170. Diesel Aftermarket and Events, Martiniworks, Dirt Racing and Road Rally's w/ Dustin Korth

And then they'll smack all that nitrous all at once. And so what happens is your dynograph just goes bop.

Sure.

And so you make stupid horsepower now. I mean, 3,000, 3,500, 4,000, 4,400 horsepower now, but they made it for a 16th of a second.

Hello ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minnoxide podcast. I'm your host Harris, aka Minnoxide, man of many, Otimo. This is our second podcast today, and I'm here with my... Let's redo that. Hello ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minnoxide podcast. I'm your host Harris, aka Minnoxide, man of many automotive aspirations. And I'm here with my Ford-loving co-host, Dan, Mr. one-take, one-intro garage.

Yes, dude, I'm good at everything I do, man. I just pick it up and go with it.

Today we have one that's been a long time coming. I say that for every episode, but they really are. We are here with Dustin Korth of Martiniworks. I met you for the first time on the RVRR Rally. What was it? Two, three months ago now?

I have no idea.

I don't know. October, I think it was. End of September, 1st of October, somewhere in there. Yeah.

Wasn't that only that long ago?

Yeah.

Time flies.

No. Yeah, it was before Gatlinburg. End of September, I think it was.

Okay.

It all blends together.

Yeah, I'm so busy. I have no concept of time. That's what I'm saying.

You go from like Rally to Gatlinburg, to SEMA, to now, to PRI, to Christmas. Thanksgiving's in there somewhere. Black Friday's in there. Q4 is just chaos.

It's been nuts. We went out to obviously SEMA, but then we flew from SEMA all the way to the East Coast for World Cup and then came back here and said all of this to edit. So I get it. But no, I had met you on the rally and I'm like, I need to talk to this guy. So, and then Dan's like, you guys have known each other for a while now, right?

A number of years, man.

Yeah, absolutely.

Since early RVRR?

RVRR number two, which would have been what? 17, 18?

16, I think.

Yeah.

Right? No, no, no. Excuse me. Gretchen is gonna kill me for this, by the way. Gretchen is the one that keeps track of all the important stuff, dates, holidays, all that stuff. I'm just like, yeah, I'll be there. But no, I think you're right. I think it would have been 18. Because we founded in 16, launched our first rally in 17. So second would have been 18 then. Yep. Yep.

So you're kind of involved with pretty much, okay, first of all, what's your role here?

So I actually, I oversee a company called Meta Martini, which is, when you look at, we call it an ecosystem, kind of the whole sphere of what we do here. Meta Martini is our digital marketing agency. So I work with brands and help them with, excuse me, I hit the mic. But I work with brands every day and help them with all sorts of stuff. Content creation, social media management, go to market strategy is a really big one for us. We find a lot of success in that space. But really at the end of the day, we help cool brands do cool stuff. So we get to work with some awesome partners. We work with Continental a lot on the tire side. We've done some work with BBS and their Unlimited program, if you're familiar with that at all. Have one additive manufacturer, like large scale 3D printer out of Waukesha, which is rad. I always tell people if I can make 3D printing look cool on the internet, we can do about anything.

That's where the High Performance get, what was the company called?

Ovalogy, Ovalogy manufacturing.

I don't know, it might have been the same one day. So we had one of the guys from High Performance Academy on the show, and he was talking about, he literally got something printed from New Zealand all the way here in Wisconsin.

Oh, yeah, yep.

I was wondering if it was the same company.

He may have fulfilled that through like a Xometry or something too. So Xometry does like some white label stuff. Anyway, that's a whole nother conversation. But yeah, that's what I do here. Sure. Help out with some Martiniworks stuff here and there. Also, I'm a part of Martiniworks Racing, which is kind of our motorsports team. If you call it that, it's basically just all of us were doing motorsports stuff, and we were like, we should do something with this. So we smashed it all together. But that's really cool. What else do I do here? A little bit of everything.

Well, I was told that I was talking to Gretchen, and I was like, hey, we're talking about getting Alex and you and some people on or whatever. She's like, well, you have to talk to Dustin. Like, you don't reach out to Alex, so you gotta talk to Dustin.

Yeah, he's a busy man.

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah.

Yeah, it's cool, though, this is cool. We've been talking about this for like, even before Rally, man, I think we've been chatting about this for like eight months or a year now, where it's like, oh, we should get together, right? Because previous to this, you guys were on the Martiniworks podcast. It was like, you podcast, we podcast. This could be cool, let's connect. And then we both just like, we're everywhere all the time together. And I'm really happy it lined up.

It's so funny, it's like, we'll be at like the same events, and it's like our entourage has just crossed.

We just cross each other, or we're rotating around Central Hall at SEMA, it's so great.

Right now, Mercury's in retrograde, that's why we're here. Oh. It finally worked out.

Yeah, we did see you guys walk by while we were talking to Amsoil.

Oh cool, right on.

It's, you go out to SEMA and people are, they see us all like lavish, and you're doing all this stuff, but dude, sometimes it's work too. I mean, you're running around, and you expect, you always go there with intentions of getting together with some people, and then you end up at a place, and you're talking to people, and you're trying to make connections, and it's a lot.

Seem as all work for us, man. We put... Like, I started my days, I was on the shuttle from... Because we stay in Old Vegas. We stay at the Downtown Grand. So, I was on the shuttle by like 7.30, 8 o'clock in the morning, pretty much every day, and then you work all day till the show closes. Typically, we try to stay in one of the halls until like 6, because then you can meet with people and actually talk to them. And then, from there, you usually meet someone after dinner, and then go back, compile all your thoughts, and rinse and repeat, do it all over again the next day.

I missed the part where he says getting s******** in there. Well, okay, so we take a different approach.

I'm a responsible gentleman.

We take a different approach. So, we go to the show for a little bit, then we go back to the room and we take a nap, and then we meet all of those same people at the parties that are going on all over town.

See, we do a lot of that too. I'm just typically a little bit more reserved. We're out every night, man. We're out raising hell and having fun.

It really depends on the night for us, too. It depends on what we get invited to or whatever. It's like, yeah. But the other thing is, we stay at Circus Circus.

Oh, right on.

Because it's right next to the Convention Center.

I hate telling people that, because there's so many really cool places. Is it nice now?

So, we stayed there, I stayed there at a previous company that I worked for, because we would book like 60 rooms. And so, when you book 60 rooms, Circus Circus is like, we'll pay you $5 to come stay here, you know, basically. But they put a bunch of money into that place, I think, in like 22 months or so.

Stay in the casino tower, don't stay in anything else. Okay, sorry. He screwed up last time. There's certain areas that are nice, and for what you pay and how often I'm actually in my room in Vegas, and I can walk across the street to the convention center, I don't have to get up and get on a bus, like it's a lot nicer.

Yeah, that's why we like the Downtown Grand, it's just off of Fremont, it's nice, it's quiet.

Yeah, well, for us, we bring all our gear into one of the halls, right? So it's like, the shorter, the better. Like, yeah, we had to do traveling stuff. But it's like, it's kind of like a holiday inn. It's like a big holiday inn.

I would agree. Yeah, yeah.

Maybe a Marriott.

It's nothing super fancy, but it does the job and it's a place to lay your head at the end of the night.

Yeah. The hotel is nice. Sometimes the other clientele that's in there is a little sketchy, but other than that, it's an off-camera story.

Yeah, we'll talk about that later.

Yeah. Okay, so then, before you get into anything related to this, so where does this whole journey begin for you?

Oh, God. How far back do you want to go?

Birth. No. How did you get into the car scene? Because I know that you guys got what we used to call the MNCC, the Wisconsin Car Enthusiast Club over here.

Yeah, WCC.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So we can pick it up there, actually. It's one of my favorite stories. So Alex and I, a lot of people, when they meet Alex, because he has somewhat of a following, right? I mean, he does pretty well. And a lot of people are like, oh my god, I can't believe you know Alex Martini. I was like, man, I met that dude in 2015, okay?

Pretty ancient.

No, no, no, I don't love him to death. He's a homie, but he's my best friend, man. Him and Lars and Ben, we've done some rad, rad stuff together over the years. But when I met Alex for the first time, I had a Legacy GT, loved that car, incredible car. It's a Subaru, we'll leave that alone. I traded it as it started knocking, so that was cool. Or, excuse me, I bought that because I had a six liter power stroke that was about to blow up. So I traded that, bought a Legacy. I mean, just shuffled it down the road in terms of problems. But bought the car. I had moved up to Appleton in 2012 for college. I'm from the Sheboygan area originally. Waldo, if you know where Waldo is. Tiny little town.

Sheboygan is where you lost me.

No one's gonna make the where's Waldo joke?

No, is that where he's from?

I want you to know, you might be the first person that I've ever talked to that I'm like, oh, I'm from Waldo. And they're like, where's Waldo?

Listen, man, we're interviewers. We listen.

We don't care. I appreciate you guys. But yeah, little itty bitty town, 452 people. Sheboygan is close enough. So moved up here, graduated college, didn't really have any friends up here, didn't really know anybody. I worked a lot in college to pay for my tuition and things like that to get through it. So graduated, got a big kid job, went and did that, bought the truck, sold the truck, bought the car. And I was just like, man, I need to make some friends, cause this sucks. So somebody had posted that they were doing like a pop up meet at a bowling alley down the road from this place. I was like, cool, that'd be fun. Let's go hang out. And just kind of showed up and did like everyone does at the Cars and Coffee. I just kind of started talking to people. Met some friends, got involved, realized I liked it a lot. Made some more friends, started kind of hosting some smaller events here, just, you know, pop-up style meets at parks and things. And I had a lot of fun with it. And then I joined WCC, said nothing for like 18 months, just lurked. And Alex had posted at one point, you know, at that time, we were, I say we, because I'm involved now, I wasn't then, but they were hosting an event a month across the state. Every 30 days, it was a new city. And so he's like, hey, where should we host next? And I was like, Appleton sounds sick, because that's where I live. So he shot me a DM, we kind of worked back and forth. We put this event together, I put this event together in 28 days, which looking back now is bonkers to me, because like our season opener event now, it takes us six months to plan. But back then, we were just like, yeah, let's go to the Fox Valley Tech, we'll pay them $200 to rent their lot and hope we make money back and, you know, sell some gear and whatever, and we'll be good. And it was an absolute blowout. We had 1,000 cars. We had no business hosting 1,000 cars for the first time. I mean, there was traffic everywhere. There was no public bathroom. So people were running across the street to go to the gas station. And I think one guy got a ticket for, you know, taking a piss in the bushes and all sorts of stuff. I don't know if I can say that on the podcast, by the way, but here we go. So anyway, so it was chaos, right? Absolute chaos. But I remember kind of getting involved in how much I enjoyed it. And so after the event, I'm talking with Alex, and he's like, well, what's next? And at this time to set the stage, I'm 24. He's 22, I think, or close. We were young. And he was like, I was like, I love this stuff, man. This is rad. I want to do more of this. How can I help more? And so I got involved with the admin team, did that for a couple of years, and then the VP had stepped down. So I, you know, campaigned, I guess. I told the group, I was like, I want to do this. Took that role in 2018 or something. And it's kind of just spiraled from there, man. We've been kind of hosting events together. And then the road rally came up, hosted the first couple with my now wife Gretchen. But at that time, she was just my best friend. So did that stuff. And then I was working, I was working at, I was selling John Deere farm equipment, actually, ironically enough. I graduated with a degree in agribusiness and science technology, which makes a lot of sense for a digital marketing guy. But I was selling farm equipment, didn't really like my job there. And Alex reached out and said, hey, I have this opportunity at a marketing firm or a marketing company that sells wheels and tires for trucks. You're kind of a truck guy. Are you interested? And I was like, I don't know anything about marketing. I just not, I don't know. He's like, no, I'll teach you. Cool, let's do it. So started at Offsets for a while. I was there for like three and a half years. That didn't really work out. Left there, did some stuff at, for a holster company actually, which is cool. Another one of my very expensive hobbies, right? Firearms. Wicked cool to be in that industry for a while. Realized I can't stay there because it's more expensive than cars, I think, and I'm out. So left there and then came here, which is awesome.

Okay, so when did that happen?

When did the transition? 24. I officially, I was helping a little bit on the side, kind of as a contractor, just part-time. And then, yeah, Alex reached out and was like, hey, I need some full-time help. He actually reached out like three times in the first two. I told him, no. And then the third time, we kind of came together and I was like, sick, let's do it. So we did.

How did things go at Fitment? Because it seemed like everybody kind of jumped ship at the same time, and we don't have to touch on this if you guys don't want to. Because when I first met you guys, I think that's where we did the, we wrapped our cars and stuff was there. And you guys were all showing us around the place, like dude, this seems like the coolest job in the world, right? You guys are doing this stuff, but as I'm now getting into this stuff, it's not as glamorous as you sometimes people play it out that think that it is.

Yeah, I think there's a little bit of an illusion that like the grass is always greener on the other side, right? And I say that a little tongue in cheek because it was rad. Like, we did some rad stuff. We worked really hard, we played really hard, we had some really cool opportunities. I learned everything I know about digital marketing in three years there. I mean, it was really kind of a zero to a hundred, cut your teeth, learn some hard lessons, you have some really great resources, and make some magic happen. So it was awesome. And I'm always very careful. I don't ever want to speak poorly about my time there because I learned so much. And I 100% would not be where I am today without that experience. I think for me, you know, I started at that company, I was employee number 68, I think.

Oh, almost a glamour.

