189. RRT Motorsports on Building The Worlds Quickest and Fastest Evo, DSMs and Standalone ECUs

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 host. Oh boy, this is already after a great start. Host of many migraines and hangovers. Here with my four, shut up, Dan. Four love and co-hosts, Dan, Mr. Gunnar Garage. And we are continuing our last day of PRI here with one of our last guests for the day with Raif Fejzo of RRT Motorsports. First of all, Ben got us connected. I'm really glad he did. Ben Hockman, that is of Hockman Fabrication and Speed. Or hopefully I got that right today. But nonetheless, just do a quick introduction of who it is you are, what it is you do, and we'll just kind of go from there.

Absolutely. Yeah. My name is Raif Fejzo, owner of RRT Motorsports. And I love building race cars, mostly Evos, anything with a 4G in it pretty much. So that's what I started with and that was a passion. And I just never give up. Just keep doing it.

Yeah. How'd you get into it? Why Evos?

Why Evos? It started way back in 2001 or 2002. So it was two separate occasions I did it. If it was first day, it was my brother's, four years older than me. He borrowed a DSM from a buddy of his. It was a 91 or 92 Talon.

Sure.

Took me for a quick ride. This thing ground every single gear, but like, man, he got on it first, second, third, grinding every gear, but man, it just got addicted instantly when I felt the power just kick in.

Sure.

And then shortly after that, my buddy Turbo Tony had a 2G that he built with all bunch of Porsche parts. He used to bring that thing to the street races, and I've never seen him lose a race. He was the king of the streets of the thing. Every time this thing left, it was, you know, bumper right on the freaking back wheel. Thing left, shifted, and I mean, it's probably 11 second car, but man, it mopped everything up. I was like, I gotta buy myself a DSM, so ended up buying a 91 Black Cherry back when I was 16. That was my second car. Shortly right after I crashed my first car, it was an Audi 80, stick shift Audi 80 I had. So I got my Black Cherry DSM, did a bunch of little mods, no idea what I was doing, but I had fun with the car. Pretty much how this all started, and it just kind of snowballed right after that.

So then, Ned, what time period was this, roughly?

This was right at 2003, 2004, was when I first got my first DSM. Maybe a little sooner, right about there, I would say.

I think these things were kind of taking people by surprise, because this is a similar story to how AMS started. Because you go out with these things, and everybody is expecting them to just be slow, and they're just blowing everybody away.

Yeah, and the thing is, they were cheap, and you can find them everywhere. Back in the day, you can find these things for $1,000, $2,000. I mean, they all needed something, some kind of work, but thinking back, that was a deal and a half. I mean, they needed transmission work or what not, but for two rand, you spend another $2,000, you can have an 11,700 car. Back then, there was nothing else that was that quick for that cheap and you're young and broke, best car out there. Sure. And addiction just snowballed real hard after that.

So at this point, you're kind of messing around getting a taste for speed, but at what point do you start, at what point do you want to have a shop? When do you start working on other people's cars?

So pretty much I started doing this out of my parents' basement or their garage back in 2004, 2005. So I started, you know, first DSM I bought, I broke the transmission the next week. I couldn't afford to fix it. I'm like, I'm going to take it apart, try to fix it myself. It was a common either breaking broken shift rail in 3.4 or broken shift work in 3.4. So I would take it apart, figure out to fix it, messed it up a bunch of times. And sure enough, I realized, man, there's a lot of these cars out there and they're all breaking their transmissions. I was doing transmissions on the side for people for like $300, to fix their shift works or shift rails. So it became like a hobby versus pay for my hobby, doing it on the side. And it didn't really like, you know, take off till about 2010, 2011 when I started taking it a little bit more serious.

Okay.

But in the meantime, you know, I, you know, I realized, hey, I can make a quick buck and anything I made from, you know, doing the side work would go right in the car. So instantly bought another DSM, I got my blue 1G at that time. And it was back in 2006, I would say, bought a 42R for the car, which was huge for back then. I was terrified. I'm like, how am I going to tune this thing? I had no idea what I was doing. Bought an AEM V1 for it. Again, I was like, I have no idea how to tune a standalone ECU. Prior to this, I was used to like tuning an Apex AFC or a GCC and a VPC set up, which was like turn some knobs and hope for the best. And it worked, you know, not the right way to do it. But hey, we went fast. So I got my blue 1G 42R, did my first built engine, got an AEM standalone. I'm like, oh yeah, now what I do? I can't get this thing to run correctly on a standalone. So I met up with a buddy of mine that worked at Proven Performance back then, his name was Kenny. And he's done a few AEMs and we're like, oh, let's do it. Car ended up making like 700 horsepower, messed around with it, took it to the track. Back in 06190, at 164, which was moving, synchro transmission, no dog box, nothing fancy. And surely after that, I was like, all right, now the Evos came out, and I want an Evo. So I bought my Evo back in 2008. And again, bought it with a broken transmission, not cheap. And we actually split the car with my brother because I couldn't afford it. I was like, yeah, let's buy a 5050. And then surely after that, I bought them back out of it. But I got my Evo, and then after that, it's all history.

Yeah. So, OK, at that point, how much of it is from what you did to the Talon, how much of that transitions over into the Evo?

So pretty much a lot of it did. So I tried to do the same setup when I bought the Evo. I mean, the Evo was mostly back then, it was an expensive car. So I didn't want to make it a drag car. So I was like, oh, let's just put an FB green on the car. I want a street driver. I want to enjoy it. I want to make it a full drag car versus my Evo or my DSM, you know, parachute cage and all this. It wasn't something I could drive on the street. And it really upset me back then because I'm like, I don't want to spend all this money and not be able to enjoy it. So it started off small with Evo. Like I had all the little turbos, FB green, FB black. I went to a 35R and then went to the bigger turbos. And then eventually I was like, wow, now I got to stop driving the car because I got to do the bigger things. But all the knowledge building the engines, transmissions, all transfer from the DSM all to the Evo. So without the DSMs, I wouldn't know anything what I know from the Evo. It was huge help. And it was nice because the DSMs were cheap so you can mess them up. And the best way to learn is fix it, break it, learn from your mistakes. And that's how I learned everything I did. From tuning to building engines to transmissions, it was all hands on. Like, hey, that didn't work, it broke. Let me try it differently next time. Sure.

At what point do you start competing? Was that before the Evo?

So we were constantly competing. Even in 2006, we would go to every single race we could locally. You know, did a little bit of street stuff back prior to that, but I kind of stayed away from that. Like, once the cars got faster. But back, like when English Town was open, we would be there every, like, at least once or twice a month.

How far was that from where you're at?

English Town was about two and a half, three hours away. Dependent on traffic. But, you know, they would have all the events at English Town, the big events. So we would always go, you know, they were called like Summer Slam or Fall Nationals and stuff like that. So we would go to those events all the time. You know, we won a couple of things back then, you know, like there was an Evo class. It was Evo vs STI or Mitsubishi vs Subaru or something. So, you know, we did that. And then, you know, that ended up dying out pretty much at 2011 or 2012. And then we kind of took over other things to compete in.

Did you at this time period, did you ever run into the MA Performance guys, the FDSM?

At that point, we ran into them at the shootout.

Yeah, okay.

We were going to shoot out since 2005, 2006. We've been attending the shootout for over 20 years. But yeah, we did run into them. They used to have, they used to have a blue 1G prior to the other car when they had the FD car. So like, we remember them when they had the 1G, they would bring it to the shootout and actually want to street race it with that car. So it was, you know, when the shootout was actually doing stuff on the street, it was crazy. Sure.

But you avoided the street stuff for the most part?

We avoided the street stuff. It was just kind of, the cars are too fast. We did street stuff on the cars, like in the 13s, 12s. But nah, when they started getting faster, it just got a little too dangerous. Yeah, that's fair. I grew up and I was like, nah, once I got past my 21, 22 years old, I was like, I'm done with this stuff. I don't want anything to do with it anymore, you know? Couldn't pay me to do it on the street anymore. No way.

It's just too fast sometimes.

Yeah, it's too fast, too dangerous.

Yeah, I get it.

You got too much to lose, you know?

Yeah. So, okay, at this point, so you're pushing to Evo in the early 2010s. At this point, are you traveling around the country or just more like your region?

