172. Building Subarus for Power, The GR Corolla, and Off The Line Performance, w/ OTL Grayson

I have it in third, I'm like, all right, I'm gonna lay into it. It finally comes into boost, and then just sprays coolant all over the windshield, you know? And this is my third motor now, so I'm a polished vet at this, you know? And I go, oh, crap, damn. And Jay goes, what happened? I'm like, I looked over at him, I go, it blew up, Jay.

Hello ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minnoxide podcast. I'm your host, Harris, AKA Minnoxide, man of many automotive aspirations, and we are back in corn country for the second week in a row. And today we are at Off The Line Performance. Oh, wait, hold on. I'm here with my co-host, Dan, Mr. Gunnar Garage.

Yeah, that's me. You just swooped me up from a quick trip and I'm sorry, quick start down here. And yeah, here we are.

But nonetheless, we are here at Off The Line Performance and I've been wanting to come down here for probably the early days of the podcast. I started following you on TikTok. I saw a tour you did at the shop, however, many years ago, and I was like, I need to go to that place one day. So we're here with Grayson Merica.

That's me.

So go ahead, tell us a little bit about who it is you are, what is it you do here, and we'll just kind of go from there.

OK. So yeah, my name is Grayson. My technical title that the bosses gave me was shop manager. So I work on basically all the Subarus that come in here. We have two technicians. The other one's name is Bob. He takes up all the random stuff. He's really good at that stuff. I'm most efficient with Subarus, so that's kind of what I stick to. I've done other projects here and there, but I would say at least 50 to 60% of our customer base is all Subarus.

OK.

So I try to just keep those rolling in and out and let Bob do the longer term projects, you know, more complex stuff. But I've done a couple of pretty cool projects. I've been here since August of 2020.

OK.

So about five years, a little over five years.

Is it all projects or do you guys do like general service, things like that here too?

Media service, yeah. I've got a BRZ on my lift right now that needs brakes and some random knickknacks replaced and stuff like that. But a lot of our customers are in for engine rebuilds. Big surprise.

I was waiting. He's going to tell the joke himself. I'll let it happen.

I mean, the Subaru enthusiasts are usually pretty hands-on because you kind of have to be unless they own a newer one and they bought it because they like it and drop it off, just let us take care of everything. But most all of our cars that we get in will usually have some basic bolt-ons or stuff done to them, and they're here for major work. You know, so yeah.

Well, what is that statistic? It was 50% of Subarus are modified or like Subaru owners modify their cars or something like that, which is a pretty big number.

It's gotten to a point now where when we get one, we're so tainted by modified cars, we get one like if we get an 04 STI and it's all stock, we're like, oh my God, look at this. This is awesome, you know, because it's so much more refreshing as the technician working on it, knowing no one's messed with this yet. You know, it's a clean slate. So that's yeah, every once in a while, we'll get a super low mile, really clean all stock example in, and we just lose our minds because it's just so nice.

Well, it's like that crazy one that you have over there. Was that a Hawkeye on the lift over there or the gray one? It's going to bring a trailer.

Yep. Yep. That one's going to go and bring a trailer.

So yeah, it's like that one was stock too, right? Or no.

That one is going to be stock. It had some parts on it. Sure. We're putting it back to stock to sell it as a stock example. But we one of the one of the most fun builds that I've done here, we had a 30,000-mile 07 STI 07s are one of the most desirable years. It's the last year of the GD chassis. It has the longer ratio transmission that the newer cars have. It has a modern fuel system on it, all from the factory, so they're really desirable. Had a satin white Pearl 07, 30,000 miles. The guy dropped it off and said, I want it to make 700 horsepower. So we did fuel system, engine, turbo kit, like everything and he left it pretty stock looking on the outside and then you open the hood and add all chrome bits and everything. It was basically a copy of the white one that we have up front.

Oh sure. Yeah.

So, and that one's down in Florida now, so.

Okay.

Yeah.

So if that was your favorite, what was your least favorite that's come through here?

Oh man. There's been some bad ones.

Yeah.

There's been some really rough ones. The worst ones are the ones where they've been so hacked up by previous work that you're not necessarily doing work. You're just undoing all the other stuff. You're having to undo years and years, because some of these cars are 20 plus years old now. So they've had a lot of hands in them. So that's what I'm going back to. The stock ones are my favorite.

So the first thing you got to ask Subaru owners, like, what's the body count sort of dealer one?

Yeah. I mean, something like that. Surprisingly enough, a lot of them, some of the guys that come in here, they've owned their cars for a long time.

There's those two, right? The guys that have had it since new or second owner or something like that.

Yeah. We have some customers that will bring it. There's an older lady that has a, I think it's like a 2011 WRX. It's completely stock. It's got 200-something thousand miles on it, and it's a daily driver. She drive, it's cherry. It's got no modifications whatsoever. But yeah, there's a pretty broad spectrum of different cars that we get in as far as like what they've had done to them and stuff like that.

So is that a, and I'm sorry, I know about Subarus. I'm a huge Ford guy, so I don't follow that right there. But when I picture Subaru, I imagine the ages of 18 to 24 are most of your owners.

Is that about, yeah, about a lot of our really, really nice builds have gone to older.

I was gonna say that makes more sense.

People that have, you know, wanted one since they came out when they were younger and finally have adult money to, you know, throw out one. So, I mean, we did a 600 horsepower package car on a 2021 that had like 5,000 miles on it. And the guy just wanted it to be fun. He still has it. It makes a ton of power. It makes, I think we went over 600 on that one. We have our 600 package, but if we turn the dial up just a little bit, it'll make a lot more than that, you know? But we basically, for our Subaru customers, we figured out the bulk of our customers either want a 400-ish horsepower car or a 600-ish horsepower car. And those power levels are what we're confident putting our label on and saying, hey, we know a curated list of parts that we can put on these cars. They'll make what we know that they're gonna make. And we can go past that, but there has to be a certain amount of owner's responsibility and acknowledgement that over 700 horsepower, the engine's basically a wear item.

Sure.

So there's, and you have the Facebook stories of guys that have made XYZ horsepower for so many years. And it does happen. It does happen. Some cars make insane numbers for so long, and some of them don't. So it's kind of, it ultimately is up to the end user, you know.

So then do you guys mostly dabble in that 4600 range, or is there any like, let's say crazy, four four digit builds at all come out here?

Yeah, so our dyno record is actually held by Subaru, and it made 1178. Wow. So that was our-

Just a dyno pull.

A season.

Okay, okay.

That was our shop, O5 drag car. Sure. That owner was actually from Minnesota. He's from St. Cloud.

Okay, I'm trying to think of the car.

It's been retired. It got parted out for a long list of reasons.

But- I imagine it's pretty difficult to make them do that, though. Is that like an IEG block or something?

Yeah, any sort of forged motor. So IEG, we primarily, we basically only use out front. We have a really, really good relationship with Germany and out front.

Where are they based out of?

California. Yep. So they've been doing it for a really long time. Jeremy not only builds engines for street cars, Subarus, but they also have a humongous sand rail.

Oh, really?

Okay. Customer base.

Yeah.

So it's funny, he's just constantly in a busy season because as springtime comes around, his street car customers are buying stuff and wanting work done, and then as the temperatures in California cool off, well, then it's sand rail season.

Okay.

So then the sand rail guys start wanting a bunch of work done. So he's just constantly slammed.

That's something I want to learn more because I've been watching a handful like sand rail videos. I'm like, that looks really fun.

I've never seen it in person, but I've heard talks of the owner of Outfront, his name is John, apparently has a EZ36, which is the 3.6 liter flat six that comes in the legacies and outbacks. Okay. They build those motors too. He has an EZ36 that apparently makes 1600.

Okay.

Which is just insane to think about. You know, but I bet it's a riot. But yeah, we, to make the kind of power on a Subaru, it, you just, like I said, you have to go into it, fully acknowledging that it's not going to last.

Sure.

No. With any, any high horsepower four cylinder, you know, but we use Outfront, you know, and this, the similar recipe that you'll see across the board for all the engine builders that offer, you know, big horsepower short block options, they're all going to be closed decked or sleeved. Mostly closed decked and then they're all going to have either half inch or 14 millimeter head studs to try to keep the heads down. And the biggest drawback on Subarus is their cylinder heads. Their heads flow like crap. They flow horribly. That's the same reason you can take a 6466 and put it on a Subaru. You can make like six, 700 horsepower if you really lean on it, but you put a 6466 on a K Series and it will make a thousand.

Sure.

You know, because the heads just flow so much better.

Okay.

So let's say I want to get in the Subaru game. What is, I want 400 horsepower. I'm going to bring you a car. What should I go find first? So what am I getting?

What I tell people is the biggest decision that most people are having nowadays is, do I get the WRX or do I get the STI? Meaning the biggest difference in the two models, which is the 15 to 21 models, right? Because one of them has the FA20, you know, timing chain, newer style engine. The other one, the STI, still has an EJ. I tell people, if you only want to make 400, the WRX is a better option because the transmission will hold it. And with a ethanol kit, a flexible kit, and minor bolt-ons, you can hit 400, all the right recipe, you know?

Yeah.

With an STI, you need a whole lot more money because you have to get aftermarket fuel injectors, bigger turbo, downpipe, intake, top mount, like all this other stuff. Whereas, you know, with the WRX, you're using the factory fuel injectors, you're putting an intake pump in both. But yeah, the STI is obviously gonna be better for the growth of the platform because if you get tired of your 400, you can still keep adding more parts and make more and more power for roughly the same amount of money. But with the WRX, once you want to crossover that 450 to 500 horsepower threshold, you're swapping an STI transmission in. You're buying a standalone, like a Motec is basically the only option that I know of right now in M142. So you can add port injection because the factory direct injectors won't handle that much fuel, you know. And you can buy aftermarket direct injectors for them, but you still have to buy a standalone to control it.

Right.

So most guys that really shoot for the moon with the FA series, they'll do a BRZ manifold because they have port injection on them. That was one of the biggest, I don't want to say a biggest L, but a serious miss from Subaru, in my opinion, is not putting the dual injection system that the BRZs have on that OE-RX. Because that was that Toyota involvement, it's called D4S. So it has the port and direct injectors. So with the BRZ, you can put a fuel pump in and with the factory fuel system run ethanol. And then if you want to throw a boost at it, you put bigger port injectors in and you just lead the factory direct injectors and you're good to go.

It just seems like, so like you may remember Austin from the rally way back in the day, he had that like pink and blue Subaru. Like he was telling me how much it cost for him to make 600. I'm like, why don't you do like literally anything else?

Yeah, because if you ever drive a 600 horsepower Subaru, there's almost nothing like it. It's so much fun. And any small liter, big turbo, all wheel drive, manual little import car, they're all a blast. That's why people dump money into Golfars and Evos and all these other ones. But there's something about the Subarus, the way that they handle the six speed is just bullet proof. I mean, it's that you know it's going to break, but for these little while, this little while when it's running, it is bliss. You know? I had a customer that dropped off their 700 horsepower STI and he said, I really need you to figure out what's going on the transmission. It doesn't want to go into fourth when I flat foot it over and over again. Flat foot shift into fourth. This car makes 700. And I'm like, the first step to verifying the complaint is verifying the complaint, right? So I told him, I'm like, I'm going to go out and I'm going to do this one time. But I'm not going to go out and just do highway pull after highway pull on your car to try to see if it does what you're saying it does. I'm going to go out and I'm going to do a flat foot into fourth and I'm going to see how it feels. And then I'll determine if it needs a clutch adjustment or if we need to pull the transmission apart and rebuild it, various things like that. So, but I went out and I did it one time. I flat foot shifted from third to fourth and it backfired through the dump and it took off and I about crap myself, but it was so much fun, so much fun. And that's why people keep throwing motors in them. Yeah. Because they're just a blast.