I know, we missed it by one, man. I remember that was the first day, my first day. And I was like, man, I could have just waited a week, and I probably would have been the right side of things here. But I started there and it was really cool, but we grew really rapidly, right? Our targets across the board were 50% growth year over year, and we did that. I think 20, we achieved 70% growth year over year. So we scaled really rapidly. And when you do that, everything shifts, right? You go from kind of a smaller, like smaller team, smaller vibe, kind of small business feeling, to when you go from 68 to when I left, there was 850 employees there, or roughly. So like when you scale that rapidly, things change, right? And I think for me, it was a lot of, a lot of the things that we talked about that we would always hold on to kind of got let go, right? A lot of that, like one of the things that we were really proud of is, you know, we maybe didn't pay the best, but there was also opportunities for like, hey, we'll help you buy some car parts because we want you guys to be enthusiasts, right? We want you to be involved in the culture because it makes you a better marketer when you know what you're talking about, right? Which was rad and those programs were sick and I got to do some really cool stuff. I got to meet a lot of companies that helped me build my Duramax, which is, I mean, bang on. I definitely wouldn't look like it does now if I wasn't in the industry. But towards the end there, a lot of that kind of started getting taken away and for obvious reasons, like accounting and legal and taxes and all the stuff that, you know, when you get big like that actually makes a difference.

And so you're saying you guys don't pay taxes here? We're a church. The Church of Martini.

But yeah, man. So like when a lot of that stuff started happening, you know, for a lot of us, it was like, I don't this isn't really what I signed up for. And so, you know, you saw a lot of us exit the company, especially for those that were there a long time. You know, no no hate to them. They got to do what they got to do. And it's their business to run how they want to. So, I mean, good on them. I've got a lot of friends that are still there. My neighbor, actually, is one of their content creators. He's a great dude. I ran into him at SEMA. We talked for like an hour. So, just a...

Not while you're mowing the lawn or anything. No, no, no, no.

But it was cool, man. Like I said, it was a really cool experience, and I wouldn't be where I am without it. So, yeah, just an unfortunate kind of turn of events, and my life went this way.

Sometimes when things start to get corporate, I mean, I've worked for a lot of companies over the years, too, where it's like, this is starting to get trash now, and then we just move on to something else.

Yeah, it's just the way it is.

Same thing for us, it was MAP back home. It got to whatever and it sold.

It's the same company.

Yeah, I know, I know. It ended up being gobbled up by the same monster.

Yeah, and again, I can't talk any sort of smack, man. They've grown that business pretty aggressively, and they've acquired some brands and are doing some things that obviously are still shaking up the industry, so good on them.

That's kind of a reality that we, because there's a handful of brands around the country that are just gobbling up companies, and that is kind of reality. In some ways, it's better. In other ways, it's just kind of time for people to move on. So that's probably a PC way of saying it.

Well, it spawns sometimes. If somebody gets fed up with it, then they start their own thing. So sometimes when things got out of hand, it spawned something else.

Dude, look at how much talent came out of MAP and how many businesses and awesome employees that you got back home. It's insane. I'm sure it's the same over here.

Charlie's doing his own thing. I know Charlie really well, so he's doing the Bay One thing.

Well, Charlie saved me after he gave me those little survival packs.

Yeah, I love him. Shout out to Charlie. But he's doing well. I mean, I'm trying to think of who else I knew that was over there. You know, there's a lot of folks that kind of branched out and did their own things, but you're exactly right. It's why when the team founded Martiniworks, I'd like to say me, but I wasn't really a big part of that conversation. But like when they founded Martiniworks, you know, the goal was we want to kind of do this again, but we want to do it and make sure that we're always true to who we are, right? That we want to... One of the founding principles of that brand was that we want to get out there and educate people and not tell them what to buy, but at least have them understand what they're buying. You know, so if you're 16 years old and you want to buy a set of odd hans, you know, a low pressure cast replica wheel, cool, buy an odd han, not a rota, because it's not going to crack when you smoke a curb, right? Or it's less likely to crack, I should say. On the flip side, we also want consumers to know that if they look at a work wheel, right? A work of motion versus a, you know, I forget what the odd han equivalent is there, they're not the same wheel. And there's a price difference for a reason there. There's some quality that goes along with that. Not that we're here to tell you what to buy one way or the other, but I want you to know what you're buying. And above that, we want to be a resource that helps people just kind of mod their cars, right? So whether it's your first time modding your car, your fifth time or your hundredth time, if there's something we can help with, if that's what we're here for.

You're in that hundredth category soon, right?

Yeah, no, actually.

How many cars have you had?

I thought we were reaching out to you guys because I want to put some unique wheels on my wife's S197 Mustang. And I want that like white, multi-spoke kind of Euro look, but it's not in the Mustang pages, right? Like you're not gonna find that and lethaperformance.com or wherever you would go and get Mustang parts, LMR, any of that stuff. So we may talk here sometime soon, but that was one of the things that I wanted that look. And so you were the guys I thought of reaching out to.

Yeah, and we love stuff like that. We love like one-off projects where it's like, hey, I wanna do something a little bit different, especially for a guy that maybe understands wheel sizing. Super cool. Not that you need to, right? We're happy to help someone who's like, hey, I just want super dope wheels. Cool, we got you. But man, we love random projects like that and just kind of thinking outside the box, cause it's cool. You don't get to do it every day.

Right.

So break down your day to day then, right now. Obviously you have the car season and all the fun stuff that you do, which we will get into. But like, what does day to day look like here for you then?

Yeah, so we're in office four days a week. We run a slightly hybrid set up. Tuesdays are remote. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, we're in office. Eight to five is typical hours here within reason. I say that because we're still a pretty small business. As you guys saw, there's a head count of ping pong tables and all that.

Taking that away from you.

We have a pretty low head count here. So small business ownership, as you guys know, means you wear a lot of hats. But for me, it's like, I come in, well recently, it's been a fun, random side quest. I brought on a contractor out of Australia, which is really cool. He's a killer dude. He knows a lot of people in the industry. We've had some bang on connections with brands. The problem is, his schedule and my schedule, very much so not the same. So if I want to meet with him, like today we had a meeting with a company in Ireland, and he's in Australia, and I'm in Wisconsin, and lining those three calendars up gives you about two hours a day. So I met with them at like 7.30 this morning, seven o'clock this morning, and took a call before work. But come in, pull some stats, lead the team. We do daily boards here, so we walk, oh, you're important.

Yeah, no, rookie move.

No, you're fine. But we walk through metrics on the day. Hey, that's good, I'm glad she's checking in on you. Yeah. Walk through metrics, kind of get everybody sorted for the day, and then from there, every day is different. Sure. And I feel like a lot of people say that, but transparently, every day is different. You know, some days I'm stacked with client meetings, or partner meetings, I call them. Some days I'm, headphones in all day, just crushing workout on tactical work. Some days I'm here, some days I'm off, some days, today I ran home on lunch to grab a mic, because the guys only had three mics. And I was like, s***, there's four of them, we need four mics. Or there's two of you guys and two of them. So yeah, man, every day is a little bit different.

I could have left Dan at the gas station, by the way.

But it's fun, it's a fun challenge. I enjoy the variety a ton.

Sure.

Yeah.

Well, I see some projects in here too, right? Who's wrenching on the cards then? Like, how often are you guys doing that?

So that ebbs and flows a lot. Typically we do most of our own work. It's funny you see there's some projects in here, because there's actually one, two, three, four of them not in here. In various states of drivable and not. But yeah, so we do a lot of the work ourselves in terms of like the lighter stuff, right? You know, we'll do suspension work, we'll do wheels and tires, we'll do, you know, kind of more of the bolt-on stuff. The really in-depth stuff, we've got a couple of friends that help. My buddy Jackson is an incredible mechanic. And I say mechanic, but he's really just kind of a guy that built a couple of cars and is like, he's handy with a wrench.

That's a category I fall into.

Yeah, he's really, really, really good. So like that thing, for example, the S2000, you know, that's a Jackson project. I don't have time to yank a motor out and put it back together and put it back in the car. Could I do it? Probably. Do I want to do it? No. You know, so Jackson will come help with stuff like that. But other than that, we kind of divide and conquer, man. We'll spend, you know, an afternoon, we'll put it in the calendar and just say, hey, we're working on cars from three to five today. Or a lot of times our favorite is like, hey, let's stick around on Wednesday night. We'll order in some pizza and wrench till nine, 10 o'clock. Yeah. We had a really nasty habit last year of waiting until like two weeks before before a show. And then trying to get all this stuff done at once, which typically included wrapping cars.

Oh no.

I don't hate wrapping cars. I hate wrapping cars when there's no time.

Yeah, that's fair.

And Lars actually made the joke that wrapping cars is like the final boss before you go to a car show. Cause every time it's like the morning of before we load the leave, we're wrapping something.

Every rally ever, by the way.

Yeah.

Or parking lots, right?

Yeah.

I always say every year, I say we're not doing a parking lot install on RVRR. And guess what? I think we've done a parking lot install every year. Yeah.

We take you to the second city of the rally. Cause like I would do three day ones. This is why like when we were talking about doing this, I'm like, I'm all rallied out. This is why, cause the last one broke me. Cause like we started in St. Louis and we were wrapping cars in Nashville that night.

Oh man.

Yeah. So like two or three to wrap.

So we did one actually that I feel you, cause we did this year's, this year's event was two days. We started in Podunk, Iowa, somewhere in Iowa, and then we rallied to Beloit. And then I ended up doing a couple of living installs that night. I think right before it started raining, it was sprinkling as we were like trying to slap stickers on the car.

Oh, we won't talk about the rain on that rally.

Oh, it was rough. Yeah, it was rough.

Dude, that was insane. Yeah, yeah. That was a rough one. Did you fix that on your car by the way?

No, I have a $300 Splitter Wick.

Oh, that's right.

I forgot you plowed into that bottom of the f****** lot.

I was like, I'm looking at it.

What I thought was a driveway was actually a river.

Yeah.

Going into a curb.

Yeah, that was rough.

I was like, Dan, stop, stop, stop. I was like, in my head, I'm like, okay, maybe he knows where he's going. I'm like, uh-oh. I'm like, stop immediately. Yeah, so, I mean, better than some of the other people in that rally. Yeah, yeah. Who was it? Somebody ripped the muffler out, right?

Nathan. Nathan blew the turbo off of his Daytona, or blew the turbo out of the Daytona, limped it home from Iowa to Green Bay, picked up his Mustang, his S550, drove it all the way back down to the end location, and on the way, ripped the exhaust out, or the muffler out of it.

Yeah, because I just went one wheel over that curb, he full-scented over that curb.

Yeah, he's a...

Yeah.

Yeah.

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So yeah, it was a fun one for sure.

Yeah, no, don't get me wrong, I enjoy rallies. I just don't think I would run one again. To be fair, I think what broke me was the wraps though. Back to your point is if I were to do it all again, I'd probably save $400 per car, because I was doing the full-on liveries and all that. I'd probably just do a little sticker. If that even, because now after our little group pullover, the group pullovers, have you encountered those at all or no?

We've had a couple, not too many.

Okay, well this last one you did, you got three Mustangs got pulled over on our way back from my debacle.

Yeah, well that's not even bad.

When we did Venom rally, we had a seven car pullover.

Oh Jesus.

Yeah, he got seven of us at once. Yeah, he's like, you're pulling over.

That's good quota. I imagine he did well.

That was half our rally. Yeah, by the way. We only had 15 cars. Yeah, that's wild. But nonetheless, okay, so you're doing a little bit of that then.

So are you still doing the rap thing then too? You didn't have like a vinyl business that you were doing at the same time?

Yeah, so I was doing that for a long time. I still do it like kind of ad hoc here and there.

Okay.

It's really nice to be honest with you. Vinyl is a great way to like have a side hustle. So like Christmas comes up and you're like, I need to make some cash. Let me just make some posts and somebody needs a sticker somewhere, right? Somebody always needs a sticker. So that's nice, but I dialed a lot of that back. Because as like, as this stuff all ramped up and as WCC kind of ramped up and as RVRR ramped up, I realized that I only have so much time and I love to work, but sometimes you can only work so much. So yeah, I still do that, but definitely not like, not full bore. At one point, I was like, I'm gonna wrap cars, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do PPF. And it's like, man, I just, I don't have time for all that stuff.

Which one broke you?

Honestly, wrapping like full wraps on cars is, it just takes time to do a good job and to do it right. It takes time. There's tons of money to be made. And like, if I was 18 again, had no wife, no kids, no nothing at home, and I was looking for a side hustle, learn how to do PPF, learn how to wrap cars, because you'll make bank, even on the side, you know, you get yourself a little 10 by 30 or 20 by 30 storage unit rental with heat, to stack the cash, because it's all labor. It's all labor hours. Yeah. But yeah, I just, I couldn't do all that stuff over and over and over.

It's one of those jobs that AI won't take anytime soon.

Yeah, it's very, very, very hands-on, which is cool.

You won't see Chad GPT throwing a squeegee across the store.

Ritchie will wrap because they've got it all the way down to the last corner and punched a hole in it.

What was your least favorite brand to work with?

Oh, boy, from like a rap perspective or a die cut, because we do a lot of die cut stuff now. From a rap perspective, I was not a fan of Hexas. Yeah, I was going to say probably a Hexas or-

At least at the time.

All the off-branded stuff, the tiny bots, vinyl frog, stuff like that. They're just really gross. They're firm, they don't bend, they don't move. What is really good, Avery Dennison, I think-

I love Avery. That was my favorite to work with.

Especially if you've never rapped before. Avery is so forgiving. I mean, it's so nice. KPMF is good. I like KPMF a lot because it's a good hybrid material. It's decent to wrap with. It's really easy to die cut. It weeds super nice.

Yeah, we did have a few cars in that, too. It used to leave a lot of residue, though.

Yeah, it is a little bit stickier material. Yep, so it is a- I think that's why it weeds better, is because there's more-

Sure.

