173. Brian Tooley and Rick Crawford on Superchargers, Airflow, Private Equity and the future of BTR

Not only is this patent done, but we have three more patents that we're working on. So it's like to really bring all this stuff to fruition is going to take an enormous amount of capital. So this 83,000 square foot expansion we're working on right now, that's $8 million out of my personal pocket.

Wow.

And I still need to go spend about 30 to 40 million buying a couple of the companies, right? And at that point was when I was just like, uncle.

Hello ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minnoxide podcast. I'm your host, Harris aka Minnoxide, man of many automotive aspirations. It's Brian Neurly. We are here at PRI, kicking it off, Dan. And today we are here with Brian Tooley and Rick Crawford. I'll let you guys make your own introduction. Obviously you guys have done some awesome stuff over the years. So I'll just start with you, Brian, and then we'll just kind of throw it your way.

How short or long is this introduction?

We got time. How do you sum up a career in 30 seconds, right?

Yeah. So I've been in the industry full time for 32 years now. Started my first business, Total Engineer Flow, in 1993. And by 2001, I bought a five axis CNC. And then by 2004, sold that business to Summit Racing, worked for them till 2010, and then quit, came back to Kentucky, where I'm from, had a two year non-compete, and then started BTR in my basement in 2012. And then moved out of my basement in 2014. And today, we have 80 people, 45,000 square feet, and we're adding on 83,000 square feet.

Yeah, and I saw the post the other day about you guys are just rapidly expanding over there as well. So, and we can touch on that at some point as well. But, so how do you guys get here today? Obviously, you guys are doing this podcast together. How does this all come to fruition?

You know how it is with hot rotting, eventually, you know, paths cross, you know, you never burn a bridge because you run across so many people in the same industry and, you know, I had I had wandered into LS World. I was originally a Buick guy beaten and broke down and I made it over to the LS World in like 2009. I started messing with LS stuff and lo and behold, you know, that Brian had already been in it and doing Corvette stuff. I think you started out with the Corvettes ish somewhere in there.

Yeah.

And anyway, so we had a note. I knew a guy that messed with Corvettes that knew Brian. You know, it is when you're chasing records, Brian was in the loop with this guy and we got acquainted and we were just like acquaintances and then lo and behold, we kept crossing each other's paths. And then, you know, it is I kept growing my racing program and I was it was just me. I was just some guy work. I worked at a shop as one of the head techs, you know, doing the hot rod work, you know, whatever, just anything. Turbos, nitrous, you know, a Dodge, a Chevy, you know, a G 35 or something. And I narrowed it down to do an LS stuff and kept growing and growing. And eventually it's like, yeah, you know, your name comes up enough. And then I think we end up getting more serious when we started doing the Supercharger testing. One day he started saying, hey, we're redoing our cams. We're going to like, we want to nail our, our Supercharger cams. And, you know, Brian was always beat me up.

That's trying to get your cam business.

Yeah, he's trying to get me to get my business.

So we spent a few months talking about camshafts.

Yeah, we did.

And then one day Rick finally said to me, because people doubted that Rick was telling the truth about his combination.

Yeah.

They're like, he's our nitrous, he's our nitromethane.

I told people, I was like, you can spill your guts about the whole truth down to the bare bones of it. And someone's like, nah, he's lying. I was like, I give up. I don't know how to break this down any better.

And I give everyone the benefit of the doubt because you don't know what somebody else knows. And so one day he finally said, I modified my rotors, the Supercharger rotors. And as soon as he said that, I asked him, I said, do you do this? And he hesitated for a few seconds. He said, that's exactly what I do.

I set up a picture.

He's like, man, we got to do some testing.

And like I said, he was doing Supercharger work and you know what it is? When you go into something, it's not like it's not like Brian's putting Superchargers and racing them all the time. And I had already gone over all this like, oh, no, no, you need this pulley. You need to do this to the tension. It's like, you know, nothing you bolt on gets unmolested. Everything gets like, no, no, no, you got to take the tensioner and grind this out and modify this. You know, you need this pulley and you need this belt and you need to get a pulley from this guy, not this guy. So there's so many different avenues you got to go. And when you're when you got a company and you're on a dyno and you're wasting multiple people's time, it's like he just says, hey, Rick, man, I think you got, you know, you seem to be going fast. You got this figured out. You want to want to get together on this. And, man, I I threw everything in my truck and I made a trip down to BTR. And I think we spent a week on the dyno, beating on we beating on someone else's motor.

Oh, it was it was our motor. It was our cam development engine. And just it's just so ironic that that Supercharger deal came up at the same time that we had our LSA Supercharger engine on our dyno doing cam development.

Yeah.

And I said, man, you got to come out. He was there three days later.

I did skip a beat. I was like, all right, let me get my stuff packed up. And I was there. It was like, well, we're on the dyno like right now. And I was like, well, I'm guessing this window is kind of short because you're probably got 20 other motors ready. So I was like, oh, yeah, I'll get my stuff. I'll be right there. So I threw what I couldn't in the truck and I threw pulleys, cams. Because, you know, we've been talking about cams for a while. It's like, listen, we've been doing a lot of. This is when you're really big on doing all your spintron work. And you still are. But you know what I mean? It's like, hey, we're just curious, you know, because you watch people and you watch racers and there's people that have problems, there's people that don't. And I had been proud that I hadn't had problems. You know, I wasn't dropping valve seats. You know, I didn't have guys, you know, tearing up lifters and stuff like that. So a lot of times, you know, someone like Brian that does belt work, it's like, you know, I got a little, I guess, respect because I wasn't out there tearing stuff up. You know, I had a lot of customers. My customers weren't, you know, out there saying, Rick Crawford crashed my motor. I dropped a valve or something. So and that's kind of partly in part of staying away from LS7 stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

So but the LS3 stuff had treated me well.

So what head unit are you working with? It's a certain brand or what do you're modifying Superchargers? What are you starting with?

I was I was strictly dealing with the GM stuff. You know, I had OK, I got into the the 1900 LSA stuff with Cadillacs. You know, I've been to all these G8s and OK and whatnot. And the CTSV came out and guys, you know, there was expensive car. So they were slowly getting messed with while I had Tim King started messing with one. He sold his G8, bought a V and he's like, hey, man, I want to go fast. So sure enough, I did a cam for him. I took a stab at it and we started modifying his Supercharger and we went, I think we got down to like 960s. And that was before people were hardly even go nines. And like, oh, again, you're spraying it. You're cheating. You're doing something like OK. And I was like, once I did his and I was like, man, this thing's going to fly. I was like, so I went and bought a V and I started. And that's when I got into the LSA stuff. So I started modifying just the factory blowers. And I think I got up with Richard at West Coast Cylinderheads. He was actually CNCing the cases for him. So it just it went it was the rabbit hole begun. You know, we started digging away and going faster and faster at it.

So when he showed up at our shop, you know, with all these parts, one of them was a Kong CNC ported Supercharger.

I say it was his baseline. It was his base, you know, CNC blower, because he wanted something that was like a standard like, hey, this is something that everybody and anybody gets, you know.

So we pulled our stock LSA Supercharger off, installed the Kong CNC ported Supercharger and picked up 100 horsepower. And then we slid the stock rotors out and slid his modified rotors in and picked up another 75 horsepower. And I was like, dude, we need to we need to we need to patent this.

Yeah.

Yeah. So we went forward with the patent.

Yeah. And he has been in the industry so long. He's like, oh, yeah, yeah, I've got I got people for this. And I was like, I do not have people for this. I have a garage where I do this. That's all I got. Sure.

Yeah.

And when when did this all start going down with this? I was dependent three years ago.

Yeah.

Three years ago. OK.

Yeah.

Three years ago.

Yeah. Well, what kind of equipment do you have in your garage? Because rotor tolerances are like.

Yeah. And that was that was the main topic of discussion. I was like, listen, I modify these by hand. I don't have like a turntable or something that, you know, I don't take an exact cut. This is all like artist work. Yeah. And I was like, and knock on wood, I've done so many of them. I hadn't had, I hadn't had any, I haven't knocked any out. You know, I hadn't had one, because we're not spinning them just a little past where they're rated at. I mean, I think they rate them at maybe 24, 22 or something like that. And we're turning them like 30,000, 32,000, 31,000 RPM. We're like murdering these poor things. And you pop the lid and you're like, oh, please be okay. And it's like, oh, the rotor is still in there. Now, they do start getting into harmonics a little bit. We spit them that hard because it's just way past. You know, what will happen is the rotors will like start chattering, but as long as you clean up the chatter and keep the chatter in check, it'll eventually just stop. I mean, I've never had to replace a set of rotors because I destroyed them or it came out of the top of the case or something. I still got the same rotor pack in there that I've been beating on for the last five years or so.

Okay. So what does testing look like, right? So I mean, are you just getting a dozen of these things and just seeing like what the lifespan looks like or?

No, it's really basic. It is, you know, for me, I was modifying stuff and basically just taking my HP tuners in the car, taking the car going out in the back roads in the middle of nowhere and making polls and looking at the data, you know, because luckily we had mass area map sensors. And I'm looking, I was like, well, that picked up. I was like, well, if that picked up, you know, the problem is you have to take it off the car. You have to rip it all the way apart. You have to pull, you know, it isn't just, it isn't just scratch it and put it, you know, and it's a lot of work taking it on and off. So it was, it was, and it's, you know, because it's so much work, we're still changing things. It's like, you know, because you don't want to be like, that worked good for me, but then you put on his car and it didn't pick up anything. So a lot of times you, you do want, you're like, okay, this looks like it picked up a lot. All right, I'm going to do one for you and I'm going to do one for you and make sure that it follows. I was like, okay, we're good. All right, and now I'm going to do something else and see if I can pick up off of that. Cause I already knew it was pretty consistent. So my testing was just customers. Sure. I would do, I would develop something and then someone else would be, you know, hey, you ready to do my Supercharger yet? I was like, I think so. Yeah, bring it in. And then I do theirs. But the problem is I'm doing motors, I'm doing transmissions. I'm doing, you know, I'm building, I'm building complete customer combinations. So it, you know, it's just me. So it takes time to do that kind of stuff. I'm always thrashing the shop, evenings, weekends. You know, most of the time people will tell you, it's like, I don't know how many times I've gotten texts from Rick at two or three in the morning saying, it was just updates on pictures and knowing I got to wake up at 5.30 to go work on aircraft.

I was going to ask, so that's not your, wasn't your full-time gig either.

It still isn't.

Yeah, okay.

So I work like two full-time jobs. Sure.

That's more than full-time, dude. I'm over my first 100-hour week.

And on top of it, how many guys, how many guys are working at a shop, building race cars or doing whatever, and then still go to races with all the customers and have all these cars you're maintaining and racing your own car. It's a ridiculous amount of work to have a car and making passes. It's one thing to go track, make a glory pass, blow it up, put it in a trailer and let it sit. But talking about going rounds at races, going to World Cup, going to Texas 2K and Cadillac Attack, and I got two race cars. I don't have one. I've got a G8 and I got the CTS-V.

Yeah, one's not enough of you. You should get it too.

One's not enough of you, so I got to have two. Oh, man, it's relentless. But when it comes to doing development work, it helps having two because, I don't know, for whatever reason, if you have two cars, it just means even though it's the same thing, it's like, oh, you do Cadillacs too? It's like, it's the same thing.

It's the same engine.

It's the same engine. They're like, oh, okay.

So, okay, so obviously, you kind of come up with this. And then, so where do you come into the picture then? Are you trying to bring this towards like more of a mass market or how exactly?

So we're bringing it to market. So the patent was finished in June of this year. And we've been working with Eaton and one Supercharger manufacturer and trying to because you have to do that machine work before it's balanced. So the only way you can incorporate this patented feature properly is during the machining process at Eaton, right? Before, you know, because that rotor is machined and then eventually balanced, coated, balanced, and then time together, right?

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That's going back to what you were asking about it, and that was the biggest part where Brian came in, because a guy like me doesn't get into an industry with Eaton and stuff like that, because Eaton makes, whether it's Magnuson, Kong or Harp or whoever, they all use Eaton Rotor Pack. And that was, you know what I mean? That's, and you know what I mean? Some guy from his garage, even though he's doing some cool stuff, doesn't, you know, you need a path. And BTR with Brian was the path into that network.

Well, really a couple of things have happened with Eaton, because number one, think about how many Eaton Supercharger rotors used to go on Chevrolet cars just five years ago. Right? C706, Camaro ZL1, right? They've lost a ton of business just through Chevrolet and now other entities. So they're more hungry for work. And then the other thing is, you know, word on the street is somebody else's Supercharger that doesn't have Eaton rotors and it makes more power. And so I said, you know, I think that we could make as much power as the other guys with this, you know, given the opportunity. So we, so this year, we have spent on our engine dyno about eight months, nine months, testing nothing but Superchargers and modifications and modifications to the case and all this. And in right now we're 50 horsepower better than the other guys, which when we started out on this quest, we didn't know if we're going to be able to match the other guys for power. So to be 50 horsepower, and it's not just 50 at peak, it's everywhere.

It's everywhere.

So you guys are going to do a whole unit then, like a whole Supercharger thing or just a rotor pack?

So it's up to Eaton to do the machining on the rotor pack, and then we'll work in conjunction with the Supercharger company to bring that to market.

Okay. That makes sense.

So it'll probably be co-branded with BTR.

Right.