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Yeah, it's pretty expensive.

In the grand scheme of things, I mean, obviously it's all not cheap, but...

The trickiest part about the Subarus is they don't have main caps. So they're really hard to align more. You have to know what you're doing. You have to have a special fixture. The problem is if you take a brand new short block from Subaru, and you have it sitting on your bench, and you take the fasteners loose on the KSAVs, and split it, and then put it right back together, your main tolerances are all gone. Because the motor shift, you know? So I don't know the magic that Outfront and IEG and RallySpec and all those guys that build motors, I don't know what the magic is, but I know that there is three shops in the US that I would trust to machine an engine. And so rebuilding them yourselves is really tricky. The FA is a little bit easier because you can actually get the pistons and rods out without separating the case halves. They have an offset connecting rod, which also makes them a little bit weaker, because it'll try to curl. But yeah, if you like, say you want to do rod bearings in your Subaru, you have to take the entire motor all the way down, like all the way apart. So it's tricky to rebuild them at home. I have a customer car here that it's getting a short block put in by us after he just put a motor in himself. And it just sucks to see, because you want to be encouraging as a professional. You want to encourage the people at home, wanting to build stuff in their garage, because we all started there. So you want to be encouraging, but at the same time, you have to be like, I probably wouldn't. Like there's a reason.

There's a right way to do it.

Yep, there's a reason that we don't build our motors here in house. Very few Subaru shops do. They almost all buy shortblocks from various suppliers. Sure. Yep.

Well, it's kind of like you said, it's like, you know, for those, like, what's a good way of putting it? Like, you know what you're signing up for. It's worth signing up for, at least for the people that do it. But it's like, this is what you're signing up for.

Yeah. A basic, to give you an idea, if you have a stock STI that's spun a bearing, it's rod knocking, and you drive it into our shop and ask for just an engine replacement, the proper way to do it is, you replace the short block, just replace it. Don't rebuild it, just replace it. Because it's cheaper to just buy a new one than it is to send it out, have it torn apart, inspected, check all the everything. We just core the short blocks, send it out front, let them use them for future builds, and then we sell the customer a brand new short block from Subaru.

What's that take for me to get a short block?

$2,800.

Okay.

Then, then, since it is dual AVCS, so there's variable cam gears on all four corners, and the cylinder heads have a ton of oil galleys, and you have the turbo, there's oil, there's contaminated oil all over. So you have to send the heads out as well, you know, want to get them decked, but you also have to get them completely disassembled, and then you have to get the cam gears disassembled and cleaned, and you buy a new oil pump because, just buy a new one. We also put brand new oil pans on because the baffling can sometimes hold on to that bearing material. And then with the gasket kits and labor and all the other miscellaneous stuff, it's usually around $13,000.

Right.

Which is sickening.

That added up real quick.

It's sickening. It's sickening. But it's unfortunate because most cases, people aren't buying these cars in cash, unless they're really old. So you get some poor kid that just financed an STI, and then from previous lack of maintenance or just poor modifications, poor tuning, whatever, it spins a bearing. I mean, not everyone has 12 to 13 grand sitting in the bank, so it's tough.

How reliable are they in their stock form? So again, we talk about a car that gets modified very often, right? So I can see why they could maybe get a bad name. But let's say I bought one stock and I just beat the s*** out of it. Am I still going to have similar issues or?

If there's a couple of things that people miss the mark on that will lead to engine failure really quick, the owner's manual, if you open it up, it will tell you to put 4.6 quarts in, five quarts every single time. So many people are worried about ringland failure with Subarus. Almost never do I get an engine in or a car in that has ringland failure. It's all spun bearings. They're all oiling issues. So, keeping good oil in it, changing it frequently, keeping the right amount of oil in it. And then another really common failure point is the factory oil pickup. So they just use a flux, not true stainless steel welding. It's just flux to do all their joints. And there's only one standoff to support the pickup. And it's a boxer motor, so it rumbles. It has a lot of vibration. And you'll get cracks in the flux, and it'll let air get in, and it'll lose oil pressure. So, I mean, I had a car on the dyno that everything looked great, and then we were dyno tuning it, and it lost oil pressure, and I pulled it apart, and sure enough, the factory pickup had cracked. And I hadn't done anything to it, so it almost makes you feel worse that this customer brought their car to you, and you look at it, do a visual inspection, and you check everything, it looks great, and then something internally that you could never anticipate to happen, happens, you know? But there's a lot of cars that come in that are in need of an engine for a very simple and cheap issue, you know? So I try to tell people, anytime you're getting into an EJ-powered car, just put five quarts in it, put 540 in it, it calls for 530, put a little bit thicker oil in it, and then if you can, if you have the capability, take the oil pan off and put an aftermarket oil pick up on it. So with all that done, they're extremely reliable. They're very reliable with good tuning. With good tuning. I have a couple, I have six or seven 700 horsepower builds that we did three or four years ago that are still tearing it up. I mean, they're having a blast.

Okay.

So it's the maintenance and the modifying and the tuning that really leads to the success of that platform.

I know when it comes to the oil weight thing, a lot of people, there's a whole argument of, this is what it says from the factory to do this, but I don't think people realize sometimes that that is sometimes has to do with the EPA for when you hit certain emissions, right? So there's usually not any problem with putting some heavier weight oil in.

The EPA doesn't want your car to last past 100,000 miles anyway.

I mean, just for them to hit the certain MPGs they need to hit and things like that, you've got to put in a lighter weight oil makes the engine...

Yeah. All the Subarus call for 530. There is no 530 in this building. It is all 540 or above or 020 or different. But in our bulk reels, I don't know if you saw it in the shop, we have bulk oil systems so we can pull the roof just like a dealership. That's 540 and it's synthetic.

Dude, when I walked in here, I was like, man, the first thing I said is I called you an angel because everything is so white here. It's crazy.

I bet you get that all the time though.

Oh, so much. The lights reflect off my head.

I got that King Neptune energy. You're not much older than me.

How old are you? 30.

30. So you know the SpongeBob reference then. OK, you got that. OK, so then obviously there was a big change one day with the new generation of engine. What was the main thing that happened there? Because they basically have been similar since the 80s, from my understanding.

So yeah, the STIs have had EJs in them since they came out. And in 2015, they switched from an EJ series to a FA series in the WRXs. And the biggest difference is their timing chained. So they have a humongous front cover that leaks on almost all of them. They have rockers rather than cam over bucket. So when you over rev an FA series, those rockers love to fall off. And then the cam will come around and will punt it out the valve cover. So I've seen that happen a couple of times, and the customers will swear, I was just driving it. Come on, dude. Come on. We all know we're at a performance shop. You can say that you were beaten on it. We're not going to scold you because we do the same thing. But they're direct injected, like I mentioned before. So yeah, there's not very many similarities with them. Other than it being a flat four, that's about it. The bell housing is the same. So you can swap engines and transmissions on to them, but that's about it.

What's the, so I just bought an FA20, an STI, and I brought it to you. What's it cost me to get 600 horsepower?

So, well, first the FA20 doesn't come in the STI.

Oh, okay.

But if you have an STI with an EJ and you want 600, there's definitely places where you can cut corners and still hit your horsepower mark. Whereas if you spend a little bit extra money, you'll make a smoother and longer horsepower, you know? So you can leave like the factory intake manifold in it, for example. You can make tons of power on the factory intake manifold. But if you switch over to an AMS or a Process West or a Corso Veloce, you'll make more efficient power, you know? So, like I mentioned before, we have our 600 horsepower package. That package deal really can hit like 700 if you really, really lean on it. But our 600 package is around 40 grand. So it's understanding or it's understandable when you get someone in that's like, hey, I want to make that much power, but I don't have that much money. Well, there's some things we can change. You know, we can take the billet intake manifold off. It won't make as smooth of a power. We can leave the factory unequal length header on. It won't make as smooth of a power. It will hit the target, but the reason that we curated that list of parts is because we know that it can make that much power for a really long time. Sure.

I love how one of the things you didn't mention changing was a source of income or anything like that.

Yeah, that also, you know.

So do you guys subscribe to like the, all right, we'll make it work with what we got mentality?

Absolutely.

Or is it more like buy once, cry once, or a little bit of both?

There's a good blend. You know, we're not like, I know that there's some shops out there that are like, oh, we won't touch your car unless it's stock and we're only putting our package on it. We don't do that. You know, well, if obviously they're Subarus, they're going to have mods on them. And we're not going to make you throw away your perfectly good parts to put ours on just because we like them better. Well, obviously, you know, if there's something that we're like, hey, we really don't like this, we'll try to steer people in a direction that we trust more. But we've made tons of power on cars that had almost nothing that we would regularly use. You know, so for example, we did a customer car not long ago. We did a Precision 6870. We normally use Garretts, but we've used both. Yeah, it's one of the things where, like, yeah, we could be really stern and rude and say, no, we're not going to touch this, but we know that.

That doesn't happen with this community, though. Like you said, it's a bundle. It's a mixed bag of everything.

Yep, and these cars have been around for so long that there's so many different suppliers and so many different manufacturers for all the parts. I mean, there's probably 30 different Subaru headers you can buy for an EJ car, you know? And obviously, there's a couple of them that we really, really like, and there's a couple that we really don't like, but if the customer has this header already and it's going to hit the power goal that he wants, we're not going to say, hey, you have to take this perfectly good part off and put one of ours on, you know? So.

You're not working on a Dodge Viper. We have like two options.

Yeah, exactly.

There's going to be some stuff shaking up that world, by the way.

We'll talk about that later. So I got that backwards then, the WRX and STI thing. So now is the FA20 to get six on a horse, similar money then?

No.

Okay.

It can, well, similar money, yeah, but it's going to be spent different ways. You know? Like I said before, with the FA20 needing a supplemental fuel system added on, the proper way to do it, there is batch fire modules out there that you can tie into the factory ECU and just make them fire together. We don't like to do that. We want to put a standalone on it and make them fire in sequence and when we want them to, you know? So, but a MoTeC package for a WRX is $8,000, $9,000.

I was going to ask you about that. So there's really, there's no other solutions besides MoTeC. Is it mostly because of the...

It's the direct injectors. So I don't know of any other ones. I'm pretty sure the M142 is basically all that people use for those. But that $10,000 you're going to be spending on a MoTeC package, the factory ECU is what we used on our horsepower record car.

Right.

It had a factory ECU on it, you know? It had nothing. It had a factory ECU with a flash device on it. So, I mean, that was before green speed and EPA and all that stuff. So, yeah, we made $1,200 with a Cobb Axis Sport.

Dude, that's actually kind of crazy that way.

Yep. Yeah. So, running into engine management walls can get really expensive really fast.