Whatever glue they have is probably a little bit tackier to the paper, so you can lift the other stuff off. But yeah, it's not the cleanest removal.

You know what was one of the ones that broke me is I had a glitter vinyl, and that one, I think I spent six hours weeding it, and it was like two or three in the morning. I was like, I can't anymore.

We have some photos, because we love, like RVRR loves, we have a trophy for custom colors, you know, like who's got the best color combo. It's always a fun one. But we love the really off-the-wall stuff. I have a picture of, I think, Hamby actually, weeding vinyl of this lime green, this bright fluorescent lime green in my vinyl room. And the light is, it's so reflective that is, you can't see the material, but his face is just green. Just lit right up. So I feel you, some of that stuff, you get in there and you can't see a damn thing, and you just gotta kinda know your designs and pray like hell that you've got it right.

Yeah, the worst is like doing a little spot. I don't know, you guys print your sponsors, right? Or no?

No, no, we die cut everything, yep.

Yeah, dude, no, pass.

So we adopted a couple years ago, like there's a disclaimer in our sponsorship sign up that's like, hey, if your logo scales out, like the font scales out to be below a quarter inch or three eighths of an inch, we reserve the right to remove that portion of your logo. And we'll work with brands. I'm always, like, I don't want someone to show up and be like, where's half my logo on the car? But we work with a lot of folks where I'll just reach out to them and be like, hey, I can't do this. Like, this doesn't work. So either you can pay to have it printed and we'll put it on the car as a printed vinyl, or I can do some design work. I'll do it free of charge, of course, but we'll tweak the design so it makes sense for you. And I think that approach has helped a lot because otherwise we would end up... Matt Nelson was prime for that. He had American Advantage Insurance Agency Wisconsin, and it was all individual letters.

Yeah, and those are the worst appeal off your car, too. I want to take one piece by piece. All right, I'm done.

Yeah, it was terrible. Yeah.

I'm sure there was a situation where you're just like, has there been a little bit of drama with that at some point and you're like, we have to start printing these?

No, no people have been really good. Yeah, we're very blessed. I think when we look at River Valley Road Rally, and not to make this all a rally conversation, I'll stop you when I get sick of it. But we've been really blessed. A lot of our sponsors have been returning businesses, or our folks that have run the rally and then come back and said, hey, I want to sponsor this or things. So we have a really good relationship with a lot of those folks. And even the ones that don't just seem to be really open to that feedback and things like that. We always try to just approach those as like, hey, obviously this is an investment for your business. I want to make sure you're getting your value out of it. But it also has to work with the systems that we've got to work with. So how do we collaboratively find a solution together? And I think coming to the table from that approach versus a just, hey, I can't do this, I think that helps a lot. That gives people a little bit more forward thinking.

So what about you on the side then, right? So outside of like, you know, looking at a computer all day and work side of things, where does the automotive side, where does the automotive passion fall nowadays for you?

In terms of like, how does it line up in my life? If it is so deeply ingrained in everything I do. You know, I think like outside of work, and it's weird because outside of work is such a nuance when you're a small business guy.

Yeah, it's like a crossover.

Yeah, and everything is work, right? The most successful small business owners integrate everything they do into work. But like for me personally, I do some content creation. So I do mostly in like the diesel aftermarket space, a lot with diesel racing. I got really involved with like diesel drag racing a couple years ago.

Okay, so what's the guy with the, there's some crazy record holder right now. We talked about the Reese brothers car. Oh, the purple, what the hell is it?

Oh, the one that, yeah, he's in tight with, with LaVonna at Firepunk, right?

Yeah, Firepunk, that's what it was.

LaVon's a cool dude, and he's done a lot for the industry. But yeah, I got into that stuff a number of years ago. I went to my first UCC in 2022, which is a killer event, if you guys have never been to that one. Not that you need to add more to your calendars.

We'll see, some are up for grabs.

Yeah, Ultimate Call of Challenge is wicked. Where's that at? Indianapolis, Lucas Oil Raceway. Oh, okay. So, the drag strip there. But it is like, imagine the Super Bowl for diesel pickups. Imagine the one, that's it, that's UCC. So, the Ultimate Call of Challenge by itself is an invite-only event, so you have to be, you essentially have to get the call and then answer the call for the challenge. That's how they position that, which is cool. But it's one truck, three events. So, drag race, dyno, sled pull.

Oh, okay.

Top score of all of those wins.

Oh, dude, that's cool.

Yeah, it's wicked cool.

How have we never heard about this before? Have you heard about this?

No, I mean, I dabbled in the diesel stuff, but that sounds awesome.

This is like when I first heard of Texas 2K.

I just like watching them pull up on the dyno.

So, good news. Guaranteed, at least one guy will scatter the bottom end on the dyno. But these guys are crazy. They'll go like DHD, Dirty Hooker Diesel, if you guys know them at all. They're like the Duramax guys, right? They're the guys.

I definitely don't know them, then.

Yeah, that's fair. That's a whole other conversation. There's only some of us that are foolish enough to buy Duramax. And I love my Duramax for the record. So, like, DHD would go sub-five-second eighth miles. Everything's eighth mile there, because diesel stuff, you run on the top end. You run on the top end on the far side. But they're doing 450, 468th miles. Sometimes a little faster than that. Yeah, yeah. In a, like, 7,500-pound truck. Yeah.

That's insane, dude.

And they'll go to the dyno, right? And DHD will pull, they've got compounds for drag racing. They'll pull the compounds off and do a triple-turbo setup, like 2.88s over a 1.06. Big guys. I've got some clips I can show, I can send you guys, like, just gigantic turbos. And then they load it with enough nitrous to kill a medium-sized family, realistically. Like, we're talking- In a dentist's chair? Yes, I was down at, or over in Delaware a couple weeks ago for King of the Street Challenge, which is a very similar event, but more disciplines. There's some street driving stuff in there. Anyway, Chris Patterson, he's got a 6.7 Cummins. He's known as Mr. 3K. He's made 3,000 horsepower in the dyno like a bazillion times now. He had eight nitrous solenoids, four small ones, four big ones, that's just at his disposal if he needed them. He ran two, but he had eight. And I was like, why? And Chris goes, I need it, I don't know. And the two that he ran was a spool jet to spool the turbo, right? So they're obviously popping nitrous just to get the turbo to light. And then the other one was a 375 through a shower head. So just three lines into the intake, hit the button, let her eat. So these guys are crazy. So they'll do, like I said, they run sub five second, eighth miles, and then they'll strip turbos off, put big turbos on, go smack the dyno and make 2500 to 3500 horsepower. 3000 on a diesel dyno is not unheard of anymore. Josh McCormick just did 4300 or something.

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And then they'll get done with that. And like, DHD will tear the whole back end of the truck apart to go from drag race trim to sled pull trim, because sled pull is so much harder on a truck.

Okay. So what does that trim difference look like?

So-

Probably lower gearing.

Yeah, so drag, well, no, it's a complete rear, like, they basically, like, stub the rear of the chassis, and they replaced the whole thing. Differential, like, the diff, the axle, the drivetrain, everything's all different. So they'll work all night, they'll stay up all night and swap that over to go sled pulling the next day, which is bonkers. Okay. But it's a cool event because you could be really good at one. Right, if you're a great drag racer, that's awesome. But a good drag race truck is not gonna do well on a dirt sled, right, a sled pull. It's just not gonna work. And transparently, a good drag race truck is not gonna make a ton of power on a dyno because if you have too much power, you can't put it down, right? So it's a really cool kind of like, you start to see these guys that emerge in their various disciplines and they do a great job. But it's always this cool back and forth the whole weekend.

So is this, how long is this event? Three or two days?

Three days. So it's Friday, Saturday. Load-in is usually, vendor load-in is Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Event opens Thursday afternoon, but then it's racing Friday, Saturday, sled pole and award Sunday.

And is this kind of like, does the whole team go here? Is it just like you think?

It's just me, man.

Okay.

When it comes to diesel stuff around here, it's pretty much just me.

Okay.

Like we'll go to, you know, a lot of the guys are into motorsports and stuff. Like we were at Daytona for the Rolex 24 this year.

I was thinking about doing that next, So good. January, right?

Yeah, yeah.

We'll see where that lands.

It's so good. There's something so unique about the track at like 1 a.m., kind of after, because the race starts at 4 p.m., right? So the first like 4 to 6 hours, crazy. Tensions are high, everybody's excited, stuff like that. But like midnight, 1 a.m. comes around, and the whole track gets like quiet and close.

All you hear is cars.

Yeah, and it's cool because you'll have, you'll see guys in their full pit gear, right? I mean, helmet and everything, that are laying against a pile of tires out back, the pit box, snoozing. And then someone will yell, and immediately they're on their feet on pit wall, changing a tire, 10 minutes later, they're sleeping again. It's super cool. But yeah, when it comes to diesel stuff, I'm the only guy. So I do a lot of that stuff, do some consecration stuff. That's rad. Dirt racing is obviously my jam. I was just in Knoxville a couple of weeks ago. We were talking about that before the podcast.

Okay. I'll touch on that in a second, but I'll go back to that diesel. I'm so enamored now.

No, it's cool. I'm here for it.

What time of year is that typically?

Last week of May slash first weekend in June.

Okay. And then for the dyno side of things, what kind of dyno? Is it like a hub dyno?

No, it's a super flow. So they bring it in on Northwest dyno, I think, or Northwest dyno services or something. They're the guys that do it every year. They're like in the diesel world, the super flow is like the dyno. Like you can go hit whatever dyno you want, you make whatever number you want, but if you didn't prove it on the super flow, it don't count.

So is that like just, I'm completely unfamiliar. Is that like a roller style dyno?

Yeah, yep, yep, yep, yep, so it's like a gooseneck trailer that they towed around all over the country, and it's got this big dyno meter inside the carriage and stuff. And yeah, so they set it up, they get it all locked in, and then they roll these trucks up, and they strap them down, and pray like hell that it holds together, and both the dyno holds together, the truck holds together, the tires stay put. Josh McCormick making 4,400, he's having issues where he can't get a tire to hold together because he's smacking the dyno so hard that the tire just obliterates itself.

Oh wow, okay.

You're probably thinking of, you're talking about these high horsepower cars, but we're limiting on a diesel truck is probably foot pounds of torque.

Right, well exactly.

So like at 3,500 horsepower, what are we talking torque wise?

It does, it's definitely not nearly as aggressive as it is in the lower end of things, because those guys are building, because horsepower is really just a calculation, right? It's torque, and I forget, divided by 5252 or something or whatever. Anyway, those guys are building diesel engines that are revving out to 5, 6K, 7K sometimes. So as you get to the top side, it does kind of flatten out, but it's definitely not an inverse relationship at all. It's usually, you know, at 3,500 horsepower, you're 36, 37 hundred foot pounds of torque, which is insane. It's interesting though, here's my hot take. You want a hot take? I'll give you a hot take. Here's my hot take. Diesel, dyno is kind of a scam.

Okay.

To be honest. So here's what happens. Guy rolls up on the dyno. Let's say he's got a Cummins, you know, he makes big power, makes 2,500 fuel only, which is not unheard of. 24, 25 is getting up there. So he goes up on the dyno and makes a fuel only pass, smacks the dyno. Cool, sick, 2,500 horsepower. Let's turn the giggle gas on, right? They'll load that nitrous up and then they break boost it, right? Like anyone would, you know, you bring it in and introduce the load and break boost it. But what happens is they do this thing called nitrous slapping, which is essentially once you're ready, once that load is in and the truck is primed up and you're ready to launch it, they'll dump it out like they're roll racing, right? With the left foot brake. And then they'll smack all that nitrous all at once. And so what happens is your dyno graph just goes, bop, sure. And so you make stupid horsepower now. I mean, 3,000, 3,500, 4,000, 4,400 horsepower now. But they made it for a 16th of a second, right? It's instant. I mean, it's just that single moment. So where I'm starting to...

That's the moment where we see things go boom.

Yeah, 100% and embrace a bunch of stuff. But like, what I'm starting to ask the question is, I had this chat with Chris Patterson when I was with him. And it's like, for a guy to make that power on a 16th of a second or a 32nd of a second, I mean, just instantaneously, that's sick. But you couldn't hold that, you know? So it's like, did it do it once? Yeah. Is that a, can you race that power? Absolutely not. You know, can you street drive that power? Absolutely not. No. So I started to pose the question that said, and Chris and I started to pose that question and say, you know, what if you limited dyno RPM, right? And you can only gain so much speed per 100 RPM on the truck, for example. Or, do you do something where it says, hey, you can make whatever power you want, we'll help you calibrate it, right? Because there's calibration factors and corrections. And it's a very, there's no standardized body in dyno. So it's a very kind of ambiguous thing compared to like drag racing as rule sets. And sled pull has pretty standard operating procedures. But it's like, do you limit speed? Do you, what if you had to hold that power for two seconds on the dyno, right? Bring it up and hold it there one 1000, two 1000, let it out. A lot of these boys would be scattering parts real quick, you know, because you can't do that for a sustained amount of time. So that's my hot take. That's my like, it's cool. It's cool to see a really big number. It's kind of not real.

So then you get this weird dyno graph that looks like a big spike and then it drops back down again.

Yeah, so you make this like, you have this nice ramp up and then you have this like crazy accelerated, you know, over 150, 200 RPM, so it's like, bop, and then that's it.

It's like every time Trump talks about Bitcoin and then it comes down. Yeah, it just fails, man.

It's crazy though. You'll be able to tell, like, if you're at UCC, without watching the dino, I've been around this long enough now that I can tell you just by the sound if that guy made 2,000 or 2,500 or more.

Really?

Because what happens is if his dino pool is, ah, he made 1,500 horsepower.

