the Motec guys too.

Yeah, right. Their cars are very well-sorted and I've supported those guys, but they, you know, they've got their own people. It's not the most lucrative thing to do, right? It's not... I do enjoy it, but it's certainly not the best way for me to make a living. Sure. It's supporting that kind of stuff.

Well, motorsports in general is not cheap.

That's... Yeah, that's very true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'd say, you know, the other half of the rally drivers are... It's probably true for drivers in most any motorsport is they're on a really tight budget and paying a professional calibrator like myself, like at least several hundred dollars a day plus travel expenses and all that stuff. It's just not on the budget for a lot of people. And so I try to support some guys remotely, but I haven't been to a rally in way too long, actually.

What goes into supporting a rally event from your perspective then? What are you mostly doing when you're, let's say you're at Ojibwe, what are you doing?

So as a crew chief, you're spending 18 or 20 hours on Wednesday, driving everything up there from here because it's very far away from here.

So you're probably going 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.

Driving the driver's rig and trailer and the car, make sure everything gets there fine. You wake up Thursday morning and the drivers are off doing reconnaissance or recce, if you've heard that term. They basically go drive the roads aren't closed down. They go drive them at posted speeds in a normal car, like not in the rally car, and they take notes. The co-driver's got to record all their, hey, there's a big-a** rock here, don't, you know what I mean? Don't go too tight on this corner or whatever it might be. During that time, I'm getting the car through tech, doing like a nut and bolt check, make sure the car's got fuel, those sorts of things, air pressures are fine, all spares are good. Make sure it passes tech inspection, you know, if the tech inspector's like, hey, it needs more roll bar padding here, I gotta go find some and sort that. So it's kind of a lazy day. And then Friday and Saturday, you're on full alert for, you know, basically 48 hours, whatever's needed. The driver takes the car, goes and does a loop of stages, comes back to service and everything could be perfectly fine. The car could need a transmission. You don't know until somehow the car gets there, right? And then you could need anything. So the service area has to be set up pretty well. You know, you got to have everything ready at it, like a moment's notice. You just don't know until they show back up. And then they could end day one Friday with, you know, I don't know, needing a turbo or a trans or, you know, maybe there's some issue that nobody has the idea of what's going on. And so you stay up all night and try to fix it and get it to, you know, park exposition the next day, Saturday and the drivers go to bed hoping that their car works when they wake up. And, you know, let's do it again on day two, probably no sleep. And then maybe you're, maybe you have a beer Saturday night and then you drive 20 hours back home on Sunday. And yeah, it sounds great.

When you put it that way, this all sucks.

Well, it sounds like you want to be the driver.

Yes, ideally you would have the expendable income we talked about earlier, which would just be the driver, yeah.

Well, I'm sure some of the grassroots teams, like the drivers probably staying up sometimes to get things.

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just, that's majority of the time, like the case. You can't, it's hard to do a stage without at least one crew person. Right. So you're like, hey, I'll pay your meals and maybe some beers for the weekend, come help me out. And then yeah, the driver, pulls into that service spot, gets out of the car instantly on the ground. They're trying to figure stuff out too. Fix whatever they can to get back out there.

So what about when it comes to supporting a car, right? So obviously, let's say nothing's broken. Let's start with that as a baseline. What are you looking for changes wise? What are you talking about tune when it comes to ECU stuff? Are you doing suspension stuff all the above? Like, what are you looking at?

So yeah, I mean, back in those days, this is at least five years ago or so.

So long ago.

Yeah, well, I mean, upwards of 10, 15 years ago. Sure. Yes, back then, I was making suspension changes and talking with drivers and co-drivers and getting updates and try to make some tweets and stuff. These days, I'll just keep talking on the data side because that's primarily where I spend all my time. So data, you're mainly just looking for inconsistencies, especially in a well sorted car. Look, if the car is pretty well sorted, it's been making the same power, there's no real crazy differences or anything like that, then it's pretty easy to take a large amount of stage data. I mean, these cars race for hours and hours. It's basically a massive endurance race on dirt roads. And if you know what you're doing, you set up your data software and you can take, okay, stage one, overlay it, stage two, stage three. Okay, there's no nothing, it's all the same. You know what I mean? So you can look at that rapidly. If that answers your question, that's kind of what I would be doing in like a hot service situation where I'm just trying to find something I can sort or something I can relay to one of the techs and say like, hey, I saw it started to drop fuel pressure a little bit on that last leg. Let's just replace the fuel pump. Because if there's nothing else going on, we have a spare. Let's just replace it. You know what I mean? Let's just do it. That kind of thing. Try to catch those little discrepancies, yeah.

Are you still, are you worked on them? I don't know if you ever were really a fan or whatever, but would you still be a Subaru fan at, let's say you're going back into rally. Are you getting a focus now or are you going Subaru or your new found love for EcoBoost?

I'll tell you right now, it's not Dodge Hornet.

Yeah.

It's probably not a Dodge Hornet. I could put an EcoBoost in one though, maybe.

You didn't sell enough.

I think I would, at a grassroots level, it's hard to beat Subaru as a first rally car. Or I mean, it's got all the right bits to be the first rally car, or they're really well supported. So any of the bolt-on or plug-and-play stuff solutions for rallies, a lot of guys support the Subaru. So it's pretty easy to just get in it, do the thing, campaign it relatively cheap. Maybe if budget was quite a bit better or not really a problem, I think I'd probably target something like, maybe one of the lower levels of what M Sport's putting together, chassis for Ford-based.

M Sport, is that the people out in Europe? They make the Nitro Cross cars, I think, right?

