181. Building Import Street Cars, Restoring Supras Modern Tuning, Sound Performance w/ Larry Prebis

This episode is brought to you by 6XD Gearbox. More on them later. Hello ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minnoxide Podcast. I'm your host, Harris AKA. Minnoxide, man of many automotive aspirations. I'm still getting used to this intro again. It's been a while since we've done these intros. But-

You should just wake up every morning and say it, so that you can just get used to it.

Six times in a mirror, just like, I'm Minnoxide, I'm Minnoxide, I'm Minnoxide. Well anyways, I'm here with my 411 co-host, Dan, and we are continuing our trip down here in Chicagoland for day two, and we are here with Larry of Sound Performance. Wow, I started on that one. We are here with Larry of Sound Performance. So go ahead, just tell us a little bit about yourself, and we'll go from there. Nothing too crazy.

Well, I'm Larry from Sound Performance, Larry Prebis. Opened this shop back up in 1989. So I don't know what you guys were doing in 89, but.

I was needing a thought.

I can guess, yeah.

I was probably getting ready for school.

So yeah, I got my, I went to University of Illinois for electrical engineering, got out of college and decided to open up a car stereo shop.

Okay.

Called Sound FX. So it was a high end car stereo shop and we did all the show cars for like Pioneer, Alpine. The same year I bought a 1989 Supra. Just, I've always modified my cars. You know, I had the C28.

Yeah.

And by 1990, 91, the car was making 560 at the wheels, which in that timeframe, that was...

That's really moving.

I had like the fastest car in the Chicago area. So at that point, people started bringing me their cars for modifications. We were in HKS, Grady Dealer, all that stuff. And I ended up... Best Buy and Circuit City opened up about that time. So the car stereo business started going down, but the turbo business started going up. So before you know it, I had more cars in for turbo stuff than stereo stuff. And... here we are, 37 years later. It's pretty much evolved into just you know, performance. We had to change the name from sound effects to sound performance, because HKS were the ones that said, we can't sell to a stereo shop. Your name sounds like a stereo shop. So we changed the name because we did sound and we did performance. Now we pretty much do performance. We still do sound systems when we do a restoration, but...

I was going to ask, is that just kind of... you just kept doing it and it started to taper off kind of as the years went along there?

Yeah. Yeah. And you know, new cars now, it's hard to change stereo in. Right? So...

Well, they come pretty decent.

Right.

Yeah.

The new stereo sound great. And it's integrated to the whole dashboard, everything. So you can't do it anymore. So...

No. I still have all of my old subs and amps and things laying around in my shop.

And we'll still do it for the customer that wants a restoration, but he wants... But we try to do it now differently than we did back then. We try... Back then, everybody wanted to see your subs. You open the hatch and now we try to hide everything. So you open the hatch and it looks like it came this way from the dealer. That's pretty much everything we do now.

Okay. Do you have a favorite setup from back in the day? Were you running a Pioneer Deck, Alpine, or for amps and subs?

My Supra was called Pioneer ODR, it was Optical Digital Reference, Phoenix Gold Amps, JL Subwoofers. I think I had a lot of MB Core speakers back in the day. But we sold everything from Alpine, ADS, Phoenix Gold, all the high end stuff we sold.

I still put in my old pickup trucks and Mustangs, have I like Pioneer decks? I've been doing that for a long time.

Yeah, you can't go wrong. I mean, all the new ones are so similar now, but Pioneer, Alpine, Kenwood, Sony, they're all great units.

Oh, I just wanted to go on a little car story.

No, you went down memory lane.

I did, I did. I missed those days.

Those were good times. There were a lot more, the cars back then were, I mean, today you drive down the road, what do you see? Black, silver, white SUVs everywhere. Back then, we didn't have SUVs. The cars were colorful and we had so many choices of fun cars to buy. You don't have that anymore.

Yeah, I remember when the minivan was innovative, right?

Yeah, definitely.

We were like, oh wow, here it is, the Caravan, yeah.

Nothing drives me crazier than that maroon color that Tesla does. I'm just like, it's just such a boring color. Like when I was shopping for cars, I was like, please, just not that color. I'm sick of maroon. Okay, but one thing you left out there is like, okay, you're making 560 wheel, or not wheel, it was wheel. Did we measure the wheel back then? Okay, I can't remember when we stopped measuring behind the balls, but back then, this is the early 90s. How, at this point, you're doing mostly audio stuff. Was that just you dabbling on your own stuff, or was that you just, how do we get to that point? Because that's a big accomplishment.

You know, I've always taken things apart from when I was a little kid. I'd take them apart and try to make them better. You know, that Camaro that I bought when I was 18, that was a 350 with a carburetor. And before I bought the Supra, I put an under the hood blower on it and fuel injected it myself. So I've always been dabbling. The Supra was more of a, you know, you got the HKS catalog out and we became a dealer and just started ordering stuff. And, you know, I had no idea what horsepower it made. I knew it was fast, but I remember bringing the car to a Corvette Camaro shop. It was the only guy, they were in Elk Grove Village and they had a dyno. And, you know, I called up, I said, yeah, I want to dyno my car. And I said, sure, what kind of car? Supra. And they're kind of like, OK, you know, put it on the dyno. And they were expecting probably 200 horsepower, right? And it made 560 and those guys were like, OK, you're making more power than our Corvettes with blowers. How are you doing this? And it was, you know, that's 1991, though.

Were you doing all of the tuning then, too, on your stuff?

Well, there wasn't a whole lot of tuning back then. I mean, we didn't even have widebands. If you wanted a wideband, they were big bucks. So you just kind of went with what HKS said. They came with preset computers. You put in their injectors, their computer, and you ran it. And they actually stayed together for a little while.

Is that what ordering was like? Because nowadays you can just hop on anybody's website. Everybody's a dealer nowadays. You can just pick out your parts. Back then, was it just a matter of looking at the catalog? And I guess now it's just kind of like Build-A-Bear, right? You have everything available. Did you have to do a lot of planning, or was it just still like these kits provided back then?

Yeah, it was, if you had an old HKS catalog, you'd see. They gave you, in order, what you do.

Oh, okay.

Now you start with the exhaust and the air filter, and then you go from there, fuel upgrades, intercooler upgrades, and you got into the turbos. And every stage, they would tell you the horsepower you'd be making, step by step.

So you did stages back then too, huh?

Yep.

Stage one, stage two, all that stuff.

All the way up until you were out of money. Yeah.

Okay, and then, I guess, what was the local scene like back then? Were you, I guess, doing some street stuff? Were you doing track stuff, a combination of it?

We had customers that did a lot of street racing. Sure. There's a white Supra here somewhere that pretty much dominated the city back then. It was an eight second street car.

Okay. Oh, wow.

You know, so.

A Mark 3 or 4?

A Mark 4. Okay. And he, you know, they would race for, I mean, back then, they'd race for a lot of money, thousands of dollars. And they'd, you know, they'd block off entire streets and get their whole crew out. And they'd run the quarter mile against these big block cars. And he cleaned up for many years. I didn't do any street racing, you know. Had family, kids. I wasn't about to do that. You know, we'd go to the track. We'd race. They had a thing called Battle of the Imports back then. We'd race in those events. I remember taking, actually, that car, the orange car, back when it was still, it was black with some ugly stripes. But we took it to the track, probably 98 or 99. I think the record for a street Supra back then was set by Powerhouse Racing. And they went 990, I think, in the quarter mile. So we took that to the track. And it was still, back then, it was a complete street car, air conditioning, stereo, subwoofers. In our first pass, we went 950, you know, with the air conditioning on. So that was a fun time. The Mark III that I have and this car, we took them once to Battle of the Imports. That was up at Union Grove. And I still have the videotape at home, because it was televised and ESPN. And both of those cars won their respective classes. So those are good times. They don't have any of that import racing really anymore, but...

Did you, was there a lot of hate on the import stuff? Cause I kind of grew up in the like muscle car community, right? Like my dad had Camaros back in the day and we were in the Mustangs and things like that. And I just remember a lot of like s*** talking on the whole like four cylinder turbo stuff. Yeah.

You know, until I would give somebody a ride.

Yeah.

And that usually changed their mind. Like my friend Jerry, he used to drive all the fast cars for me and he was a Mustang guy. He had the Mustang with the blower and the nitrous. And then we raced against my Supra and I crushed him.

Yeah.

And took him for a ride and then he was like, okay, I got it. And he would drive the cars for me. And then he ended up working for me for over 10 years. So they eventually, I mean, horsepower is horsepower. I mean, there's some guys that are all about American stuff or V8s, but do you? It's hard to beat technology, right?

It is. And I still like, again, I'm a big V8 guy and all that stuff, but I still like, these cars are beautiful. I mean, I don't, I'm a car guy in general. I have my niche that I stick in, but there's, I appreciate all of it. So like, I, you know, you laugh, but I still like all this stuff. I would give my left nut and drive something like that. So I'm fine with that.

Well, no, no, both, both of us have kind of grown with this show too, right? Like we've talked, like, we were just talking about EcoBoost BMWs, like just before the show started here. It's like, we've really seen such a wide variety and that's the one kind of trend we see is like, like you said, horsepower is horsepower.

Right. And with these smaller motors and a turbo, you can get good gas mileage.

Sure.

They idle smooth. You know, there's something to be said about a car that idles smooth and is nice and quiet and makes a thousand horsepower versus, you know, trying to do it with a V8. You got a radical cam, the car is shaky. It's got a loud exhaust, gets 10 miles a gallon. Okay. You know, so.

Well, let's talk about that then. So you weren't really doing tuning then. Are you tuning now?