Doesn't Link also do DI?

I think they just released the DI.

Yeah, because we had an EcoBoost guy on the show, Gem Sport. I always f*** the name of Gem Sport. Yeah. Yeah, because they do all EcoBoosts, and I think those are all DI, aren't they? Or is it Port and DI?

Well, it depends on which one, but yeah, it's Port. I'm sorry, it's DI. You know what?

We both need some coffee. But no, because I know that's what they were talking about, because you would think, right, with everything being DI nowadays, you would think there would be a little bit more support for it.

Yeah, and the industry is definitely going that way, because now there's aftermarket direct injectors for different models. Whereas before, if you had a direct injector car, you were just buying a port injection manifold and putting it on, because no one knows how to mess or make aftermarket DI injectors work properly to sell. But now there's quite a few options for them, for different models.

Well, I'm noticing that they're still doing that even, and when you start getting a real high horsepower, a lot of times they're taking the direct injection out and going to straight port anyway.

I think that's mostly just because you have so much more options with your injectors and sizing and availability and stuff like that. Because if you're at the track, TX UK and you need a new injector, no one's going to have a new direct injector there. They'll have, ID will be there, Tony T1, they'll all be there, so they'll have injectors on hand. So that's primarily all we use, is just injector dynamic stuff.

Unless Nostrum wants to set up a booth down there maybe.

Exactly. I think they do have aftermarket injectors for the WRX now.

Yeah, I know when we were talking to Sam Burroughs, they were really heavy working on an F820 stuff. He was super excited about bringing a lot of that to the market.

Yeah. Well, it's a huge hole in the market, because like I said, if you're looking at all these kids that have a very entry level sports car and they want to cross over that 450-ish horsepower barrier, they have to spend $10,000 just on engine management. That's not the hard parts, that's not the fuel pump, the lines, the manifold, the injectors, all that stuff. That's just to make it run. And a tune.

Yeah, well, that's like one of those things where it's like, you don't see it, right? I mean, it's tangible because you get in a box, and so you see you and all that stuff, but it's not necessarily going to equal more power immediately. You start to buy the rest of it.

Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Since starting here, we've gotten a lot more into standalone installs and tuning standalones and stuff.

And that's all MoTeC then?

No. No, we mostly use Haltech.

Haltech. OK.

That's basically all we use.

Run the ad, by the way.

Yep. Run the ad. That's... We've done other ones. Cold C8 up there. It has an ETS twin turbo kit on it. Well, when the motor's in it, the motor's broken, but that runs on our MoTeC. So we've done Lynx, we've done MoTeC, we've done ECU Masters. We've done it all.

Any favorite between all of them?

Haltech, for sure. Really? I don't tune at all, but I can get on to a Haltech and I can troubleshoot. I can look at data logs. I can, you know, we do some IC7 installs. I'm doing an IC7 install on a JZSwap G35 right now.

Oh, sweet. Okay.

And I'm even with no knowledge of tuning whatsoever, I can get on to the, you know, NSP software and make a dash and customize it and set up highs and lows and stuff like that. So that's awesome. It's super easy.

Did you see, so the only reason it's on top of mine, because I did the ad for this yesterday. Did you see it? It just dropped some stuff for like the whole JZ guys as well. Yeah.

So I, one of my buddies, one of our buddies, his name is Mike. He's from Scotland, but he comes to Scotland. Yeah.

I'm sorry. It's a tick. It's a tick. I can't control it.

He comes to the US every year for ice cream cruise. Okay. By 1320 video. And then he goes to SEMA afterwards.

Sure.

And while he was at SEMA, he was posting on his Instagram story. And I think it was Bullet Race Engineering that had the Rebel Jz set up at their booth. It was either them or it was, someone had a Jz on a stand with a Rebel Jz and the thing on it. And I screenshot it. I was like, what is that? What is it? I want to see that. So the fact that they're going down that rabbit hole of like, hey, this is a common swap like they did with the LS. This is a common swap. People are doing a lot. Let's make it easier for people to get an engine management system on it. It's really, it's sick. It's awesome. Cause I mean, any other instance before that, you'd have to buy the engine, then you buy a harness or you make it yourself. Then you have to go through and you have to program everything from scratch. So it makes a lot more user friendly for people that are new to standalone.

So, okay. GM and Jz guys, Haltech just unveiled some new products for you guys last month and pre-order starts soon. Whether you want an ECU and harness package for your Jz or an expansion module for your 6L80 or 90, you can go to toonbyshawnsajwn.com to get going on your pre-order. And of course, you can always use code Minnoxide for 5% off when it's game time. Let's get back to the show. Oh, damn, dude, that actually kind of gives me an... So, okay, I've been talking about getting that 86, whatever, like for a future build, right? So then in that case, I can just throw a 1J or 2J in there.

Yep.

Pretty cut and dry.

Yep.

Or more cut and dry, at least.

Yeah. So my FRS, we put an LS2 in it after many failed attempts at the FA-20.

I think your biggest problem is going to be sourcing the motor, but yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. These are all later problems. These are problems for future cars.

After a couple failed attempts at big horsepower FA-20s, I put an LS2 in it and we got a harness from Wiring Specialties and a Haltech 2500.

Okay.

You flip a couple switches in the software, the Factor Dash works, the ABS works, the cruise control works, everything. It's seamless, you know?

Well, that was probably like a... I remember when I was at Shawn's doing the install on that 68 or 69 Camaro. They were like, they ripped out this whole Holley, threw all this Haltech stuff in there. I know after like 12 hours or whatever, they basically got it firing.

Yeah.

Like it's insane. It was like, you just punch in all these numbers, like, what do you have in the car? Boop, like.

Yep. I saw Nick from Haltech. I follow him on social media a lot. And I think they were at a race or something like that. And there was a skyline there. And it had this really janky ECU set up on it. And he posted a story of him taking all that stuff out, putting a RB plug-in in it and having it fired up in like two hours.

That's awesome.

It's just crazy. So the fact that they're going down the path of like having factory fitment standalones is really cool. Because it's similar to what Link does, I guess.

Right.

Where they replaced the board.

Oh, yeah.

But this is like a standalone with the right connectors for a factory harness, which is pretty cool.

Yeah, they're messing around with the Coyote stuff too, I've seen. That's been the thing.

We had a 66 Mustang in here that had a Coyote in it. And the harness was a Haltech Coyote harness that apparently got discontinued at some point. But the harness had been cut up and hacked and all sorts of weird stuff done to it. I looked at the customer and the poor guy hadn't done any of the work himself. He had dropped it off to various different shops and had really shoddy work done on it. And I remember looking at him and being like, I'm just going to show you an example of how bad the wiring is here. So you have a 2500 Haltech and you have an IO expander here, and you have a harness built for this engine. I said, all this wiring for your IAT goes to this IO box. And then I reached back by the supercharger and I pulled up the wire that had the end cut off of it and it said IAT right on the side. I'm like, so they had an IAT plug, they cut it off and then made a new connector, ran it to your IAT and then ran it to the IO expander.

What's the purpose of buying a plug and play harness?

No idea. So I was like, oh, well, this is a Haltech harness, let's just hop on Haltech and buy it. It's been discontinued. So I told them, I said, I'll call you when they bring it back, it'll come back eventually, because just like the JZ and the LS, I mean, it's a super common swap.

Right.

A little bit more expensive.

Well, we're looking at the swap we talked about earlier in the Cobra with the GT500, we're looking at putting a Haltech in that. So yeah. Yeah.

I think he said Nexus R3 is what he's going to.

Yeah.

We'll talk details later. I can't remember what he said on that one. So I kind of want to bring it back to the Subaru side of things then. So there's also the FA24 too, right?

Yep.

And that's what comes in the 86s and the BRZs, right?

Yep.

Unless I'm mistaken.

Yep. The BRZ, GR86 and the new WRXs all have FA24s.

Okay. Yeah. So okay. That's what I was driving the other day because I test drove the WRX as I was telling you.

A little bit punchier, a lot more low end torque and stuff like that.

Yeah. It seems like they kind of, correct me if I'm wrong, from my like reading like a few months ago, is like they fixed like a lot of the issues with that one.

They changed the, the platform is very similar. You can take FA20 heads and bolt them on to the FA24. You can kind of Lego it like that, you know, similar with the EJ motors, but yeah, they fixed a lot of stuff with the FA24.

Okay. So is there, has anybody gone down the power route of those yet?

Yeah.

I'm sure.

Yeah. TPG tuning.

Okay.

Yeah. Um, I forget the guy's name, Nate, I think he, they have the world record for the FA24 right now. I don't know what numbers they're making specifically, but it's got to be near four digits.

It's okay.

Because I mean, to get a Subaru to go, to go nines, it takes a lot of power.

Right.

So, or a really, really good driver. There's glory passes out there.

Sure.

Yeah.

You know, they're also not exactly getting lighter either.

No.

The new ones are, they've got to be, not, they got to be, what, 3,500 pounds at this point?

I don't know the number off the top of my head. It's, they're deceptively heavy though.

Sure.

You know, we get a good scale for how heavy a car is because they're broken. So we push them around the shop so much. So like when we get a broken FRS in, it's really nice because they're so light. You know, they only weigh 26, 2,700 pounds. Sure. Whereas when we get like a brand new SCI that's broken, it's like going to need some help here. They're not too heavy, I guess, especially when you compare them to like some other entry level sports cars, like Mustangs, Camaros. Those things are, especially the high trim ones, they're heavy, you know, they're really heavy. There's a reason that a Camaro is in the heavyweight class with track hawks.

Right, yeah, yeah, yep.

Well, I have a carbon fiber package GT 500, so that's supposed to make it lighter, right? And it's still 4200 pounds, so, yeah.

Exactly.

What about the guys that, I just, I have one and I just want a daily driver, is it good to just, I mean, does Cobb still offer like a canned tune in an access port? Like if I just want, you know, to add 80 to 100, I mean, that's a pretty simple deal, too.

So you can take someone in their garage with no tuning experience whatsoever and without ever connecting a laptop, they can put an intake, no downpipe support anymore, but they can put an intake, flex fuel, a bunch of other bolt-on mods, and flash a off-the-shelf flex fuel tune. And ideally, I would tell them to drive it to the dyno, but you can go drive it around on the tune that it has. There's a lot of bad talk about the off-the-shelf tunes from Cobb, but they come from people that are not using Cobb products with their Cobb tune. So they think, oh, well, I have this NVIDIA downpipe and an AEM intake and I'll just put this Cobb tune on it. It's supposed to be for stage two, you know? And then the car blows up. It's like, well, the MAF diameter is different on that AEM intake and the downpipe flows different. So your tune's completely off, you know? You think you're going down the right path of putting a tune on it, but ideally, no matter what parts are on it, you get it pro-tuned.

Yeah, if you're not going to go with whatever Cobb recommends, then they always say ask your tuner, right? So if you're not going to do that, then you need a custom tune.

Yeah, but it's like off the shelf.

Yeah, yeah. No, I try to tell people, like, we do Cobb installs all the time. We have a ton of Cobb products here. We love Cobb. Every once in a while, we'll get a car in and the customer's like, hey, I just want you to put this SF intake on and flash the stage one tune. Perfect. Sweet. But anything past that, it's like, okay, all these cars have different quirks. They all flow a little bit different. It's ideal to get a pro tune, you know? So we try to get everyone on the dyno at least once.