And I didn't get to go to Eaton, but Brian did. He was like, dude, you won't believe how lucky we got with this patent dealer. Because when you go to someone like Eaton, they have tested all kinds of things. He told me, he's like, they got a whole wall full of patents. But he says, you know what they don't have a patent on?

The front of that rotor.

The front of that rotor, the design. You make an airfoil to the front of that rotor. And I was like, yeah.

Because I've been looking at the bearing plate and some other things. I thought there might be Airflow. And I go there and literally there's a wall that probably has 60, 70 patents on it. You know, plaques. And in one of them, it's a bearing plate, you know, mods. And you know, so it's amazing all the stuff that they've tested, but they never seem to have tested that.

They had a patent on the design of the rotors and how they're made and everything else. You know what I mean? The rotor itself, but they didn't have anything on the design to the rotor.

So I was going to ask, that was going to be one of my questions. What are you doing different to the rotor? Do you mind divulging that information or what?

Well, if you look at it, I mean, everybody's seen Turbos and Superchargers. Well, you're probably more familiar with a Turbo. You know, the front of it is all, looks like an engineering design, you know? When you look at the front of a Supercharger, it looks like a caveman developed it. You know what I mean? It's just, it's all square.

You know what I mean?

It just looks like a bunch of square corners and it doesn't look like the inlet of a Turbo. So there's nothing aerodynamic about it. You know what I mean?

Yeah, because from an airflow standpoint, of course, that's my background, you know, total engine airflow, important heads and all that. You know, a square edge you use to detach air and a radius edge is what you use to keep air attached. And the trailing edge of those rotors is square, right? So you just take that square edge and radius it off in a very specific way.

In a very specific way, because it isn't that simple. I mean, if you were to just to take, because I tested just, because I looked at it, I was like, oh, I'm just going to radius this rotor pack. Well, I did that and I was like, oh, that didn't work. Because I went there and I was like, I think I'm actually lost a little bit. Because there's things that happen because the rotors, it's a compressor, you know what I mean? That air goes into that and actually compresses air. So you have to be careful because you can hemorrhage the air out of it. And air does crazy stuff that you wouldn't think it would do. And I've sent pictures to you that once, I was like, hey, check this out. I've had a rotor pack. I was like, look at where the air is going in this case. Just, and you're like, ha. Because there's spots in the case where the air is blowing the wrong way it looks like. And it's strong enough that it's taking grease and oil and stuff that's packed in. And it's actually like, looks like it's blowing it out at like 100 PSI or something. And it's like, dude, I'm telling you, this is just something good to see and just let your mind churn about. And it gets you down a path that's like, all right, well, let's try to do this because it does look like we're wasting some air there. Something's not happy.

So and I had a 2019 CR1 that I've ported Supercharger heads and all that on in 2019. And that was the first time I really, really studied, you know, one of the Superchargers and that that trailing edge. I'm like, why in the world is this trailing edge square? Because that's going to detach the air because you want to pull that air in front of that rotor, not detach it at that trailing edge. So, you know, and, you know, so it's just like, it's one of those things that seemed obvious to me. And it's so funny because working with some of the people that's in the industry, been in the industry a long time, you know, because as soon as he said he did that, I was just like, that's what I would do, right? But he tested up designs to make it work really well. And so I'm working with these people that have, you know, some of decades of experience with these things. And they're like, that really works. You know, they're just like, really? 50, 75 horsepower because a 2650 only picks up about 50. And they're very skeptical of the power gains. And I'm just like, it doesn't make sense to me because, you know, for me, I don't have to look at that rotor very long to realize that that turning edge does not need to be square, right? You know, and so it's very interesting that people are, you know, yeah, actually acting like that to me.

It's kind of like when you have, when you go in your shop and you're used to seeing the disaster, but it's to you, it's an organized like chaos. Someone else comes in and like, oh, my gosh, how do you work in here?

And it's kind of like we act right now, by the way.

But, you know, it's kind of like when you think of that, there's some of the there's a lot of people in the industry that are like, you know, 70, 60 that are that are old. They've been staring at it for so long. That's just the way it is.

Yeah.

And it's like, why is it like that? I was like, hmm. They have to think about it. It's like, I don't know. We had some engineers that came up with this, and this is what came up with this is what was the best. And that's what we use. I'm like, OK, whatever. And then again, with with what I was doing, you know, Brian's looking at it's like, why do I mess with this rotor? This thing, you know, it'd be like grinding out a crankshaft without rebalancing it. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

And then he says, he says, oh, you did it. And it's it's still in the case. Is there any problems?

Yeah, it has to.

Yeah, you need to come on by. We need to do some work.

See, that was the first. That's why I asked you, because I guess I'm going to his garage grind away at rotors. I'm like, there's no way I've seen those things.

You saw how I did it. You'd be like it's not a simple process like it looks simple. When you look at it, it's like, oh, it doesn't look that bad. I was like, wait, wait till you see how I do it, because you do it's like it's almost like a valve job. You do a cut and you got you got eight rotors. So I'll do four and I'll do a cut on it. And then I've got like the little Harbor Freight magnifying glass with light at it and I'm working on it on a rotor. And then I'm measuring it as best I can. I do the same cut on all four rotors. And then I have to go back over it and make sure they're the same, like three or four times. And then I do another cut and then I do another cut. Then I do another cut and then I check all that. And then I finish it. And it's a lot of work to do it by hand and try to keep it as close and knock on wood. It's been successful for me. But it's not something that you want just anybody doing. You have to be really savvy with how you do it and smart about it. Because if you let some guys like, oh, Rick said he just grinds in his rotor, that didn't last long.

Yeah, they probably lasted about one pass.

Those bearings lasted like five miles and came apart on me. I was like, yeah, you probably weren't nearly. Because when you look at the holes they do for balancing these things from eating, they look like they don't do anything, but it's dynamically balanced. So you're like, all right, whatever. Right.

It looks like it'd do something to me.

Yeah, it's a lot of our shaft balance on these turbine engines. And we use these like titanium, little Allen screws and this big steel shaft. You're like, oh, all the little test equipment, a little accelerometers and vibration analysis stuff we got on these engines says that that fixes it gets it within the hips that it needs to be. And it's good. So it does something.

Do you think your knowledge then in that in that industry helped you get this Supercharger thing going or a little bit?

You know, it's funny when anytime you're doing stuff mechanical, it's a matter what you see. If you're like just savvy for knowledge and learning stuff, you'll see stuff. You'll be like, you know, it's really cool. You know, you'll see something on like a turbine blade or you think about how the turbine works on a compressor on an engine. You'll be like, OK, that's kind of neat. You know, you see how we do a fuel or you see how you do a line or something. You know, I was an aviation structures guy. So you went through structures course, learned about all kinds of different metals and what what they like and don't like, what you can weld and what you can't weld, how to grind stuff, how to modify stuff and tolerances and everything. And then it just carries forward when you're working with rotors like, hey, I know that, you know, a difference between a press fit and a clearance fit. You know, I understand how much stuff moves and what, you know, to be savvy on tolerances. And it all comes together. It's, you know, that's why it's hard to like to tell anybody how to do it. It's like, man, I don't think you understand how deep the cavity is in the back of my brain for the stuff that I've learned. You know, it's just like someone doing cylinder heads is like, oh, well, you just port this. I was like, no, man, there's about 20 years is all it takes to get good. You can't do that on that style head. You can only do that or that valve angle. You can't do that with a valve at this angle. There's so much stuff that they know that you just can't even fathom.

It takes a long time to figure all those things out.

Because you're constantly building blocks on top of blocks on top of blocks. Once you're so far up, it's like, man, I don't know how to bridge the gap sometimes with some people. It's not that people aren't smart, it's just you've got so much depth of the knowledge, so much you've learned that didn't work or doesn't work, or just do this or don't do that. Some things are simple and some things are just really complicated. It's hard to explain.

Well, is it like that with... So, let's talk about camshafts for a minute. Is that a similar situation? Because when I see a camshaft sometimes, it's like looking at a valve body on an automatic transmission. I understand how they work, but there's a lot of... It needs to do a lot of things in those rotations. So is that a similar situation?

For cam lobe design, for us, it's definitely been an iterative process. And we were very fortunate that we had a huge breakthrough in 2021, which is when I decided to spend a million dollars on a cam grinder. And yeah, we kind of stumbled across something that it seems like hardly anyone else has figured out. And so that has definitely put us in a position where... Because most all of us was kind of in the same realm in terms of when you look at power production and stability. And we had a breakthrough because when you look at that acceleration curve, right? Cause you're designing that lobe off this acceleration curve. You've got this positive acceleration, goes negative, back positive, right? And...

He makes it sound so simple, right? It's just a little...

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

A cam lobe is a tricky cause he's gonna explain it. But when someone like me or you or something look at a cam lobe, it's just like, well, it's just like kind of egg shaped. I was like, man, that lobe, there's, you know, you could look at two lobes that look identical as I do. They're completely different.

Yeah.

Even if they say they're the same, they're completely different. They could be completely different. And he he went in and tested all of it.

People think that, you know, that Valtrain is being accelerated to the nose and then it decelerates. And that's not the case at all. It has initial acceleration going up the ramp, and then it has to decelerate a lot so it doesn't loft off the nose. Yeah. Yeah.

Like a road course.

People don't realize. Yeah.

It's going to the quarter wide open.

Yeah. You know, and that's really the our my breakthrough we had was actually related. It actually came from road course stuff that I do. OK, because the way to think about that acceleration curve, it's like you've got a you've got a track that has this 180 degree turn. You've got a straight away 180 degree turn straight away. You've got to start here and stop here. So you have to accelerate as hard as possible. But then you had to break to make it through the turn, accelerate again, stop again. OK, and I know that sounds abstract, but that's exactly what that Valtrain has to do. Yeah. And so when you look at that opening acceleration rate, it became a balancing act because as we increase the opening acceleration, these would make more power to dyno, and then the dynamics on the spintron would get worse. And then as we lowered that, the opposite happened. So the power production and the spintron, they ran inverse to each other, right? And so it just became a balancing act of getting as much acceleration rate as we could get with getting acceptable closing bounce. That was our number one thing we looked at for dynamics. We wanted no more than 6,000 closing bounce. And so when I had this idea to kind of fundamentally change the shape of this acceleration curve, was the first time that we ever designed a lobe that we put it on the dyno and spintron, and it was better on both. Okay. First time we'd ever seen that, right? So we knew that that was a huge breakthrough. And the cam company that we had been doing business with for years, their lobes did not have that feature, that design. So we realized that they didn't know that, and they'd been in business for decades, right? Decades and decades. Practically been in business as long as I've been alive, I think since the 60s or 70s or something, right? So when you had that sort of breakthrough, of course, I'm a spiritual guy, so I just kind of, I'm like, okay, thank you, God, appreciate that one. And you move on. But yeah, it's the iterative testing. And the thing that I have found in the 32 years I've been in this industry pretty much full-time, people don't do the testing.

Yeah.

I don't know why. It blows my mind. People say, oh, it's time consuming, it's expensive, it's this, that, and the other is just like, well, but being slow and dumb is kind of.

Or what they'll do is they'll build one. They're like, they'll make one, and then they built everything off that one. And even though it dynamically changes through the curve, like, hey, let's say we made this one lobe and it did good. Well, we're going to make another 20 lobes off this one, and we're going to make the duration bigger on all of them. We're just going to kind of tweak the lobe and just make it bigger and call it this, you know, call it a family of lobes. And it's like, well, wait a minute, this lobe's happy. And then you get to this one, this one's happy. But this one here in the middle, it's trash. Like you'll tear stuff up and you won't even know why. It's like, oh, I tried a little bigger cam and I lost power in it. You think of that was, you know, maybe it was too big of a cam. I was like, no, it was just the camshaft got really mad. You got a bunch of valve train bounce. And if you went bigger or smaller, you probably went faster just because that load was bad in it. So a lot of people, sometimes people go put a cam in their car and like, man, it's just it should have done better. And it didn't. I don't know why. And it could be a lot of things. But a lot of times it's just valve change. It gets so unhappy and it's like people losing valve seats. I was like, man, if you're losing closing valve mounts, OK, if you're losing valves, actually dislodging the seat, people will sit there and blame manufacturers and not saying that stuff doesn't happen when doing cylinder heads. But if you're if you're notoriously losing seats, it's like you got something wrong. You're using the wrong spring.

Your profile is terrible or repeatedly damaging failing lifters or breaking springs.

Yeah.

Most I tell people 99 percent of out train failures are a symptom, not a cause. The cause is the bow trains out of control. The symptom is you broke the part. It's like a blown fuse in an overloaded circuit. Right.

It's not the fuse's fault.

Yeah. Everybody's like, oh, that's a bad fuse. That lifter, that spring, that, yeah, whatever. That's a bad fuse. It's like, no, your dynamics are not good. We see some incredibly not good stuff. For the first year or so that we were doing testing, we were only testing 1-7 rocker ratio stuff, LS, you know, typical LS. We would see some competitor stuff in the 25,000th range for closing bounce, which we thought was bad. Then we went to the Gen 5 1-8 rocker stuff. What this one company had done is they had taken lobe designs made for 1-7 rockers and just put it on cams that use 1-8 rockers like LT. We saw over 50,000th closing bounce out of those engines. It's so funny because this same manufacturer was just like, yeah, you had to replace the seats in these factory heads. It's just like, well, why did these engines run for a couple of hundred thousand miles and the seats don't fall out, but they use one of your cams and the seats do. It's like you think that somebody put 2 and 2 together there. But that manufacturer doesn't design their lobes. They didn't have a spintron in house. And so it goes back to not doing the testing.