Yeah, they make quite a few. They've got a program with plenty of chassis. You can roll up to M Sport and write them a check for $300,000 and have a WRC 2 car.

Yeah, like carbon Kevlar and all that crazy stuff.

Full spares package, all the underbody spare everything or whatever. They'll make it all for you, support it for you.

You're going to sell a lot of EcoBoost kits for that.

Yeah, I'm pretty far away from that, I think, hopes and dreams, I guess. But yeah, that's probably where I would rather be in something like that. Sure. Something a little more complicated to control. I think I'd really enjoy maintaining, you know, I've tuned quite a few like sequential shifts, you know, race cars with different like complicated boost strategies and stuff like that. Sure.

Like Sadov's typically?

Yeah, yeah, Sadov or Samsoness or...

Any 6XD stuff?

I'm sorry?

Any 6XD stuff yet or? 6XD. We just had them on. They make sequentials down in North Carolina.

So I guess I'm, maybe I'm not familiar with...

They probably don't get to the horsepower needs where you would need something that robust.

Well, not necessarily. Again, that's not just a horsepower problem solver. That's a lot of drift cars.

I guess they are pretty big in the drift community.

I think they run them in RTR cars, for example.

Oh, I see. No, I guess I'm not super familiar with those. It sounds like something I'd like to play with. But for the most part, a sequential trans is controlled like any other sequential trans, it seems. For the most part, unless the only real difference is like, okay, is it pneumatically shifted? Are you physically pulling a lever? You know, how are we telling the ECU what gear it's in? You know, that kind of thing, is it moved out of this gear? And then, yeah, different speed sensors and that sort of thing. But yes, I love those very, you know, very complex, a lot of features, a lot of equipment, things to control. This is satisfying as a calibrator to do all that.

Like rally cars in general?

Yeah, rally car or anything. I mean, any motorsport, rally car, you know, time attack or any road course stuff. Drift cars, primarily what I'm messing with, but I'm sure it's just as satisfying for guys that tune drag cars all day. I'm sure they would rather be playing with the big toys, you know what I mean?

What's the most satisfying project you've done?

Oof, that's an interesting one.

Somebody's just like, please say mine, please say mine, please say mine.

Yeah, right. So, probably, okay, so maybe not the most satisfying, but really impressive, and it was definitely satisfying. Fantastic customer, his name is Sam DeVries. I think he's Graham Rapids area. I'm not sure if he has a large following or anything like that, but recently helped him tune a car that he put together. It's a Subaru. It's an STI. It's like a, I think it's an 04, 05 STI. First version of it made about 700 wheel horsepower, which is, you know, plenty in a Subaru, that's for sure, especially light car. Yeah. And I think we made closer to 800 this last time, and we've turned the boost up on the street since then. It's probably, on our Mustang dyno, it's probably an 850 wheel area. We're probably close to 1000, the crank, I would assume at this point. Yeah.

What engine's in there?

It's an IEG 1150 block. It seems like they changed their product line up a lot. You know IEG, I'm sure, right? I don't know if I do. IEG, the...

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, okay. Yeah. They make, you know, engine packages for Subarus.

Yeah, it seems like their content actually has some good stuff.

Apparently what they do. Yeah, fantastic company. I've tuned a lot of their engines. They're great. And then they hold together.

That's the important part, right?

Yeah. Yeah, right.

Yeah, and it's crazy numbers for a Subaru.

It's pretty nuts. And the thing is, maybe it's not the most horsepower, highest horsepower car I've been in or tuned, but it's probably one of the quickest on the highway because the car is so light.

I was going to say, is it sub 3,000 pounds probably?

I'm sure it is. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure it's probably, like without anybody in it, I'm sure it's like 28 maybe. It's not like gutted, but it's, the thing doesn't have a cage in it. It's like, it's pretty light car.

So, that's the satisfying one?

That was very satisfying to do. Yes. Yeah. I think maybe a little bit, like underwhelming project was one of those helicopters I was talking about earlier. That was, I think that was super satisfying because it was one of my early projects. It was one of the first things that I did. So, yeah.

This is making you chuckle like, oh yeah, one of my first, oh yeah, tune? Yeah, I'll tune a helicopter for my first thing. Yeah.

Well, it was, I guess I should say, it was one of the first, like standalone ECU projects that I messed with. I had done plenty of tuning for OEM stuff.

You were familiar with that sort of, yeah.

Yeah, it was definitely, I think it was the first Haltech I ever plugged into. You know, it was the first time looking at the software. So it took me a minute, but getting it fired up for the first time, getting it or working with the customer, he's satisfied with how it runs a little bit, right? And that's like, okay, what are we gonna fly it now? Like, what do we, you know, how do you tune something that you can't put on a dyno, right?

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Yeah, you're not going to go do some street tuning with it.

Yeah, exactly. So, actually, a guy I was working with, his name is Dick DeGraw, if you want to look him up, old man. It's just an absolute genius. He came up with a sort of a dyno where we basically strapped the helicopter to the ground, to like concrete, right? And where we would do, you know, anywhere like sweep through, like do throttle sweep to different loads, basically just trying to pull this concrete slab out of the earth with this, it's actually a gyrocopter, but you know, a helicopter or whatever. Four or five, six feet off the ground. It was a two seater. I was in the back. You know what I mean? He was kind of like pilot in the front and there was one behind it and I'm crammed in this little thing with my laptop, you know, sweating and it's just loud as like trying, you know, it was wild experience to, I don't know how old I was at the time, but I was pretty new. You know what I mean? It was pretty wild. Like that was really satisfying. Just wow, I did the thing, you know?