Sure. What's that cost somebody for something like that, then, for a tune? Because in the Ford world, they're $600 to $800 for the tune itself.

So for us, without purchasing any unlock credits or if it's just a flash tune...

The device and all that stuff is separate.

Yep, yep. It's $650 for a single map. If you do flex-fuel, it's $1000. And then if it's a standalone plus flex-fuel, depending on what sensor setup we have to do and if you want rolling anti-lag and if you want all the different cool things that a standalone can do, the price goes up a little bit. But yeah, entry level for a tune, single map on a flash device is just $650. And if it's a standalone tune, since they're usually a little bit more complicated, it's $1000.

That makes sense. I meant to ask you this earlier, so what made you go the LS2 route in that car? I don't think you finished that story.

So to start out, so I got that car from Spokane and my buddy Josh, Josh Bader over here to him.

Name sounds familiar for some reason.

He is the king of no mechanical sympathy. He just goes for it. Like he, I watched him at TXUK. He had his drag Subaru down there and he was like, I drove all this way. Qualifying got pushed off and pushed off and I'm finally here, I'm going for it. And he sent it the first pass. He sent it, sent a rod right through the block. But he actually, after he broke that car, he piloted our drag car to the win for us at TXUK.

The Honda?

No, our black drag car that we had, the 05. So we were actually the first and anyone to win TXUK with a Subaru.

What year was that?

2021.

OK.

Is that the trophy that's on the desk up there?

Yep.

Yep, 21.

So we won that. It was actually really, really cool. So in the finals for stick shift, because they have the slow class and the fast class, it's unreasonable to expect a Subaru to go on the fast class. Those guys are running sixes. But somehow, P&L Motorsports out of Chicago, they made their way to the finals. And then in the slower class, it was us and Misfire Motorsports. So there's three Subarus in the finals of TXUK that year. And so we were like, hey, this is awesome. This is a win for the community regardless, no matter what happens happens. Unfortunately, Shawn from Misfire, he broke on our race. And so we got the win there. And so we were technically the first Subaru to win TXUK. And then the next pass was Roli and P&L's car, and they won as well. So there's two Subarus that won TXUK that year. It was pretty cool. But anyway, back to the FRS, I found it on Marketplace. It was 67,000 miles, completely stock. And the guy had it listed for eight grand. And I was like, no, there's something going on here. And so I messaged him because I was shopping. I was actively looking for a project car. And since I had built this friend group of Subaru guys from going to TX UK and then eventually working here, I was like, yeah, I could get down with an FRS. And so I messaged the guy. I was like, where'd you come up with your price? And he said, oh, I took it to CarMax and they offered me eight grand. So that's what I listed it up for. And I said, what's your PayPal? I'll be there next week. And so back to Josh, he took delivery of it for me and inspected it for me. And he called me before I sent the check. And he was like, if you don't buy this thing, I'm going to, because it was just dirt cheap. And so I ended up mailing the check, flew out there and I drove it from Spokane down to my hometown, which is in Southeast Idaho. I drove it from there. That was about 10 hours. And then slept for about five hours in my grandma's house and then drove the remaining 17 home.

Holy s***.

And FRS's don't have armrests. So I had a Flying J humongous cup sitting in the cup holder and I was just using it as my armrest. And I was just calling anyone who would answer the phone to just talk because I was just, I don't know if you've ever driven on I-80 through Nebraska and Wyoming, it is mind numbing. It is horrible. It's torturous. So I got it home and I called Justin. I was like, hey, I kind of want some parts for this thing. Let's do a cat back, let's do a shifter, entry level stuff. And then he called me after I wanted like some other mod. And he was like, let's turbo it. And I was like, all right, well, how much does that run? All these kits are, you know, three or four grand. Like, okay. And he goes, but if you spend a little bit more, we can make it really fast. Like, well, I don't have a whole lot of money right now. I was staying with my buddy, CJ. Have you ever heard of a V8 bait Subaru? He hasn't raced it in a long time, but in the Subaru community, very legendary car for drag racing. Okay. But I was staying with him and that's actually kind of how I got started with the Subarus was that car, but we can get into that later. But he was like, yeah, we can make it fast if you spend some more money. And I'm like, well, I don't have a whole lot of money right now. And he goes, well, if you come up here on the weekends, because Omaha is where I was staying at the time, and we're in Des Moines, so it's about two hours. He was like, if you come up here on the weekends and do some mechanic work, I'll help you out with some of the parts. I'm like, okay, cool, let's do that. So I pulled the motor out in the garage, put the whole build together after the motor showed up. We did forged internals, half inch head studs, the turbo kit had a precision 5858 on it, and it made 500 wheel in an FRS, which was a blast.

That's a party, yeah.

It was a riot, it was a riot. And it kept lifting the heads. So it lifted the heads the first time, pulled the motor out, sent it to out front, let him do his thing. Lifted the heads the second time, and then Jeremy from out front, he put me in timeout. So I was in engine timeout for about a year. He said, I'm not sending you another motor until you figure out what the heck is going on. So at that point, we switched over to a standalone, so we put an M-Tron on it, because M-Tron has a plug and play for those cars, and they're pretty capable ECU. Put an M-Tron on it, put a bigger turbo on, because we figured the back pressure was probably the source of us lifting the heads. So we put a 6466 on, and it rocked that set up for about a year before it finally lifted the heads again. And I was beating the crap out of it. I was having a lot of fun with it. And after it lifted the heads again, I pulled it into the shop running on two cylinders. Like it literally, we were going to lunch, and I had Jay in the passenger seat, because he had always liked FRSs, and he wanted to go for a ride. And we get up on the interstate, I have it in third, I'm like, all right, I'm going to lay into it. Put my foot to the floor, finally comes into boost, and then just sprays coolant all over the windshield. And this is my third motor now, so I'm a polished vet at this. And I go, oh crap, damn. And Jay goes, what happened? I'm like, I looked over at him, I go, it blew up, Jay. And so as soon as that happened, I called Cole, who was still at the shop, I said, open the garage door as soon as I pull up. And he goes, okay, because it's got lifted heads, the there's no ceiling surface, but somehow it's still running, you know? And I'm like, if this thing comes to a stop, we're screwed. So I blew two red lights and limped it all the way back to the shop, pulled it in and closed the door, went and got lunch. And while we were at lunch, Cole goes, hey, let's LS swap that. And I'm like, sounds good to me. Sounds good to me.

So 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.

Cole took all of the FA20 specific parts, like the turbo kit, standalone, all that stuff. He took that and ordered the LS swap and I got the swap kit from Sikki. Those guys are awesome. Got the swap kit from Sikki, did a wiring specialties harness, Haltech, and threw it all together. It works awesome. Works awesome. So it's a ton of fun, a lot of fun.

So then you threw that in there, then is it still turbo and all that too, then?

No, no, just natural aspirators.

Okay.

So and then full disclosure, I messed something up on the LS swap. Sikki sends this really nice white paper on the with the swap kit, and it's for the oil filter relocation. And they say, hey, it's really important that you put into out and out to in on your oil filter relocation. Well, I was very excited, and I was just throwing stuff on as fast as I could, and I put in to in and out to out. So after I put the swap in and got it running, we tuned it, it was a, you know, I think 70,000 mile LS2. So who knows what it came out of? Who knows what it had done to it before? But put it in, tuned it, it made 380 wheel. And for two weeks, I beat the brakes off this car. I had a blast. I was like, finally, a car I can trust. And then it spun a bearing. So I, when it spun a bearing, I was giving another friend a ride. So that's what I figured now is that if I want my car to last, I just don't let anybody ride with me.

That's a ride along too.

And I was pretty defeated at that point, you know? And so I pulled it into the shop. We listened to it for a second. I was like, I'm pretty upset right now. I think I'm just going to go home. And the guys actually, awesome, they stayed late. And Bob and Scott, one of our friends, actually pulled the pan and swapped the rod bearings for me. Oh, wow. In the shop that night. And they were like, hey, we're going to fix it. You know, this is going to cost 20 bucks in bearings. Let's just do it. And they swapped the bearings for me without me knowing. And the noise went away. But then after they drove it for a bit, it slowly came back. And so we determined there was just too much damage. So we pulled the motor out and fixed a bunch of stuff, sent it to the machine shop. I only had to buy a new used crankshaft. I was able to reuse the pistons and the rods, did ARP fasteners all around. I did a BTR cam kit. So it chops now, which as soon as I fired it up for the first time, I was like, I should have put a cam in it. Cause it just sounds like a truck. So I haven't put it back on the dyno yet, because I built the motor all myself. I had Eric's help. I plaster gauged all the bearings and did all the rings myself. And I was like, man, if this thing fire up and makes oil pressure, I'll be happy. That's all I care about. And it fired up, and it made such good oil pressure that it blew the rear main out.

My god.

So that car, it just hates me, but I love it. So it's like a toxic relationship. You know, eventually here on Christmas break, I'll pull the motor back out and do the remain. So it's a it's a tough battle, but it's worth it.

When did you get it?

I got that car in 2019.

So it's just been nothing but hell since 2019.

Basically. Yeah. Yeah. I had hair in 2019.

That car did you dirty.

Yeah. Yeah. But it's it's also taught me a lot.

Sure.

That car, that car is 100 percent the reason that I'm sitting here, because without that car, I wouldn't have built my relationship with Cole and Justin. I knew Cole from high school, him and I went to high school together. OK. But without that car, I wouldn't have learned the platform, built a rep, you know, not built a reputation, but, you know, showed Cole and Justin, hey, I can do this. You know, I know how to do this stuff. I can build these cars. And so because that eventually just led to me getting hired. Sure. And at the time, it was just Cole and Justin here. So I was their first hire. And we were at a, we were in a 4,000, no, 6,000 square foot shop. I think they'll, Justin can correct me on that. Sure. Just two lifts. And they actually had my car up there because after it blew up the first time, I just left it there. And he was like, hey, when you come back up, just bring all your stuff. Cause you're just going to move here and work full time. I'm like, all right, I could probably do that. So, yeah.

That's an awesome story.

Yeah, it was a lot of fun. It was definitely different now. Cause there's a lot more responsibility, a lot more stuff at stake. Whereas before we were just three dudes in a small little garage, turning out a couple Subarus now and then, selling some parts, but it's a lot bigger now.

There's a lot of the people we've interviewed that end up in a shop like this where it all starts with just a few guys in a garage somewhere, right? And the next thing you know you're in, this is a pretty impressive shop you guys got here now.

Thank you. I don't own any of it, but I take a lot of pride in this business, because I've been here since, not the start, but close to it. Sure.

Well, I feel like you also, every day it seems like it's different here. What was that Volkswagen I saw up front, by the way? There's so much weird s*** here.

Yeah, we have since dialed back the craziness that we're willing to bring on. For a while, we were like, anything, if it's got wheels, we'll work on it. So we've since turned that down just a little bit, but yeah, there's a bus up front that, wait, you're talking the GTI or the bus?

The Mark II, I think it is?

