190. Kelly Aiken on Making Cars Hook, The GTD, Perfecting 60-130s, and Suspension Geometry

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, and I'm here with my Ford Loving Co. host, Dan.

Yep, finally the Ford Loving comes into play here.

Oh, you've been doing some Ford Loving, huh? Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm just gonna jump right into it, man. Today we are here with Kelly Aiken. I should have asked you before the episode. That's how you say your last name, right?

Yes.

Okay, just making sure. But anyways, we are here today.

We got some Aiken, all kinds of people. Yeah, it's just Aiken.

Sure. Well, first of all, thank you for this backdrop. When you got this delivered in red, my first car was a red car, really similar to this shade, and I love it. I'm glad you got a nice spec GTD. So thank you for not being boring about it.

My first Mustang, my first, actually, yes, it was my first Mustang, was a 95 Cobra that was red. I took my wife that's upstairs working to prom, my high school prom. She was in college, I was in high school, but I had the 95 Cobra, took her to prom in it. So we have a prom picture and I plan to recreate it with her at some point with this car. So it's like, you know, when I knew that I was going to marry this girl, and then, you know, now we've been married for a hundred years, but, you know, we get to recreate it. I'm hoping I was in a white tux, right? I don't know back then in small town, Texas, I was like, you got a white tux, you have to be different. So I'm hoping she'll, she'll let me recreate it with the craziness with what we had, what we were wearing, you know?

So can tell us a little bit about what it is that you do, like what you've done in the industry over the last, you know, 20 years, whatever. How do we get to where we're at today?

Yeah. So a very long story made short is that, you know, I back in like the mid nineties, my sister married a guy who, I didn't really know much about cars. I did, but I didn't, you know, you know, Vipers and stuff and like test the Rosas because Michael Jordan had one. Yeah. But my sister said, you know, Jim, what's his name, is going to come over in his car. He just got it back from LG Motorsports. And we lived in a town that was by Wiley, Texas. That's where LG Motorsports was. And I was like, cool, I don't know what any of that means. You know? And this guy shows up in a freaking built, like built, built, like back in the nineties, like big wing, 17-inch Nittos, you know, like a roll bar. You got to get in and put the heart in it. And as a built trans, manual trans, it was a SS. Like a 97, 96, 97 SS Camaro that was built. Built blower, the whole nine yards. We got in that thing, dude. And he takes off and I'm like, was he shifting? And I was addicted right then. I literally started writing books of, if I get a Dodge truck, here's the engine. Here's the, and I was 14. I don't know.

Oh, cool.

Okay.

Yeah.

So that's what got me into cars. I was addicted ever since, right? So in high school, I had like a built El Camino. I had like seven cars before I graduated high school. I had, dude, I had everything. Like I had like a Camaro, 94 Camaro, T-top car, white wheels, white car. I had a Dodge Avenger. They were kind of cool back then.

Oh, I had one of those.

Yeah. And I had like just a Mark 8, Lincoln Mark 8, because they had the Cobra 4 valve in it.

Yeah.

One of those in high school.

The Mustang with a tuxedo.

Yes. Yeah.

Yeah.

Air suspension and stuff, you know? So I got addicted. Then I started racing. I started going to the drag strips. I started street racing and all that stuff. And I, you know, fast forward. I went to the military. I made her go with me. I called her from basic training. I'm like, we got to get married. There was no romance. It was like, we're getting married. You're coming with me to wherever I go. So I got picked to work on nuclear missiles, ICBMs, the ones down on the ground. It was kind of an interesting deal. And I was in Wyoming and I bought my first car on my own. That was like, it was a 99 GT2 valve car. And this was in the early 2000s, right? And the LS cars were just gangster back then. They were gapping everybody. And I just made it a mission. I'm like, I want to prove a point with my 2 valve. And it became a pretty well-known car in that part of the country, you know, Colorado, Wyoming area, because it was way faster than everybody's 2 valves. It was a stick car. I've always been a manual trans guy. And then that process of making that happen, that's when I learned the importance of traction. How would a bolt-on nitrous 2 valve Mustang manual trans car beat a heads cam sprayed SS Camaro? On paper, that's not even close. It's not. Roll race, not even close. I was out there on Nittos and stuff, you know. I'd have eight cars on them by the time I'm hitting third gear. And then that's when I learned the importance of traction. That was when it clicked. I can beat these cars if I just make my car hook. So I did some time in the military, came down here, and then it just, all my buddies, we were out street racing and stuff. I had that two valve when I came down here. I did a blower and all that stuff on it. And then I got into four valves. That's when I realized, holy crap, I'm wasting my time with the two valves. Four valves were great. And it was just one thing after the next, snowballed into having a whole bunch of different Cobras. I'm still to this day a big Cobra guy. I got a funny story about that. But, and then I got into the 03 or 04 Cobras. And I liked that car so much that I skipped the S197s. Totally skipped it. Because I had gotten addicted to independent rear suspension. And that was a good thing, though. Because that's why I'm in this chair, I guess. Because I started to hyper focus on late model IRS cars and why they're so much different and making them work really well. And I had kids and my buddies, they're having kids and starting families. And they're like, yeah, we gotta get out of cars. And I'm like, no way, I'm multiplying. When I had kids, my car game stepped up big time. It was like everybody else is like, I gotta sell all my stuff. I'm like, no way, I'm buying more cars. And I just...

I did the same thing, by the way. I just doubled down.

Yes. No, it's a true thing. My buddies are popping out kids and they're like, yes, I can't have cars anymore. I'm like, no, I'm going to keep doing better in my career, in our wealth, in our relationship, in life. And then I'm going to be able to afford these things. My dream was always, when I married her, dude, we didn't have any money at all. I didn't grow up with money. When we moved to Florida, we lived in a camper. I mean, literally. So everything I've done is very hustle. Like I've hustled, hustled, hustled, hustled. I used to tell her all the time, I can't wait someday until I can buy a brand new car when it comes out, like Mustang, because I was a diehard Mustang guy. So the S550 is when that happened. That was the first time. And it was funny because I had an 04 Cobra at the time, and I had a VMP blower on the 04 Cobra. And I told myself, I want to have the S550 modified just like the Cobra. And it was cool because I literally did the same TVS blower, the VMP blower. I replicated it because I used to always tell people, if the 03 or 04 Cobra came stock with an automatic transmission, it would have really been a game changer. Because for a long time, the F bodies were still gapping 03 or 04 Cobras. I know Ford guys hate that, but it was true. I experienced it, right? And a big part of it was manual transmissions and combos that weren't put together right. And so the F bodies for a long time were really dominant. And it pissed me off because I was like, if Ford would have just done an automatic, like a 4R75 that was a little stronger, then that would have made the game totally different, right? Ford would have kind of jumped ahead by that time. So I was upset at the S197 stuff because I thought Ford has a history of implementing something into a specialty car and trickling it into production. Yeah. Dark horse SC. They're using the new traction control system. They're using the brakes on this car. They do that. I was sure that Ford was gonna do an IRS type of car before they did. And I was excited about it. So long story short, I skipped that whole generation. Got it. And then S550 got announced. All my Ford brother, you know, my Ford brothers were like, we hate this car. Like back in the mod motor days, when they released the two valve and all the push rod guys were like, no way. It was the same thing. Everybody, man, they were like, but then all of a sudden it became really popular, right? You know, it sold like record sales, sales were back. The brand was back. The racing was back and strong. And then, you know, from that moment on I was working, you know, in that intermediate time frame from like, when the S197 was popular, I was working like normal jobs and then slinging parts on the side. A lot of the local guys around here, I set them up with their connections with Hellion or On3 Performance or whoever, because I had a parts business at a young age. And I skipped that whole S197 generation and I started working for BMR in like late 2009, early 2010. And then, you know, at that point, I decided to get out of, you know, like corporate type of jobs, like who gives a s*** jobs. And I wanted to be in the performance world. So I actually took a pay cut to work for BMR. And that was around the time when the Coyote motor stuff was really, the rumors were coming out and all that stuff and it was about to come out. And even when that car came out, I was impressed with it. I was impressed with the Coyote, but I wasn't impressed with the chassis. And so, but I did, I mean, I helped a lot of people go fast during that time before the S550 came out. I started getting a name in the suspension world, because I was the guy at BMR. I was helping the guys set records. I was going to all the shows. We were racing. We were showcasing what we could do. And I did that until 2019. So for about 10 years, I was there. And I got burned out big time because we went from, BMR went from a couple million dollar company to a, I mean, it's 150,000 square foot type operation. Oh yeah. People don't realize it's massive. Yeah. You know, it's the internet and then there's reality. They're a very good case. I mean, dude, they crank parts out. I mean, it's, but that's where I kind of lost my interest, right? Because when you have a company that big, Racecraft, TRZ, Team Z, those companies won't ever be like a BMR or Steeda. Yeah. Because they're so niche. Like, you know, those companies to keep growing, they have to make strut tower braces and like trinkets, I call them. That's not me. I can't sell somebody. If you look at my website and I'm five, six years into this gig, you're going to see very few parts. If I sell it, I believe in it. I will not sell somebody a part just because I'll make money on it. I refuse. You know?

Well, BMR does a lot of like F-body stuff too, don't they? Yeah, they were big.

So, I was, I, you know, I don't like to talk like this, but I guess you can't really dispute it. You can't dispute it. But like when I interviewed for BMR, they were like, we need a Ford guy. And they were primarily GM. I mean, yeah, back in the, you know, back in that day, 15 years ago, 15 plus years ago. No, BMR wasn't really known. They did some stuff when the three Valve cars came out and they went to PRI and they got noticed. And they were doing, you know, without getting too far into numbers, you know, a couple hundred thousand a year in Ford sales. I mean, they're doing way over 10 times that much in Ford sales now, right? So when we came in, when I came in and we came up with a game plan, as a matter of fact, I was a big Fox body guy and the owner wanted me to help with Fox body. Let's develop parts. That's an interesting story in itself. They're doing a lot of Fox body parts. Before I left, we finally, my dream had come true and I kind of lost interest in Fox bodies, right? Because of all the new stuff. Yeah. But like the owner hired me to help build the Ford segment. And one of those things he wanted to focus on was Fox body. But once I came in, I got in my saddle and started, and we started kicking a**. We were like, screw Fox body. Like we're on to the future here, you know? But I will say, I helped the original founder of BMR. He's no longer there, Brett. Him and I designed some really cool parts before I left. And they've trickled them out since then. And that market, all those parts. One good example, and if somebody has a Mustang and they're watching, is, you know, I used to have all those Cobras I mentioned, Fox bodies, whatever, all the older cars. Pre 2005 cars. And there were parts, every time I built a car of my own in my garage, there was always parts that I was like, why does nobody offer this? And this is an important topic right here. Why does nobody offer this? So I came with a list of parts that I knew, I told my boss, I said, you know, I said, look, we got to release these. And he's like, why? I said, I'm telling you right now. Stock style A-arms with a spring perch. So you don't have to go coilovers. The spring perch is out there that people do have suck. Decay members suck. They're all copies of copies of copies of PA Racing and this, that, and the other. They really are. Right. It's all a bunch of copied stuff. I said, if we come out with all new stuff and have different lines, budget line, premium line, coilovers, non-coilovers, like, and it's real easy for somebody and the pricing is right, it will take off and it has, they do a ton of foxes.

I like their stuff. I thought it was reasonably priced.

It's very nice.

And if you ask for S550, do you have any to do with the IRS lockout and all that kind of stuff then?

Well, I created that name.

Yeah. Okay.

So when Steeda was, that design is like literally my design. As a matter of fact, when we were designing S550 parts, I had a S550 early on and the owner, my boss, had a S550. And we got to do like two different types. Mine was the auto drag race setup, his was the performance pack. Let's put HREs on it this wide. You know?

Yeah.

And we learned a lot. But I mean, I remember arguing with them. The founder of the company, the new owner of the company and me. And we got the IRS out of the car on the floor for a week. And we're arguing. They wanted to make Polly bushings and stuff to replace all the bushings. I'm like, dude, it's 2014 at the time. I'm like, people don't want to take a brand new car and cut it all, take all the bushings out and replace it. And we came to an agreement and we had a price target. Well, Steeda had come out right around that same time. It was us and Steeda, nobody else. Just to throw it out there. And that market, those are the two companies. I lived it. I experienced it. There's a Steeda and there's a BMR. They don't copy each other no matter what anybody says. Those are the two companies that get copied. Steeda put a lawsuit against us. And it's weird because it's a weird, weird, weird scenario. You make a little bushing piece to fill a void. Well, they patented that. We didn't copy you. There's only one way you can make it. And we're behind closed doors developing and they're behind closed doors developing. It was like a race. So they beat us by a couple weeks or something on the IRS lockout. But they called theirs a bushing support system, IRS subframe bushing support system. And I said, we're calling ours a bushing cradle, cradle bushing lockout kit. And you know, pretty much everything there. I mean, I was over, I mean, they're still releasing parts that, like the K members for the S550. Brett and I designed those when we were there. Of course, I'm not trying to sound like they don't do anything good anymore, or like they don't do that anymore because they've, you know, there was mistakes that Brett and I made. The upper shock mounts for the S550. The new current one was, you gotta give props to the engineering department at BMR now. So Brett and I kinda missed on that one. We did it a little bit, it could have been better, you know? So everybody makes mistakes, right? But in that industry, you don't have, I don't care what anybody says, man, you don't have five years to test something. You know, think about it. Your little company, small, these are all small companies. It's a big company, but it's small. So you don't have time, you can't validate things like Ford. I mean, it's different. You just got to really do your best job and put products out there, right? So but that's a good part. You know, I don't want to get too far into details. You know, I have my own version now. I call it a Posi-Lock kit. Okay. And it's the things that I wanted to do to that kit. But when you're restricted on what you can do and you have to compete with other companies, that's the thing. I don't have competitors. So everybody, I tell people that and they look at me weird. I don't have competition. If you don't, I don't pay attention to what other companies do. But going back to what I said, I did things on that Fox market for BMR that nobody offered and it took off. My theory has always been do something that others don't do and you will succeed. I'm proving it. Everything I do. I come out with something, nobody has it. I don't have any interest in competing with somebody. Like when I bought my Raptor truck, I wanted to reverse level it. I don't want to lift a Raptor. Why would anybody want to lift a Raptor? That's for like Lariat's. Like a leveling kit. You know what I'm talking about?

Yeah.

I don't want to lift a Raptor. I'm a hot rod. Raptor owners aren't Yeehaw mud truck guys. I wanted to level the back. Dude, I could not believe it. Nobody made it. I said, I'm going to make it. Now I sell the s*** out of them. I sell a bit. Oh, I had a set up there. I took them in because we sell so many now. I had to take my personal set. I still got the prototypes on my truck out there. Just raw aluminum. They're a billet adjustable spring perch. Why do all these companies specialize in Raptors? I'm Kelly Kelltrac. Nobody knows who I am in that world. I come out and I'm like, hey guys, you can drop the back of your truck now with an adjustable spring perch.

I heard leveling kits, but you said you lift the front end, right? I've never thought about dropping the back end. Yeah.

That's why my brand is going to just do really well. Yeah. January was our best month ever. So it doesn't happen. I don't get into the drama and this verse that I just say, you know, you're a Kelltrac style of customer or you're not. I turn people away every day in the mornings. You know, people, I want your parts. You don't, you're not the type of person that needs our parts.

Right. Would you say that? So where I keep seeing your name come up quite a bit is in this new single cab F-150 game. I was like, that has to have been, yeah, I bet. Cause if you ask which one to go with, your name comes top of the list every single time. Yeah.

So that's a catch 22. We're having really, I just raised the prices on the kits.

Yeah.