Yeah. So what does data logging for a gyrocopter look like?

I mean, it's just, it's a Subaru engine. That's what he had in it. So it doesn't really matter what that engine is driving.

So it's kind of same thing.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was an NA-22. It was a pretty simple engine as far as tuning goes. It wasn't a very complex job, but I think it definitely had its own issues in that, you know, it's not, you're not rowing through gears. It doesn't idle quite the same. It has, you know, typically they get up to, you know, full load. He's twist the throttle to, I think that one was like 4,000, maybe 4,500 RPM. And it basically just stays there the whole time. And the load might vary a little bit. But for the most part, it does the same thing. So on one hand, it's a little bit easier because there's not like gears and you're not really going through that rev range and the transients don't really exist. There's not really much of that going on. But the compensations for like temperature and, okay, how long has this thing been at full load, 4,500 RPM? Has it been two hours? Is the intake temp getting up there? You know, okay, how much, what do I do with addition timing to try to save this thing from, you know, putting a hole in it and not maybe not coming to the ground. So, yeah.

Yeah. It's time to sound effects, right?

I think that's one thing that people don't realize when you're talking about something that doesn't have a transmission. In the marine world, you could be running, you know, if I have my Yamaha boat wide open and I'm ripping across the lake, it takes me 20 minutes to get from one side or the other. I'm at 8,000 RPMs almost the whole way.

Yeah.

So like you're not, it's not like it's there for a second and then back down. They're running at wide open for quite a while.

Right. Yeah. It actually, we've actually done a couple of EcoBoost jet boats and air boats with customers, just doing something similar, kind of tie that all together with similar stuff. But actually, drift cars aren't that far off from that complicated issue that we're talking about, of staying at that higher RPM. Like these guys will just ride on limiter for who knows how long. They're not, it's not like a road car where you're going down to second gear up to sixth gear and then going through the sixth, that kind of thing.

So what's next for you then? What does the next year, two year, five year sort of look like?

So I think we will kind of perfect a lot of the products that we've come up with. I think maybe we released a little too much at once, you know, for how small that we are. We just had a lot of good ideas and stuff was working and it was like, okay, it works, let's get it out there. And it kind of got popular pretty quickly. I think we need to pump the brakes a little bit, perfect some of the solutions that we have. We will probably narrow in on our, perfecting our wiring production process. It's relatively low budget, it's a little slow right now. I think we need to speed that up a little bit. Maybe look to hire someone else, we'll see that kind of thing. Just, I guess, basically to answer your question, just perfect what we have going on.

Basically, making it more efficient?

Yeah, try to perfect production methods, maybe we can find areas to bring cost points down or whatever it might be. Just try to be a little bit more efficient on the customer support side. Again, there's only three of us, and it's hard to get back to everybody that might have a... Even if it's a good comment or whatever, sometimes it takes me over a day or two to get back to a simple email. So maybe we could focus on doing that a little bit better and we can kind of perfect the product line that we have going on, get a good scope of work. Solidify in the next year or two. And then I don't know what's going to happen five years from now, because if I look five years back, it was a totally different direction. So there's really no way for me to even predict. I'd hope that the EcoBoost stuff takes off a little more. I think we'll focus on that for a long time.

I've been seeing it pop up like wildfire. So, I think it's a good space to be in.

It's good to hear that, but it's definitely surprising to see that. We didn't really expect it to be as big as it is.

But it's a good thing you're focusing on that too, because again, a lot of the people we had on the show are business owners. And it's very easy to tell, like the people who are focused on improving stuff typically improve it.

So, yeah, it's good to hear. Yeah, I think that's definitely the plan. Like I say, maybe we start looking for hiring another guy. Sure. You know, maybe to... It'd have to be like the perfect fit, for sure. And then, honestly, I really enjoy e-tuning people's projects. It's a Link Ecu, I'm familiar with it. And, you know, it's always something different. I typically learn at least a little something, you know, every time, like, oh, they're using this product or whatever it might be, it acts this way. Sure. So, that's been pretty satisfying, is just kind of going through that. And then messing with the latest Link Ecu stuff, the car on the dyno has the late, what was the first Neo4 in the country? And, you know, got it started, actually, Nate from Link Ecu, their media guy was here yesterday, got a bunch of media on it. I think he put out a reel, actually, last week, when he was here, when we first got it on there. I can't remember. But yeah, just messing with that new technology has been really fun. I'm interested to push that to its limits, see what its limitations are, because I can't really see any right now. It seems like it'll do anything and everything that we could do with an Ecoboost, you know, so.

What's your, do you have like a backlog right now of builds? Are you looking for more of those in here too? Or how long does it take you to kick one out?

Yeah, I'm glad you went that way. I think that's another thing that, as far as the projects in here, we definitely want to narrow in on just Restomod projects, that kind of thing. And, you know, ideally Ecoboost powered stuff. That's kind of the goal. So as far as a backlog of those types of projects, we're not too backed up right now. I think, you know, we probably have at least a couple months worth of work here right now.

That's a good, healthy spot to be.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, and a lot of our focus has shifted to, you know, the website online sales supporting those products, you know, attuning stuff and stuff of that nature. We've been saying no to a lot of people that are like, you know, hey, I've got a 2015 Coyote Mustang with an intake. I want a dyno tune.

Sorry.

You know, unless you're going to put a Link Ecu on it, or Motec.

Sure.

We, you know, someone else can help you better than we can. More efficiently, I should say. Yeah. It's going to take us too long, so.

If somebody wanted to do that and had a Link Ecu and they wanted to do, is that something you are open to? Have you tuned in something V8 versus Equal Boost? Not much difference between the?