But they'll make a rip on a dyno and they'll be like, oh, but it made good power. And I'm like, oh my gosh, how much stuff you got to destroy. I was like, you realize all you got to do is make the lobe right and you could still make the power and not kill stuff. I was like, some people are just...

And that's what so many people think. They think that you can either make power or you can make stable wow trains, you can't make both. And we're doing both very well.

Yeah. And that was always by my big thing because I've been doing car stuff for a while before I got up with Brian. And man, I've been using specific lobes. I was like, listen, it's like walking on a glass floor. It's like, you know, I'm doing can't you know, I'm putting cams in like 20 or 30 cars. I don't want to find because it's not like it's going to break as soon as I drive it. I don't want the guy to call me in, you know, five or six months and then realize I've done 20 cam installs and realize that, oh my gosh, that means the other 20 guys are right behind him. You know what I mean? That's like, if he lost a lifter or he had a load fail or he had a valve spring break, that's like, it's like, you just get that sweaty feeling like, oh my gosh, that means the rest of these guys. How am I going to, how are you going to fix that? You know what I mean? And you know, there's shops that run into problems like that. And you know what I mean? That's how some shops get destroyed, you know, like buy the wrong part from the wrong person. And it goes downhill and they realize we've done 50 of these or you know, someone like you and I'm manufacturing. I mean, that's huge panicky. So you realize, I've already sold like 5,000 of those. I was like, I'm leaving the room.

Well, yeah, that can be a supplier issue. I think Whipple just went through this not that long ago with some bearing problems they were getting from their manufacturer. And they were they were shredding the inside of GT 500 engines with them. And, you know, they just were like, hey, sorry, we had a bad batch and we're making it right.

But, oh, that's it. They've seen I've seen that with engine bearings, converter stuff, clutches, you name it. And, oh, my gosh, when you're you're at the mercy of, you know, when you're a guy that's doing building work, you're at the mercy of the customer. Be like, man, please understand.

Yeah.

It didn't make the clutch. I'm sorry.

Yeah. The QA in the performance automotive aftermarket is generally lacking.

Yeah.

Right. And even in my own business, I mean, we grind our own camshafts, we manufacture a lot of our own parts. And I see our own failures sometimes. And it's just like, that's a written process procedure. It's right on the CNC that says you had to check that when that part comes off the CNC, let's say an ORB on a valve cover or something. And it's just like, when did we get in the habit of no longer checking that? Yeah. And so QA is super important. And I used to be a part of, you know, Trick Flow. They bought my first business, Sunderland Airflow. And the ways that vendors could mess up the components that they sent us was unfathomable, right? I mean, you'd be going along and all of a sudden you get vows with soft tips and stock rockers would eat them up. Or you'd be going along and all of a sudden, they changed the heat treat process. And the outside of the Sunderland is hard, but the inside is like bubblegum. And it would literally break tools off when you try to machine it. You know, and just on and on and on. And it's just like trying to bring parts to the end user is...

When you don't have OEM money to have like endless amount of testing where you can trash, you know, a thousand of these tests and stuff. You know, the hot rod world, you know, it is. We're all rubbing nickels and pennies together trying to make more, you know, planting them in the ground or something. And, you know, it goes across the board, whether it's people manufacturing blocks or cylinder, everybody's trying to make it so you can buy a set of cylinder heads or a block or a piston or a cam, put in your car, you know, because it's a whole bunch of parts to make a hot rod. It's not just one piece. So, yeah.

Yeah, with supply chains, you know, with all the disruption since COVID, you know, people resourcing products, you know, they, you know, they could have sourced various from a different manufacturer, right? Because this manufacturer didn't have it. Well, hey, this manufacturer's got it. But guess what? It's not the same.

Right.

You know, so it's so the the sourcing and resulting quality issues that you can have are pretty. It's quite a challenge. A lot more of a challenge than you would think.

Oh, yeah, I'm sure we've talked to some performance shops that make some of their own parts. And again, they're making them, you know, two, three hundred at a time. And they're like just trying to get that stuff sourced is an absolute nightmare.

Everybody buys a CNC and a little, you know, CNC printer or whatever they got. And they're always making their own parts. Now, with the way, you know, we're where CNC's come along and easier now than ever. And it's it's so hard to find. It's like, you're sure this part's right. You know, you made this out of T6, right? And they're like, what? You know, because anybody can buy this stuff now and do this just because someone's savvy enough to make the part doesn't mean, like I said, the testing is maybe not there. It's just it looks right, but doesn't mean it's right.

So I keep looking at plasma tables right now just because sometimes you need a bracket or a little thing. May you get cut whatever you need. I'm like, oh, that'd be nice.

They got some little like user one dimensional program. Yeah, I just need this plate. Yeah, just draw it and scan it and then hit go and it'll cut it out.

Yeah. Yeah.

You know, quality, you know, speaking of which, quality issues is the reason we're in the cam grinding business. Yeah. Because we had a cam manufacturer, very large one, provided all our camshafts, and we had all kinds of heat treat failures. We had soft lobes, we had lobes, we had two cams that the entire nose of the lobe fell off the camshaft in the engine running.

Really?

Right. Yeah. And the second one was a really bad deal, because there was a family that had an SS, a Chevrolet SS, which is a fairly rare car. The thing had like 8,000 miles on it, and they did a lot of research and settled on BTR for their cam choice, installed the cam and the lobe fell off, knocked a tooth or two off the electric wheel. And so now the engine's got to come out of the car, right? And that was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back, because I knew enough about the cam core manufacturing and heat treat process by that point, that I was demanding that this company change to a better cam core supplier. And not only did they refuse to do that, they actually cut us off overnight. Really? Yeah. But interestingly, two days later, they brought every one of our camshafts. So same exact name, same exact specs, same exact everything to market for $40 a piece less under another sub-brand that they've got, you know. So, you know, very, very dirty move for sure. And the only thing I am, you know, here I am, I'm their number two customer. We're literally some at BTR Jacks. So it's not like we're small customer. We just want a quality part. That's all, you know. And not only did they refuse to go to a better cam core, you know, then they cut us off and tried to crush us. And so, you know, so that's a good example of lack of quality control, you know, in the, in the aftermarket, you know, I just wanted a better cam core. And we can talk about cam core heat treat while we're touching on this, because I went to their cam core manufacturer and that cam core manufacturer was heat treating one lobe at a time, right? He treats this lobe, this lobe, this lobe, this lobe. Of course, on that LS cam, you got the big bearing journal between each set of four lobes, right? And so then we go to the cam core manufacturer that was a little bit better quality. And I noticed that they were heat treating all four lobes at the same time. They'd heat treat these four and go down and do the next four and the next four. And I said, why do you guys do four at a time? And when you look at that LS cam, these two lobes and these two lobes are actually closer together. And he said, well, when you heat treat this lobe, some heat treat blends, bleeds over to this other lobe. And then conversely, when you then heat treat this lobe, some of that heat treat bleeds over to this other lobe. And it puts stresses in the metal that you don't want. And I said, stresses would cause the nose of the lobe to fall off. And he said, exactly. And I was just like, oh my god. That was 2018 when I found that out. It was 2020 when they finally cut us off. And I spent two years trying to get a better camcorder. So they lost millions of dollars a year in business from us, just because they refused to go to a better quality camcorder.

Some bean counter was like, it's going to cost us 50 cents more.

It's $20 a camcorder. Yeah, $20 a camcorder. You know, what's a few million dollars a year in business? When you're talking $20 a camcorder.

Yeah, that conversation would have gone differently. You'd still be in partnership with them and they'd be selling probably more cams than they were.

Yeah.

And you know, the sad thing is it isn't just like, you know, he has his one. I mean, I had several cams where I was like, you know, I use different, I use different manufacturer. I was kind of like an oddball guy, but I had seen the same thing. I'd be pulling out cams. I was like, you know, and then talking to him about it, I was like, oh, so it is kind of a common thing. You get on the, you know, back in the day we had the forums and it was a big thing on the forums. You'd see guys talking about it. And it sucks because, you know, everybody's trying to do their hobby with their little side money. And it's like, man, I only had this cam in for like, you know, six months or three months and it went bad. I mean, I got to replace it. And I got to take the heads off. I got to change the lifters out. I'm like, this sucks. You know what I mean? You're talking to some guy that this was his, you know, he was lucky enough to get it in the shop, to get a cam put in it. Now he lost it in six months. I mean, it sucks.

So, you know, it's bad for the industry.

Yeah, it's bad for the industry. It's bad for the hobby, you know.

Yeah.

That's how you ruin it for people, you know.

And you've got a guy that's got a relatively new car. He's making car payments on, you know, he gets a new credit card and he blows a great big hole in it. It goes by whatever performance parts. When those performance parts fail, and not only are those parts trash, but it trashes the entire engine.

It takes a lot of stuff out with it.

Oh yeah. You think a bunch of steel going through your oil pump is good for it, or bearings. The filter might catch it, but the oil pump is going to catch it. The oil pump is going to be chewing on metal.

Or the head of the valve falling off and taking out the engine. You know, a lot of those guys are done forever.

Right.

Right. They are never ever. They're going to.

They're going to Honda and yeah. And grow.

Hold on. What I hear is you're going to start BTR financing. Then is that what you're going to do? Sounds like easy fix.

That's that's one of your sub business that you just have a link on your site. For you. Let this guy work about financing stuff. Just trust me. You give you give some hot rod guy finance. And they're like, how much are you going to give me again? And then, of course, you never get a budget, right? How many guy builds a car budget? Right. Oh, never. Everybody's like, I have like 20,000. I was like, dude, you've got I mean, just generic. You got a thirty five thousand dollar plan. OK, make it fit in a 20. I was like, I just laugh. I don't know.

I was like, no, you get it. It always starts out mild and then you get plagued by the well, while I'm in there.

Yeah, while I'm there.

Yeah, I was like, yeah. So, yeah, easy to do.

Yeah. And that's where I thought I've always been good in all the years because I work with a lot of guys. You know, I try to make sure to steer. I was like, no, no, you don't want to do that. I know it sounds right. I don't even got cams. Guys are like, well, guys put these cams and they go do, do, do, do. I was like, yeah, but what do you do with the car? Oh, it's my deal. I go back and forth to work. Are you going to put a converter in it? What's that? I was like, no, no, no, no, we're not putting this cam here. Let me explain a few things to you. I was like, we can probably give you a little low, but we're not going to do that. That's wrong. You know, and you try to do your best you can to correct people. That's why, you know, I've never had like, like, hey, you got a website where I could buy this. It's like, man, that's not me. There's companies for that. That's great. And they have people on the phone that can help you. But when I build something, my name goes on that and it's just me. So I've always been trying to be savvy and make sure, hey, man, don't do that. Or you don't know, hey, this is, you got a stock bottom and we're going to stop you right here. And when you get it, when you want to put rods and pistons in it, that we can go up. Because if you realize that you think you're just going to fix it, oh, well, if it goes bad, I'll just put rods and pistons. Like you don't understand when that rod goes, it's coming out the side of the block, you're going to trash ahead. The piston is going to go through the Supercharger and you're going to trash your Supercharger. And you just went from just rods and pistons, you need everything. I was like, you just quadrupled your money. I was like, just pump the brakes. Or put rods and pistons in it, pick one. Please don't blow it up.

So where did this all kind of begin, right? So I'm going to start with you because I read an article about you this morning as well. I think it was a drag scene article, right? So when did you initially kind of get into cars? I thought it was a Buick, right?

I was in the cars, I think, the minute I could figure out how to read. Sure. I don't know what it was. You know, some people grow up and they're like, what does your dad do? Was your dad like a racer? I was like, my dad played with cars. He didn't know anything about him. But he had a hot rod. And for whatever reason, my just it made my everything tingle. So I was like, so I used to spend I used to get kicked out of convenience stores because I used to read all the hot rod and car crafts and popular hot rodding, 5.0, anything that was hot rod related. I'd read all the tech articles and I just I took everything I could possibly take in. And my first car I bought in a box and in a basement, it was in all pieces of 70 Buick Skylar. And I put that together when I was 17 in my dad's garage, you know, with pennies, nickels and dimes and working at McDonald's. And it's just like a tinkering thing. And I just you know how it is. It's like, oh, I want to go faster. What do we need to do? And, you know, and I was always poor and cheap. So I was like, I'm going to I was I was an aircraft sheet metal guy. So I had a lot of air grinders and tooling and stuff is like, I'm going to port my own cylinder heads and do a lot of stupid stuff. But eventually, if you're savvy enough, you learn and you talk to the right people and you learn how to do things better. And so I went through the and being I was in Buick World, there wasn't a very big performance market for Buick stuff. You're always like, well, I need better rods. Well, this rod looks close. Can I make this work? I was like, that's not a Buick rod. I was like, well, I know. But if we machine this, we machine it down a little bit and we use a different pin, you're always making some work. We had to put girdles to keep the lifters from breaking out of the blocks. We're putting epoxy and stuff. We're machining. And so there was a lot of special effort to try to make a Buick go fast down the track and try to keep it together because they were just blow up machines. So there's a lot of just re-engineering stuff. So when you start doing all the re-engineering, trying to keep a Buick together, go faster. You go into LS World, it's like, this is so much easier. This is so much easier and less painful.

So then that brings you up to speed. So obviously you have a lot of experience in the industry. I think that's a good way of putting it.

Yeah.

What does this all kind of begin for you, the whole BTR journey and everything before then?

