197. Pancho Weaver on Nascar Chassis, Building a Trans AM Monster and a Career in Racing

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 back here in North Carolina with with Pancho Weaver. I want to give the audience kind of a little bit of a backdrop of where I discovered, I guess, you in the first place. I was at Road America about a year, year and a half ago. And I was like, man, that is a crazy looking challenger over there. And then I was like, that challenger sounds pretty crazy. And then I looked you up and then lo and behold, I actually got the introduction to you from our friends at 6XD.

Right.

And now here we are. So real quick, just kind of give us an understanding of how do we get here today? Where did your career begin? How did you get into racing cars?

And that goes, that's a big story. And you got all day, I guess, but it started back in Southern California, back in Orange County area. And my dad was an old midget racer from the 40s and 50s and 60s. And I just kind of grew up around it, you know? And he-

Just gonna pause you for a second, I'm really sorry. No sound, let's just tighten it like a jacket. I guess.

Okay. It was sinking.

I know, I forgot to freaking tighten the thing. It's like rookie mistake. All right.

It's all right. Anyhow, he was in the age group of like Parnelli Jones and Dan Gurney and, you know, you know, Carol Shelby and some of those guys. And they were all from that same area. So they were Southern California racers, and they bonded pretty well together. And so I got to grow up around these guys and didn't really realize where I was at that point in my life and until I got older and who I was hanging out with when I was, you know, seven, eight, nine, 10 years old and just being a pain, basically a pain in the a**, hanging around, getting in the way and whatnot. But it turned into a great career. Just by hanging around it through osmosis, I got to learn a lot of things from lots of different, really neat mentors and fabricators and, you know, racers and anything that had to do with racing, I was all about it.

Was it all appealing to you, like seven, eight years old, right, was the fabricating, was the putting stuff together? Did anything appeal to you in particular, just all of it?

Well, I mean, I really enjoyed watching the cars, of course, you know, going to the track with my dad and we had local tracks and some that were a little further away, but you know, usually pretty close. And they raced, you know, even before I was born, they were racing three, four nights a week, you know, but I mean, when I was around, it was probably once a week or something like that it's probably more like it. But, you know, and when you're that age, you're building like model cars, you know, you're going to Ravel and you got a plastic model and you're putting it together and you customize it and you paint it the way you want and you're dreaming, right, it starts your dreaming process. And I always kind of gravitated to Trans Am as a young kid because it started in 1966, you know, and at that time I was about 10 years old or so. And so I just loved that. Plus Parnelli was one of the drivers and he was my dad's friend. So I used to kind of watch that, you know, and so all those heroes of yesterday and as it goes forward, I just kind of stuck with it. Here we are, you know, many years later, this is, you know, 1966 and here we are 2026. So a lot of times have gone by and cars have progressed and they have materialized with technology and whatnot. And I love this class because it innovates. Innovation is welcome in this class. I mean, you have to make certain safety standards and rules.

Like the Trans Am class?

The Trans Am class, yeah.

When you say innovation is allowed and expected, what does that look like? Because like some of these other series, it gets so strict to where it's like it's difficult.

Yeah.

What does innovation look like here?

Well, it's the only class other than Off-Road that I know of that isn't a cookie-cutter kind of class. It lets your dreams materialize. It lets your thought process gel. Technology helps drive all that because things changes as brakes get better, engines get better, tire grip gets better, aerodynamics and whatnot. So it's a growing class in challenge as well as just performance for people behind the scenes, cars, drivers and mechanics.

Let's start with this guy. First of all, this three-wheeler, we need to talk about that at some point. Three-wheel drive is the craziest thing I've heard in my life.

There's another dream right there.

We have to come back to that at some point. I want to talk about the challenger behind you. So you talked a little bit with my brother off camera here.

That's your brother?

Yeah.

Goodness gracious.

I don't know what to say.

Gotcha.

Anyways, engine-wise, right?

Yes.

There was a video that I posted when I was at Road America. I think it did something over a million views. I didn't know one and a half million views. Because people were like, what's the sound? Nobody could figure out what the engine was. What is the engine in here?

Well, I'll take you back just a little bit further than this. There was a long path of starting Trans Am back in early 80s, about 1980 or so. I've currently built 50 Trans Am cars, road race GT1 type, that class car.

Like over your career?