Yeah. If it's got a Link Ecu on it, I'll tune it. It doesn't really matter what it is. I'm so proficient with the software at this point that as long as I have good data from the equipment that's on it, you know, sensors and whatnot, I'd make short work of it, I think. I've done plenty of V8s and LS stuff. And, you know, I don't know. I can't really think of it. Maybe a weird engine that I haven't done in LA. I mean, rotaries, RVs, JZs, SRs. I don't. I haven't done a Coyote and a Link, actually. So that example is probably a pretty good one, actually. Yeah, but the new Coyote is being DI. It would be nice to fit one with, you know, and control it completely with DI.

Before we start wrapping up here, I do have to ask, what's with the backwards stickers?

We just talked about this the other day. So, that's kind of a just a thing in the drift world, where one side of the car matches the other side. So, they're like the correct way. It's basically a mirrored image of the other side of the car.

Right. Yep.

Yeah.

So, there's not like a functional reason for it, or like cameras are recording backwards or something.

No, no, no. No, I kind of tried to wrap my mind around that too. And actually, when we did, we put just a simple, not the livery on Vance's car right here, but now Nate's car is on the dyno. When we were doing the vinyls on that, I got outvoted on that bit because everybody else thought of it. And it's neat, right? It's cool to do it, old JDM style with the s*** backwards. But being a business owner, like brand recognition means quite a bit to me. Let's just see what we can do to get it the proper way. But I got outvoted. So, whatever.

Well, I'm Slavic, so I'm like, all right, is that Cyrillic? I'm like, never mind, it's just backwards.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Well, shoot, anything else from you before we thought the usual three? You have a shopping cart, Dan needs to buy some stuff.

Yeah. Well, I think what I originally came in here thinking that I needed might be something different. So it was going to ask you so in and out here, like let's say that Fox that you just did, you said that was kind of a complete, he brought you the car and you gave him the finished product. How long does other than you had to do a little bit of R&D on that one or no?

Yeah, yeah. So that when that car originally came to us, I think we may have started the preorder for like Fox body amounts, but we definitely didn't have a set made when it first came to us. That was the car we made. And yeah, I'd love to do more of that stuff. I think if we could keep pushing our customer base in that direction, I think there's a market for that. Guys that are like, you know, kind of like you, it's 88, Thundercoup, right? That could, I've got to clean chassis, drop it off to you. Let me know what the bill is going to be. Or this is my budget, we're going to work within this. I want to make X power, work with projects that way. I think that would be probably one of the most fulfilling ways to kind of move our customer base in that direction. And yeah, even if it's a car that we don't necessarily support, I mean, we've done, we've supported plenty of people with, like I said, jet boats and air boats and wacky stuff that guys are putting it in there, but still using some of our products. We're happy to support all that. We think it's cool, keep doing that kind of stuff. Yeah, like I was telling you earlier, a gentleman brought us, I forget what year it was, a Fox body, it was a GT, a VA, running and driving, showed up here, did a complete two, three swap. Originally, it was on an OEM ECU, all of our suite of parts, ZF BMW transmission, our adapter, we did all the shift linkage, shifter, trimmed the tunnel out, built a tunnel, shifter mount, drive shaft, spec that all out, all the intercooler piping, any and all tuning up might needed, all the plumbing for power steering. I'll try to think about anything else. The engine, they're pretty simple, if I'm honest, but his bill was sub 25 grand.

And what was the timing on it? Did you have it for three months, six months, two weeks, three days?

It was probably somewhere in the three month area, maybe a little bit more than that. But we were doing some stuff.

That's pretty good for what you were doing. Right, if you had to- For the first time. Right.

Yeah, yeah. I think if we had everything and all the questions were answered, the realistic timeframe might be two months, something like that, just to kind of give us a buffer. There's always gonna be a little something that might be different or a fitting that you have to order. Like, oh, scratch your head for a little bit, I need this fitting, I gotta order that. Sure, now that's always gonna kind of push things back a little bit, but yeah, I think that was probably somewhere in that time frame. It's shy of six months, that's for sure. From like concept to completion, it wasn't that long.

See, you were telling, saying something earlier about being the engine swap part being the hardest part. I feel like that's the easiest part. For me, it's getting everything in there, bolt it in as hard as all that little stuff afterwards, the sensors, the wiring, the plumbing, the everything, like even just like, okay, these fuel lines, I need to make these attach to each other. It's all that crap. There's a bundle up in my brain and then I go, okay, f*** it, I'm not even going to do it.

That's what takes the most time. I mean, we were, now we're starting to do a lot of these like full Restomod builds or EcoBoost Swap builds. We came to the realization that we just spent four hours talking as a team to plan out what we need to do for this build. Like we got to build somebody for this. Right. And so like calling the customer and say, hey, we've got a lot of time to just do in this. Those are the things that you learn as you do more longer projects and stuff. And at this point, we build that in at the front. You want us to do everything on the projects. It's going to take us time just to figure out what we need to do. We got to pay or you don't get paid for that. Yeah.

What is your shop rate here, by the way?

The rate? Yeah. The hourly or whatever. The hourly rate that you build people out to? Yeah. Well, 140, a labor hour. And then tuning is usually build at 190.

Sure. Okay.

Whether we use the dino or not. I kind of look at the dino as a tool. If you really want me to put it on there, I will. But if the project doesn't need it, then why use it? But tuning time is tuning time.

So it makes sense.

I've had a lot of people telling me I need to raise that. I don't know if that's, what do you guys normally hear or see?