What else am I going to do, man? We can't keep up. So again, I don't have competition there. I didn't want to get into trucks. I'm not joking. A couple of years ago, and again, I'm not trying, I don't want to say that I'm better than everybody, but what was happening is people had kids and they're like, Kelly, I'm building trucks now, but these trucks aren't working very well. And I got all these parts on them. And I was like, send me some videos. And these trucks are hopping all over the place. I'm like, man, I think that has more, there's more to that than shock settings, right? Shock settings are just to make something work smooth. But if something is bouncing like that, that's not a shock setting. It could be, that could be too stiff, and that's something people don't realize. Once you stiffen up your suspension so much, the vehicle, this red part, moves like the tire moves. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Okay, so when you're riding around on a little go-cart, it's just the tire, that's what's moving. You know what I mean? So when you stiffen your suspension up to a level, and then you're on a slick, right? Slicks move around a lot, so that's a big one. That's a whole different topic in itself. But what was happening is, I'll keep this short, but there's two things that were happening. The rear suspension people were doing was, the shocks didn't have enough compression travel, or rebound for that matter. They were short because they were relocating them and all this stuff. And in the front, they use, a lot of these companies use a little short shock with a stiff spring. That's how the world works. You want to drop your car and you go with a really short shock, you put a really stiff spring on it. Because if you put it too soft of a spring, it's going to compress too much. You see what I'm saying? So like, it's all about how much something weighs and how much it compresses it to reach a certain ride height. So that's why when you see like a long travel suspension kit, it's always a much softer spring rate. It has to be because you start with something this, that weighs the same. Let's say that we're going to refer to this as every car, right? The vehicle weighs the same. You put a short stiff kit on it, it drops it to here. You put a long soft kit on it, it has to go when you set it down and come to here. So you got to have a much softer spring, right? Because if you put the stiff spring on the tall setup, it won't drop because it can't compress it eight inches to sit at ride height. So then you have to adjust the perch. You ever see cars where you have to lower them and then you jack it up and the spring flops around? That's because they use the spring too stiff. So in order to not do that, you got to shorten the shock. So the length is what's lowering it, not the spring going down. So what was happening is these trucks were launching and bottoming out in the back and then in the front, topping out. Well, they're all wheel drive. The very worst thing you can do on a drive axle, like the fronts of a thousand horsepower truck or a boosted truck is start to lose contact with the surface.

Why?

Because it starts, think about it. Tire shaking, wheel hopping, it's going, hooking, touching, not hooking. It's bouncing all over the place.

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So the trick is, is that you see the trucks with our stuff, and they're like, just, they launch and they're, I just posted one on my Facebook, like two or three days ago, a white one from the side. That's ridiculous. And before I started playing with the trucks or whatever, I rarely saw one like that. If I saw them leave like that, I might not have gotten into the market. So what I did is I bought a couple trucks, when the Gen 4 trucks came out, 21. And I tested, I put the kits on them, and I said, what's wrong here? Why are these people coming to me? And that's why I got into the market, because people asked for it. I had no interest in trucks at that point. No, no, no. I've always been a... We're all car guys. But I didn't have an interest in supporting that market. So I found... I mean, I could talk for days about the truck stuff and what other companies' theories are. Do they even have theories? See what I'm saying? They're making parts to use the parts. I don't fabricate brackets. So that's the magic, right? So I'm working with shocks and springs. Other companies are making metal parts. So they're pairing a Viking or a QA-1 or a Strange or a Coney or a Fox with their parts that they specialize. I'm providing customers with those parts that I specialize in. Now, I don't make them in house. I don't want to. Yeah. I have no interest. I have zero interest. Why? Viking makes an amazing product. I've sold 10,000 shocks now. I've had five issues. That's no b*******. You call Viking and ask him, how's that math for you?

Yeah. I had a set of BC Racing on my S550. That's got Vikings on it now.

Yeah. So you can adjust ride comfort. You can adjust performance and everything. So BC Racing, you know, I'll gladly talk about stuff like this. We just came out with a coil over kit for S550. It's wicked. It's awesome.

I want to talk about that a little bit too.

Yeah, it's cool. So I wanted to do that for 12 years. I wanted to do that. Nobody does it. Yeah.

I was kind of shocked, to be honest with you. I order a coil over kit. I was like, I have two coil overs.

Yeah.

And the rest is an adjustable spring perch and it springs. Yeah.

Yes.

And shocks.

So ours is a true coil over, saves 20 pounds, stock location. But it's involved. It took us six months to develop it.

Yeah.

But nobody else is offering it. So I'll do it, right? Goes back to that same thing.

The one question I have is, how does that work? So you're bolted to where that shock perch is, where it bolts into the wheel well there. Yeah. So is that still, because before it was kind of supported by the spring that was underneath in the IRS.

Yes.

Is that still strong enough there? I mean, I'm not questioning your engineering, but.

So it is and it's not.

Okay.

And this is real talk here.

Yep.

Okay. If engineering is a real thing, there's the good old boy try like, let's make it and hope for the best. And then there's engineering without getting too far into the engineering part of it. The chassis there is a high strength steel, right? Yep. Naturally. The strongest area of the chassis is right there because the spring at 700 pounds per inch, you know, stock spring. The Shelby GT, my, our Shelby GT 500s have 900 and something pounds springs in the stock location. 900 pounds per inch. So the amount of load and the design of that area overall is pretty impressive. Yeah. The issue is on the shock mount, they mount the shock to the chassis with the two nutserts. So there's like these welded in nuts, you know, and what it is there to be able to get the bolts in there, the two layers separate right there. So it makes like a bubble. Then it goes back in the middle together. So it's two layers. And then there's a bubble and a bubble so they can get bolts right there.

Okay.

So that's the part that rips out because it's a single layer of steel. It's not the double where the rest of it's like, literally you look in there, there's two bubbles with threads. That part is weak. What we do is we tie our, first of all, we make the part that's orange part up there. That's a printed prototype of the bracket. So we make it very thick. Dill it. You know, we could do steel, we could do whatever, but if you make a part big enough, thick enough, and it's designed well enough, and dill it aluminum, it's very strong. Okay. So we, that's what we wanted to do. We wanted to make something with some mass to just make it strong. We wanted it to spread that strength into the chassis. So what we do is, we torque new bolts, new, all really good fasteners. I'm a fastener and bearing snob, right? So everything I do, I try to make it like the best of the best. So we put that part on there, and then we reinforce it through the axle's double layered area. It's almost a quarter inch thick. It's very strong. The part that is not double, where the two bolts are, where a stock shock mounts to, that's all it does. It just bolts the two areas. If you bottom out BC Racing, it happens all the time. That's what I was going to say. I call a spade a spade. The BC Racing shock, the design is horrible, because they don't give you enough stroke, and people bottom them out and shatter the chassis right there. Have you ever noticed they have these metal adjusters and stuff? It takes up all the travel. You gotta have a certain amount of travel. So when we design our coilover kit, it's very specific. We make it to where we design the travel without the spring on it, to where that tire will hit the fender and pop before we bottom that shock out. Well, then you gotta make sure your spring doesn't get all the way collapsed, because the shock of a spring bottoming out will knock that. So that's the first thing. Our kit, you cannot bottom it out. The tire will pop. And there's little screws. I don't know if you ever noticed that. There's like these little things hanging out of the fender way up top. Your tire will hit that pop before you ever bottom our part out. So that's part one.

Okay.

So we never introduced that shock load to that mounting point. Then the other thing is we reinforce it to the double layered area in the middle. We provide a drill bit and everything. You put it in there, and then you torque it to 60 foot pounds to a backing plate in the trunk.

Oh, okay.

So you're clamping the big billet mount to the double layer steel. If that's not good enough, last week we just had BMR redesign their brace that goes across. You know, shock tower brace, strut tower brace. I'm not even going to sell it. Again, I'm picky, man. They redesign this whole part, and I'm just going to send people to them. But it works with our part. So if you don't think that our engineering is good, but you want to run a coilover, we got you. You can order a BMR STB762, and it will clamp and connect the sides and bolt to our bolt pattern with... Because our coilover mount doesn't match the same bolt pattern as the BMR mount, so we had them redesign their brackets. Now it works. It's already available. So it's very strong. So Ford uses coilovers in that location on their race cars. But they tie that backside of the chassis in the trunk to a cage. Oh, yeah. So that's how they get by with it. Now, there's been companies like Ride Tech, Ohlins, Penske, MCS, the high level companies. They've been offering a stock location coilovers since the cars came out. There's been a few failures and stuff. I mean, whatever. I mean, that's the name of the game, right? Yeah. But, I mean, if somebody installs our kit properly, I will probably reward them if they break it. I'm serious.

Yeah.

I'll reward them. I'll pay them. I'll be like, here's all your money back. Thank you for showing me that that can be done. Because I can't do it. I mean, I'm driving off hitting potholes. I mean, my S650, man, I beat. I don't care about that car at all. That's my baby. So that's the one that we're about to cut it up and we're gonna do the push rod suspension on it like this.

Oh, really?

Yeah, we're working on that too.

Okay.

Okay. There's a few ways we can take this. I wanna go back to, how do you get to this level of knowledge in the industry, right? Because you're in a very niche area, right? Like, again, 186 episodes, we haven't had a suspension guy on the show, like dedicated suspension guy. How do you get here? Did you just, you mentioned, I think it was before we even started to show, you kind of like, we're already kind of dabbling with that. That's how you can get a car to go and hope and all that. I mean...

Yeah, because I started with horsepower. Everybody loves horsepower. And I didn't think, I did not sit and think, what should I do to make money someday? I love suspension. I just think it's amazing. And back in the day, I used to actually think, there's no market for suspension, because it was just like, maybe if you drag raced, people would use like UPR, Team Z, you know the names. But yeah, I mean-

Other than lowering springs, you were trying to drop your cars about or you gave a s*** about.

How to get your attention though, right? Like did somebody point you in that direction? And you're like, oh, I'm gonna go dabble with suspension, right? Like did somebody mentor you at some point? Or how did you get on your radar to even start playing with that?

So the radar was the early 2000s, when I was hardheaded and I decided to be a Mustang guy, instead of a F-body guy.

Yeah.

And they were way faster cars. And I like a challenge. We really, we all do. Unless the challenge puts you out in ways, we're all the same like that. Anybody that's into cars at all, we like to be underdogs, we like to try to do things other people can't, hence the micro records. You know what I mean? You strive to do something that other people can't do. So that was the first thing. When I was dabbling with horsepower, like porting intake manifolds, cutting runners up, doing this, working with some other guys in the industry back then, I was like, this is cool and I love it. I would spend hours on the dyno with Matt Cassati, other people as well, Palm Beach Dyno. I mean, I spent five hours on the dyno with Ken, just testing intakes on a Gen 2 Coyote, velocity stacks, no air filter versus air filter versus making the tube larger before the throttle body, which actually is really where the power is at. A lot of people don't know that. You know, it's not the stuff at the end, really. It's like the middle of the intake, right? So like you learn that stuff. But then it's like, okay, cool. There's 11 cold air intake companies. It's like, it's cool for my own knowledge. So then I thought, well, if I can put it all together, I like racing. I was always actually a big street racer. I've always liked street racing. I like to be able to call out people like Brett LaSalle. And you know, he won't watch this because he's too busy these days. He's, you know, Mr. Motion Race Works and you know, Mr. Famous. But before that came, I used to tell him he was going to be where he's at. When he would come to my house or whatever, we're friends. I used to tell him, I'm like, you're going to go far, dude. I've told him that since the beginning. I met him when he had a stock car with a turbo kit on it. I was at BMR. And the more, what I'm getting at is, I had a TVS 2.3 Mustang. You don't even see those. 2.3. Now we're in the 3.8s and stuff. So he had a low-weight second 6R80 turbo car, it's not rocket one, I guess you want to call it. And I sold him parts. I helped him with stuff. I developed a Viking coil over kit back then. Viking posted it right on their profile. We worked with Kelly at BMR on this new thing. It was 6R80 valving. So I was deep in that stuff back then. But I could message Brett and say, come out Saturday night. I'm going to gap you. And I did. I mean, we had a couple of close races, but overall it would take him the right boost curve with the right traction, with the right building boost to be at or beat my car. And my car was much slower. He had a low eight second car. I had a high eight second car. The difference was when I smacked the gas, my s*** was pulling wheels. He was trying to get it to leave hard with turbo power, turbo spooling. It's a whole different ball game. I love blowers. I know turbos are king, but you put me next to a turbo car, I'm probably going to win every time because I'm going to spend the time with the timing curve to make it work. I don't need MoTec. I don't need boost CO2s. I don't need any of that. I'm just stomping the gas in my tuner and I have worked together to get that thing to plant. The most power possible with timing and fueling and RPM and stuff like that. So, that was probably, I was working at a suspension company and I was out doing those things and I was like, and then I was the first person to go like 1.3 and 1.2 60 foot in S550 by long ways, like a year.

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I was going 127, 60-foots and everybody was like in the mid-1.3s and mid-1.1.4s back then in 2015, 2016. So that's when I really started figuring out like, I really like this. I liked it when I was younger and I dabbled with everything, but when I was at BMR and the S550s came out, everybody knew my car, everybody knew my 60-foot times, everybody knew I was one of the first to go 8s, first blower car, you know, or maybe first production car. I don't remember. Watson Racing beat me to the 8s back then with like a prototype Cobra Jet. But like overall, I mean, I was right there in the runnings. I mean, I've got all the magazine articles and stuff to prove it. I'm not just saying that. That was what really did it though. I think going to the drag strip, renting the track, cutting crazy 60-foot times, figuring out what it took to get an independent rear suspension car to do that. As a matter of fact, I spoke with somebody at Mickey Thompson Tires back then. And they couldn't believe that I was going one to 60-foot on the which is a great tire. I got guys going 115 on them, but the 305 45R that everybody uses on their Mustangs is 17. So back then, when I was going 120s, 60-foot on them, I was talking to Mickey Thompson about it, and they were like, wow. Now cars are so fast, technology. So that's really what did it. I was like, it's easy to make power these days. The example I give people is if you're 24 years old or your age, you can go get a car from the Ford dealership, you can pick a tuner, and if you put together the right recipe with just a credit card, you can borderline be knocking on eights, and you can have a thousand horsepower car, right? But you might not hook.

Yeah.

So I don't care about this tuner and all the tuning drama. There's a million tuners out there. There's a million boost companies. There's a million fuel systems. I say million. I'm joking, but there's a lot. That's a barrier to enter that market. It's like, oh man, I got to... How am I going to set myself apart from Hellion and this and Midnight and Daylight and this and all these companies on three, right? The one thing that they all have in common is they need their cars to plant the power down. So with my experience with horsepower and a little bit of tuning and some other stuff, you know, I'm kind of like all of it. But you know, like when I help customers, a lot of times it's not about turning a shock knob. It's about telling them how to set their boost curve or hey, your tire pressure is too low. The tire is folding over itself and then the shock can't control the tire rebound because it's trying to control the suspension. So those things are what make it interesting. And that's why I have kind of led my way into the suspension world. Because when I was at BMR, man, we did, you know, I was the only guy there, just like I'm the only guy at Kelltrac, right? Like to talk to, for Ford Mustang. I was the guy. I would be on the phone. This is no b*******. I would be on the phone and all the lights, seven lights were waiting for me for years. I'm not joking.

Yeah.

I mean, it was a good time. I got burned out though, right?

There's a lot of phone calls.

Do you have any kind of an engineering background except from the military then or schooling or anything like that?

Emory Riddle through. Yeah. So I worked on nuclear missiles. You know, I got a really high ASVAB score and the recruiter was a lying a******. He's like, you're going to be on the beach. Missiles, the coast.

Yeah.

I was in the middle of the country in Wyoming. I worked on a missile that was only at one and there's 50 of them and it was only in one area.

I mean, Wyoming is beautiful country if you're in that kind of stuff.

