175. Doug Ring on East Coast Supercharging, How Modding Corvettes Has Changed and Racing

It takes all the sportsmanship out of it. I'd rather lose a good race than to spend my whole day winning against cars that broke at the line. Like, that's no fun, you know what I mean? I mean, of course, I'd rather win that close race, but.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minnoxide podcast. I'm your host, Harris, aka Minnoxide, man of many automotive aspirations, and I'm here with my Ford loving co-host, a bad news for you.

I won't hold it against him.

You forgot to bring that up when we were talking to one of the GM. Yeah, the other guys.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, today we are here with Doug from East Coast Supercharging. And obviously, we're still a PRI. So go ahead, tell us a little bit about yourself, your business. And honestly, we'll just kind of go from there.

OK, so we've been we've been around for about 25 years. Started in automotive several years before that. The very beginning of performance, I became a warehouse distributor for Paxton in 93. I'm aging myself a little bit there, but it is what it is. I got into it because I wanted a supercharger on my truck and a couple of guys that worked for me and good customers wanted them. So we ordered five, which made us a warehouse distributor. And I didn't think much of it other than that. You know, we put it on and that was it. And then we sent in our warranty cards. And a couple of days later, the owner called me up and said, I kind of have a void in the Tri-State area of a shop. Would you mind doing installs for us? Absolutely, I would love to do installs for you. So it was pretty organic how it started. Next thing you know, within a year, I was the Tri-State area rep for Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey. Because apparently if you just call a customer back and answer their questions, this goes really far. Yeah, I guess they had a problem with that with some of the other shops that they were working with. And it just organically grew to straight performance. And then, 99, we decided to only work on C5 Corvettes, which was kind of like friends of my laughed at me. They're like, well, wait a minute, you want to just work on Corvettes? And I went, well, I actually just want to work on C5 Corvettes. And like, so you want to just work on a car that's only been out for two years? I said, yeah, yeah, there's a big market for it. And I think we'll do just fine if we focus on one thing. And within 30 days, the parking lot was full of C5s and never looked back and never been slow a day since. So it was a kind of a bit of a leap of faith. But I also had other if it didn't work out, I would have been fine. I had other contracts and stuff that we were working with. But that was the direction we wanted to go. And it just worked out. So it just kept growing from there. And we stuck with only late model GM. I know a lot of shops like to also do Hellcats and whatever, but we're just so busy with just the GM stuff that I think it's better to be the master of one than the jack of all. Sure. And maybe someone can be the master of all, but I have a hard time keeping up with GM. So I'm gonna just leave it at that. And that's what we've done. And it's always worked for us. And I think our customers appreciate that. They want to focus on just one car, especially Corvette guys. They're kind of a different breed, if you will. You know what I'm talking about. Sure, sure. So, you know, I think they appreciate it. And they know when they drop their car off, we're not going to go joyride it. All our cars are faster, you know. We're not going to, we'll take care of it. Everything is treated, you know, with kid gloves type of thing. And, you know, I just think that they appreciate that aspect. So we'll have guys where we supercharge their car, and then we'll just even do their maintenance from then on because I don't want to drop it off at a dealer. Because I've worked at a dealer for a short stint. I know what happens when you drop a car off that's fast. Every service rider goes, takes a, takes a ride. At least that's how it was at the one place I worked at. It was a Ford place. I only worked there for a couple of months before I realized that I can't work for someone else. But I remember some guy bringing in a Cobra, an O2 Cobra at the time. And I'm sorry, earlier than that. Anyway, long story short, everybody, everyone took that car out. And beat the hell out of it. And I just went, wow, that is just so wrong. So wrong to do that. This poor guy is like, that was his baby and everyone's out there just abusing it and I went, man, that will never happen in my shop. You know, and now I have to put them through their paces to tune them. But there's a difference between abusing and tuning. Tuning is clinical. You know, people ask me, when the C8 first came out, how does the launch control work? I said, I don't even know. I own one and I don't even know because I'm not here to do that. You're here to do that. That's your job. My job is to make it able for you to do it. Sure. You know, you go beat on it. You sidestep the clutch. You figure out how to know lift shift. That's your job. My job is to make you able to do it. That's just the difference between us and then some other shops who don't always work on performance work. Not that we're not excited about it, but we look into it all in a very clinical matter. Not so much of a, wow, this is so cool. Let's go beat on it. Let's, you know, blah, blah, blah. Let's see what it's like at 150. That's all the customer's job. So I think that's a difference, whether it's us or any of the other larger performance shops that make it difference is it's more clinical than, you know, goofing around, right? You know, this is serious business. It's a lot of money. It's, you know, the people love this stuff. Even if we scratch the car and repaint it, the orange peel is not the same. It's not good enough, you know? So you have to go into it. And I'll have other guys, friends of mine, who are in general automotive. And they're like, well, these cars, they're such a pain in the a**. They're not a pain in the a**. They love their car. And if you can value that, then you need to work with that. You know, if you put an exhaust on, those tips better be 100% level. Because if I'm driving behind that car and I see it, I go, horrible job. So we cater to that like anal personality because, well, I guess we have that anal personality, you know, and we want it just so. And fortunately, the crew of guys that I have right now, I mean, all these years I've been doing, it's the best crew of guys I've ever had. I've always had great guys at work for me, but there was always a couple where if they said they were leaving the next day, I go, okay, we'll replace you. But the crew that I have now, everyone is absolutely essential and share the same values and looks on the cars. And I don't have to tell them to wrap the car. I don't have to tell them to not get in if you're dirty, to not put a seat cover on or any of that. So I don't have to say any of that. If anything, I'm the one who's the worst defender because I'm not in the bays anymore, so I'm clean. So sometimes I'll get in it without putting a seat cover and they'll yell at me. And I love that. I love that because it keeps me in check, too, you know? Am I going to get it dirty? No, but it just lets me know that they always think of it and that makes the difference.

That's a good position to be in. So how do you get there from, again, starting C5s in late 90s, early 2000s? How does it grow from there?

So we were just doing installs, which is why we were East Coast Supercharging, right? And we were doing installs originally in the 90s on Impala SS's Mustangs were the big ones, right? And then when ATI came out with the C5 kit, that's when we got into supercharging the C5 stuff. You know, it's kind of funny now if you have, say, a C5 and it doesn't make 500 to the tire with adding a supercharger, you start looking what went wrong. Well, we had the first car on Corvette Forum that broke 500 of its variable horsepower, and it was 25 pages of BS, no way, can't be done, you know, and it's just funny how now if you don't get there, people are like, what's wrong? What did they do wrong? You know, so it's funny how the tide turns, but it was pages of no way, can't be done. But since the intercoolers were so poor back then, there's little twin things, and they didn't, the NA cars with lesser horsepower would would equal or beat at the track because your IITs would get so hot, it would start pulling timing. So like your horsepower on the dyno didn't really equate to the horsepower on the track yet. So it took a little bit of learning and figuring this stuff out and seeing what was going on, learning about fuels. I'm originally an aircraft mechanic, so I've had a lot of training on fuels and stuff. So at least-

That's two episodes in a row, by the way. Oh yeah, that's funny. Are you familiar with Rick Crawford?

Yeah.

I mean, he's also an aircraft guy, from my understanding. That's okay.

Just two episodes in a row started fun.

I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah, I always figured, well, I was a kid in the neighborhood that fixed my neighbor's brakes, who rebuilt the lawnmower, never bought a dirt bike that was assembled. I would buy it, beat up, put a piston in it, then sell that for a little bit, then buy the next better one, beat up. So I had that background. I always thought, well, if I'm going to fix stuff, let me go to what in my mind was the pinnacle of fixing stuff. Sure. But I didn't enjoy it at all. Sure. It was very boring. If you're going to do an oil change on a Cessna 152 that you've done 10,000 times, you have to have the book open to the page with the torque specs. And if an FAA guy walks by and you don't, you're actually, I guess, the boss would get in trouble. So it was very monotonous. Sure. And I mean, it was cool being able to taxi planes around, and I flew all the time. That was fun part of it, but the actual job part of it, it didn't thrill me. It wasn't very exciting. It was so militant and buy the book. I like to just look at it something and go, man, let's change this. What would this intake do? And you can't do any of that in aviations. And also the pay, honestly, wasn't very good. So when I left there, that's when I went to work for Ford for a couple of months. My cousin worked there, and that's when I quickly realized I can't work for someone. The boss was just so degrading towards everyone. I was like, nah, I can't do this. So that's when I opened up my auto repair and got involved with Paxton. But then the C5 days, we ended up learning and experimenting because we ran the Corvette Challenge, which was English Town's largest race series for a long time. Any given weekend, there'd be 100, 125 cars. So it was a pretty good turnout all the time. It was a really good race. But we pushed each other. There was us, CarTech, Vectdoctors in the Northeast, and we just went at it. It was in the very beginning, we were the only ones with nine second cars at that time. What the amount of parts and effort we put into that, we would be like low eights now. But at that time, we were learning stuff. We really didn't know anywhere near what we do now. But what we take for granted now was all, this was the building blocks of it. So we were obviously the supercharged guys. CarTech was big into NA, Vectdoctors was big into nitrous. So it was great to learn how everyone was doing. We got to see. I don't want to say we compared notes because at the time we all hated each other, but we really didn't. But it looked like it. And it's funny because now we're all friends and I talk to everyone. And we've been that way forever. But I guess in the beginning, we're the bullies of the schoolyards. But it was good racing and it was a fun time. And when you got to see what everyone was doing and who was faster, and this one would excel a little bit, and then this one would get hit a little bit. It was fun. It was fun racing and my biggest opponent at the time was one of the car tech guys who years ago was Sylvester Stallone's bodyguard. So my arch nemesis in drag racing was Rambo's bodyguard.

Okay.

So we would argue in the pits. Meanwhile, he could just crush me like a bug if he wanted to. But we had great racing and there was other guys who had just fantastic racing, very hardcore, up all night till 3 a.m. to get ready for the race. For what? You know, whatever. But it was fun and we learned a lot. It was a good way to base it. And that's how we eventually just started manufacturing because we learned all the downfalls of what was out there. And this piece broke. Okay, we replaced that. That piece broke, replaced this. And then by the time we were all done, and we just said, well, you know what? At this point, let's just manufacture our own. And since I was with Paxton for so long, I just called them up and said, you know, we'd like to buy head units and this is what we're doing. And they were more than welcome to have us back on track. And I think it was a good move for both of them because I couldn't even tell you how many millions of dollars with the business we've done since then.