Yep. So Justin picked that thing up. It's his. He'll know more about it, but it's an old, vintage race car or something like that. It's got mechanical fuel injection on it. He got it running, so it's cool, but he drug it out of someone's backyard or something like that, like a year ago, and he was like, I'm going to make this thing run. So yeah, that thing's pretty cool. We've had a lot of really oddball cars in here. I think the strangest car that we had in here, it was called a Tiffany. It was, you might know what it is. It was Cougar based, like old 5.0 Cougar. But it looked like a Corolla DeVille car.

Yeah, so they do that with the Mustangs too.

Yep, it's called a Tiffany.

Tiffany, I can't remember what the other one is, but I know exactly what you're talking about.

This thing was enormous. It was probably 20 feet long. We couldn't even put it on our dyno.

Yeah, it's all hood, right? Yes, yep.

And they have the fake, like, you know, dryer vent exhaust on the side, you know. We had one of those in for a tune. It had a Trick Flow manifold on it and that was it.

Dude, I gotta pull this thing up.

They're crazy.

Dude, you gotta, yeah, it's nuts.

So type in, like, Tiffany or?

Type in, like, Mercury Cougar Tiffany and it should pop up something.

No, and they look cheesy as hell, like, whoever did them. Oh, they're hilarious.

They have the spare, like, spoked wheel on the back and then you get it and it's just a Cougar. Yeah, it's like, you know, great Gatsby car, you know?

There was a Mustang version for sale not that long ago up in the Twin Cities area. I think somebody sent it to me and I'm like, nah, hard pass.

How's that Robbie kid's car? He's got a couple of those.

We had one of those and I was like, I don't even want to put this thing on the lift because I'm scared. But yeah, we've had a lot of weird cars in, but that's probably the strangest one that we've had.

I feel like that's kind of the appeal though, with some shops. It's like, these guys will f****** do anything. Let's go see what's in there this week.

Like I said, you know, half of our customer base is easily Subarus. The rest is all over the place. I mean, just looking out across the shop there, you have a CRX with a B16 and then a F-Body Camaro and a Silverado, you know? And so-

It's a SS Trailblazer there too.

Yeah, yeah. There's kind of, there's like half Subarus, half who knows, you know, just random stuff. But basically if Parker gets a call and it's, you know, insert weird project here, he'll come talk to me or Bob and be like, hey, you feel like you can take this on and we'll, you know, say yes or no. And sometimes they get turned away, sometimes they don't.

Okay. What do you turn away then?

Let's say sometimes you wish you would have said no, probably.

Yeah. Before we started, like I said, we're 0 and 3 for being successful with Coyotes.

Okay.

And it's not that we've done the work on them. It's all Coyote cars that we've taken on that have had other work done. And we're just, we just don't like them, you know, so that we turn away a lot of mod motor and stuff like that. Because I feel like-

You just don't like your four cylinders to be in a V shape and put together?

Unless it's an LS.

Yeah.

I honestly think that the Coyote and mod motor platform is probably just like the Subarus, where anyone can work on them, but if you want it done really, really well, you have to take it somewhere that knows what they're doing, you know? Whereas like with the LS's, I mean, I put it together and it works. So, I mean, some of the guys giving crap that we just put bolt ons on because we don't build our own motors. But I mean, if I can put an LS together, anyone can.

Sure.

So, yeah, there's some things that we've turned away. There's some things we wish we would have turned away, but there's no car here that's been here because we can't fix it. We try to figure them all out. Sure.

So, one of the other things is like, again, this is how I discovered you in the shop years ago was, again, I'm pretty sure it was like two years ago, is on TikTok, is there anything in particular that just does well for you? Like, what is it that gets people excited? Is it Subaru related mostly?

Subaru, yep. So, every once in a while, I can start a video with a catchy, you know, this or try to hit this target audience, but if I want guaranteed views, it's all Subaru related.

Okay.

So, and they really like how tos and tech tips, but I mean, I've gotten to the point now where I have to start making videos about things I've already talked about years ago, which it seems silly to me, but also my following's grown, so these people probably haven't seen those videos.

Right, yep.

But there's some days, because I try to do all my TikToks before work. So, I get in here early and I'll be like, all right, today I'll talk about this, or today I'll talk about this. And, but there's some days I get in here, I look around, surprisingly enough, you look around the shop and I'm like, there's nothing in here for me to talk about. And it's just writer's block, I think. Because there's obviously stuff in here that I can make videos about. But yeah, the TikTok really likes how to's, tech tips and just anything super related. If I post any of my own cars on there, they flop every time. So, yep, I can't post my FRS, I can't post my IS, I can't post my GTO. Every once in a while, I'll post them just because I want to. The social media stuff, this is my job. The social media stuff is just for fun, which is kind of nice because I don't have to take it too seriously. But yeah, they don't like my cars, but they like what I work on.

Just because it caught my eye in the background, what do you guys 3D print over here?

Eric uses that 3D printer for just testing different models of things that we're going to make. We tested our intercooler intanks that are CNC'd. We tested those on there. We use that for up pipes and all sorts of random stuff. Anything that they want to make for the Corolla that's behind us, it usually gets 3D printed first. Everyone's going to hold 3D print, something goofy. But also production parts, we have little brackets for ethanol sensors that we use on some builds that are 3D printed. He uses it for kind of whatever. Sure.

They make all those little penises for Kyle Lafayette.

Yeah, we are a supplier. But the CNC plasma table behind us, that's one of the coolest tools that I've seen. Unlocking, getting an in-house fabricator transformed this shop. Absolutely, without a doubt, that was the biggest step forward for the business. Because before, if I needed an air cooler pipe changed, or I needed a bracket for this, I was either making it myself and it looked not how I want it to, because I'm making it. Or I'm calling our fabricator buddy, who's down the street, to come over, do some measurements, and then take it back to his shop and do it. So getting an in-house fabricator absolutely changed everything. So, and Eric has a lot of manufacturing experience too. So he had a lot of connections. We scooped him up from Subi Speed. So Subi Speed used to be right down the street from us. And when they sold and then, you know, got rid of a bunch of stuff, our fabricators got laid off and we were like, hey, we're gonna grab you real quick, because he's an incredible fabricator. Wish I could have gotten him to sit down. Wish I could have gotten him to.

What kind of additional projects have you been able to take on as a result, then?

Swaps, exhaust fabrication, intercooler fabrication, like all sorts of random stuff. Like they, the fabricators really like doing production work because it's consistent, you know, you can kind of turn your brain off. You're just doing the same thing over and over again, but we'll throw them a customer, you know, custom fab job every once in a while, and they get really excited.

Yeah, keeps things fresh.

Yeah, absolutely, you know.

Well, you guys also make a good bit of parts too then, right?

Yep, yep. We have our, we have a lot of Subaru stuff. We have a lot of, the Corolla stuff is what we've been hitting really hard lately. We have our downpipe for those, our front mount, our charge pipes, cooling hoses, engine mounts, catback, like all sorts of stuff for those things, because anytime there's a fresh platform that comes as a shop, if you're going to want to like expand on that, you have to hit it fast.

Yeah, yeah.

So we were one of the first to get a downpipe made for them. We were one of the first to make a catback that doesn't break the bank, that still has a valve in it, because they have a factory exhaust valve in them, you know, right off the showroom floor, but you can't control it at all. It goes off the throttle input. So it's only open if you're wide open throttle. Ours, you can open and close it whenever you want. So, yeah, trying to hit that market, see what sticks, you know, try to gauge interests with the owners, stuff like that.

Sure. So, okay, that's actually a question I had on the way down here when I saw the Corolla when you sent me the photo the other day. How does it compare to Subarus?

The Corolla is a fantastic car.

Well, I sense a but.

But they haven't, it's like Hondas. You remember in 2005, there wasn't a Honda on the planet making more than 400 horsepower. Now, thousand horsepower Hondas everywhere. It just takes time. You give the platform time to grow and give it time for people to blow things up, and then rebuild, and then blow it up again, and change things, and do this, and do that. Thankfully, the guys in Australia, I was going to say the Aussies. Yup, they got the Yaris two, three years before we got the Corolla. So they did a lot of the pioneering on that. But just giving the platform room to grow. The problem is, is the internet has gotten all these kids to think, oh, well, I need five, six, 700 horsepower to be fast. And then you get into Corolla, it's like, that's not what this thing's meant for. This is meant to make three to 400 ish horsepower and absolutely shred a track, you know? But you get kids that want, you know, GT 500 horsepower in a three-cylinder, and it's like, it might do it, you know? But it's probably not going to for very long.

I know those Aussies, they've been, last video I saw was seven, or I think it was 800 horsepower, which out of a three-cylinder, it's insane.

Well, if you can get a look at the...

What's the displacement on that?

1.6. G16, yep. They're a phenomenal engine factory. And you take the dial and turn it up a little bit, they'll make really good power. But I mean, the cylinder liners are enormous on them. They're huge. They're almost an inch thick. And yeah, I've seen, I think Lamb Speed, I think he got 700 horsepower out of a factory bottom end, which is insanely impressive. But we've found the drawbacks with turning the boost up on the factory engine. We've blown our own up to R&D. We were at I-29, Midway, Omaha's track. And we went there, we had our red car and our blue car behind us. The blue car was completely factory, all stock at the time. And then our red car had all of our bolt ons and suspension and wheels and tires. And we were going to do a comparison on the track. And our red car blew up first lap.

So this was on the road course at that day. Yeah, I've driven that track.

Yep. It's a blast. Yeah, it's a ton of fun. I've never done it in something fast. I've only done it with our truck and trailer during Ashram Cruise, but I've torn up some lap times in our F450.

I did it in a 2021 GT 500, which that is pretty small and technical for my car. But it's fun. It's great because if you run off, you're just grass forever. There's no wall, there's no anything. I mean, there's grass growing through the tracks.

Have you guys been to Ashram Cruise?

Not yet. It's on the bucket list.

You have to go. It's insane. Do you know Jordan Shipbox Garage on Instagram?

I don't think so.

Maybe. I talked him into coming one year and now he's like, I'm coming back every single year. It's an insane event. It's crazy. There's something there for everybody. There's drag racing, there's roll racing, there's a burnout contest, there is a dyno, there's a stereo or a sound stage. It's insane. It's as close as you can get to Forza Horizon.

Sure, yeah.

We've been the title sponsor of that event for three years now.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, it's a ton of fun. It's one of the events that we all here at the shop look forward to the most.

It's probably not too far of a drive for you guys either.

I'm seeing the stickers on every car in your office. Yep.

Yep.

Well, if you get the RV and it's not a bad drive, it's an eight hour drive for us, that's not bad.

Yeah. The only downside is it usually lands the same weekend as a bunch of other really big events. Sure. I know that, I think the conflicting one this last year was like FD or I don't know, but I try to get all, any internet friends come check it out. And they're all like, oh, well, I have this, I have this.

So what was the conflict for us this year? I can't remember what it was.

I think we were actually going to go this year, but it was not that there was going on the same weekend. We had something else we were going to close to it, like within a week or two.

Yeah, it was just too much at once sort of deal.

Like one for us is SubiFest Midwest. Yeah, it was this last weekend, or it was this last one last year. It was the same weekend as Ice Cream Cruise, and I have a bunch of Subaru friends. Come to SubiFest Midwest. Come check it out. Come check it out. I've been to that show. It's a blast, but Ice Cream Cruise is just insane.