I'm a Mustang street racer guy. I'm calling my boss. I'm like, it snowed today. I can't make it to work. I used to get in trouble because I was so diehard Mustang, right? So I mean, I'm like driving like on base, sliding, trying to get to work, you know? Luckily, though, when you're in that career field, it's like a really high priority career field. So like it's like it's crazy. It's like you watch everything before you go out and work on the missiles. Like they got you got to interview you and everything. It's so you only work like a day a day a week. So I had a lot of time. I hung out with a Mustang shop locally. That's how I got in to like the street racing stuff and the dig racing with a manual car. So I represented a shop there called Miller Performance and we had like Crosstown Rivals and all that stuff. You know, that was what really got me started. But but but to answer your question, you know, that I learned at an early age that suspension was important, right? It was important. And then time goes by and you overlook it a little bit. You know, on all my Fox bodies and stuff, I just order whatever was on eBay or cheap. I mean, I'll be honest, I didn't have any money or anything. So like, I knew I had to get better bushings, which is kind of overrated. Like I talk traction, so it's a little bit of everything. You know, some some of the parts out there hurt traction, right? So if you have like a bone stock vehicle and you add power to it and you decide to replace all the rubber with bearings, well, then the power doesn't get absorbed. You actually want like absorption, right? Especially on the late model cars. So the early experience when I was at BMR with the S550 chassis, that's when I was like, I know now this is, you know, because again, I was I was at BMR from like early or whatever, 2010, we'll just use years. And then 2014, 15 came along. And that's when my love for the suspension stuff like flourished. Like I, I, I at that point became obsessed with it. And I think a big reason for that is because when before that car came out, I was helping redesign parts. Like when Shelby, a good, a good example, Shelby, I dealt directly with Shelby American. Yeah. And they enroute actually back then, which is really impressive. A company like DMR back then in a little building was building parts for production. Roush cars. Yeah. So I got to deal with these people, but I wasn't quite that interested. So the Shelby S1000, have you ever heard of that car?

Oh, yeah. OK, that was the that was Shelby Americans first dabble in the big power stuff, which, by the way, Carol Shelby himself says there's no such thing as too much horsepower, just not enough traction. Yes.

OK. So I was the guy at BMR, not because I'm awesome, because I was the Ford guy. So I got to work with them and pick out and spec out that whole suspension for that car. That's a full BMR suspension on that car.

Wow.

Every part. So. But I wasn't. Whatever. Solid axle, control arms, brackets that I got really good at learning geometry, you know, it made me learn control arm angles, anti-squat, percentage of rise, all that stuff. Like plotting, like I can plot with the best of them, but nobody knows that, right? Yeah. I love it. Like the data and everything. So, but again, when the S550 stuff came out, it was like my dream came true. And then that's when I just, I really became obsessed with it. And that is when I actually started coming up with the ideas. When I wanted to offset the bearing on the tow link a little bit different for geometry purposes, and nobody else to this day does it. When I wanted to do that, we did it. So naturally, when it becomes your baby, and then your baby takes off and works, and it helps you develop a brand like that, like we did, it just puts you in a position where you're like, this is what I like, so.

So, what are your thoughts on, you're talking about, you're looking at cantilevers, what are your thoughts on the suspension on this car?

It's amazing.

Yeah?

Yeah, it's next level.

Okay.

Yeah. With the way that the... It's, you could literally have a whole podcast about supercar suspension. It in every way, this car, other than the fact that it carries over a lot of Mustang parts, it's all supercar stuff, like very high level stuff. Like that's, like we're gonna develop a kit like this, we're developing it right now. For GT500s, we'll probably release them first, because I'll have it online. It's gonna be like this, but nothing like it. I mean, this is all very next level stuff, like with the ability to adjust the ride height in the car and like going into different spring rate zones. So like right now, I'll give you a really good example. On a coilover kit right now, say we got a 12-inch long shock or something, and you have a certain spring rate you wanna use, but remember earlier when I was telling you people, if you go short, you gotta go real stiff on the spring, but when you drag the car up, the spring might flop, because you wanna get to a certain ride height. So that's when what's called a tender or a helper spring is used, the little springs. So then that supports it, so it doesn't flop around. That's all that's used for. Did you guys know that? Okay, so like a helper spring, when you see somebody's suspension system with a main spring, looks like a normal coilover spring, and then a little small spring under it, like a little thin, and it just... So the reason that that's there is because when the suspension completely comes up, like put a car on a lift, jack it up, there's a lot of cars out there right now, if they do that, their springs flop around. Well, the proper way to do it is to always have spring tension from, you know, from right, static ride height to full extension. So the reason I'm getting into that is they build it in like hydraulically and stuff with these. So like you, like if you, if you hit track mode on this car, it drops two inches from this. It buries the tires, it's silica. But what it does is it compresses that one. It's a dual spring system. So when, when we do a dual spring system with a helper spring, it's just what it is. When they do it, it's a separate entity of the shock. It's a billet separation point. It's like a, it's all, it's this whole system. And then they just go and it goes, now it's only using the stiffer spring.

Okay.

So it drops it down and it says, okay, here we are. And it's only using that spring, right? So, I mean, it's like next level stuff.

I was going to ask what about a dual rate spring. Would that be kind of a similar situation? So you would have like a softer one up top and it gets a little harder.

So, dude, that is, I love this. Now we're getting into tech that nobody knows.

Yeah.

Like a dual rate spring. Okay. So you have, you have, you have a, there's one over there. Let me grab it.

Yeah, go for it. Yeah.

It's off my son's Chinese four wheeler.

Okay.

So I'm going to grab the microwave. This is a really good top. Really. So what you have here, and this thing is here.

I'll cut you up.

What's that? Yeah. So, so what you have here is you have, this is, this is approximately 100 pounds per inch to here.

Okay.

Okay.

So you weigh 200, just using a number.

Yeah.

If you step on this, say this isn't here. So the spring stops here. See how this coil spacing is equal?

Yeah.

Typically that means it's a linear rate spring, right? It's just one, one rate. So say it's a hundred pounds an inch from here to here. If you put 200 pounds on it, it compresses two inches.

Okay.

Right? A hundred pounds per inch. 300 pounds, three inches. 400 pounds, four inches until the spring won't go anymore. It gets solid, right? Coil bind, whatever you want to call it. Okay. So this from here down, notice how they're closer? Okay. So this is what you would call a progressive spring in theory. So it might be a hundred pounds per inch here, and it might be this first little small spacing. Do you see it right here? How it builds up to the next spacing. It might combine the 100 from here with the 60 from here. So it might only be 50 or, you know, it might be a lot less. And then once it, and once it combines this small portion with this small portion, it might finally get in to where it's just compressing this. Which would be 60 pounds per inch. And then once there's enough weight, so let's say this is, let's use easy numbers. Let's say this is 60 pounds per inch here, and it's two inches. Once it gets to 120, two inches, it moves to this. And then it gets into that 100. So 120 pounds will compress this and it will go solid. So you can actually see the spring marks on all these coils. At ride height, my son's four-wheeler was, these were compressed. So if you pull the back of the four-wheeler up until the tires are hanging in the air, you then see this gap. When you set it back down, it closes this gap, and then it moves to working from here to here. So it's a tender or a helper spring. It's supporting it. Well, why do they do that? They do that so you can put the spring on the ATV and it compresses down and it meets the specific ride height that it needs to be at. And then when you lift it back up, the spring won't flap around. So in other words, that's a coilover shock over there. It's all ripped apart, of course, because it broke, you know, jumping it and stuff. If you cut this off and then you put the same spring on there, it'll sit probably pretty close if you adjust that perch a little bit on the coilover. But when you pick it up, ride height for ride height, it's going to flop around because it doesn't now have this preload right here. It doesn't have that. That's what's keeping it tensioned, the softer. So it helps it maintain tension through its entire range of travel. Okay. So now that we know that you can use this as a separate spring. So like we have our own brand, we have our own design of helper springs. So we have a helper spring made, and then you stack it with a little billet coupler. So when you get something from us, we don't do progressive or dual rate, which I'm going to get into. We do, here is a 100-pound print spring, here's a 60-pound print spring, and then we put a billet coupler. So we have two springs. It's a helper spring. It's very common in the suspension world. Okay. And then you get into the difference between a dual rate theory and design, and a progressive rate theory and design. This is the real tech that people don't understand. If I'm designing a very good spring part number from BMR, it's a SP012. Okay. That's a dual rate spring. Okay. We never called it progressive. Why? Because we... It looks just like this, actually. We wanted the spring to compress all these coils, and then work at 160 pounds per inch. So that's what you call your working rate. So we spec the spring to compress all these to achieve ride height. Like when the car is jacked up, set it down, this is soft enough, but it can't be too soft because there's a transition zone. So you spec it to where those are touching, they're touching at ride height. When you look under a BMR car with that spring and you see it, it's a bunch of coils that are touching, and then it's a normal spring like this. Okay. So the mistake people make is dual rate and progressive are similar in spring design. When somebody says it's a dual rate, you're going to say it's a 120, 160. The 120 gets compressed and used up. The 160 is the working rate when you're driving the car. Okay. A progressive spring is very challenging to design properly because the goal is to have this zone up here and to have this zone here, but reach it in progression. Well, the only way that you can do that is you have to try to get the car to sit at static. Everything matters is how the car sits right now because when we hop in here, when I take you for a test spin, it's based on right now. It's not based at full droop. It's not based at full compression. It's based at right now. So if you have a progressive spring, some companies will say, this is a progressive spring. It works its way. They don't say it's a 120 160. It works its way from 120 160. So the difference is at ride height, you want it to be in the intermediate zone because now it's progressive. There's nothing progressive about putting a car, a dual rate on a car and using this as a spacer. You're using it as a spacer so the spring doesn't fall out of the car. So it's useless. You will never use this part of a BMR rear S197 Mustang spring because it's used as a spacer. It's we don't want it to be used as spring rate. Right. So you're wanting the 160 to be used as a spring rate. It's just a void filler. If it's a progressive spring, you want the car to work in the 120 to 160 transition zone. So you want it to go from 120, 130, it's compressing, it's getting stiffer. It's progressive. So when you go into a corner, you want to be at say 200 pounds per inch on the front. You want to progressively go to 300. You want your car to experience the transition zone, sorry, from 200 to 300, 220, 240, 260, 280. You want it to progressively get stiff. Because if not, then it's just a linear spring, like this, which a dual rate spring, again, we'll say 100, 200, that's what we'll call it. A dual rate spring, oh, I got a 100, 200 dual rate spring. The 100 is used as a spacer. A progressive 100, 200 means you're going from 100 to 200 when you're driving the car. So you go through the whole progression.

Okay.

It's crazy, but nobody knows that. That's how a spring works. And it's all based on the coil design.

Now, let me ask you a really dumb question after you explained all of that technical stuff. Does it matter if I put it in upside down or right side up? Nope, okay.

Nope, I get asked that a lot.

Okay, I just wanna make sure.

Even a coil over for the most part. Yeah. Unless it's, so we do a lot of inverted upside down stuff on the race cars and some of the stuff we do. And it's a twin tube. And the rumor back in the day used to be you can't run a twin tube shock upside down, but you can. Like a Viking, I do, we didn't do that for years. And if it's like a Coney, you can't run, or like certain types of shocks, you can't run them upside down, right? So yeah, I mean, but I mean, for the most part, suspension, you can do pretty much whatever you want. I mean, you know, you can, you can run it. You can put a spring this way or this way. Okay. It doesn't really matter. So yeah, that's how the spring works.

All right. So let's talk about shocks now, since we just went in and had some spring conversation. I have the Viking. God, I don't know. I think they're double adjustable.

They are. What car?

It's a S550, a 2015.

Okay. They're not for me?

No, they are not.

Are they Crusaders?

I think they're Crusaders.

Okay. So it's a B358 AM.

Okay.

That's probably your part number on your invoice.

I have, well, I got it at Mustang Week from, I don't know, UPR, BMR. They were running deals and specials or whatever. So they, it came with like some, put it to here and here for this and this and this. What is the whole rebound and all this stuff? How does all of that work?

Okay, so that's probably the most misunderstood topic.

Yes, it really is overwhelming to me, to be honest with you. There's too many clicks and there's two knobs.

There is, yeah.

Okay.

So first of all, shock valving is based on force. Okay. Almost like that spring, kind of. Okay, so what that means is like, if you dyno a shock, there's shaft speed. So when you're driving, your shock's moving like this. When you launch a car, an S550, and it squats, your shock goes from nesta. You see them bury the tire, right? They squat. S550s don't separate. It's not a solid axle car with bar angle. It's an IRS car. Most IRS cars squat. Mopar is a little exception. It's special. But it's good to a certain level. My most impressive customers have Mopars, actually, for considering. But the shock's job is to control the suspension, period. So if you data log your car and you have a shock sensor set up and you launch your car, and let's say you take that data and you extrapolate it, and the car is moving. So a shock is based on the speed at which the shock moves, which is called shaft speed. Okay? In shock talk, it's inches per second. So it goes from zero to 10 plus. A radial tire separating car, for example, when it separates, you know, when the Fox bodies and all, they go and breathless out, all those cards go in the back, sits up real high. So they're hitting that tire at random number, eight inches per second. So that's a speed, eight, it's moving. They break it down, like when they're doing it on a shock dyno, it's at that speed, when it goes, it goes one Mississippi, it moved eight inches, one Mississippi. So that's how fast it's moving. So the job is to be able to control that movement and make it work as smooth as possible. So in the shock world, the term smooth as fast, nails it more than any other world. Legit, like literally, smooth as fast, okay? So the shock's job is to control that up and down. There's really no other direction, right? It's up and down. Compression, rebound, or rebound, compression, okay? So knowing that, and then knowing that certain cars with certain power levels, so if you have a bone stock S550 and you launch it on a slick, the suspension might only move three inches per second when it squats. If you're Midnight Performance or whatever, whoever, the big guys with the 2,000 horsepower cars and they launch, it might compress at eight inches per second. Double, you know, double plus the quickness. So every car needs something a little bit different. So in your scenario, if you have a B358 AM Viking Crusader, which is a Viking Crusader, so it's a good shock.

It has BMR springs on it too, by the way.

Okay, yeah, so SP088. You notice I'm rattling off part number?

Yeah, yeah.

So, okay, so you got SP088 springs. They're 800 pounds per inch linear. Okay. There's no progression there. Yep. And it sits perfect. You know, that's the whole thing when we were coming up with those rates and everything. So, and then you have a B358. That's the spring and that's the shock. You know, naturally I had the first set of that shock and I designed that spring. Okay. So, your part on your car, I have some involvement with. Yeah. That's the same spring and the same shock. I went one, two, 60-foot back in the day. That's, those are the parts, exact parts, early on. Okay.

Okay.

So, where I started really learning the shock stuff was because what happens is on your shock, six and nine are kind of the sweet spot. Okay. That's what I learned on that shock.

Okay.

Once you would go above nine clicks on the rebound, it like shakes the tire because that valving on the rebound side is so strong. It's a digressive or progressive. So basically, digressive is going to come down and smoothen out like this. Progressive is going to get real. It's going to go, so like as you adjust it, it's going to change like an 88 millimeter turbo on a bone stock Honda Civic, you know, but opposite like on a dino graph of a shock. So at that, that shock is a good example. At certain shaft speeds, it becomes very tight. And again, it's rated in force. So you could, to dumb it down a little bit, it's going to, a shock is going to say something like, in order to extend this shock this fast, it takes this amount of force.

Okay. So like I could press it in slower. It wouldn't be that if I hit it with a bat, it would feel differently.

Yeah, absolutely. That's so perfect that you said that. Because at low speed, it's going to be, there's something called a low speed bleed, by the way. So there's different valvings that build so much pressure that they had to bleed them off at low speed. So then that way, when you're just driving, they're smooth. But when you hit them real hard, they're really stiff, just little things like that. So that shock, it's very sensitive in that regard. The valvings that we use at Kelltrac, we have our own part numbers on some stuff, whatever, you know. So we definitely use like different, like I've never, since I've started Kelltrac, I've never sold your shock, for example.

Okay.

Even though I used it way back in the day.

Yeah.