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So that was a win-win for everyone and everything just got easier on us. You know, as far as belt tracking and wear, and we just slowly figured every little thing out little by little in the organic way, by going to the track and breaking it and just keep breaking it. And then come back and break it again. But at least then when a distributor or someone along those lines were coming to us and said, I want to run 950 or I want to run 10.0 index or I want one. I can tell you exactly what to do. Here's the recipe. And I think that was very helpful for a lot of the up and comer shops. We were an up and comer at that time also. But I mean, as far as like new guys coming into it, we could help give them a big leg up. And most of our competitors were not doing that. They would rely on the customer to go to the track and break stuff and figure it out. And of course, we had people who pushed it as well. But I think at the time, especially, we were the lead pushers of let's go fast, fast, fast. And I got fortunate enough to win True Street one time at Alice X Shudow. So like we were that upper field of fast street cars, not real race cars, whole different level. But as far as something that still has a radio and air conditioning and whatnot, we were pushing the limits the best we can. And I think it was helpful for the shops that we sold to. To just say, no, no, no, that fuel pump didn't work. Or, I'm just using an example, but whatever it was. That we lost power with that intake, we gained with this. And then they would give our feedback, you know, us feedback when they tried something new. Hey, how did this work? How did that work? And it was just a very organic and fun way to figure things out and get product to the market that we knew worked. And if it wasn't working for you, let me help you figure it out. Because we have it down pat with this system. Why isn't it working for you? And then we can also help them, you know, get up to speed or at least where we were. And then when someone would surpass us, awesome. You know, that's great. It's what we want. So so it was just a fun way. And I think that was the best being involved in that much racing where we were at the track every week, multiple times. Because usually it just really had us figure things out, figure out even as it may sound simple, but where an idler has to be compared to where a groove pulley has to be, where, you know, like those, it sounds like, like, well, you just put it where they need to be. It's not exactly true.

Well, on a C5, there's not like, if I remember correctly, there's not like a ton of room. And that's a weird kind of geometry on a GM. Like that's why I see so many Corvettes running without hoods, right? Because as soon as you start modifying anything under there, there's no space for anything. The hood just comes off. So was there a lot of challenges in trying to figure out? Because now you're talking centrifugal superchargers too, so there's extra piping, you've got to bolt stuff to the front of the engine. Was there a lot of problems there?

So not hood wise. We've always been able to keep it under the hood. Obviously, once you go to a tall high rise intake, then that blows that out of the water. But that stuff really didn't come around to like 2010ish. You know, you could still get the current high rise would be what we would call a low rise today. So you could still keep that or maybe like an ACR hood or something, but a normal hood would hold most of the intakes until Holley came out. Then you had to have like a pin on, was it VCM or something? I forget the name of the company, but where you have the big cowl in the front to hold it. Or most people just cut the hood and left it. But as far as our supercharging stuff, we never really had a problem with getting that stuff to fit. Where we did have a problem was figuring out several renditions in the beginning to figure out that where the tensioner needs to be, that you can't have a tensioner go to your, from tensioner head unit pulley, it's gotta be tensioner idler head unit pulley, so you stop the slack from the belt before it goes to the head unit pulley. Little things that you just pick up after years of failures, and then you figure it out and you keep going, and that's life. That's how you keep growing. In between, we would have times, years where we were going fast and we were winning races, but we would bring belts with us to an event. And now if we go to an event, I don't even bring a belt. And if something happened that we threw a belt, well, we're gonna put the car in the trailer because it's gonna be a seized idler seat, like something that's not track fixable or not to where I'm willing to fix it at the track anymore. So it's not even like a really a thought anymore. We just drive it. I mean, my daily driver's been supercharged for 100,000 miles. If I'm taking the kids to Vermont a five hour trip, I don't open the hood and check anything. I just get in it, pile in the suitcases and go, like any other vehicle. And that's something that wouldn't have happened 25 years ago. You had to be a little receptive to little hiccups and problems and stuff. And over the years of having those hiccups and those problems, we've got to figure it out and see where our mistakes were. And this, hey, this car really works. And then when we went to, you know, like 5th Gen Camaro, OK, we're going to take those same ideas that we know works, even though it's completely 180. But we know how we need to have the belt track and what the how the eyelers need to be placed, you know, to keep it together and not have an issue and how to make it easier to adjust a belt. Little things, you know, when we first had it, there was very, like, the belt had to be damn near the exact size. And you didn't have, now we have adjustable eyelers and this, so you have this big swing on what one belt can do. And that's just all time and years of doing it and manufacturing them to learn what finally worked. You know, and then we just kept going on, so.

And then it started to transcend generations at that point as well, then?

Yeah, so C5 and C6 are very close to each other.

Okay.

Little differences on the brackets and stuff, but they're pretty close to each other. The C7 is completely different, but you open the hood of a C7, there's this big area. They might as well place a sticker that says, place supercharger here. Or, you know, turbo or if that's whatever. But they made it very easy for us. It's the easiest install. It was the fastest that we were able to come to market with a kit. So C5, C6, C7, the fifth gen Camaro, it was very difficult. That was very difficult to figure out. It's our most elaborate kit, the most amount of brackets. It's the most money. We could fit a huge intercooler upright, which is nice. But that one was tough to figure out. And the sixth gen Camaro was tough to figure out. Very tight space. But by the time the sixth gen came around, we had a fair arm. We had, you know, things that we just simply didn't have when we made the earlier kits. The earlier kits, I would start with cardboard and then I would go to sheet metal. And then I would go to actual metal. By hand. And we didn't have these things that were out now. Whereas now we just come in, scan it, and cat it. We had our C8 turbo kit made before the C8 was available. Because CMO, you could get the drawings.

Oh, that's right, yep.

So we had the drawings and we had the entire kit made before we even saw the car. We had manifolds made the whole night. Now, of course, we made like half a dozen renditions of those manifolds. But we had a start before we even had a car.

Sure.

Which was, that was like aha for us. You know, that changed everything.

Is that a matter of going to the SEMA thing real quick? Is that, did you go to like Diamond Bar just to access their files that they scan?

Just access their files. If you give them a legit reason why you need them, they were very receptive to us. We had already had the other kits out. They knew what we were doing. But I think it's interesting that you have to give them an explanation as to why you want this. Sure. I guess it just keeps things from getting out to copycat guys or whatever. I thought that was pretty interesting that we had to apply for it basically. My shop manager did that part, so I don't know the exact procedure on it, but I know it took a little bit to get. Now that we have the fair arm, you can't get Hellcat drawings. But we have them because we were making a kit for someone a while back, so we had brackets for Hellcat and stuff too. So no forage, sorry. But we never really took it anywhere. We didn't do much with it. They bought a handful of them and it just piddled out and we never did anything with it. But having that capability to scan everything and make stuff on the computer is just night and day. And being that I'm from the generation that didn't have any of that, to work into that, it's really cool. It's really cool. So our head guy that runs that, Alex, he's doing really well with it. Sure.

So you guys are doing a bunch of prototyping and stuff in house then?

Yeah, we have CNC everything in house. And obviously some things are still made outside. Obviously the head units are, silicon hosing, things of that nature. But anything aluminum, intercoolers, anything along those lines is all made in house. Not the cores for the intercoolers, but the intercooler itself and the ducting, all that's made in house. And that allows us to not have to buy so many at a time, because there was that stretch where you basically had to go overseas or you just weren't going to get it.

Right.

So I'm so glad that that tide has kind of shifted now and everything is the same price to make it here as it is going overseas. So I'm very happy about that. I was never happy about buying ducting from China. Now it's ducting. It's aluminum ducting. All right. So it's not like a real intricate piece per se, but I still just didn't care for it. I like everything made in the US. So now that we make everything here, I can do shorter runs. Like some kits sell more than others. So if I know there's a kit that sells 30 a year, I don't want to buy 250 pieces. I want to keep it in a lower number and then I can keep more control of it. But if I see we're down to 10, okay, well, in the next two weeks, we're going to run a run of these brackets or whatever it is. So it's just been able to keep things a little more in check. And also if someone calls and all of a sudden, because we'll get guys from overseas to say, I would like 10 Supercharger kits. It's funny how they're like that. They want to put everything on a boat and just get a whole bunch. Yep. So where you don't get that in the US guys, they want one or two, you know, and they install, then they'll call for another one. But the guys overseas, it's like they put everything in a container and they just want to fill that container. So they just buy in these huge bulk. So if that happens and we have eight pieces and they want ten, well, I can just, we can just go make, you know, a handful of pieces to get the order out quicker. So that's been a big help. Having the things in house is definitely a big help. And that was, that took a little while, you know, it took a while to get all that to happen. That was during, we got their CNC machine probably about five, six years ago. It took us a solid year to have a...

You said it's four axis, five axis?

Four. Four. So we're not quite doing so in our heads. Our stuff is pretty basic. Sure. 90% of our stuff, actually it's set up, I shouldn't say four, we're set up for three axis right now, four axis capable, but we don't really need the fourth axis yet.

Right, yep.

Yep, so, but we purchased it in the hopes that we will.

Right, yep.

You know, so it's all set up for it. But Bracketry, you know, it's flat. Our stuff, you know, probably the more elaborate stuff we do is our direct drive system. We have to machine the cog on the jackshaft. So that, you know, that's all relatively basic stuff though. And it's all pretty much one axis. So it's pretty basic really in the grand scheme of things, but it allowed us to learn it and grow into it. And as we get better and better, parts come out faster and faster, and we can start getting into more elaborate things. So, you know, it just works out that way, and all kind of goes back to the organic beginning of just starting, and let's see what we can do. You know, our machinist who originally did our stuff is ten times the machinist that we are, but we stick to the basic stuff and do what we do, and we still do a ton of business with them also. But we fill our needs and we do what we got to do, and we just try and keep as much in house as possible. Sure.

How many products do you have? You said something about a turbo kit earlier too. Are we just kind of basically intercoolers and piping type stuff?

So the C8, we have a turbo kit for that. A twin-turbo kit, and that was by far the most elaborate kit for us to put together because we had the manifolds cast. So we started with billet stainless and then welding them. But that literally took 40 hours for a set of manifolds. For one set. So obviously we can't scale that. So we were doing in-house installs for that. But now we have the manifolds are coming in cast and they're pretty nice. They're really nice. They're right up on the engine. Spool is instant. Like it's just instant. I've driven the rear mounted stuff. Cool. They're fast. Put anti-lag to it. You're going to take off great. But on the street car, I give it a quarter throttle. I'm already at two pounds of boost. Like it's just instant. So I've never been a huge turbo guy because I don't like that disconnect on the boost. That's why I've always been a centrifugal guy. The root stuff is cool too, but on a Vette, the car is too light in the SN. So you give it that instant boost, it lights the tires up, and then the centrifugal guy blows you away. So that's why we always stuck with the centrifugal. The C8, the roots blowers are pretty good because the engine is right over the back tires. You can hook them pretty well. And the turbo, same deal. You can hook them right away. And they put it down so much better than any previous year. So, the instant boost was the way to go in our minds. And that's the direction that we went with it. So we've got the manifolds that are cast, down pipes are cast, and canal. Oh wow, okay. We use precision turbos, the mirror turbos, and an air to water intercooler. So we haven't pushed it this far yet because the transmissions, but it's about 1500 horsepower capable. Sure. Each turbo is rated for 900 in a perfect world. We don't live in a perfect world, so I'm getting some leeway.

It's like those Facebook posts like, oh, the fuel system is rated for 2700. It's like, okay.

You can't put a number on it exactly like that, but it gives you a ballpark. So I figured if you go off of their ratings, actually the newer ones, I think are 1000 now, but that is in like the ultimate perfect turbo setup, where you have all the room in the world and everything. We don't have all the room in the world. So I'm sure it would take a little bit of its efficiency away, but that's going to fill 99.99% of my customer's needs.