I was going to say, like SubiFest kind of makes sense for you guys.

Yeah, I went one year before I started working with the shop. It was actually a hilarious story. So I told you about CJ. He's a good friend of mine. He's known Justin for years. I started hanging out with him when we both lived in Sioux City, Iowa, and helping him out with his drag car then. We were in a wedding. We were both groomsmen, and we had SubiFest Midwest the next day. We were at this wedding all day doing pictures, staying up late, had a couple of drinks, let the alcohol wear off, we sobered up, and then we drove from Sioux City to Chicago, overnight for SubiFest the next day. And we were like, man, this is kind of sucks. We're taking this sick drag car, made over a thousand wheel, had went eights at that point. And we were like, this kind of sucks. We're taking this sick drag car to this car show, whatever. It'll still be fun. We get there and it's held at a drag strip. And we're like, open the lanes, come on. We'll do one right now, please. And the event organizers were like, no, we didn't pull the permits for it. We didn't get the insurance. And we're like, come on, just want the people want to see it. Come on, let's just do it. They wouldn't let us do it.

I was hoping there was a happy ending to that story.

They wouldn't let us do it. Wouldn't let us, no. But it was still a lot of fun. I think Junior, our tuner, he was there. And after the show, we were like, well, time to drive back. And they were like, no, we're buying you a hotel. And so we ended up staying the night. And it all worked out. But yeah, we were pretty exhausted during that show. I think I fell asleep in the IAG booth.

OK, so OK, you've done Texas 2K a handful of times. You've been in some of these fast cars. Then have you done much racing with any of those cars? Have you been a part of anything cool like that? With like my own or either your own or again, like because I always see, like I always think about my episode with Eric Bloom. I don't think you were a part of a show at that point, but like you went down to Texas 2K and I was just hopping in like these crazy cars or whatever.

And it's just like, no, I haven't done any driving. You haven't done any driving in front, you know, short of like, you know, taking customer cars on test drives and stuff. I've never been on track myself other than taking my ZX10 down to drag strip a couple of times. Unfortunately, no, I haven't made it there yet. But I get a lot more fulfillment out of building the cars.

Okay, sure.

Racing them, you know, because I think it's one of those things where after you spend all the time building it, you know what racing does to it, you know?

It's like stop.

Yep. So like, it's one of those things where like, I have my cars and I really want to race them, but I'm also nervous to break them because I don't want to fix them, you know? So they just keep breaking on me anyway. But yeah, I want to take my Is300 to the drag strip this year.

Okay. What's all done to that one? I don't think I asked anything about that.

So it's an 01 Is300. I got it from a customer. The customer dropped it off as a complete running car, and he said, I want you to take the factory naturally aspirated JZ out. I'm going to use it for a 280Z swap.

Okay.

So pull that out, and then the car is sitting here and I'm like, what do you want us to do with the car? I had always liked Is300. The very first car I ever tried to apply for an auto loan for when I was like 17 was an Is300. And thank God I didn't get it. But he was like, I'll sell it cheap. And so I paid him 500 bucks for it. And then we ordered a JDM Aristo engine. So it's the 2JZ GTE with VVTI. So those never came in the States. You got the Mark 4 Supra that had the GTE engine, but it was no VVTI. So it's got that. It's got a built A340 Automatic, which is the factory four-speed auto that Toyota had in the Supras and the Aristos. That's built by ATF Speed to hold around 1300. And then stock long block has a Pulsar 7375 Compact, a, I forget the name, intake manifold, just like a Greddy style, typical JZ intake manifold. And some fuel system stuff. We basically set it up to, once I eventually build the stock long block, then all we have to do is just swap injectors and turn the boost up. So it's got 1300 horsepower capable turbo. Well, 1200 horsepower capable turbo. It's got three 525 fuel pumps in it. It's got everything there for all the power, but it's just on a stock long block. So it makes like seven ish. So yeah, it's got a, the built automatic, it's not as fun to drive, but I have my FRS that has the manual and it's a V8. So that's the fun engaging car. The IS300 is just supposed to be like, you know, it's got air conditioning, it's got power steering. I should be able to drive it every day. It's got a couple of weird issues I got to figure out, but I should be able to daily drive that thing and comfortably, you know, and just have fun with it. I've done a couple of rips with the guys in it and they're all like, man, this thing's laggy, but once it comes into boost, it's quick. It's a lot of fun. I had my wife in it. The first time I got it running, it still had the factory transmission, not built transmission in it. And I had literally just got it finished. I drove it home and I was like, let's go for a ride. Let's go for a ride. So she gets in it. The driveshaft's hitting the shifter linkage. So it's rattling like crazy and it's loud. It's got a four inch straight pipe on it. I can't lay into it. And so she's looking at me, I was like, isn't this great?

This is awesome, right?

She's like, no, this sucks. And then after I got the transmission built, I was here on a weekend with her and we drove up the street to the parts store to grab something and we took the IS. And on the way back, I laid into it and it hooked and it went and she was like, oh crap, okay, like I get it now, this is sick. I was like, hey, you like that? You like it? Let me do it again, let me do it again. So I flipped around on our street and I went to do another hit and I hit some gravel and about put it into a pole. So I took her from enjoying it to absolutely hating it in one drive. But that thing's a lot of fun. I've always wanted a JZ power car. Yeah. So that was, it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun.

I feel like that's always like cream of the crop for, I don't even know if it has anything to do with Fast and Furious at this point, to be honest with you. I feel like just something about, I don't know, just the sounds, man.

Yeah, they're a blast. It sucks that they're getting so expensive.

Yeah. What are they up to nowadays? Like if you want to get into a 2J, have you looked recently?

I haven't. We got my engine from an importer three years ago, and it was seven grand, I believe. That was dressed with the turbos, with the transmission, ready to drop in. But yeah, I think they're still around that much. I've seen Jay-Z's, like the same one that I have for seven grand, but no manifolds, just the long block, you know? Because I mean, let's be real, the manifolds don't really add a whole lot of value anyway. People are mostly throwing those away, you know? Like I traded my stock twin turbo setup for an additional A340 as a spare, you know? People just don't want them, you know? The most expensive part on the factory intake manifold is the throttle body, because they can go bad and they don't make them anymore. So guys that have all stock, clean examples and they need a new one, they'll buy those up. So yeah.

There's no aftermarket for that? Just like Emotion Raceworks or anything like that that makes a...

You can, but if you're wanting to run the stock computer, no check engine lights, stuff like that, you need the factory throttle body. It's this big gigantic piece. It's got the TPS built into it and everything. I think they sell for around 500 bucks used for a factory throttle body, which is pretty crazy.

Which in their time was probably like 20 bucks.

Yeah, and people were just throwing them away. Oh, I got this new manifold. Throw that in the garbage. Don't need that. But yeah, some parts scarcity sneaking up on us there.

I just keep thinking about how freaking comfortable this chair is. It's a rocking chair. For those that are actually watching on video, it's like lulling me to sleep.

They're comfy. When Junior's here for tuning, sometimes he's only here a couple of days out of the month, so it turns into some late nights sometimes. And cozy, because these are normally in our dino room. So get cozy in there, and you're just waiting, waiting for the next car to need strapped down.

I could sleep in that dino room. That was really nice.

Like dining, dino room, like watch waiting areas. That is 100% nicest one we've been in.

Yeah, no, it needs a popcorn machine and a beer fridge.

We thought about a popcorn machine, but then we were like, well, someone's gonna have to clean it.

Yeah.

No, we don't need a popcorn machine.

I do that all the time. My wife, she's like, we need one of these. I was like, and who's gonna take care of it?

Yeah, exactly, exactly. No, we have a pretty solid setup here. I'm very blessed.

No, again, like it was like one of your tour videos on TikTok a few years ago that got my attention. And I'm not even blowing smoke up here. I was like that, like for waiting room, like sit down, enjoy, like watch. Like I don't think anybody's gonna be able to replicate that.

Yeah.

That's impressive.

And you know, like I told you guys when we were touring, you know, before we just had the dino kind of in a corner. And so you don't want to, you know, pull that experience away from the customer and be like, no, you need to sit up in the waiting room while we dino your car. That's, no one wants that, you know, but we also wanted to have a safe environment for them to be able to hang out and watch. The only downside is when something's going wrong. You're literally in a fishbowl and the customer's just watching you while you're trying to diagnose their car on the dino, you know, and they're just looking at you through the glass.

That's just a funny video way to have it, by the way.

Exactly.

I'm just saying, there's a fun idea there. I didn't even look too closely. Is that a dino jet or Mustang?

It's a dino jet.

Dino jet.

I forget the model. It's the Alva Drive one.

Sure. Yeah, yeah.

The LC4 something.

Sure.

Yeah.

So this, Mark kept telling me, he's like, dude, if you go down there, you got to try to coordinate when Junior's there or whatever. What's so special about this guy?

So Junior, his name's Junior Barrios. He's from New Jersey, from that area. So he tunes primarily at Prime Motoring. And if you want to interview those guys, I can set that up. They're really, really good friends of ours. He primarily tunes out of there, but he also flies to us. He flies to New Mexico. He flies to Texas. He flies to Kansas. He flies all over the place. And Junior just has a lot of experience with those cars.

Subarus in particular, you mean?

Yeah, he's Subarus. We'll throw anything at him. We'll have tuning sessions where I'll tell him, I'll be like, hey, I hope you're not looking for gravy work because we got a bunch of weird stuff coming. So, but the easy stuff, I mean, if we're slammed, and slammed for us is usually 10 cars in a day, he can get through all 10 of them in one day, as long as they're all Subarus. The standalone ones and the Corvette or Mustang or whatever, it'll slow him down a little bit, but he's fast. But I think Junior's, the big deal with Junior is he knows the recipes, he knows what parts are gonna fail, he knows what parts do well, and so he can adjust his tuning to that. If we got a customer in that has XYZ fuel pump, he'll tell us, hey, don't do that. So he has a lot of experience. A lot of tuners, I feel like they will take kind of whatever and just try to tune it, you know? But he'll tell us, no, we need to change this. And unless the customer is hell bent on using what's there, we'll usually try to get it to the way that we want it before we put it on the dyno. But Junior's made six-ish hundred horsepower on a factory long block STI, which before they revised the factory short block a couple years ago, that was unheard of. But Junior and CJ, with his car, they went 977 on an unopened long block forever ago. That's still a standing record as far as I know. And he has the drag racing repertoire with it. If there's a fast Subaru out there that's in the drag racing community, almost always he's tuned it. There's the guys that are doing it on their own, and they're killing it, that obviously aren't tuned by him. There was a year of TX2K, I think it was 2018 or 2019, I think there was 25 registered Subarus for stick shift. There was a ton of them. And Peter didn't like it because he switched the minimum ET the year after. OK. But there was a year where there was just a ton of Subarus drag racing at TX2K. And I went over because the TX2K with Junior, what we would do is you go do your qualifying or you do a test pass, whatever. You log it, you take it out of the car, and you take it over to wherever Junior is, and you have them look at the log. And I think I stood in line behind like six others, six or seven other racers waiting for a revision from Junior at TX2K. So he tunes a lot of them.