We were mostly regional. The only traveling we would do is to Ohio. We definitely made the Ohio trip every year. And then we would do the English town stuff. And then, our local track, we were there. Man, we used to race, there was street nights on Wednesday nights. We were there every single Wednesday on a street night, no matter what. If it didn't rain, we were there. Like, we were addicted. Like, you know, like when I even went to school, I would make sure my college schedule didn't have anything on Wednesdays so I can make sure I go to a track. That's how serious we took it. It was just fun. We did it with all bunch of friends. And we still kind of have the same tradition pretty much. Same group of friends that we started back then. We still hit the track all together. Now we just do track rentals instead of the street night stuff because the prep is a little better on track rentals.

When did the shop come into play?

So the shop came fully legitimized in 2015. So that's when I rented a building, got everything situated. Prior to that, I was all just doing school or doing it all on the side. So I ended up in my house at a big garage. I was doing it out of there for a while and just got way too out of hand where we had like Evos just coming in left and right. Trainees coming in left to right. Engine bills coming left to right. Like this is too much for me to handle. I need to make this a full time operation. So 2015 is when I rented a shop, got a dyno at the same time. And then that's when we kind of actually were able to get out of our shelf or shell. And then just kind of like, all right, now we can have people know what we do and who we are, because prior to that we're just keeping a small, local stuff. We don't want to be well known or anything. And I don't think anything of being serious about it. It's just like, hey, just a side gig thing for me. I had a different job at that point. I was working at a restaurant making pizzas and stuff.

Sure, yeah.

That was my thing. But then I took it serious in 2015. It's when really sat down and said, all right, we got to do this the right way and make things happen.

Did you have somebody helping you even out of your garage?

No, I was doing it completely by myself. My brother would come in and help me here and there because he's been there since day one with me. So he was always my right-hand man. If I needed something, he would definitely help me. But it was the majority of the stuff would be done by myself. Okay.

Even when you moved into the shop?

When I did move into the shop, it was still my brother helping me out. Then we got employees as soon as I moved into the shop. So then I learned, hey, if I pay someone, I can do a lot more work. I can push some of the easiest stuff. But even to this day, I still do all the tuning. I still do the engines and transmissions all by me. So the employees either will pull them in and out of the cars and help me out, clean them, vapor, wash them, stuff like that. But I still do 99% of the engine builds, training builds, transfer cases, tuning. Still all goes through me personally. Sure. And some people say, hey, why don't you help? I don't know. I don't know if it's a trust issue or I just like to do it. I think I just like to work maybe.

Well, that still helps you out a lot, right? Because all of that other stuff is super time consuming, you know?

Well, yeah, like people don't understand. Like when I do a transmission build, it takes longer for us to get this thing looking brand new, washing it. And we got like, you know, a hot tank, an ultrasonic, a vapor horning machine. But then you got to go back into the hot tank and back to the ultrasonic. It takes a full day to get the transmission looking pretty. And that's the hard part, not the hard part, I should say. That's the time consuming part. I get the gear set and do all my stuff, it takes me, you know, I can do it quicker than what they do cleaning the parts. So it's the same thing with engines. Like the prep takes longer than the actual build. And the prep is what needs to be spot on. You know, you need a clean engine, everything needs to be spotless. And that's what takes, like, it's tedious work. That's what I let my guys do. They are in there cleaning and I get it all back clean. And I'm like, oh, now I can start assembling. And then I do that. And it kind of works out really good, because you don't get fed up of the cleaning part if you do it yourself and then have to assemble it. Then you kind of like, that's when I think things start getting messed up a little bit on the builds, you know.

So at this point, then, so many people got working for you now, then?

So we got two people working for me and then I got a side guy that does a little bit of work for me also.

OK.

You know, part time cleaner and things like that.

Sure, sure.

But then, you know, we have, I have few guys that do like my social media, like guys that, you know, friends that are there, but not there, but I would consider them also as an employee, to put it that way.

Sure.

So we got a lot of people that help around, you know, especially when we go to the, you know, the shop is one thing. But when we go to the track, it's a completely different group of guys that we've been doing it for so long. They also do come in our full hands on deck with the race cars. Sure.

So obviously we've had some Honda guys in the show, so we kind of know the pecking order there. But what's the Evo world look like when it comes to records? Where do you stand and then where, who's in your competition?

So right now, my Evo is currently the record holder. It's a 727, and that was a 205. And the best mile an hour on that car is 210. With the Evo 10 world, I also hold the quickest at 769 and best mile an hour 189.

Oh wow.

And English holds the mile an hour record for the Evo 10 at 192 or 193. I believe somewhere there. And then right under us on the Evo, on the Evo general record, I should say, we got Lucas English from English Race. And I think he just went on 744. And below him is again, we have Nick Armoral, which is one of part of us. He's fully RRT car. Basically everything my car has, he has. And you know, we kind of work together with him. So we bounce everything, whatever his car works, my car doesn't work. So it's really good. And then I think after that, who's the next one? Is it Median after him? I think Median, which is also another RRT car.

Okay.

Then he got my Evo 10. And then I think you got Ben Hatchman after him.

Yeah.

Okay. So we were pretty high on the list with all the RRT cars. I think we have four out of the eight or nine or 10 in the seven second field. But you know, the ultimate goal is we're trying to see who can go sixes first on Evo.

Right.

Yeah. We're close, but so far. Yeah.

What'd you say you ran again?

727.

That's what it was. Okay.

Yeah. So when you get to that fast, those next few tensors. Yeah.

You know, it happened so quick this year. We went from a 740, 730, 720. And it was like every time we went to a track, it went quicker, quicker. So like, oh, I think we're going to go 17s next pass and 7.0s. And we just kind of hit a brick wall. We just constantly go on 730, 730, 730. So we kind of with something big needs to change the car for us to go a little quicker. Now put it that way. I don't think it's going to happen with what we got. So everyone's going to sequential transmissions and you're trying to stay away from that. And I don't know if I want to do that, but I might have to, but I don't want to. So I want to keep the car each pattern.

When you get to a certain level in a build, whether it be drag racing or drifting, road course, or just the b***** street car, you'll have to upgrade your transmission. And when we're talking sequential transmissions, there's no one on the planet with a stronger gearbox than 6XD. And the proof is in the pudding here, folks. Half the FD field is rocking a 6XD and even 3000 horsepower vipers have not been able to tame the best that 6XD has to offer. So if you're ready to take it up a notch, go to 6xdgearbox.com and when contacting them to place an order, use code MINNOXIDE5 or reach out via socials to figure out how one of the baddest transmissions on the planet could fit in your build. Let's get back to the show. No, I get it. But that also gives you more flexibility on where you can compete, too, because then you can play in that H pattern pool, too, as well.

I love racing the stick shift class. Even though we're not competitive in it because the cars are so much faster, it's still just a fun class to be in. So I just love the whole stick shift idea of being H pattern and actually having a little skill to drive the car, and anything can happen in stick shift. You can miss a gear, hit the tire, anything can happen. So that's why I just love racing stick shift. And going through a sequential, it'll be devastating. I don't know. Just because I started by building transmission. That's how I was able to afford what I have now. And going sequential just feels like it's just cheating on myself.

Do any of your other RRT cars have sequentials?

No, none of us have sequentials. So Lucas has a sequential right now and he knows how much I don't like it. I tell him to his face, that's okay. But the way the world's going, it's kind of have to join them sometimes. So there might be in the future, I might have to make a switch.

6XD is right around the corner.

So even if I do ever make the switch, I will still go back to H-Pattern eventually. It will be just to go run a number and then put it back to H-Pattern. So you can never, H-Pattern for life.

Do you do track support and all that stuff then too?

We do track support. Absolutely. So if we get customers there, Ohio is a big thing for us. So when we go to Ohio, I would say there's at least 40 cars there that we support.

I'm sorry, did you say 40?

40, yes. We get a lot of cars to go to Ohio. So we're saying we need to put a pop-up tent or something with a drive-through support. And I have tickets going in and we're gonna have somebody going there to vet the people to see if they're worthy of us to check their logs or not. But usually for Ohio stuff, I love just to help people. So they're there and we previously tune their car. As long as I'm not going specifically for our customers, no one gets charged. We're just like, just drive through, whatever. You want to give me a beer later down the road, that's all I ask. I don't want to get paid for track support as long as I'm not specifically going out for them, which we would. But if we're in Ohio and they're already there and we're already there, as long as I'm not underneath my hood, wrenching and you pull me out like this, then forget it, I'm not helping you.