Well, so, you know, I started my first business, Totally General Flow, in 93. And I guess really my story is similar to Rick's. I didn't actually start working on cars myself. My dad raced in it with his friend, but I didn't physically not help my buddy's buddy, mine work on his truck a little bit. But I didn't physically start really modifying my own personal car till I was 20 or 21. I had a brand new C28 that I bought new and eventually put intake and camshaft on that.

Do you ever have a transmission tore apart your kitchen floor?

Never transmission.

I had a turbo 400 spread apart all over my kitchen table. I had to look at that a few times, but I was like, I'll clean it up, I promise. I think it's a little volume floor.

I definitely built an engine and ported the heads in my kitchen of my apartment when I was in the Navy.

I ported a cast iron set of heads in a bedroom in my house because it was too cold in my shop. I got cussed at for years because it was the iron dust from grinding on it was in the edges of everything. Because you're going to use an air tool and oh my god. I got cussed out forever about that. I still get Matt yelled at for that.

Yeah. Yeah, so I started porting heads of a buddy of mine. I go in his trailer one day and he's got a Trans Am. This thing wasn't a year old. And he's got the cylinder heads on his kitchen table, porting them, because we're just a bunch of Navy guys. And I was just like, what are you doing? And so you know how it is. It's just like, once you get past the intake and camshaft, it's like you eventually have to go to the heads. And so I eventually built a stroker engine, a 406, I guess, for its small block Chevy, and you know, ported the heads and it ran well. Of course, that's back in the five liter days, you know, where, you know, it's just like, you had your stock 305 Camaro, you were not keeping up with the five liter Ford, you know. So, so, you know, I kept doing that. And then I, you know, got out of the Navy in 89, built a new engine about that time and went back to Bowling Green, Kentucky, my hometown. And it was the fastest street car in town and definitely got a lot of notoriety. So now important intakes and heads for all my buddies. And around 1990, the, yeah, it was the Corvette Homecoming. They would have this big Corvette Homecoming at Beach Bend every year. And they had this King of the Hill and the ZR1 Corvettes had just come out, you know, the four valve C4 Corvette. And we actually, we won King of the Hill. We were the fastest Corvette there. We went low 12s, tuned port, you know, 350 engine. And it's funny because there was a guy there with a, I shouldn't say the word Lincoln filter, but he had a 383 and, you know, we had a ton of respect for Lincoln filter because we had cam and headers from Lincoln filter. And we were faster than him. And he's asked his questions, asked his questions. And it was so funny at the very end of the event, he comes driving by us with his windows down and he hollers at us. He said, I know you boys are lying about what's in that car. What's in that, you know, what's in that engine. It kept driving on. And, and, you know, you're offended for about five seconds, you know, and you're just like, wait a minute, that's a pretty big compliment, you know, because this is a stock short block. We just ported the heads. My buddy was a machinist though. And he actually dowed, he dowed the, the two port runners to the base and to the plenum. And then we perfectly port matched all of that. And, you know, the car ran well. So then I'm porting heads for people. And, and, and another buddy of mine that was in business was like, you need to go on business. I was like, the only thing I'd ever heard about anybody that was in business was it's awful. So I got no interest. I was a maintenance mechanic in a factory. And then 1993, I lost that job and bought a flow bench and started porting heads.

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I worked in a shop, so we worked on five liters and anything that came in the door from either timing bolts one day and the next day we're doing a G35 Infinity and putting a still-in Supercharger kit on it. And then I'm doing a five liter, I'm doing gears in a five liter, and I'm doing a clutch and some L-Brock cylinder heads or whatever. So I did a lot of five liters. So it was good because that's where I picked up a lot of my, you know, I tell people there's no such thing as bad knowledge when we're working on stuff like whether it's wiring in a nitrous kit or putting on a Supercharger kit, it's all stored in the knowledge base of, you know, oh, I know that ain't going to work. I've done that before. And well, we got to do that. Or I've seen this and this is cool. So, yeah, working at a shop because that was that was where the hot rod money came from, was working at a shop, you know, went from my third shift at the Air Force. I came straight from third shift. I go straight to the shop and fall asleep at a park a lot until they open the doors. I walk in there and I'd work there till supposedly lunch, but it always ended up being two or three, finish up a customer's car and go home, try to be a dad or a husband and then fall asleep for a minute.

You do that as well. You didn't mention that part in addition to the two race cars and everything else.

So leading up to the two race cars I had while I had the Buick, I worked at a shop and they did, you know, it was like a hot rod shop. You know, a bunch of racers that had a shop and, you know, we did timing belts and break jobs for money. But, you know, we did a lot of five, back in the 90s, the five liter was king. And it was everywhere. So we were doing gears, Mac exhaust and L-brock heads and, you know, intakes and putting the chips in it and recalibrated mass airs and throwing nitrous on them or Paxton Superchargers on them and going to the track. Cause in North Carolina, there's a track every direction you want. Any direction there's a track in 20 minutes, you know. So we'd go to one track on Wednesday. We got another track on Thursday. We got another track on Saturday and then Sunday and rinse and repeat. So, yeah, that was, that was my life.

Yeah. And then by the, by the mid 90s, I did get hired into Holley Product Development. They wanted to do intake manifold camshaft packages. And then I suggested we also do cylinder heads. So if you ever remember Holley making small walk forward, small walk Chevy heads, that was my suggestion. And they actually leased my flow rates from me for about a year. And so learned a lot. So I ran the engine dyno there for a couple of years, learned a lot. And then, but went back to self-employment around 90, around 96, 97, and then started buying equipment for total engine airflow to work on. Solar heads do everything needed done to solar head. And by 2001, I bought a five axis CNC, which in 2001 was a really big deal because in 2001, almost no one had, you know, true five axis, simultaneous CNC machine to do porting with. And so by 2003, I'm porting heads for Texas Speed, Bischoff, Proline Racing. I'm porting heads for everyone. That CNC machine ran 24 hours a day, the first six months of every year. We had people that came in every four hours to change the...

I was probably buying cylinder heads before I even knew you. I was probably buying your cylinder heads before I even knew who you were.

Well, I'm a big Ford guy. And even then, like in the GM world, I knew of Brian Tooley Racing and Lingenfelter. Those are the two big names that I always knew, even though I don't follow that world really that much.

Being a Ford guy, you probably know some of the people I worked with in the early 2000s. So Jimmy LaRocca, Bob Kergan, Bart Tobner, you recognizing those names? It's all street renegade guys. And so we won between 2000 and 2004. We won between Fun Ford Weekend and NMRA. We won a dozen championships. So we set dozens of records, won hundreds of races with our stuff. We did mostly the twist of wedge Ford heads from Trick Flow. And so had a ton of success with those things. Made stupid power.

That was the beginning of the that NMRA race series was like the beginning of the street racing series for all the for the modern era, I would say. You go back to the NMRA race series where they had Super Street and the Renegade and all that. That was like, that was like the base plate for, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. It was so big back then too. Cause in the nineties, it was World Four Challenge, which kind of faded away for some reason. But then NMRA just picked up where they left off and yeah, they had a really great race series there for a while. But you know, it's funny because you talk about all this engine stuff. Fun Ford Weekend had a class where you had to run naturally aspirated, like I think the max cubic inch is like 308 or 310 cubic inch, 500 lift camshaft. We eventually had an engine with twist away street heads make 2.2 horsepower cubic inch with 500 lift hydraulic or camshaft, right? So this engine is making 660 horsepower out of a 306 cubic inch small Ford. Yeah, with 500 lift. And so, you know, of course, the heads were five grand. Very expensive set of heads. Seven millimeter stem, titanium valves. You know, we welded the heads when they were still raw castings. We took the raw casting and completely welded the chamber shut and then had them heat treated, machined. And then in those heads, when they were done, were like 45 CC chamber. So we were able to get high compression with the flat top because the class also said you had to run a flat top piston. So you're making 2.2 horsepower for keeping kids with a flat top piston and, you know, 500 lift cam, which you tell people that to this day, they'd be like, yeah, that's not that's not realistic. Yeah, so yeah, you get to learn a lot of stuff working with racers for sure.

And that's where that's all that that base knowledge that people don't know that you learn from, you know, going forward. You know, when you do crazy stuff like that, things you learn when you made power, it's like, oh, we did some cool tricks. And same thing with people like, oh, you're lying. And I was like, no, you just sometimes there's some of the tricks you just can't explain.

Sure. You know, yeah. You know, and well, let's be fair. There's a lot of that lying and, you know, gray area rules and things out there that people are.

I had a fight with people for a long time, you know, because, you know, doing doing the Supercharger work, they were for a long time, they were just seeing, seeing like the inlet and like the air going into the Supercharger because they're like, they're like, well, after that, it doesn't matter. I was like, the blower won't outflow what the heads will flow. I was like, but if, if you, if I port the blower to the cylinder, it's like port match it, it'll pick up like almost 40, 50 CFM. Yeah, but that doesn't, that doesn't change. We've tested, that doesn't work. I was like, that doesn't make any sense to me. I don't believe you. So you're doing something wrong. If you made something flow better and it won't make more power, you're doing something wrong. It was like, yeah, but a blower is different. I was like, okay, whatever. So I was the only one that was like porting the runners and there's not much of a runner, but it's like a transition into the port, into the head. And it was just terrible. So I would always, I was always porting them. And guys, I was fighting people forever about, you know, in a lot of places where you get CNC blowers, they didn't touch the runners. They only did the inlet area going into the Supercharger. And there's a lot there, but it's not everything. And I think, and dealing with that, I think it's because a lot of people are wrong on camshafts. Like they're over camming the Supercharger and what it was is because they're over camming it so bad that when they were port matching it, at probably one time when someone tested it, it didn't make any difference because it was over cammed and it didn't help it because it's already wrong to begin with. You're so wrong, it didn't help it. But when you had the right cam in it, it made a big difference. And it's just people weren't, you know what I mean? They were close and then they went right past it. And I was like, yeah, you almost had it right.

So I feel like you guys see that all the time, especially in your guys' world, just people just like, there's got to be a secret sauce. They're not even a secret sauce. It's just a combination. A combination, yeah. People mess up combinations all the time.

It's a combination of parts. And that's one of the things that I've been big on. That's why it's just me. I was like, I control all the variables. I do the tuning. I either ported the heads or I had someone that I knew was that ported the heads to what I wanted to see on a flow bench. Sure. You know, I picked the cam lobes. I picked the valve springs. I picked the push rods. I picked the converter. I worked with Circle D doing all these converter testing to get the right converter. And then, you know, I get the gear and then I do the fuel and the fuel system, from the air filter or non-air filter, the whole intake, all the way out the back of the exhaust, everything, and then I'm tuning it and then I'm driving it at the track. I mean, that's the only way to get it to where you can control like all of it. Cause it's so easy for someone to screw it up like, oh, the converter is way too tight or way too loose or wrong gear, you know, or you can't do 12 to one with boost on 93. I don't care how much methanol you spray in the inlet. You know, there's just all kinds of things with a combination that people get wrong that if you can control all of it and you're smart enough, you can try to be better than anybody else. Sure.

Yeah.

And that's why all of this work into positive displacement blowers. Is there a better option? Is there?

It is the easiest.

I mean, it's a weird passion thing.

It's a passion thing, but it goes to people that are more crafty or for basic. Like anybody, I mean, I would say anybody, but it's so easy to just take off the intake, put a Supercharger on, connect the belt, go fast. You know, turbos, it's piping, ducting, intercoolers. And if you want more or less, oh, you need a bigger intercooler, the pipe isn't big enough, there's no room for the exhaust.

It's centrifugal Superchargers, so much harder to install, yeah, you know, putting an intercooler somewhere, piping, routing, you know, I talked to a Corvette shop years ago, and they said, we just did two C6 LS3 Corvettes. This is literally probably eight or 10 years ago. So they put, you know, somebody's centrifugal Supercharger kit on one car. They said this lace was 24 hours, and then they put a positive displacement like Magnuson on the other car.

It's a nightmare to work on if there's something wrong.

Six hours, and they both made the same power, and the Magnuson made way more torque everywhere, and you can run a stock converter.

Yeah, a stock converter, you know, with something choppy in it if you're frisky enough. But I mean, it's...

I mean, my ZR1, a lot of people don't know this, my 2019 ZR1, that thing went a 12660 foot, pulling the front tires, was a stock converter. You know, and with the stock exhaust, you know, you drive around, people think the car is stock. They don't know it runs eights, you know. And that's a really cool sleeper effect. And, but you're talking to a guy, I've got a twin turbo car that makes 2,500 horsepower plus. I've got a centrifugal supercharged car, gear drive F3R 121, that'll, that is easily make 2,000 horsepower. Then I've got that 2019 ZR1, that's just a fricking super cool street car, right? If you want a super cool street car, positive displacement supercharger, I think it's kind of the ultimate thing, yeah.

It's a lot easier for us to say, cause we do all these cars all the time. Like he's done all the cars and I've worked in it. I'm telling you, I was like, man, I mean, if you're like, like ultra go fast racer, it's hard to be turbo stuff, you know, but there's so much into it. And it's such a dedicated setup, whereas the supercharger stuff, man, and you can grow with it. Like you're talking a car that came with a 1900 off the showroom floor. And I've got that thing, I've gotten that thing almost into the sevens, you know, just by keep tweaking and modifying. I had with Cal Heartline, we did his working with him and with his V and I helped him on a supercharger stuff. He had a stock converter, stock gear with a 30 inch tall tire, cut like 120, 60 foot, going eights. Stock gears, factory converter, factory gear in it.