Right, exactly.

And until we have the transmission tuning, we're not pushing them that far. Anyway, even the guys like, we've had a bunch of guys do Forge 427s, like they're all prepped for it, but until we have the trans tuning, they're just sitting on their thumbs.

Dude, that one's going to explode once that's available.

Oh my god, yeah. So I can't wait to go, I want to go see Anderson at the FuelTech booth because I hear he's-

Oh sure, we're having him on tomorrow as well.

Oh, are you? Yeah, yeah. I'll ask him. Yeah, oh, please do. Yeah, I'm going to ask him too. Tell him, yeah, tell him, Doug, from East Coast Supercharging. Waiting, waiting patiently.

Are you-

There's a lot of people. There's a lot of people waiting.

Are you offering like a canned tune then with your kits then too? Are you developing a tune for-

So our Supercharger kits, I offer a free startup tune. But I don't have the- Like we don't send it in RTD because most shops will do their own tuning. The ones that- It's usually the guys who are doing the install themselves. But I always tell them, look, you have to go get this checked because if you're installing a kit on a C5 and your fuel pump's 25 years old, how can I guarantee that that tune is correct? No matter what. I don't do remote tuning because I just don't have that hours in my day. There's no way. But if they want to send the computer in, I'll put a base file in it and they can drive to their tuner, and it's going to be 99 percent. It's my same startup file for thousands of cars now, but that doesn't mean that every car is going to be the same. Exactly. Honestly, on the rarity that I get one where I put the file in and it's dead on, I'm like, wow, holy cow, this actually worked. They're all a little different. Every single car is a little different. You put five of the exact same cars, exact same packages, they're not going to be the same tune 99 percent of the time. Close in the ballpark, but not exact. And little differences between the vehicles, whatever it may be, that's just how it is. The newer cars seem to be much more spot on as far as the same tune, same build. There seem to be a lot better.

Are you doing all the tuning for all the C7s and C8s as well yourself too then?

So the C8s, we work with Brandon from Elite.

Okay.

And we do the data logging. We are involved in the tuning, but he's a little step ahead as far as in the global B world.

Sure.

So anytime I can get help from someone who knows as much, or in this case more than me, I'm going to gladly accept his help.

Elite, that's not the guy out of Atlanta, is it?

Atlanta, correct. So just a little out of it. So he's a super good guy, very knowledgeable, and he has the time to strictly focus on that. The global B is so just like anything, we thought the C5 was complicated, right? Now it's like Lecovision. It just is what it is, but at the time until you master it and had it figured out, it's this whole new thing and the global B is a different level. So as I'm getting my hands dirty with it and getting into it a little bit, he's already a few steps ahead, so he helps with that. But anything C7 and down, I still tune. It's a little tough sometimes doing that position and trying to run a multimillion dollar global company, but I don't mind it. So a lot of times I may even do tuning after hours just so I can run the day to day business and then stay late and do tuning. And the guys who will have me set up on the dyno and everything will be good to go as far as that goes. So I get more cars done. I used to set up on my own cars because I thought it was belittling if I said go set my car up. Yeah. It just seems that way to me. I've never asked an employee to do something that I wouldn't do, even if it's crappy job and they know it. And every once in a while, I'll jump in and go do that crappy job just to let them know that I will actually do it.

Lead by example.

Yeah.

That's not fun. No, it sucks. But if you want to own the company and actually have people respect you, that work for you, you've got to jump in and do the crap job too.

See, I make my kids, I have a two post in my shop and I used to laying down and putting everything in place. So now I've got them trained, at least the older ones. I was like, all right, hey, put the arms under there so I can just hit the button and I don't have to get down there and do it. That's why I bought the lift to begin with.

Exactly. So our latest Dyno can handle, they say 3,500, it can't handle 3,500, but it's big. Oh, yeah. I've tested it in the 2s and it could barely hold it. So yeah, they're a little lofty on their claims, but I don't really go that high very often. We've only had a handful of cars.

Is that a Roller or a Hub Dyno? Hub.

I'll only go Hub. I've had a Hub Dyno since before it was cool. Sure. And I would never have gone back. I had a Dyno pack 15 plus years ago and best Dyno ever. I miss that Dyno, honestly. I really do. I shouldn't have sold it. I should have kept both. But now that was good to about 1,000 horsepower, a little over. And it feels like it's not, but it feels like every third car now. Whereas that was like that one time you needed it. I would go to someone else's Dyno if I had something in the 1200, 1300 range, whatever. But now it's just too often.

It is very often now.

Yeah.

They come in stock 1,000 horsepower now.

It's not a big deal anymore. Whereas it was years ago. So we got this bigger Dyno, but it's more work to put it on and everything else. So what I finally said when this one came in, I said, you know what, 50 years old now, let's get one of the young bucks to take their back out like I did. So I had them set it up and then I realized how foolish I was all the years prior. I get an extra car done per day and I should have been doing that for years. Right. Because while they're taking one off, I'm street tuning the next one. By the time that one's off, if all goes well and it's one of our usual packages, I'm only 20 minutes after them building it off and I'm pulling the next one on. While they're putting that one on, I'm preparing the next one. Just going, and I get an extra car done per day, and I really should have done that a long time ago. I realized that was kind of foolish, but best of intentions, but I should have done that a long time ago.

How many guys you got working for you?

So right now, we are nine of us. So it's not a huge shop. That's not including our outside machinist that helps this and their facility. We were, a couple years back, had a handful of, four or five more guys, and I found that I did not get any more work done, and I just had more headaches and problems in dealing with, you know, because every employee's problems are your problems. So we kind of streamlined it. I kept the best, and that goes back to what I was saying. I have such a good crew now, and there's just no BS. We get the job done, you know, the bays are, you know, by the time you call someone over to go clean the bay afterwards, the guys could do it in 30 seconds, you know, and they know what's garbage and what isn't, and what the customer is going to want, and what can, whereas if you have, you know, someone come in, like to say we have like a C-tech cleanup guy, well, then all of a sudden, you know, you go and you look in the metal dumpster, and there's like something really expensive sitting there, and you're like, oh my God, I'm so glad I saw this, you know, and you just don't have that with when the guys themselves are just doing their own, you know, we have, we'll have someone come in and do like a major cleanup and stuff, but we just kind of take care of our own, and we get done a lot quicker, a lot faster. So it's just been our better way. We streamlined and got more efficient. And instead of me wasting high dollar guy's time to teach a low dollar guy, we just all take care of ourselves and get it done. So for the for the amount of business we do, we're a relatively small crew, but we're very clean, very efficient.

So you're doing obviously a lot of builds, probably a good bit of maintenance work in there as well. How many builds are you kicking out a year if you had to guess?

I never thought to put a number on it. A lot. A lot. That's a good question.

Well, let's just put it so you're familiar with Vengeance, then probably.

Oh, yeah. We're on par with Ron.

Yeah. So he said that 800 cars a year, I think is what he said he does.

Yeah.

Something along those lines.

I mean, there's never a time that there's not 30 cars at our shop at any given time, and they're just constantly rolling over day after day. More dropped off more. So yeah, that's a fair assessment. Yeah. Sure. Ron's got a nice shop. We're pretty close in size and amount of lifts and that sort of thing. So he's pretty lucky. He's got his son started up with him now. That's cool. I have two daughters, so I don't think they're going to be interested in the shop, but you never know.

My 15-year-old is on her way here later today. She's very much into this stuff.

So yeah, my younger, I have a 16-year-old, just turned 16 the other day. She may surprise me. My older one, she's in Florida now. She's going to be a pilot. So she wanted to go do that, and she's wanted to do that since sixth grade. Never veered, never changed course. This is what I want to do. So that's pretty cool. Yeah, that's pretty cool. She's exciting. She's doing well at school. So I must have done something, right?

Yeah.

One thing I was going to ask you earlier, when you were talking about all the casting and stuff, again, you kind of mentioned a lot of stuff being done stateside. Is that also being done stateside?

So currently, that is done in India, and that is just where the major... That's where casting is done. So it is what it is. If it was my choice, I later on found a place actually near here somewhere that does casting. Had I known that, we might have worked with them first, but I didn't see them until like two years later here. Sure. I was like, well, I already had my tooling in India and that was $30,000. It's not something that you can just, we'll just switch.

Sure.

It's not that simple. I would give up a year of selling. Exactly.

Have you explored... I'm blanking on the name. We talked about this with Connor from HPA. It's kind of, it's not like 3D printing, but like a somewhat similar...

It's like a metal 3D printing.

I think it's called STL or something along those lines. So laser sintering, that's what it was.

We 3D print all our parts in plastic, currently. Like when we start a new design, we'll make it out of plastic, put it on the car, know that it's right. We do not get involved with any of the metal end of it, but we do send stuff out to have it done. That's one of those things like, you've got to specialize in that. The machinery is too expensive to just have in the corner for when I want a cool intake made. You've got to have a focus on it. It's like people ask us why we don't do tires. I go, well, because for us to do tires, I need the most high-end tire machine and a road force balancer that's going to be 50 grand, and I may do two sets a month. You need to do two sets an hour to own a machine to be profitable. That makes sense. It's the same type of deal with that type of machinery. You've got to focus on it. If there's any one thing that I've learned is that with how many kits we do and for size of our shop and everything, sometimes we need to rein ourselves in. We're like, oh, let's make this air to water in the core. Just because we can make it all now.

Yes, that's shiny object syndrome.

Yes, and we definitely are victims of it. But then your day-to-day falters. So you've got to either get to the point to where you're big enough where you can just have a crew of guys that just play all day, or focus on what you're doing and try and keep your core customer happy. And that's where we've been more focusing on that and pulling back on just making every new shiny trinket that we want to. Because sometimes just because you can doesn't mean that you should. So that's kind of where we've been with that. Although making the shiny trinket parts is the stuff that we like the most.

The reason I bring it up is because a lot of that is also kind of being able to be more outsourced as well. It was cool. I was doing a bunch of research on it like a month and a half ago. It's just crazy what's becoming more capable. I was going to ask you as well.

Speaking of shiny trinkets that car guys love, are you working with carbon fiber then too at all on some of your stuff?