Right, yeah.

As long as you're nice, you come there, I'll check you out and help you out, absolutely. Sure.

When's the first time you ran eights in the Evo?

The Evo went eights back in 2016. That was on full street trim, AC, full leather, full interior, everything. That was a huge accomplishment. And shortly after that, we ran the 890, and then we went to World Cup that year and ended up going 830. And it was still on a full street trim mode. So we were like instantly like, wow, I think this car can go sevens. And this is way before the whole seven second bounty came out, which made every Evo like wake up out of their hibernation and try to go fast. So we were like-

What was that?

This was 2016 or 17. There was a $15,000 bounty who goes sevens first in an Evo.

Oh, really?

So we were like, oh my god, we're going to do this right away because we were in a hot streak. Every time we went to a track, we went from 890 to 860, 850. We won the shootout that year. So we were on a hot streak. We were like, oh my god. Then we go to the World Cup. We made it to the semifinals. And we went 830. And we're doing it on a Synchro transmission, no dog box, no nothing. Because we had a dog box. We broke it. We put a stock trans. And we're like, wow, we're gonna put a dog box back in the system. We're going 7s. Nope. We were stuck going 830s for about four years, but believe it or not. Oh s***. Someone else, the Pro Quivo ended up going 7s. Then, then English went 7s. Then Median from Yorkies went 7s. And then we finally went 7s. And it was, I feel like it's the same way. I'm stuck right now at 730s, 720s.

Sure.

I was stuck at the 730s back then for four years. So let's hope that's not what it takes to go 6s now. But it was a rough, it was a rough four years.

Who puts up this Bounty? How does that work?

The Bounty was put up by SparkTech.

Okay.

So they were an ignition system back then. I'm not sure if they're still around. His name was Craig. So he put up the Bounty. So basically pretty much all these people sponsor, like we were sponsor of it. So anyone can throw in $150 to $500, whatever. So I ended up growing to like $15 or $18,000, I think. And back then it was a lot of money, which still is. But it wasn't even about the money. It's who's going to do it first. And Proko ended up doing it first. They did it with a sequential, but whatever. They did it first. They did it first. I'm not sure if that car's even around anymore. I don't think it is. I think it sold out somewhere in Brazil or something. But he ended up going 770. So he went from like being 8 something, jump right to 770. So that was impressive. So it kind of lit up a fire under my butt. Like I got to do something. That's when we kind of took the program to a whole different level. We're like, you know, we're done with this whole street car kind of look. Let's make the car serious. And then we just went from like 790 to a 760 or 770, 760, 750s, 40s. Boom, boom, boom, just we kept picking at it afterwards.

Sure.

So kind of lit up the fire.

When you say boom, boom, boom, but it wasn't that quick, obviously.

No, no, it wasn't that quick at all.

So okay.

There's a lot of struggles in the way. A lot of struggles.

When you went from 830s, 820s, what pushed you into the 7s? What were the big changes?

So we were still on an AEM. I was really old school, so there was still an AEM V1 in the car. The car was still a lot of like a street kind of car. Like it wasn't very serious. The turbo manifold wasn't the correct for the car. The turbo sizing, the engine program just wasn't there. It was still on a cast block. So the biggest changes we did is we switched ECUs. We went from AEM to Link ECU back then. Switched to a billet block. Way better turbos. I mean, we were on precision turbos then. It just, we stepped it up a size because we were trying to run like 68 millimeter turbo and try to go fast with that. And then we also switched from an ethanol fuel to a methanol fuel.

Okay.

So, but it came with a big learning curve.

Did all these changes happen at once or?

Pretty much we did them all like within a year. Okay. So we did all the changes and we quickly realized we, you know, it's a little too much. I had no idea what I was, I mean, I had an idea what I was doing, but like we were hurting the car pretty much every time we go out. Something would fail. We were finding all the weak links. Like once you start making a lot more power, you're just starting to find out, the clutches don't hold. This type of valve we're running doesn't hold, you know. This type of head gaskets we're running, they're leaking. We got to figure that out. The type of piston, the type of rod, the cranks were cracking. So we're trying to constantly figure out what the car likes, you know. The trigger we were running in the car with the link at that point, it was fighting with the cam trigger, and it would have some trigger errors, and every time that happens, you'd melt the head, and boom, there's a fire. And when you're in methanol, man, it's brutal. So a wiring harness, the whole engine will get destroyed. Do it again until you figure that out. It takes a year. Next year, it's the other problem. Oh, now the clutches are slipping. Figure that out.

So this all sounds very cheap, by the way.

Yeah, it's not cheap. And it's really, you know, all rockers are blowing and popping. And what's causing that? We got to fix this limiter issues. And these are the things no one's going to tell you, because if you've been through it, you're not really sharing this information. Right. So it's all new to everyone, you know, and there's only a few cars also in the sevenths, and they may or may not have ran this in the proms, and if they did, I don't know if they're going to be talking about it. So you're over here struggling, you know, the car is going sevenths, 780s, 770s, but it's not reliable. So it's like, this is not fun anymore. So we got to make a change. We erased the car like that for, we ended up going actually 750 or 40 on a Lincoln CU.

Okay.

We eventually got to figure it out. We're like, ah, so this is what's going to happen. This is what the car likes. This is what it wants for time. This is what it wants for fuel. It's a huge learning curve. And then the biggest change we made on the car is just saying, you know what? Let's just go to a real ECU and we put a MoTeC in the car. Once you put a MoTeC in that, if I put a MoTeC 10 years ago, oh, I would have saved so much money. That way, 90 day difference.

You could have got that bounty and paid for your...

It's a sore subject. Don't get me wrong. We still do link cars. They're fine. It's not the ECU. It's just the MoTeC is just that much better.

It's the creme de la creme.

It's the best ECU one can buy. Obviously, I was terrified to go to MoTeC because I'm like, everyone that tunes on MoTeC or has a MoTeC, they're like the best, the best. I'm like, well, I'm not the best, the best. Or am I? I don't know. So like, can I handle a MoTeC? A little bit of pressure there. A pressure. It's like, I'm already going really fast on a link ECU. I'm going 750s. Why do I want to go to MoTeC? I'm like, what if I go slower? It's already dialed in. It took me four years to dial this link ECU. And now if I go to a MoTeC, I'm like, oh.

You have to relearn everything.

Relearn everything.

Is it very different?

Not really. Once you know it, once you know the tuning aspect, be in the background, what the car wants, what the car needs, the MoTeC is fine.

So navigating it just took a little bit of time.

So what I end up doing to help myself, and this is one of the reasons why I built my Evo X. So I bought a plug and play ECU for my Evo X. And my Evo X was supposed to be a car I want to learn MoTeC on. So I built the car on pretty much budget as budget can get, like as cheap as possible. Like I don't want to spend more than 20 grand including the car. So cheap, cheap, cheap, whatever is in the shop is going in it. So I put the MoTeC in it, learned on my Evo X. I take it out, first time I go out with the car, and we're trying to go like, if we go eights, we're really happy. We don't want to go eights, we want to go nines in the car. First time I'm out with the car, we go on eight one or eight two or three, I don't know where we went. So we're like, oh my God. I'm like, I don't even know what the hell I'm doing still with this MoTeC, I'm still dialing it in.

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And first season out with the car, we ended up breaking the Evo World 10 record, which is 7-7-1, then we went 7-7-0. So first year having the car out, we broke the Evo 10 record. Wow. And that's when I was like, all right, we're putting MoTeC in the Evo 8. Like there's now it's easy. So we put the MoTeC in the Evo 8. The Evo 8 goes instantly at 740 off the trailer. First pass. It's like, OK, so now we're right back at square one, even better. And the car is just really consistent now. Nothing really breaks. We can stay on the same engine for a long time. We pulled the motors out just because we want to refresh them, not because they're falling apart and blowing themselves up.

Correct, yeah.

Prior to that, it's, you know, we... towards the end of the links, we got them kind of figured out because it ended up being a lot of parts issues too, that we figured out what's better, what's not. So, but MoTeC helps a lot.