But I learned with it. And I learned that I'm not a fan of that rebound valving with my customers. Doesn't mean it doesn't work for you. Right. As far as adjusting it, right? So you're always going to have a sweet spot. The goal is smooth as fast. That's important because your goal, in all honesty, is everybody's goal if you're launching at a drag strip, is for the car to look slow. You don't want to do all this. Right? So how do you achieve that? Stepping it up. Right? Well, if you stiffen it up, then what are the factors making the car work at that point? How good is your tire? How good is the drag strip? You see what I'm saying? So if you're on a really tight track, then you have really tight suspension. If you're on a really bad track, you want it to move. You want to transfer weight. That's why you see the no prep guys, right? With the fronts way up in the air and all that stuff. Because they're wanting to transfer weight and hold it down on that back tire, like the old school days, when they wanted the sloppy suspension. It's just more controlled now. But as far as adjusting it, there's a couple different theories. So with our spreadsheets that we send people with our packages, I am of the opinion that I don't want to start them out really stiff. Because then it's nine times out of ten when you do that, the customers don't have the setup right. But I don't want to start them off full loose. So we'd start somewhere in the middle with an emphasis on really loose rebound, so the cars will actually transfer weight. The goal is to get it down the track and see what the car wants. Because every car is different. A twin turbo car versus a blower car versus an NA car. NA cars are horrible to work with because they hop like bunny rabbits because their converters aren't right. The new craze for the Coyote guys, the NA guys is all the nitro fuels and all the really, the nine second cars. But they're trying to leave off of a trans brake. So they hit the tire like a clutch car launching low, like a bog. So they all hop, you know. So they require something a little bit different, you know. But as far as the shock control and the adjustments, do you have any specific questions about how to adjust, how to know?

So when you're saying soft and hard, right? When you're talking to whatever, are we talking just on the rebound or compression or where? So there's technically two numbers. You said six and nine. You thought it was a six spot.

Six compression, nine rebound. Yeah, with a Viking, I get... When you look at the shock, the first knob is C compression and rebound. So it's always like, hey, go seven, 11, six and nine. So that's what I'm talking about. So this is a great example. So I'm going to use it right here. So you have an S550. That car, an IRS car that squats, you have to treat it like a seesaw. Does that make sense? Because the car can't bend in the middle.

Right.

So if it's a seesaw. So if the back squats, the front comes up, your goal is to make that happen smooth, but you can't tie it down on one side. That's what people's mistake is. They think that, hey, Kelly, look at what my car is doing. I need to tie that back end down. Well, what happens if you two weigh the same amount and you're on a see-saw going up and down, and then one of you is like, I'm gonna tie this b**** down. It like breaks the center. Leverage, the leverage is totally changed. Well, the chassis is like, bro, I'm trying to come back up. You just squatted me. There's always a counter-reaction. But people think, I want it to launch like this and stay like this all the way down the track. Well, your car doesn't want that. When's the last time you saw a car launch like this and exactly stay the same? It'll launch and come back. Yeah. Smooth as vast. If you try to keep it like this, that's just going against physics.

Right.

So the other thing is, I tell people, if you want that car to stay like that, what makes the car do that? If it doesn't have what, then it can't do that. What's the answer? If it doesn't have what? Power and traction. Yep. If you want the car to stay up, make more power. Because that's what ultimately causes it to be up. So make more power. Oh, I can't. I'm maxed out. Well, then your car doesn't want to stay up. You're calling me saying, I want my car to stay up. Make more power. Well, it's maxed out. Well, don't hold it up against what it wants to do. That's the whole thing that people don't understand. You don't, once you start trying to get something to do, what it doesn't want to do, you start having issues. That's why I like the solid axle radial tire guys, when they start putting all the preload and the anti-roll bars, they get the cars all bound up, trying to make them steer certain directions. If the car was set up a little bit better, they wouldn't have to do that. That's like a band aid, right? So my goal, my goal is for people to go down the track is as flat and just, now, most of the time, it's impossible. When's the last time you went and watched a race of a bunch of seven second cars that literally just do this?

Yeah, no.

You'll see, like, the, the, again, I throw Brett LaSalle out there. Everybody knows who he is. He's got an accomplished program. He cuts good 60-foot. He knows his stuff. So, yes, those cars are very fancy, but multiple hundreds of thousands of dollar cars. I mean, we're talking street strip Mustangs.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Hellcats, Camaros. I do them all, man. Corvette's a big market for us now, you know, because they didn't have somebody in their market with my theory and doing the things I did, right? So like, that's, you know.

So now, do you kind of just specialize in the setup for drag racing? So I am actually a road course guy. I want to do some drag racing stuff, and I'm probably going to use my orange car to do it, the S550. But are we we're talking probably a whole nother setup now, right? I mean, in the GT 500, it's got MagneRide, which is another opinion. I'd like to get your thoughts on.

Oh, sure.

But like, I just put my car in track mode. It just does what the f*** I need to do.

So which is the beauty of the modern things, right?

You know, you're a fan of the MagneRide.

You think I'm a fan of it and I'm not a fan of it.

Just OK.

It's totally from a drag racing perspective. It the the Magride fronts on a GT 500, they don't have enough stroke. OK, so I remember earlier maybe it was on camera off camera. I don't remember when F-150 guys came to me.

Yeah.

And they they were having they were topping out in the car and the trucks were acting silly when when a GT 500 gets to a certain point. And I can tell you this because all the record holding GT 500s are my customers. When they get to a point where the Magride suspension pops out, what did I say about that seesaw? Yeah. Just smooth any interruption. That's the thing when that tops out is if it's trying to come up and it stops and then it has more leverage trying to lift the wheel up because that's why people pop wheelies. The suspension stops and the wheel comes up. That's that interruption of the process and that smooth seesaw. That's it. So the very first car that I did suspension on was Palm Beach Dino's GT 500 and we took our brand, not a Viking, just a Kelltrac. I have my own brand stuff too. So we took our brand Strat, a Sanimo set, and I said, let's work on a package so I can learn these cars better. That's when the GT 500s were newer. And I really wanted, I didn't want to sell people. I always know something's going to work, but I want to validate it. So I sent it to him and the car just totally changed. It was like, yes, it's doing what we want to do now. He started going better, 60-foot, and the car got a lot more consistent. On a road course, it's different. What a lot of people don't realize about road course stuff, and the reason I don't push it hard, dude, I've got track guys. I mean, it got eaten up by bugs, but I had, before I remodeled or changed the layout of the garage, I had a letter from a guy out in Arizona, Chris Nguyen. He was winning championships and stuff back in the day in his Bostro II, and I was helping him with Watts link set up, control arm angles. It's not that I can't do it. Suspension is suspension. You gotta pick where you wanna work in that realm. If somebody thinks because they see us getting tagged in a bunch of drag racing stuff, thinks I can't put up a handling style suspension, they're very sadly mistaken. It's usually a matter of wanting to do it and then having access to the parts. So I can do that. A quick example is the C7 Corvette guys. I work with some of the track guys. Not drag race, which I do the drag race too, but the track guys. Well, Viking has their kits. I wanted to do something different. I wasn't too happy with the droop and some of the things. So Viking made me a custom shock, Kelltrac. I don't sell off-the-shelf stuff for the most part. If I sell something through Viking, it's something Viking and I create together. I'm working on a new rear shock for Mustangs right now, by the way, so with them. So I had to reach out to various suppliers for parts to put together that kit. Different spring rates, different stroke, different everything. Because the drag race stuff is easy, I already have all that figured out. The track stuff, I wasn't happy, and the guys wanted stiffer spring rates. That's a totally different style of suspension, upper and lower control arms, like a front of an F-150. It's just a shock with a spring on it. It's not like a strut, like a Mustang strut. So that's an example though. That's, and then I sell a couple kits to the guys, and they're like, dude, I was using Owens or Pinsky's or whatever, and you're like, I already set new best with these parts. I didn't go out and post that. I didn't say, customer swaps. But I mean, it's easy to me. It's easy, right? It's not that difficult. Like, you know, it's all a matter of grip. So what I was getting at is when you have a magride car on your road racing, if as long as it's mechanically sound and it's working properly, driving is usually the limit there. So I don't even push it, because, going back to what I said earlier, I'm not in this to pedal parts. If I don't think it's a big improvement, I will not sell a part to somebody. I'm not joking. I'm not that guy. You could beg me. I do it all the time. My guys at work think I'm silly. People will call and beg me to sell them something. I don't know. They just want our sticker or something. And I'm just saying, like, I tell them. I'm like, dude, call up Lethal Performance or Beefcake or Palm Beach Dine or whoever's selling the parts. American Muscle Late Model, whatever. I don't care. And just order this. I'll give them part numbers. I'll be like, here's what you need. You don't need us.

Yeah. Can you go into that a little bit? You mentioned at the beginning to show you have a Kelltrac customer. What is a Kelltrac customer?

So a Kelltrac customer is somebody that I deem fits our customer base that I want. I don't want the guy that thinks they need my product and buys it and then complains because they didn't see a result or didn't see it. It's like the guy. This is a great example. When somebody calls me and says, Kelly, this is really common with Hellcats. Okay. I love that market, but I hate it at the same time.

Because those guys, we all have that feeling.

Those guys will call and they will say, this is their exact words. I've got a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, hellcat. It's seven names. A widebody jailbreak, last call, red eye, 170 demon, car, and it makes 980. I'm going to buy your clovers, but I need to know what gains can I expect? And I say, this isn't Whipple, man. I can't tell you. I don't know. Like what tire are you using? What, what, what are you an idiot? Are you one of the people that doesn't burn out right? And you got water on the edges of your tire? I'm serious. That's when I take on a customer, I have to babysit them for the most part. Sometimes the customer's a b*****.

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

Five to 10% of the time, my customers are b*****. Or they're a b***** because they listen. There's a customer out there, his name is Cody Rogers. He causes, he stirs up a lot of stuff. People love him or hate him. He's a customer of ours. He listens. Love him or hate him, he listens. He called me and he said, I don't know anything about this stuff. I used Mincer and these other companies on my Cadillacs, whatever. I'm relying on you. You tell me. I told him every single part. I'm like, you're going to do this clover, this shock, this cradle lock or posi lock, this control arm bearing, this toe bearing. Don't do this. You're going to see people say it. I'm not going to answer this question again. And I'm like that. Like when people ask me about shipping ETAs, I send them back a screenshot of the website that says, don't ask unless it's been 20 business days. I don't have time, dude. I'm setting people up with like epic s***. You know, like I babysit them. Like I help them. You know what I mean? It's not just turning shock knobs. That's what some people out there, you know, you get the drama on the internet. So and so's customer had to come to me and I had to help him with the shock knob settings. There's way more than shock knobs. You know what I mean? Like there's so much more to it.

There's a lot going on under there. And every time I go to dive into the suspension, other than like, you know, I did the BMR lockout, the springs and all that stuff. It's just very overwhelming, man. I already have a lot.

There's a lot of moving parts.

Yeah.

And you don't know what does what.

Yeah, exactly.

You're like, the vertical link? What does that do?

Well, and then in the road course game, I'm body rolling this way, I'm body rolling that way, I'm on the brakes, I'm on the gas. Nose dive. Yeah, the car is doing everything all at the same time.

Yeah. Especially when you, the thing with the road course stuff is people have to put together like a plan for like braking. You gotta learn to track.

Yeah.

And what a lot of people, man, this is, I get customers to do this. They're like, I've been drag racing for 20 years, I'm gonna get into road course racing and I'll help them. They're my customer, man, they spent four grand with me.

Yeah.

And they were with me for four years, setting records, whatever. Now they want a road course, which I don't blame them. It's fun. It's way funner than drag racing, right?

Yeah.

So they're like, dude, I went to the track and almost wrecked every time on the back straight when I was getting into the braking and all this stuff. And I'm like, were you like anticipating the turn and starting to turn the wheel when you were on the brakes? Like, there's all these things are like, oh, as a matter of fact, I was. That's why I felt like I was losing control every time. I'm like, dude, you got to get over, get in your, you got to get your path and you got to, you got to eyes forward, focus on what you're turning in your peripheral, know where you want to get at with speed and then make your move. Don't try to do it all at once because, like you said, you're going to have this, this, this. I mean, you're going to have all kinds of stuff going on out there. And there's compression, there's rebound, there's bushing deflection, there's nose dive, there's all these different things you got to control, right? So, one of the things going into that real quick is, one of the suspension companies out there that I really like, not as a business, not like, oh, they make awesome stuff. Theory is Cortex Racing. You know?

Yep, that's in the patient stuff.

Yeah. Oh, okay. So, Cortex Racing is, Philip is a very accomplished guy, and he will, I'm the drag racing version of him, if that makes sense. He's big on theory. So, speaking of road course, if you're coming in hot and heavy, especially in a GT500, Oh yeah, it comes in hot and heavy. You push through the tire and everything. Yeah. So, if you're coming in hot and heavy with a GT500 and you get on the brakes hardcore, you nosedive. Yep. Right?

That's what I did.

GT350.

I drove his car on a track, so I got to extreme.

In your way.

Right?

Yeah.

Okay. How do you stop that? You guys are just car guys. How do you stop the nosedive?

I would assume that you would stiffen up the compression on the front, right?

Yeah.

Or the rebound on the back, or both?

Yeah, it's a system.

Yeah.

I like to do front and back. I'm a big front and back guy. Everyone's, what do I do with the front? Let's talk about the whole car. So, but...

What's that seesaw effect, like you said, right?

But what is the shock controlling?

I don't know.

What else is there in the suspension?

Yeah. Oh, I don't know.

There's only two parts of the suspension, technically.

Yeah.

What's the other part?

Like the camber or the spring. Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

So your spring rate, if you go with a stiffer spring, it's harder to compress.

Right.

That's why all the guys want to use a 700 pound spring on the front of a Mustang. It comes stock with 166 pound spring.

Holy s***.

Okay. So S550. Some of the newer ones are 200 and stuff, you know, whatever. So here's what I'm getting at with Philip and Cortex and theory. What else determines? So you're coming in hot and the front does this. There's stiffen up the compression. Well, what happens if it's not stiff enough? You need a stiffer spring. What happens when you go to a too stiff of a spring and then all of a sudden your tires start sliding all over the place? Because now you're like a rock solid suspension. There's a thing called mechanical grip. Nose dive isn't bad, but too much is. Too much of anything is bad. Not enough of things can be bad. Philip's strategy at Cortex is he's looking at the energy of the car. So the spring and the shocks are only at the surface. If you change your control arm angles and the force is coming from your wheels into the chassis, think about it. If the brakes start right there at the tire, the energy moves through the chassis into this platform right here.

Right.

There's an intermediate there. What controls the intermediate is this and the shock. But what's really happening is the angle of the suspension is causing that to happen. So you can build in what's called anti-dive. So think of it like this. If the angle of the control arms in the front is combating the front from squatting, when you're coming really fast and you hit the brakes and that tire starts to stop the car, the angle of the suspension can be used to push up on the front end if you angle the parts properly. So now the angle of... Because again, the force, the energy has to go from the brake to the wheel to the tire through the suspension into the chassis. If you angle up the control arms and you try to stop and the force is keeping the... If the force is pushing the front end up, guess what happens? That part is not as important, which is perfect. Because now you're not relying on a shock and spring. You've tuned in the geometry of the vehicle to help. So just like a drag race anti-roll bar, if you have a drag race car that body rolls and then you put a big bar on it to keep it flat, that's really not technically, from an engineering standpoint, that's not efficient. You're using a bar to keep the car straight. Why don't you start thinking about other things? Why don't you put a sway bar on the front so the leverage comes into play and it doesn't do this? You know, in the Fox body days, everybody wants to take sway bars off. They think a sway bar removal causes weight transfer. It causes body roll. So if I could go back 30 years ago, I'd be everybody would have the fastest cars using me because I'm not saying nobody else talks about this. So my theory is going to be don't take your sway bars off. Keep the car flat because then you apply the power to the tires more equally. But people take the sway bar off thinking, oh, it's weight transfer. Well, it's doing that because it's body rolling now. The two sides aren't connected. So that leverage against each other is not there anymore. So now because they've removed the sway bar in the front, caused the car to do this, front left comes up. You've all seen them. G-bodies, Mustangs, front end comes up. Now all of the body roll is you're relying on the rear bar. Again, let's use common sense. Not what's under cars out there. Let's use common sense.

Yeah.

What caused that? What caused you to need an anti-roll bar this big around? That's the thing now. Everybody's like competing. I make the biggest anti-roll bar. Why don't you find out what caused you to need the biggest anti-roll bar? Then your system is working completely. Same thing as what I'm saying about the cunt. If you're road racing and the front goes, right? There's all these things involved. Nobody thinks about the angle of the geometry of the suspension. They just think, oh, I need a stiffer spring and a stiffer shock. So that's where I implement that same type of stuff into the street strip, the no prep racers, the drag racers. I take the same type of theory that he has, and then I'll have some guys do some super unorthodox stuff, and it works. I'm like, okay, cool. I'll use that for the next customer. You know, I've got a new suspension system for the front of cars that I can apply to every car now, and it works so good, and I've never seen anybody do it ever, ever. And it's, to me, it's very common sense on the front, like to prevent wheelies. So like everybody's swapping to our stuff, because...