Oh, yeah. We've been tuning. We've been tuning now for the last 30 gods. Since, since probably, probably 2000.

Okay.

Yeah.

So that's probably right around, were you burning chips and stuff then? Were you that early? Or were you kind of got into when you could get into the ECU?

It was, it was ECU.

So you got into the flash tuning.

That was when, I guess it was probably the AEM, the first AEM computer came out.

Okay.

And, and the guy that brought that to AEM his name was Jason Siebels. And he's one of my best friends now. He actually came out to our shop and we put that computer in a car. And we, you know, he taught me how to tune. And we took the, we didn't have a dino back then. So we took the car to AMS and they had a dino back in Arlington Heights when they were doing DSMs. And we put the car on their dino and he taught us how to tune, taught me how to tune. So I owe him a lot because he taught me, you know, all about tuning. And then I remember we had the car on the dino and Jason was, you know, had the laptop. And Ivan, who now works for Cannonball, worked at AMS, worked here. He was driving and we got that car up to, it was a Supra. We got it up to like 850 at the wheels and it wouldn't go any higher. And then Ivan looked at the exhaust. It was a Greddy exhaust and it was three and a half or four inch exhaust, but inside the muffler, it necked down to like two and a half inches. So Ivan crawled under, popped the muffler down, and on the very next pull, car made 1,050, just taking the muffler off because there was so much back pressure. And it was funny because Jason, you know, Jason was calling the shots because he had the laptop and he's like, well, boost went up 10 pounds and everything looked good, so I just figured we'll stay in it. And I think that was the first time anybody made 1,000 horsepower on the AMS dyno, they said so.

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Yeah, those are good times. And we're still, you know, friends with all those guys. Still talk to Jason all the time.

So you said Ivan worked for you as well?

Ivan worked for me for probably 10 years.

Oh, wow. Okay.

And then he went to AMS and now he's over with Arnie at Cannibal.

Yeah. I haven't had a chance to meet him yet, but yeah.

Good guy. Yeah.

I've seen some of his stuff on like VinWiki and then obviously like with Arnie's content and all that.

Yeah, he's doing some new videos on motor building on the McLaren stuff.

So where did this all, we were talking a little bit before the show, but your first car after the Camaro was the Mark III then, right? Or no?

Yeah. First performance car. Yeah, performance car was definitely the Mark III Supra.

What made you get that? What did you just see? Like drove by like, you know, like in a movie scene sort of deal or?

You know, I remember we were at, I went to my, with one of my buddies, we went down to Fort Lauderdale for spring break one year. And it was probably around that time, late 80s. And we were at a club and the club closed, and we were walking out of the club. And I remember Guy picks up his Mark III Supra from the valet, pulls out, and did a burnout for like ever. And I was like, okay, that's pretty cool to do that. So, I always wanted one since then. And, you know, we were doing some work with Elmhurst Toyota, and I knew all the people that worked there. And they called me one day and they're like, hey, we got this, I know you guys wanted a white Supra. We got this one in on trade. It's got like 3000 miles. The guy hit a parking curb and folded the front bumper under. So it needed a front bumper and it needed a new intercooler. And they sold it to me really cheap with 3000. The car was mint other than the front bumper. So I put a new bumper on it, new intercooler, and I've had it ever since.

Wow. Do you remember what you paid for it back then?

A little under 20.

Okay. Yeah.

And the funny thing is this Mark IV, when I bought it, it was probably 97, so it's a 93. So it was four years old. It had 17,000 miles on it, you know, twin turbo. It was black with tan interior, and I paid 18 grand for it.

Wow.

Now you know what they're going for now, right? Yeah.

Yeah.

That's what they were going for back then.

Wow.

Yeah. I mean, it was a four or five year old car, and that's kind of what they went for. We used to buy them. People would, you know, take them out and hurt the motor. We'd buy them for under 10 grand with a hurt motor. We had to put a new short block in them and sell them. That's what they went for, Mark Forrest. Not anymore.

No.

It's crazy. You'd like to know what the next thing to take off is and just buy them up and set them aside, but it's hard to judge.

There's a few of them in here. I wish I would have kept some.

What would you say the mix is between right hand and left hand drive cars when people come to you here?

Lately, I would probably say it's 20 percent right hand drive, 80 percent left, but the numbers, it used to be almost all. I would say every year, the right hand drives become more and more popular.

Really?

As they're easier to get here and become more.

They were also cheaper for a while too, I think, weren't they?

They're way cheaper. A right hand drive Supra is worth quite a bit less than a left hand drive Supra.

So what about, okay, it's not often we get to talk to someone who was already working on Supras before the big Fast and Furious boom.

We were.

Was it a big boom when Fast and Furious kind of hit the scene or did it take a few years to catch up or not?

Yeah, it probably took four or five years.

Okay.

I think, yeah, we were still building them before then. I think when we started racing them at the track and people saw how fast they could go, which was, it probably coincided exactly at the same time. So it helped, you know. They saw that the Mark 4 Supra was the one car that could go. It was going a lot faster than every other import and probably for a few reasons. I mean, the drivetrain is bulletproof, you know, and they're way easier to work on. You know, if you guys have ever worked on a 300ZX Twin Turbo or any of the other Japanese cars, you would appreciate a 2J. It's probably one of the easiest motors to work on.

Is that what's in the 300ZX?

The 300ZX is a VG30, so it's a V6 3.0 liter. But the way they pack that motor in that engine bay, there is no room. You can't get your hand down the side of the motor between the motor and the frame rails.

Oh, really?

They're hard to work on. They're great cars, but they're hard to work on.

I think they look really cool. Yeah. Speaking of cars that look really cool, let's jump into the stealth you got back there.

The Dodge Stealth.

Yeah. So I want one, and I've been talking, I talked to Aaron Miller with Enthmoto, and he agrees with me. He thinks they're a very cool car. But I keep, have people telling me, no, don't do it. Is there a way to make them reliable? Or are they unreliable? Are there any?

I, well, so I've had the car now about three years, and I've always thought they were really cool. And we, you know, we used to work on them through all the HKS upgrades back in the day. Occasionally, we'd do turbo upgrades. We never did a full build on one in the, you know, the 37 years I've been doing this. Never did anything crazy, but I always thought they were really cool. And I was looking around for one and found a guy on the East Coast and he had that one. It was in dire need of paint. The car was pink. Spots on the car. It looked like they touched up with rust-o-limb can. It was rattle-canned. But the interior was perfect and it was meticulously maintained. I mean, it had the, the lifters get noisy. He had the lifters changed. Before he sold it to me, he put a new clutch in it, put a new timing belt, water pump. And the guy gave me a bunch of old parts. He gave me all the manuals. And the car was $6,000. Yeah. So I put paid on it. And after we painted it, did some stereo work and been driving it. And the car's got 140,000 miles on it. It's probably one of the most comfortable cars. It rides so nice. It has the electronic suspension rides great. It's got great low end power. It's not as fast top end as a Supra, but you know, you know, you can't have everything. It's just a fun car. I would say that car probably gets the most attention. You know, I drive my Supras on the street. They get a lot of attention. That car though, people don't know what it is.

Yeah.

You know.

You don't see them at all anymore.

Right.

Yeah.

And it does get a bad rep for, if you abuse the transmission and drivetrain, yeah, the earlier ones, you could break it. I'm old. I don't drive aggressively anymore. So for me, driving it to work every day, I'll never break it, you know.

Okay. So do it, but don't be irresponsible about it, is what you're saying.

That's what I tell everybody.

Yeah.

I mean, you can break anything. Yeah. And people do. You know, we get people that break anything that's, you know, we have some of those customers that parts are not supposed to be breakable and they break them. Yeah. But I think if you drive anything with a little bit of respect, you know, no speed shifting on those cars, the trannies don't like it. Don't do any 5000 RPM, dead stop launches because it's all wheel drive. It'll hook up and something will break.

So, so just, you know, we're just talking about that off camera as well, like the mechanical sympathy side of things, like giving a little bit of love. Do you guys, did you dabble a lot in the, did you build a lot of race cars at a certain point? Like, I guess, how involved were you at the, at the track, on the track side of things?

Not terribly. I'm probably built under 10 race cars in my day. I mean, we took this car from a street car and turned it into a race car. That white Supra was more of a street car. And actually, they ended up both being about the same speed at the track. You know, we used to, this car, we used to race against Niro and Titan and all the big Supras at that, at the Texas 2K event when it was all Supras. Built a couple V8 turbo cars that were race cars. You know, for customers, we'd built some race stuff. It probably wasn't my biggest passion. You know, back then, it was very frustrating because you'd, I mean, it probably is with anybody, but I hated when anything broke. And you know, back then, we were in the infancy of import racing, so you broke a lot of parts and it just got kind of depressing, honestly. I mean, we went really fast one day and then one day, you know, everything would break.

So you eventually ended up just kind of sticking more to the street side sort of thing.

Yeah, that's more my passion. I think I like building a car that, you know, now we could take a car and these cars came with 320 horsepower. We take them now and we can make 700 to a thousand and they drive like they came off the showroom floor like that. You know, I'm not really into loud exhausts or big camshafts. I like the car to idle smooth and sound nice and be completely drivable like it was, you know, built by Toyota and they sold it as a car like that. So most of our builds now are, I kind of, I want everybody to have air conditioning. I want everybody to have a nice ride. I want the car to look nicer than when they were new. You know, we do things like, we try to take these old cars and make them like, you could buy them right now. So the car is going to have Bluetooth and backup cameras and, you know, everything that a new car has, but still look like a cool 80s or 90s car.