Well, you said that you were, you had talked earlier about being in that 500 range and then kind of going up from there to just kind of as a basic mail order tune type thing, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I think that's anywhere. So I've been looking at tuning my GT500. It's right in that starts in that, well, for an NA tuner a lot. But once you have a power adder, they're anywhere from $500 to $700 where it starts. And then you add on other stuff. They're like, oh, you have different injectors. That's going to do this. Or you have that. It kind of adds up from there. I think to get my car tuned through something like Palm Beach with where I was at and some of the extra stuff I had, I'm in that like $1,600 range.

What does that include?

And that was with me adding, like I want two tunes. I wanted a like a Pump Gas tune and an E85 tune. And then that's with all of my extras, the mostly injectors and then changing pulley size, things like that.

Okay. But that's just like tuning.

Correct.

Right, right. Is it a $1,600 or whatever? Is that like, that's going back and forth and like dialing things in, I assume? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Like, so my Lund, my, I did a tune with Lund, and I want to say I was right in that maybe $1,200 range for a 5.0 Coyote, but I had 96 emails back and forth because I had some issues on mine. We would go and they'd be like, hey, I'm not seeing fuel pressure where I want it. Then I have to dive back in and go, okay, what am I got going on here?

Yeah. And that sounds like right on par. That's kind of how, that's how I have gauged a couple of them recently is just the email string back and forth. And you say it was like 1200 bucks.

Yeah, I think it was right around there is where I got it.

Roughly 100 emails back and forth.

It's about $10 an email roughly.

Yeah, I guess.

And that kind of lines up. I think, again, my base price, it's 490, but call it 500. At that point, I'm typically, once I get to the point where I'm approaching 50 emails back and forth, maybe we're on the 10th or 12th tune revision and we're still having issues or you want other features or whatever. At that point, I'll probably ask you to pay for that service again. And then we'll go from there.

Yeah, more work, more money.

Be honest with you, so that was just where the tuning starts, right? I have to buy the device, so there's 500, 600 bucks. And then I have to buy credits. So this is all HP tuner stuff, right? So that's half the price right there.

Yeah, that's definitely a big expense. And if you compare that to like, buying a Link Plug and Play ECU, that's $1,700 or whatever, like that Plug and Play ECU is a lot more powerful, and it's really not that much more money. I mean, you start doing credits and an HP tuner's device, and now you're Plug and Play full standalone ECU with all these amazing features and safeties is $1,000, when you compare the two, not two grand, you know?

So when we compare Link to like... So in my GT500, I'm considering going to standalone because of the nannies that you can get in that. So like, I'm assuming that if it senses dropping oil pressure of any sort, it can throw you in lit mode or shut down or stuff like that too with the Link.

Literally anything you can think of, we could probably set up a control strategy to prevent something from happening or enact a different amount of ignition timing or boost pressure or whatever it might be for any given circumstance. It really, I mean, it's up to your imagination, whatever it is that you want to do.

What year is your GT500?

2021. So my other biggest push to go standalone is the fact that I can go flex fuel. So right now Ford doesn't have a very good flex fuel solution. And what they do is they use the throttle body modulation to kind of change your air intake, I think, as you would read the alcohol content and the fuel kind of on the fly as instead of like in a turbo where you can control boost pressure on a twin screw supercharger that is, you know, by changing pulleys, you know, the stand, the ECU is not going to change a pulley for you, but it can change how much throttle body opens.

Right, right. Yeah, that's a big reason to go stand alone as there's really all the control in the world. Yeah, flex fuel is pretty seamless at that point. It's very, very simple and easy to set up.

Are you tuning flex fuel on EcoBoost stuff?

Yeah, I mean, pretty much everything Link, even if they don't have a ethanol content sensor yet, I'll tune it in a way that it could easily have one added. Right, so if you front load all of that work, when you write the base map, then adding any feature at the end is so much easier, right, if you do it in a proper model.

Buy once, cry once, sort of.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. So I can easily help back.

Well, it makes his job easier for when they come back and say, hey.

Exactly.

Yeah. So you've worked with these two side by side then between Link and Motec. Are you really seeing any reason why you would go with Motec over the other or when you sit there and put them apples on apples, are they pretty dang?

Uh, it's...

It's... They each have really good features and they... You know, in one small area, like I might have a little gripe about what this Link software does. Right. Motec does it perfectly and vice versa. Sure. Motec might have a couple of things that I'm like, why would you do it that way? And then Link does it the better way. That's the case with a lot of different EC manufacturers and their software and stuff. But you know, sometimes I wish, I think Andre says this often where he says, I wish these manufacturers would talk to each other a little more.

That was the last episode we did.

Or take some stuff. Oh, really? He mentioned the app. I've just heard him say it a couple of times where he's absolutely right. I mean, I think, you know, taking advice from some other companies, there's no shame in that.

The way he worded it, he's like, I don't think these guys work in a bubble. Like they don't look at what other people offer in ECU. It's like, they all are great in one aspect, but it's like starts stealing features.

Yeah, right, right. Yeah, you think you would see more of that, but you really don't.

Oh, typical engineers.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think maybe where you were headed was Motec and Link. Yeah, yeah. Did you have more to that?

No, it was just, I've been looking at that route, but now you're talking, I'm talking maybe $16, $1700 to do a ECU tune, but I'm looking at anywhere from 10 to 15 to do Motec.

Oh yeah.

And so that's a big thing. But then when I'm talking about an engine that is 20, 30 grand, you know, where am I? You know, what is the second, the standalone saves my engine one time. Yeah. I've already, as a guy who's melted a couple of coyotes by having a drop in fuel pressure over something as stupid as a fricking 10 cent fuse, that makes a guy pretty pissed off. So, you know, if you had something that would shut it down for you and then go, hey, idiot, check this out.