We do not do any carbon fiber stuff in house. I don't have anything carbon fiber in our kit. I do know some carbon fiber guys and they're awesome. I'm sure if I said, hey, I want this part made and I want 25 of them or whatever, that they would be more than willing to do it. But so far, our intakes and stuff are molded. Injection molded, stuff like that. I haven't done carbon fiber stuff with the kits. And the only reason why is it goes back to, we were offered too many options. And as a manufacturer, when you have too many options, you screw yourself. Oh, all day long, yeah. Because now you're constantly working on this one-off thing, and we had to reign ourselves in and go, okay, again, just because we can doesn't mean we should. Sure. Then if someone calls us up and they want something, I can say, okay, we'll make it for you, but it's going to be six, eight weeks, or it's going to be three months, or we're not going to look into it until the spring. Do you still want it? Yeah, call me when you're ready. But if it's on the website, just because we made it before or whatever, now it's expected to be there in Amazon time, and then now you upset someone. So if you set the goalpost from day one, okay, we'll work on this in between stuff, this and that. But we had to kind of rein in some of our options because we created too many options and we created too many headaches for ourselves and too hard to have all these different skews sitting on the shelf. I would have hundreds of thousands of dollars sitting on the shelf. We're a big company, but we're not to the point where I can have millions of dollars on the shelf and not feel that. So we kind of rain things in a little bit, and I've been kind of focusing on just getting stuff out the door faster and having the products, the core products that we make boxed and ready to go. So that's been a big focus of ours. We've had some lows, highs and lows. Now, the downside to having a few people, we've had times when someone was sick or something along those lines. And when that person is a core ingredient into a particular kit, and now all of a sudden a kit takes four or six weeks to come out, it's an easy way. This is an impulse purchase. You can't make people wait. They want their superchargers. And I understand it. I completely understand it.

Well, sometimes they still get to your place and they sit in the box for another four months. But I want it right away. Exactly.

And I completely understand that. Yeah. You know, because then, say you ordered a supercharger and it took months. And in between that time, you know, your car blew the trans and this and that. And then you start thinking, man, I shouldn't have. Man, I wish I didn't buy that. I needed the money for this or whatever the case may be. And then then there's resentment on on the purchase. And you don't want that. Whereas if it was already in the car, they'd be like, well, OK, let's figure out how to put a trans in or whatever, whatever they need at the time. So that's been a major focus of ours because we've had times where we took too long to get stuff out the door. And a lot of it is because we are such a niche, you know, shop of what we do.

So I was going to ask you as well. So obviously, you have a lot of, you know, let's say 500 to 1000 horsepower range, you know, the bread and butter customers, let's just call them that. Do you have anything along the lines of like a race program as well? Are you doing that stuff too?

So we sponsor four races a year at Island Dragway now. It's the only drag strip left in New Jersey. Yeah. And it's just street car stuff. It's not anything too crazy. Being that the tracks are so far away, the drag racing stuff has dried up a little bit now that English Town and Echo closed.

Yep.

But we sponsor Race Motive, which is the role racing. We actually were...

That's Pocono, right?

Correct. Yeah, usually. Yep. We were actually the first ones to sponsor them to get that started.

Okay, awesome.

So they're good guys. They run a really good thing. I was never personally into role racing. Sure. You know, I won't, you know, I'll just, you know.

Yeah, you don't have to explain it to me.

As a drag racer, you know, you're like, it's all off the line. Like everything else, you know.

What do you mean you get going?

Yeah. What do you mean?

The race has already started?

I don't have to be exactly... Wait, what? But so I kind of went into it with a little reservation because I thought it wasn't real racing, per se. But I've actually grown to really like it for a multitude of reasons. The cars really don't break. You bring 100 cars to the drag strip, you're going to have 5 to 15 with broken axles, broken trans, broken diff, especially with C5 days. You're always breaking something. The roll racing, there could be 150 cars there, maybe one guy blew a clutch. Sure. Because it's literally like you're pulling on to a highway and, oh, look, there's a Lambo next to me. Let's go. It's literally just like that. So it's not very hard on the cars. Obviously, you're running them out, but it's not as hard as drag racing. You don't have that hard hit off the line. That just breaks stuff. So we've got some guys that really love that. And there are upper horsepower guys, 16 to 2,000 horsepower area. One's coming out next season. It's been out and it's gone. It's gone almost 180, which is pretty quick for that event. One of the quicker vets there. But we added like another 600 horsepower to it this season and a sequential.

What did you go with for a sequential?

Just so no shifting and the owner, that's what the owner wanted.

Sure. No, because I'm wearing a 6XD shirt. So I was just curious like which sequential you guys went with.

So a brand of it? Yeah, that's a good question. We got it from Rick over Tick Performance.

Okay, sure.

But I don't know exactly which brand it was. The owner bought it himself, so my guys installed it. But I raced it, so I love it. I love it. It is just so. So let's keep your foot matted and go is awesome. So I mean, I used to flat foot that car when it was just a manual also, it shifted like butter. But just that instant is just amazing. It's cool. Yeah, it's very cool. So he's got a power glide for it too. He wants to put that in and drag race it. He's like, I want to break 200 to Pocono and I want to run sevens. And then I want to take my wife out to dinner. And I went, you suck.

You're killing me.

But he also has a complete zero one transport that if he wants to put back to the street car. And I mean, we can change it. I might as well put a zipper on it. We can change it so fast. So he doesn't care. And so he'll just say, yeah, well, I tell end of the winter, let's put the power glide in. All right, let's put this in. And so far, the sequential stayed in it the longest. I think it's going to stay in it for a while because he really likes that. But he's got a complete power glide nine inch setup that's just sitting on a pallet, just waiting. He's like, well, maybe we'll go do imports for Stomestic or something. Like if we're going to drive to a race, let's go to a race. And there's something good. So yeah, so we'll see. We haven't gotten that far yet. But once we get all the bugs worked out of the car and hopefully get to that 200 mark at Pocono, then well, at least 190 is the minimum. But I think it's going to do a little more than that. OK, we'll see. And I think when I last time I took it out, he wasn't there. So I just wanted to do one run in it, kind of like a dyno pull. So I hit fourth gear and it lifted me up out of the seat. And there's any car video. You see, I lift up out of the seat and I instantly grab. I was like, holy s***. It's like 40 pounds of boost on a 427. And it took off, man. I was like, holy cow, man. I was like, if I have this in the other three gears. Oh, man. Oh, Lordy, it's going to be fast. So we're looking to get that out. He's ready. We're just waiting for the next event. So hopefully we get that out and get a full pass on it. And he's running the Hollitec in that. So the new Nexus.

The R5, probably.

Yeah. So traction control, everything. The CAN bus system is all integrated. So we were able to remove so much stuff from the car as far as secondary ABS sensors and this and that.

So we've got C7?

C6.

C6.

Yeah. Sure. It's the most, well, it's black, but it's just a base C6. Caravaggio interior, you would never think it makes the power. And that's what he wanted. He wanted to be very low key. So it's not super flashy. Even his street rims, our stock rims widen.

I love when guys do that. It's the coolest thing.

Yeah. So you look at it, you can see, all right, it's a nice clean vent. It's mint, but very few people have the idea that it's making that kind of power. Sure. It's a fun car.

So did you guys do that entire build or was that just like? Yeah.

That actually started supercharged on the stock motor and just worked its way up.

Jeez, that's intense. So how did you guys decide on a Haltech then?

I've just known Eric and the guys there for years. That was the one who I started with. I also know Anderson, but I didn't know him till a couple of years later.

Sure.

They've just had such unbelievable customer service with us.

That's what I've always heard.

Amazing. You can literally call their customer service 24-7, and you'll get someone because they have different places around the world.

There's one in Kentucky, I think.

Kentucky is USA, and then I believe it's the UK and Australia where they started. So you have someone around the globe answering that phone.

That's awesome.

I'm sure not on a holiday or something, but you can be working on your car at three in the morning here, and you will get tech support, and they'll log in and just help you out. They're amazing.

They really are. Who's doing the tuning on that? Is that you still? Yeah. Okay. So you're familiar with the Haltech ecosystem. Is that your choice of stand alone then across the board at the moment?

I like the FuelTech stuff also. I have basically no C time with the MoTech, even though I hear how great they are. I've never had anything that I couldn't have the Haltech or FuelTech do.

Right.

So I know the whole industry will say, Haltech or NoTech, I've heard that. But I've never had a time where I went, boy, I wish it could do this. And when I did, I'd call them up and they'll go, let me work on that. And then they'll give me another operating system. And if I can think of it electronically, they make it happen. So I haven't seen the need for my level yet.

Correct. GM and JZ guys, Haltech just unveiled some new products for you guys last month and pre-order starts soon. Whether you want an ECU and harness package for your JZ or an expansion module for your 6L80 or 90, you can go to ToonByShawn, shawn.com to get going on your pre-order. And of course, you can always use code Minnoxide for 5% off when it's game time. Let's get back to the show. They're all b***** too, right? Like how far it's all progressed. Like if you talk to anybody, any tuner that's been around for, let's say, 20 years, they can all kind of appreciate all of them.

Yeah, typically, you want to go with whatever your tuner is good with working with.

Yeah, so that was just one of those things. When they first came out, one of our other heavy Pocono hitters, he's right around just under 180s also. We started him with the Piggyback Haltech and just kept adding on from there. And once our drag guys started going quicker, we started putting up the height sensors on the nose and just adding little things here and there. It always amazed me, the difference between just a few degrees of timing on the launch is the difference between the rear bumper being scraped off or a bullet, just a couple of degrees. And it's amazing how little it takes and having the right sensors that will just take that timing out without you having to do anything. And it just makes the driver look like, you know, like a rock star. Yeah. And they are. But, you know, it's it's it's assisted.

Right. Yeah. Well, it's like, what do you draw the line on? Assisted anyways, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I would say for me, drawing the line is anything GPS.

OK.

Tracking, you know, to where if you're running 10 index and you've got and you've got computer assisted to get you there in 10. That's crossing the line.

In my opinion.

But, you know, some of these guys are just so spot on that it makes me wonder. But yeah, that that that was the only thing where I would say because like like, you know, the wheelie sensors and shock sensors and things of that nature. Yes, it helps tune and do all that, but it doesn't necessarily. Age you in in reaching your specific ET or, you know, whatever you're trying to do. So that's that's the only part where I will like, well, you know, people are doing it. They're certainly capable of doing it. So why wouldn't you do it? So as long as you can cut a light. And I've even been talking to guys and say, well, they there are sensors that can see the tree and you don't even you don't even do that. Now, that's that. Why are you even there?

Right.

What do you think? Like, that's that racing. The whole point of it is to cut your light and, you know, in my opinion. But I mean, I haven't seen anyone's cars or do it, but I just know enough people that know how to make that happen that someone's doing it.

It's kind of the against against the spirit of the sport.

Exactly. Exactly. It takes all the sportsmanship out of it. I'd rather lose a good race than to spend my whole day winning against cars that broke at the line. Like, that's no fun. You know what I mean? I mean, of course, I'd rather win that close race. But I don't mind. Like, when you go through those through the traps and excuse me, you have to look to see what light went on. That's a good race. Yeah, that's a good race.

Do you have a personal car that you raced into? Or you guys got like a shop car? Or what do you have?

So I'm usually I'm usually driving customers' cars, but I do have a road race car. That's like my personal thing where I don't tell anyone I'm going road racing. I just take the day off and go have fun. So that's that's my fun car. I did have drag cars. The drag stuff has like dried up so much around us. Like all the all the trans brake stuff, all the switching manuals, the autos, all gone. Now everyone wants to go back.

Well, what's your road course car?

It's a C6 with a LS7 drivetrain, Cam'ed LS7 drivetrain, full cage, aero. OK. You know, pretty low key car. But that's again, like how I want to put up, you know, brakes. It's it's a complete race car type. Sure. And I just get to go and have fun and not worry about other customers there. Or that's why I try and sneak in under the radar. And, you know, a friend of mine runs days at New Jersey Motorsport Park. So I always go go to his events.