Right. And they'll live a good long, well, reasonably long life at that power level too?

Oh, a 2J and the 7, 700, 800 horsepower, you can get hundreds of thousands of miles out of it.

Really?

Yeah. Yeah.

All right. What's it take to get it to that level? What are we doing?

7, 800 horsepower on a 2J? That you can do on the stock bottom end.

OK.

And the stock head. So it's basically a bolt on turbo, intercooler, fuel system, computer, and then some sort of things to the drivetrain. So if it's a manual trans, you need a stronger clutch. If it's an automatic transmission, then you have to build the transmission.

OK.

And that's it. They're really easy to make power on.

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Aftermarket support, sure, that's easy. Computers, there's a dozen really good computers out there you can buy. Turbo's easy, drivetrain stuff's easy, fuel, intercoolers, all that stuff's easy. The parts that are hard, because what we're doing now is restorations. You know, there's 60 cars here in the shop and probably 30 of them are here for full restorations. So what I'm seeing is people that are my age now, always wanted one of these cars when they were in their 20s and 30s, right? But they probably were in school, couldn't afford it. So they say, oh, now I want a Supra or now I want a 300ZX or a RX7. You buy one now, they're going to have some problems, right? Because it's a 30 year old car. So they bring it to us, we repaint it, new interior, new seats, new suspension, and they want 700, 800 horsepower. So that's what we're doing. We're giving them a brand new looking car. That's an 80s, 90s car that, you know, has all the modern technology stuff. The parts like you were referring to that are hard to find now are all the original parts. Little plastic pieces on the interior, motors for the seats, you know, in some cases, new glass for the cars are hard to find. A lot of the original parts. Toyota's brought back a lot of parts. They have a heritage program going on now. So they're bringing back parts for the old Supras. And it's helping, but yeah, there's a lot of original parts that are really hard to find. So what we've done is, you know, we've gotten into the 3D scanning and 3D printing and some of the small plastic parts we scan and print ourselves. So...

When you're doing some of those small little plastic pieces, I'm just curious, what material do you typically go with if you're printing it?

That's a question for Stephen.

Stephen, okay.

Steve does all the 3D printing.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

No, because I'm in some of those Facebook forum groups, like, you know, people are getting more and more into that, like, oh, I made this custom cup holder or whatever bracket mount, whatever. So yeah, that's cool. Is there like a bread and butter build that people typically go for? Like, is it just like a standard cookie cutter?

Probably on the Supra Mark IV. It's probably keeping the motor stack. OK. Probably a new HPT 6464 turbo, because it's probably the best turbo I've ever tested in my 37 years. These new turbos from Heria at HPT, they're making 15 pounds of boost at 3000 RPMs, which is unheard of. And I've made 900 at the wheel with this turbo. So that turbo with a computer, intercooler, small fuel system, couple of pumps, upgraded drivetrain, and you're at 800 at the wheels, and we ramp in boost to keep torque flat. Torque is what's going to break the bottom end, and the rods will bend, so we keep torque flat. And yeah, 800 at the wheels, and the car has stock cams. It still, I mean, the car runs like it's original. You can't tell these things are running, and they're just really responsive and fun cars. When the Supra gets out of the fun rain, people come in all the time and they say, oh, I want 1,000, I want 1,200 horsepower. Have you ever driven one of those cars? Unless it's a 3.4 liter stroker motor with VVTi, a standard 2J, 3 liter, with a turbo that's gonna make 1,200, is a terrible car to drive on the street. It does nothing until 5,500, 6,000 RPMs with that setup. So under 6,000 RPMs, you have the slowest car on the road. I mean, that motor, in most cases, is making well under 100 horsepower. So minivans, everything will crush you on the road until you're at 5,000, 6,000 RPMs. So I can't tell you how many customers I've had that we've built something that makes 1,200 horsepower. And they'll drive it for a month or two, and then it'll come back and they'll be like, yeah, you're right, it's no fun to drive, let's put a smaller turbo on it. That happens probably over 50% of the time.

What's the other 50%? Just go bigger? Or it just sits?

Probably, yeah, I mean, some of them go bigger. At that point, when you're in that cookie cutter stage, you're kind of at the limits of what the stock bottom end can do. So if you're gonna go from there, you're gonna build the bottom end, and then you're gonna go to something bigger. And if we build the bottom end, and then we go to like a stroker motor, that extra displacement allows you to go with a bigger turbo and spool it at a lower RPM. And then we're putting the variable valve, the VVT-i heads on these motors. So that also spools the turbo faster. So if you have the stroker motor with the variable valve head, then we can put a much bigger turbo. We can, you know, you can make a thousand.

You can play with the timing a lot more, I suppose, that way.

With the intake cam, yeah. Okay. And then we can make a thousand all day long on a built bottom end and have really good drivability and a lot of bottom end power.

Okay. Let's say I just picked up one of these Supras off of Marketplace and now I brought it to you and I want 800 wheel. What's that? Can you tell me what you think that costs for me to come out the door? Let's say everything else is perfect. I don't need you to do any.

The funny thing is, you know, you probably didn't talk to Jennifer, but Jennifer runs the.

I actually never ended up chatting with her. I ended up talking to Steven only.

Only Steven. So Jennifer is my right hand woman. She runs all the money side. Before Jen was here, I was probably not the most profitable business in the world. Because I'd be like, yeah, it's $3,000 and I wouldn't keep track of hours or I wouldn't. So now, they don't let me do anything with money.

Okay.

Because I'm really bad at it. You know, I want to give everybody everything for nothing. And Jen's like, you can't have a viable business doing it that way. So now that we're finally profitable and the business has grown, you know, we were 8,000 square feet four years ago and now we're 20,000 square feet. Now we have 60 cars here and we're booked out for a year. And I owe all that to Jennifer for making the business profitable.

Yeah.

But in doing so, she has taken me out of the money part of things because I'm so bad at it. Yeah, sure. So if you ask me how much it costs for a cookie cutter build, by the time you add up, you know, if the car was bone stock, exhaust, intercooler, drivetrain, fuel, computer, tuning, I mean, it's still going to be 25, 30 grand.

Okay.

And she may yell at me for saying that number. It may be more, but you know, it all, you know, prices today are...

Oh, I know. I know.

It's all over the place.

Yeah. You know, it adds up really quick.

Oh yeah.

I just, I like to ask that question because it changes per platform, right? So like if you wanted to do something like that on a GTR, like in R35, you're, yeah, you're six figures before you're doing anything fun. So yeah, I just like to check. I just want to know if I'm playing in the right platform with the Coyote stuff or not. So far, I feel like my stuff's still cheaper than all of this other stuff.

Throw an ESS on that sucker. You're good to go.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's a great motor. Yeah. Those guys are making well over 1,000 on the new... There's like three different generations of the motor, right?

Yeah. I think we're on Gen 4 now. Oh, there's four Gen's. Yeah. And you can get them right from Ford with a Whipple on it with 800 horsepower and...

Yeah. I mean, these guys are doing a little bit of tuning and a little force induction, putting a tire on it. And they're like eight second cars now, aren't they, pretty much?

Yeah. I think you can get them into the eights pretty easy.

That's crazy. I mean...

Well, here he's got GM's got that ZR1X that's right out the showroom floor. Yeah, it's a $200,000 car, but it'll do 86 right out the gate. So...

I mean, it's 200,000, but I mean, where else... You build an eight second car that is going... You can drive to the track and drive home and has air conditioning and run smoothly. That's gonna cost you that much money.

Yeah.

You know, think about it.

It really takes every box.

That and you can take it to the Nurburgring also and get good times.

I mean, the cars are so fast now. Yeah. You know, back in the day, if we had a car that went stock in the mid 14s or even 13s, it was like record breaking.

Yeah.

You know, now they're five seconds faster than that.

Oh, yeah.

Think about it.

Well, yeah, right. We all remember when ten seconds was the big deal.

Oh, my God. If you had a ten second street car.

Oh, now you can get a Camry in ten seconds.

All these kids are driving around in these cars that are making, you know, the GTRs, all of them make 1,500 at the wheels or more.

Yeah.

You know, there's some guys around here driving these twin turbo Lamborghinis that are they say they make 2,000.

Yeah.

I don't know what you would do with that on the street.

But what's crazy is that some of them are also making it work, too, which is the crazy part. I mean, not as well as it would at the track. But yeah, like I just saw some stuff on Facebook the other day, like the owner of Underground Racing is going back and forth with the owner of Midnight. And it's like, they're doing two second 60 to 130s on the street. And it's just, it's insane. I wonder if stock cars will ever get to that level. Because we're talking about these ZR1s and stuff now. It's like, that's just stupid. Like that much power from a stock car is insane.

I mean, I never thought you'd see a thousand horsepower car from the factory or zero to 60s in under two seconds.

All while meeting today's emission standards?

Yeah, meeting emission standards and being, you know, put your wife in the car and drive it across the country.

Yeah.

You know, with the air conditioning on and probably get 25 miles a gallon.

Yeah.

I mean, think about 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 hydro Corvette because you're going through a messy divorce. And when she says everything, she means everything. Anywho, Nick Shearer is the proud owner of SureThing Logistics. Having traveled much of the country with every type of vehicle you can imagine, he's got the experience and reliability that you want to ensure a safe journey for your pride and joy. If you want to find out what it takes to ship your vehicle, go to surethinglogistics.net, fill out the intake form and be sure to let him know I sent you. Let's get back to the show.

These street cars, whether the gas or electric, are just so fast. A friend of mine, two years ago when the plaid come out, it's maybe three years ago.