Again, when you think wheelies, you don't think about the front.

Right.

Really.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, yeah. Well, you do, because what happens is people say, you need travel limiters. Because what happens is like when you're drag racing, if the front comes up really quick, that enables the wheelie, that makes it come up on the bumper. And we're getting to a point where everybody makes so much horsepower. That's a real thing, man. I got guys with average builds that are like, bro, almost scraped the back bumper. I need something to help because that'll damage your car. I got... It's bad. When guys do wheelies, it destroys all kinds of stuff. Sometimes the motor.

Oh, yeah.

Because it hits the oil pan. It starves it of oil. So, I've got to, again, going into that suspension theory, it's called our X-Series. It's a specific valving with Viking that we use. And if you... This is so cool to talk about. This is my baby right here. So, if you have your car on a lift, any cars you guys own, on a two-post lift, and the tire's hanging, you know, they droop. Are you strong enough to go put that wheel back up at its ride height position? No, not even. You won't even get it to move too much.

No, sometimes the car's making a noise, and I put it on a lift, and I can't get it to replicate. And I've seen those where the dealers will use those like things that hold a car up in the air.

So, you have a spring on a car. I'm gonna talk about, you have a GT 500?

Yep.

Is it a carbon fiber track pack or base?

Yes, yep.

Okay, so you have a 200 and, 268 pound front spring, something like that.

Okay.

Okay, so, are you strong enough to go move something one inch if you have to push up 268 pounds from a standing position right here?

Probably not.

I don't know anybody that is really. I mean, it's not a bench press, it's like in front of you, like, your a** is gonna go out and you're gonna fall on the ground. Okay, what about two inches? How much force is that? 268 times two.

Oh yeah.

Yeah. So now, you gotta go five inches. This is real numbers. You gotta five inches, five times 268. There's not a human on... There's not anything on the planet that can walk up to your GT500 and take your wheel and tire like this, your head's right here and go, whoop, that's ride height. It's impossible.

Yeah.

So our front, so okay, now you know what type of weight is involved. Let's call it 300 times five, 1500 pounds. When you race a car and you hit the throttle, you've got... Do you ever see things like memes where people are taking a spring apart and they're like, I got a helmet on and it's gonna come loose and literally knock their head off?

Yeah.

The shock has to control that. Yeah. Think about how good a shock has to be. Do you realize how much force 1500... Dude, don't let that spring come apart in front of you. You know what I mean? It's gonna shoot through your roof and knock your chimney apart. I mean, that's crazy force. So these shock manufacturers have to combat that. They have to make something that can slow that down. I don't want to slow down something that has 1500 pounds of force. That's a freaking missile waiting to take off, right?

Yeah.

I mean, that's a huge. So I started thinking, man, I keep coming up with all these shock ideas and these valving ideas. What causes that? And then it clicked. So our set up for the Jagracers, if it was on your GT 500, you could, this is why it would have been cool to do this at my shop, because I got an S650 on my lift with this. You can, you can go up to that front tire. And as long as you can lift the way to the skinny, the TBM or the aerospace brake, the spindle, you can lift it right up.

Really?

We have zero spring preload with the way that we do our valving and our spring stack on that car. There's no spring force. Well, why is that? Why does that matter, right? Well, A, we can use a different spring to make it only compress two inches. I can make it do anything. I can make it do anything. So if somebody calls me and says, Kelly, I really need something that can really like, it can come up a few inches and stop. Because once it stops, if something's moving real fast and you just interrupt it a little bit, it'll kind of stop, right? So like, if you have a car that's wheeling at the tracks, I don't know if you guys have seen people put weight in front of the front bumper to kind of hold the front end down, okay? I can spec a spring that'll... I can literally say, I'm going to spec out a spring for your kit that's going to compress 1.37 inches. So at 1.37 inches of extension, it's going to stop. If your shock knob is set to 7. I can literally build in a travel emitter into this system. Nobody else can do that if they're not using the same type of technology that I'm using. So what the guys out there that if somebody's watching this and they have a really fast car and they don't use us and they don't have wheelie problems on a race car, then they're either using travel limiters, which is a legit limiter like a strap or a bar. The real fancy ones like all the Mustang guys offer in Motion Race Works. All these guys have these nice fancy travel limiters.

Yeah.

It'll come up and it stops it. It's like a bar that's tied to it, right? Or the common one for 50 or 60 bucks is a chain. So you can droop your suspension and you droop it two inches and then you hook the chain up. So it'll come up and stop. It jerks it. So it stops that momentum. We don't use that. We use the valving and the shock because we don't have that momentum because we don't have spring rate on our kit. There's no spring rate. Now the bad part is when the guys order this s*** from our website and they drive on the street and the cars bounce and all over the place. They're like, what is this? I'm like, it says right there in yellow, not for street use. It's what it is, is it's a custom spring that we had made that's so stiff that it cannot be compressed. And I couldn't find when you do something like that, you had to make sure that everything's the right links because a regular spring compresses when you set it down. Right. So it took a while to get it perfected, but now it's like everybody's using it. But that's my point is if you have our X series on the front of your car, all of the shock has to control is the weight of the unsprung weight. It's not controlling the chassis. It's not controlling the sprung weight on top of the spring. It's controlling everything below the spring, the wheel, the spindle, the brake, the caliper, the rotor, et cetera. So now using this technology can make everybody superstars. And I've told people this 100 times. You're gonna start seeing it. And I think I'm still the only person that does this. But you're gonna start seeing it. Because what's gonna happen is somebody's gonna go, man, I can order a $350 spring kit from Kelltrac and my XYZ shocks that aren't any good are now good. Because they don't have to control that 1500 pounds. So now that rebound valving, the rebound is extension. Now that extension valving is good. Because what extension valving can't control the weight of a wheel, tire and brake? You see what I'm saying? If it was designed to control 1500 pounds and high shaft speeds, well then now all it's gotta do is control a car that's just trying to do a wheelie, so you can hold it down. So that's the reason this topic exists is because we've gotten to a point where it's so easy to make over 1000 horsepower, right? So 1000 horsepower at the wheels and up is when cars really start battling doing this at the drag strip. So they have to find somebody, going back to my comment earlier. It's not, you know, they don't contact their tuner about it because that means that the tuner has to make the car really slow. They're not trying to go slower. They're trying to go faster. So they got to reach out to somebody that can control that. So that's what we do.

Wow. So how important is... So we're talking about all the suspension, all the stuff that moves. We were talking about Fox's a little bit ago. And another thing, like tie the frame rails together because you can twist them in half, all that stuff, you know. How important is and how much do you look at the chassis itself as well? Because you're transferring a lot of this into the chassis itself. Do you have to think about, like on a Fox, you got to tie the frame rails together, things like that. Is that coming to play, I'm assuming, quite a bit as well?

Not on the newer cars.

Okay.

Because they're just designed so good. Like the chassis are, they're awesome.

Yeah.

Like I don't, that is a real, that is a very real scenario though on the older cars. The 04 and older, it's not a debate. I mean, they're not, these newer cars, man, their frames are, now they still, that's more of a road course thing, I'll say that.

Okay.

That is definitely, you know, road course stuff is very, like from an engineering perspective, it's heavy. Like, it's heavy, heavy engineering, like a stiffer wheel, you know? Yeah. Struct tower braces, as much as, you know, some people are against them. There's a reason that Multimatic and Ford and, you know, race cars have those, the tie it in because if you have a chassis that flexes, that's, it's an integral part of the suspension system. So, a really good example, since you know S550 stuff, are you aware of like all the companies that make the shock mounts? Steeda, UPR, the billet shock mounts in the back?

Yeah, I've seen that, yeah.

Okay, yeah. BMR, everybody makes a shock mount.

Yes.

And the reason they make that shock mount is because the factory one has a rubber piece. It has to, man, it's factory. I mean, you know, all this stuff, it's gotta be designed a certain way to meet demands.

Yeah, NVH and all that s***, yeah.

So, you have a shock shaft and you have a mount and it attaches to the chassis right behind your ear, man. You're driving right here, that shock's right here.

Right.

See, they make noise. So, you have this shock mount, right? You have the shock mount and then the shock connects to it, right? Comes up like this and then you have a nut on the top. Yeah. The part that it bolts to is rubber, reinforced rubber inside the stock mount. People pop them through when they hit a pot hole too hard, stuff like that, okay? So, when people do like an aftermarket shock, a lot of times, they still have bare bushings in them, like a poly bushing on the load. So, your shock, it has a black bushing at the bottom.

Yeah.

So, if you have a car that makes a lot of power, or you're road racing, or you're doing anything performance driving related, that will move before your shock works. If I put a pillow in front of your face, and I'm gonna knock your a** out, and that's my goal, I gotta get through the pillow first.

Yeah.

So, the shock has to work through all that deflection.

Right. Yeah.

So, what does that mean? Well, that means on a card that has a motion ratio, so the motion ratio of something, think of it like a pencil. And you know how you can put a pencil like this, and you do this, and it goes like this. Yeah, yeah. You know what I'm talking about?

Yeah, yeah. Make it look like a rubber pencil.

So, if you wanna stop that movement, do you grab it here, or do you grab it at the end?

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 grab it at the end?

Yeah.

Because it's one-to-one at that point. It's like, it's moving here, stop it, it doesn't move. But if you're moving it as hard as you can, you know, well, you've all done that, fidgeting with a pencil. Yeah, yeah. This is the best way to say it. So, if you do that really hard, and then you start moving these two fingers here, it'll start moving, because the leverage, you want to hold it here and here. You don't want to hold it here and here. You know, like this, and then it still has all this room. That's how the suspension is. It's tied to the subframe. Here's the chassis right here. And here's the parts that move. So, if you have a shock right here, and the wheel is here, then for every amount this moves, the wheel moves more. So, if that's motion ratio. So, for example, think of it as an arc. So, if you take a solid object and you do this. So, during this travel, what's moving at a higher distance at the very end? Yeah. This is barely moving at all right here. So, when this shock is right here, and it moves a quarter inch. Say you have a quarter inch of deflection, which is pretty typical in a high-powered car or a road course car. Quarter inch of deflection, okay? It's a quarter inch right here. So, that means it's a half inch right here. So, this wheel gap to the tire moves a half inch before the shock even knows it's moving. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Okay.

That's how the chassis works. If the chassis is tying the whole car together and it has a little bit of deflection, then it's moving before the suspension can control it. So, it's not like a solid system and it's not direct. It's not controlling it directly. So, that's why they say like carbon fiber wheels are the greatest thing since sliced bread for road course cars because they're really firm and stiff. They don't flex. These flex like crazy. Yeah. That sounds crazy to think about, but like on the Nurburgring, for example, who knows? These things are flexing, dude. From the pad in the middle, the spokes. I mean, everything's moving. That movement happens before the tire can control it, before the suspension can control it, before that movement gets put into the chassis. So, that's very important, but it almost translates into, is it worth it?

Right.

Well, what's worth it? We just had that conversation. Is this car worth it? Not to a guy that just wants to go roll race with his Whipple Coyote.

Right.

I know that's crazy off-topic, but it's the same thing. Is it worth it? Do you want to reinforce your Fox body for $3,000 to gain a second at the road course? Do you see what I'm saying?

Yeah.

Or do you just want to send it and just have a car that's, because some people's theory would be, oh, if it's flexing, it's adding to mechanical grip. I used those words earlier. That's a real thing, right?

Yep.

If you have two states of suspension, and you have solid and you have non-solid, right? You have movement. So you ride a go-kart, it's solid, right? You don't have like ball-off suspension on a go-kart. It's direct, one-to-one.

Yeah.

Right? You mess up on a go-kart, you're doing 360s in your slide. You know, because there's no mechanical grip.

Yeah.

Your grip is in your tire only. So.

Well, yeah, every bounce would be the wheel coming up off of the ground then. Yeah.

That's exactly right.

I was bringing back memories one time I went off. It was like a U or whatever. I went through the grass. I f****** felt everything. That's bringing back some memories.

But that's your example. The light went off. Let me turn it.

Yeah, for sure. We'll pause for a second. Slash cut.

Yeah.

Good stuff.

Yeah.

This is going to be one of those where people are going to be messaging me, I listen to that six times. Yeah. For example, we've had like, I'm sure you're familiar with Greg Banish. Yeah.

I dropped Banish yesterday.

Yeah.

People will always be like, yeah, I had to listen to his episode three times. It's like, oh, I didn't catch it the first time.

Yeah. No, the suspension stuff is like black magic to most people.

Well, that's what I'm saying. There's so many aspects to it.

People will see that and they don't understand what it does. There's just so much to it. It just goes really deep. Then the biggest thing is people think that the shocks create traction.

Yeah, it's just going to slide the chair towards me a little bit. Yeah, perfection.

Yeah. But yeah, the biggest thing is people think that the shocks... They think shocks create traction. You know, they control it. If a car doesn't hook, the shock doesn't know. You know, like, what makes a car do a wheelie? A power and traction.

Yeah.

Okay. But if it doesn't do the wheelie, does the shock know what's going on? Not really. Do you see what I'm saying?

Yeah.

So like if you're a roll racing, those guys are the worst because they're like, oh, I'm not hooking from a 60-roll. Okay. Get with your boost curve. Get with your tuner. You know, get with somebody that can really help you hook. And then once you hook, your shock's going to say, okay, let's do this. But people think like turning a knob makes it hook. The only time that's the truth is on a radial tire car, on a Brett LaSalle car. The track isn't that good. Well, what do those cars do in the back? They separate. That separation is hitting the tire. You hear people say, hit the tire harder. So you loosen up the rebound, the rebound extension. You loosen it up so it can go and dig the tire down. Okay. This car, these cars, all the IRS cars, the tire has to hook before they squat because the hook is what makes them squat. So people have the hardest time with that. Yeah.

Real quick. So when it comes to like, racing from a dig versus roll racing, right? There's obviously different things when it comes to consideration of setup and all that, but I want to talk specifically from the suspension side. You have to attack it differently, I imagine, between roll and digs, right?

Yes. There's very basic things that need to be done. You could come to me with 1,000 horsepower roll race car, and I could make you hook better with just common sense and a couple hours of your work without spending a bunch of money. I'm not saying you're going to go threes and twos and drag you like all these micro record guys. I'm saying the biggest mistake people make is you need weight on the back tire with a roll race rear wheel drive car. So you can accomplish that with a few ways. You can put weight in the trunk. You can do all kinds of things. Well, there's also ride height. And so like, I mean, I sell these like $39 spacers and they are the best $39 anybody will spend. I'm not joking. Like I got guys ordering on this. Probably somebody ordering from the website right now. And I learned on my test track right here that when you start with a thousand horsepower car, when you start with the car level or the front up a little bit, you get a head start to what? Traction on the back tire.

Right. Yeah.

Put the car on scales. Drop it an inch in the front and watch the weight bias change. It's it's physics. Common sense, actually. Screw physics, right? So if you're out there and your goal is to hook from 40, 50, 60 miles an hour and you have a lot of power, you want, I mean, there's a lot of things involved. The tire temperature, the tire surface. If you have a drag radial tire and they get feathered, they're done. You got to re-burn them out and you got to get them smooth. Like a coefficient of friction. That's a huge thing people don't think of. So if you're like trying to hook on an asphalt surface, people, 95% of people don't understand this. The reason asphalt doesn't hook as good as concrete is why. It's more porous. It's surface. Doesn't have to do with anything else. Coefficient of friction. That's why sometimes you can take like a perfectly polished surface and put a perfectly polished surface on top of it and move it and you're like, it won't move because it's like fully contacted. Right? So you have to look at it from that point. You got to say, I need to be on the best surface possible. That's why when I make on my 1000 plus horsepower cars, I make there's little bridge patches on my international raceway here and always start on the hit. Even on this car, it's starting to have issues. Traction when I turn all the nannies off. So I had to start on the concrete. Well, why? It's not because it's white. It's not because it's concrete. It's because it's less porous, more tire patch. So contact patch, right? So there's all those things, man. So going back to what I said earlier, I got to babysit people. Kelly, I'm not hooking from a dig. Turns into a whole topic, a whole long discussion. Kelly, I'm not hooking from a roll. Turn, what surface are you trying on? What's your timing on the hit? That's a big one. Because a lot of the, I call them generic tuners. There's cookie cutter generic tuners, which are most of them. And then there's tuners that offer services to like really dial in your car. I need to dial in. Because if I go out on a thousand horsepower car and I stab it and it's 18 degrees of timing or 16 degrees of timing and 20 pounds of boost on the hit, it's really hard to make it hook, right? But if you pull timing out and it's eight degrees on the hit, well, now you go. Now you got something to work with, you know?