Sure.

If his dino pool is, ah, that's 3K, all day every day, because they're just slapping the s*** out of it, you know?

Yeah, yep. Okay.

What's your favorite, so I know you have the Duramax, so what's your favorite diesel engine?

Man, I love my Duramax, I do, it is a great truck. I am fortunate enough to have bought an LBZ, which is like the holy grail of Duramax guys. The L5P gets down, right? The L5P's properly rowdy now that we're starting to see some guys dabbling that. I think it depends on what you want to do. If you're looking for a daily driver truck, I'd be hard pressed not to buy an L5P. The Allison is decent, they make good power pretty easily. They're still prone to the CP4 failures, like everything was post 2015.

I have the same, I don't know, I think I posted in your thing. I took a screenshot.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've been just putting the EDT in just to save it in case.

Yeah, at least to try. Yeah, right.

I should put the disaster recovery kit on it, but I don't know.

Yeah. But no, I mean, I love the L5P's. The power strokes are good. The Aluma Duty stuff is incredible. I think Ford did a really good job with those. I think if you want to go drag racing or any sort of performance diesel, man, it's a Cummins all day every day. And they come with a lot of nuances, right? If you want to go drag racing today and you buy a Cummins, you just assume you're putting a trans in it.

Anything Dodge, you're putting a trans in it, but yeah.

Yeah, and I don't disagree. I think what's interesting is nobody talks about Duramaxes in the same way, though. My LBZ is great truck at stock power, slightly above stock power level. But if I do 30 overs, I've got 30 over injectors, a 64 mil VGT, a new CP3 pump, and a high flow bundle to get it breathing better. If I wanted to, man, I could make 650, and that trans is going to hold for about minus five seconds. But nobody talks about the Allison failing at 600. It's always Dodge stuff, right? The 48s are garbage, the 68 RFE is garbage. It's like, yeah, it is. So is everything.

Right, sure. I do know that they have the new, the last year or two or whatever, they have some new trans in there.

The 10 speeds, yeah.

Yeah, so every forum I've been in has been good reviews so far.

Or the eight speeds on the Cummins stuff, yeah. The other good, they're much better than the other stuff is.

Yeah, we'll see how that shakes out over the long period.

No, but no, it's cool. One of the things I'm working on next year, actually, with the Martiniworks racing stuff is, I want to go drag racing really bad.

Okay.

Because we do a lot of grip racing, we do some drift stuff.

Yeah, the boring stuff.

Pro-Formule mods. No, no, I love all that stuff. I grew up a half mile off of turn one at Road America. I was never there till I was a whole grown adult. But motorsports has been a big part of my life. But these guys do all that stuff, and it's rad. I was super happy for them. But I want to go diesel racing really badly. And so we're going to buy a third gen 5.9 truck and basically document the whole process. Because there's nobody out there right now that like... If you want to learn how to drift, you go to YouTube. There are thousands of videos of guys that will teach you everything that you need to know.

Oh, there's like clinics and stuff, too. Well, you can go do that.

That's what I'm saying. If you want to learn how to drift, you can learn how to drift.

Are you familiar with Drift Maps by any chance?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, you know those guys.

But same thing as grip racing, right? If you want to get into grip racing, SCCA does a really good job. There's some other... PCC does a good job with some of that stuff. There's so many opportunities to learn about where to do that. If you want to go diesel drag racing, I would encourage you to go and Google right now and say how to get started diesel drag racing. You'll find nothing. I mean nothing of any substance anyway.

Let's see what happens.

Yeah, take a peek.

I'm sold now. I'm gonna call your bluff.

To be honest with you, I've been getting, not in the diesel side of things, but as we've been going to these tracks, World Cup finals, we go to Texas 2K, and then I just imagine that if I don't have a six-second car, I'm not even gonna be able to have fun.

Isn't that crazy?

Yeah, I know, but there are plenty of like, there's other classes. There's plenty of like even 11, 12. I'm just like, okay, I want to just do something to go and be in the event, because I think it would be a really good time. So I've had the itch lately.

All right, first one from drivingline.com. Competition Diesel 101, a beginner's guide to drag racing.

Yeah, open that up and tell me what that looks like.

Probably nothing diesel.

Exactly. So it's not that it's bad, right? There's resources.

But nobody's documented it.

But nobody's telling that story in a way that says, I'm 32 years old, I've never drag raced in my life, but I want to do this, how do I get into it? So I called Chris, it's why Chris Patterson and I are so close. I called him like a year and a half ago, and I was like, Chris, I'm going to be honest, I have no idea. I know that I need to Cummins, because that's what everybody runs is Cummins, right?

Is that big of a difference, huh?

Yeah, and that's just a reliability thing, right?

Yeah, you could do a six to a row power stroke for about four seconds.

And the six leader guys too, Jesse Warren does a killer job with the six leader stuff. I love my six leader job. He's got like a billet block and big turbos, and it's Brad, hardly runs. I'm sorry, Jesse, I hope you're not listening to this, but I love what he's, I mean, he's done some incredible stuff, but when you look at the guys that are winning, it's Cummins, Cummins, Cummins, Cummins, Cummins. Every now and again, a power stroke guy, he'll dabble, or DHD will dabble in the Duramax stuff. But I called Chris and I was like, yo, I wanna go racing. I don't know where to start. I know I need to buy Cummins. I spent an hour and a half on the phone with this guy, just like, do this, buy this, plan on this, look for this. Here's how you're gonna start. Here's where you're gonna go. Here's what you need for spare parts. I mean, he was an incredible resource.

So what's, okay, what does this to-do list look like? So let's say you're starting this next week.

Where is your to-do list? First and foremost, if you're gonna start it right out of the box, you need about $60,000.

Okay.

So start with that. Go buy yourself a late third-gen Cummins, so like 04 to 06, 07-ish. You want a 5.9. And the reason you want a 5.9 is not because you actually want the 5.9 24-valve, but it's because you're gonna yank it out of there anyway. So buy the cheaper truck, right? Yeah. Or if you can find a roller, find something that's blown up, right? Because the thing is, to go drag racing and be semi-competitive, you're gonna need to do a trans. You're gonna need to do an engine. You're gonna need to do a turbo. So none of that stuff matters. So buy whatever you can find. Doesn't matter if it's super pretty, because if you're handy with wrap, or you want to do some paint work, or if you just don't care if it's ugly, clean it up. Although, hot take, I don't believe in ugly race cars. Just because it's a race car doesn't mean it needs to be ugly. So go buy one of those, four to 10 grand, depending on what you buy. Bring it back, run it, have fun with it. And let me back up. The caveat here is I want to race 670 index. So when you look at diesel drag racing, there's 770, 670, 590, I think it's 570 now, ET, and then you get into like the crazy stuff, the pro truck and unlimited stuff, and guys like Justin Ziegler that are doing four second eighth mile passes, which is nuts. But that's a purpose built tube chassis. It's less of a truck. So I want to go 670 racing, because it's kind of the best of both worlds, in my opinion. You got a cage, but you don't need to be super stripped, so you can retain some of your interior bits, things like that. But yeah, go buy a truck. Plan on 670 swapping it with some sort of filled block or something like that. You're going to need headwork, you're going to need turbo, you're going to need injectors, you're going to need a trans build, but kind of start piecing that stuff together. Plan on doing a cage, like I said, you're going to need certs there. Full manual valve body, so you got the cool ratchet shifter up on the top, which if you've never driven one of those, wicked cool. They like, it like scratches the brain when you go to shift. Even on like the street, I got to drive Chris's truck, which has made 3000 a handful of times now on the street in Delaware. And it was sick. On the dyno the day before, it made like 2400, just 2400. But it was sick because it's so well-mannered. So you go to get started and you like, it sounds like a Peterbilt. It's just got this deep growl. And then you're in first and then you go to shift. So it's just click. And it's like this springy mechanical kind of click as it goes in and you lock the converter, go into third, flip the overdrive button. They're so, it just like scratches the itch in the back of the brain to drive that.

Is it kind of like that sequential kind of click?

No, it's less of a, sequential is more like, it's like metallic, right? Especially if it's going through something like straight cut gears, real whiny and things like that. A full manual valve body is like, imagine a perfectly built pen, right? Like the nicest pen that you've ever held in your hands.

Yeah, the Pila G2s.

Sure.

Maybe a little tighter on the tolerances.

Sure, sure, sure.

Imagine like a super hand built bespoke pen, and you go to click it for the first time, and it does that like the springy, tactical, like, it's like that.

Don't do that to me.

It is so good.

I'm envisioning it right now.

And the audio, because it makes like a springy click noise when you turn it. Sure. It is so good. It's so good.

So I feel like I'm in a South Park episode right now.

But yeah, man, it's, but that's where you start. And then the rest of it is just driver mod.

Is that really all it takes is 60 grand to get into it?

Just 60 grand.

Well, in the drag race world, though, that's like light duty.

But again, you're running 678th mile and stuff. So it's fast, but it's not, I mean, these guys are trapping, you know, 670 at 90 to 100 miles an hour.

They're boogieing. Is it two wheel drive, or is it four wheel drive?

So you're doing four wheel drive boosted launches. Obviously, you need some wheel and tire setup in there. Right? But it's not the most affordable, but it's also definitely not the most expensive sport to get into.

Well, I'm just doing it in my head. Like, yeah, there's very, like, for example, when you go to like normal drag racing, what is it? Fox body and an LS.

Yeah.

Not much to get into it. But like, then you also get into like the high performance stuff, and it's like, it's a snowball.

Yeah. And that diesel stuff is the same way. It scales super quickly, right? To go from 770 to 670, not that much more. To go from 670 to 590, quite a bit more. To go from 590 to, you know, pro truck, a lot more. And so it does the same thing. It just ramps so aggressively.

Right. Are you seeing less, I'm trying to think, I don't, like I see plenty of cars going squirrely, hitting the walls, is there less of that happens in the diesel drag?

No, it's all the same stuff. And you'll see guys too, like, it's interesting because I think that the diesel aftermarket is so young yet that...

Really? Okay.

Yeah, like, a lot of folks don't know this, but where the gas aftermarket has been around for almost 75 years, 100 years, basically since the Model T came off the line, right? The diesel aftermarket didn't start until Gale Banks essentially founded it with the Sidewinder kit. Which is a real...

Side thing, he's like my number one goat guest.

He's a cool dude.

Dude, he seems...

He is a wicked cool dude.

The guy's like a f****** rock star.

I got the tour, I got the tour of Banks Power in Cali there, and I'm walking through Jay, their Director of Marketing, or I forget what his title is, Jay's a cool guy. But we're walking through and he's showing us production and stuff and things like that, and we round a corner and I just about run into a car, because I'm talking to Jay, we're talking like this, and I was like, oh, shoot, I'm so sorry. And I look down and it is a GT40. It's a bright red, white striped GT40. And I was like, holy s***. I've seen two of these in my entire life. This is the second one. Like, this is cool, right? And Jay goes, yeah, it's just, that's Gale's car. It's just in for an oil change today. What? But yeah.

I didn't mean to cut you out.

No, no, no, you're good. You're good. But he, so the story here is that GM comes to Gale in 1982 or three or something, whenever the Trans Am was like at the peak of stuff.

Okay, better on that.

Yeah, and they go to Gale and they say, Gale, we want you to set a land speed record at Bonneville this year. Gale's like, hell yeah, I'm in. That's my stuff. So they give him a couple cars and a whole entourage of tools and parts and everything that he needs to go set a land speed record. And he does it. But on the way from California, from SoCal, they're in outskirts of LA., from LA to the salt flats, they're towing two trailers with all their gear and the cars.

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Let's get back to the show. With Suburbans, I think, with the 6.2 in it, which if you know, the 6.2 Detroit, gutless, miserably slow. I mean, couldn't get out of their own way if they had a strong wind at their back. So Gale comes back and he's so pissed off at this thing that he says, I'm gonna mount a turbo to it. And such, the Sidewinder kit's born. And that was the first time that anyone had ever looked at diesel outside of like, this goes in school buses and tractors, right? We could do something with this. And so when guys think about diesel aftermarket, they're like, man, parts are harder to find, or they're more expensive, or I feel like we've reached a ceiling. It's like, guys, you got to chill. We've been at this 35, 40, you know, sub 50 years at this point. The gas world has been around for double that. And look how far they've come. So we're ramping up, diesel ramping up really, really quickly. But to answer your question, I think because that industry is so young yet, you see just as much or even more of some of those things, you know, guys scattering bottom ends, guys snapping crankshafts and putting trucks into walls, guys that are really experienced that just have a bad take or have a bad launch because there's just not, there's not that data available that says if your air temp is this and the track temp is this, your tire pressure should be this if you make this power. That doesn't exist yet. We're writing that right now, which is really exciting.

Huh. That's funny. We were just talking about that truck beforehand. I got a side one. I didn't realize that was, that's like a...

That's the thing, dude. That's the one. Yeah.

Oh, that's awesome.

Yeah, it's such a cool story, man. And Gail has done such an incredible job in the industry. Now, I know there's some conversations, because he works... He obviously owns Banks Engineering, I think, is the engine plant. So they provide all the engines for the JLTVs and things like that, all the military contracts. So he's very close with the government, which explains why he's very emissions-compliant tuning. And he's in California, so it makes sense. But that makes some people a little bit less...

I just love that when he's got a product, or when he sees somebody else ripping off of one of his products, he'll call him right out on the camera and is like, listen, this is why your s*** sucks.

Yeah, he's a little aggressive sometimes. And that gets taken with... You know, there's some love and some hate on that on the industry, too. But I think regardless of what you think of him today, it is undeniable the impact that man had in the last 30 years.

Yep.

Absolutely.