Maybe a little bit longer.

Maybe more. He brought it over when he first got it. And he's always had Teslas and I've driven his, and they were really fast, so he let me drive the plaid and he showed me how to launch it. I was not ready for what it did. You know, zero to 60 in two seconds on the street. I didn't make it to 60 and I let off and I went, this is not, this is too fast for a street car. This should not be allowed on the street. People are going to get hurt. I don't know if they are or not, but.

Surprisingly, not that much yet.

Yeah, I mean, I know the car's got a lot of safety. Safety's built into it.

It slams on the brakes before you can do anything, yeah.

But eventually, yeah, you launch that car on the street and you get that feeling in your stomach that you normally only get at the track, you know, on slicks. And the car gets to 60 and then it just starts pulling harder and harder. It's just as fast as the cars are now. It's technology.

Yeah.

Wait until those plaids get old and they're going to be like $20,000 a pop, $15,000 a pop.

They're pretty cheap now.

For like mid 40s right now.

Yeah.

The problem with electric vehicles is not necessarily the mileage, but the length of the battery. So my wife's got a Mach-E and we're trying to drive the living s*** out of it right now because battery only degrades over time mostly. So we're trying to rack the miles up.

And are people replacing batteries or are they just?

They can. So before I...

It's really expensive, right?

It is. Although I looked at, before I bought the car, because I thought, because the resale on them is garbage, right? So I was like, all right, what happens if I want to drive this thing until it falls apart? You know, what would it take to do battery replacement? So I started looking around just on Marketplace, and you could find, like, somebody pulling a battery out of a wrecked one. I think I found a battery for, like, four grand. So it wasn't bad, but I don't know what it takes to replace one.

I'm going to say, what's the rest of that look like? Yeah, yeah.

I mean, you're saving a lot of money on things like oil changes.

Oh, 100%.

I mean, the maintenance on the car is pretty minimal compared to it.

Zero right now. I mean, she drives to work and plugs it in and I don't ever think about it. It just does what it's supposed to.

And it's really fast, right? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. It's fun.

You know?

Well, I have a 21 GT500. I think the zero to 60 is like 3.6 and her car is like 3.8. So, I mean, they're very, very close. Yeah.

And yours is 3.6 if you don't spin or something. Because I mean, her car, she can do it every time repeatable, every single time. So.

No, there's something.

I mean, I know the electric cars are getting a bad rap. People are, you know.

I think we're kind of past the bad rap side of things.

I think so, too. People are coming around.

I hope so, but you still read stuff all over the internet. Oh, yeah. But, man.

What? The internet has bad information on it?

For a daily driver, I would drive one.

Yeah.

It would be a blast. You know?

It's fun, because on this podcast, again, you kind of see what shop owners drive and saw them drive. I know some guy pulled out with a Maverick, makes 3,000 horsepower Vipers, pulls up with a Maverick. Or sometimes they'll have a 1,500 horsepower Corvette. They got a Plaid at home. It's like, yeah. I think people... Car guys are starting to adapt to electric cars, for sure.

You're a car guy. You're working on your own s***. You're building cars, doing stuff. You don't want to worry about the daily, right?

Yeah. My daily is bone stack.

What's your daily? What are you daily?

Acura TL. All wheel drive. Cars got 250,000 miles on it.

A 200,000 mile Acura.

My wife's got an Acura MDX. It's about to turn 300,000. You know what? Just maintain them and they live forever. Right now, my son is in his last year of college. After this year, the kids are out of college. So then we can buy some, you know, I have 12 cars right now. But the dailies are old. You know, mine's at 12. My wife's is at 2007. And you know, it's nice not having car payments. Oh yeah. You know, you could, I just bought her a Corvette for a toy. So she has that. You know, I have all my Japanese toys and my Camaro still, but.

What gen Corvette?

C5. It's gotta be pop up headlights. I'm old.

Yeah.

And it had to be bright yellow cause it's her favorite color.

Oh, okay.

That's cool.

So what about day to day, right? Like where do you fit into this equation? Are you back there welding, putting together engines? Like where do you stand nowadays? Has it changed?

Four or five years. I mean, yeah. I mean, oh, it's changed so much. When we first started, it was me and two other guys. So we did everything from everybody did welding. Everybody did, you know, I put engines together. I did all the wiring, you know, now. I do tuning. I do not get dirty. I do not lift heavy things. I am old. Yeah. So, but like, you know, there's 18 other people here. So, you know, they, they do all the, they get the cars ready for me and I tune them. I talk to the customers. I design the builds with the customers along with Jennifer. And so, yeah, it's changed a lot. I have, you know, two full-time fabricators that do all the welding. Ian and Tommy that you were just talking to, they do all the wiring. They build the engine harnesses, wire the computers, get the car set up, get them all running. And then all the other techs do all the other stuff, transmissions, put the motors in. So, yeah, I stay, my wife's very happy that my fingernails are clean all the time now. So, it's a good thing, I mean, you know, I'm 60, probably going to do this until my wife retires, and she's two years younger than me, so I've got, what, seven more years in me. Okay. And then one of these guys here is gonna take over.

Okay.

That's the plan.

When you're, that's actually a good plan, by the way. Not a lot of people have a succession plan in that regard.

I know. I think a lot of shop owners are just convinced they're gonna die at that shop in there.

Well, it's, you know, that may happen, but I still want it to go on. Yeah. I mean, both my children have gone on to, you know, they've gone to college and they want to do other things, which I've probably talked to my son, you know, out of doing this, you know, let him do something else. Well, it's fun, but I think he has higher aspirations, so that's good, and my daughter's doing, she's saving the oceans, marine biologist out on the East Coast, so she's always on TV, and so she's doing really well, so. That's cool.

So the fact that you ship your parts overseas isn't a conflict of interest?

You know, we don't, we do. We don't.

Well, no, I mean, like the Japanese, I mean, the Japanese cars. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I was going to ask earlier, so you're doing the tuning side of things. Are a lot of these cars, what are they, stock ECU, standalones? Like, where do they land? A mix?

Well, all the 80s and 90s cars.

Yeah.

You know, everything, pretty much everything you can see from where you're sitting, these are all standalones.

Okay.

Every one of them.

Any favorites?

In the standalone world? Um, ECU Master, Pro EFI, Helltech, Link.

Okay.

Those would probably be the ones we do the most of these days.

Okay.

Um, you know, like I said earlier, you know, back in the early 2000s, we, it was primarily AEM. I mean, the AEM V1 probably turned around the aftermarket performance industry. I mean, there were no computers available back then, except for like the old Haltex, which were awful. And you had to tune them with a DOS based laptop and they didn't have much capability. If then AEM came out and it really changed the aftermarket performance world. And then it's taken off so much from then. But anything that is OBD2 or newer, you know, we have to be emission compliant. You know, if it's driven on the street. So we, those are all factory computers that are tuned. You know.

And you're kind of proficient in all of those. Are you the only one that does the tuning here then?

No, no. There's two other, there's, Tommy can do, Tommy and Ian do tuning. Tyler, who's not here today, does all the factory computer tuning.

Okay.

And a lot of the new factory cars are all wheel drive. You know, we do a lot of the BMWs and Infinities.

Okay.

So that's why we just built that all wheel drive dino room.

Oh, gotcha, okay.

Because this one here is a two wheel drive dino. So a lot of the new cars, we'd have to turn them down. We couldn't tune them. Okay. So, now we have two dinos.

When it comes to your personal project, so obviously you have the white car, you have the Dodge. Any other kind of precious vehicles in there that are kind of just fun cars?

You said you had 12.

Yeah. Are they all Mac cars or?

Right behind you, the white SC. That one, I've been building it. It's with my son, for my son. He's graduating college this year, so that's gonna be his college present.

Does he know that yet?

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, he's been a part of it.

He gets to cut that out.

You know, he's not, he cleans parts and he's not a mechanic by any means, but he's learning a lot. He worked here in the summer when college was out. So that's, it's a simple build. It's got a really nice interior. We just painted the car and 400 horsepower, 2J, small turbo, something that he can daily drive and have fun. I have obviously the Mark 3 Supra that you saw in my Z28. Then above that white Mark 3, I told you was another white Mark 3.

Oh, that's right, yeah.

That one only has 13,000 miles on it. That car looks and smells brand new. Funny story, probably four years ago, a woman made an appointment, said her Supra wouldn't run, towed it in. It was pretty dirty. The fuel pump fuse was blown. Put a new fuel pump fuse in it, blew instantly. Okay, so we took out the fuel pump, dropped the tank on that car, and the gas in the tank was like jelly.

Yeah.

So then I got in the car, and I'm like, wow, this smells like new leather. And I looked and it was 13,000 miles on the car. So I called her and I'm like, tell me the history. She's like, well, my dad bought it for me when I graduated college in 1989. I drove it for that year until the weather got bad. I put a cover on it and it's been sitting ever since, since 89. I'm like, what do you want to do with it? She's like, I need to get it running so I can sell it. I'm like, okay, I'll buy it from you. Yeah. You know? So yeah, you know, clean it up, buff, wax it, put some new tires. The tires were original. The brakes were original. Everything was original. Belts, everything was.

So all that's probably starting to dry rot and everything.

You know, surprisingly, the belts and the hoses and everything are still in good shape.

Really?

You know, I changed them just because I thought we should, but they came off. They weren't dry rotted or anything. The tires were bad. Tires were dry rotted. It still has original brakes on it. It's got 15,000 miles on it now. My wife and I take it on Sundays. We take the top off and we go get ice cream like old people do, but you know, it gets so many looks because the car looks brand new. You know, you don't see an 89 Supra, brand new looking.