Sure.

Huge.

Are there big differences between the Evo 8 and the 10?

Well, other than the engine, I think that would be the biggest difference in the car. But other than that, as the drivetrain stuff goes, it's really similar to the Evo 8. So, that's why we knew what the 8 always loved. So, we kind of like copied what the 8 wanted for as far as suspension wise. I mean, we literally pulled the suspension on the Evo 8 and put it in the Evo 10 and then just bought brand new stuff for the Evo 8. So, it's really, it's all the same. We still have some mounts that are different. So, we made some fabrication things to make different. But as far as like the transfer case, the rear end actually is an Evo 8 rear end. That's the first thing you do to upgrade on Evo 10 when you drag race in that. The trans is different, but honestly, it's beefier and better. The engine now is completely different. And I would almost argue it might be better. It's just not refined. There's not a lot of people that race the 10s. So, there's not a lot of people that are refining the engine like the 4G has. The 4G has been around for so long. So, there's so many companies just redesigned a lot of things on it that made it better. With the 4B is like, there's a lot of people that make 8-900 horsepower, but not a lot of people that make 1,400 horsepower to see what the weak links are. So, why is that? It's just, I don't know. People are scared of the aluminum block. They think it's weak. But, we make 1,400 horsepower like 60 pounds of boost versus the Evo 8 will never make that power at 60 pounds of boost. So, it has a way better cylinder head on it. But, it comes with little flaws it also had. The valve train on the Evo 10, the valve stems are really narrow. So, it bends valves a lot easier. Being on a bucket design also makes it good, but also kind of hurts you at the end too. After 10, 15 passes, you know, the buckets and the valves will start bending, closing up the lash a little bit. You lose a little compression, so you got to pull the head off. It's good and bad at the same time. Once some issues get resolved with Evo 10, I think it might be a better engine in the long run. For 1,000 horsepower Evo 10s, all day long, I would probably pick a 4B11 to make 1,000 horsepower with a 4G. After that level, the 4G is still a king, I would say.

Sure, it's all figured out.

It's all figured out. It's well dialed in. Put it that way. There's not a lot of competition for it, yeah.

For a 10, though, not a lot of competition right now.

For a 10, we got no competition.

Well, you still hold the record for that, right?

So we had the record and then we re-broke the record world cup just now with the 769.

When did you break then?

Just the world cup.

Oh, this year?

Yeah, this year, a couple of months ago.

So how long have you been the record holder for that then?

So we broke the record last year and then we re-broke it this year. And we never raced the car. We only took it out for world cup and once for testing. That's it. We just don't care about the car at all. So we took it out for world cup and we put in... What do we put in street? Limited street, we put it in. So last year, limited street was like a 760, 50 class car. So we brought two cars to world cup. So we ran one pass in the Evo 10. We qualified with a 7, 7, 2 or 3. And I was like, you know what? We should be good. We should be number like 3 or 4. But I didn't realize the whole field got so much faster. We weren't paying attention. We were worried about the Evo 8 and stick shift. So we ran it once on Thursday and parked the car till Saturday. And then I'm looking at the ladder. I'm like, oh, my God, there's cars going 730s now. Yeah, like I sure ran a little bit more. So next pass we got ended up getting eliminated on a 769 to a 770. I was sleeping on the light and the guy with a VA just on a button just took right off on me. It's hard to compete with an auto and a button, you know? Yeah.

So I don't know. It'd be kind of cool to see a little more progress in that. I'm just curious about the 10 just because it'd be cool to see that progress forward. There's no reason to if you're already just holding a record anyway.

Well, you know what's crazy about the 10? It's still got power windows in it. It could be a street car if you wanted to. So World Cup, I got my Evo 8, which is beautiful and then you got my Evo 10 that's thrown together. The Evo 10 draws a bigger crowd because it's impressive. I think most people can relate on the 10. They look at it as like, I can have this. The Evo 8, it's like, all right, you got to be good to build this car. The Evo 10 is like, any Joe Schmoe, you look underneath the hood, it's like, there's nothing special. It gives somebody hope they can have that car and they can build it. So I think that's why people like that car better, honestly.

That makes sense. Yeah. And what year did you say you threw MoTeC in again, roughly?

So MoTeC went in about two years ago.

Two years ago, okay. So everything changed two years ago.

Everything changed and that's honestly, if it wasn't for my buddy Whalen, so he used to be a big Evo DSM guy. Now he does a bunch of Can-Am's. So he was doing a lot of MoTeC stuff with the Can-Am, along with John Reed. So John Reed's the MoTeC guy.

That's the guy that tunes for UGR, I think, right?

Yes. So he does all the custom firmware. So Whalen hooked me up with John Reed. So, and that's how it all snowballed now. Now we try to push MoTeC out of the shop on every car we do.

Well, which system did you go, 182 or?

No, 150, MoTeC. So the Evo X actually have, I'm 130, so it's the basic of the basic. Like I said, it was never planned to go fast, so I bought the cheapest one you can buy. Sure. So it was the 130 and it's a plug and play, still on the factory wiring harness on the car. Like it's...

That's awesome.

It's a mess already, I'm embarrassed about it. I don't care about the car, put it that way. Sure. I just don't care, you know?

Sure. Okay, so then you break into the sevens. So then, are people going back and forth with you at this point, or is it just you just keep pushing that number down?

So with the Evo X, we got no competition. The only people that were in the competition was English, so Miles was driving the Evo X, but like they have... I talk smack to Miles every day to get the Evo X out, because it is fun to have competition. It makes me want to get the car out. That's the reason why I never want to race the car. There's nobody competing with it. With the Evo 8 now, there's definitely competition with the Evo 8. So there's few people that are building new cars. We got English that's right behind my tail. And Lucas is a very smart dude. So if anyone's going to beat me, it's probably going to be him. And if he does, I'm going to go sleep at the track for a couple of weeks and beat him again. But he's probably right now the only competition I have. Obviously the cars we do, like Nicks car, can beat me at any second. Like a car is a clone of my car. And he just had a bad luck season. Just small, stupid stuff. Like a starter grounding out in his car. He had like blow up valves leak and then a Mac valve was no good. All season he's had problems. But when that car won't have problems, it's the same car as mine. So there's opportunities to go faster than me, put it that way. And then obviously we have Median's car, which is he's been doing the whole entire car. He took two years off, which is the Yorkie's Evo. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it.

Which one?

The black one, the Yorkie's Evo.

Okay.

So we got his car, which probably could be a top contender. And then you got also Ben's car, you know, once he gets a few things sorted out. So I believe, I don't think I'm going to forget anyone in the fast seven second fields, but there's few guys overseas. And I think one car in the states, they're throwing threats, they're going to beat us. But okay, I would love to see it. More competition just drives me to go faster, put it that way. If there's no competition, I'm going to just lay low. I don't want to go race the car. It's expensive to race it. But if there's competition, I'm going to think outside the box and I'll figure out to go faster. Sure. So bring it on, please.

How many cars are you building out of the shop?

We do quite a bit. I mean, at all times, we have at least 20, 30 Evos at the shop. Parking lot and everything. So a lot of stuff we do, like big winter build projects over the winter. Like we'll do engines. But majority of the cars that come to the shop is either for an engine repair, the transmission, TKs. We do everything. So anything EVO related, like we'll wire the car, we'll do your rear end, transfer case, motor, anything. So like it all gets done in house. Nothing gets outsourced and then we'll tune the car. So it's a true one, you know, stop shop. So we'll get it all done. So all the work varies from, you know, someone that just blew a motor that we're just gonna put an engine in it, or someone that wants to do a full build. Like we got a car that we're just doing low mileage EVO 8 that we're doing a full build, thousand horsepower street build, like AC and all, MoTeC, the whole nine yards. And those we tried to do over the winter, especially, you know, try to take our time with them. But, we don't make money on making big builds, put it that way. It takes too long. We like to do them cause it's fun. That's the only reason we do them. But the money makers are, you know, I love to do a quick transmission job, a clutch job, or a quick, you know, engine build. Like that's what makes our money.

Yeah, like a 500 horsepower, bread and butter sort of deal.