Same as the R1, all stock suspension.

He's running eights with it. As somebody else will, I mean, the only other guy that could maybe get away with that is maybe a nitrous guy, if he doesn't blow it up. But you're filling bottles and you're, man, filling bottles gets old really fast. Especially there was a time when you couldn't even fill a bottle because the nitrous plant went under, blew up or something like that. And it just, oh, you're going to get two good passes. And then the bottle is going to get too low. And ah, man, oh, the nitrous solenoid opened and the fuel one didn't. The intake came off the car with the hood and everything else. Car started on fire. Yeah, I'm telling you, Superchargers is just the blower wine is, you know, it's just so many cool hot rod things about a Supercharger.

My wife's car has a Procharger on it and I have one. I have a newer GT 500 with the, I think that's a 2650 on it as well. And they are two totally different driving experiences.

So, yeah, someone's, I tell people, someone's got to stick around to make this stuff fast before it just, you know, it just falls off the map because a lot of times it's just hobbyist. So you don't see a lot of us factory blower cars at the track killing it.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, we do it at the Cadillac race. And then I go to, I mean, when I go to World Cup, there is out of, you know, it's a pretty strict set of rules for like World Cup for some. And when I raced in like the mean street class, I was like me and A&P were probably the only two people in the country that could build a car fast enough with a factory blower to even qualify to be at the race. And I went, I want to say two years ago, I went number one in Mean Street when they had it, number one qualifier with a 1900 Supercharger, went eight O's. So I mean, that was really cool to do.

So it's crazy how far you can push it, man.

Yeah. You know, I was like, it came from, you know, I mean, it's a factory thing, you know. So I mean, there's a lot more into like going fast with it. It's the rest of the combination. But the fact that it's like, if you have a guy that has that Supercharger to look at and be like, you know, you can keep evolving this setup and just keep going further on it and keep going faster, you know. It's not like you have to like completely sell out and be like, oh, I got to start over.

Right.

You can just keep building, you know, do the Supercharger, maybe port it, then build a motor. And then when you blow up that motor or you hurt it or something like that, build a better motor and then start upgrading your driveline. And you can just keep growing with it. It's kind of cool because that's what hot rodders do, right?

Yeah.

I mean, they just keep going further and further. And a lot of times when people sell out their cars is because the car burned them out. You know what I mean? Or they hit a wall and no one could get them past it. You know, they wanted to go faster and couldn't get there. And their buddy was beating them. So they bought a Corvette or something. And, you know, trying to being able to, you know, be that person that gets someone to keep faster and faster and faster. And, you know, it's it's kind of like being a mentor to all these racers. You know, I have a I have a pretty good following with the guys that I work with and customers. And it's been really cool. Yeah, you know, because they look at me and they model what they want. It's like, I want a car like that. It's like I could build you one.

So obviously you do a lot of drag racing. What about you personally? I mean, it sounds like you have a wide range of interests. Where do you typically fall?

Well, I have seven Corvettes, four road course, three for drag race. And and I really love the road course stuff. I'm in the driving club and see a motorsports park. I've got three C5Z's. One of them belongs to my wife, one belongs to my son. And then I've got a C5Z and I've got a C8Z06. And just going down there and making laps, you know, I wish everyone does that at least one time in their lifetime. Actually I have a Tota Stacker. So I'll take and put a couple of cars in that and then have somebody drive a car. And so we'll take three cars down there at a time and we'll just make laps. And, you know, and I'm putting, you know, guys that work for me in these cars making laps. Otherwise they would never in their life have an opportunity to get on track with a decent car. And for me, I love learning. I love learning, constantly learning. And, you know, when you've been a drag racer, your whole life, the road course is a completely different thing. You know, so it's just like for me, I wanted to even know, well, what, you know, what is it, what do you want for a camshaft, for example? Right. And so, you know, like my wife's car would put a stage one cam, my car would put a stage two cam. It's really interesting, because obviously my car makes a lot more power, because I also ported the heads and put a fast intake on it. And because it's just still a LS6 by seven, you know, engine. And on a drag race, oh yeah, it would, you know, crane my wife's car, but cut them out of a corner, her car is better coming out of a corner, you know, and you can't discount that when you're coming out of 23 turns in one lap at that track, you know, and so, and even in the other cool thing we did was we never bought the same set of tires. We bought nothing but true 200 credit worth tires. We never bought the same set of tires twice, right? We always bought different, different types. And just what you learn from tires and just driving the different tires. I mean, what a unbelievable amount of difference tires can make. Well, my C8Z, it came with the 4S tires, which are absolutely the worst tires in the world.

We call them the Swiss Army Knife because they're pretty, they're all right at everything, but they're like, yeah, I've tracked with it 4S's and it's not great.

You were sliding about.

They get greasy after a while.

I can't, and then, and then if I had another set of stock wheels, I put the Pilot Sport Cup 2R's on.

Yeah.

And those things are kind of trash. Let's be honest, right? I mean, they've managed to make this weird combination of a tire that doesn't grip that well after one session, right? They're good for one session. But second session, for some reason, they're kind of done and then they wear quickly. So it's just like not only do they not have good grip long term, they also wear quickly. So that's a really weird combination that they put in those tires. And then I bought a set of Forge lines and put a set of Hoosier R7 slicks on it and holy moly, right? And of course, I'm out there in the driving club. You got a bunch of rich dudes and they got their McLaren 720S's and their Porsche GT2RS and you go out there and just run past them so fast. They don't even know what happened. You know, they don't understand you got to set a slicks on that car, you know. So it's a lot of fun.

Do you have a favorite tire that's in like that 200 tread width sort of class?

You know, the Proxus RR and I don't know the total. So is that a Toyo?

Yes, Toyo, yep, yep.

In my opinion, I've got on my personal C5-Z06, three seasons of those tires on that car.

Sure.

Still haven't courted and still have decent grip. I mean, they're like from from first year to last year, maybe two second fall off. And, you know, the fact that you've run three seasons on it, it's just, it's unbelievable. That's like, how do they keep that much traction in that compound and that much in that good of wear?

Because when you heat cycle them, they start to, some tires, depending on how they make the compound, the compound goes away, or they turn into powder, you know what I mean? They just, it goes one way or another.

Those R7 slicks, they turn into brakes after about 15 sessions.

Plastic or something.

Yeah, so it's really, so for me, it's just having the education of being out there, making laps, testing some different stuff. So I really enjoy that. But then the drag racing, the drag racing is kind of the same thing, because the cars I have are so different. I bought, Dave Atkins has a C7 Corvette, he went 380s in the 8th. He holds the LS 8th mile record with that car, won 199 in the 8th. And so bought that car, we're originally going to convert that to a hydraulic roller and try to go 380s with that hydraulic roller. And then the big centrifugal Supercharger car, we detuned that to run the little gangsters class, which is just 530 index. So we put the slowest gears we had in the gear drive and first day out with a really soft tune up, a 130, 60 foot tune up, then went 523. So we're right there. We're just going to command the shifts a little earlier to slow it down for that class. So I think that's a really cool class. And it's funny because I can't believe I'm saying that because I'm a guy that hates bracket racing, hates index racing. But the things that they did right with that class, the fact that they hid the clocks, right? They hid the clocks. So people that are watching, they just see two cars go down the track relatively fast. One of them wins, one of them loses, right? And so, you know, cause when that class first got really popular, I mean, we, we sponsor it, you know, and I was just like, you know, it's an index class. And then once you really, you know, understand what it is and watch it, you know, you have a much better appreciation for it. So, so one of the cars to set up for that. And then the other cars, the 2019 ZR1, it's just, you know, I don't know, it just sits there and looks pretty, that's probably about all it's going to do for a while. I may eventually take it to this track. It's one of those cars that's so hard to work on, you don't ever want to break it.

Sure. We only did it for one year, right?

Yeah, that's one year. That's one year car. Okay.

That's a shame as well, cause that is, what a way to end before they went on a mid engine. It's just, I wish they made it just a little bit more.

Yeah.

Yeah. What did you say your home track was, by the way?

Well, really Beach Bend, I'm an hour and a half from Beach Bend. Corspo La Green is my hometown. I currently live in Bartstown. So about an hour and a half from Beach Bend. We're not maybe an hour or so from Ohio Valley up toward Mobile. And then about an hour and a half from Kentucky Dragway toward Eastern Kentucky, other side of Lexington.

Gotcha. Okay.

Yeah. Nothing as close as I would like.

Sure. Yep.

When I lived in Bowling Green, because when I had told me Airflow, I lived in Bowling Green and to be at the track in five minutes was right.

Oh man. That was my biggest thing for because I didn't have a dino. You know, I was one of the few people that I, I when I started doing the LS stuff, that the dino era was what was king. Everybody in their dino sheets and what they dino. And I was like, cool. I was like, I'm just going to the track. That's where I tested. If it would faster at the track, I could tune it and tweak it and mess with it. That was my thing. And luckily I had a quarter mile drag strip like 10 miles from the house. So I had these, I had a drag pack that I used to put on any customer's cars. I got these going because they're pretty universal when you get GM stuff. So throw the drag pack on it, let's go to the track. And that's that was my test. So I'd have time slips. And that was because that was, you know, for the guys I work with, that's what matters. You know, there's guys that go to cars and coffee and they just want their dino sheep in their window and they just want to cruise around, they don't want to beat on it. And then there's other guys that all they care about is how fast it is, you know. They don't care what camshaft you use or what tire or whatever. Just tell me what goes fast and that's what I'm going with. So it was cool having the drag strip right by the house and doing all my development work at the track.

Are you doing all of your own tuning? Are you tuning customer cars then?

Yeah, I do all the tuning.

Okay.

Yeah, I use HP tuners and mostly all factory computers. I did a couple little Holley stuff here and there, but really the OEM stuff is where my base is at. So I try to stick with what all my customers have. There's no point in me going to a Holley or doing something or Pro EFI or something. If 99.9% of my guys are factory OEM, it's like there's still little tricks you learn or little loopholes or something cool you learn to do. Because if you've ever been through, you guys familiar with HP tuners or looked at it much? A little bit here and there. You start opening, go through all the tabs and screens, it's like there's millions of tables of everything. You're like, okay, what do I need to worry about? What do you mess with and what do you don't? And every car is a little different. You think that you work on a Corvette and you go work on a G8 and it's the same and there's not. There's tables you can touch and there's tables you can't touch between them both. The transmission, they act different. And learning all that stuff, doing the tuning, it's important because that's the end game. When you're the tuner, you're the end game of what everything else matters, to make it all work. You can't get the tune right, that you've wasted everything. You know.

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Yeah, the tune mixer breaks a lot of these cars.

Yeah, yeah, it's the same thing, you know, it's either guys come in, or one intended.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, so that's, man, tuning is, that's always, that's been the trick for forever, is getting the tuning part down, right? And learning all the combinations. And people lean on me and say, hey man, where you gonna start doing the LT stuff? I was like, man, I think I've been cured of that disease. I don't think I'll ever make that mistake. Nothing against it. LT stuff is the most powerful base. The problem is, it's so complicated for guys to get into it and make power with the direct injection and the high pressure pump and the direct injectors and everything. It's so hard to come up with a combination to get enough fuel to it and go through all the loopholes and trying to deal with a factory computer. It's like, the throttle plate shut down again or it didn't shift or fourth gear windlock or it goes in limp mode for some weird because the torque table wasn't right. The torque tables and everything. It's such a mess and you can spend so much money and it's so easy to go down the road. That's why you see so many NA LT combinations because they're stupid fast and make great power, but you don't see, they've never made the transition to power rider stuff, really, like LS. Like LS, they put any power you can think of on the LT stuff. It's just everybody gutting out the cars and maxing out the NA setup, putting high rams or whatever intake they can put on it and spinning the guts out of them because they make amazing power. And that's why you start seeing guys trying to put Nitro on them because it's still NA then. They just sprayed in like Nitrous or whatever, or mixed it in with the E85.

I will give that to GM. They've got the NA game down. We were at Streetcar Bragging Rights and an NA class was coming up. And I told Harris, I was like, watch, there won't be one Ford in this one. It's going to be all GM stuff. And I think there might have been one or two Ford cars, but it pretty much was all GM.

That's turning into a pretty big race. Like the last, like they came around for a while. But like Rock and Ham for like 26, that Bragging Rights race. That's I mean, I'll be there, but there's a lot of like a lot of guys I know that I work with customers. They're all going.

That place is going to be awesome. We like our favorite ones this year. It has to be. I mean, we we stayed at the track for 2K, Texas, 2K for our first time. That was a good time. Bragging Rights is also good. We did World Cup, but I think Bragging Rights is probably number one for this year. For fun.

I'm hoping this year is a little cooler. Last year, dude, it was hot. It was a baker. I was like, oh, please. Luckily, it got late enough that when we went to run the sun had set and I wasn't going to try because you start getting dressed up in that suit, get strapped in the car and this, you know, Rockingham faces the sunset. You're sitting there. You feel like a candle just melting. Why am I doing this?

So I got a question for you. With all of your experience with this GM world and making engine components and things like that, is there a king of all of them? Which is you have a wide range of vehicles too with LS, LT, stuff like that. Which one's your favorite out of all of their engines they have?

I mean, between LS and LT. Well, I'm an efficiency guy.

Okay.