Right.

You know, and all I, I mean.

I mean, I've heard of one owner cars, but one owner driven for one year.

Yeah.

That's pretty good. Yeah.

Yeah, so we, I mean, we put a fuel pump in it. We cleaned out the fuel system, cleaned out the injectors, put a new filter on it, and it started up and it, and everything works.

Yeah.

So it's pretty cool.

That's awesome.

Now one's just gonna stay bone stock forever.

That one was going to stay bone stock. You know, it's mostly bone stock.

That's one, that's worth keeping bone stock, I imagine.

Yeah. I mean, it has, I had to put a different, I put an aftermarket HKS street, quiet exhaust on it. Just because the factory exhaust from sitting for 30 years with condensation in it, it had a lot of holes in it. A couple other things we've done to it, but it, you'd never know driving it. It drives like a bone stock car.

What do those come with, with a stock engine anyways? I forgot the...

The...

Mark 3.

Amazing 7M GTE motor, 232 horsepower turbo.

I once, this is before you were on the podcast, this is like early, early Jim Hall days, when Shawn was the co-host. I can't remember, but those are actually pretty decent, if I remember correctly, from a tuning perspective too, aren't they, or not really? Like, can you do much of them?

Well, you know, like, my other one was making 560 at the wheels.

Is that still the original engine in that, or?

The original engine is sitting in the pile of engines back there with the other 100 7Ms and 2Js that are sitting on the shelf. But I have the original engine. Right now there's a different engine, because we just, we build an engine and take out one and put it in. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But it's still a 7M?

It's still a 7M. Yeah. 7M gets a bad rap from the factory. It had some problems. They're known for blowing head gaskets. And there's a few reasons for it. The factory head gaskets were not very good. They were an old composite style. So we put in the new, you know, multi-layer head gaskets with better bolts.

I was going to say you switched to head studs or something then?

We switched to ARP head studs. The other problem that people don't realize is the car came without a crank position sensor. So it's got a cam position sensor. So the computer tries to locate the crank shaft from the cam. And if you put a timing light on it and you were to set the timing, you know, static at like 20 degrees and you were to rev it up, you'd see that timing all over the place because you get things through that rubber timing belt, you know, harmonics and all kinds of acceleration, deceleration problems. So locating the crank shaft through the cam shaft when the two are connected with a rubber belt, bad idea, which is why all new cars have crank position sensors. New cars make a lot more power. You can tune them more aggressively because you know exactly where the crank is. That car relied on the knock sensors a lot. So the car would run a little bit too much timing. It would knock, the knock sensors would pull the timing back. Eventually, when you're knocking, knocking, knocking, the head gaskets would go. So when we rebuild them now, we put in the butter head gaskets, we change to a crank position sensor and an aftermarket computer, and then they stay together forever.

Okay. I've heard that a couple of times. They were like, yeah, they have a problem with blowing head gaskets. They're not very reliable. I remember blowing up cars and praying that it was the head gasket.

Oh, head gaskets is an easy fix, right?

Yeah. That's not a very bad thing, to be honest with you. So if there's anywhere where I want it to go, that's why that car is a go.

That car is notorious for head gaskets.

Okay.

By the way, it's an easy fix.

Okay. Each time, it has not been my head gasket.

So you were a little...

Yeah, I'm a little...

A little too aggressive?

Yeah. I was... I do road rally stuff, so I try and tune... Well, get my stuff to the point of where I don't... I can rely on s***** pump gas, and I've played with that line too many times.

Well, like I tell everybody here, everything we build now is flex fuel.

Yep.

So I tune them soft on pump gas.

Yeah.

Because if they're going to hurt the motor, they're going to hurt it on pump gas. It's pretty hard to hurt the motor on ethanol, so.

It's in the Ford world, the flex fuel is like a four-letter word. It doesn't really work out well. So it's one thing I've...

It's so good for making power.

I know. I want it bad.

And it's cheap.

Yeah. We just don't really have a great option. So...

Maybe stop building blower cars. I mean, these turbo guys got to figure it out.

I know.

Yeah.

I've decided I'm just going to get a Mark IV Supra.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Hey, one just sold last week for 220 grand, right? Oh, s***.

It's insane.

Never mind. I'm getting a ZR1X.

Yeah. Same price, right? Yeah.

Right.

Oh, my God. Yeah. That's a hell of a decision. But at the same time, like, there's that nostalgia aspect, right? Like, I'm looking at the rear end of this black one. I'm like, man, like, it's... You just can't beat that.

No.

I agree. I mean, there's a couple of new cars out there, but we had 10 times more options.

Sure.

We had the variety. You know, we had different colors.

Yeah.

Now, you know, it's white, silver, black and an SUV.

So I remember a post a while back where somebody put all the different automakers. They're like, you know, flagship SUV, right? Like an Equinox or Ford Escape or whatever. And they put every automaker's same thing all in white and they all looked identical.

Oh, all the SUVs look the same now.

Yeah.

Here's a question for you. How many cars does the United States make? Not SUVs, not trucks. How many cars do we make?

I don't think other than them. I think the Mustang is like the last one hanging there, ain't it? It was. I think that's...

Would you consider a Corvette?

Oh, yeah, a Corvette.

Corvette, Mustang.

Yeah.

Any family cars?

No.

Well, no, you got the charger.

It's coming, the charger came back, right? Challenger's gone.

Yeah, it's just, they combine them both into the charger.

And I think Cadillac still makes one.

Yes, the Blackwing or the CT4s, Fives, all that.

And that's it.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah. Either way, it's a small, small number.

So you can count them on one hand.

Right.

Yeah.

I think how that's changed from 30 years ago, that's all we made was cars and a couple of pickup trucks.

Who's telling us about this a few days ago? It was like, the reason it's such an SUV heavy market is because it was like subsidized in the early 2000s or something crazy like that. Like there was like a big push for SUVs for some reason.

Well, cause they be like when the Blazer and the Explorer and all that stuff hit the market, they just blew up. It was like, it was crazy. It was what everybody wanted. It's like, oh, you don't have to have a mini van.

I get it from a convenience standpoint. You know, it's nice being able to go to the store and buy your 75 inch TV and throw it in the back of your SUV, right? Yeah.

What's wrong with station wagons?

Yeah, those were cool. Remember those?

We need those back. I don't know.

Oh, were you, remember in the, I don't know, you're not old enough. Remember the back seats where you sat facing the wrong direction?

Oh, yeah. I've heard that. I sat like that in a car.

Yeah.

In my family, we had a car like that, yeah.

Yeah, we used to take road trips up to Michigan, sitting in the back, seat belts, no.

Yeah.

You know, different time.

Well, speaking of different times, Toyota's are the worst when it comes to the seatbelt ding. Like I rented a Toyota down, was it North Carolina? And this guy doesn't wear seat belts. He loves to go through windshields and it's just dinging. It's just, it's the craziest ding I've heard in my life. The newer Toyotas.

My wife's mom.

So you drive without your seatbelt?

No, I don't.

Yes. Well, no, wait a minute. There's some discrepancy in what you guys are saying.

I love to throw them under the big yellow bus. It's my favorite thing to do.

At home, in town, where I'm taking my kids around sometimes, it's 25 miles an hour. I don't always wear my seatbelt in town. I have on all of my stuff, I turn off my belt minder. When we first get in the car, sometimes I'm like, he's like, find a coffee shop, do this. And I'm doing stuff on my phone. I don't buckle up first thing all the time when I get in the car.

The car yells at you as soon as you put it in gear, right?

It does.

Cause mine does.

Yeah, oh yeah.

My dashboard's flashing, fastened seatbelt, everything's dinging.

My daily, I shut it off. I turn off the belt minder.

How can you do that?

In Ford, it's like a seatbelt click and unclick sequence. You can turn the key like seven times on and off. You're promoting bad stuff right now. Plus I have, in Ford, we have something called 4Scan. It's a software I can go in and I can change a lot of the stuff on the computer, so I can turn that off. I can make my dome light go on for five seconds instead of three seconds when you open a door. You can change all kinds of little stuff like that.

I could do some of that stuff in the Accurus through the screens and the menus and the setup, but it doesn't let you shut off seatbelt.

It may be on like a brand new Ford stuff you can't, but on my 2015 Navigator I can, on my 2016 F250 I can, especially on my trucks. I do a lot of stuff in the yard or I've got up north where I'm like, I'm moving my skid loader around or I'm throwing wood in the back of the truck and I'm just hauling it across the yard. You're getting in and out of the truck and it's running, it's dinging.

Okay. I mean, I can see if you're just moving it five miles an hour and moving around stuff. That's fine. Is every time I get on the highway, but if you're on the highway and have the kids in the car, I hope you have your seatbelt on.

I do. I do. I actually-

Make sure to safety talk.

That's fine. My, actually my little brother was killed in a car accident in 08 and if he had had his seatbelt on, he would still be here. So I am a very big component of seatbelts. Please wear your seatbelt.

You know, like I said, in all these restorations we're doing, I occasionally get the person that I want to put a different steering wheel on it, these old older, get rid of the airbags. And I'm like, please, you don't understand how much additional safety an airbag gives you. You know, I mean, these people are getting in 40, 50 mile an hour crashes now in these cars and they just open the door and they walk out. Yeah. You do that in a seventies car. Yeah. You're, you have a steering wheel through your chest and broken ribs and near.

Yeah. Yeah. People don't understand that your car stops abruptly at 40, so you don't, you'll keep moving.

Yeah. These cars are designed so that the interior stays nice and the rest of the car takes the impact. Old cars, now your body took the impact.