So is that how you would control that with a blower car, right? Because you can't pull back boost.

Correct.

You're going to pull back timing.

Correct.

Okay.

That's exactly how you do it. So like if you come to me with and you're my customer, I don't, if you're not my customer, I'll tell you to go away. Yeah. You got to be my customer, right? So when you're my customer and you got a GT 500, which I got a lot of those guys, and you're having a hard time roll racing or like hooking, I just, I'm honest, hit up your tuner. And if it pisses a tuner off, I don't care because...

Is that your raceway?

That's my raceway. Yeah. My wife, last night, she went and got groceries in the Raptor. She pulled in and I was doing it during the halftime. I think it was, I don't remember when it was. She's like, was that you? Yes. So it's literally like a hundred yards. I mean, it's the international raceway right there. Okay. So, but yeah, so these guys come to me and I'm like, you need the tuning. You have to have it. And then the tuners will say, you need a suspension. And they're usually really firm on it, a lot of them. And it's like, but they know tuning. They don't know chassis and suspension. I know both because I've just been doing all of it for so long. I realize what, you know, I know if I, I've done it. I know that if I take a GT 500, I do a Whipple 38, I do a Palm Beach Nine-O-Tune, I do this fuel system, I do this drag pack, and I do this set of seats. And that's literally what it took, or cat delete, whatever. And I go out here, I can go threes on a Draggy with 1200 real-world horsepower all in, no boost correction, with tuning and suspension. Right? I mean, the fastest, to my knowledge, the fastest Roll Race street Mustang is a Mercar, have you heard of them? Mercar Automotive out of Texas? He's got a Roll Race 10R80 Gen 3 Mustang that goes like 3-1s, which is... The rear-wheel drive record is like a Calvo Viper making 1500, 1600 on the street.

I think that was more than that. I think you're talking about the black one.

2-8.

Yeah, I think that one's doing...

So we got a Coyote guy out in Texas going 3-1 with a 10R80 car.

Think about that. That's f****** out. It's actually put it that way.

Yeah, he's run a whole bunch of low threes. He, to be honest, he might be quicker, but he's always one step ahead. Like, I just released the Draggy Times on this. And I've been quicker, two tenths quicker, but I'm showing everybody a time right now. It's just, I like to have it in my back pocket.

Yeah, by the time this episode airs, it'll be...

Yeah, it'll be in the fives. Yeah, I got a bunch of plans with this car, as long as...

Let's talk about this car a little bit. I mean, we obviously come back to other stuff, but you are in a very select group to own a GTD. What is your plan with this car? Are you doing any development with it, or just enjoy it as is?

Okay, so I have always been the type of person that I want to do things my own way. Now, at this age, I'm like, man, if I waste my time doing it my own way and I don't make some money doing it, is it worth it? Because my time, man, it's crazy, right? So I have some custom carbon fiber seats over there I had made for the car.

What are they, by the way? What brand?

Or who do you use? It's just a guy I got.

Oh, a guy you got?

Yeah, it's not obvious, because I've used him for a couple of cars. I got carbon seats in all my cars at the shop. Okay, sure. So, but, and the other reason I don't want to say who it is, because I'm probably going to offer them, right?

Yeah.

I'm going to sell them. Okay. I'm working on, I have my engineer right now working on some really lightweight seat mounts. I don't want to sell them as seat mounts. You'll be able to get them with the carbon seat package. Going back to that whole thing. I don't want to do that, dude. There's 95 companies that make seat brackets. I have one floating around here somewhere. But anyways, so I want to have a carbon seat package, a magnesium wheel package. So I got those on order now, custom, a tuning package, a carbon fiber supercharger lid, and then maybe call it like a GTD Extreme. What's up?

I'm good, thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, I'll take one.

No, I'm good. You got your Elanis. Yeah, I do.

Yeah.

I'll pass it. Yeah, I'll just go.

There you go. Yeah.

Right here. Say hi. No, I'm good. Thank you.

I appreciate it. No, no, you're good.

Shout out to my buddy, John Fieldley. My one of my best friends is the CEO of Celsius.

Oh, really?

OK. Yeah, they were a big Celsius guy.

Were they? They were sponsor at Bragg and Rice, weren't they?

Correct. Yeah, I think it was Bragg and Rice.

Oh, that was the whole thing.

Mod Nationals. They sponsored that.

OK.

Yeah, that's I. I have a little bit to do with all that stuff.

So, yeah, it was great. We were in the VIP and it was like you can just grab as many as you want.

It's super cool. That's the whole story in itself.

Really?

Yeah. Dude, I mean, he was my neighbor across the street, not here, over in like Trenton, Newport, Richey area.

OK.

And we were both broke. We're like, I was at BMR early, early in my BMR days, making pennies. And he was early in his days at Celsius when there was like four employees. Like I'm talking like grassroots, bro. Like, let's go hand out some drinks at 7-Eleven. Let's let's try to build this brand. Yeah. And then now.

One of the biggest brands out there right now. Yeah, that's awesome.

He took over CEO in 2018, I think it was.

OK.

So he but he worked from the bottom up, man.

Wow.

I was on, you know, he got a new yacht. He's very frugal. When I met him, he had a couple of investment houses. He did pretty well, but he wasn't like well. Well, I mean, he was smart and he was a hustler. And but he would like buy cars from auction and stuff. I look out my window and some new people moved in. I see a Hyundai old busted up Kia or Hyundai with a palm tree hanging out of the back of it. A mattress on top. That's that's John Fieldley. I'm like, I go over there and help him. And then we just became really good friends. Yeah, he's he's a good guy, man. He's he's busy. Whatever. I mean, he's got his own thing going. You hang out with people, you party with them every weekend, you become, you know, life friends. You know, there's a difference between car friends and life friends. Just throwing that out there. Like I usually call my car friends buddies. I call my life friends, my friends. Nobody really has a whole lot of friends, you know? So the car thing, you know, you got to think of it like this. If you're really good, if you two are really close and you're racing and stuff, you don't really want him to win because you want to beat him. Or if you're going out to the meets and you're street racing, you know, deep down you're like, I want to beat him. So right out of the gate, it's not a good thing. You know to ever say, buddy, I want you to beat me, I've turned into that person, though, because I can't spend all week trying to go out and beat people on the street. So I'll be like, hey, man, congratulations, you beat me. You wouldn't have 20 years ago, but you did this time.

Good job, good job.

But that's like, with him, you know, we don't really talk cars. He did get his first cool car. He got a Lamborghini STO.

Oh, those are awesome.

Last year. I was actually buying a Hellcat, and he called me. I was three miles away from him, and he's on the East Coast, Boca. And I was buying a Hellcat, a last call, blah, blah, seven name car. And I thought they were gonna be some rare collector's edition. And so I'm like, I gotta go buy one. So I'm buying it, and I'm in finance. And he's like, hey, man, I just got a Lambo. And this is a guy that's always been frugal. You know, he's finally enjoying life. But and I'm like, where are you at? And he goes, oh, I'm right here. And we were three miles apart. So needless to say, I canceled all my plans and I stayed. I was down there for a podcast, actually, but I stayed to buy that car and go to a podcast. Then I ended up going to like F1, I think, like Formula and all this stuff in the Lambo. And he sponsors Ferrari. It was kind of a weird experience.

Oh, that's right. Yeah, he did. Yeah, yeah. You're an F1 guy, by the way. I haven't asked you earlier.

No, nothing about it.

Nothing about it.

But I did get to hang out in the Ferrari suite and everything.

Yeah, that's cool.

So I was like mingling with all these people. I know nothing. I'm wearing like gym shorts. Cause I went there to be on a podcast. I had on like sweatpants and stuff. John's like, we're stopping at like stores, get this shoe and get this. I'm like, no, dude, I'm gonna rock. I am me. So like, I mean, the CEO for Ari, like all these people, bro, eating like filet mignon and like lobster, like overlooking the track. That was pretty cool. But I think that's big money stuff. I don't know. I'm not, I'm not, it's not.

It's a very different vibe.

Yeah.

Well, what year did you go? The Miami Grand Prix, I'm guessing, right?

It was the one.

Was it the first one? Like three years ago or whatever?

Two.

Two, okay. It might have been the second one. I was down here for the first one. So I was just curious.

It might have been three. Yeah, it was when there was only a few 2023 Hellcats left anywhere. So it was either a late 23 or 24 because it was a 23 Hellcat that I went down there to buy.

So do you like them or do you just get up for development?

So, dude, I love those cars, but I hate them. So like when I bought that car, I had a Z06, a Viper, a GT500, an X5M series, a Raptor, an F1. I had all these cool desirable cars that all the hot rod guys like. And it was out of place. I loved it for what it was. And I even told so much, currently we talk lifestyle. My best friend John Field used to be my neighbor across the street. My buddy Cory is across the street. We talk about this. He helps me with all my stuff. He's an awesome guy, right? So we talked about it and I said, the Hellcat is a really cool car if you just want to be a Hellcat guy and modify it. But when you have other options, they don't make sense to me. It's tough, right? They just don't make sense. ZL1, GT500, sure. A Hellcat? You got to be on a point. When I mentioned earlier when I was a two valve Mustang guy, it didn't make sense, but I wanted to prove a point. I feel like that's kind of the Hellcat, guys. In all honesty, right? It's the heaviest car.

You started out at a disadvantage.

You got to overcome all this stuff. We gutted it and we put it on my YouTube channel. We gutted the whole car. It saved 300 pounds.

And it was still like 4300 pounds. I mean, we spent hours gutting panels, I mean, the whole thing. We had it all laid out in the driveway. We were weighing everything, and I was like, and it rattled like crazy. There was rattles I could never fix, and it was a brand new car, man. I don't know. And then I dragged it, and it's the slowest. I was expecting way more. Yeah. And then all the Mopar guys messaged you, because I'm posting truth. I don't have any skin in the game. I'm like, look how fast this car is from a dig. I do digs, rolls, whatever. People love all the data. So I showed the data, and all the Mopar guys come after me. That's not accurate. Okay. Every car I've ever posted is one of the fastest. Cause I have, you know, like I'm, I'm where they're like, you gotta do it in this mode. You gotta, so I said, okay. I spent weeks listening to all the guys. No. All the tuners. I'm like, this tuner's the best. Listen to him. He knows the modes. I did his modes slow. I mean, it's just, whatever. Now the most impressive cars are CA Corvettes.

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.

Really? Yeah.

The launch control and stuff? Yeah. So I had a Z51 before I got a Z06 and it just had like a set of a Turo, like those really cheap drag radials. I did a YouTube test on it and showed the guys the results and all that stuff. That thing would go, it would go tens from a stoplight. So I would make fun of the Dark Horse guys. I'd be like, bro, you guys spent 74 grand on an NA Mustang and you put 15 grand into it. And my Z51 base model Corvette, it was non-magride. It was like a base. It was like a race car spec. Yeah. A base Z51, I put carbon aero, HRE wheels, air filter and a AWE straight pipe exhaust, right? But no tuning, nothing. That thing would go like 1080s, 1090s from a stoplight, like on a Draggy, at like 125, I don't know, whatever. Dude, the Mustangs are amazing on a Dyno or at the drag strip. You get them out on a stoplight, they're going 12s. I'm not joking. They just don't. I mean, take a GT500. Good luck. If a Hyundai Ioniq or whatever they're called pulls up next to the light, you're getting gapped. It is what it is. Go drag your car. You'll be happy to get into the low 11s with it. I mean, that's Tesla. That's like soccer mom car stuff these days.

My wife has a Mach-E. I went and got her one. She had a Navigator before. She has a commute for work. So I was like, all right, this just makes sense. It cost me $35 a month to charge it. The zero to 60s are a couple of tenths apart. But I will say about the plaids and stuff earlier. In an electric vehicle, anything over 100 is b*******. They're really great to that. But then after that, the f****** car is motor.

Like a motorcycle?

Yeah.

A lot of people don't know that. They're like, you can beat a bike? Yeah, race that sucker from a 60-year-old. Up top, they just fall off. From zero to 100, they're nasty. You can beat a leader bike in a catalog part Whipple GT. I mean, you really can from a 60-year-old.

I used to, one time I had my orange car out, that's the 2015, and I had a group of bikes, they rolled up on me, and then they did that whole thing where they sent two guys ahead, and they really like had blocked traffic and s***, so we were doing hits. And yeah, I was like, to be honest with you, I wasn't impressed with what they, I would think they would blow me away, and that wasn't the case.

You could have, somebody asked me a while back, they're like, man, if I want to go race bikes, what's the best car to get? And I said, well, it just depends. I mean, if you're gonna pull up next to a modded ZX-10, you better have your Wheaties, you know? That car is gonna be stacked. But if you buy a new, S650, I mean, we can't say a Camaro or what. We're gonna talk about Corvettes or Mustangs, which is an interesting topic. But if you get an S650 and you do the basic mods, you can go out there and beat 700s, 750s, some leader bikes from the right speeds. I don't want to piss people off. I mean, yeah, if you're gonna race them from a dig, a bike's gonna eat your lunch. If they're only they can keep it down and everything. But I mean, it's the same thing, though. I know exactly what you're talking about. I've had really good friends with plaids. I actually have friends now with plaids and they talk s*** to me. But it's one of those deals where it's like the combustion guys are like, that car has no soul, I don't care about it. But at the end of the day, I think we all think it's cool that you can go low nines like that.

Deep down, right?

Yeah, I mean, it's cool.

It's fun. It's a blast to drive around town, man. I love driving the Mach-E to be honest with you. She loves it. She has a pro-charged, gotta have a green 2013 car. So like we didn't do it to offset any carbon footprint. It was literally her commuter, a car that I don't have to think about. This is the only reason we did it. So yeah, they definitely have their place. It's just, and like I said, it's fun to drive, but Mike, I could get in the GT 500 and be going 180 and feel like I'm going 40. And yeah, the Mach-E is not like that.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm conflicted. I mean, we were at the Porsche dealership the other day and they had some electric cars there, the Skycam or something, a thousand horsepower. And I told the guy, I said, I don't have anything against electric. Okay, so what it boils down to is that dollar value. Yeah. Again, everything, if you say, what is the best vehicle for 50 grand to get to do this? Then you're going to go buy a used plaid. Yeah. Because it's easy and you get it right out of the box and you can do it. But I think the big thing that we're seeing in the car world is people love nostalgia. They love lineage. They love hot rotting. They love modifying. And that's the deal breaker. You know, so, you know, this car, for example, you don't know how many people have said, why did you get that over this? But that's not a good question. Because anybody that owns a GTD can go buy whatever they're saying. Let's be honest, if you truly own this car, you can get the plaid. You can go get the ZR1. You can get that whatever. Unless Ford's not, they're not dumb. They're not picking people that can't pay for the car. For the most part, I mean, there's a few people that maybe drop out because they can't afford it or whatever. For the most part, it's guys that have Ford GTs, multiple Ford GTs. It's guys that have multiple GT500s. It's guys that have Vipers. They pick you for a reason. They don't pick a random person. They want to know you can buy it. I'd love to know who f****** approves you. Well, no, if he's got all those cars.

Yeah, they did ask me. I have several cars. There are one of 12 or one of five. We talked about the Celine and the S351 and things like that. So yeah, I think that they were looking for enthusiasts. They were looking for social media presence. They were, you know, whether you were Die Hard or Ford.