I love efficiency in terms of horsepower per cubic inch. When you look at, it's like small-block Chevy. That's what I cut my teeth on. Then eventually did big-block Chevy stuff. When you talk about hydraulic, flat-tabbing hydraulic roller cam, pump gas, small-block Chevy, you're at 1.3, 1.4 horsepower per cubic inch. Then sadly, like a big-block Chevy, you could have a freaking solid roller, or 13 to 1 compression, and that thing is like 1.6 horsepower per cubic inch. Very inefficient engine. Yeah. And then when the LS came out at 1.6 horsepower per cubic inch, hydraulic roller pump gas, I was like, oh, this is fantastic. Then if you've got a really, really, really good set of heads in the higher PM intake, you can get that LS up in that 1.8 horsepower per cubic inch range, which I felt like was probably going to be the pinnacle. And then the LT with direct ejection came out. And I had heard some numbers through my friends down there at GPI. They were making well over 700 horsepower with their stock LT1 short block. And I was just like, man, that doesn't make sense to me. And so we did all basically same stuff with one of our cams on pump gas E85. We made 740 horsepower right at 2 horsepower with cubic inch.

Yeah, and a guy short block and a guy's cam. As soon as LT, they got started LT. They're like, LS, what's an LS? Yeah, he came out. They're like, you know, they start throwing down with that motor.

Yeah, I mean, 2 horsepower with cubic inch.

That's not even a dual ever. It's not even a.

Yeah, right.

Or a camera. It's not even a four valve.

Yeah. But you know, almost 10 percent of that horsepower is just the direct injection because we took that engine from direct injection port injection. It went from 740 to 670. You know, we did it back to back and then we could also blend the fuel. And you blend the fuel 50-50 and it was 35 horsepower difference. You know, it followed one to one. And the reason that is, is it's really kind of twofold. Number one, when you look at the airflow through the engine with port injection, the more port injection you put in the engine, the lower the airflow, right? Because you're clogging up the port with that fuel. Oh, yeah. And the other way, the other, I'm a theoretical guy, you know, looking at BMEP, brake mean effector pressure calculations. And when you start running BMEP numbers on ProStalk engines or NASCAR engines or whatever engine you're working on, and then you run it on this LT engine, and you're like, wait a minute, this thing is showing higher BMEP than a ProStalk engine. This doesn't make sense. What you realize is that, you know, once you fully optimize the intake cam, the cylinder heads, all of that, you're putting all the air in the cylinder, closing the valve, and then ejecting the fuel, right? And so the fuel, the direct injection, is almost like an artificial Supercharger, because you're putting more stuff in that cylinder than you're typically going to put in with any port ejected engine, right? So that direct ejection is absolutely a cheat code, and it kind of hurts my head that we're this many years down the road with this thing, and guys are like, I'm going to take that crap off and put port ejectors on it. It's just like, yeah, but you're giving up 70 horsepower on E85. Now, on gasoline, it's less gain, but here was the impressive thing to me. That engine on Pure M1, just put M1 in the tank instead of E85, that engine made 785 horsepower. So picked up another 45 on M1. And then the difference between direct ejection and port ejection with M1 was 85 horsepower. It went from 785 to 700. That's 7800 RPM.

Yeah. And again, it's a supercharging effect. Because if you look at how much fuel you got to put in a motor to feed it with methanol, you're just raising the static compression just by stuffing more fuel in that thing.

And all that.

And it's super cooling it on top of it.

Yeah. All that fuel is clogging up the port. In any application, carbureted, port ejected, but not direct ejection.

And it tolerates so much compression. You put so much more compression in a direct injected motor. And then you put methanol on top of it. You know, you tell someone you make it 800 some horsepower out of it, you know, an NA direct injected motor. And you tell some guy, you know, 10 years ago, you're going to do that with a small block. They'd be like, you're out of your mind, not unless you got the best, you know, 850 lift cam with some ridiculous numbers and ridiculous compression on C23 or something. But now, yeah, it's nothing, you know, factory stuff. Yeah, crazy.

So I like I like the direct injecting agent.

If it's an ALT is king. Just it's sad that that it's such a complicated mess for the tuner side of it and that the fueling is such an expensive. It's like a barrier trying to get the fuel to it. Even when they mean and they're still working on. I mean, we were on a dyno that long ago and we you know, they're working on these Goliath pumps and these monster injectors. And there's so many just walls you run into that. It's just like, man, this is not going to be easy to do with a power adder. You got such a short window, injection window. The injectors are so time limited. And then when you deal with a high pressure setup, you can't just, you know, an aftermarket, if you got the stock fuel rails, you throw some bigger rails on it. Well, that direct injection is all like high pressure lines. And they got this itty bitty calibrated orifice feed hole to it. And the pressure is ridiculous on it. It's not like something you just bolt on a bigger set of rails for it when you run out of rail or it doesn't work right. Because these things, the injectors just won't open. You start throwing more pressure at it and the injectors just stop opening. You're at 650 kPa or whatever and they just they slam shut and then motor shuts off. You know, God help you if you're spraying nitrous to it or something.

Yeah, you know, but you know, I was thinking about that all these things. So that F3R121, the Supercharger I've got, we put that on an LAT. I don't know if you're familiar with the LAT. That's the 6.6 liter iron block that comes in the trucks. Yes, and it has an eight counterweight crankshaft, forged crankshaft, which is wild. Never thought I'd see the day that GM is putting an eight counterweight crankshaft in a production engine. And with that stock block and that stock crank with that Supercharger, we made right at 2,050 horsepower with that engine. Yeah, you know, and it's just like...

It's some factory stuff.

What a time to be alive, you know? Had aluminum rods and good pistons, but that was with factory LT4 heads, ported factory head gaskets. We never heard the head gasket at 2,050 horsepower.

Yeah, wow.

It's just like, this doesn't even make sense to me, you know?

When you race it on a budget, that stuff like that makes a huge difference. Because that's usually what kills people's pockets is telling them, like, well, if we sleeve this block...

Yeah, buy $5,000 of heads.

Yeah, we put some...

Copper O-rings.

Yeah, O-rings, fuel hoop it. You know, we can probably keep it together. And you're like, how much is that going to cost? A lot.

It's amazing what these OEMs are do as the government's been constricting them more. And it seems like we're still moving forward is kind of a crazy deal.

You know, that should bring us to the next topic, which is software engine development. Because all those new engines, the LT and the four valve engine that Chevy has, all of that has been developed inside a piece of software called GT Power. And so where all of our testing in the past was iterative, much like Rick's in his garage. You know, you've got a new cam and you're testing on a dyno and a spintron. With that software, you can put all the parameters in the software and test dozens of camshafts a day on the spintron and the dyno.

Sure.

Right. And then, you know, so having that technology, you know, to kind of take your stuff to the next level.

It's cool how that software, CrossRiferts, is over to the dyno, because even though it's an animated software, you still got the dynamic part on the dyno where you're taking, there's pressure sensors like everywhere and you're checking like exhaust pressure, intake pressure, chamber pressure, and you can see how everything's happening and how it all, and then you can plug all the dynamic data back in and then you can fine tune it and you're like, oh, this is easy.

Sure. And how does that translate into real life usable? Is it like 80, 90% of the way or how exactly does it translate?

Well, like in that engine we made 2050 horsepower with. Sure. We had put our biggest Supercharged Shelf Cam in that engine and at the exhaust valve, at the intake valve open point, so now you're exhausting the pistons coming up, exhaust valves closing. At the point that the intake valve cracked, there was still 50 psi of residual pressure in that cylinder. So we knew that we needed a cam with more exaust duration and the guys went ahead and put a little bit more intake duration in that camshaft as well. So they did a cam change and picked up 100 horsepower. Holy s***. And if it wasn't for the pressure data.

You would know where to go with the cam. You'd be guessing. You just grinding stuff and stuffing it in there and making tests and being like, well, we picked up 20, I picked up 35. You don't know if that's good enough. I mean, once you see the data, you're like, and then you could do it. You could throw what the data says and you could do one test and be like, yep, that fixed it. You know what I mean? Or you could be like, you know what? I think we can get in our 20 out of it. There's still a little, you know what I mean? Sure. You can look at data and run it through the power and you could. It narrows down your guessing window down to like nothing.

You know what I mean?

You know, you're really close versus we're going to try this.

100 is huge. I don't know what guys do to get 20 or 30. 100 is great.

Yeah. Yeah. It shocked us.

That was so what I started doing to Supercharger work. One of the guys told me he's like, I was like, well, how much is this going to cost? It's like, well, this is a lot of work. I don't even know how to price it. He goes, what would you pay? How would we do it by horsepower? He goes, what would you pay for horsepower? And really, some people would be like, man, man, if you get me 20 horse, I'd pay 600 bucks for that easy, you know? I was like, okay. It's funny what guys that are really number crunchers like, man, if you'd get me 100 horse, oh yeah.

Cam swap.

You'd go 1,000 bucks for 1,000 for 100 horse cam? I was like, okay.

Absolutely.

If you're gonna tell me you'd give me 100 horse, I'll take it.

Yeah, that's a bargain for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And we've seen that. I mean, not granted some of the testing I've done, but we've been on the chassis dyno with cars, and we've seen a combination, and it was, you just know it's down power. It's like, man, we made 1100, we're down at 980 or something or 990. It's like, man, we're down. And you thought when someone built their combination, it's like, oh, we've made this so you could put more pulley and more boost to it. And the more pulley and boost to it, the worse it got. And I was like, wow, what is wrong? And you're looking at everything, it's picking up air flow, the boost is up, but it's losing power, like the power won't carry. And Supercharger stuff does a lot of crazy stuff that like normal things don't follow with, you know.

It has a lot of drive load, right? I mean, because another thing that the cylinder pressure data shows us is actual cylinder horsepower, right? So it was like the testing we were doing this year on the LT4, the engine is showing it makes 1200 horsepower, you know, to the crank. The cylinder pressure is 1600, because it takes 400 horsepower to drive that Supercharger.

Yes.

Right? And also like the airflow distribution, because the sensor in the rear of the engine, number seven versus the front of the engine, number one, with one of the manufacturer Superchargers, there was 25 horsepower difference, right? So it's like they were behind the competitors, you know, 25 horsepower. Well, if they just didn't have such bad distribution that that cylinder, you know, they would have been right there with their competitor. You know what I mean? So it's just like having access to that technology is game changing. And, you know, that's where this industry is going. Those who can scale up to the point that can afford all the tools they need, the software, that Plex pressure information.

It's like an Easter egg map. It's like an Easter egg hunt with a map.

You know, those guys are going to separate themselves from the rest of the pack.

Okay.

You know, because technology, it's just, your learning increases at a rate of probably 10 fold versus those that don't have that.

Your guessing drops next to nothing. Yeah.

Well, I'm glad you brought that topic up then as well, because obviously there's been some big news in the past week. 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. Yeah. With the whole private equity and all that stuff. So what's the future of BTR look like?

Yeah, I'd be glad to discuss that. So I'm 61 now.

Sure.

And so when I built the first 15,000 square foot building for BTR back in 2017, 1.5 million at that point, that's the most money I've ever spent my life. And yes, I was scared to death. And then in 21 and 22, we added on 30,000 square feet, which is another 3 million. And I personally own the buildings and I leased them to BTR. And so at that point, I've got 4.5 million invested in buildings. And then the machine shop, we spent another 5 million in machine shop equipment. And then over the next two years, we added 2 million to that. So now we've got 7 million in machine shop equipment.

Well, when did it transition to private equity?

So that happened two weeks ago. So I knew that I wanted to do, I wanted to buy a couple of companies, to be honest with you, and bring this patented feature to market and other things. Because we have, not only is this patent done, but we have three more patents that we're working on. So it's like to really bring all this stuff to fruition, is gonna take an enormous amount of capital. So this 83,000 square foot expansion we're working on right now, that's $8 million out of my personal pocket. And I still need to go spend about 30 to 40 million buying a couple of other companies. And at that point was when I was just like, uncle, I think I'm too old in this economic environment to take on that much risk. It's like when you've worked 30 some years to have, because I don't feel like I have a high level of success, I feel like I have just an okay level of success, but it's still 32 years of work to get to that level of success and you could run it all. An economic downturn could put you out of business. So for me, partnering with private equity, so we can take BTR to the next steps was an option that we looked at. And then we found an incredible group with Burnout Brands, their CEO, Christian Roth, literally one of the most intelligent people I've ever met in my life. And in this industry, generally, as the intelligence, as someone goes up the intelligence scale, the personality goes the other direction. We call them brilliant a*******. Also, one of the nicest guys you've ever met. Very positive, right? Very intelligent. You know, so to partner with him and his team and with private equity is absolutely going to let us take BTR to the next level.

Yeah, because I know a lot of people, like you know, there's a general consensus was like that it was a sellout and now it's really, everybody thinks it was selling out and everybody's cash out and leaving. It was really just about stepping up. It wasn't about-

It was more of a partnership than it was anything.

Absolutely. And a couple of things to note with PE buyout in the performance industry, a lot of those buyouts happened in 2018, 2019, 2020, maybe 2021, right? What was different then versus 22 and later? Interest rates.

Yeah.

Right. There's a roll up, you know, these private equity roll up groups, there's a roll up group out there right now that's rumored to be paying a million dollars a week in interest on their debt.

Holy s***.

Right. It's, you know, their business model was not built on 7% interest, it was built on 2% interest. And when those interest rates went up in 22, it's crushed those businesses, right? Their cash flow requirements went up, they started trying to cut costs everywhere, inventory, people, whatever, and it's just really crushed those businesses, right? The other thing that happens, in my opinion, is a culture problem. Because you've got this founder that walks away with tens of millions of dollars, and everyone else is left holding the bag, right? With BTR being an employee-owned company, we just put almost $40 million in the pockets of 70 some people, which is dramatically different from how sales normally go, right? So now those people, I'm hoping, are more bought in than ever, right? Because all of them just had the largest windfall of their lives.