Can I tell you one thing that scares me a little bit when it comes to working on the eighties and nineties stuff? Because again, I'm a big Fox body guy here. Either I'm messing around under the dash or I'm driving it and you know, things fail. They get old, you know, electronics, I'm replacing sensors, things like that happen. I always think about the airbag. I'm like, when is this thing just going to go off randomly while I'm driving or I hit a bomb? That's really rare. I know it's rare, but as things get, as they age, they don't always, things work differently.

You need a major malfunction for the airbag to work. I don't know if I've ever even heard of it going off.

I haven't either. It's just irrational.

They have recalls on airbags where sometimes when they open, they don't want them to hurt your face and things like that. I've never heard of one going off while someone was driving.

Do you know what I have a problem with? I think it was like 5 or 10 years ago with Shrapnel coming out with their airbags.

I think that's one of the recalls.

It has to do with the door on the thing. Sometimes the door can come off. I had an uncle of mine in the 90s that said, what is it, he's always scared of it because the door came off and ripped somebody's half their face off. Because the airbag launches it into your skull.

That's probably still better than going through the windshield.

I would have thought so, yeah.

Yeah, they did. A lot of manufacturers done recalls. I think my Viacra's had a recall on the airbag for a similar reason.

I think Mercedes went through a huge airbag recall too.

I think everybody's gone through some sort of crazy recall. Everybody's like, oh, Ford's better, Chevy's better. It's like, oh, they all have the same issue. I actually watched a video the other day from the CEO of Bugatti. He was talking about that whole Matt Armstrong Bugatti rebuild. And he went into like a two, three minute rant talking about what really goes into their whole airbag setup, because basically they have like the dash and they have to like pre-cut parts of the leather, but not make it visible in there. So it can actually come out. And if you don't do it correctly, a 20 degree difference might mean that it doesn't come all the way out and it's dangerous and yeah, it was a fun talk to watch. We've strayed into safety quite heavily here. Speaking of safety.

You made fun of me for not wearing my seatbelt.

Oh, every day of the week, twice on Sunday.

I would. Yeah, definitely.

It's just the ding, the ding gets me every time. But safety wise.

You know, funny about the ding is, you know, back when I started doing this, I said I was doing sound, right? We did sound and we did alarms.

Okay.

So I'd be under the dash, having the key on, you know, for the whole day, for weeks at a time. And the cars would be dinging, cause I had the door open and the dash on. After doing it for years, you become immune to that sound. I don't even hear door dings anymore. You know.

If you start it, that goes away. So in an enclosed shop, just start it the whole time and have it run in your shop, just enclosed, you'll be fine.

Yeah. Eventually you won't hear anything.

Yeah.

Right? If you're enclosed, but okay.

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 guys say, since you guys have fab guys and stuff here, do you guys do cages every once in a while or not really?

No.

No, not, not the wheelhouse.

Honestly, we take cages out of cars now.

Oh really? Okay.

Because that's another thing we're seeing. You know how much these cars are worth, right?

Yeah.

If it's a street car, it has air conditioning and it's drivable. These cars are, these are all six figure cars. If you build a race car with a cage and they're hard to drive on the street, the car is worth half as much. So as soon as you put a cage in one of these Mark IVs, you're lowering the value of it. How do you drive a cage car on the street? Are you going to wear a helmet?

Right.

Yeah.

I mean, if you have a cage, a bar right next to your head and you get in an accident, you don't have a helmet on and you hit that bar with your, I mean, that cage car, even though it's structurally sound.

Your head's an object.

From you being in the car perspective, that car's more dangerous than a regular car. So I tell these people, put a cage in your car, but are you going to wear a helmet when you're driving on the street? And they don't think about that. I'm like, that car's more dangerous than a car without a cage, because you have this hard metal object that you're going to crack your head open on. So many cars now, people are bringing us these cars that they built back in the 90s, 2000s. And we're taming them down, taking out these big camshafts, taking off the big turbos, taking out the cages, putting a new carpet in, new dash without the holes for the cage. We're making them street cars again, putting AC back on the cars. And you still can make a thousand horsepower, but we can do it in a way now that you can drive the car and have fun in it every day.

Would you say that most of what you get in here, then, is the Mark IV Supra?

I would say, if you look around, I would say half of what's in here is Mark IVs. There's probably 25, 30 of these things in here right now.

What's the other variety? You've got a little bit of Nissan.

There's a lot of Mark IIIs. We're starting to get a lot of these skylines. Nissan-wise, there's two Z32s here, a couple of the 350s and 370s. Those are mostly here just for standard tuning stuff. Those guys don't do a whole lot of force induction on them, occasionally, but it's not real popular. There's an old 240Z here that we're putting a 2J in.

That red one over here?

Yeah, that's the only one that's here. Yeah, we're getting a 2J in that, so a lot of MK3s.

Sure.

There's a couple RX7s.

Yeah, you're walking away on me here, by the way. Yeah, just slide over.

I was gonna ask about that. Do you do any rotary stuff, or do you just tell them to take it out and use it as a boating?

Yeah, all the RX7s that are here have JZ swaps, every one of them.

What did Henry have in his? I think it was a 1J in his.

Yep, that's the popular, and there's a reason for that.

It's still rotary, yeah.

Yeah, he's sick, that's right.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I was going to ask, do you do a lot of 1J stuff here as well?

10% of the JZ stuff is probably 1J. Not a lot.

Is it getting more popular?

No, I would always talk somebody into a 2J.

Sure.

I mean, the 2J simply does everything better. There's nothing a 1J does better than a 2J, and they're harder to find parts for, right? Why would you pick a 1J over a 2J? There's only one reason, and it's in those RX7s, because the deck height, the actual motor's an inch shorter. 2J just won't fit under the hood without a hood scoop. You can fit a 1J under the hood. But other than that, you can't go to a parts store and buy parts for a 1J. So 2Js, they spool a turbo 500 RPMs faster. They make more power. You can get parts. Cost is the same. Why would you want a 1J?

Sure.

Did you ever work on the... There's like a V12 version. Is it called the 1GZ or something like that? I can't remember what exactly it's called.

No, never seen one. That's probably available in overseas only.

It might be, actually. Yeah, because one of my friends is putting it in a... He has a Veilside RX-7 and he's putting that in there. It's like some V12 Toyota engine.

A V12 and an RX-7. Yeah.

It's one of those projects that I think it's... I heard about it five years ago. So, but COVID kind of slowed down the transport of the body kit. So that took two years or whatever. So that was all crazy. But yeah, I should probably follow up with him.

COVID was interesting for all of us in the performance world.

Sure.

Completely opposite of what we thought was going to happen, right, for most of us.

As in like business blew up? Yeah.

We all thought, okay, we're going to huckle down and business is going to die. And it doubled in like a three month period. Everybody got that free money from the government. We're at home and looking at these cars and going, all right, I want to work on these cars. And everybody's business just exploded. We never thought that was going to happen.

But they had time and money all of a sudden.

People have time and money to burn.

And yeah, yeah, I'm looking where it's at 4JZ. But it looks like it's some stuff that people are custom building. Yeah, they're putting together to 2J's.

Some weird.

I saw somebody did that. I didn't know if it was real or Photoshopped, though, with AI. Nowadays, you can't tell what's real. Yeah.

Yeah. So what's next for you, right? Like, obviously, you said, you know, seven, eight more years. And this is kind of game plan. Are you is this like a matter of especially with this dino? Are you going to start going more into like BMWs for whatever reason or?

Yeah. You know, Steve, Steve owns a BMW. So we're going to try and make four digits on that. Yeah, a lot of the newer car, the all wheel drive cars do a lot of the stock computer tuning. And the BMWs make a lot of power. They're pretty easy to tune. So more and more restorations, I foresee, you know, that's becoming so popular. I don't know how much else, you know, in the last three, four years since we expanded, you know, we went from six lifts, I think I have 14 or 15 lifts now, if you count through the shop. Added the second dyno, added the powder coating room, all the machinery, the lathe, the mills, the tire machines, the engine building room. You know, we're trying to do everything in house. You know, we used to send cars out for alignments. I bought an alignment machine. We used to send all of our parts out for powder coating. And bought two powder coating ovens. I have a full time guy that just does powder coating all day long, 40 hours a week. So every part we put on a car now looks brand new. I think that's my goal for the next seven years is to probably try to do as much in house as possible in the restorations. And then probably to groom some of these guys that work here to take over, you know, when I retire.

Do you have, do you guys make and sell any parts or products? I saw there was a, well, you have like an F1 manifold or something, don't you?

Yeah, I mean, the 2J exhaust manifolds, intake manifolds. Yeah. We're not a parts dealer. Like I never wanted to be that guy that builds parts, puts them in a box and sells them. That's no fun for me. I know a lot of shops you can make money on that, but I prefer doing the builds, you know? I know I don't anymore, but I love getting my hands dirty. You know, taking an old car and just making it new again, or better than new, that's what I like doing. Like that car, the Mark IV car that's here that was in the hurricane, you know, I can't wait till that one's done. That thing, that's gonna be our best restoration, because that car was completely submerged for many days.

Where are you at in edpro? I don't know if I saw any progress pictures.

Right now, we're going through all the wire harnesses. All of the pins on the end of the harnesses where all the connectors are, they're all corroded from salt. So we're, you can't get new harnesses. So we're going through pin by pin, replacing the pins, cleaning the connectors, all the parts going in the ultrasonic cleaners. And that's where we're at. You know, things like, we were talking about the airbags earlier, the airbag computer in that car. Would you trust an airbag computer that was under salt water for many days?