Those are wide broad.

Yeah, because I'm sure.

There are people that didn't get picked that are really mad.

Oh, absolutely.

I got every Ford GT. I got every Shelby. I got every this and it's like, and then I look at it like, well, how did I get picked in? But they have to break it up because they want to put the car into, you know, like, like when I was talking to my concierge, he was like, they want people to like get out there and use the car. And I said, I'm, I'm your huckleberry. Yeah, that's what I'm doing. This thing's going to have twin turbos or Whipple. I mean, you know, I'm, I'm modding it. I'm not keeping it stock. So going back to what you said earlier about my plans for development for this car. It's, I'm not using it for development. I mean, it's, it's, it, it's one of those things where it's, you get picked to buy it. There's no, like all the people online are talking about, like that thing's going to lose half its value. They have no idea. They have no idea the process it takes. They have no idea that to own it, you got to put 50% down just to order it. When that stuff comes into play, none of the minutia matters. You want me to give you a good example? Go try to buy a Rolex Pepsi watch.

Oh, it's not happening.

There you go.

Yeah. Or they tell us.

And if you want one, you got to pay double MSRP or five to $8,000 over MSRP.

Oh, yeah.

Okay, so listen, this is important. Yeah, that's a huge, the watch world is a big market. Young guys know about it. They don't even, they'll tell you, I don't wear a watch, I got my smartphone. But that market for some reason is hot. A Rolex watch market. Every person that wears an Apple watch, every person that wears a Casio, every person that wears a Timex, every person that wears a blah, blah from Walmart that has a Japan movement, quartz movement, battery powered, every watch out there pretty much keeps better time than a Rolex.

Yeah.

So what's the big deal? Three words, people want it. Yeah. That's it. Performance metrics on a car don't make it valuable and they don't make it valuable in the future. It's somebody wanting it. Why is a Ford GT a million dollar car? It's not worth it. All three of us can admit right now, if you want the best performance car for a million dollars, do you buy a Ford GT? Yes or no?

No.

Not even close. So when we were cruising yesterday, there was a four, like a three million dollar car. And everybody literally walks up to it's a Porsche 918 Spyder. Yeah, they only made them for a couple of years back in the day. They they MSRP for like 800 in 2013. That's a two, three, four million dollars right now. Why? People want people want them. That's as simple as that. When we were there, everybody surrounded that car. I didn't even know what it was. I'm dead serious, I was like, I think I've heard of that. They only made 918 of them and guess what? They retailed for 800 and people are paying 3 million for them.

Dude, that's me with old Ferraris and people are like, oh, it's the 288 GT. I'm like, I don't know what the f*** it is.

Yeah, right. Yeah. Even now, I'm like, 488 Pista, 458, like all these things. I don't know what that means.

That's the only thing that blows my mind with like the, again, if we're talking Ferraris, like the 488 Pista, whatever special editions. It's like you see like the $400,000 edition and there's like, why is this one almost 800? I just don't understand. The people that do understand it, they want it.

Yeah, so like as a GTD owner, I don't care what you think. You get to a point where you don't care. I don't care what you think.

You're not soft.

Cool, cool. You're not paying my bills. You didn't buy my GTD. I don't care that it won't beat a ZR1. So whatever, I bought it to have fun with it.

You already got a ZR1 too though, right?

Yeah, so I have the opportunity to buy a 2026 one right now for a little bit of a markup, and I just don't want to pay the markup.

It just doesn't sit right. I know. I agree with you.

Not with a Corvette. But there's my point. The average person will say, but you bought this for that much. It's not the same, dude.

Look what happened to the C8 when it came out. What people were paying when it came out, and nothing dropped off faster than that garden.

You know who made a great point, though? The people who got the C8s and paid $40,000 over at the time. Who was it that told me this? They were like, yeah, the people that paid $30, $40, over, they have the one thing that you cannot buy, which is time. It's like, if you're 60, 70 years old, you know what you've probably got, or whatever, 80 years old.

I just had this topic yesterday about the Porsche GT3 RSs. If you're older, it's so worth it.

Who cares about the extra hundred grand?

Yes, exactly. So I had a 2020 GT500, and my first one was a Golden Ticket. That's the only year it was a Golden Ticket, because that was the only year the painted stripes weren't an open commodity. I was told this directly.

Okay, because my 21 has painted stripes.

Yeah, but it's not a Golden Ticket, because anybody could get them in 2021. You couldn't. You had to have the allocation to get it in 20. Just some food for thought there. The guys that helped develop the car told me this. Literally, they were at a table saying, what is a Golden Ticket? They considered the Golden Ticket the car with all the beans, the carbon and the painted stripes. That's the Golden Ticket. I had one of those. I refused back then to pay markups and everything. I found one with 221 miles on it. Shout out to Brett Morgan or Morgan Automotive Group. I try to get all my cars from him, because he always takes care of me when it comes to the specialty stuff. He's a big dealer, right? They hooked me up. I got it at MSRP back then. Okay. So, the guy that bought it... This is dead serious. The guy that bought that car paid 50 grand over. They got the car from California and had it... So, it's a matter of them paying 25 over to that dealer, and then they're making 25. It's like this whole thing, right?

Yep.

He was 84 or 86 years old.

Wow. Okay.

He did not give a s***.

Yeah.

Because it's either he either had the car or he didn't. He curbed it. That's why I got it in MSRP. Because I offered to buy it, like with the damaged carbon fiber wheel.

Yeah.

They hooked me up anyways. I didn't have to get the wheel separate, but it was 221 miles and it was too much car for him. So, he traded it in on a bullet. They had one in the showroom.

Okay.

Like a bullet was like a factory-installed whipple or something. But that's a good story. The other good story I had was my Z06 and Z07. I had one of those. At the same time, I had my Viper. That was $160,000 MSRP. The first guy that bought it was an old man and he paid 50K over. That same car is like... I think it's for sale somewhere recently. The last couple of months, I saw it somewhere for like $111,000.

Yeah, that's what it came down to roughly.

50 grand under sticker. So it went from... That was a 23, that car. It went from a couple of years ago, it's fetching 50 over to 50 under.

Yeah, that was tanked.

With a couple thousand miles on it.

Wow.

So, Corvette, I mean, you're right. If you're older, I don't plan to die anytime soon unless it's...

You can wait it out a little bit, yeah.

But like, if I'm older, I'm 100%. I'm just gonna do it.

Just throw it, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, because it's either that or you don't own it. If it's a truly special car, how else are you gonna get it? You can't. If you're a really... We're diehard car guys, right? That's why you're here, that's why I'm here. If you really want it and you got millions of dollars, where's that money gonna go? Just take out 100 grand more and just pay that markup. But it does hurt the guys like me because I really want a car at MSRPG.

But you gotta wait two, three years.

I know man. Yeah. So I plan to get one when the time is right. And what I mean by the time is right is I really want to wait. I mean, I waited to get a Raptor R at a good deal when I got one. I've had three GT500s. So they come, the deals come.

Yeah.

So I'll wait. I mean, I'm sure that car is exhilarating. I haven't driven one yet.

Zero one?

Yeah.

Vinny got to drive a zero one.

Yeah, Steve's, I think it was.

Yeah, he was, he just, he's like, I have to have both now.

Yeah. Dude, I mean, a thousand horsepower.

Yeah.

So going back to what I said earlier, I love a C8, man. I'm like, I'm a Ford, I'm a, I'm a car guy.

You're right. Yep.

I am Ford first in consideration. Being able to feel a C8 Corvette in the engineering and the traction control and the way it actually applies power is so impressive, man. I'm serious. I mean, who needs MoTec? That's why I get, that's why people use MoTec. They're doing it with it. That's, that's, that's a very good comment. Think about that. Who needs MoTec anymore? GM gives you a thousand horsepower car on street. And it works.

All three of these cars, the GTD, the Zero One and the Three RS, are amazing because one of the race car drivers we had on the show, he, I don't know if you've seen the YouTube channel Savage Geese before, but they did an amazing...

I watched one video where they drove, I think they drove a GTD.

Yeah.

And they were saying it was an amazing car.

And they tested all three, right? And they brought out the engineers from each of the company. And they had all these crazy discussions. Right. Each of the manufacturers were impressed with each other's cars for various reasons. Like, again, the average Joe is not going to go to the ring and do that five second difference.

Yeah.

So it goes back to what you're saying. It's like, get what you want.

Yeah. Well, my best example, I was hanging out with some Porsche guys yesterday.

I'm sorry.

Yeah.

And I, you know, they're very, very adamant about their GT cars being like supreme.

Oh, don't worry. They get pissed off when I blow by them in my GT 500 on the track, too. So, yeah, in a Mustang.

Yeah, they get they get upset. However, they they they received this car pretty well. I mean, let's be honest, this is the American version of a Porsche. I mean, yeah, it's just heavy. It really is. I mean, think about the think about this. Okay, ZR 1060 horsepower. Let's call it 1100 because it's underrated. It's making 1020 of the years.

Yeah.

So 38, 3900 pound car, 1100 horsepower, 649 or 650, whatever. Not the X, just the regular one. 4400 pounds, 815 horsepower within a few, three seconds, two seconds, three seconds of the ZR one, not the X. So engineering wise, this is crazy. Just like the black series, the AMG. So from a handling perspective, but here's the thing. So people will say 400 grand versus 400 grand. Why did you buy this car? There's a lot of reasons. I can go buy a GT3 RS right now. There's one at Porsche Tampa, a black one, brand new, never titled. I can go buy it right now. Not only can I buy it right now, but when I buy it right now, and then somebody else with a GTD pulls up next to me on the highway, we're not in Germany, we're in Tampa. I'm getting gapped in my GT3 RS. I mean, based on the draggy and stuff, and based on the results I'm seeing on this thing, it's way faster than a... I'm going to do it. I know some people with them. I'm going to do a video.

It's going to be fun.

I'm going to do all... We'll do digs, stoplight type stuff, no prep, no... Let's raw, like here it is. Dig race, roll race from various speeds. Let's see what wins on American roads. And then I'm going to track the car a lot. That's why I haven't... Just so you guys know, that's why I'm not going to mod it for a little bit, because I'm in talks with Billy Johnson. I don't... You probably don't know who that is. He's a Ford factory car driver. He's down in South Florida. And he was a Ford driver for the Ford GT program and helped develop the GT500.

Okay.

Yeah. So at some point we're going to get this thing out on a couple of different tracks and do baseline stock.

Awesome.

And then before my wife interrupted with the Celsius, my point is, is I'm not really doing development with this as far as like Kelltrac and what Kelltrac is known for. I actually want to start offering like a package for it. And I want to call it like a GTD Extreme Package. So it'll be either a Whipple package or a stockblower based package with tuning. I'll use Ken to develop the tuning. A magnesium wheel. So it'll be 10 pounds lighter per wheel, which you said you're working with Terrence on that one or what? No, I got my own guy.

Okay.

Yeah.

So they didn't offer the magnesium wheels for these then? I thought they were supposed to. It just ended up happening?

I've heard some behind the scenes stuff.

You get magnesium paddle shifters, so you're good with that and that's all you get.

So when my, yeah, yeah. That's a whole different topic. When I had my issue with my first GTD, I'm not supposed to talk too much about it. But they were offering me like an interior package for the inconvenience. I thought it was nice. They were like the day it happened. They were already like, we're going to fly out the Palm Springs and we're going to do this. They were, Ford was great with it.

I heard they were amazing with like the whole concierge and all that.

It was good. There were some things. Some of the owners aren't too happy, but some people just complain about everything.

Oh, yeah.

But they were trying to get me to take this like $10,000 type of package. And I kept telling them, I mean, I'm messaging with like the main people at this point. Yeah. And I'm like, guys, you don't know me very well. I don't care about titanium and like interior. I don't care. I'm a horsepower, performance metrics, and that's it. I've never even really been a big looks guy. People love my style, like with my cars, like I'll fix up a car and people are like, like on my white GT 500, I got the Ford lines with the red bead lock, which I really want to put on this car. You know what I'm about, breaking the internet. I want to tow this car on drag pack on a trailer with my lowered Raptor R. Talk about the purest. Like what is this guy doing? So, but yeah, I want to, I don't know, we'll see what happens. Baby steps. Yeah. But the moral of all that is, I want to track this a lot more than I have in the past with some of my performance pack cards and stuff. I just dabbled.

That's exciting.

So I can't wait to do it.

Well, we are closing in on two and a half hours. Do you want to rip the usual three?

Yeah, so this will be fun. All right, so at the end of every episode, we like to ask our guests to pick three cars. I need a track car, a daily driver and a show car. You have an unlimited budget. You can build whatever you want. What are you going to pick?

I play this game all the time with my friends, by the way.

Yeah, okay.

So the first one was what?

Daily track and show car.

Yep.

You can track like road course.

Anytime.

Whatever track you want.

If you want to dirt track, be my guest.

Daily track and show.

Yeah.

So when you say show, do you mean just attention getting? Sure.

We usually bring it up as like you're going to take the wife and kids to go get ice cream or whatever, or maybe go to a car show or something like that.

Or like go on a date or whatever.

Yeah.

Show car, nice showy car.

So you decide the amount of attention you want.

Okay. My mind is analyzes things at a level to where it's hard to really pinpoint one car because I'm such a big car guy. But I will say this and you guys can try to figure out what this fits into.

Okay.

I personally, this is just me, not talking like dig racing. I mean, the problem is all-wheel drive EVs ruin a lot of this topic.

Yeah.

So as a car guy, I genuinely think the GT500 is hands down one of the best cars all around. Because let me tell you why. I have proven on three of them that you can make 1200 real horsepower without touching anything from the cylinder head to the rear wheels. You don't need a clutch, you don't need a converter, you don't need a driveshaft, you don't need axles. You see what I'm saying?

Yeah.

And it's heavy. I've never even seen a GT500 break a carbon driveshaft that they come with. So will it be as fast from a roll race, for example, as a Viper or as a Calvo, whatever? No. But that car, you can go on cars.com and you can buy one for 70 to 80 grand. And then you can put 15 grand into it, make over a thousand rear wheel horsepower, might not even need to do a fuel system. And you have a, my GT500 man, I'm building it as an example of what you can do. I don't even have headers on it. No fuel system, no headers. It's nasty. So for me, that's it, because that's the car that is, gets attention. You can go get ice cream in it. It's comfortable, it's refined, and you can make big power. The only other car that I think can compete with that is like an R8.

Well, that's fair. Yeah. So that's show car?

People love them, dude.

So that's the show car.

I mean, well, you said daily track show car.

Yeah, three different cars.

Oh!

That changes everything, okay.

Yeah. Okay. I was like, okay, so...

It's good to know that one checks all the boxes for you.

It does, though. Well, it does because kids love it. Overall, that's my vote. So take it how you might take it. Because I always tell people, like, that's the domestic version and real-world drive, of course, of like an R8. You know, you can make $1,200, $1,300 with like an R8. It's expensive, but I mean...

You can daily it and all that stuff.

Yeah, just fine. So that's like my... All-encompassing. That's my all-around affordable car for the average American guy that does well. Say that. That likes the hot rod. That's the important part. If you don't like the hot rod, you know, cause then you're in ZL1, you can do all the other stuff. I'm talking like horsepower junkies. So show car. Show car, you gotta have the most attention grabbing car possible, right? Because why show it? People go to a show because they're sitting there going, oh, I can't wait for people. Right now, as I'm sitting here, I'm taking this one. I just experienced it. My first day I could drive it, I drove hundreds of miles from Tampa to Redneckville. I actually went to a three o'clock Wendy's car show in Crystal River, Florida, and I have a photo from a random guy. Hey, there was a GTD in the Crystal River car show. Do you know whose it was? And I replied back, yeah, it's mine.

No way!

And it was a bunch of old people with gassers. I'm not joking. I've been wanting to do that since I ordered the car. We have a home up there. That's our weekend getaway. Okay. It's in the sticks to just relax. So every time we're up there, we have a little place on the water we eat. It's been there a hundred years. It's like old America, old Florida.

Yeah.

So I'm not into the tourism. I get away on the weekends.

That's Northern Wisconsin for us.

Yeah, exactly.