Sure.

Mo HPD and those are those are my my fun days.

Sure.

Those are my let's just go racing and like like a customer would.

How do you feel about that LS7? Because I feel it's kind of hit and miss across the GM stuff.

It's it's a great motor. But you got to do the heads. You got to replace the heads and keep up on it. Even after you replace the heads, you still have to keep up on watching them, making sure that the guides aren't wearing out because the geometry is technically wrong. Okay, so but for the motor itself is fantastic. So it's a great road race motor. It's not a good boost motor. Yeah, it's not something you want to boost. We've twisted cranks at 750, which is not a whole lot. Yeah. Now, granted, these are guys that are using them. But yeah, and then once you twist a crank, you're like, all right, there's no fixing that. The block is not strong, but it's not made for that. It was made for a lightweight road race NA motor. Sure. So keep it to where it's supposed to be, and it's a great build. So let's just stick with that, and there are guys that are faster, but like I said, I'm just there to have fun. So I don't mind that anymore. Years ago, had to be the fastest, have to be the fastest, but after a while, you've been the fastest enough and lost enough that you just go, you know, I'm just here to have fun now, and that's that. But when I'm with a customer and they want to be the fastest, then I'm going to do everything I can to help them be there, at least be a contender.

Sure, yep.

So yeah, I kind of focus more on the customer's enjoyment at this point than my own, but I also get to race all the cars too. So is it all for the customer?

As in like you'll pilot them at events sometimes, or?

What's that I'm saying?

Like you'll actually, you'll jockey or pilot them at events as well? Yeah, yeah. That's pretty cool. Yeah, I know a few shops that operate that way as well.

Yeah, typically I'll go out and just, I'll know whether the car, I basically set it up to be point and shoot, so they can go in and be a hero, even though they don't have anywhere near the C time that I do. Sure, yep. So at least if something's gonna happen, I know the feel. I know, I'm more comfortable with it. My nerves aren't on edge, whereas you get a guy who's gonna jump into a car and go 200, hasn't done it that many times, they're on edge. And they can make mistakes that someone who's more experienced just would feel, would know. So I try and set them up to where they're not gonna fail, or for the most part. So that was one of those eye-openers where like, you know what, maybe I can't just kick them into the deep end and say swim. So it's not doing them any favors to do that. So but that's like the fun part. I like that. I also get to know what's going on. If they have a complaint or a gripe of some sort, then I can go take it out and see what it is, see what it feels like, or sometimes explain to them, that's how this performance part feels like. You know, the big thing when we went to 275 Pros, when they came out, the one guy was like, oh, the car is so bouncy. When I let off, it scares it, it doesn't feel right. I went, just hold the wheel loose and just go with it. Cause that's how the tire is. This is the nature of the beast. But if I didn't drive the cars, I wouldn't have understood what he was talking about. Right. So it's just one of those things where it helps me diagnose their concerns and their issues.

So where's everything kind of heading for you then? Are things going to be more and more C8-oriented then, going years and years going forward?

Yeah. Yeah. You know, we have, within reason, there's always some new product, but within reason, we have all our previous packages set. Sure. You know, whether it be ZR1 or whatever, we have our thousand plus horsepower packages all done on all those vehicles. So the focus is always going to be on the newest car, even though the shop may be full of C6, C7s, you know, or at least 60 percent still. You know, we got a couple of C5s. They're starting to dry off a little bit. But the C8 is always where we have to put our time into and figure out and, you know, test and see and push the boundaries because, especially now with the transmissions, the horsepower made is not equating to the ET ran.

Yeah.

So just like in the C5 days, when we first came out and we were just dipping into the nines, we would just dip into a nines with a D1X and a 250 Fogger shot. We'd run like 850s now with that.

Right.

You know what I mean? So, but we were learning and we were figuring out, and that's where we're at with the C8, is we're learning, we're figuring out. It's more complicated for sure. We didn't think so, like I said, back in the time, we thought, well, man, this is so complicated. Now it's not so complicated, but, and the C8 will get that way. Things will get figured out. The transmission will eventually get figured out. Then all of a sudden you're going to see this huge spike in fast C8s because it's all about the transmission.

What does R&D look like and do you have anything exciting coming down the pipe or anything you guys are working on?

Yeah, we've got, right now we're in the middle of two 427 turbo builds. Those are both going to be capable of 12 plus 100 horsepower, but all of them, just like the previous ones that we've done, they're dialed back. Good thing about a turbo, they're dialed back and we just push them as far as the transmission can hold. The E-Race seemed to be holding better. I guess just the programming in it. Again, we don't have the option to even look and see, but once that finally gets around, I mean, if you think about it, it took almost five years for the engine tuning to come out. Before you're like, who, that's insane that it took that long, but it is what it is and I'm sure HP is doing everything they can, they want it out too. I'm sure there's many hurdles to it that I just don't know exactly what they are, but being that there's so many smart people.

Coyote and S650 and F150 stuff going too.

Yeah, and they're side by sides and they're this and they're that and everything that they're doing. So they've really come such a long way from when we started, it was just two guys and now they've come very far. And without them, what would the industry have?

Right.

You know? So they're very important. They're a big piece to everyone's cog. So they've done a good job. They really turned it around. Now the EFI Live kind of dropped off the face of the planet. They're still around, but no one uses them on the new stuff. So they don't have all the tables that HP does. So a lot of the stuff, even if you wanted to use it, you couldn't fully tune the car the way you want to, kind of like we can't fully tune the trans, right? It's the same type of thing. So for me, I used to only use EFI Live till the C7. Now it's all HP tuners. And going forward, all HP tuners. So I can speak both languages, which is nice. And if a customer sends us a file in either one, I can work off of either one and it's fine. But it's funny how the tide came because I used to not be an HP fan. Right. And then now it's like all we use, you know, because the earlier days EFI Live was a little one step ahead as far as how their tuning and stuff went. Their operating systems were better. Just a couple of extra features that again are so basic now.

Yeah.

But back then it was a big deal to have, you know, a high and low octane table in your custom operating system, whereas HP didn't have that. Or you had to pay to get two bar map sensor stuff in an E38 computer, C6 computer, whereas that all was standard from GM or EFI. And then there was that Blue Cat stuff that you had to like add on if you want to do stuff. And I was like, yeah, I think I'll just stick to this because it's all in one and you don't have to pay extra for it.

Yeah.

So it's just that's what I always used. And now now it's all switched. So I kind of had to like really learn it. You know, all the little I call it button ology, you know what each little, you know, how to get through the different things and stuff that I had all down with EFI Live. But that's life. You got to evolve. Right. You got to keep moving on. And I used HP in the earlier days, but very little. So I have a library of EFI Live that's thousand thousand. I mean, I've done like 40,000 cars. So it's huge. Yeah, it's a huge amount of tunes. My mail order alone. One hundred and forty nine dollars with return shipping, we've done well into the seven figures of mail order tunes. Now, we've discontinued that just because EPA stuff and we're sure. But that alone Corvettes of Carlisle, I would tune 125 cars in a weekend.

Holy s***. Yeah.

I would have we used to have dueling dueling computers while one was pulling is like the dinoing. Yeah. I'm working on that one. While that one's done, I'm working on this one, putting this one in another car, pulling that one. And I would just go from car and the guys would have them lined up with the paperwork of what they had and I would just go car to car to car to car to car. That's awesome. It was exhausting. We would get there six in the morning and there would be people waiting. Then they would close the fairgrounds and we would have to take our cars and point the headlights in because they shut the electricity down and we would be there till like 9.30 at night.

Yeah.

It was exhausting. But we still do the show and I'll have guys that come up and go, you tuned my C5 20 years ago and it runs great. It's over there. Do you see it? I like that. So awesome. You know, it's pretty cool. It's pretty cool.

Would you do that other sort of GM related events like LS Fest or anything like that too or?

LS Fest is a little too far away for us.

Sure.

You know, being in Jersey.

Yeah.

And I love the two Texas 2K. But that's like 3000 miles away or 2500.

You're up there.

Yeah.

You're better off going to Canada.

Yeah. So it's definitely a trip. And since we do enough race events between what we sponsor and race.

Sure. Yep.

We just kind of keep it local. I would like to go and do like a half mile thing just because we get the 1600 feet. But you know, then now, too, the cars have gotten so fast that a half mile, like a standing mile. My God, I take this car that makes 2000 horsepower standing mile. Like if you had it geared right, you're going to be like ridiculous.

Yeah, I think those events are gone at this point.

Yeah, because the cars just got too fast. Yeah. It just got too fast, which is pretty cool if you think about it. It's like NHRA limiting top fuel. It's like we had to slow it all down or shorten it to slow it down. Because at the end of the day, you have a bunch of guys going 250 plus, someone's going to die at one of these events and nobody needs that. They're already going 250ish, knocking on the door of it in less than that.

Are you a quarter or eighth mile fan either way? Don't care, it's all good?

We've always done quarter mile because Northeast is all quarter mile. I never understood it in the earlier days. Why would you not want to run the quarter mile? But now I get it more. I understand more. The race is all about that eighth mile really. So the extra quarter mile just beats your stuff up, or eighth mile just beats your stuff up. But I've never done eighth mile racing in the Northeast ever. We had to go to Silver Spoon or Silver Dollar Raceway. I did eighth mile there. Some of the southern tracks. But that's just not popular by us. Everything was quarter mile. Always was. So now the only track that's left, Island, has a very short shutdown. So if they run faster car events, it'll be eighth mile just because you'll be out in the soybean field behind it. If you ran a fast car there. For us, it's perfect for the street guys. It's not quite the track that we were used to with English Town, world-class track. But it's a great 9.0 and up track. Sure. And that's what most guys are driving their car to. Which is funny too, just that we won't even trailer a car that runs nines anymore. We don't need to do that.

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

It's reliable now, you know, you can do it. Whereas, you know, I always come on a trailer years ago because you're going to break an axle. You know, something's going to break because they just weren't as good as they are now. They're as consistent as they are now. So it's funny how people call the muscle car area in the 60s. It's right now. Yeah. Car area.

We're in a second golden age or resurgence.

There was a weird time there from like the mid 70s to the mid 80s where, you know, there was a sad time.

When your Corvette had 195 horsepower.

Yeah.

You had a sad time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which is crazy considering what was the crazy Corvette engine? It was the L55 or something back then. And it's like that was just like the nastiest thing since ever at that point.

Yeah.

And what did it make?

I think it was like mid 500s or something.

Oh, was it even?

I think it's stupid. I don't know. I might be completely off on it, but I remember it being like a stupid number. Like it was. Yeah.

For back in that time. Yeah. Yeah.

Especially for those days. Yeah.

They had the fuel. You can run a little gas so you could crank up that compression and do everything.

Yeah. Good point.

But man, were they pigs?

Yeah.

So I mean, they were so slow. And it's amazing what we used to think was fast.

Yeah.

There's now an average sedan, like something that wasn't even driven to the track, like a Maxima will outrun it.