Bread and butter, it's like, you know, I love like, hey, you come with a trans that needs, you know, sinkers are, you know, bad, and we just gotta take it out, you know, refresh the trans, put it back in. You know, those are the quick jobs we get done in two days. Builds take months and they tie up a lift, and you know, the way we work is like, once it gets on a lift and we're building a car, it doesn't leave the lift. So this is where we actually get the job done. So we don't like to do any builds. So if we're doing a full build, if it takes longer than two, three months, we're, I'm upset. Like we gotta get that done. And that's the rule. You put on the lift, doesn't get off the lift. So this way it ties up the lift, it forces us to get that car done. So that's how we do it. And don't pay me for it either. So pay me the end. Small payments if it's a big build. Right. It motivates you to get paid afterwards.

Do you still get any talents coming through?

We get calls for talents all the time. It has to be the right talent for us to take in. It devastates me because that's what got me started. But unfortunately they need so much. And like I tell the customer, we would have to do a ground-up build from the bottom to the top for us to take in. If you bring it in just for a simple fix, there's probably 10 other things wrong with it. And if you can't afford it, and then if you bring it somewhere else and you say, oh, Raif from RRT did this, but the rest of the car is a hack, and then it gets listed for sale, and you say, oh, Raif did this. I just don't want my name behind it anymore. So it's gotta be the perfect car, and we don't take many of them, I'll put it that way. So, even with the same thing with the tuning, if a DSM comes for a tune, I would love to take the money, but I tried to explain it to them, like nine out of 10 DSMs that come for a tune, they're not tunable. It's like there's something else wrong with them. So I don't want you wasting your time to come to the shop, because the ones that you can't tune, you waste more time. You spent three, four, five, six hours, and then how do you, I feel bad charging you for a tune when I didn't even tune the car, because there's so much issues with the car, and then they gotta come back. So those guys, I need video proof, picture proof, I gotta see the car prior, and then I'll take you in for a tune. And it's just because there's too much time wasted on both sides with DSMs. The Evos are different. The Evos are kinda just as bad sometimes.

I was gonna say, they don't have a great record for reliability. It's not as bad as Subarus.

Well, the problem is more people are getting their hands on them. So, you know, it's either you got someone really good working on the car, someone really bad working on the car, and then someone else gets it and thinks it's great, and then they bring it to you like, no, it's all messed up. But we do so many Evo stuff, there's nothing a customer comes in, unless it's a blown engine or a transmission's blown, there's nothing that someone comes into my shop for a tune that we can't get it done that day. We have all the parts. So we try to get those cars done right on the spot. With a DSM, we don't have all those parts, it's hard to do anything. With an Evo, you come in, nine to 10 times, they always need a fuel pump or a regulator or something like that. So we'll fix them right there because half my customers are two hours away, one direction. And we try to get them done so they don't have to come back.

Is there a sweet spot? Let's say I just bought an Evo 10 and I want to bring it to you and I want it to live, it's like my daily, but I want to go to the track and run 10s. Is there a good spot?

Yes. Evo 10s, stock engine, don't touch anything. Not even cams, nothing. 500hp is a very good spot for those motors. As long as everything is right, the only thing that could happen is you could break a piston on top of it and that's due to the ring lands just from the factory that are cut too tight. I've seen them with a 2,000 ring gap. If you have one of those engines, that's the only thing that can happen. But if you already have 50, 60, 70,000 miles on this engine and you've been in the 3, 400 horsepower, you're probably OK already. So if it hasn't blown up yet. Long as the air fuels are solid, the thing doesn't lean out, it will last at 500 horsepower forever. We've made like 657 on bone stock long blocks and Evo 10s. And honestly, I don't think they've, I don't think any of them are broken yet. But you see some that break at 450, but they break from dumb stuff. Kids are doing something stupid. But like 500 horsepower, Evo 10, dude, they hold together forever. As long as you're smart about it, just pay attention to your gauges. As long as your fuels are on point, you don't lose a fuel pump, that thing will last forever.

Yeah. Let's say I do pop an engine. What's the, you say you can do it in about a day. What's that cost me?

Honestly, if you pop an engine and you're only making 500 horsepower, we'll sell you a brand new crate motor from Mitsubishi. It's just more reliable and cheaper. But if you want to do a build, let's say, you did break it. You're spending about 12 to 15,000 for us to pull the engine out, do the bottom end, do the whole cylinder head, put it back together, all fluids, gaskets, seals, timing chain, break the engine in, do like four wheel changes, and then put it on the dyno and just give you turnkey, car back, all broken in.

Wow, that's a pretty good deal, actually.

If anything goes wrong, it's on us. So we guarantee the thing, it will make it off the dyno, we're driving it for a couple hundred miles, all broken in, you don't have to do anything. We hand you the key, it's running perfectly. If something goes wrong, when it's in my hands, it's covered all by us. So that's why I tell people, instead of them getting an engine X place and then bring it to me for a tune, it just makes sense, just get it done in one shop and there's no finger pointing. Because if I buy all the parts, something fails, it's on me. And things happen, nothing's perfect.

Oh yeah, you can get brand new s*** out of the box.

All the time, it happens. And we just know there's some brands that fail a lot more than others. So we've learned what not to use and what to look for.

What's a crate engine cost? Any idea?

So for Mitsubishi, a full crate engine, like retail, if you were to buy yourself, it's about $7,000. And that's a valve cover to oil pan. It's a really good deal if you think about it. And then you still get to keep your old core. So if you want to sleeve it, take your time and build it in the future, it's a really good deal if you think about it.

It's like a coyote short block, but you don't get heads, you don't get any heads.

Sure, sure. Yeah. And Mitsubishi used to sell it with like, Furio, Alternator, Clutch, Turbo, everything for the same price. And then finally they just took it all and just made it a long block instead of it's not a full long block. Yeah. It's crazy. It used to be like actually 4,500 bucks. It was so cheap. Like, yeah. But this Crane Motors from Mitsubishi, I don't know how much longer they're gonna last, you know?

Sure.

They're probably gone for a little bit, but you gotta remember all the Lancer Rally Arts, they run the same engine. So they're all over the junkyard because they have the MR transmission with SST, so they're all blown up and they're all over the junkyard. So you can go pick up a junkyard engine for $2,000.

Sure.

So Evo Xs are really, it's really a great car. With a 4G, you're not finding a used motor for two, three, four grand, you know what?

And I bet 500, 600 horsepower, you're still having a blast, you're driving around the street.

I mean, see, the Evo Xs at 500 horsepower, they just don't feel that fast. An Evo 8 at 500 horsepower feels fast.

Okay.

It's different. The Evo X is more of a luxury car, kind of.

Yeah.

It's more of a daily luxury, comfortable car. The Evo 8 is like a raw car. At 300, 400 horsepower, it still feels fun. The Evo Xs at 300, 400 horsepower are kind of boring. At 500, it's okay. But an Evo 8 at 500 is a blast. Way more blast. It's just more of a raw race car kind of thing.

Okay. So how much am I, let's say I want an Evo 8, I go pick one up on Facebook Marketplace and I take it to you. What am I going to be into that for? Just to get 600, 700 horsepower.

Well, on an Evo 8, I do recommend building the engine right at about 500 horsepower. 400 torque, 500 horsepower is where we recommend that. I mean, it'll be the same thing. So the engine build wise is still going to be about 15 grand plus all the accessories. So if you want to make 600 horsepower, you're going to need all the supporting mods, the turbo fuel system. Okay. To make a solid, and this is to do it really correctly, to do a 700 horsepower, which I feel like it's a really good spot. 7-8 on an Evo 8 is where they don't break all the time. If you drop me off a car that needed everything, you're going to spend about 35 to 40 grand to do it really right with everything nicely done. Tuned out the door, 700-800 horsepower. And it has the potential to make more if you want to down the road. But if you want it to last, leave it at that power level.

That's good power for that little car too, man. You're beating a lot of stuff at that level.

Anything after that 800 horsepower mark, they start getting a little... It's not that they're unreliable. It's like whoever owns it needs to be a little bit mechanically inclined to do some things themselves or else you're going to be spending a lot of money to bring it to me every time you need something a little. Stupid stuff will go bad.

Yeah, when you're making 200 horsepower per cylinder at that point.