No, I told you, I'm already scared.

We opened it up and all the electronic modules are corroded on the inside. It's funny because this happened years ago. There's parts on this car we're taking apart and there's still water inside.

Oh, wow.

Everything's got green corrosion. That's kind of where we're at in the electronic standpoint kind of thing. Trying to find parts on eBay. People that have totaled a Supra were buying harnesses, all the parts, all the electronic modules, the cruise control, the power steering module, the airbag modules, the airbag sensors. Finding the parts on these old cars is the hardest part now.

Well, those aren't exactly easy parts to come by either.

No, you have to find a car that was smashed.

Yeah, and hope it has everything still. I can't imagine a lot of these come across co-parts all that often either at this point.

Yeah, it's funny. Back in the day, when we were building some of these race cars, we never knew 25 years ago how many parts did I throw out back then. Oh yeah. I mean, now I'm keeping everything, right? I mean, I probably have a million dollars worth of 2J parts upstairs in the three lofts. You know, intake manifolds. You know, you go over there, there's 52J motors.

I saw that.

Cranks, heads. I have collection upstairs of seats, interior panels. These interior panels, you know, when they were available, you could buy them from Toyota for 60 bucks. Now, people are trying to get a grand for them.

Right.

Because all this, you know, I have a collection of everything upstairs that, you know, over 37 years we've accumulated.

Yeah.

So, and we use them for, I only use them for the customers that bring me their cars and we're doing restorations. So.

Do you guys have somebody you partner with to do paint and body then?

There's three body shops in the area that we keep them busy.

Okay.

There's probably a dozen cars out in the body shops right now getting either engine bays or full paint jobs.

How often would you say you get a full rotisserie car?

A full restoration? Well, there's a dozen of them here right now. They're full. Top to bottom.

Just rip everything out?

You know, rip everything out. The subframes get powder-coated. All new parts on the, you know, every part of the suspension is new. Re-under-coated, engine-based, painted, shaved and painted. Yeah, new leather.

You can get all that for 25 grand also, right?

Yeah, you can make payments of 25 grand. Yeah, it's amazing how much people are spending on these cars.

I know.

I mean, every one of these restorations is six figures.

Well, you can't go buy one off the showroom floor.

That's right. I mean, new cars cost almost that much, and people want these old cars, so.

Like me personally, if I could buy this black one today, I would leave with that today.

I can give you the owner's info.

I would need the bank info first. How many credit cards can you take at once? So obviously, you're looking forward to the Hurricane Project, but do you have a build that's come out of here that's been like your favorite, like that's just a feather in your cap?

Probably, god, it's probably 15 years ago. We did a car for a gentleman in Australia. He sent me the car. It was a right-hand drive Supra. We did a custom wide body on it. Full restoration, top to bottom, but he wanted every screw, every weather seal, every piece of rubber, everything to be brand new. And back 15 years ago, the parts were still available. So everything was new. He bought some crazy 12 piston calipers. I mean, that car was, that ended up being on about a $250,000 build. Holy s***. And he wanted a custom sequential twin turbo kit. So you know how the factory twins on the car are sequential. So you have two turbos. One comes on all the time. And the second one comes on as needed. So Vince, who was working here at the time, a friend of mine, who now tunes for Honda, Indy cars, but me and him built a sequential twin kit. Something that would make about 800 of the wheels. So we used smaller turbos from Precision Turbo. We built all the controllers, all the valves, to sequence them from one turbo to two turbos. And I think I'm probably the only shop Vince and I, other than probably Toyota and Mazda, to build a sequential kit for one of these cars. So that car was gorgeous. That was probably our coolest, biggest build ever.

All right, so now I'm going to be the devil on your shoulder. What was your least favorite build and what would you say absolutely no to ever again?

Oh, we get, I mean, not to put anybody down, but I mean, we get these people that try to do all the work themselves and everything's bolts are loose.

Or even something that turned out well after you guys had it, but when you worked on it, you're like, I'm never working on one of those cars again.

You know, now it doesn't bother me because I have guys, they work on them.

Sounds like their problem.

That's a good question. I don't think there's anything that scares me anymore.

Okay.

You know, there's some that aren't as fun. You know, look at some of these cars that we, we're doing a lot of Vipers now. They're not the best built cars in the world, but they're cool, so we'll work on them. I don't know. I mean, definitely not a rotary though. I won't work on a rotary motor. That's for sure.

But you get to work on them forever.

Yeah, it's a gift that keeps on giving, right?

Damn, I had a good one in there. I lost it.

Sorry. I don't know.

Well, Subaru's as well. You can work on those forever. I work for Subaru Tool Company, so a gift that keeps on giving.

That's one of the cars that we don't do very much.

Really?

I don't see a lot of Subaru's through here.

But you do? Are you starting to get more and more like the RB platforms in here as well? Seen more of them?

Oh, definitely. In the last 10 years, it's gone from one a year to four a month now, we see.

Which one's better?

A JZ or an RB?

Yeah. Where do you land?

Oh, come on.

I knew who I was asking.

Come on. You know, everybody knows the actual. I mean, I know there's RB Fanatics and it's a really good motor, but yeah. Yeah, no, the JZ.

From what I've heard is you can make an RB as good as a JZ for twice as much time and for twice as much money. That's what I've always heard.

Yeah, you have to do some work to an RB to make it as good as a stock JZ.

Sure.

Yeah. But it's still a great motor. They're cool motors.

What's the because we're talking about this with one, the race car looking things in the back over there. What's the I guess most race car build you've done? Was it a personal build or a customer build? Or even though you don't dabble with them too much race car.

Well, we had a Camaro. That was a seven second Camaro that we built. Oh, really? It was my ex-partner's car. It was just a small block Chevy with a big turbo on it and a lot of technology that we set up in the computer to make it run consistently. That was probably the, yeah. Other than that, it was probably this one, the orange car. This car, I built so that it would look, I wanted it to look like a show car, but it's a race car. I mean, if you look inside of it, it has a full interior, it has dashboard, it has, you know, I did things on that car, tried to make it lighter, so everything, the dashboard's empty, but it looks like it's all there. Right? The radio looks like it's there, but the radio display tells you the air-fuel ratio.

Oh, that's cool.

You know, stuff like that. That's probably the other raciest Supra that we've ever done.

Okay. But you're not doing anything crazy, like billet blocks or anything like that?

There's a billet block being built in the back right now for a customer. Why? Because he has the money. It's a younger gentleman that made a lot of money in Bitcoin, crypto, something. He doesn't know what to do with it. He wants a billet block Supra to say with a dry sump, but he wants 800 horsepower.

Oh, interesting. Okay.

So sure. Yeah. We're going to, we're doing it. He doesn't need it. It's cool. I guess.

It'll look pretty.

If you see it in the back, it's really pretty.

Oh yeah.

You know, but bling, bling. I still get every once in a while, I get a customer come in and I'm like, okay. And they say the customer is always right.

Are they?

Oh, absolutely not. Hardly ever. You have to, you have to educate a lot of them.

Right.

You know, you don't want to take AC out of your car. Oh yeah, I do. It's going to be faster. No, it's not. Why would it be faster? Well, because the AC robs horsepower. No, it doesn't. The AC shuts off at full throttle on all new cars. Oh, but it's going to be lighter. You're going to save 30 pounds.

Yeah.

What is 30 pounds going to do for you? Taking off an AC compressor in a...

I've lost over 30 pounds and I feel a lot better. Right.

Exactly. Get healthy and lose the 30 pounds and then you can keep your AC.

Yeah, there you go.

For both reasons, you sweat less.

Yeah, right.

Exactly.

I mean, I got so many people that have done it. And on a 90 degree day driving without AC?

No.

No, not going to happen.

I had a lot of cars that didn't have AC and I reached a certain point in my life where now if I can't fix it, it's going in the trash because I need it.

So yeah, we're putting AC back in all of these cars. Yeah.

So as we wind down here a little bit, obviously you've been in the industry for quite some time. Do you have any, you mentioned that you want to pass this down to whoever's next. What are some, what's some advice to, I guess, the next generation of shop owners you would give?

It's gotta be something you love, right? You know, cause I could have done a million things with my electrical engineering. Do it because you love it and try to just, you know, like I was saying earlier, I never did it for the money. As long as I have enough money to, you know, pay the bills and, you know, I didn't care about the money. I just wanted the customers to be happy and give them the best product. You know, a lot of shops will give you a horsepower number in a car that's completely not drivable. So, I've always thought that it was more important to give the customer everything. You know, not just peak horsepower, but area under the curve, smooth ride, nice idle quality, good gas mileage, and that's, to me, that's more important than a car that makes 1,400 horsepower, but only does it at 1 RPM and barely starts, and, you know. So, that's kind of where I'm at these days. Sure. And anybody that's getting into the business, I would tell them, I think you're gonna get a lot more business with that attitude than building race cars, because it looks to me like a lot of drag strips are closing, and have closed. So, I don't know where that's, that part of the business is going anymore.

It's weird right now, because like some of them closed, but then also the IHRA guy just reopened too, I think. Like just bought it. Like, so I'm curious to see where that all goes, but let's rip the usual three then.

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. Whatever you want to do, you want to swap something.

Oh God. It's got to be something that I own because, you know, I have a very strange collection of cars, the 12 that I own, but if I had a daily driver car, I think it would be an LC500 Lexus. Oh. I just think that's one of the most gorgeous cars ever made and you can't beat Lexus quality, right? Sure. So, that would probably be my daily. Got a track car. I'm not a Porsche guy, even though I know they're great on the tracks. Probably a newer Corvette, you know?