It's like you look back 10 years ago, like the stock Hellcats, what are they running? Like high 10s or low 11s or something like that? Stock?

Yeah. Yeah. And a big boat.

Yeah. And a big boat, too, yeah.

Put like everything against it and still did it.

Yeah. One of these days us Stellantis boys will figure out to put it in a proper chassis. But, yeah.

I looked under that new one. It's got independent rear suspension in it now.

It's also 4,800 f****** pounds.

Oh, jeez. Wow.

4,800 pounds, dude. That's 400 pounds heavier than the previous generation Hellcat with two less cylinders.

Wow.

Yeah. How do you and Howard know each other, by the way, since he's the one that got us connected?

So Howard and I have been friends since the early days, since he was in New York.

Sure.

Just we always talk tuning and Howard loves his tuning stuff. So we just always were friends forever, it feels like. Sure. If I have a question, something beaten me up, I have no problems giving Howard a call and I'm sure he'd help me, vice versa. We seem to figure him out, but that's just the type of relationship we've always had. We were always far enough apart that even when it mattered, we would never step on each other's toes or anything along those lines. It was always just a mutual respect from shop to shop with Howard. We always hoped he would have came down when he was in New York for some of the Corvette Challenge races. I didn't really see him there, but he built fast cars and had a good reputation. And when he went to Florida, stuck with him. So, I went down and visited them when he was at Ron's place for one of the Global B Classes and stuff that they had there. And he's just always been one of the staples in Ellis tuning. So, we've just been friends because we both figured it out from getting our a** handed to us over and over again. And we were there from the beginning. So, it's just one of those things. We're one of the original guys in the original, let's say 12 guys who were doing it. And even the ones that we went head to head with at the track, we always had a mutual respect.

Sure, yeah.

So, he was just one of those guys that I always just had a mutual respect for. Yep.

So, that said, as we slowly start to wind down here, anything exciting that's going to be coming up in the next year or two, anything to look out for?

Well, the main thing for us right now is getting the C8 kit in full production. Okay. The manifolds, we've had the first batches come, and that took a lot longer than we originally anticipated.

As always does.

Yeah. Well, it even took longer than I originally anticipated. Yeah.

You already built in a buffer and that's gone.

Yeah. That's gone too.

Yeah.

But we have them in our hands now. We have them on cars. I'll show you a picture when we're done. It's something only a car guy would understand, but it's a work of art.

Yeah. Okay.

It really came out phenomenal. So we're hoping that we could just get, even if shops want to build their own turbo kit and want to use our manifolds, it's, in my opinion, the best foundation that's out there now with no close second. And I don't want to put down the other guys, but I'll show you, it's pretty tricked. It took us a long time, a lot of money, but we didn't skimp on anything. We made sure that it was absolutely perfect, that you can wastegate it down as low as you want or as high as you want. Cause a lot of times you can build a great manifold and you can only bring it down to so much. And that was one of our many renditions to the manifold, was to make sure that we could wastegate down to whatever we wanted. The first set we put it on, man, a car made like 900. We're like, whoa, that's great. We couldn't make less than 900. That's a problem. You know, it's just the way where we had the wastegate, just, I mean, I'd seen it on plenty of other vehicles, but for whatever reason, it just didn't work for us. So we had to change and change. And we probably went through a half a dozen different revisions of it until we got to where we are now. So that was also part of the the factory problem was because there's so much money for this tooling. You can't make a mistake. This, you just got to be done. You know, so we got it all got it done. And now, now the first big batch is in the works. And so once we have that out there, I think it's going to change a lot of things because a lot of shops want to do their own fabrication. And I get that. I understand it. We're so we're going to sell the kit as a complete kit, like we've been installing, but we'll also sell the manifolds over the counter. Okay, cool.

Do you have something sold already? Or is it like a pre-order or anything or?

I haven't listed them out yet because I don't want to disappoint anyone if they take longer than expected. I've been doing this long enough to know that they don't always come when they say they're going to come. So I'd rather have them in my hand. We've done all our media stuff. We've got tons of video, the different sounds from our turbo kit to what the rear mounted sound like. Obviously, I'm biased, but it sounds so much better. It really does. Because you could put any exhaust you want on it. So you can change the tone of what you want. Whereas the rear mount stuff, if you like the tone, it's fantastic. If you don't like the tone, too bad. That's what you got. That's one thing that I like with ours. But the main thing is the spool. Spool is instant. There's no disconnect feeling. It's just right there like a roots blower.

You have to show me a photo of how everything is mounted. Yeah. I'll take a look at that.

Yeah. When we do have the first truck load that comes in, it'll be 100 sets or so. Then we'll do a media blitz, get everything out there.

Sure. When do you anticipate that dropping roughly?

Three to four months.

Okay. Just the time for next summer sort of deal.

Yeah. That's where we were hoping to have it out. That's adding a buffer.

I was going to say, is that a buffer for the buffer still?

Yes. It should be two to three. But like I said, I've been doing this long enough that I'm not sitting there waiting for the truck to pull in. When it comes, it comes, but these guys are on the ball. They're working with some really good companies. The work is just phenomenal. I'll show you everything in your bike.

Yeah, for sure.

Any car guy will go like, oh, wow.

Oh, shiny.

Yeah, shiny object too. I like shiny object. But it's just really beefy. They're super thick in canal. So there's no issues with flanges, blown out exhaust, it's just beefy. Just beefy.

Are you guys doing a lot of truck kits and stuff too? Because that's a really popular thing too.

So, we make a truck kit. But we were so behind on everything else that I didn't release it yet. So I have it on my truck, and that's what I was saying. I have over 100,000 miles on it. Yeah, I have over 100,000 miles on it. It's a great kit. Air to water intercooler, tightly packaged up front. I surprise the s*** out of some people.

Yeah.

They definitely don't expect that. It's kind of funny. There's a light right by our shop that it goes to two lanes, but then right back down the one.

Yeah.

And any time I'm in that front left lane and someone tries to pass on the right, I have not lost yet. So it's funny, including a police car. But hey, he tried to pass on the right.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's also legal. I got pulled over for that.

Yeah.

At least in Minnesota, you're not allowed to pass on the right.

No, you're not in Jersey either. So it was funny. He was on the side of me. I'm like, all right. So I just kept them there. And then right as the road was ending, I just nudged ahead of him. So later down the road, he goes and passes me and flashes the badge. Because I said, don't pass on the right. And he just went and drove off.

Sounds like a Jersey thing.

It's such a Jersey thing.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's where we are is just so rural.

Sure.

We're not in New Jersey that most people think of. Oh, yeah. You're staying here last night. I felt like I was in my grandmother's apartment in Brooklyn. Because it's like in the city, the sounds, the trains, the everything. I'm like, oh my God, the cars.

The gunshots we heard last night.

I hear gunshots too, but it's the farmers keeping the birds off the field. So I think nothing of gunshots. I shoot in my backyard. But yeah, in the city, you think of it completely different because they weren't keeping the birds off the crops. Or target shooting at two in the morning.

Well, Dan lives right next to a gun club. So yeah, you're used to it quite a bit.

Yeah, it doesn't bother me in one bit.

Yeah, I think nothing of it.

My neighbors shoot all the time.

Yeah, I shoot all the time. My house is on eight acres, so I have a range.

Oh nice. Okay.

That's all set up. So yeah, we're just between farms. I don't farm at all. But one guy is like across the streets, Alpacas. The other guy supplies the whole county with eggs. He's got 500 chickens. So it's just a very rural area.

That just smells great, I bet.

You don't smell it at all.

Not too bad.

Everyone's too far away. So it's not too bad. But if I leave my windows open, I can four farms down, they have a donkey, so everyone's while you hear the donkey going. But just very faint, like not to where it's going to wake you up. But yeah, it's funny sleeping here. I was like so loud. I felt like the cars were like right in the living room. I'm like, my God, I'm not used to that. I grew up in North Jersey, so I know what it's like, but it's been 25 years down where we are now. So traffic to me is a school bus or a tractor. I have multiple other ways I can go, so not a big deal. But yeah, definitely not the Jersey that most people think of when they think of New Jersey. So we're not near Philly and we're not near New York, so it's a whole different world.

Yeah. Well, if we come out to Jersey, so Harris and I also are kind of foodies. What do we got to get if we're in Jersey? Is it pizza? Is it, we had cheese steaks. We didn't get into Philly, but we had those pretty close to.

Philly is the cheese steak area. Jersey is the pizza and bagels.

Pizza.

Okay.

Isn't that one guy? What's his name? Is he from Jersey?

Dave Portnoy. No, his favorite though is Connecticut.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Boston Celtics guy.

That's right. Yeah. So yeah, there's a lot of, the closer you get to the city, the more high-end stuff you'll get. Yeah. That sort of thing. But by us, we've got the local Clubstead Grill, and you get that or you get nothing.

Sure.

Another question for you. Before I lose it, are you displaying here at the show or are you just visiting?

No, I'm never displayed here. The reason why and it's always been, we work at max capacity. Sure. Until we streamlined our stuff 100 percent, I didn't feel it was worth it. Because all I would do is upset more people by not having stuff product out fast enough. Exactly. And we've, like I said, we've tried the outsourcing stuff and it didn't always work how we wanted. We tried to do things that would get us to the point where we would have all that. And we're pretty close to it at this point now to where I can start considering having a booth and getting more clientele that way. But like I said, we were just always at max capacity, so there's just no point in upsetting people when we're pumping out as fast as we can.

Sometimes I get busy at work too where I'm scared to get more work, right? Like that'd be an issue.

Which is a weird thing. People don't understand that. I always say I wish I had a volume button because there are times when we're three, four months backed up and then in winter time, not this winter, but normally, we'll get down to four weeks. And then as soon as spring comes, the first nice day, phones are off the hook. That first nice weekend, we'll put extra people in the office because the phones just go insane. All winter long, they could have called and gotten right in. But as soon as it has to do with the tax returns also, people get their tax returns and got some money in their pocket they want to spend. So it is what it is. It's all part of our cycle. But this year, we are jammed all winter with big projects. It seems like in the last year, the guys spending 50 plus grand have come back. Whereas we were always busy, not a problem with work, but those real big jobs drifted away a little bit, and now they're coming back. So whether that's just circumstance, part of the economy, whatever, who knows?

But you're saying like the last three or four years were kind of quiet and then it kind of picked back up or?

Yeah, not to where we never once ran out of work or didn't have something to do.

But the big projects.

Yeah, the big projects, people spending big money. And we'll get C8 guys who I think came from the Porsche world, because we get a lot of guys who came from Porsche and BMW. Ferrari guy, we got one guy who was a die-hard Ferrari guy, and he just went and paid like 15 grand for a service, like routine maintenance stuff. He was like, you know what?

I'm done.

So he's like, he bought the Vette. He's like, I love it. I go to service. And he's like, how much is the twin turbo kit? Well, they start, you know, 30,000 range.

That's it?