Yeah, Link Ecu's used a good example. Motec does this as well, but you can basically tie fuel pressure right into Link Ecu's basic fuel model to where once all the other factors are done, it's calculated exactly how much fuel I want to inject. If fuel pressure is 10 PSI lower, it's gonna inject that much more. But the volume of fuel injected will be the same, even if your fuel pressure dropped in half immediately. It's a fantastic feature that some OEM ECUs have, but it's not always cut and dry to use, I guess.

Right, and sometimes it just doesn't do it at the speed of what some of the standalones can do. I don't know.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yes. So yeah, processing power is a big one. A lot of Link Ecu's, especially the latest and greatest, their processing ability, their speed is so much greater than a lot of the OEM ECUs, and especially the older ones. I mean, they're mass producing these ECUs. They're going to do it in a relatively inexpensive way. You know, if you look at, and even the software, it's like the logging rate from HP Tuners for you to look at the data is laughable compared to what you can accomplish with a Motec or Link Ecu. Yeah, just the rate at which you can look at things like fuel pressure when you're tuning, or even boost pressure. It's crazy. I mean, sometimes it could be 100,000 times what HP Tuners is capable of showing you. Oh, yeah, yeah, easily. Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Not that you would necessarily need that for those types of things that, you know, I think there's some pretty crazy statistics for logging rates with some of the new Link Ecu's that you would use for things like, you know, shock pots or, you know, dialing in chassis stuff, rolling around a course, you know, that kind of thing. You may not, you know, I'm not logging boost pressure at 10,000 Hertz or, you know, what some silly, you know, just to do an E-Tune on a JZ or something like that.

I'm not, you know, I'm not using that functionality, but there's a solution for everybody's issue. Right.

You don't need an M4 for paintball.

Right. So for what most people are using their GT 500 for, they're going to, a lot of them are doing drag race stuff. You know, if you're doing road course, usually the car in stock form is perfectly fine. Yeah. I kind of want a little bit of a Swiss Army knife. Like I kind of like to do a lot of things. And one of the things that I do really enjoy is long distance road rallies. Well, I'm getting into, sometimes I'm driving halfway across the country and I, the anxiety of trying to figure out what kind of fuel I can get in certain parts of the country is, I fricking hate it. You know, I don't want to wing in and I, Tessini 85 I've done before too, which is not my favorite thing to do. And then what happens if it's s***? Now I have, you know, I'm carrying around, I just want to be able to pull up to a pump. Even if it happens to be 91, I want to be able to put it in my car and I want my ECU to go, hey, we're going to turn this thing down to a Honda Accord level. And you can get to where you're going and I don't have to worry about another engine.

Yeah, I think Link Ecu would definitely do all that for you. Like I said, pretty much, you know, most tunes I do on the flexible side of it, you could buy anything when I'm done, you could put anything from E0 to E100 in it, and it will work flawlessly throughout most of the time without even ever having to test on those different fuels. So I've done full flex fuel tunes on cars that never had ethanol in them at all. And then they went and did it one day and it ran, you know, it's flawless. They send me a log, oh, I just want to make sure everything's good and it's right on point. You know, if you understand the math, that's really not that hard. You have good sensors and, you know, yeah. So yeah, I mean, Link Ecu would definitely ease a lot of those stresses, I think. Okay.

Or any after or any standalone for you at this point.

Yeah.

He keeps going back and forth. I think it's been, what, a year and a half you've been trying to find a solution, I think.

Yeah, after you, like I said, you blow up a couple of engines. I had one in stock form, and then I went to a built engine, and I still had issues with that. And basically, what my problem came down to was fuel controller that I had had a dead fuse on the inside, so I even replaced my pumps, I said, your pressure's not there. Sure, should I have probably been monitoring fuel pressure inside my car with some sort of aftermarket gauge? But then when you're in wide open throttle and doing some of the things you're doing, you're not wanting to look down at your gauges either, right? I'm going 160 miles an hour at some times and I'm trying to pay attention to what I'm doing.

Allegedly in Mexico.

Yes. So that's not always the greatest solution either. And this particular company, a fuel controller I had, you would think that if there was a fuse, which by the way, you have to take the controller completely apart, take all of the cables off of it. Yeah, to see that you have a dead fuse, you would think that a simple LED red light, which I know you can get, there's lots of things out there when a fuse blows, it goes, hey man, you got to fuse out. Right. Or whatever, put them on the outside, do what you can to make it a little bit easier on the end user would be great.

Right. Some sort of indicator, at least, yeah.

Yeah. So I think that that may have been my problem for a couple engines, but we'll...

Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Sounds like you would benefit quite a bit from standalone ECU.

I think that's where I'm at. It's just the 15 grand for Motec was a hard pill to swallow.

It is. Yeah.

It's hard to sell, so.

Yeah. It's a lot of money. So do they make a... Is it a plug and play completely for that?

They... As far as I know, there's only one company... There's a company that sells a plug and play kit for a Motec, an M150, I believe. But you buy that separate, then you buy your M150, and there's one company that you go to for a one-stop solution. They tune it, they do all that. So basically, you drop the car off, 15 grand, you get it back all tuned with all the goodies and everything.

Specifically, like they specialize in that. Yeah. GC500.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, that sounds like the place to go to, probably.

Yeah, I don't know. I'm still not like... I don't know if I want to spend that much. I have other friends that do Motec stuff. I'm open to doing some... This link seems like a decent deal. I'm open to some things. I'm wondering how much their harnesses would work.