Exactly. People don't understand. You make that kind of power, you're more likely not going to drive that car a lot. You can't just be like, oh yeah, don't do anything to the car, just let it sit. You drive it for 500 miles a month or less, you better change the oil every 500 miles. People are like, oh no, I'm going to change every 3,000 still. No. If it sits for that long, you gotta be on top of maintenance a lot more. Fuel sitting in the tank with the 85, a full month and it just sits there. You gotta probably pull those injectors out, clean them out. So there's a lot of maintenance that goes on that people don't understand. Sure. So we try to educate customers because you just have no idea. People just don't know.

At that level, yeah.

Yeah, at that level, they just don't know.

Well, let's talk a little bit about engine program then. So from my understanding, Ben's also running your program now, right?

Yes, correct.

Okay. So what does it take to run 7s with the 4G? Are you billet block at this point, too?

We're a billet block. You don't need a billet block to go 7s, honestly. Sure. You do the billet block for more reliability to last a little longevity things. So actually, English is still on a cast block.

Oh, really?

They had a billet block. They broke it and they didn't want to spend the money to buy another one. I'm sure they're going to go back to a billet block at some point.

Yeah.

At some point. But Lucas likes to do things on a budget, and I don't blame him. But definitely, billet block to go seventh if you want to make it really reliable. We spent a lot of time on redesigning pistons and redesigning rods. So that was the number one thing that we were having the most issues. We would be cracking pistons left and right on the skirt. So we constantly kept adding more and more and more materials. So we worked closely with Wisegal. Since 2015 to now, let's say we have about 30 to 40 revisions on pistons. And these get expensive because they're not throwing at us for free. Sometimes one set or two sets here and there. And you got to buy because we're doing engines for my car, Midian's car, Nick's car and other customers. So we got to buy. And these things take like six to eight weeks sometimes or longer. So you got to buy. I got to buy 20 sets of these. You buy 20 sets, we put them in our car. And I'm like, these things are, they're working, but we find another issue. So now you get stuck with like five sets that we didn't use. We went to upgrade to a new set and then we got another 20 sets. So we got a lot of old stock stuff that we can't run. And even I don't want to put in a smaller power car. Same thing with the rods. So rods we've been, gosh, so we've been through a lot of revisions. So we finally did our biggest revision ever and it's been game changer. When was that? So we did this about a year and a half ago, maybe two years ago, but we've been full testing and we released them about six months ago to the public so people can buy them. So we ended up, all these aluminum rods run 3.8 bolts. So if you look at a 3.8 bolt, I mean, it's a 3.8 bolt, looks nice, whatever you think it's big enough. You know, we do a lot of steel rod stuff especially and some of the steel rods run a 716 bolt. So we're like, you know, why don't we run a 716 bolt? So I talked to a rod company and they're like, oh no, that's not enough meat here. You know, we got to make this whatever. So we made this rod so big, which barely goes down the cylinder bore. So like it basically scrapes the cylinder bore down. We ended up making it so beefy, like a normal rod off the shelf is usually like 500 grams. This is like, you know, close to 700 grams. People will say, oh, it's too heavy. Oh my God, it's going to destroy other stuff. But when you're a full blown drag car, who cares, man? When this rod snaps up to three passes and this one doesn't, it's a huge thing. So we made the rod huge on the bottom, put a 716s rod bolt in there now. Man, all the issues with rods breaking after five to 10 passes have gone away. Wow.

Okay.

And we're running 110 pounds boost on the car. Holy Jesus. Over 11,000 RPM. And we pull them apart and they still look phenomenal. So we usually have the 20 pass rule. If you mix the 20 passes, pull the engine apart. Yeah. Even if it looks great, we put new rods, pistons and a crank in it. So that's pretty much, we live by that rule. Sometimes if we go to a big event and the engine's got 15 pass, we'll switch it right before the big event. Sure. It's just not worth a window and a block. Cause once you window the block, it really distorts the whole billet block. You got to lie and bore it and do a bunch of stuff. We heard all that from Ben. It gets really expensive to repair them. Now we have repaired them and we do repair a lot of them, but there's a point sometimes the repair costs just as much as buying a new one. So just buy a new block. So on a low power car, I say repair, put it this way. I used to repair mine, six, seven repairs on the same block. I have those are retired now, like no more. I can't repair them anymore. And I learned, cause like I repaired the repair block, the things that would happen after like five to 10 passes versus the brand new one, you know, it wasn't worth repairing it cause I would have spent a thousand dollars more about a new one cause that just bit me in the butt and something else went wrong with the repaired one. So it works, but not for longevity, put it that way. Sure.

Who's billet block do you use? You have what? Do you like have your own or?

So we use the Bullet Billet Block.

Oh, okay.

Sure. So we've been working with them for, man, when do we go bill it? 2018, 19?

Sure.

But, you know, they're great people over there. So they, you know, there've been some revisions on the blocks, not too many, but it's really, you know, they listen to the changes we need. There've been definitely some little flaws.

So you kind of work with them on how to improve their block?

Yes.

And then does that apply? Is that like a specific to you program or everybody can buy it?

Everybody gets it. So once they do the little revision, I think all the new 4G's afterwards will have all the revisions. So like, you know, we're not, we don't want to be like, oh, get exclusive to us. There's not too many people that run it anyway. So if somebody gets it, let them get something that's already better. And I mean, it's simple as just moving the oil galley like a couple of thousands over. So we notch for the aluminum rod. We're not going through the oil galley. Simple stuff like that, you know? So like, there's a lot of little changes there.

Minor improvements.

Yeah, minor improvements, but not much. So we finally, the last improvement we just did, and we're still, the engine's in the car, so I'm not sure how it's gonna do. We ended up changing the material of the girdle on the bottom to a better aluminum to see if it's gonna move around on us once we break the engine. So we actually have to break it to see if it's gonna be stronger. So it might take a while. I don't know when we're gonna put a hole through it, but we need to shoot a rod through it to actually see if it's better. Put it that way. And it happens. So I can't say I've never shot a rod. If you don't shoot at least one or two rods a season, you're not going fast enough. At least. But I race the car a lot. We go to a track every other week. So at least 15 times, maybe 20 outings.

How many passes do you think you get in a season? Between both cars even, like you personally?

I don't know. I go, so let's say 10 to 15 times a season. Depends if I get five passes. Maybe 75 to 100 passes a season. I drive the race car a lot. Nick and I go out. If it's nice out on Fridays, nice out, we're out at the track. We're crazy. We got problems. We shouldn't be doing this. We're really dumb. We're not smart.

You just don't like money. That's the problem.

We just like to go fast. When you have a buddy of mine that's just crazy as I am, so we do it together and we have a group. We go on a track, it's fun, put it that way. We go fast, it's very exciting. You go slow, it's a little depressing, but at the end of the day, we go have fun and the group of friends that always show up, we're always at least 15 to 20 of us, we go to a track and it's like an outing. Some people like to go to a bar for the weekend, we like to go to a track for the weekend. Keep the party in for PRI to get messed up here at the bars. But when I'm back home, all I think about is, next Friday it's not going to rain, what am I going to change in the car? And usually we only go to a track if there's a change on the car. So there's constantly something getting changed. We won't go with the same thing twice. Unless it broke instantly and we didn't get to test that product. So it's constant testing, testing, testing.

So okay, so you get the build block from them. So then you said the pistons and rods, that's you though.

Those are specific to me, correct.

Okay, so then you're designing those and making those or how's that working?

No, no, so we're just talking with Wisego what we want and they just give them for us. And same thing with the rods.

Okay, so like the specific specs and all that stuff that you want for them.

So yep, specific specs. So do we want them exactly like this? You know, we want the rod, you know, even though we run on 156 mm rod, but we want a specific height to like exactly being like, you know, let's, for reference, we want to like 11,000 shorter, 12,000 shorter. So when the rod grows, you know, they usually do like specifically 10, but we'll go like, no, let's go to like 13, cause the engine we run them in like this, cause billet blocks are completely all different than a cast block. So we go, everything moves around. Same thing with the piston, the height of the piston will change constantly to where we want it. Sure. Yep. And then compression ratios change a lot. Like just this year, we finally went to like a super low compression. And it's funny cause we will get customers just complaining, I want the high compression engine and this and that. I'm like, listen, if you're trying to make 40, 50 pounds of boost, 60 pounds of boost, like compression is not going to matter. It's only going to make the engine live a lot longer. So just go with the lower compression no matter what you do. Just stay with low compression. Sure. You might lose a little low end off boost, but you're not even going to feel it. You're not even going to notice it. It's not worth it. The engine will just live so much longer. It's not worth it. And the tuning window goes huge. You can mess up the tune. Well, to a point you can mess up the tune, you'll survive.