It wasn't like Brian just walked away with all of this, he said, bye, I'm retiring.

He bought a yacht and moved on, yeah.

And that's what happens.

All the guys are left to dry, they're all getting fired.

That's a culture killer, right? And I mean, we have a dozen guys that are going to be, a dozen employees, that's going to receive over a million dollars themselves. We have one that's going to receive over two, you know? So from my perspective, and I guess you have to know the rest of my story, because, you know, I sold my first business to Summit Racing for about what I owed on it. And then when I moved out of my basement in 2014, I had less than $50,000 saved for retirement, right? Because I had cashed out my 401k to, you know, start business in these things. And I didn't know if I was ever going to be able to retire. And, you know, so I just said a prayer to God. I was like, God, if you let this business take off, I swear I'll share the wealth, you know? So, you know, doing the ESOP in 2018, and now doing the private equity, you know, cell has put that much money in those people's pockets. You know, and I started BTR in my basement with a $50,000 home equity line of credit, right? And there's almost no one at BTR that's receiving less than that amount of money. And, you know, so some of those people may go on to start their own businesses, which would make me happy. You know, that's the thing that I would like to see. So I think that our situation is so different, you know, because, you know, these people have cash, right? So they, you know, their whole business model isn't built on cheap interest rates that suddenly go up. And, you know, we have a good culture at BTR. We're going to protect that culture religiously. You know, we don't want to hurt the culture. And then you see a lot of businesses in this industry with bad cultures. And that's really the difference. If you want a great business, hire great people and try to promote a great culture. I myself, I'm not the great culture promoter, but fortunately I have great people that work for me, great managers on my management team, who are great people.

That's why I'm here. For now. People are saying, well, why did you hook up? Well, how did you end up with Brian? It was like, it wasn't like, I called up Brian and we just made an agreement. It was like, there was an initial, I showed up, we had talked and been around, known each other a little bit, but I showed up, we did some dynoing for a whole week and thrashed there. And then we came back and revisited things again. And over the years, you learn people and you see how things work. And you're like, you know what? I would be proud to say I'm involved with this organization versus this person, because it's just how it's built. And other stuff, because talking with him, we talk about all kinds of stories and stuff, and stuff he does with product development, and how he does his product development, and the way he researches stuff. And it's something like that. I was like, okay, if we do a venture, I believe that in the end, that will come out with the best product. I don't think it'll be short-cutted. I don't think it'll be like, well, you know what? That's going to cost five more dollars. I don't think it's really worth it. I just don't think that he would cut quarters on something when it comes to development stuff.

The other thing that a lot of people don't understand or don't think about, this is not the first business I've sold. I sold my first business in 2004 to Summit Racing. I saw management there come to me, tell me to do things, and I went and did them even though knowing they were bad ideas. Then when that bad idea came to fruition as a downturn of business or whatever, I'm just like, what did you think was going to happen when you did that? I'm in a much better position now to have the emotional intelligence to sit down and say, hey, you don't want to do this and here's why. Sure. And having those crucial conversations with this group, whoever you had to work with.

So one question that comes to mind, it's just going over and over in my head. So one thing you mentioned earlier is that this group, they're not basically going to the banks. This is a cash buyer then, from my understanding?

Yeah, they're primarily cash.

Okay, gotcha. Okay, so that kind of takes that pressure off of like, okay.

That's right. And you're still on the board of directors.

Sounds like I'm on the board.

Right. So it's not like he's just gone. Well, they're going to just do whatever they want. And yeah, it's just going to happen. However, they feel like it's going to happen. He's still doing the same thing.

Not running off like Scrooge McDuck with your bag of money.

Yeah. He's still trying to keep making sure the culture stays the same, even though he's just trying to develop it more with a better backing.

You're basically doing the same thing you're doing with him, and he's doing it with another person here, right? You're using your tools at hand.

Right, right.

That's a good way of playing.

Yeah. Yeah, because it takes a lot of capital to aggressively grow a business. Yeah, right.

What you're trying to do next isn't exactly an easy feat either.

And what people don't understand is like it's not just, it's not like you just spend a couple million dollars on CNC machines and poof, you're making money, man. It takes so long to just, everything has to start working together. Like the machines all have to work, the tooling has to write, the casting has to be right. There's so much like, you'll invest, I'm sure he's invested millions of dollars and it's like, it's going to be two years before that starts making money. So I have to be able to put that money into something.

And then I have to wait. You look at our cylinder head program. We bought a brand new Mazak C600 with the 18-pallet pull system, $750,000. Permanent mold tooling to make the cylinder heads, which at this point is probably $300,000. All the pallets that you bolt the heads to, to machine them, all the tooling, we have over $100,000 in tooling. We probably have a few count employee time spent programming and CNCing the fixtures, way over 100,000 of that. So that total project at this point, a design guy that's worked on this thing for better part of three years, a porting guy that's spent the better part of three years just doing port development and CNC programming.

There was a casting on the table, what, three years ago?

Three years ago. We had a casting they had three years ago. So we have $1.5 to $2 million in that project. Thankfully, it's paid for, so it's okay we're not shipping cylinder heads, but that's a good example of how much capital it takes.

And they ain't even made a nickel yet.

They ain't even made a nickel yet. Because a lot of businesses, if they spent $1.5, $2 million on a project that didn't make a penny for a year like we have, they would be in trouble.

Yeah, right.

Especially if you're paying interest.

Oh yeah, especially if you're paying interest.

You know what I mean? That's why you're not making money and you're paying interest on something that's not making any money yet.

Yeah.

That's where that capital base comes into play. Whereas if you don't have it, you just can't do it.

Right.

Or you just go under one of the two. Right. So to start jumping up those next two levels, just more capital.

Yeah, I just wanted to bring that topic up because again, last week him and I finished the podcast.

It's been all over social media for the last week or two.

Scratch around and to come up here and to come up there and everybody has an opinion on it and I'm like, man, and you want to chime in but I don't want to get, you don't want to get, because I kind of know a little bit where it's at talking to Brian, but I didn't do the, I don't know the whole deal.

So to be fair, it doesn't have, usually private equity ruins everything, right? In the grand scheme of things, so people are a little gun shy, right?

It's a bunch of guys, penny pitchers that are looking to make a dollar.

Yeah, nothing about the performance industry.

What can we trim off? And yeah, it's a stock market thing. It's just what can I make a dollar with, you know?

Right, short term versus this is more of a long term investment then. So you said, so you guys just added that 83,000 square foot, is that a fulfillment warehouse then?

So it's under construction.

Under construction, okay.

So that'll be the entire order fulfillment facility. And then the current 45,000 square feet foot facility will be pretty much nothing but machine shop.

Sure, okay.

So we're planning on scaling up machining a lot there.

And then you said you're also going to kind of go on, you're going to buy up some other companies too. Did I hear that correctly as well?

I'd like to.

Okay, that's, I'm not going to ask who in particular. Obviously, that's got to stand around.

That is somewhat fluid, you know what I mean? It's nothing because sometimes the plan yesterday doesn't fit into the new plan for today.

Right, exactly.

Some things come up and you're like, oh, before we were only talking about doing this, now we're talking about doing this. So things change and it should be good.

So this is ultimately, it's not you coming off the hamster wheel. In fact, it's you kind of ramping it up, if anything.

He's just getting someone else to help him turn the hamster wheels. He's running on it.

It's a bigger hamster wheel.

It's a bigger hamster wheel for people running on it.

Or you get somebody else to pay for the hamster wheel.

Right, there you go.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You get a newer, bigger hamster wheel. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, so we touched a little bit on future plans and obviously we're coming up here on two hours. I obviously want to get you guys going to the rest of the show. But so what's the next year to look like? Do you have any upcoming programs? What do you guys are? You have a booth here at PRI too, right?

Yeah.

Anything in particular that you guys are showing off for this year and anything new or?

Well, the rocketing guys changed up the entire PRI booth. Because we went from roll around carts with, you know, the shape like this with parts on the side to pretty much displaying nothing but the parts on the engines. So we got some really nice looking, powder coated engine stands with all these different engines. And they wanted a car in the show, so they brought my C6 Corvette. And I'm not one of those guys that goes around and looks at the cars. Like, I'll go to SEMA. Like, I went to SEMA, right? Last month, I didn't take a picture of a single car. And I can't say that I even stopped. It really paid much attention to a single car. Because I think I'm just way more of an engine geek, right? I'm just kind of focused on the engine. And but, you know, it's just like, hey, if it helps draw people in, whatever helps draw people in. Sure. That's what you have to do. So but now going forward, you know, if we can bring these patents to market, if we can capitalize on them, if we can partner with some of these other companies to continue to scale and grow the business, you know, that's what our plans are. We want to continue to scale up camshaft grinding. We want to obviously bring the Supercharger patent to market. And there's also a patent we're working on, on aluminum blocks. We would like to bring that to market. That we have one detail that we've not finalized yet, but that block concept, it would be the strongest aluminum block made and cost less money to manufacture than any aluminum block on the market.

Okay. Oh, wow.

So that's a very powerful combination when it's stronger and costs less money to manufacture. And it is through the manufacturing process, of course, and thinking outside the box. But like I said, there's still one detail that we have to work out with that design to apply for that patent. And because if that patent is anything like this last patent, I mean, it's going to be two, two and a half years before that patent is finished. So it's protected.

This patent we got, I mean, it took two years. It took almost two years just to actually get it finalized.

Yeah. Once you got all the paperwork submitted and everything.

Because it was, you know, I don't see it because I don't do a lot of patents, but there was a lot of like, man, just just kind of be quiet, ride this up because it doesn't, you know, you don't want anybody challenging or disputing or doing stuff and making a mess of what you're trying to do because it can happen, you know? Yeah, absolutely. It was like, okay, we actually got the number. We are on the better side of the line now. Yeah.

Because I think, because-

How long before you start to go ahead? I got a camshaft question.

Let's talk about the future. To be in a position, we know we have the most powerful camshafts because we buy everyone's camshafts and test them. Yeah. Right. If you want to be the best, the only way you're going to know you're the best is by always stuff and test it. And basically what we do is we develop and work and develop and work until we're better. And then we're sticking for it, we're done. Right. So there are new cylinder heads. Obviously, you know, I worked at Trickflow for six years, brought every CNC ported head that they had to market. There's been more effort and energy put in our almost three score porting cathedral port heads than any head in the history of V8 performance cylinder heads. I'll bet you by large.

I even sent him heads for him to say, here, you can look at these and see if there's anything fancy. You see, I sent him heads that I've done and sent him just to peek at me. He's looked at everybody's like, you look at the shelf in his shop, like the R&D shop.

We've dyno-tested everybody's. We went and bought everybody's heads. We dyno-tested all of them.

Every camshaft box that has made an LS is on the shelf.

Yeah. All the brands. All the brands. People think that we're copying that stuff. It's just like, no, that's the baseline. That's the bar. That's the bar that you had to be.

It sucks when you're doing testing because it's like, man, which one do I want to pick? There's like 200 cams on this shelf.

So these heads are about 20 horsepower better, the Cathedral Port and Square Port on our 6.2. We're about 20 horsepower better than the best we've tested, that's available, and 20 horsepower is a lot. So to have the most powerful cams and the most powerful solar heads at the same time, the 40 years I've been in this industry buying parts, I don't know a single manufacturer, who's ever could say they had the most powerful LS3 or Cathay Deport camshafts and solar heads at the same time, right? Because generally you're good at one or the other, but not both.

Yeah.

And then if you take that to the next level, and you have an aluminum block that has a patent on it, that's the strongest aluminum block made, cost less money to manufacture, and you got crank rods and pistons like we do, now you've got an engine. Now you can sell crate engines. And if you can sell crate engines with either an internationally aspirated or Supercharger on top, now you've got really exceptional crate engines.

Absolutely.

Yeah. And so that's ultimately the direction we would like to go. Okay. Yeah, but it's several years out.

When are you gonna get to the point where you're, like, are you at the point where you can grind camshafts? I know you're grinding cams.

We have two cam grinders.

Right, but like what people don't understand, like when you call anybody else in the industry to get a cam grind, they're taking a core off the shelf. Where you guys do cams, they are getting their cam ground to size, heat treating up, and then they're grinding. So when you get a cam, it's way different. It's almost like an OEM, it's like an OEM cam. Like when I sell a cam to a guy, I order it and I do have some quarters, but there's still a generic core, and there are plus or minus on that core, and they're cutting into that heat treat. Whereas his, the heat treat is dead even all the side because they already ground at the size before the heat treat. Most cams are getting ground, they're just a roughed in grind that's within tolerance, their tolerance of what you can get on that profile. So the heat treat can be thin or thicker, and that's why you see some fail and some don't fail and whatnot. Yeah, and that's a difference where it's sometimes getting custom grinded cams is, are you still outsourcing? Yeah, custom stuff. So you're not to the point where you're actually heat treating.

Because we're too busy. Well, no one, I mean, understand that no one, we compete against heat treats.

Right.

You know, I mean, they can take an 8620 core and rough it and send it out and get it heat treated and then bring it in to final grind it, which we do have plans to do.

Yeah.