If there was three events that we had to add to our calendar, Diesel World next year, which three events would they be?

Oh, that's a really good question. If you're looking for a really good cross section, obviously Ultimate Call of Challenges is top of that list. Like above all, if you can only make one, that's the one you go to.

Okay, that's the one in Indy?

Indy, correct. That's really good. Let me see. What else do I really enjoy? From like a show truck side of things, if you're into like brodozers and big wheels, I think Music City is a really good event. That's in Nashville. Again, definitely a lot younger crowd there. Less horsepower, more like 16 lines and whatever. It's, I will say though, it is really cool to just experience it.

Sure.

Because it's almost like, it's like Stance Cars.

Like the outside area at SEMA there, the like small section.

Yeah, yeah. It's interesting because there's some small, that's not a small section.

Compared to some of these meets though, like there's hundreds and hundreds of those trucks.

It is cool though, like when I worked at Offsets, man, we would build four, five, six, seven trucks a year and go to, there was an event called, oh my God, it's escaping. It was in Branson, Missouri. It hosted at this old golf course. But really, really cool event. And we would take all the trucks down there. And like, you think mobbing in six cars is cool? Imagine mobbing down like a city street, six deep at eight o'clock at night. It's pitch blackout and you got rock lights and wheel rings and everything's all lit up and powder coated and I mean, turbo screaming to the tens and it is cool. It is such a cool feeling. But yeah, Music City is really cool. That's a neat event. And then, man, I mean, I think, you guys are probably hitting the other ones already, but like pure PRI is a big one from just like an industry standpoint. I think there's more of that showing up now than there was before, which is cool. I would go to PRI over SEMA to transparently. SEMA is cool, but it's big and obnoxious and you walk a lot. PRI is like, you have cool products. Let's talk. Then let's go get drunk later.

Yeah, I always tell people if you so going to SEMA is great and you'll see some people at SEMA, you won't see a PRI. Correct. There's some connections sometimes you need to go there for. And it's cool because it's Vegas, right? You have endless opportunities. If you want it to be more personal, PRI has to be. If you were somebody who was looking for sponsors, you're going to get a way better chance to hit up somebody if you go to PRI.

Absolutely.

Well, I actually told Brandon from ARS the other day, I'm like, dude, you need to go, fly in. I'll pick you up from the airport. I might backpedal on that one.

I'll call an Uber, it'll be fine.

But I sent him a screenshot that MoTek is going to have a booth there, and he's a MoTek guy, right? So I'm like, this should be your first stop. And he's like, I'm going to talk to the boss lady.

That's cool. PRI is sick because it's like, you have nowhere else to go, because also in Vegas, you have all this other stuff, and the weather is nice.

So you're like, You try to hit everything.

Yeah, guys will dip out early, they'll go walk the strip, they'll do this, they'll do that. PRI is like, we have this show, and it's 10 degrees outside, so you can either be here, or we're going to the bar.

Yeah, right. There's two ways to stay warm.

Yeah, exactly.

It's also three days long. I mean, as you may have seen on Facebook, it's like we're going to have a booth over there, and we're going to be doing 16 interviews in three days. Yeah, yeah. And it's like, it's a pretty stacked list, which I'm really excited for, but you can only do that at PRI.

And there's such a cool cross section there, too. It's like, you into dirt cars? Cool.

Insane.

Late models? It's there. Spring cars? They're there. Dirt midgets? They're there. You into drag racing? Sick. You'll find all the drag racing cars you want. You into diesel stuff? You know, typically there's one to two diesel trucks that scatter their way in there. Yeah. Sure. So it's like, it doesn't matter. If you're into something going fast in some fashion, either on the street or on a track, there's something there for you.

So for diesel events, UCC.

Yep.

And then Music City.

Yep.

And then PRI.?

Yeah, probably, to be honest.

Sure. But that's just overall a growing scene, too, then.

Yeah, and that, I think those three are kind of like, what's the best of the best that also doesn't give you the same thing, right? Because UCC is cool, King of the Street is cool, but they're so similar that I'd have a hard time telling someone, go to Indy, to UCC, then three months later, go to King of the Street in Delaware again.

What are the types of psychos that do that? Because we did, this year we did, we did Texas 2K, then we did street car bragging rights, and then we did World Cup finals. Yeah. Jeez, we really did do it all this year, holy s***.

What I think is cool is you're starting to see some diesel guys get down in the next evolution of that motorsport side of things. Like, like Dragon Drive stuff, right? So like, my buddy Wyatt, I say buddy loosely, he's an acquaintance of mine that I met through the diesel scene, but he's got a, like a 72 C10 that's Duramax swapped. But he would take that thing everywhere. Do he do like sick week with it, and all sorts of like, like rockin on race week and stuff. And so it's, it's cool for me to start to see some of these diesel trucks that kind of roll up and, and will beat up on some of these street car guys, because they've been so uncontested for so long in their spaces, right? And it's fun to see guys look at it and be like, there's no way a 6,000 pound truck is gonna walk me. And then you put a bus length on them in a quarter mile.

Well, that's what intrigues me, right? It's kind of like, again, I'm not really involved in that world, but I want to get involved in it. It's just, I don't even know if sleeper's like the right term, but like, that's why I love my GTI, right? Like I could beat up on a Hellcat, if I do the right mods, you know what I mean?

It is a crazy, so my first taste was, I had an 05-60 truck.

God bless him, I love those trucks.

Oh, it was such, dude, the way it, like, and I bought it, it was stock. And my buddy's like, dude, you gotta get these. I bought it, it was stock, and I drove it, I was like, dude, what are you talking about? This thing sucks.

Yeah.

And then he's like, just wait. So I tuned it, deleted it, and I was like, I love this truck.

Chat, we're back.

Yes, and it was great, cause you would get some buddy at a stoplight, and you're sitting there and they have no idea, and I wasn't even like crazy. I would know bigger injectors, none of that stuff, stock turbo, and I would just lay on it and just blow them away, and it was so great.

Lars had a 2020 M2 competition that he bought brand new six-speed car, and the M2 comps are no slouch, right? I think that generation of car made like 430 or 450, weighed just over 3000 pounds. It was a pretty peppy little car. And let me preface this by saying, Lars is not a drag racer, right? That's not his thing. But him and I ended up next to each other at a stoplight one time in downtown Amsterdam, just f****** around. And he's like, he rolls his wind down on it, he's like, you want to race? Sure, man, I'm in, you know, whatever line of, and I mean, mind you, I'm in a 2007 2500 HD Chevy Silverado on a four and a half inch lift and 35s on 14 wides. My tires weigh 176 pounds a piece. I weighed them. Of rotating mass, for the record. So we're eating a couple horsepower up there. And it's tuned, it's got an intake, but stock fuel, stock turbo, you know, stock all that stuff. And we launched, and in a city block, or in two city blocks, I put about a truck and a half on him. And it was like, dude, you know, this thing weighs 7,000 pounds. It should not move like that.

I'll do it with a trailer on sometimes.

Same, as long as I know things are strapped down, well, we ball, you know? But man, they just boogie. If you've never done a four-wheel drive boosted launch and anything over, like in a diesel truck over like 700 horsepower, put it on your bucket list. It is a feeling unlike anything you will ever experience. Because it, and I've never done it in a gas car, but I assume it's the same way, right? So like you stage it, and you kind of, you get her set in, locked in four high, and you bring the RPMs up, and you spool her out really good. And when you launch it, it's crazy, because there's this feeling of like, the instant torque throws you back a little bit, and we're talking a half a second later, that front end grabs, and like the whole truck picks up, and it gets like weightless as that front end is clawing. And the moment you like, so you like weight transfer back, and then you kind of rock up as the front end grabs, and the moment you come back to zero, it is gone. I mean, it's crazy. And the turbos are screaming, there's black smoke, everywhere, and you're just holding on for dear life, going, how do you keep this thing in a straight line? Like, it's so violent in all the best ways.

Oh, man. So that 24, whatever, 3,000 horsepower truck you drove, did you get on it at all?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, to the point where I was being very gentle to it. I'm always, I have this weird niche where I love driving slow s*** fast and fast s*** slow. It's like I'm dailing a Mini Cooper right now, which is a probably fun car. Also, very different, I've realized it must be the ADHD. I like extremes, so really big lifted trucks, really fast trucks, tiny wheel cars. I had an NB Miata with a Supercharger on it at one point, which is also incredibly fun. But anyway, so I love driving slow stuff aggressively. And then there's something about driving a well-mannered build that makes a ton of power on the street. The GT350s are really good for that. I assume the Shelby's, the 500s are the same way. But the GT350 is such a cool driving experience because you know it could kill you at any time, but it's so respectable in the hands. She's just like, I'm here until you tell me it's time to kill something. But so is the same way. So I was being really gentle to it. I was being nice. I just was kind of taking it all in. I was enjoying the ratchet shifter. It was incredible. And we stopped at a stoplight and Chris is like, okay, once you kind of get into it, bring it up to second, lock the torque converter, and then just lay on it, man. Just get into it. And so we did. I kind of brought it up in first and got her up there, clicked her in the second, brought it up, locked the torque converter in, of course, and then it kind of shutters and it brings it down, and then you start coming back up. And he's like, all right, three, two, one, hit it. And I bet you I was only half throttle. It's a dually. All four rear tires break loose at 45 miles an hour. The truck goes like this. Long enough wheelbase that it stays straight, but you feel like it's squirrely. And I'm laying out a bunch of black smoke everywhere. And then I'm still hand on the shifter. And before I can even think, Chris reaches over and smacks my hand into third, because you can hot shift them between two and three with the converter locked, smacks it into third. I let out at what I think is like 65. I looked down and we were cresting 100 miles an hour. But dude, it was so cool. It was honestly like bucket list driving experience for me. It was incredible.

They are really fun, but it's funny, up to about 100 miles an hour, then things start to get sketched.

Yeah, man, you get up there and you're like, that's a lot of momentum.

Yeah.

There's a lot of weight there. If I hit something, it's gonna hurt, because it's not like safety barriers are a thing for cars.

Yeah, normal vehicles.

But you smoke a safety barrier in a 6,000 pound truck, it's at 120 miles an hour, you're taking the barrier with you.

Don't worry, I just had to pay $5,000 for a guardrail, but I hit it with an excursion, so I really took care of it.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, that's wild, man. It's such a different driving experience, which is why I think I'm so hooked on it. It's just unlike anything I've ever done before.

You just got that bill, what, a month ago?

Yeah, yeah. I finally, I only had liability on the excursion, so I just assumed, we were coming back from PRI.

Okay.

And I had bought a welder from Lincoln, but I bought one of their...

Hey, hold up, that'll get you slapped around here. Miller's like two miles down the road.

I know, I didn't realize Miller was a Wisconsin company. You were in Appleton. Yeah. I did buy a Miller helmet, so I have a Miller helmet with whatever. So I, but we bought the display unit, so we had to stay later on Saturday, and we had some weather came in on the way home, and I hit black ice right in Tomah. And I felt the truck get a little squirrely at first, and like I didn't want to put in a four wheel drive, which would probably not help me anyway, but I will if the weather gets bad. But you've got to get out and lock the hubs on that truck, and I'm like, ah, too lazy. And so then we get, and it just spun around, and I kissed it and broke my fricking pitman arm right off of my steering box, and yeah, we were dead in the water there. And we were getting on the tow truck, I said, maybe I'll get out of here, and nobody will notice the guardrail. Tow truck, I call him right away, he's getting us, he's pulling us, we're halfway up and a cop shows up. And then he didn't even see the guardrail, so we were almost out of there, and he goes, oh, you hit that? And I was like, yeah, I did.

Yeah.

It's kind of hard to like say, no, I didn't, my truck's all busted.

No, what me was the last guy, I just had a weird mechanical failure.

It's like the kid with chocolate all over his face, I didn't eat the brownie. What me? But no, my insurance company is taking care of it, so thankfully I'm not actually getting into it. That's nice, yeah. But I do like my welder, but it cost me a truck.

Yeah, well, I mean. It cost you a truck.

I had to wait till the end, so that was the problem.

Yeah, we usually dip out early on Saturday.

Yeah, us too.

By like 10 a.m., I'm like, man, I've seen it, and I cooked.

Yeah, we don't get that much this year.

Yeah, you guys are in for a long weekend.

Between, yeah, we had to get there Wednesday, first of all, we had to set up everything, and then obviously, 16 episodes, and then the weekend's over, and then we still have to pack up.

And then drive home, how far is it?

It's about an eight-hour drive.

So it's not awful, but it's enough.

It'll probably be out to like six.

Yeah, so you're getting home late.

Yeah, so. Good news, though, is that I have a really nice 7.3 Power Stroke that I dumped a lot of work into. It's been regasketed, it's got head studs, it's got a KC turbo on it, it's ready to rock and roll. It's just in a slightly twisted excursion that I will either cut the front end off and put a coil over one on. Or a coil, you know, the newer 05 and up. Or try and bend it back and just make a rock crawler out of it. Or I'll take the 7.3 out and put it in like a Bronco that I have or something.

That would also be sick.

Dan has a lot of cool ideas. And he executes on a lot of them actually, which is a scary part.

The best part is I think he's run our rallies a handful of times now. I think he's done it in a different car every time.

Yeah, you might be right.

I think so. I think so. Other than like Riverside, River Valley, I think you've done in the 500 now. But other than that, I think it's a different car every time.

You did the mouse car, you did the orange car, you did the 500.

Yeah, orange car, 500 and mouse car.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I hate that I called the mouse car too.

Yeah, which is still around. I sold that car to my dad. Because he helped me build it and he's like, you're just gonna sell it? He worked really hard on it. I was like, you want it?

Yeah, for real.

Okay, so we touched on the diesel side of things. What was the other thing? Dirt track?