Oh, my, this car, it was 100 grand. That was this. So like they come in and what sticker shocks the old school Corvette guy, the new C8 guy, which is a market that, a lot of these guys never had a Corvette before, never even considered owning a Corvette. Now, they are. So we're getting a completely different clientele sometimes, like 50-50. And the guys that come in, they'll be like they're ordering off a dollar menu. Yeah, let's do the Alcoa brakes. Let's do the Borla. Let's do like they're ordering off a dollar menu, but those brakes are 13 grand and this is $5,000. And they're like, yeah, add this, add that, add that. Let's do that. Yeah, we'll do the twin turbo. Let's force the bottom end. All right, let's do a 427 if we're going to force the bottom end or a 416, I guess. So like, but it's like nothing. So I love that.

Sure.

It's nice to see guys come back with that. And and obviously that's feeding the economy and everyone's doing well. So I love to see people able to do that.

You still see in your jean shorts and New Balance shoes and high white socks or any of that kind of stuff, though, too.

Yeah.

Yeah. Right.

That's that's a Corvette.

Yeah.

That's a classic Corvette guy. Yeah. We call that that's the Corvettes, a Carlisle guy.

OK.

Sure. Yeah. That that show is part of many people's ritual vacation. They see the same people that they've seen for the last 20 some odd years. And and they're a great group of guys. But those are like, you know, the the pinnacle of Corvette guys. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. You know, all the stuff all over the engine, you know, that's that's the Corvette, the Carlisle crew. But they're they're great guys and they're great customers. They don't break their car.

Right.

So they're a really good customer on that point of, you know, that side of it. But they're easy. They're easy going. You just have to you have to be well aware that they're very in a retentive to their vehicle. And if that's not the kind of type of clientele that you're willing to to work with, then they're not your clientele, right? Because you have to, you know, make sure you return the car clean, no fingerprints, to the best of anyone's ability, you know, even if it comes in dirty, it leaves clean. It leaves better than it came to the best of our ability. You know, so and that's what you have to do, you know, with that clientele. That's what they expect. That's what they want. That's what they came to us for. So that's going back to when I said, Oh, some of my friends are like, Oh, these are such pain in the a** customers. No, they're customers. Sure. Yep. Okay. They're customers and this is what they expect of us. So they're not a pain in the a**. They came to the place that will give them what they're looking for. So what you view view is a pain in the a**. I view as a customer looking for a certain thing out of their job that they're getting from you. Yeah, that makes sense. So, you know, and you got to expreciate those people. And a lot of times, you know, you'll get guys like, who are like, Oh, there's such a pain in the a**. So this is the, how'd you pay your mortgage this month? Through the customers like that, you know, at least for us, you know, if you found your avenue that you're more happy with, great. But, you know, these guys have been very well with us. They're very loyal, our customers. You know, in this 25 years of doing this, I fired four people.

Wow.

That's not a lot for thousands of people who've been through our door.

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.

You know, that's a very low percentage of where we just had to say, look, I'm sorry. This didn't work out for whatever reason. I always say, look, blame me. I apologize. We did this all wrong, whatever it was, but we're not the fit for you. Sure. No, this just didn't work out. Sorry. You know, of course, I see it on my way and they see it on their side. But for that few people, out of that many customers, I think we somehow managed to do okay and keep everyone happy. Of course, there's always someone not to be happy, but we do our best and we actually care. Sure. Chris and I, we used to joke around, we're really not that good. Everyone else sucks.

That's a good way of putting it.

It's true. It's true. You just show up every day, be there, care, wipe down the fingerprint, remember the customer's name, do whatever, that one step above, and that seems to be three steps above most of the time. So as long as you're there consistent and you're doing your job and you actually care about the job and you care about the customer and you genuinely want them to be happy, then the rest just falls into place. Whereas a lot of guys just want the money, give them the money, get the car out, get it out. Yeah, of course we have to make money. Of course we got to pay the bills. Of course our ridiculous insurance costs got to get paid, all these things. But I've just found that when the cars leave, I don't focus on the money, I focus on making the car leave and the customer happy. And the money just comes. So it's a different way to look at it than a lot of guys. And when I have guys who have come in as new service writers and stuff, I have to train them. I don't hire guys from dealerships because they're all about...

They're all f***** up anyway.

They're just all about the money. And they've been trained just money, money, money, get as much out of them.

Has to be the right guy, I get it.

Yeah, so it's got to be someone who can read the room. And if the person cracked the piston and doesn't have any money, OK, let's work on getting you together as reasonable and quickly and inexpensive as we can. We're still doing a good job. And then there's a guy who cracked the piston, goes, woohoo, now I can do the 427. My wife can't say anything. So you read that person. Now, that's the guy that you can put all this, open the door for, do you want to do this? Do you want to add this? Add this. OK, yeah, yeah, whatever it is. Sure. But if the guy comes in who can barely afford the supercharger kit in the first place, let's say, and then years later cracks a piston and just doesn't have the money, well, you got to do your best to help that guy out too and get him back on the road as inefficiently or inexpensively as possible and keep everyone happy.

Yeah, that drives me nuts, man, is when people are trying to constantly upsell you on something. It's like you clearly tell I'm not that customer.

If you are, great. Then that customer is like, oh, this guy gave me so much time and it's fantastic, great. But if you're not that guy, you need to be able to read that guy.

It's like a ZR1 customer and a Stingray customer. Okay, you can go get a C8 ZR1 from a Chevy dealership, deliver it obviously, but that's not the same as a guy with a C6 Stingray. They're not the same customer by any means.

No, definitely not. Some of them evolve into it.

Correct. Yeah, that might be the case.

Yeah, you go through. We do have a lot of that.

But here and today, probably not.

Yeah.

I mean, sometimes they might have multiples. I feel like every Corvette guy has had at least two generations at one time from everybody I've talked to.

Yeah, I pretty much always own two at a minimum. I had my C8 and then the road course car and my two drag cars I sold. But so, yeah, what's the best generation, though?

Which which generation did best?

So it depends what your usage is going to be after that.

Sure.

I think if your main goal is a race car, C6Z. OK, I mean, it's it's still back in the era of where the computer made sense, you know, before all the crazy torque based stuff, where you really got to know what you're doing in the C7 world. So you could gut it quicker. You could make it a race car faster. It's a good chassis. But for a driver, C7Z06 is fantastic.

Sure.

You know, I went from a 19Z to the C8, and I wasn't overly impressed on anything but the launch. Sure. I mean, the thing just it launches, but then it falls on its face.

C8Z or C8C8?

C8. No, just standard Stingray. I didn't want to go with Z06. I actually had one in order and I canceled it because I came to realization that if I twin turbo it and put a rod to the side of the block, I have to think a worst-case scenario because I'm going to push it. Yeah. I can't buy another engine. I got a six-figure paperweight. So I went, all right, I'm not going to do that.

That's what everybody has said about the CHC.

I want to push it. I want to be able to do that. If I can't and I constantly have this black flag over the back of my head that I can't repair it, if I break it and there's no warranty, obviously. Well, that takes all the fun out of it. I'm not going to want to push it. So and then the ZR1, I don't know too many people who are going to mod them.

Yeah.

Like almost to the point of why would you, right? So there's always going to be someone. There always is.

There's going to be a small handful.

I think it's going to be such a small amount of people that I don't want to put that much R&D into something that I'm going to get such a small amount of return on. Right. But what it did do was it, their design and our design, which we came, not that they copied by any means, but they're almost identical besides the ZR1 has a dry sump. Ours are gravity fed.

Sure.

To the wet sump. But otherwise the placement, everything is pretty darn close to identical. So it really just, like I had friends, are you worried about that? No, not in the slightest, because so few people can buy that car in the first place, but it just like validated our design. Yeah. It validated everything that we did five years before it came out that this was correct. It was the way we should have done it. You know, GM has, you know, we don't have a bucket out of the ocean compared to their, you know, R&D and engineering. I mean, we're nobody. So for us to come up with that close of a design, it was, it was just, I took it as 100% plus. Like, this is, this is perfect. This is exactly what just had to happen. And it worked out great.

Yep. Well, if anything, it's going to help you sell more because people are going to want to replicate that for half the price.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And if GM can do a thousand horsepower with a warranty, well, I can get this built too.

Yeah.

You know, and be reliable. You know, obviously in a perfect world, if money is not an object, you'd want the zero one for resale and whatnot. But and just to have that car is going to be iconic, you know. But the average person can't touch it.

Yeah.

You can't buy it even if you wanted to. So, you know, dealers are getting one or two. If you're not one of their top buyers, you're not going to get that car.

Yeah.

You know, unless you're willing to pay the hundred grand over, which you're insane if you do that.

But thankfully, though, the market's kind of starting to correct on those. I don't know if you've been watching to bring a trailer stuff. Yeah. Because like whoever threw that out there, by the way, that was a bold move. But it's like, it kind of is like, all right, here's what people actually want to pay for it.

Yeah.

So, yeah, we'll see what happens there.

You know, I've had this discussion with guys who paid extra for the C8 when it came out, which I think was a huge mistake. Obviously, they, you know. Yeah.

I know guys that paid 20, 30, 40 grand over on it.

Yeah. And I, and I, we had a customer came in and I discussed it with him. I'm like, why would you do that? You know, I just don't see this be in the car. And of course it did exactly what we expected it to do.

It did it really fast.

Yeah. It corrected very quickly. Like within a year.

Yeah.

But he said to me, goes, you know, older gentleman, he goes, I have the money. I don't have the time.

That's what I thought about too.

Okay. You know, I didn't think of it that way as a 54 year old guy. You know, I was like, I still got some time, you know, in my, in my head, of course, I'm going to get by a bus tomorrow, but, you know, in my head, but then I kind of realized this guy's early 70s and he's like, yeah, what's 2030 grand? But so my grandkids got a little less money. Whatever. Yeah. So then I, it changed my perspective on it.

Sure.

It really did. It made me kind of realize, you know, if you got a lot of money, you can't buy the time, no matter how much money you have.

Yeah.

So in that case, it makes sense.

Yeah. Made sense. It really did change my perspective on it because I kind of thought to myself, boy, you'd have to be such an idiot. But then when I kind of thought of it that way, I went, well, maybe he's a little smarter than me and he's got that money. And so, oh, I get to see a bigger, slightly bigger number in my account. If it starts with a seven, if it's seven figures anyway or whatever, right? What's 20 or 30 grand? So I guess it was the age cutoff, though.

Right. So let's say it's 2020 again. And I become a d****** for buying over for paying 50 grand over on, let's say, because the C8, let's let's say it's an 80 dollars, 80 thousand dollars sticker and you want to get it ASAP 50 grand. What's what's the cutoff like? All right. You can't justify the running out of time argument.

That's up to the beholder.

Right.

That's fair. No one can answer that. No one can answer that. But looks at their own account and knows their own health and knows their family's history of longevity and puts that all together. So there's no way for any one person to answer that.

But the person that's a good politician answer. I like it.

But it's true, though.

Right.

It's true. Yes, that was a very good politician. But it really is.

Are you announcing your candidacy on the show right now?

Hell no. I would not want to do anywhere near. I get beat up enough on the Internet. I don't need to get beat up by everybody on the Internet.

Let that guy from McKnight handle it. He's taking care of it.

Yeah, that was a fun conversation. Well, before we start wrapping up, was there anything else that you wanted to touch on while you're here?