Yeah. But yeah, our cam cores are near net shape. So they're within 20,000s of final grind size, where everyone we compete against, they have generic cam cores that generally have at least 60,000s extra material. But what they do is they heat treat deeper than we do because they have so much extra material.

Yeah.

And that extra heat treat is not good because that can also put stresses in the cam that you don't want. Like we had a guy, ironically, 2019 CR-1 in Puerto Rico, that second bearing journal has an annulus all the way around that bearing journal. And the front of that bearing journal broke off like a wedding ring, right? I mean, physically broke off the camshaft. And that is from our cam core supplier. But that was from somebody who custom grinds cams, not like our self cams. And I went to them and I said, what's the deal with this? And they said, well, that's the problem when you're trying to do this generic UGL unground load cam and you're putting all that extra heat treat depth in, so you can grind 5,000 different cams from one core, where we only grind one cam from one core, right? Gotcha. And I did that because I didn't want heat treat issues because we had so many heat treat issues. But the other interesting thing about that, the unintended consequence was we could then grind a camshaft in one-third of the time of our competitors. Which, you know, when we bought that first million-dollar cam grinder, we were like, well, we can only bring in, you know, 30 or 50 percent of our cam grinding, and we brought almost all of it in-house quickly. And then we bought a second cam grinder. So we have plenty of capacity at this point. So yeah, there's a few things that we do different for sure. And everybody has to walk their own path. And in our inventory does end up higher because we have so many different custom cam cores for our cams. But you're spending the last time grinding it on a million-dollar cam grinder, you know, a third of the time, you know, so who's right and who's wrong.

Right.

Right. And I think the way we do it is just the right way to do it, you know. But it's also expensive inventory.

Yeah.

Millions of dollars.

You're buying a lot more cores to keep the cost down. You have to put a lot more on the shelf just to do it that way. Right.

Yeah.

That's why you put so much time and effort into designing the cams, because like, man, I don't want to put a thousand cams on the shelf. I'd be wrong about this.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Well, so being an engine nerd, you've obviously you've landed in this LS world. Is there another one from another automaker that you respect or that is whether it be a Hemi or a Coyote or even a 2JZ or?

You know, it's funny as a as a as a much younger man. I was I was very, very, very biased. Sure. And and, you know, I hated all the other brands. And but then once I bought a flow bench in 93 and started porting heads like a Trickflow Highport Ford head. Yeah. First Ford head I ever floated on my flow bench. Very impressive solar head. Right. And then as you start doing all of these different things, I think you gain respect for all of them. You understand the pros and cons or, you know, any idiosyncrasies that may come. I am a push rod V8 guy. You know, I mean, I certainly appreciate the technology of the four valve stuff. You know, my CX-06 is of course four valve. And it's amazing to have a factory engine that rests 8600. But being just old school push rod guy, you know, so the Ford Godzilla, the Hemi, the Hemi is very impressive. You know, talking about efficiency, horsepower, but cubic inch. The Hemi engine makes more horsepower than an LS. Cubic inch for cubic inch, right? Yeah. And it's because of the cylinder head.

You know, that's been my thing. I've been trying to stay ahead because I was like, man, eventually these Hemi guys are going to figure it out. And they're going to be tough because right now, I mean, I like kicking them around the track and talk trash to them. But, you know, because they got their three eight whipples, the three liter whipple is like, don't let me come up here with my little 1900 to kick you out. You know, but in reality, it's like these you're you're you're picking on a better setup. So you're like, eventually they're going to figure it out or get a lighter chassis. And it's going to be like, yeah, I'm not going to be.

I think that's the problem is the package around the rest of the motor, the rest of the car.

When you were back in the 80s, it was like, oh, man, a 426 Hemi. You know, it was you know, that was the car to get and put a blower on because that's what the racers use. Look at all the 426 Hemi's are all in the blown cars and stuff. And I was like, man, I think this is just a rinse and repeat of, you know, you know, time. You know, we got the Hemi coming back around and it's the new era of the Hemi.

So, yeah, did GM ever mess around with hemispherical heads? Because I know Ford had the 429, which is like a semi Hemi.

But yeah, pretty sure back in the late 60s. OK, yeah, everybody had a after they did it.

They were like, hey, we need to figure this out.

Everybody had to have it. Yeah. And then and then NASCAR outlawed it. And then, you know, it all went by the wayside. OK, but so like the Hemi, from a just power production standpoint, a Hemi head is going to make more power than a wedge head, period. Right. But then the geometry of the Valtrain is not quite as kind. It's like an LSLT. And then you look at the Godzilla, the Godzilla, unfortunately, for whatever reason, the cylinder head didn't come out as well as some of the Chevy LSLT stuff did. But what does it have on its side? Cubic inch displacement, right? I mean, why does bore center of any? I think it's one of the biggest small block ever made, and I'm going to continue to call it a small block. I know there's people who are trying to make it a big block in some of these class rules and stuff. But I think it's super cool that Ford has a push rod engine that's so freaking big.

Yeah. You can make a monster with that thing. How big can you go with that thing?

I mean, you know you can go 500, it's easy. Easy, right? And so.

So then after that, once you start making 500, keep again, someone's like, I got to make a big cylinder after this thing.

You know what I mean?

Actually, someone will come out, maybe a cylinder of that thing. Yeah.

So we make camshafts for all those, of course. And, you know, so those, those are the ones that I, of course, have the most respect for. I have plenty of respect for what the coyote guys have done. I mean, it's not rocket going 390. So it's stock blocking. And, and I guess I don't know about crank, but, but certainly stock blocking heads.

Yeah.

I mean, holy moly. Right.

Almost 10 grand.

Yeah. There's nothing negative you can say about that. I mean, yeah. I mean, the guys whose villains are all hurt. I understand why they're saying stuff negative, but you've got to give what they've done. Total respect. Absolutely. And I think that's really the thing about this industry in general, mutual respect, right? For whoever it may be. And, and that's also, I think another thing that's, that's lacking. I think a lot of people don't give other people in this industry the mutual respect they deserve, right? Because everyone out there who you've, who you've heard of, there's a good chance that they've achieved something.

Yeah.

Right. And so it's just like, well, give them kudos for that thing. You know, they may be the fastest half mile guy. They may be the fastest this or that.

Everybody's got their micro record.

Yeah. And hey, you know what? I say good for them.

Right.

Yeah.

Whatever gets you in and at the track and in the sport anyway, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Because that's, you know, a lot of times you see stuff going on and everybody wants to see the industry keep growing and continuing, man. It's the participation. So a lot of times you go to these things like, you know, we know that LS Fest is huge. If anybody's ever been to LS Fest, that's a mad house. It's one of the biggest events that you'll probably go to. World Cup is a big event. Texas 2K, FL2K. Now you got Bragg & Rice. There's a lot of these big venue events. But outside of those big events, you start seeing people try to do the same thing somewhere else, at like a quarter mile, and you get like three cars that will show up and be like, where are all these guys at? You know, they kind of pick and get in. A lot of guys pick and choose where they go and where they race at. And sometimes it hurts, hurts growing things because, you know, you don't, who wants to build a faster car? It's like, they lose interest, you know what I mean? Trying to get people's interest in it. So we're, let's go to the track, let's go race, you know. But I'm not as fast as so and so. I was like, man, you know what? You look at so one dimensional, you know how many times I've been to the track and I haven't been the fastest guy and you still go to the finals because the fastest guy is the first one that probably going to break, you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. I remember going to Texas 2K and Z was there with his charger and he was fast. You know, I mean, I knew he was faster, but he I think he broke a transmit. He broke a drum and a transmission one time and a driveshaft one another time and then he had a reelector wheel come off and it's just, it's attrition of making power, you know, and trying to push the envelope.

So, did you want to pop the usual three?

Yeah. All right. So at the end of every episode, we like to ask our guests or guests to pick three cars. I need a track car, a daily driver and a show car. You have an limited budget, you can swap whatever you want. What are your three choices?

You know, I'm a simple person. So it's a daily, a track car, any type of track and a show car.

Yep.

Man. For a track car, I currently want a faster, lighter road race car.

Okay.

And they have that Lamborghini spec class and they sell those cars used for like 150 grand. I don't know if it's a Super Trofeo.

Yeah.

Yep.

Okay. And you know, this car's like 25, 2600 pounds. That sounds like a phenomenal road race car. So that'd probably be my track car. And show car, Shelby Cobra. Yeah. Shelby Cobra. Okay. Wanted one of those since I was a kid. And I am definitely going to own one one day. I thought I bought one here just about a month ago. Right place at right time. And a guy priced it to me for 25. Oh, really? Yeah. And I was just like, all right, I'm coming here tomorrow. Pick this thing up. And then he's like, you know, and he called me. He's like, I can't find the title. And so he still hasn't found the title. I'm like, well, apply for a duplicate title. Let's get this thing.

He's talking like an AC Cobra, like the oldest Cobra. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

I just always loved those cars. Yeah. And so that'd be my show car and daily daily driver, probably the ZR1 I've got. OK, I would never drive it because it's way too expensive of a car. But you know what?

I disagree with you on that, because I'd almost pick the same thing you already got that truck.

Oh, yeah. OK. I have to say, I even like that. I'm not a T-Rex. A T-Rex truck. OK, is absolutely, you know, and I told somebody this other day, I would almost rather drive it than any of the Corvettes I've got. Really? I can't even explain it. It's just it is so much.

It's like driving around a hot rod monster truck like everywhere. You hear the blower whining. It shifts good. It drives good. It handles good. It rides nice. It sounds good.

It's like it does everything well.

You know, it looks like a big, mean truck. I'm like, and again, I'm not even a Dodge guy. And I was like, I love this truck, man.

I have one of these, too. As a Dodge guy, that warms my heart to hear.

So yeah, yeah, I would have to say that is a hard daily driver to beat because, you know, it's a truck. So you can put anything in the bid. You can do anything you want. And then that truck, the, you know, the third lane on the interstate, that that right, that right hand one that a lot of people don't use. Yeah. That truck is phenomenal in that lane. When you're on a trip and people are running 70 miles an hour side by side by side, and you need to just pass all those idiots, that truck does that very well.

And there's no hiding it. There's like, you know, you're in my way.

So what are you locking in then?

Oh, man, I think if I had like a show car, I think I'd go with like a 64 Riviera with the hideaway lights, all moderned out. I've always loved those cars. You know, I've seen a couple of them that were like in show trim where someone's doing a modern upgrade to it. And it just with a nice candy color. I don't care if it's a blue or red, just a beautiful car. Race car, man, that's a daily. I would have to go with that T-Rex. That thing is awesome. I'd have one of those too, I think. Race car, man, that's a toss up. I've really grown fond of my G8. I love that car. I think it's a cool car. I drive it when I can, even drive around because it's still got the six-speed in it. I just love it. I love my V2, though, but my roots are all in my G8, so it's got like a weird font. It's got like a different fondness to it than what the V does, even though my coupe is, I really love my coupe, so it's a tough toss up.

I might make you choose one, though. Nobody walks away without choosing.

I'm telling you, I'd stay with my G8. That's where my heart's at.

Well, perfect. On that note, any closing remarks for our viewers? Anything you want to touch on?

I'm going to keep going faster with Superchargers.

You're going faster with Superchargers?

I'm going to keep going faster with Superchargers. You just sit around. The best thing is that it's not just me. I don't want to be like, oh, Rick's only fast with his car. I have a bunch of customers' cars. It's like having an army of cars, and I keep at them slowly as I can, keep moving them forward like a game of risk or whatever, moving them. And it's cool because they go to tracks and it represents me. And they're all good people. They're all great customers. I look forward to it, man. I got to look at some grudge people, some heads up. It's cool to have them all come to a track because sometimes I can make a whole race event just so I can get my customers to come there and listen. And they're all fast, so it's cool.

I think my parting words would be, I would like everyone's, fortunately for me, 30 years ago or more, I was sitting in a church and a pastor said, pick one thing and do it better than anyone. And, of course, for me, that was supporting Twisted Wage Fordheads around, you know, 93, 94, 95, whatever that was, which then opened the doors to trick flow and summit racing and then on and on and on. So, I would encourage everyone, pick one thing and do it better than anyone. And the other thing would then be work hard and the last thing would be kind. Yeah. Work hard, be kind.

That's a pretty good recipe.

Yeah. When you go around racing, you run into so many people and, you know, if you have mixed sour blood, you know what I mean? You're in the lanes with a guy, you want to be able to talk and you'll poke him a little bit or something. I mean, yeah, you start getting sour blood. It just ruins the sport. You know, it's so much better when you go to race and high five everybody.

And have a talk traction wall and get away with it. How much does it cost to be kind? How much does it cost? Yeah, it's free. Yeah, it's literally free.

Where can everybody find you guys?

briantooleyracing.com for me. This guy's way more elusive.

I'm more elusive. I tend to be kind of underground. You have to know somebody.

I worked hard to research you, sir. He's like, Rick Crawford. I'm like, what do I know that name? And I watched Justin's podcast with you. And then I'm like, yeah, I got some learning to do. So you're elusive, sir.

I'm elusive. That has been like my key thing. I've been underground. I kind of keep to myself. And I try to let my work speak for me.

What we should have done. You know, it was like classic like FBI interview videos where the person's like blacked out. We should have done that.

Yeah, it's falling down. The deep voice and everything with the like the little like the high disguised my voice.

Yeah, yep.

That's great.

Well, awesome. Well, thank you very much for coming on, guys. This is a blast. Dan, thanks for existing and we'll see you all next time.

Yeah, sounds good. Thanks, guys. Take care.