Dirt racing.

Oh yeah. So that's the thing that I've never attended yet and we haven't had anybody on the show that really does it. I want to learn about that world because apparently those guys got balls of steel.

So yeah, we could have started there. There's hours we could yap about this one. But man, the world of dirt racing is cool. So for me, I grew up in the outskirts of Sheboygan there. So Plymouth has an incredible little dirt track, quarter mile at the County Fairgrounds. But really, actually pretty renowned racetrack. I mean, it's no like Knoxville or Eldora, the big stuff. But like, man, everyone who's anyone that's been in a sprint car has raced there. Tony Stewart was there once, Kyle Larson. I met Kyle Larson a couple of years ago, and everyone always asks the same questions, right? And so I was like, I'm gonna ask him something different. Be like, why do you like sprint car racing? And I asked him, he told me, and it was cool. But he's like, are you like real familiar with dirt tracks? I was like, yeah, I grew up in Plymouth. And he goes, I love that track, it's incredible. Holy cow, you know? So it's always been a part of my life, ever since I was a little kid. My dad ran hobby stocks for a while. And then when I was old enough to finally work, I was before the days of electronic communication, you would hand write all your lineups on a piece of paper. And so my job was every Saturday to hang out just outside of the scoring tower until they opened the door and handed me a piece of paper. And my job was get down the grandstands and into the pits to hang it up as fast as I could. Because the faster you got it there, faster guys knew where they started. So it's always been a core part of who I am. But those guys are crazy. Yeah, I mean, that world is insane. And the sheer amount of dollars in that world that I don't think, I think a lot of folks attribute dirt racing to hoodlum, not hoodlum, but rural America, maybe lower income. Sure, those are the words I'd use.

Yeah, like a lesser of a race.

Oh, it's your local dirt track. They're banging Monte Carlos, they're banging doors on Monte Carlos with square tubing. Man, and some of it is still like that, don't get me wrong. But when you look at the upper echelon of some of that stuff, the Lucas Oil late models this year had a total winner's purse, if you just took the winner's purse of every event of $800,000. Bobby Pierce won $175,000 in three days a couple weeks ago, because he won two back to back races. Like Jonathan Davenport, these are all late model guys, Jonathan Davenport won the Eldora Million last year, or two years ago, where they've paid him a million $2,024, or $23, something like that. Like life-changing money is happening in some of these races. And it's the same in Modifieds, Big Block Mods and Sprint Cars, and all of that stuff, man. So yeah, little like, you know, just nuance there. Everyone thinks it's like rural stuff, and it's, man, there's big dollars, and lots of engineering, and lots of money into cars, but yeah, those guys are racing on a track surface that changes throughout the race, not even just over the night, throughout the race you're on it. The driving line changes, the divots and ruts and things change, and you're going 100 and, I don't know, they clocked a Sprint Car at an Anago, at a half mile track, at 130 miles an hour on the back stretch. In a car that, mind you, makes 800 horsepower, weighs 1200 pounds with the driver, and all it is is a tube chassis, an engine. There's no transmission. It's just a drive shaft back to the rear end. It's in gear or out of gear. There's no starter, no clutch, no nothing, and a big wing on the top that holds, puts a bunch of arrow down and holds you to the track.

Oh my god.

It's nutty.

I gotta get out to Cedar Lake and check it out.

Yeah, I didn't realize you were that close to Cedar Lake. That's an incredible racetrack.

How far is that from your place?

Maybe 15 minutes. It's like 10 miles. Oh, man.

Go to one of those. Yeah, I always wonder where to go. Yeah, because I have a friend down in Arizona, and he's all about that stuff. He's always telling me, you gotta get out, talk to those guys, NASCAR drivers, all that sort of stuff. It just seems like an insane world. And every once in a while, I get them in my comment sections, too, and I'm like, all right, let's see what this guy's all about. I'm like, oh, okay.

It's so cool. And there is something so satisfying, because the cars are, when you watch a spring car driver, for example, who's wide open on a half mile, especially qualifying and stuff, in pack racing, it's a lot different, because you're shimmying all over the place. But in qualifying, he's not moving his hand, but this far. I mean, he's moving at a half rotation tops. Everything else, they're driving that off the throttle. So you wind this car on the straights, and it's going down the straights this way, by the way. If the racetrack is like this, it's going down the straight like this on kind of a crab walk almost. And then they get in the corners, and they set this thing up, and they weight transfer to the right rear, and then you just use the throttle, and they'll hook that right rear on the cushion, right on the little berm of dirt. And when you do it right, you just ride that cushion around and back out of there again you go. So it's unreal. It really is.

Is that all standardized at all? Or are they like running the same chassis, same engine, all that?

Yeah, so there's some pretty good rule sets. I think there's a couple of organizing bodies that are putting this stuff together that's, like on the spring car world, it's world of outlaws and high limit. And they do a really good job of like kind of securing that and dialing that stuff in. But you'll see some goofy stuff every now and again. There's one guy a couple weeks ago, I don't even think he raced for points or money, but he just went to test a car. And he took the wing and he shimmied it all the way to the right. So it's like wing piece and then the driver's spot and then there's this huge gap before the other side of the wing. I assumed to move that center of gravity over when he's in corner and things like that. But for the most part, it's pretty locked in, pretty standardized, and it helps keep things pretty fair, I think.

Sure. So what are they using for engines in those?

Big ones. Big and very expensive. A lot of them are based on small block Chevy stuff.

I was gonna say.

Although, it's really interesting. Ford's done a really good job with their racing program in that space, and believe it or not, Toyota's been kicking around in the sprint car world now for like three or four years.

Okay.

Which is really interesting. But they worked with some really big names, and they've done fairly well for themselves, considering that's pretty outside of their wheelhouse.

So there's a lot of OEM support as well then?

Or from an engine side? Engine, yeah. But the rest of it is like, Wilwood pretty much has the market cornered for brakes, right? They're just the guys in dirt racing brakes. I think wing, like wing technology, there's only a handful of guys that make wings. And there's, wings are pretty like ruled down, you know, kind of tight on that, because guys have tried every trick in the book, whether it's pulling supports out. I've seen guys pull center supports out of wings, so that way the wing bows more in qualifying, so you get more traction. Because the whole dirt world is just a dance of horsepower, traction, track conditions and traffic. All at the same time. So it's like, and there's some tire wear and stuff in there, too. You know, the late model guys will run 100 laps on a dirt track, and like, you beat the hell out of your tires in lap one through 25. By the end of the race, you got nothing, and you're just skating on ice. But yeah, in terms of like OEM, there's not a ton of like, it's not like IMSA, right? Where like Lexus and Porsche and all those guys are involved in that. It's more so like, hey, we can build this big obnoxious 800 horsepower V8. Sick, let's strap it in a tube chassis.

Right, yeah. Who was it that was watching a month or two ago? I think, was it Travis Pastrana? I think that was his first time in one of those cars.

Did you catch what he said at the beginning? It's one of my favorite quotes. So the camera, the video opens up, and the camera kind of zooms up to him. And he's like, hey, I'm Travis Pastrana. I've raced everything, I've driven everything, I've broken every bone in my body. And he looks at the car and he goes, that thing scares the s*** out of me. I was like, yo.

Yeah, I watched that whole video. It was an awesome video.

Yeah, yeah, it's pretty wicked.

I think I actually sent that one to you, maybe. I'm pretty sure.

Dude, sometimes you send me things and I'm busy.

I assume you don't watch it.

It's my wife sending me TikToks. I said to you what?

Cause like, I'm in this world, right? Dan goes back to whatever the f*** Dan does. But like I'm-

I was at like eight quick trips today.

Big boy job and dad life is also a real thing.

Yeah, dude, like you went, I tried, like I always like double check with Dan. I'm like, hey, the kids still love you, right? Cause like, I don't want to be like, you know, that s***** uncle Harris, you know what I mean?

We got like 12 of them, don't you?

13, it feels like 12 sometimes.

That's funny.

No, but that whole world just absolutely just fascinates me. So it's like, is there big events to attend or just local events or how's that?

So my favorite recommendation is like, if you're like, for you guys who've never done it before, my best recommendation is go to your local dirt track for a couple of reasons. Number one, they're disappearing like crazy. You know, I think Wisconsin lost two tracks this year. We lost one the year before. We lost one the year before. Well, in part of that is just the natural evolution of things and track owners selling and things like that. But there was a time in southeast Wisconsin where you could race five nights a week if you wanted to. And you're not winning a ton of money, right? But if you wanted to get seat time in a car, you could do that. So that's not happening as much anymore. So number one, go to your local dirt track, right? It's gonna cost you 15 bucks, 20 bucks to get in. You're gonna sit in a bleacher, you know, a metal bleacher, so bring a blanket to sit on. But go enjoy that and kind of get your feet wet. And then once that bug has bitten you, because I've never taken someone to a dirt track for the first time and they've been like, that sucks, I don't ever want to go back. They're always like, when can we go again?

Challenge accepted.

Done. So then, once you do that, I think then step up to, man, there's a host of them. Gateway Dirt Nationals is in St. Louis the first week into December, which is a all indoor race. It'll be my first time, which I'm really excited for. But that's rad. Anything at Knoxville ever, like the Knoxville Nationals are probably the biggest sprint car race in the world. It takes them six days to go through qualifings and finals. That's a cool one because Knoxville has no pits. So people pit in all these local businesses will rent out their parking lots.

Okay.

So you'll have like, and we're talking big names, like Kyle Larson, he won it this year actually. So Kyle Larson and Tony Stewart when he was racing, all those guys will show up. And you'll have Tony Stewart changing a rear end in a parking lot of a Dollar General in Knoxville, Iowa. And that's normal. That's completely, this is what you do.

Oh, this is in Knoxville, Iowa.

Yes, not Tennessee.

That's way more obtainable.

Yeah, it's only a couple hours from you guys. Yeah, so that's sick.

They're putting a quick trip up there actually. I'll be there in a week or two.

Oh, they're putting a quick trip in Knoxville?

Yes.

Oh my God. I have the list for next year.

That's so sick.

I'm super excited. That's a leak. You heard it here first.

Sorry, they're not putting a quick trip there. They're putting a quick start there.

Yeah, same difference. But yeah, anything at Knoxville is cool. That's where that picture is on my monitor there. Knoxville is really rad because it's got like 15 footwall guard rails. And so the background is like these white fences, which is sick. But that's cool. El Dorado is cool. Port Royal is a cool speedway. Volusia, just outside of, you know, just north of Daytona is wicked good. Man, the list, I could give you a list of 50 tracks to go to next year. And I promise you'd have a good time at every one of them.

So real quick, okay. Just to, because there's various types of dirt racing as well, right? So okay, that car that's on your monitor, what type of car would that be?

That's a late model.

So that's a late model.

Yeah, so when you look at...

The big wings over the top, that was a...

That was a sprint car.

That was a sprint car, okay, that's what I thought.

Yeah, so at the top level, there's really only three classes. There's late models like that, there's sprint cars, and there's big block modifides, which are kind of like the weird, pointy nose looking ones. They do a lot of that. It's interesting because...

Oh, the ones that look like a door wedge?

Yes. It's interesting because where you're from depends on what you like. So late model stuff, crazy popular in central US, West Coast, Arizona loves late models. Midwest loves sprint cars. Sprint cars are their jam. Northeast, kind of Maine, Vermont, all that stuff, those guys are big block mod guys. And what's really interesting is, typically you don't find, if guys like one, they hate the other two. Hate's strong, but that's not right. If you find a sprint car guy, he's like, I love sprint cars, I'll go see them. I go to Knoxville every year. My granddad's like this, 83 years old. I love sprint cars. I go to Knoxville every year. I watch every local race that we have on Saturday nights, but I don't give a damn about late models. And then the late model guys are the same way. They're like, this is cool, we love this stuff. Keep your wings and tube chassis away from us. So yeah, it's interesting.

That's kind of been me these last three, this is why I'm so happy we do this podcast, because it gets us exposed to stuff. But when I first started going to Texas 2K, I only cared about the Elite 8, I want to go see Kratos run, all these crazy stuff. Yeah, the crazy stuff. But now I'm starting to learn about all these other classes, and since then, again, I didn't grow up with drag racing at all, pretty much. I'm learning about all this radial stuff and big tire. And when we had Reese Brothers race cars on the show, I'm learning about all this stuff, I'm like, this is so cool. And I'm like, yeah, so I get it. When you start exposing yourself to these other worlds, I understand.

I work with one of our partners through MetaMartini is American Racing Pro Series Wheels, which is a standalone company. Those wheels over there? Yeah, on the wall there. But Dan is the guy that owns the company, incredible human being, has a ton of experience in it. He's built IMSA wheels, and he could tell you stories about working with all sorts of crazy race teams. He called me today, he was at the production plant for FF2000s, like the little Indy car stuff, working on a wheel for those guys, I guess, or something. I don't know. But listening to him talk about the technology that's just in a wheel for a dirt car was wild. We spent three hours at Knoxville to have him walk me through why they designed their beadlock the way they did, because the way the beadlock sits and the way the clamping force sits, and there's an ovaled out hole that as it clamps down, the bolt stays true, it doesn't wobble one way or the other, so you get a good hold. There's so much technology in that stuff. And so, like drag racing is the same way. You talk to a guy that's like, yeah, we run this shock because I tore it apart and this valving here and dampening that, and you know, rebound here and yada yada yada. It's like, holy s***. This is not, this is not like, hey, let's throw an LS in a car and go fast. Sure, I mean, it's part of it sometimes. And there's grass root stuff like that, and I'm glad that still exists. Hobby stock racing and dirt's the same way. You buy a tube chassis car for five grand, you throw an LS, a built small block in it, and let it rip. But man, it's so cool to see as you get into all these niches, how much science is behind that. Science. Aliens.