So that would be the tricky bit. And the unknown would be getting a Link Ecu wired to it. And maybe that's something we could help you with because we were already super familiar and stock a lot of the Ford OEM Ecu connectors. Connectors in general, not just Ecu connectors, sensors and everything. And we're all familiar with the pins and whatnot. So maybe it would be relatively easy for us to fit a link to your car. I mean, I don't want to say for sure, but I have to imagine that it would be. And even all said and done, I guess I don't really see that project costing you half what it would Motec tuned and everything. I don't really see it being much more than that.

And that's kind of where I wouldn't... They're a great product, don't get me wrong, but I don't know how much you're paying for the name for what my solution is. They're probably great in a very crazy 3000 horsepower Viper application. Yeah. That's your go-to, but...

So the main people we've had on that focus in Motec on the show are Enthimoto, which I'm not sure if you're familiar with them, but Twin Turbo Vipers, 3000 horsepower Vipers. And then ARS Tune, which is down in Texas, they basically are pushing the sixth gen Camaro platform. So, we're talking 1400 plus horsepower Camaros, right? Which is not what his use case would be. His is mostly road course and road rallies for a GT500 making aiming for 900.

Okay.

Yeah.

We won't leak his use probably. Yeah. A better move.

No, I was already thinking it. I didn't want to make this last part of the podcast a sales pitch. I was planning on actually after you had said something that I was planning on talking to you afterwards and whatever, but I think these are all good talking points. Those people out there that are curious about that kind of stuff as well.

That's exactly what this podcast addresses, right? It's like there's so many different ways to skin a cat, and it's like you just have to pick the solution for you. So, maybe it is or maybe it isn't, you know?

So, it's like, yeah.

And most of the time, you know when it goes to tuners, right? It's like, pick the seat that your tuner knows, right? That's a reoccurring topic, right?

Absolutely. That's probably the most important.

Who's in your area, you know? Right.

Even like at a base, if you're considering tuning anything, like talk with someone that you and get on the same page, it doesn't matter who it is, if they're a calibrate, like make sure that they understand what you want to do completely, make sure they're going to be proficient at it and use whatever they tell you to use. You know, bringing someone a mismatch of parts that they're never familiar with, that's not, you know, no calibrate is going to like that.

Well, it's like with a dance case, right? Like, you know, he presented this case to some person, and they're like, oh, well, you can just do it, you know, solve the solution with this. And it's like, well, not necessarily because this is my problem. So it's like, it's mismatch.

I was suggested that methanol injection was an option too. It's not, that wasn't also my favorite thing.

Yeah. Yeah.

Again, I'm not, I'm not, I'm getting to be an old guy, right? I want to just roll up and have a fast car and put whatever I want in it.

His car's an automatic now, technically.

It's a DTT. I was going to ask you, do you offer, it's like BMW has some DCT stuff. Do you guys have, have you even played with that at all then? I've not noticed that it's a 2.3.

Yes, so we just added, so actually the BMW ZF Trans that we support has a very similar bell housing to the BMW DCT that you just mentioned. We added, I think we had to add one hole, and that was pretty much it, you know, just a minor change to our bell housing adapter, and now that DCT fits, fits our adapter. So, and that's same with like, you know, if you've got a ZF 5-speed, a ZF 6-speed, a DCT, if you buy the adapter kit, it's the same adapter kit, you know what I mean? So, if you want to upgrade to a DCT at some point, the bolt holes are there and vice versa. If you want to go from 5-speed to 6-speed or whatever, whatever it might be. Yes, pretty excited to play with DCT stuff. Actually, talking with Rob Fields, Fields Auto Works, we were talking about earlier, about doing some DCT stuff in one of his customers' cars. That'd be cool. Customers' cars, yeah. So, I'm pretty excited about that. And furthermore, being able to control that kind of thing behind an OEM ECU would be pretty much impossible. I don't think you would ever really get it right. You know? Yeah. So, that's another thing is limitations that some standalone ECUs, they lift those limitations ceilings for what you might do in the future, right? So, yeah.

I think that's an issue that I run into as well is that a Tremec 7-speed DCT in it, not really much in it for tuning options as far as those go. And we're learning as we talk to tuners, calibrators, whatever you want to call them, the guy who blows your car up.

The guy who gets blamed.

Yeah, right. Yeah. The engine management and transmission stuff, it's hand in hand. You can't really mess with one without the other usually.

Yeah.

So.

Yeah, I think that's the case. We're actually trying to figure out a good way to control the 10R80 without an OEM ECU or maybe some sort of Ford Performance Controller of some sort, maybe work with them and see if we can get 10R80 control. Because there's not really a good way to control a 10R80 or any modern automatic trans with a standalone ECU, like with a Link or a Haltech or a Motec or anything like that. You're not going to get good auto trans control. It may not even be anywhere near possible to do. So having some sort of controller that can work with a standalone ECU, kind of like the DCTs or a lot of guys doing the AHP swap these days or whatever. A lot of those complicated, relatively complicated modern transmissions, they have to have their own controller. But a lot of the supportive ones are now, they've got controllers that will talk with a standalone ECU. And it's hard to talk with an OEM ECU. You know, it might run the engine, but you can't really have it do, you know, having an aftermarket controller request a torque reduction from a Ford ECU. Ford ECU is going to like, no, I'm going to do what I want. You know what I mean? It doesn't care what you ask it to do, you know.