It's kind of crazy actually to sit in the hot sun just waiting for a revision.

Waiting for a revision from, you know, from the one guy who's tuning all these cars, you know. So, yeah. And then on top of that, he was also racing in one of the cars that year.

That's so difficult to do that as well.

He's a madman, but he gets it done. He's really, really good at what he does.

So who's the fastest Subaru out there right now?

The fastest, so Subaru Powerplant car. It's called the Brumby. It's a Brat. It's from Australia. I think the guy's name is Errol Bratton. And it is a EJ-powered Brat with a Turbo 400. I'm pretty sure it goes mid-sevens. Holy s***. Yep. And then after that, there's actually a Subaru drag racing Facebook group and they have a Excel sheet with all the times, the turbo, all this stuff. So they keep good track of it. But I'm pretty sure the next in line after him is, oh crap, the, he's my buddy. I was literally just talking about him the other day. It's a blue 15 STI. I believe they went 812 or 82 with it at World Cup a couple of years ago. Okay. Omar, Omar is his name. So I think he had Roli driving it that year. Roli is like the king of Subarus as far as drag racing. He does a lot of hired gun racing for different jobs. He was the first H-pattern stick shift Subaru to go sevens ever. They've only done it one time. But they went 7.9 and I think that was World Cup 2017. Holy s***. So when they went sevens, the Subaru drag racing community exploded because no one had ever done that before. And no one's done it since. So that's like the time to beat is if you have a stick shift Subaru, 780s is like the time. Because as far as in the Subaru drag racing community, if you have an automatic or a sequential, you just get tossed to the wind. They don't care. They all care about it having an EJ and it having a factory six speed for whatever reason. That's what they care about.

It's interesting. That's crazy. Eight years. Almost coming up on nine.

Yeah.

Is there anything new coming down the pipeline that's exciting for Subaru at all?

Well, they tease that new STI concept. And just from the pictures, they gave the community everything that they've been saying they wanted. Because like the hatch, it was a hatch concept, which people have been complaining since 2014 when they discontinued the hatch. They wanted hatch STIs again. They like hot hatches, you know. So, they made it a hatch. It's got Brembo's, it's got a manual transmission, it's got the driver controlled center differential. It's obviously going to have an FA series engine because it'd be kind of silly of them to take a 20 year old platform and debut a brand new car with a 20 year old engine. Right. So, I think that's what everyone's kind of waiting for right now as far as new things.

I'd love to see it come to fruition. Like when they discontinued that hatch, I was like, this thing is awesome. I was shopping for those in high school.

Yeah, the hatch STI is, I mean, there's a reason that the hatchbacks, when they're clean, sell for so much more money than the sedans. People want them. So, it'd be really cool to see that happen. Because I think the WRX being the flagship performance car just isn't really satiating for most enthusiasts.

You're thinking there needs to be an STI.

There needs to be an STI.

Well, that's the thing, I kept calling the car I drove, I kept calling it an STI. The TS. No, I wasn't even a TS. I think it was a Premium or whatever, something to be called a TS. But either way, I'm just like, yeah, the TS thing was goofy, too, though.

Well, yeah, they came out with this TS trim and it has Brembo's, but you can only get the good seats with the automatic and just weird, you're looking at Subaru and you're like, what are you thinking? Come on, this is a manufacturer that tries to boast having an insane enthusiast background. I mean, you look at all these wicked big meat, SubiFest, SubiFest Midwest, Texas, like California, all these different meats, they bring the factory race cars out. They'll bring Bucky Lasek or Travis Pastrana out to go do ride-alongs and stuff like that. But you're making your premium car an automatic only for the cool interior.

CVT too, isn't it?

Yeah.

Dude, you know what? Okay, I, hold on, b******* moment. I actually kind of like that new Prelude from Honda, but they're dropping the ball in every way. They're making it a hybrid, which again, I can maybe live with that.

Yeah, there's a lot of performance of going hybrid too.

But if we ignore that whole aspect of it, why are you putting a CVT in this car? It looks like a great, it looks like a direct competitor to the 86.

Yep, yep. So I don't know, because I was excited when they said they were going to bring the Prelude back, but yeah, same thing.

I don't mind the looks though. It's kind of like weird and sleek in the back, like in a weird way that I kind of like it.

Hey, in two years, there will be a K-swapped one on YouTube. Someone will take, just like Devin did with the-

They're like 65 grand or whatever, I think.

Well, is the CVT- So it gets a bad rap, and I think mostly from Nissan, right? Like, they can't build a CVT to save their lives.

Subaru really can't either. I feel like Toyota's had the CVT figured out.

I have a 300-horsepower snowmobile that basically runs off a CVT transmission, and-

I think the biggest complaint that people have with the CVTs is you're taking an automatic transmission, which already doesn't have a whole lot of driver input, and you're basically just making it- I mean, there's no gear change. Yeah, there's no gear changes. I mean, I can't remember what manufacturer did it, but they have a CVT transmission, but they'll fake shifts for you. So they'll hold it in an RPM and then bog it back down. I heard about that. It's like, give the people what they want. Give it either a true torque converter transmission, like they're putting in these, or give it a manual.

Yeah.

It's what people want. Apparently, the automatics that they're putting in the Corolla now are pretty solid for an automatic and a sports hatchback. But we haven't had one in here yet.

So interesting.

Yeah.

Now, I like the look of this one, by the way.

Like, yeah, no, just the Chrome TEs were definitely what set it off. But that color, you want to hear a really unfortunate story about this car.

Oh boy.

I got tasked with going and picking it up in Missouri.

Poor guy.

So I had, I was going to make a round trip out of it. I had a customer car that I messed something up on. And so he drove to town, his car wasn't ready. I was like, hey, I'll bring it to you. So it ended up being a blessing in disguise that we had to go pick this car up because I was like, hey, I'll knock this guy's car out. I'll drop it off to him, drop this customer car off. Me and Richard leave the shop here like four or five in the morning, drive to Omaha, drop this customer's car off before the sun's even up. And then we immediately drive down Joplin and we're on, we're wearing a borrowed trailer, or with a borrowed trailer from our friend, Chen, who has a sick Honda collection. But he has one of those really cool Futura trailers. I don't know if you've seen those. You unhook the-

I have the Tim T version of it, but yeah.

Okay. Yep. It slams the trailer all the way down to the ground, right? So we borrowed his trailer because he's awesome to us. And we pick up the car and we are, we've done a whole day of driving and we are 45 minutes out of town, 45 minutes away from the shop and a tire explodes. Tire explodes, destroys the fender and destroyed the side of that car.

This car right here? Damn.

Took the, it put dents in the door. It took the mirror off and thankfully it didn't hit the fender or anywhere in the unibody. And so, I pulled over and I'm like just crushed. And I just called the boss, called Cole. I'm like, hey, Corolla's messed up. It just exploded a tire. On top of that, we were stupid. We didn't bring the spare. So now we're just sitting there waiting for Parker to bring us the spare from the shop, you know, in our pain for 45 minutes, but.

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

Thankfully, we took it to a body shop that is extremely talented in town and they were able to fix it up. You can't even tell now. It looks just as good as I did.

That little spot right now?

Yeah. But no, all I saw, it was me and Richard and we're driving, driving, driving and I just see another back mirror. I'm like, oh crap, we lost the tire. All right, we'll pull over, we'll get the spare and then I get out and I just see the side of the car. I'm like, oh my gosh. Man, just bad luck.

No, I had a, I had a super duty blow a rear tire and it looked like somebody took a can opener to the side of the box side. It just took and ate a whole chunk out of the whole thing. That's kind of crazy.

And those Futura trailers, they just have plastic fenders. So I was hoping that that wouldn't damage the car, but yeah, it got it pretty good. So yeah, I was pretty bummed to make that phone call, but it is what it is, you know, it happens.

Well, the Timpty has aluminum fenders.

I'll have to look into that.

Yeah. And I believe they're like a big, they're number one, like corn hauler trailers, right? So that's gotta be big in the Iowa and...

Must be.

Nebraska area. Yeah.

I see them all over the place. I know that. Yeah. I've been wanting to get my own trailer for a while. Maybe look into one of those.

Well, I went from like a steel, pull out the ramps, set it all up to this drop trailer now. And yeah, it is double the money, but my God, is it so much nicer to roll up, hit the button, had the whole trailer drop to the ground, drive the car on and go.

But at that point, OK, so what I'm struggling with, would you rather have a steel frame enclosed or an open aluminum because they cost about the same?

Well, you can't ask me that question because I have about 12 trailers and I have about every combination you can ask for. I also have a big 28 foot race trailer, all aluminum, there you go. Enclosed trailer.

Did you see our big trailer out in the parking lot? I did not.

I saw the Futura trailer on the way in.

Yep. So we also have our 48 foot enclosed. You're one foot short of a semi with that thing. The first time I took that thing anywhere was to TX2K and we only had a six and a half foot bed and it's a gooseneck. And one back window later, we made it back. But yeah, that was rough. After that year, Cole traded his F250 and then we got our F450. So that thing's awesome. Those four diesels are insane.

I know, I love my truck.

The trend continues by the way.

Yeah, my trailer, I have a gooseneck too that will hold two cars. One time we went to TX2K with a C6 ZR1 and my GT500 on an open gooseneck trailer.

Oh man, I bet you were getting a lot of looks.

Yeah, yeah, that was pretty cool.

Especially when the tire bounced off the back.

That was on the way home, yeah.

I, Cole got married two years ago, two, three years ago in Colorado, and I drove his purple R32 as a, well, oh, that car. Drove that out there for him.

This is an R32?

That's an R32 with a BR widebody kit, which converts it to an R34 front end.

Interesting, okay.

But I drove that on the trailer out to Colorado for him, so that he could have it with the wedding and all that stuff. One thumbs up all the way out to Colorado. I got one thumbs up on an open trailer with that thing. And I'm like, man, where's everyone at?

Yeah, right.

Dan hated his life when there was a pink RX7 on the back and nobody gave a s*** about it. Mr. Chrome GT500.

Oh, yeah, I got, you know, there was a friend of ours had an FD RX7 and it was like everywhere we went, you know, I have this awesome GT500, it's wrapped Mystic Chrome. So it looks like that right there, right? And everybody flocks up to his RX7. I'm like, come on guys.

Doritos!

Yeah.

Yeah, we, that Mustang meat that I was telling you guys about, we, this building was packed. It was shoulder to shoulder. There was probably a thousand people here. And we had the interior all cleaned out, had show cars all lined throughout and everything. And it was looking like we were pretty full. And then a Mr. Chrome Cobra came up, like a true Mr. Chrome. And I was like, we'll find you a spot. Come inside. We'll find you a spot. You know, there's something about that color.

I know.

It's insane. Isn't there something like, don't you have to like have a rep from Ford, like verify that you have a Mr. Chrome car or something like that to get the paint?

Mystic Chrome and there's Mr. Chrome. So in the nineties, I believe it was Mystic Chrome. That was the like SN95 body style. Now, what I had heard was who developed that paint color, was it, I forget the name of the paint company, but anyway, paint company develops this paint color. The government was also using that in money. In order to, you know, like when you could do and they did a little bit of color shift, you know? So that was why it was so guarded. It was literally the same paint code. So if you had one that needed to have worked on, a Ford rep had to bring the paint to a body shop. They had to spray it and then anything that was left had to go back with the Ford rep. That's so, and that was why they were expensive. So that we've gone away from that now. But yeah, that's the story I was told.