Well, that's like Brett LaSalle and his coyote. He's in the mid fives now, and in a quarter mile, and I see him at every event.

Yeah, he just broke into five nines or five eights.

Yeah, that's insane.

Yeah, it's crazy with a coyote engine.

Yeah, granted, it's been through some iterations recently.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I'm sure there's some design changes there.

Well, this is the thing you're talking about, right? Like, you're like, okay, we're going to totally re-engineer this.

Yep, yep.

So things get blown apart, and then they just go out.

You find the weak spot and solve it, and then you go to the next, and you solve it, and you go to the next, and solve it. It's just this constant chase your tail thing, but it's cool.

Well, speaking of motorsports that people don't really follow or whatever, and there's actually some money to be made in them, how do you feel about this burnout stuff that's becoming really big now? I heard horsepower rodeo and all this stuff. They've actually got some decent payouts, and there's a whole judging thing to it.

There's some big stuff there. Australia's been kicking our a** in that for 20 years, right? The Aussies are nuts. I guess I would be nuts, too, if I lived in a place where 60% of the country, you can't live because it's just desolate nothingness, and the other 40%, everything else you see.

What do you call Montana?

Montana's pretty, it's just snow wants to kill. Yeah, there you go. But the other 40% of the country, everything wants to kill you, eat you, or destroy you in some way, shape, or form. So I guess let a rib melt some tires off. But it's cool, I think it's neat to see it come down, or come over, rather. I think it's really rad that folks are doing that. It's not really my jam. I don't know, maybe it's because I've never done it, and maybe it's because I just don't have anything high enough horsepower to do it, but I don't get down with the whole tip-in stuff and thrash it around here and do that. If I'm going to do a burnout, I want to plant that thing and just burn a tire off. That's my jam. But it's cool. I think it's cool that there's another opportunity for that. It's the same as when Drift came to the US. I think it's cool that US motorsports is so diverse, because you can do whatever the hell you want here, really, truly.

You're not kind of limited to anything. A lot of people are starting to, since F1 became popular here again, people are starting to pay attention to that, but then obviously you have all of, you know, NASCAR and all that. It's like, well, maybe that's not my jam. There's so like, for example, I'm not on there anymore. I deleted the app, but like, let's say you're on a hinge or Tinder or whatever. It's like, you see all these chicks like, oh my God, I love F1. It's like, I wouldn't see NASCAR or anything on there before like, oh my God, I do NASCAR every Sunday. You know, so it's like you have, but if I go down to, down south, I'm sure it might be the different case.

Do you know what it is, by the way?

What?

Drive to survive saved F1. Oh yeah, so NASCAR is in this weird spot right now, where NASCAR got so, I'm gonna sound like a boomer here. NASCAR got so PC, right? Like when I look at the glory days of NASCAR, when I look at the days where NASCAR was the top of the food chain, it was because they had personalities, right? They had the Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt, beef. They had Kyle Busch talking mad smacked everyone on the radio. They had Tony Stewart and Matt Kenseth that would get into a brawl every week it seemed, right? And like, they weren't afraid to talk about that stuff. There was personality, there was drive, and Indycar for the record is going through the same thing. Indycar is by far and above as cool as F1 is.

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

Race car technology, people that are in it, things that are going on.

Some awesome tracks too.

Awesome tracks, awesome stuff. It's a really cool multi-discipline thing because you do oval and road course stuff.

So much harder.

Correct, to be a well-disciplined driver takes way more talent. Someone's going to get mad in the comments and be like, F1 car, you know.

We'll get mad no matter what.

I read Adrian Newey's book, How to Build a Car. And he, who was the godfather of aerodynamics and F1 packaging, he also started an Indy car, Ford a challenge. And he says it's incredibly difficult because you have to be perfectly optimized for just one thing. You could be within the operating window if you're turning right and left.

Yeah, so it's wild to me. But both of those motorsports are suffering from the same thing, is that they've gotten so afraid to talk about those things that people have fallen out of love with the sport. Paddle Award is the only guy I know in Indy car right now that's doing a damn thing about being a personality with it. And he's hilarious. If you don't follow him, he's awesome. He had a tire failure in a points championship. And he posted, while the race is going on, they pull him back in, they park the car, because he kind of wadded the car up. They park the car, he gets out, he goes in, does his stuff, whatever. 20 minutes later, he posts an Instagram carousel of random awkward angles of his face, just like pouting. And he's like, me right now when a right front fails.

I'm like, that's good, more of that.

People love that stuff. I think those brands are so afraid to let people be authentic.

Well, it's kind of like Chase from Streetcar Takeover was saying, there's no more heroes. So he's talking about drag racing in particular in his world, but he's talking about in motorsports, you need that hero, you need someone to cheer for. And if you're so PC, are you relating to this guy or this version of a guy? You know what I mean? I don't know, man. For example, even if you look at UFC and MacConnor McGregor, he grew their s*** out of that sport. Why? Because he had this personality.

Yeah, and you either loved him or hated him. And when you try to get everyone to like your sport and the people in it, you lose that conversation piece. You lose that ability to have a protagonist and an antagonist. And my favorite is when there's folks that are, that create these dramas in their heads that they hate each other, right? The Earnhardt Gordon thing is a prime example of this. Like, anyone who is anybody would tell you that those two hated each other. Like, they had absolutely worst enemies. Netflix did a really good documentary. I think either Netflix or Prime did a good documentary on Earnhardt. And they were actually really close. Like, very few people know this, but like, Dale almost took Jeff under his wing and kind of taught him some stuff. You know, he was very brash about a lot of things, and when they got wadded up, he was an a****** like Dale Earnhardt did. But they actually had a really great relationship, and hardly anybody knows that, you know? So, it's important to let people be kind of on the ends of the spectrum there for themselves and for the sport as it is for the people watching it.

Okay, yeah.

You need that diversity. I think that good, like me giving GM guys crap. You gotta have that. I have a respect for all of it, but at the same time, if you can't do that little bit of ribbing back and forth, you take all the fun out of it anyway.

It's like if we all ran, like in the diesel space, if everyone ran a 6.7 Cummins and an 86 Turbo, congratulations, you're gonna be right on top of each other all the time, you know.

That's one thing, hopefully I don't make too many people upset at this.

Like you care.

Yeah, yeah. But it's like, that's one of the things, that's why I love, this is one of the things I love about World Cup. There was so much diversity there. One thing that kind of throws me off is like when you get like these like B58, or like 68, or not, sorry, like these 68 inducer size whatever class is for GTRs only. It's like it's so, it's not diverse. Yeah. I love the stuff where it's just, things are getting mixed up.

So we're doing the opposite in the diesel world. Levan actually from Firepunk, and Viren from VS Racing, who's a turbo manufacturer, came up with this idea last year that said, hey, here's a scoop. We're gonna build a new class. We're gonna call it the 72 Fast class, the 72 mil turbo. Every turbo is the same frame, same size, same everything. It's the same spec turbo. Here's your weight limitations. It's gotta be a four wheel drive. Here's some other general class rules. Go nuts.

But you can still choose between, let's say, a Ford.

You pick whatever platform you want. I like that. What happened is year one went off without a hitch, and the Cummins guys beat up on everybody, as they always do. So this year now, as they're reworking this, first of all, they only had 16 trucks last year. They're doing 50 trucks this year. Which is wicked cool. That's awesome. But number two is, you've started to see sponsors come in to this and say, hey, every Duramax that beats it, like Merchant Auto, big Duramax company, came in and said, hey, listen, we have an unlimited budget for this. Every Duramax that beats the Cummins will have $500 on top of that race. That's sick. That makes a Duramax guy look at that and say, I want to go beat the hell out of these guys because I can make two, three, five, ten grand if I go well here, plus the winning purse. It's cool to start to see some other people getting into this and finding new ways to diversify that class. I was told the diesel racing industry is missing the mark right now with Eurodiesel stuff because there's no budget way to get into diesel drag racing. Even a 770 truck, you're talking 40 grand, 50 grand, to do it well. You could do it on a shoestring budget, but you're not gonna have a good time. You know, put yourself together a class that's 338Ds and Audi TDIs and things like that. You're starting to see like Exergy is making injectors for them now. You see some fuel injection stuff. Man, I'd go buy a 335D and throw a set of $1200 sticks at it, a little bit of fuel, and for 10 grand, I can go race 7 second 8th miles.

Hell yeah, I'm in.

You know, that's sick, and I can drive it back home at the end of the day because I don't make enough power to tear it apart.

Sure.

That's rad, you know. There's opportunities there where I think the diesel space is still missing.

None of that stuff is allowed then?

No, there's no... There's guys that compete in like 770ET classes, but there's nothing... They're so out of their realm in that space because they either don't weigh enough and they have to put a bunch of ballast in the car, or their rear wheel drive, and they're competing against all-wheel drive trucks and things like that. So I think there's a huge opportunity to start feeding that sport from an entry level.

I'd love to see that as well. We don't have a ton of diesel cars here stateside, do we?

It's getting better now. BMW has done a good job. Audi has done a good job. Americans are just really dumb when it comes to diesels. I don't know why that is. They're so obsessed. Americans as a whole, I think it's because America is big. Everything about America is big. We find it with JDM cars. We imported an R34 GTT. Killer car, love it. Makes like 250 horsepower. It's not that fast. But all those JDM cars come over. They're 25 years old. They have 30,000 miles on them. And people are like, whoa, that's so low mileage. Guys, the country of Japan is the size of four states on the Eastern seaboard. It's tiny. You can't drive that far. Americans are so used to everything being so big. And I think because everything's so big, they attribute diesel to diesel engines only. If you talk to someone who's not in motorsports or in automotive aftermarket, you ask them what a diesel is in, they're gonna tell you, I get a diesel. There's diesel in city buses, semi-trucks, tractors, wheel loaders. They don't even consider that the diesel doesn't need to be big, right? Meanwhile, Europe's kicking the s*** out of us making, Lars had a 328 wagon, a BMW wagon, with a diesel in it. And that thing was quick as hell, and it made up 50 miles of the gallon.

That was my argument when people were arguing about this EV stuff. And same thing with the Prius and all that. I was like, has nobody ever driven a Volkswagen TDI? They get like 40 some miles of the gallon, and they just go and they run up to like 200 and some thousand miles without really any issues at all. And I was like, if we want to talk about how we're gonna do EPA stuff, that's where it's at.

Yeah, I think it's a combination of Americans hate small diesels because they just don't grasp that concept. And Dieselgate did not do them any favors. Everyone's mad at VW for Dieselgate. Half of the people can't even tell you why they're mad at VW. There's emissions and they lied, blah, blah, blah, blah. Congratulations, so did every other manufacturer at one point. So I think that left kind of a black eye on that industry. And that and their concept and the EPA being out here just thrashing about how terrible Diesel is.

It depends on who they choose to pick on. The same thing happened to Cobb. We had them on and they got really thrown under the bus. And I was like, you know there's a lot of people out here doing the same thing.

Yeah, it was, man, it was rough. So it's tough because there is a lot of really good diesel stuff. TDI is great. Very few people know this, but Volkswagen did a TDI R8 back in the day. They stretched the chassis and did a V12 TDI in it and it was incredible.

Really?

Yeah, it was super cool. They also had all the LeMars stuff they did with TDI.

Was it a V12 or a V10? It was a V12.

It was a V12, it was out of the Tuerck. Yeah, yeah.

Okay, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, yeah.

It was rowdy, properly rowdy. But man, Mercedes does a good job with that and Audi and Porsche does a little bit and VW does a bunch of stuff and BMW does a bunch of stuff. And now America is finally starting to be like, hey, maybe a three liter diesel makes a lot of cents and a half ton pickup. It's like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Well, if you go back to the whole, you know, I'm not gonna use the terminology you use, but like Americans, like for example, a lot of people are talking s*** about the hurricane that's going into the hurricane engine, right? Oh, it's a six cylinder. I'm like, guys, like every diesel ever is like a six cylinder.

It's I6, right?

Yeah.

That's God's platform for the record, okay? Every proper engine has been an inline six. Yes.

I'm just saying, you're thinking like, I didn't like a lot of the things that like I hear in the dealer world is like, well, people are, you know, don't want to do turbos. I'm like, guys, we've been doing turbos forever.

Like, yeah, turbo technology is not new.

Yeah. It's like, you can get 500,000 miles out of a turbo. No problem. Like it's like, so just, I don't know. Speaking of why Audi does diesels very well, you also to remember that they had a Le Mans winning race car.

That's what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The TDI race car stuff was so cool.

We're gonna have to have to go call the engineers for that on the show soon.

Oh, man.

It's gonna be super cool.

Wicked good.

I thought I was gonna have to go slap the fuel handle out of a lady's hand the other day. She was putting diesel in like a Malibu.

Are they making those diesels now?

So there was, I guess, in, this had to have been like a 2015 or something. I don't know. I don't even know if it was a Malibu. Some little s*** sedan four-door car. But I walked around the back of it, and it was some sort of eco diesel that she had in her car.

So that's what I'm saying. We've dabbled in diesel now for, fun fact, that's the, I write for Diesel World, Meg, dabbling in diesel is my column in the back piece, in the back of the magazine. It's really weird that that came across here. But yeah, America has been, and domestics have been dabbling in diesel now for a couple years, but nobody knows. I would consider myself relatively in that scene. I didn't know they did it in the passenger car stuff. That's cool. Why are we not talking about that?

Yeah, I don't know, man. Maybe that should support it for my next car.