Okay.

If I could buy a, I think if I was to buy a new Corvette, I'd buy an e-Ray.

Oh, okay. I hear that a lot.

Just because it's probably the best bank for the buck you can get right now.

We haven't talked to any e-Ray owners that were disappointed in their purchase.

A friend of mine's got one, and he loves it.

There's sub 100,000 now, too. They just knocked off like 10K off the MSRP.

And I know, you know, from an 80 mile an hour roll, the ZR1 and the Z06 are going to beat it, but in 90% of driving, it's faster, so I think bang for the buck that that would be a fun car.

So not a ZR1X? You could always go crazy, right?

You could. You could. And what was the third one?

Show car.

Wow. That's a good question, a show car, huh? Well, like I said, I made that into a show car. I would probably say something like, you know what car I love? You guys are gonna laugh. The, like the Smoky and the Bandit era Trans Ams. Yeah. I have the Z28 version of that, which I, you know, that's my car, which is the same car, but I think I'm gonna buy one of those Trans Ams.

Okay.

Just for fun, and make it show car quality.

No, him and I have a weird affliction for, we want like a nice early 2000s WS6.

Oh, those are gorgeous. Yeah.

Well, I like every generation of Trans Ams.

Yeah. Give me an 8081 Turbo Trans Am. Yeah, yeah. Terrible car. Yeah. Absolutely terrible, but you can fix a lot of the stuff on it, right? I mean, that car, the motor, the turbos, just got awful, but it just looks so cool.

It really does. I don't know what it is about Pontiac, especially older Pontiacs. Like, don't get me wrong, like the Chevy stuff's cool. We talked about this last night or whatever.

Pontiacs look better. But the Pontiacs... And I own a Z28. I'll be glad to say the Pontiacs always look better.

Yeah.

Yeah, I was raised in a Grand Prix, so...

It was a great car. What year?

Oh, I don't know. I was young to remember. They got rid of it by the time they got to Pacifica. I think, I want to say... I was in a Supra late 90s, early 2000s.

So it was a front wheel drive version.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

With that bullet proof 3800 motor.

The 3800 that they put in everything back then, remember?

I still say at the end of time, that'll be the only thing that's left.

Some of those cars were Supra charged, and some of them, didn't McLaren make a turbo version of that car for a while?

McLaren had like the, you could get the fancy seats. The McLaren did earlier, they had a Grand Prix. So yeah, you would be in the 90s, but it had like bucket seats in the back.

Oh yeah, those seats, remember those seats? Those seats wrapped around you, and they had bolsters for the bolsters. And the whole dashboard lit up red, if I recall, on all the old Pontiac stuff.

But they were a 3100 turboed, I believe.

Yeah, we couldn't afford that back then. My grandpa had a black one, and my dad had a red one, and I think that was after he had an Eclipse for a little while. Again, not a fancy one. We're talking like $800,000 cars when they came to the country, so it was really fun. But no, just my Pontiac affliction started with that.

I drove a GTP for a while. That was being like an early 2000s one.

Pontiac made some really cool... I was surprised that Pontiac got axed.

It really is. It was a bummer.

I thought they would keep Pontiac and like...

You don't think the Solstice would have saved it?

Oldsmobile...

Okay.

I understood Oldsmobile going away. But I thought they'd keep Pontiac and get rid of Buick.

Yeah, but Buick apparently is completely held up by the Chinese market, I believe. I think they sell... I think they have like 38 models or something over there.

Like some of the new stuff they have out now. I mean, my daughter has a Buick and it's been great for her.

You know, they also have a wagon. I think they have a wagon. Yeah, I think one of my friends has a Buick here. Yeah, it's like a... I gotta check this. I don't check my phone. I have to.

My parents test drove a... We were looking for a family car. I remember when I was younger, my dad test drove a Bonneville, Pontiac Bonneville SSEI.

SSEI.

Yeah, I was like, dad, buy this car.

Wasn't it cool? I mean, yeah. Had great seats.

Oh, s***.

Yeah, I mean, it's not like anything with that crazy power, but I love wagons, man. If I could get me like a Passat wagon, I don't know, something like that. Like something stupid.

We had a, last summer, we had a Volvo wagon in here.

Yeah, those are cool, too.

And it looked, it was an older one, mid-condition, it was like a bluish, aqua-bluish color, and it had CCW wheels on it, and 800 horsepower of 2J under the hood.

Oh, wow. It was like the squared-off one with the little wiper on the headlights.

It was, yeah, it was.

Really?

So one of the shops in Minnesota just finished, it was actually a, it was at PRI. It was a Volvo 242 or whatever, 2J in it as well. It was making like, I think, seven or 800 horsepower.

Yeah, this had a lot of Motek in it, and it was...

Holy s***, and this is a wagon? That's cool, I'm on to look that up.

Yeah, that should be on our website. Or on our Facebook or Instagram.

That's a really cool way to make a $2,500 car cool.

Yeah. I love it when you take a car like that, just do something ridiculous, especially when you crack the...

Sometimes.

Sometimes, yeah?

Sometimes. There's some poor choices made, but okay.

What's the weirdest car you have?

We see some of these older, really old Corollas and these really old, tiny little cars that have a really short wheelbase that people put 800 horsepower 2Js in.

That's so scary.

And yes, they are not drivable. The wheelbase is so short, the car wants to come around on you. And then customers will make all this horsepower and be totally against doing upgrades to the brakes.

Oh yeah.

Oh yeah, yeah.

I'm like, dude, you have the tiniest rotors in the front and you have drums in the back and you have 800 horsepower, you're going to die. Yeah. So.

But no, I meant you personally. What's the weirdest car you have? Do you have like a duck?

Me, personally? Yeah. I would probably say everybody would say the Stealth. Yeah.

That thing is cool. That is a mint car, man.

Yeah, everybody, you know, everybody was looking at me like I was crazy when I bought it. And then after it was painted and we put it together and people drive it, they're like, that car drives really nice. It doesn't rattle. It drives smooth.

It's got a Dodge that doesn't rattle.

Doesn't rattle. And we had that car totally apart for the paint job.

Right, yeah.

But maybe we put it together better, but. Sure.

That's a fun car. Just wait for the electronics to start failing.

That's what I hear on those. Everybody that we've talked to, like when you talk about the Stealth and the 3000 GT, it's always the electronics is what people say.

Well, when I bought it, the factory computer for the motor, it would run good one day and the next day it would be, it would just hesitate and spotter and buck and everything. We couldn't, I mean, you can't hook up to that computer and do diagnostics. You can get some codes out of it and that was it. And all the sensors tested fine, so we took the computer out and put an ECU master black in it.

Oh nice, okay.

And yeah, that was the problem. The car runs perfectly every day now. Yeah, the old computers, all the capacitors and stuff go bad.

Yeah. What's the owner, is this named Danny, the guy that owns the ECU master or something like that? I don't know. We're supposed to have him on later this year at 2K, but I'm getting crazy with it. Anyways, where can everybody find you? I should probably let you get going.

Where can you find me? I'm here four days a week. I come in when I get here, because I own the place. That was another reason I opened my own business, because I'm not a morning person. I don't like set schedules. So I get in around 11, 11 to 6, Monday through Thursday. We switched to, last year we switched to doing four 10s for the employees. So we're Monday through Thursday, 10 hours a day. And then the guys still work on Fridays. They can get, you know, they get extra money.

It's such a better set up. Like eight hours is cool and all, but like it's not hard to work an extra two and then get another day off.

Yeah, and then you could have three day weekends. Oh, three day weekends is a game changer. I should have done this 25 years ago. It's so much more work done around the house. Yeah.

But for socials and all that, Sound Performance and everything.

Yeah, we're gonna do our Sound Performance on Instagram and Facebook. And there's probably a couple other ones that they, I'm old and I don't really know. Even though, yeah, I was always in the tech, but can't keep up with the kids now. And my personal Facebook has, is probably the easiest way to get ahold of me. Sure.

Well, awesome. On that note, thank you very much for making this happen. I've been, people have been telling me to get down here forever. And I'm glad we finally made it happen, so.

Yeah, I'm glad you guys came by. I think we're probably a little different performance shop than most.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, with the restorations and the stuff that we're doing, I think, yeah, like you said, we've branched off into a little bit different direction than just performance. But I think we might be one of the oldest performance shops in the country.

You have to. So right after this, we're headed up to Schwartz Performance.

When did they open?

I want to say it was after you. It has to be at least 10 years after you.

So we're from 89, I opened.

I don't think Schwartz's, yeah, he didn't have his own shop until late. I want to say I was the early to, I'll ask him later today. Because he was 66 when we had him on last year, I think.

It's cool that I've done this for 37 years.

That's some longevity, man.

Every year, it just gets bigger and bigger. So I'm proud of that.

Yeah. That means you're doing something right.

We have so much repeat business, so we're doing something right. So that's good.

When you say, I will let you go. When you say repeat business, is it usually a Supra guy getting an R33 next or something or what it will?

Yeah, I've got customers that, they progress through their builds, right?

Oh, sure, yeah.

They keep coming back, but then I get, I have a customer that has, he had at one point, he had five cars here. He's making his own collection of older Japanese cars and he loved the work that we've done, so it went from, okay, here's my RX-7, okay, here's a second RX-7, here's two 300 ZXs for you to build, here's an NSX, he's got that NSX back there for us to do. So, you know, if you do good work, people are happy. Yeah.

Sure.

Well, perfect. And I know, thank you very much for coming on the show.

Thanks for coming.

Dan, thanks for existing and we will see y'all next time.

And wear your seatbelt.