Dive bars in small towns.

So we get on our golf cart, we go drink beer, we eat fish, we eat smoked mullet. It's all redneck activities. Okay. And we've been talking, I'm not joking, when my neighbors and my wife watch this, they're going to laugh because we've been like bedding. When we pull up in that, are people going to know what it is? Not really. Yeah. You know what I mean? But there was a group of old timers there and there was really no group around any other car. When I was at Porsche Tampa, Porsche at the dealership, it was an invite, Cars and Coffee. I got invited. Yeah. Not only did I get invited, but I was told if I come, then I will have a reserved front row spot for a year. Okay. Cool. So I go there and even my wife was like, oh my God, this is uncomfortable. I mean, you go from pulling in, we're at the light with the turn signal on and Shawn, my wife was like, look at all the people walking to the curb, to the sidewalk to look at the car. So I'm biased, right? I mean, the only other car I drew that much attention to was the Viper. You'd be driving down the road. That thing had such a big cam, in sixth gear, going 60, it was loping. I'm not joking. Going down the highway. People would just be filming, but it's just like that with this thing. But it's unfair because it's so new and so rare. So that's why. You know what I mean? Like, everybody's so numb these days. But the one thing that I'm told constantly right now, never seen one of these. So I mean, I'm biased, right? It gets a lot of attention right now.

Yeah, so that locks it in for Showcar.

Yeah.

Yeah, which I agree, no disagreements there.

Yeah.

All right, so track him daily.

Okay, so. Okay, so for me, the daily is no competition.

Okay.

Not even close.

Oh, it's a Camry, isn't it?

Am I wrapped around? Okay. Oh, yeah. I don't even think it's close, guys.

I picked the Shelby Baja. Supposed to say the same thing. Yeah, I need a truck.

I don't think it's close. Yeah. Because you had to pick. You guys are making me pick.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, I gave you some b***** cars already. Yeah. Let's throw some trucks in there, dude. Like, if you're daily driving a vehicle, I don't need to drive a Plaid. I don't need to drive a Honda. I don't need to drive a little car. I don't need to drive a Shelby. That thing is a 10-second truck with a tune. 10 at 125 to 127. Think about that real quick, 6,400 pounds. Yeah. It can off-road. It tows my car out of state. So as a daily, why would I not have a truck that can do everything?

That makes sense.

It's a 10-second car.

Yeah.

So I explain this to my wife. She drives it right now. It's her daily driver. I have a truck. It's not here. It's at my shop. I'm daily. This is my daily driver for until further notice. This is my daily driver. So that truck right there, if a CA, if my wife is out going to public shopping in that truck, and a dude, an older dude, there's tons in this area, older dudes and CA, if he pulls up in a light, she's probably going to gap that corvette. That's cool. Yeah. It's not a plan. I get it. But it's just a different experience. And it rides amazing. Have you guys driven the gen three and up Raptors?

I haven't, but I've heard amazing.

I've been looking at them.

They absorb everything. They're like a Cadillac. Like the term rides like a Cadillac? Yeah. That's probably one of the best riding vehicles you can buy. Okay. Like I'm serious. If you get the opportunity to drive one, drive it. You'll be like, whoa, it's like floating on a cloud. So that's my daily 100%. It's not even close.

And then track car.

Well, I got to have two.

We'll see if I can let you play this game. What do you mean by you got to have two?

Track drag strip.

Well, then pick a track. If you think this is the only time you're coming on the show, you're mistaken, by the way. You can choose a different next time, too.

So you're saying you either had to pick drag or track or one that can do both good.

Yes.

I can't say if it's a track, it's this. If it's a drag strip, it's this. You're making me pick a one.

Yeah, you have to have three and that's it. He doesn't let anybody know.

So Raptor R, you're trying to bully me into the 352 Predator cars that Ford makes and I own. Yeah. Okay. So a Raptor R is my daily. So that's why I have it. This is the show. That's why I have it. But I also have it for track. But again, I'm not going to pick this for track. I wouldn't. Yeah. Because I think it's more of an attention getter than anything. Right. So and rare exclusive right now. Okay. So track car is going to be. There's no restrictions.

Just go for it.

Just go for it.

Yeah.

You can weld two cars together if you want.

Yeah.

Now, we've broken him now.

I've seen deer in my headlights.

Last question. Are we considering like a Brett LaSalle car or are we saying like the car for what it is? Because.

Yeah, you go Brett LaSalle car. Like we're talking full on craziness. Doesn't have to be street legal.

Doesn't have to do anything, it's just a matter of who makes the best carbon parts and all that stuff. I mean, you know what I mean? Like as a car channel, I think it really needs to be based on like the success of the OEMs, because if not, you just build a chassis car. It's like, I mean, it's just unlimited options. I will say that if it's a car that I want to buy, I'm going to base it on that. I'm going to base it on, I don't have time anymore, dude. I'm not the same guy I was 15 years ago, where I could not sleep and work on my car. So the Brett LaSalle cars are out for me. Maybe when I retire, that's what I would do. So for now, that's not, I'm going to say, I mean, probably ZR1X. I think it's the baddest car ever built. I just like the idea. I legit think it's the baddest car ever built, considering the details.

That if you were going to, you couldn't choose between either track. I feel like that's your go.

Yeah.

Because that would be both.

Do you agree with me?

Yeah, I would agree with you.

And I'm talking low work here. Yep. Naturally, we're all going to build something to really kick some a**. Notice I didn't mention F-150s. Yeah. Mexican GTRs. Yeah. But a lot of people would have that on their list. Yeah. The 10-year-ago me, if I was here 10 years ago, in this chair, in this scenario, that truck would have been somewhere in that. But I like my comfort. I like, you know, the attention or whatever, you know, whatever this offers. And then I think that the ZR1X nails it. I legit, that's why I like, I don't like it when people make a comment. You should have bought a ZR1. Well, I plan to because it's amazing. If somebody says that car is not amazing, they're crazy. Yeah.

100%.

It's great. It's, I'm happy that an American company came out and did it. Ford didn't do it.

Absolutely. Well, Ford was the first to break the six-minute mark, though. You can't take that away from them. They were first.

Yes.

You know, and when they throw some twin turbos into the next one, we'll be fine.

Yes. It's funny because when I make posts on this car now that I'm putting content out there, I put a disclaimer. No, it's not as fast as a ZR1. So don't ask. It kind of sucks I got to do that. I don't mind doing it because the ZR1 beats this car in every way. They've proven it. The ZR1X.

How often though?

But if you pull up with two of these, that's the thing. If there was a red car that looked just like a ZR1 at the Porsche show and I didn't see anybody looking at it. Like I think it was a Z06, but it had the ZR1 hood and the bigger spoiler and everything. And I didn't really see, and it was red. And it was my car, two underground racing, UGR Lambos, and then that car. And everybody wasn't on this car the whole time.

Yeah.

No, I don't think they made the ZR1. So we've had this discussion, look far enough away from the other CA.

Have you seen one in person though? But a ZR1?

Yeah. There's a bunch around here.

Oh yeah, I guess, fair enough.

There's always.

That's the other thing. There's a bajillion CA's out there, right?

Yeah.

And then I think it just kind of muddies the water.

But the ZR1 does have a presence though. When I was in Detroit, the width is the same.

The only presence is a vent on top of the back flare.

I don't know, man. When I saw it in a rear view mirror in Detroit, I would worry.

Okay.

And I saw the GTD come up in my mirror and I saw the ZR1 come in my mirror. And I immediately, I'm like, that's a f****** ZR1. Like, yeah, maybe to whatever person, but like.

I agree with you. Because I think, I will say this, it's because of the hood. That's the main difference.

The hood and the big a** wing.

Yes, that's it. But if you have, so again, yesterday, I didn't even go up to look at it. I didn't even go up to the car to look at it. There was a Reds C8 and it was wider. So it was definitely a ZO6 or something. It wasn't a base. That's the main difference. Like a ZO6 has the bigger scoop here. Yep. Okay, this red car had a ZR1 hood, which makes a huge difference. And when you're behind one and a ZR1 is behind you and it's coming up on you, you see like that reflection and that little 100%. And you're like, whoa, that's exotic looking. I agree with that.

Yeah.

Totally. Yeah.

Same thing with this car. That was like, if you change the front bumper and it had just like a normal GT, like look at a normal 5.0 versus a GT 500. You see that front bumper.

Yeah.

It's like, you know, something special is coming.

So when I had this car delivered, I had my GT 500 next to it right here.

Yep.

I had both cars. It was actually really cool because there was about 30 people here. And each person would walk back and forth and be like, this thing makes the GT 500 look like a little hot wheels car. Yeah. Because it is so fat, dude. It's 82 inches bottom to bottom. Like measuring across.

The wrap should be wider than your Raptor.

No, it's a couple inches more narrow. That's a, I can't go to car washes. The Raptor are like the, yeah, I can't. So the GT500, I think, I think is about six inches narrower or something like that. That's huge. Yeah. When you're looking behind a car and then you go look at the other one and you go back and forth and you look.

It's insanity.

It's insanity. I mean, it's a presence like no other. I mean, it really is. That's, it's funny you say that because I literally talk about that weekly about the ZR1s. I have a problem paying 200 grand or more for a car when at the end of the day, the main difference is when you stomp in the gas and it goes fast. That's the main difference.

Yeah.

And the sound, but the ZO6 sounds amazing. So 100%. So that's the thing. Like, I don't feel that Chevy gives Chevrolet. I don't think that Chevrolet gives you the value of a multiple hundred thousand dollar car for a full circle. I think that they compensated, and the reason they're able to give you such an awesome car at 200 grand starting, we're talking MSRP, of course.

Yep.

That's why, though. That's the result of it.

Right.

Because then you have a one-off car that's hundreds and hundreds of thousands, right?

Right. Which has been GMs, even in the day, like I come from the muscle car era, that's kind of how I got into cars. We were, you know, my dad and I had two 69 Mach 1s at one point in time. That was one of the reasons why the kind of the Mopars and the Fords were a little bit more collectible, because they didn't share as much between everything. Like with Chevy, Chevy between like a Malibu or a Nova or all that stuff. They had all the same parts.

You look at a parts catalog and it's like 14 vehicles and it's like four types of parts. Yes, yes. I know it's exact, suspension's the same way.

Yeah.

Like it's like, what do you have? Oh, it's a GM before 1986. It's all the same.

Yes, yeah.

Coil over kits, everything's all the same. Yeah. So no, you're right, you're right. That's a hundred percent right. But that's been their trick.

Yeah.

That's how they can have a ZR1X at the MSRP it's at, because they've, they got rid of the Camaro. They focused on a mid-engine. And I, dude, I mean, there's a lot of haters. That whole thing is crazy, man. The division now, because of, there's really just Fords and Corvettes now, kind of. I mean, that's really, so the division and the hate out there for both on, from both sides. The C8 is such a good driving car, man.

I am a, I'm a hardcore Ford guy, right? But I'm like you, I'm a car guy through and through. So, but if I can't pick on GM guys, then I don't even want to f****** do this. So that's where, that's the only reason, like, I can respect the cars and I will say that out loud. But at the same time, if I can't like jab at somebody, especially when it comes to trucks, we're not even going to pretend like a Chevy truck can even touch a Ford truck.

I agree.

So I, yeah.

I went through a spurt where I was buying all of them. I'm just a car junkie man. I had a Chevy when they finally got away from the square wheel wells in 19. So I went and got one.

Somebody told me that and now I can't unsee it. I was like, I'm like, that looks like s*** now that I notice it.

I would not buy a Chevy truck. My wife would be like, I want you to get a Chevy. And I'm like, nope. Until they get rid of the square wheel wells in 2019, they came out with a new style. And I hated the front because it was so complicated. So I got black. Anytime you don't like features of a car, you get black. Because then it's just the overall shape. Yeah, yep. So I went and got that and it became her favorite truck of all time. Right now, I've had multiple Raptors. I've had Rams. I've had F-150s out the a**. The one Chevy RSTZ71 I had, she talks about it every day. I'm like, what do you like about that truck? She's like, it was just awesome.

This can't be more awesome than that thing.

No, this is the ultimate truck.

Okay, yeah.

I don't know what she likes about the Chevy, but yeah, I really think that's it. I think the Raptor R for the daily, it's fast. It does everything. It can tow if emergency happens. I mean, I'm covered. So I think about the whole thing. Not just if I pull up at a light, I can beat somebody, who cares? I'm past that point, man. Somebody told me the other day, what if a plaid pulls up next to you? And I'm like, just like one did in my Calvo Viper, and I got gapped, and I thumbs up, and I said, I'm still driving home in a Calvo Viper. Yeah. It's not like I'm going to pull over and be like, can we trade cars? I don't want my Viper anymore. What? So I mean, that's the same thing with this. Yeah. You know, if a GT2RS or some cool car pulls up next to me, and it beats me, literally doesn't mean I want that car at all. I don't care. Right?

Still got your car at the end of the day.

Yeah. I mean, you know, so that's my outlook on it, on the car stuff. And I get, now that I'm putting this out there, I'm getting, I don't know if you guys are on the Draggy Talk page.

Oh, a ton. No, no, we keep up with it, yeah.

My posts are like hundreds of comments every time I post, you know?

Yeah.

And people are hating and stuff, and I'm like, oh, whatever, man. I hope someday you can do what I'm doing. Like, that's my reply. I hope you get in a scenario where Ford can pick you and you can actually drive the car. And then at that point, you just realize, yeah, that's my hour.

That's your cue. Yeah.

It's on a timer.

Yeah. Well, on that note, where can everybody find you?

On the internet.

In the Draggy Forum.

Yeah. So I just like to have fun. So I try to separate the business and what I like to do. This doesn't, Kelltrac customers don't care about this, but they do because they think it's cool.

Yeah.

So I do a lot of act. I'm a real active on all the car groups, whether it's tech, I help people out or somebody wants to order something, whatever. But just the website, keltrac.com. And I've got Instagram account. I don't put a lot of focus on it because it's just me on the logistic side of the business. But Instagram at Kelltrac, you know, K-E-L-L-T-R-A-C. And Facebook, Kelltrac, Facebook page. And Facebook is huge for car guys.

Yeah, because it's got a marketplace. We're already on there anyway.

Yeah.

It's the only reason.

So I tell people all the time, I'm on Facebook all the time. Like, I work on my laptop at the shop in my office and I have Messenger open and I just tell people all the time, man, like I get my phone, like when we're done with this, it'll have all kinds of messages. And I just tell people, message me on Facebook because it's centrally located. And I got customers on there, that's where I provide remote support and stuff like that. So Facebook, Instagram, the website, kelltrac.com.

Sweet. Dan?

You can find us at Gunna Garage. That's all I got for you.

Awesome. Well, Kelly, first of all, thank you for making this happen. This is awesome. You've been on my bucket list for some time. So I'm glad that we made this happen last minute.

So thank you for making it happen. Yeah.

By the way, I didn't tell you, he canceled a cardiologist appointment to do this with us. I was going to tell you that I can't forget him yet.

I'm getting older now, so my wife's like, we can't be that bad if you're drinking a Celsius.

Yeah.

They're like, you got to stop drinking all that caffeine. No, never. But yeah, I'm approaching the mid-40s, so I'm just trying to get everything checked out. I haven't been in a long time. Back in the day, I had some stuff done just to see, I was having some weird issues and it's all lifestyle and diet. Yeah. Take care of yourself. So my new doctor is actually a friend of mine. He has an AMG, the Black Series, the one's the big spoiler and all that stuff. So he's a car guy. He's like, dude, we got to get your blood work. And I was in there getting blood work and it was like vial, whatever they're called, tube after tube. Yeah. It was like 24. And I'm like, okay, one more of these and I'm passing out. I mean, I'm like, what did you have tested? And he's like, everything. He's like, we're getting you on track. And I'm like, okay, cool. So I'm in good hands now. I used to just have like a generic, like old.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

But he's, so that's why it's not like I'm undergoing any type of like craziness, but yeah, man, this has been a blast. I appreciate you guys coming.

Yeah.

Thank you.

So it's pretty cool. So it's cool to be able to just do it here too, you know?

Yeah.

It's a little less hectic, more comfortable.

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