Can you just compensate it with more boost then?

Yeah, it honestly doesn't even take much boost because we did back to back testing on my car. We went to a 10L compression, right to an 8L compression, didn't touch the tune up, 205 vs. 205, same exact mile an hour. Oh wow, nothing changes. Same boost, same everything, same timing, I didn't change anything. It's probably the engine is running more efficiently, it's not struggling.

Right, makes sense.

Yeah. It's probably just, honestly with the higher compression, it's probably deadening, we're not seeing it. And so it's hurting itself. Yeah, making a little more power maybe, but at what price?

How useful is it?

Then it's gonna come apart after two passes. It's not worth it.

What do you use?

Well, I don't know if we've talked to anybody that does an engine program that does this much real world testing. I mean, you're constantly...

Yeah, we're constantly testing. Constantly testing, yeah. We never stop. That's the thing. We're always trying to figure out a way how we can get this thing to stay together all season. It's probably never gonna happen, but how can we make it stay together all season without working on it? Because we're getting older. I don't want to work on the car. Yeah. Unfortunately, we have to.

Well, lucky for you, it's a little 4-zone. Everything is light in there too. Compared to some of these guys. Like we know that the Enth Moto guys are working on V10s. Those f****** ain't light.

Yeah, in a shoe box too. Like it's tight fit in there. Yeah.

Yeah, like I picked up a crank out of Adam's old Viper and I'm like, it's f****** heavy.

We, when the car is built, like all the fab work around the car, if you look at it, it's designed to be worked on very easy.

Okay, sure.

Well, there's things like, hey, like we're really, like any bolts, like if they're not 10, 12, 14, 17, 19, can't use anything between. Those are the only bolts and nuts can be used on the car. I don't want a 15 millimeter. I don't want a 13 millimeter. I don't want a 16 millimeter anywhere in the car. No, 18 millimeter. I lose my mind. So make it simple. Like those are the tools you need and that's it. Like everything's simple.

Right.

The motor to come out, like you specifically notched a frame rail, this section right here, so the train can just fall right off. You know, so suffering doesn't have to get touched or dropped. You know, intercooler, the way it's placed in the car, you can pull the engine transmission, the intercooler does not need to move. The turbo can actually stay in the car. So everything's very simplified. Smart. Where the motor can go in and out. We can do a motor at the track in the car, like pull it apart, back fluids running in about an hour, 25 minutes. Completely done.

Holy s***. Rebuilding the same motor. No, not the same motor, no, completely new long blocks.

Yeah, okay, okay. We will swap the whole engine and it will be completely ready to get dropped and the only thing we have to swap is intake manifold and fuel pump on the engine. Watch everything is already on the new one and we just literally just put it right on. So, hour 25.

That's still good.

And I bet we can do it quicker, but like that's just not killing ourselves. It's kind of cool that you can get it done in that quick amount of time. So basically you can do it between rounds if you need to. Well, that's the car is designed to be like that. Now, my Evo 10, if I pop the engine, I probably park the car. It's not built to be worked on. We will do an engine overnight or something like that, but now that one will take us about five, six hours to do at the track. A lot longer compared to the 8. So almost like changing the oil, just changing the engine.

Yeah, you got that dialed.

Yeah, it's like, it's simple, you know? The motor comes out of the car maybe every two, three races. So like it's got to come out no matter what, you know? If it's not the engine, the trans at least has to come out, the clutch has to come out. Something constantly breaks and snaps. Like this season we've snapped nine or ten input shafts in the transmission.

Oh wow.

Yeah, so now we're working with PPG to make something way stronger. So once that comes out, all the Evo guys are gonna get the better input shaft now. So we sell a crap ton of PPG stuff and now there's an option where you'll have an input shaft that's almost not breakable at all. And we've seen people with FP0s twist and break these input shafts. And then you have cars like mine that was making 16, 17, 1800 horsepower, never snapped an input shaft for years. And I was like, how are these smaller guys snapping theirs? And now I see why, because it's usually you're over, if you over clutch the car, so if you have an FP0 car with a triple disc clutch, you don't make enough power to slip it between a shift, you're gonna break the input shaft like a 600 horsepower. So we learned that now at 2000 horsepower, we always had a clutch that slipped a little bit, now we went to a really b***** clutch, which is a big problem, because we always would slip a clutch, slip a clutch, slip a clutch, now we put a b***** clutch, now we break input shafts. So now we'll put a real input shaft and it's gonna benefit the slow guys too, because they're having this issue too. And we were always thinking like they're doing something wrong, but they're not doing anything wrong, it's just this input shafts. When you have something that shocks that hard with a dog box, it just needs to be something bigger. It has nothing to do with material or anything that, you know, the strain you guys are doing, it just needs to be bigger. It was never upgraded from the factory size, if you think about it. Sure. So that's gonna be the next thing.

You're just a problem solver. I like it.

Well now I'm like, what's the next thing? So now when we do this input shaft, what's gonna break next in the trans? Because nothing used to break, so now I'm like, was that the fuse? The clutch is the fuse, now it's the input shaft, now it's the fourth gear, so now we're in the talks. You know, while we're redoing this gear, so let's make fourth gear bigger. I think that's gonna break next. It's constant chasing. Chasing the next weak link, put it that way.

Yeah.

Which sucks.

Yeah.

I wish someone else was doing all this, not me. That would be a lot cheaper.

What do you run for a turbo in that car?

Apex.

Okay, so when did you go Apex?

We were the first Mitsubishi to ever go Apex. Like one of the few import guys that went to Apex. We talked to Apex when they used to be in the hallways here, not in there. And they were all about tractor pulls and all a bunch of stuff. So I remember talking to them, it was 2019 or 2020, right before COVID, I believe. So we switched to an Apex. We would break other turbos every two, three passes. The back wheel would just shoot right out of the car because we were trying to run them 80, 90, 95 pounds of boost and just these turbos didn't like that. So we would have to, it would always break them a shift, three, four shifts. So we would have to make the shift a lot softer. So we would have to go real easy on the shift to not get the boost to kick in hard to keep the turbos together. So that was kind of slowing us down. We couldn't really push the car. So we switched on Apex and we've been trying to break them and we can't break an Apex. It's unbreakable. I don't know how, but it's a stout turbo. You know, I'm sure other turbo brands are, you know, making power, but the Apex is just reliable, put it that way. Sure. It might not make more power than your competitors. Or maybe it does. I don't know. But we're there just to be reliable. It just sucks to put a turbo every two, three passes when you try to push it this hard. I don't know. It's just honestly, it can never switch to another brand. Put it that way.

Yeah.

You're gonna have to pay me a lot of money.

We had them on the show and I think they do, they were like extra bearings and stuff in them and everything's still hand built by them and everything. So yeah, I think you're getting a good quality product.

The quality is just unbelievable. How good they are is, again, like I wish we went to an Apex a long time ago, but you know, other turbos were great. You know, we had a precision in my Evo 10 at first and ended up going fast with the precision. So we didn't have a problem. Nothing broke in the 10 for the precision ones, but you know, Apex ended up hooking us with the turbo for the 10, so couldn't say no. Sure. But I wasn't going to spend the money on the Evo 10 for a turbo, I was like, no. I was like, if you guys want to give me a really good deal, I'll put one on. If not, I'm leaving the precision on. And it went fast with the precision, you know? So it just went faster with Apex, but I don't think it was the turbo change. Maybe it was, I think just more time with the car. I had it a little bit faster. Yeah.

All right. So I've had this question probably for the last almost hour here. So you said there's a couple of clones of your 8 pretty much, right?

Yes.

What does it take to make a record holding Evo 8?