Well, we found out that the parameters, I forget the actual name of what they were saying, but you can get in the amount of data you can get, see and mess with on a stock ECU is doesn't even touch the tip of the iceberg of what they actually do. So you actually get access to certain, you know, it's like having your gaming PC and all you can do is go in and change the desktop color and that's about it. Yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah. And we do a lot of the PATS programming. A lot of that that we do is, you're looking at a raw bin file. If you've ever heard of this, basically just all the hexadecimal data that that ECU carries. And it is, I mean, it could be millions of lines of code, but even some of the most well-developed ECUs that HP Tuner supports, all the tables and options that you see and that, you know, the whole HP Tuner's editor, maybe you guys have looked at it before, their software, all that you see is maybe 3% of the data that's in the ECU.

I think that's about correct, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's wild what's behind the curtain you can't see or nobody's bothered to figure out what it does.

Well, so we had Banish on the show and basically he's seen both sides. And I think it's like a factor of like 20 roughly. That's the difference between what's available.

Yeah, yeah.

But one of the things you mentioned is like a lot of it's also unnecessary to look at as well. So, there's that too, right? Just yeah, the basics and all that, so, you know, how much of it is worth it? But at the end of the day, just go stand alone.

That's a really good counter is like, yes, there's a lot of stuff there, but you might only need, you know, one or two.

You won't touch the important stuff.

Yeah.

Well, s*** man, you want to rip the usual three?

Yeah, this will be interesting. So, at the end of every episode, we like to ask our guest to pick three cars. We need a track car, a daily driver and a show car. You have an unlimited budget, you can put an EcoBoost in whatever you want.

What are you picking?

So, track car? Sorry, what were they? Track, show, daily? I see. Limited budget. I'd probably just go to M-Sport, we were talking about earlier, for a track car and say, make me the baddest thing you possibly can. Equip it with something I can plug into, so I can fiddle with it and play with it. And that would probably be my track car, it would probably be a rally car. Maybe have tarmac suspension for it to do, maybe like some touge events, something like that, hill climbs or whatnot, would be fun. I'd probably enjoy that more than anything.

So just straight up rally car from M-Sport?

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's probably, it's not really going to get much better than that. Full blown WRC car basically. Sure. But you'd have to have a limited budget.

Yeah, we've seen that.

Yeah, they're expensive. A show car? I don't really get a lot out of, you know, like I've never been a part of the Stance community, you know, I've never really been one to just go hang out at car shows. I guess I don't really get a whole lot out of that.

What do you take to get ice cream, M?

Oh, that's okay. That's a good, yeah, yeah. I'd probably build a 51 F1, build it up like, what's that movie? The all black one. Was it Untouchables or something?

I don't know, but the 50s version of the F1 is like my favorite. Everybody wants to go to like the 40s, the smaller one, you know, but I like that big grill. Looks like it's going to eat you as it's coming down the road.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What was that movie called? I can't remember. It's a really well done up, I think Mobsteel built it here in Detroit. Anyway, yeah, 51 with the, you know, like you said, big grill with the little partitions in it.

Teeth, yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it looks like teeth. I'd probably do one of those up real well. I'd probably put, maybe I'd put a 3.5 EcoBoost in it.

Dude, those things are, my wife's Navigator has one in it, and I'm like, dude, that's one of the most fun trucks I've ever driven. And it's a, what, 7,000 pound SUV with cooled seats.

That's great. Yeah, I've got a 2020 F-150 Lariat. It's the best. I mean, it's so good. Such a good truck, great fuel mileage. Toe is like a dream.

I towed a 96 Bronco out here 10 hours with my Navigator.

With the Navigator, yeah. Yeah, they do great. Really, really good. So yeah, I don't know. I think I'd probably, maybe I'd put a 3.5 in it, maybe I'd put a 2.3 in it or something. Probably an automatic, go get, you know, chill, get ice cream, put the girlfriend in the car, you know, tool around, go drive on Sundays and stuff. Maybe we go downtown car show or whatever. And for a daily, if money wasn't an object, it'd probably just be a brand new Super Duty Platinum something or other, you know? Could also use it as a tow rig, right? I had a 17 Platinum before I bought this truck and they're just, you know, 6'7, diesel, it's fantastic. Pulls anything, super comfortable. Every, you know, all the amenities, like doorbells getting cranky, cool seats and stuff. I'm yelling at Leo.

Well, sweet, man. What can everybody find you?

Our website's probably the best, jemsport.com, jemsport.com. There's a Contact Us form on there. That's perfect. That's probably the best way to get a hold of us. I think you guys have probably heard the phone ring a couple of times. We're a pretty small operation. We don't always answer the phone. So, you know, email's probably best. And then on Instagram, Facebook, it's jem.sport.spec. Same with, like, I'm Jem Sport Jake. My personal one or whatever, Jem Sport Spec, is the page and there's a couple of other people associated with the business that have that similar thing.

Awesome.

How's it going, Jem?

You can find us at Gunner Garage. Maybe we'll get some Woodward Dream Cruise content. Hopefully, my wife will make a couple of reels or whatever.

You guys are gonna throw the GoPro on the thing yesterday.

Are you kidding me?

So far, Woodward hasn't been as lively yet. I'm waiting for the towards the end of the week here.

Have you guys been out driving?

Yeah, a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, it'll be fun. We'll be out there tomorrow a little bit. We'll see what happens. But on that note, thank you very much for coming on the show.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Yeah, or thanks for having us. And Dan, thanks for existing. And we'll see y'all next time.

Thanks again for watching the show, guys. Be sure to go into the description down below and check out all of our sponsors. They are what make this show possible. It allows us to travel the country and talk to some really cool guests. So be sure to check them out, support them just like you support us and see y'all next time.