It's super versatile too, because just the other day with this IDI, I had the fuel filter come on. And long story short, I think I have debris in my tank is my problem. But my buddy was like, hey, just go have your wife grab a filter. Like I was stuck on the side of the road, twist it by the way. But he's like, instead of grabbing diesel, just have her grab some ATF off the shelf. And I'm like, what do you mean? And he's like, no, instead of just screw around, just get some ATF and fill the thing up. So it primes the deal and spin it on and go. I was like, okay. I mean, you can run them off fryer oil, ATF. Like there's all kinds of stuff. It's super versatile.

Yeah, it's cool. And what's fun is the newer stuff is more sensitive, right? Like anything that's either Huey injected or some of the common rail stuff. But you buy like an old 12 valve. Like if you want an apocalypse truck, you go buy yourself a first gen Cummins with a solid axle front and rear and leaf springs all the way around. It takes three wires to start that thing, a power ground and a key ignition switch. And that thing, I swear to God, you can dump anything you want in that gas tank. And as long as it's flammable under compression, it'll run. Yeah, it's so cool. I mean, they're just so you just beat the hell out of them, you know? So they're fun, man.

There's an old military, what, deuce and a half or whatever.

They ran out six fuel types.

Yeah, exactly. Used motor oil, all kinds of stuff.

Yeah.

So as we start to get close in on two hours here, by the way, I imagine so, yeah. What's some homework you should give me to do than this next year? I want to dabble and dabble in diesel.

Hey.

I want to get an understanding on this world. Like who's somebody that we should potentially have on the podcast or what's some things that we... Cause like Dan does the diesel stuff. I am a rookie.

Yeah.

So...

Man, there's so many ways you could take it. I think I'm really blessed to have just networked with some amazing people in that industry. It really is. It's really intimidating if you're not familiar with it, to get into it. I imagine it's like drag racing, right? From the outside, it's like, oh man, this is scary. These guys are going really fast. They're doing cool stuff. But once you meet one, you'll find that community is super chill. And for the most part, they're all pretty good. I think in terms of podcast guests, Chris Patterson would be cool. Chris was the first guy, or one of the first guys.

Or even people's content to consume, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Chris does a good job. He's one of the first guys to smack 3000 on the dyno. Chris also has a really cool mindset where all of his stuff has to be drivable. So he functions off the ice cream rule, which is like at any time, if someone said, go take your wife to get ice cream in your truck, it has to be in a state where he can do that.

I like that.

Yeah, super cool, because it changes how you think about these things, right? But he's cool. He does some content for his shop on Rival Diesel. I'm trying to think who else is really good in that space on the diesel side. From a content creator side of things, you have to be really careful, because there's a lot of... Fluff. There's a lot of showboaty stuff. There's a lot of guys that do stuff for views, and views only, which is fine if that's what you're into, man. But I don't get down with the Whistle on Diesel stuff, or some of that stuff.

Neither does the IRS. Actually, to be fair, it's not the IRS.

Yeah. But I think there's...

But who are the real guys that...

Well, I feel like that with the Diesel brothers, too, right? They've built an amazing thing. They're really cool guys. But it seems like, I don't think I've ever seen them actually working on a truck.

They've gotten really big, and...

Maybe in the early days.

Heavy D has done a really... That whole team has done incredible. But they've grown to the point where they're so unattainable. They remind me of DDE, right? Daily Driven Economics is kind of the same way. They've just gotten to a point where, as you ratchet up, you can only do so much before it's like, I could never do that in my life. I can't. I'm not gonna make enough money to buy a Pagani. That's just not gonna work that way. But honestly, the guys at DHD are pretty cool, at Dirty Hooker Diesel. They don't post a ton, but they're cool guys to just follow along with because they're doing some Duramax stuff, which makes them the black sheep. Tony is an incredibly smart human being. He's forgotten more in a day than I'll probably know in a lifetime. He's so smart. Other than that, Josh McCormick is doing some cool stuff from a very relatable, vloggy type of thing. He's the one that hit 4,300 and some change on the dyno. He's a cool guy to follow along with. Man, even Fast Fuel Systems, Jake and Spencer and those guys are really good proponents of that space.

Amazing product to have that on my list.

Fast does a great job. There's another one where people, the argument is always Fast or Air Dog, because they both create fuel systems, lift pump fuel systems. And everyone thinks they hate each other, and the community is so absolutely divided on it, and those guys are really cool. They always shake hands, kiss babies, and drink beers together at UCC. So it's always so fun that way. But those guys do a really good job. I mean, of course, I think a shameless plug, right? As we start to document some of that stuff, I would love to have you guys just follow along on that. I think that'd be really cool. When's this happening?

When's this build going down?

So we're building plans now. So we're actively, I had some conversations at SEMA. It was kind of a pipe dream. It was like, that'd be cool. I had some conversations with some folks I know at SEMA that are really well connected in the performance space. They've got a lot of brands under their umbrella that can do a lot of cool stuff. And my contact there who manages the marketing department was like, hey, I have a deep budget, let me know what you need. And I was like, hey man, thank you so much. And he looks at me, he's like, no, I need to spend it this year. Tell me what to send you. Let me lay the plan.

Yeah.

Let me lay the plan.

Here's my list, I have it right here, yeah.

So it's cool, right? And that came from a lot of hard work. We could do a whole nother podcast bit on sponsorships and that stuff.

Or dinner.

To be honest with you, I wanted to ask some of those questions, but we burned through all kinds of great stuff.

You guys can call me and we'll have drinks and do something or whatever. But anyway, the goal is here, I'm working on plans, I'm kind of lining some stuff up. I always like to approach these guys before I ask them for parts and say, here's what you can expect, right? I want you to know what you're getting before you come into this. So that'll probably take place realistically between PRI and the New Year.

So UCC then? Is that what you're aiming for?

I'm trying to do some racing next year already, yeah. I'd like to do some like ODSS stuff. Sure. I will not be competitive next year, I'm sure.

No, first year out the gate, it'd be difficult to do that. I get it.

Yeah, but I think like I'm trying to have a truck here. My birthday is March 20th. I'm trying to have a truck on site by my birthday so we can start kind of getting into this thing. Sure. And just see where it takes us.

Who's going to do the work on this? Mostly you or some buddies?

It'll have to be me and some homies. It's funny, I'm the type of guy that I'm like, I always like to help, right? Like you call me at 2 a.m., 10 a.m., 2 p.m., midnight, doesn't matter. I'm the type of guy that like drop it, I'll be there, we'll get it done. Really cool, I love that. Really hard to go racing when you're the guy everybody else calls when they need help. So I'm really blessed. I've got a couple of homies that I was kind of tickling the idea with and they were like, I'm in, let me know where we gotta go. Like I'll sleep in a race trailer, I'll do whatever. Cause I told them, I was like, you know, this is very grass root stuff. We don't have, I don't have $100,000 budget to go racing with this year. Even with parts support from a lot of these folks, it's still, it's gonna be tight. And I want it to be tight because I want it to be real.

That's true.

I don't want to show up to the racetrack with a brand new truck and a brand new hauler and all this stuff. And then number one, not know how to drive the damn thing. But number two, you lose all relatability there. You know, I want it to be, I'm 32 years old. I'm a stepfather. I have a wife at home. I want to go drag racing. What does that look like? So yeah, I'm really excited for that. It's gonna be a really good time.

Sweet, should we pop the Usual 3?

Oh yeah, absolutely. This will be really fun.

Usual 3.

Yeah, all right.

Oh, he's not familiar.

I don't, yeah, forgive my ignorance.

Oh, okay.

Don't worry, people do it at the same time. Hey, do you watch this? You watch this? Like dude, I don't have time for that.

You didn't know I make content. I can't consume content too.

Before you popped Usual 3, we went to this like creators thing at SEMA, right? There was like three, 400 creators. There was like a big hit.

That was gonna be a really big opportunity. We go there.

We...

I didn't know anyone.

Really?

I don't watch any of these people.

Sure, sure, sure, sure.

That makes sense. Most of these people have probably have similar following to me or bigger for the most part. And I'm just like, I did meet like one or two people and I'm like, yeah, I don't know anybody else here.

Did you meet Jordan? I think he might have presented that one. He goes by Shipbox Garage. If you want just like a good time for the random shenanigans on Instagram, follow Jordan. He's fun.

We'll have to look him up. He could have been there, we wouldn't know. You would know him.

He's a little bit taller than I am, longer, you know, ginger hair, glasses, kind of nerdy looking dude. Yeah, he's a lot of fun.

We saw a lot of people like lookalikes to people that we know. But yeah, that's pretty much it.

All right, so at the end of every episode, we like to ask our guests to pick three cars. I need a daily driver, a track car and a show car. You have, under limited budget, these can be trucks, these can be cars. You can swap whatever you want, build wherever you want.

I'm so indecisive and I'm not brand loyal to anything. This is literally my kryptonite. Oh God, okay. To try and keep this not 25 minutes because we've already yapped forever.

We'll have you back on in the future too. You could change them then.

That'd be sick. So daily, track car, show car?

Yeah, yep.

Oh, all right. Daily driver, assuming an unlimited budget, assuming what I do in life, man, a dirt nasty fifth gen Cummins would be sick. Sick, sick, sick. You know, assuming that you have the budget to fix everything that's wrong with them, because they have their problems. They like to eat the bolt out of the grid heaters and then, you know, smack a bolt into a piston and take it out.

You have another budget. You can do a billet block if you want.

Done, done.

Yeah, all right.

Give me like 1,100 HPs in a Cummins. Perfect street truck. That's all another conversation. You can do a lot of stuff in those with a lot of power. But give me one of those for a daily. Race car? Boy, like attainable stuff, and I know it's an unlimited budget. Attainable stuff like M2 Comp is an incredible car. Really, any of the M cars, I think, are some of the best bang for your buck race cars.

Outgoing generation or current?

Outgoing, so like F80, stuff like that. JDs are cool, too. I don't have a ton of experience in them. But every time I drive an F80 M3, I'm like, man, or M4? I'm like, man, these things, they're properly well done. They're properly well done. Unattainable stuff, man, anything vintage, like give me like an old 767 Mazda or something, or an old NASCAR or something. I don't know, just something. I watched a guy Friday night at Daytona. They do like a vintage open track day, and there's like five cars on track. But this dude's got this old Mazda prototype race car. 8 p.m., it's dark, the track lights are on, track is quiet, nobody's talking, no announcer. And you just have this guy just, whoa! And two minutes later, he does it again. I was like, that's gotta be the most blissful feeling in the world, to have Daytona to yourself in a vintage race car.

Oh, 100%.

So I would do something like that. So what do you lock in?

You have to lock one in.

Oh man, oh God.

We've had some pretty big people try Weasley and extras. Harris does not have it.

No, no, no. My problem is that I don't think I could pick one, man. Like, I don't know. Yeah, it would probably be an old Mazda like that, I think. I have such a weird affinity for those cars. You know, an old Le Mans car of some sort. Let me flip the script. I can be very, very decisive, actually. Give me a Mark 1 GT40 for all the same reasons, right? That old vintage nostalgia.

We got to ride in one a few months ago.

A Mark 1?

Yeah.

Yo.

Yeah, not super performance.

They were super performance.

Yeah, that's cool.

Yeah. Like original tooling and everything.

That's such a like, that's a once in a hundred lifetimes experience.

Yeah.

You know.

No, it had a big old 427 in it. It's...

Oh, cool, cool, cool.

It makes like 500 something horsepower. It was hot as hell down there, but it was a... No, dude, I was the airbag. I'll show you a photo of what it looks like in there. It's hilarious. That's your show car?

Track car. Oh, that's your track car.

Okay. So show car then.

Show car? I don't know, man. I'm not really a show car guy. It'd be cool to do, like...

Get yourself a jeep with some ducks, man.

Yeah.

Well, show cars can be fast too, right? So it could be double duty.

Yeah, that's true. Man, I wish the Ferrari was here. I really love the Ferrari. I think that's cool. Like an old 190 Mercedes is probably where I'd go. You know, something... The hammer. It's just something unique like that. I like really eclectic stuff. You know, stuff that you don't see every day. Because it's just neat. It's different. So I'd probably do something like that, I think.

What are you locking in?

That's probably what I'd lock in, is a 190.

Okay. Well, sweet. On that note, where can I really find you?

At DustyLBZ is D-U-S-T-I underscore LBZ is all my personal social stuff. If you want to follow the Martiniworks crew, that's at Martiniworks. The MetaMartini side is Meta.Martini on all the socials there. But yeah, you can usually find me in one. And if you don't get me on one channel, you'll probably see me pop up in another one. There's a lot of cross collaboration between all of it, which is really sick.

Dan?

You can find us at Gunna Garage.

And if you're at this point in the video and you still haven't got Haltech product, the Black Friday sale that Shawn's putting on right now is ending probably any minute. Someone will post this next week. So yeah, I'd hop on that because you can get an extra 5% off using code Minnoxide on top of Black Friday.

That's a big deal.

No, dude, like he sent me a code the other day and how much someone saved, I was like, because he bought like like eight thousand dollars worth of ECU stuff and whatever. I was like, holy s***, that's five percent.

Don't sound like a lot on top of Black Friday sales until it's like, well, a few thousand bucks here, you know.

Yeah. So anyways, and then obviously check out our other sponsors.

What's up today, our code with High Performance Academy is better than a Black Friday sale for individual courses. Not the VIP stuff though, but you're showing out a lot for that anyway. But anyways, hey, thank you so much for coming on. I'm glad we made this happen. There will definitely be a round two. Let me know how you experience life in the diesel world and dirt track world. Dan, thanks for existing, and we'll see you all next time. Thanks again for watching the show guys. Be sure to go into the description down below and check out all of our sponsors. They are what make this show possible. It allows us to travel the country and talk to some really cool guests. So be sure to check them out and see you all next time.