Not that I could think of. We had a pretty good conversation. I enjoyed my time with you guys. Thank you for having me.

I'm going to rip the usual three then.

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

Oh, boy.

Just so you know, Brian Tooley didn't pick any GM vehicles. Wait, what did he did? It was a Lambo, a Cobra and a Dodge truck.

But only because to me, a GM, it's like me going to a... People are like, how come you don't go to car shows? Because I work at one. I'm not starting my day off going to work. Obviously, I'm not working, but you know what I mean? So I think, yeah, if I'm picking cars, it's going to be something different. Sure, okay. My daily would probably be... Keep in mind, I always have to have a truck. So let's call that a utility vehicle. We won't even count that. If I was just having a daily, I would probably do like a Urus maybe. Okay, okay. I got a friend who has one and that's a really nice car. And it's not flashy. I mean, daily, I don't want a flashy daily driver. A lot of people have no idea that that car's a Lamborghini, or what it's capable of. So I would want something like that, maybe as just my daily go out to eat, whatever car. Let's see. Twin Turbo Lambo has always been something that I've wanted because it's a Twin Turbo Lambo. But I also do like the SF90, that one that just came out. I forget the rest of it, but that's just a sexy car. Then there's Road Course.

Wait, what's the SF90? Is that going to be for show car or daily?

Show car.

Show car?

Yeah, that would be the show car. Okay.

First time somebody said SF90, I think.

I understand a lot of people like, I love old cars, but I like them in your garage. A lot of show cars, I like to go to shows and see the old cars and see, especially when people tricked them out or pro-mod or whatever they did to them. Pro touring, I should say. But it's not something I'd want to own myself. I've driven, because I tuned so many of them over the years. I've driven maybe a small handful of resto cars that truly drove like a new car. Most of them drive like the old car with better stuff underneath it and everything, but it's still an old car. And it still has that feeling. And I love that, but that wouldn't be in my first choice of cars. And I guess as a road race car, hmm. See, that's tough to say. I love open wheel cars. I had the opportunity to race open wheel cars. I think if I had the choice of maybe not something to go to HPD Eason because I wouldn't want to get in a wreck with an open wheel car. Sure. Of course. But just for the driving experience, an open wheel car is just amazing. So I've had an opportunity to race open wheel cars a few times, and it just blew me away. And just how well they stuck to the ground. Just insane.

Anyone in particular?

I don't know them well enough to say I wouldn't want this particular one, one way or the other. Like I said, the ones that I drove were at driving schools and stuff like that. The last one I did was at Bondurant.

Sure.

And we got invited there by Corvette Forum. He started advertising on Corvette Forum, and they wanted someone to come out and take their full course, the five-day course, whatever it was, and do a write-up on them for Corvette Forum. So my head road racer customer and I went out and had a great time. It's funny, when I went there, I didn't really know his history.

Sure.

And we sat and talked for hours. What a nice guy and just so rich with history. It's a shame he passed away now, but when the movie Ford vs Ferrari came out, now I had known him personally now, so it was like it meant a lot more to me to see things I didn't even know, even a stupid movie. But it was pretty cool to have met this guy that was from this movie, from the 60s. It was pretty cool. And he was a super nice guy. It was funny because his assistant kept coming out and trying to end the conversation because I'm sure he was older than, gets tired, whatever, and he kept shooing her off and she was getting annoyed. We were just having a good conversation about it and everything, and he was a super nice guy. That was fun, but he had open wheel Ford's there, and it was an experience. Sure. It was a fun, fun experience to not have that huge amount of weight and to be so low on the ground with enough power and just different. They were like Mazdas, like momentum cars. Yeah. So once you learn that, that you got to race it like a go-kart, not like a Vette, where you can power your way out of something, it just was a completely different experience for me that I had never, never felt. And I left, I was like, wow, that was fun. Yeah. That was a lot of fun. So it was funny because there are guys at work there. I was right on their a** and we're going around, and the one guy is like, man, very rarely do I have someone up my a** on the thing. And he goes, you know the trick, don't you? I go, yeah, I know the trick. And he goes, so? I go, never let off the gas, ever. You never let off the gas, floored the entire time. And you just tap the brake when you want to slow down. You never, if you let off the gas, done. That car just like lets off. When I say done, I don't mean done. I mean, they took two, three, four car lengths on you and you're not going to gain it back. But that's from racing go-karts as a kid. You never let off the gas on a go-kart, ever. You just keep it floored and you tap the brake to slow down when you need to slow down. And I just drove it the same way and it just clicked. It just instantly clicked. It was just a big go-kart to me. I was having a lot of fun. And I would love to get in another one. And I thought about it, but I was like, I'm doing HPD stuff. I want to be out there with three, 4,000 pound cars. That's a recipe for disaster. I want to ride off into the sunset and not be in a wheelchair.

So one of those Ford open wheel cars? Yeah, I've seen those at Road America. They were f****** awesome.

They are. They are. Now, it doesn't necessarily have to be one of those. I know Mazda makes some pretty cool ones, too. There's a bunch of obviously, you know, when you're getting into professional level, that's a whole different, different grade.

You know, are you thinking something like kind of like Formula Four territory or a little slower?

Yeah. Yeah. Somewhere in that area where it's still fast, you know, to say someone it's going to jump into an F1 car or something. You're out of your mind. Like you're just talking crap. You know, I've been through some, you know, I've been road racing a long time. I've oddly enough, I've never been anything but the advanced run groups because when I showed up there, they just assumed that I thought. So I went, okay. And I went out and I've never raced in anything but the advanced run groups. Sure. Later on, talking to the guy, you know, and it came up in conversation later on, like several track days later. And he's like, so who else did you run with? I said, just you. What do you mean? He goes, well, you didn't have an instructor first time out. I don't need an instructor to drive. That's what I do for a living, like semi. And he's like, oh, well, I should have looked into that. I said, I didn't even think anything of it because it was my first track day. So I didn't know that I needed an instructor the first time. I didn't know. So we just went out and hammered down and never ran in anything but. So it's kind of funny that then I instructed for a while. So I guess those times I ran in other run groups. But as far as going out of my own, I never worked my way up the ranks. Sure, I just got kicked into the deep end and somehow swam through it. But it was fun and I love it. And that's where I really enjoy spending time, which is why I try and just go on my own and have a fun day that's business related, but not where I can just go and enjoy my day and not worry about all the other customers there. Because even at the Pocono events, even if I'm racing that day, I still have all these other guys. If they have concerns, then obviously, that takes precedence to their customer. It's nice to go and not have anything else but my enjoyment and take the precedence. I usually try and do at least four days a year where it's just me.

One percent of the year to yourself.

Yeah. I don't think I ask a lot. I still sometimes will do other days too, but with other customers there, and then I always want to make sure that they're doing okay and everything's fine, and making sure they're not overheating it or just getting out of the car out of a hot session and not rotating the rotors. So you're always watching out for everyone else, and it's nice to not watch out for anyone but me once in a while. Yeah.

I think that's a good note to end on.

Yeah.

Where can everybody find you?

So website is www.eastcoastsupercharging.com. That's obviously the quickest, easiest way. Sure. We're located in Cream Ridge, New Jersey, right on Route 539 in the desolate area of the Sticks of New Jersey. But what's nice about it is we can run the cars out in the middle of nowhere. We can test things, make sure that they're right, show customers how, you know, because a lot of times people come and pick up their car and they don't realize just how fast it is because they hear a number, but they've never driven something nine-second cable or whatever. So I can give them a little taste, show them how fast it is before they go out and just do a Mustang from a car show thing. He's like, shut up.

No, the Dodges have already way overtaken that. Oh, have they? I'm using overtaken as a button there.

I was just busting your chops on that one.

No, don't worry about it. It's all good.

Somebody's got to keep him humble.

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I don't want customers pulling out of the shop like maniacs. We really try and steer that, but I know some people get overly excited. So that's the fun part of what I do. There are times when I'll have someone who's come in, a guy who just retired, and just using it as an example, because it wasn't that long ago. He always wanted a Supercharged Corvette since he was a kid. Comes in, finally gets it. This guy, he was so giddy, like a 10-year-old on Christmas morning, left his wallet on the counter. He was just so happy to finally have this car that he's wanted his whole life. And it's so nice to fulfill that for someone. I mean, I haven't even had customers call me on their deathbed, literally. Like, died the next day or one guy was two days later just to say, thanks, I really enjoyed what you built for me and I just wanted to call you and say that. Wow. And that to me was like the ultimate compliment. Like, holy cow, this guy is done. One guy died two days later, one guy from Staten Island died just like three or four days later, who took the time to call me to just say how much they enjoyed the car and it brought them a lot of enjoyment. Like, that's awesome, you know? So it's really cool. That's the part of the job that's so fun. Like, if you did general automotive work and your brakes are just as good as they were the day before they started squeaking, no one wants to pay that bill. No one wants to come to you, you know? But what we do, they knew what the cost was before they dropped the car off and they can't wait to pick it up. So there's no issues as far as that end of it goes, you know? And that's the stress of the business that I can't stand. Sure. I don't want to argue with people. I don't want to haggle pricing. You know, here's the price, here's what it is. You know, if you can afford it, great. We'd love to do the job for you. If you can't, I completely understand. We'll be here when you're ready, you know? And it just makes business so much, so much tolerable and easier to handle. And our clientele base are just such interesting people. You know, we really get a good clientele base from doctors to our heaviest hitters or lawyers. And, you know, just very interesting people, you know? We really don't get any trouble, you know, as far as people go. You know, we do kind of push away the entourage rapper looking for stuff. Like, I don't want that clientele. I know some people would love to have that. That's not what we're looking for. And we've had a couple come in, and we quickly learned that they think that because they spent 50 grand or whatever, that they can just walk in the back shop with their whole crew. And you know, because it's like, it's like the line of the drag strip, you know? And they all come in with this whole entourage, and I'm like, guys, did you not read the sign? Like, if my insurance agent pulled in here right now, she'd have a conniption, you know? Like, you can't just do that. So it's like, we've just found that that crowd wasn't the best.

Sure, now I get it.

We just, our typical customer is a cop, or fireman, business owner, lawyers are heavy hitters, and you know, some doctors, but pilots, a lot of pilots. Stuff like that, but like normal guys, you know, just good customer, just a good clientele base that aren't really affected so much by economy, to a point, you know, I know some guys that have higher-end chops like Ferrari, stuff like that. And when the stock market goes down, they dry up. Whereas our guys, I mean, yeah, nobody likes that, but it didn't affect your day-to-day. We're still just plugging along, getting a regular paycheck. They can still buy what they want to buy, you know, within reason. So it's a pretty even-keeled clientele base of good people. Yeah. You know, we really don't get anyone who tries to scam us or anything along those lines. Sure, sure. You know, we've had a few over the years, but we can read you like a book now, you know, so.

Yeah, yeah.

You could tell. You could tell. There are always signs, you know. But, yeah, that's pretty much it.

Awesome.

Well, thanks for coming on the show, Doug.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, no, it was a good time. Dan, thanks for existing, and we will see you all next time.