We have a guy that wants or we had a guy he never came through. So I had to price out the whole build. It's about $240,000 if we start from scratch to build a car. So I already priced it out. That is without supplying a car. I mean, again, the car is only a tiny grant, I would say. That's not supplying a car. It could go a little bit more. That's a good starting point. That would be like definitely a seven second pass off the trailer, I would say. That doesn't come with the maintenance program. To do what you got to do, you need two of everything. You need what? You need two of everything. So you need two motors, two trainees, two transfer cases, you know, two transfer, two rear ends, stuff like that. Will it go sevens with the $240,000? Yes, but not for long. You need two of everything to do it seriously. If you don't want to do it seriously, you send your old stuff back, we can fix them, but without having two of everything, you're not, it's hard to do it. You got to be able to rotate.

So real quick, go down to that build sheet. Obviously the MoTeC 180, oh sorry.

150 MoTeC, yep. Yeah, 150 MoTeC, obviously a full custom turbo, exhaust manifold, you spend in between. Turbo kit, you know, turbo kit and all the custom stuff, you spend eight to ten grand on that alone. The full long block, if you're doing a full bill of motor, easily 30 to $40,000 on that. Electronics, MoTeC, wiring, sensors, tuning, 20 grand. This is going a little overboard, you gotta eat every sensor possible, obviously.

Right, yeah, of course.

People listen out there, MoTeC's not that expensive, usually, you know, it's only a couple hundred dollars more.

But if you're trying to do everything about chase records.

This is if you're doing chase records, cause that much. If you're doing just a regular car, a simple MoTeC's like 30 pound a box. It's cheap, it's not that bad. People got their mind that MoTeC's the most expensive thing in the world, it's not that bad. Obviously, chassis, fab work, you gotta spend easy 40, 50 grand on a decent chassis and all the fab work. Notching the front end, all that stuff. You know, transmission, 10 to 15 grand. Transfer case, like four, five, six grand. Clutch, you know, intercooler, you name it, man. It adds up. Suspensions, wheels, tires, easily gets in the $200,000 range, you know? So, but if you're serious about it and you do it once and do it right, it's a lot cheaper than band-aiding and keep patching it up, adding it in after, you know?

Sure.

So, it gets expensive, you know?

And I'm gonna be sick listening to that, damn.

Just in the injectors in my car, we run three sets of ID2600s at $1400 per set. So just in fueling, we got the money. That's just in injectors. Then you got the fuel pump, fuel cell. It gets really expensive, you know? Yeah. You know, like, looking back, I don't even know how I afford it. I don't know. It just, I think it just slowly progressed.

Yeah, when you do it piece by piece. Yeah, I've done that on builds before, too. You start to add it up and you go, oh, s***.

Yeah, I don't want to add it up. It's expensive. But to me, my car is my business. You know, that's my advertising. I don't advertise and do anything else. My car does the talking. So that's why I can do what I do, because that's what brings me customers. So it's money well spent. And I have a blast doing it. I love what I do. Like, you know, I have a smile on my face every time I'm at work, you know? I'm not depressed going to work. I want to go to work. So I love what I do. Yeah, it's awesome. It's a fun thing, you know? And I love like helping people out. I mean, if you talk to me all in a bad, whatever, I don't care about you. But if you really care about going fast and you're like, you know, you're down to earth person, then I will help you with anything you need, put it that way.

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, race tracks, 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. What's the best moment you've ever had in an Evo 8? Do you have one?

My best moment in the Evo 8 is when I first broke the world record. It was in Maryland, and at that time it was a 7.62. This was, what, three, four years ago?

Sure.

I mean, you know, it was... I never thought I could ever have a world record car in my life. It was never the goal. Like, when I was young, looking up at AMS and Buschr and John Shepard and seeing these guys go on sevens, you're like, there's no way I could ever do that, you know? Like, it's physically impossible. And then when I went, like, 7.70s and then I went to 7.65, and I'm like, man, there's a chance I could break this record, but I still never thought it's possible. And I remember getting the time, so I did cartwheels, jumped up on my golf cart, and I might have fell down. I don't even know what I did. It was the most exciting moment, you know? It's a good feeling. When you break a record, especially when you work hard for it, and you just put everything you can in it, it's huge, definitely huge, you know? And it's still like that when I break the new records, but it's like now I'm beating my own record, so it's not as fun. Not only it lasts like five minutes of excitement, not the whole day.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it's not as cool. So someone needs to come, you know, get it away from me so I can get that excitement again.

Sure. So is it, because there's been more, okay, let me rephrase this in a good way. The current 4G record, that's in a DSM, right? Like a Talon or what's it currently?

No, it's an Evo. So you have the Evo records and then there's a 4G, I guess. So overall 4G, if you put all the 4G's, there's like Jet Race and there goes like 6Os and theirs, but it's a pro rear wheel drive car. Sure. And then I think the next, like if you want to just talk about all wheel drive 4G's, the next one above me would be Devin. So he goes 685s and 8XRs also. So if you want to compare 4G to 4G, all wheel drive stick shift.

Sure.

So he'd be the only one. The other cars would be like either a Draxter or a rear wheel drive.

Because I know like Shepard was doing the, he had some awesome records in the early 2000s.

He won 770 and took forever people to catch them.

Okay.

What he won, I think it was back in 2006 or 2007, he won the 770 and that was just, it's still impressive, put it that way.

Right.

It'd be impressive now, but it was way more impressive than, I mean, he did it with like a Cast Turbo Wheel. It was probably in an AEM, like it was just really simple, if you think about it, you know? There's no technology to help him to do what he did. So for what he did, like he paved the way for all of us. And I think, I would say he's probably the biggest role model of people look up to him.

Yeah.

You know, I wish he would take their car back out, but he's, I think it's just too much catching up.

At this point, you don't think he'd just come out here and smash everyone if he updated it?

I don't think he would. I wish he would.

Yeah.

He should. I just think the car just so outdated, he would have to build, rebuild the whole entire car. It's too, like what it did back in the day to redo everything. It just, the technology is so more advanced for him to redo it. He would have to go start from scratch on the car. And I don't know if he's got it in him to put all that time. I get it, it sucks. It's a lot of work, you know? But it'd be fun to see him come out. I hope he comes out one day, man. That'd be awesome.

Yeah, relive the glory days.

Yeah, it would definitely be cool.

What do you thought? Should we pop the usual three?

Yeah, absolutely. Let's do it. 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. Do you have an unlimited budget?

Track car?

Oof.

I mean, I'm not a liar. I love my Evo. I'm leaving it as a track car because I love banging gears. I'm so in tune with the car. It's like my baby. Like no matter whatever happens, that is my car, I feel like, you know?

All right.

Yeah. Yeah.

So what's the next one? Show car and a daily driver.

Daily driver. Man, I love my diesel like TDI. So like an Audi Q7 TDI or something along the way, something that's reliable, it's not going to break. I can drive it with anything wrong with it. It's still driving it to be no matter what. Yeah.

I almost got one of those from my wife. I was looking at those. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Like we've owned, the whole family owns TDIs, dude, anything, anything diesel like that.

Yeah, of course you do. Of course.

You know what I'm talking about. And a show car, man, I don't know. Like I would love a nice, clean MK4 Supra.

Okay.

Very clean one. Something spotless like, you know, and blue would die for that.

Oh, I know.

I like that teal blue. Is that what you're talking about? Or like blue blue.

No, like the blue blue.

Okay, blue blue.

You know, like that's, and stick, just cruise it. That's what I would love.

Nice.

All stock, just untouched or?

Wheels, exhaust, simple bolt-ons.

Yeah, sure. You know?

Just nice, elegant, like not right started at all. Just very, very well done.

Kind of like a nice like mild, like 650 wheel build sort of deal.

Yeah, that'd be awesome. They probably would never drive it. I'd probably just sit in my shop. Yeah, like all my other cars.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, sweet on that note, man. Where can everybody find you?

I mean, everyone can go on our social media. So Facebook under RRT Motorsports, Instagram under RRT Motorsports or on our website at rrtmotorsports.com.

Sure.

So or they can catch a lane or they can catch a lane. Lebanon Valley every Friday, basically in New York, or we'll be at Ohio or we'll be at Maryland, you know?

Sure.

So we might make some Florida events this year and see what we can do, you know?

Awesome. Raif, thank you very much for coming on the show.

Thank you for having me.

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

Awesome. Appreciate it, guys. Thank you. Yeah.