Interesting.

So they probably had to get some kind of special thing from whoever this paint company was. Well, the government wants us to keep this under lock and key.

But the next color, that wasn't the case, right?

I don't think that was the case, no, on the New Edge style ones.

Got you.

Yeah, mine's dipped. So it's dipyourcar.com. They've got that pretty down to the right color.

Pretty well matched.

Yeah. Nice.

Man, they've been around for a while now. I remember watching their stuff in high school. Fonz.

Oh, Dip Your Car?

Yeah. They've been around for a while now.

They're not going to Wednesday, aren't they?

No, I think they're down south somewhere.

Sure.

I get a lot of really cool looks because it gets the depth of paint, but it's technically a wrap. And I don't know why more people don't do that instead of the vinyl.

Yeah, I don't know.

I think I don't know if it's because it's a bad name.

I mean, I guess the only thing I could imagine is I imagine your car is stored inside.

Oh, yeah.

You know, I don't know if you've seen a car that's daily driven, that's dipped. They look rough after a while.

Yeah, like not not mine's already because I track the car and do stuff. So it's already looking kind of roughish. And I do rallies, so I'm putting stickers on and off. Yeah. But it's probably get one more season on of it. And then I got to start thinking about what I'm going to do.

There you go.

I said actually paint at the color.

But yeah, yeah, no, I feel like every every kid that's every car guy that was our age, you know, like thirties now probably had a plasti dip phase, at least early on, you know, because I knew my wheels.

Yep.

Yeah, it was my wheels. It was my grill. I had like a I think it was a 2002 accord that I just I'm going to plasti dip the bumper and I'm going to do this and all this stuff. And then my dad would just watch me and be like, all right, whatever, do what you want to do.

My my plasti dip story. So I didn't take the wheels off. I just took the trash bags and wrapped them around the back. Right. And I forgot to on one of the wheels. I forgot to take the trash bag out. So all the plastic got into the rotor and the brake pad. That s*** smelled for so many weeks.

Yeah.

And it was also spongy too. Like it fell off.

Yup. Yeah. We did, Cole had a S14 that we were tinkering with in high school.

Sure.

And we spent a whole day plasti-dipping the whole car black. And it was standard plasti-dip. It wasn't anything from Dip Your Car. It was like what we bought at O'Reilly's, you know?

Yeah.

And so the finished product was just horrible. It just looked horrible. But we ended up spending a whole day doing it. And then the next day he was like, no, and he peeled it all off the next day.

Well, that's good, because the longer it sits, it's way harder to get off. I had bought a 91 Mustang GT that was a white car with a black interior. It was a beautiful combination. And somebody did a very horrible black plasti-dip on the outside. And I took a pressure washer. I think I ended up taking the black interior out of the car and getting rid of the rest of the car.

Really?

It was impossible. I'm like, there's no way.

When I took mine off, I just took the pressure washer and just got as close to the highest mode on it. It took a while, but I got it off.

I've heard that if you douse it in WD-40, it's supposed to break it down.

That doesn't make sense. Yeah, because chemically it...

I think they have something now, too, that you can spray on and then spray it off.

That's nice. Yeah, yeah. No, we don't get a whole lot of plasti-dip cars in here.

No, people aren't doing the gold wheels with plasti-dips.

No, no. Yeah, most of them just spray-paint them, I feel like.

Yeah, I had leased cars, so I had to... I had to plasti-dip them. It's unremovable. I mean, I probably could have just painted them when it f****** mattered, but...

Yeah, I remember the first set of aftermarket wheels I bought. I think they were Koenigs. No, they were Sparkos or something like that. And I put them on and I was like, I can't plasti-dip these, they're too nice. And they were like used, I bought them for like 200 bucks or something like that. But I was just so excited to finally have a wheel that wasn't the factory one plasti-dip.

Right, yeah, exactly, yep.

I feel like that in exhaust is number one, a mod, right? When you get a car.

Absolutely, kind of chop the muffler off or something like that.

Yeah, absolutely, yep.

Yeah, that was the first thing I did to my FR-S at least, was put a catback on it. And I had it on there, I had the same catback on all the way until I LS swapped it. And the guys really wanted me to leave it on there. They were like, no, do a single exit, it'll sound so cool. I was like, if I'm going to have a V8, I'm having duals, I don't care, I want duals. Yep.

Well, now you have bank one and bank two, so you got to do that, right?

I know, yeah. Yeah, and it ended up sounding really good. I told Eric, I was like, I want it to sound like a Corvette. And he goes, it's not going to sound like a Corvette. But we put an X-pipe in it and it's got headers on it, so it sounds really, really good. But yeah, sounds a lot better with the cam now.

When it runs.

When it runs, oh, it runs, it'll just leak a puddle.

Oh, perfect.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I can't do the rear main by just pulling the transmission, I think.

Oh, really?

Because it's so tight in that chassis, I think I'm going to have to put it in the way, or take it out the way I put it in, which was I bolted the engine onto the transmission, blew the whole front end of the car apart and slid it all in one piece. So unfortunately, I think that's what's ahead of me.

It's going to be a busy Christmas break for you.

Yeah, it will be, but it'll be worth it.

So is that all that's on the horizon for you then at the moment?

Yeah, basically. I don't have any current projects other than just trying to 100 percent complete what I've already have. I don't really have anything that's in my head. Obviously, there's cars, oh, I'd love to have one of those or I'd love to have one of these, but there's nothing that's like actively I'm shopping for. I think that, yeah, yet. I think the current lineup is pretty solid. Honestly, the next purchase, the next vehicle purchase I make is probably going to be a new daily driver. So, yeah, because I have a Tundra and it's a great truck, but I'm just ready for something new.

Sure.

Toyota. Huh?

Get an F-150.

Oh yeah, that's what I was trying to say earlier. Literally, every shop we've been to, their hauler is a Ford, even the Chevy shops.

Dude, I mean, I haven't driven one of the new, new Silverados, but those Fords are awesome and they just work, you know? Those 6.7s just work. And I mean, even with our 48 foot enclosed and two cars, fuel, all of our tools, merch, everything loaded in it, I mean, if I need to pass them when I can, you know? The only downside of the 450, at least for me, is it's gearing. It's geared out. You can't, not that you should be going past 80 with the trailer, but going, you know, if you're on South Dakota, the speed limit's 80. If you're going 80, that thing's spinning pretty fast.

What year is it?

It was a 19, I think.

Okay, so that still has the 6R80 in it?

Still has the 6 speed.

Okay. Which is good, cause you have less problems, but you know what really fixes that is, if you delete it and tune it, you can change the shift points in it.

Might have to look into that. Well, you go 85. Yeah, once we got it, that was one of the first things I told Cole, I was like, we gotta put drop spindles on this thing, put airbags, Alcoas, delete it, you know, DPF delete, all this stuff. And he's like, no. He's like, if there's anything that we're not going to touch to try to keep it reliable, it should be our hauler.

Yeah, but if you take the DPF and the EGR off of it, you will double, you will go up in mileage, so you'll get better gas mileage, you'll have more power and you'll take the reliability through the roof.

True.

You'll double the lifespan of the engine.

One thing it does have is it has a transfer flow bed tank. So there's a 50-gallon factory tank and then there's a 50-gallon auxiliary tank. So there's 100 gallons worth of fuel in that truck. And I drove it from here to Salt Lake and I filled it up one time, which was awesome.

Oh yeah, but you gotta stop the pee more often than that.

Exactly, yeah, yeah. But it makes it, well, especially with that trailer, it's so huge and it's, you honestly, when you're hauling something that big, you have to like look at your destination and be like, okay, I can fit here, I can fit here. But it's nice because I don't have to worry about pulling in a parking lot so I can just pull off an off ramp real quick.

Well, yeah, sure, yeah.

Do the business and then get right back on. So yeah, I got stuck in a couple pretty tight parking lots with that thing, but having the eight foot bed is absolutely a necessity for that.

So it doesn't work on my Goose, but my fifth wheel has a slider so I can slide it back to get maneuver in a parking lot. I can't tow it on the highway that way, but yeah. No, I've got a dent in my, in the pillar in the back there.

I didn't go all the way to take the window out, but yeah, ours, it actually didn't, the trailer didn't contact the truck at all. What had actually happened on the 250 when it blew off the back window, it had a roll up tonneau cover and the tonneau cover obviously rolled up and the trailer pinched the tonneau cover between the window and it blew the window out. So it's honestly kind of better that it did do that because it definitely would have hit the cab. So thankfully it didn't.

On that note, do you want to rip the usual three? We're coming up on two hours.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Time flies.

All right, so at the end of every episode, we like to ask our guest to pick three cars. I need a daily driver, I need a show car and I need a track car. You have an unlimited budget, you can swap whatever you want.

Unlimited budget.

Yeah.

Okay, so for the daily driver, I would probably do an F250. Not, you know, it's not an easy, it's an easy answer, but yeah, probably an F250. Cause it would haul whatever else. Show car, I really enjoy my GTO, my old GTO, because that thing's just fun, it's engaging, it's a four-speed manual. I can take it around. It gets a ton of looks, it does well at car shows. So probably that, because you gotta have a classic muscle car, you know? And for a track car, probably, probably a C7-06.

Ooh, okay.

I love C7-06s. And they handle well on track, you know?

So one of the coolest cars I was ever in was a, it was a C7-06. Did you say C6 or C7?

C7.

C7, yeah.

Or a C6 ZR1.

That's always the other one.

That's a toss up for me between those two.

But dude, a C7-06, like the 3LZ, like all spec'd out, manual, like black on black on black. Dude, I hate, my old French sold that car, and I was like, that was one of the coolest cars you've ever had.

It's crazy the amount of road presence a Z06 or a ZR1 has, over a base Corvette.

It's insane, right?

It's crazy, because you could drive past a thousand base models and not care. But the second a Z06 drives by, you're like, man, those things look good.

Because whenever you see a base model, you're like, is that a Z06? And then we see a Z06, you're like, oh.

Yeah.

That's definitely.

I don't know what it is. It's got to just be those bigger fenders.

Dude, the ZR1, like when I saw my first one in person, when we went to Woodward Dream Cruise this year, I was like, what the f*** is that thing? It's massive.

Yep. My favorite part about the C7 ZR1 is the wing and how the trunk just barely doesn't hit the wing the whole way around.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's pretty cool. Pretty cool.

On that note, where can everybody find you?

You can find me on Instagram and TikTok, otl underscore Grayson. That's basically all I post on. I have a Facebook, but it's more for just like personal stuff. Yeah. And then the Off The Line Performance YouTube channel. We try to post Subaru content. We do Corolla content. We do all sorts of stuff. But yeah, that's where you can find me. And then just Off The Line Performance everywhere else.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

Dan.

You can find us at Gunna Garage.

Two ends. And as for me, well, first of all, thank you for coming on the show. I'm glad we made this happen. This is a good time. Yeah. Thanks for having us, man. Dan, thanks for existing. You guys made it to this channel, so you made it this far. And yeah, we'll see you all next time.

All right. Thanks.