Yeah, over my career in Trans Am. In Cup, we built 83 Cup cars. Because I went to work for Dale Earnhardt and I started the chassis program and it flourished into some other things. Well, that whole process ended in 2008 when the company more or less imploded and everybody was displaced. And so here I'm sitting on the couch going, oh, what do you want to do? What are you going to do when you grow up? And this is about 2008, the end of 2008. And so I decided I'd like to get back into Trans Am. I'd like to come up with something different, something new, innovations welcome, what aren't they doing? What would you like to do? And made a big list. And so that's what this car actually is. And this is the fourth car of this new design, which I call the Generation 3 Weaver. And I wanted to be in their face. I wanted to be in their face with performance. I wanted to be in their face to build a vehicle that cost about $100,000 less than the competitors. And I wanted to be in their face with the sound of the engine and the color of the car. I mean, the whole thing was to be noticed, right? And so that sound that you projected, or that it projects, that you noticed and realized that it's a different sound. It's a 180-degree header system. It's pretty difficult to build because of tight constraints and whatnot. But I'm glad I did it because once we heard it, it was just like, wow, that is a completely different sound. And you know when this car is coming, you don't even have to be watching it. You just know that car just went by.

I would hear it at turn 13, 14, whatever.

Exactly.

I would know exactly which car was coming. I'll get the camera ready every single time. You know, I finally got that one clip.

So we just finished up year five, starting year six with this car and this paint scheme and this team and this program. And so it's kind of becoming an iconic. People relate to it now, and I'd kind of like to keep it going that way.

Is this paint or?

This is wrap. This is.

OK, I was about to say, yeah, which, by the way, you nailed it on the color scheme. Like it's just bright in your face, like you said.

It's bright, Menard yellow. There's a story behind that, too. My dad was painting the Parnelli Jones turban cars, and they were fluorescent, kind of a red, orange, fluorescent red, orange STP stuff. And so he's down at the paint shop buying materials to paint these cars, and he notices this yellow, this fluorescent yellow. He goes, oh, that looked great on my midget. And so he painted his midget. I have it upstairs. It's a 1946 Curtis midget. It's getting ready to go into restoration process as well, like everything else seems like, but that color was bright. And so this car is named after my father. His nickname was Speedy. And so that's the name of this car. And then the color scheme, and I actually called Paul Menard and I said, hey, I want to use your family color on my Trans Am ride. And by the way, why don't you come drive my Trans Am car? And he goes, oh, that'd be awesome. So, and he did, he showed up. He was the first driver to drive this car when it was new, along with Boris said, we did a test day out in Virginia. And the two of them, you know, thrashed this thing pretty roughly for the first day. And we learned, we developed it basically at that particular time.

So what kind of, what are some things that defined this car, right? Like what are some, I guess, rules, regulations, or kind of take me through the build, I suppose.

This car is quite, like I said, I wanted to build something quite a bit different. So nobody was building all round tube construction, which the whole chassis being round instead of square. There's some examples. We can do this in the video a little bit later, but the square chassis is, was very popular. It's easy to build on a flat surface. But every time you have an angle change, there's a miter joint and a weld, a butt weld basically. With the round, you can actually, and this car is done in CAD. I did everything on a computer with my engineer out in California, Chris Willis, my engineer of choice. He knows that and I say it every time I get asked it, but he's a very accomplished engineer and he's done a couple Trans Am cars for me. He's done GTP, off road, lots of different things. But anyhow, I said, I want to build a car that's a little bit different and I want to build an all round tube car. So through CAD, you can see and see bend the frame where there's multiple angle changes. Like the floor tubes on this car, the outer floor tubes, I think they have five or six different bends in there, where that would normally be a cut, a miter, and a butt weld on a square tube. So it's a lot stronger because you don't have these welds, you don't have these intersections, and it's a lot stronger torsionally because round is very resistant to torsion. Or square is just basically being held back by the four points of the square tube. So that's why sway bars are round. They're not square. Oh, yes, that makes sense. Torsionally, it's so much more sound because it's backing itself up as it's being twisted. So, and at the same time, you're losing the corner of the square. You don't have that material. So ultimately, it's lighter. Our chassis, the first chassis was 100 pounds lighter than our previous square tube design. And it was over double the torsional stiffness in a torsion test. So we went from 16,000 pounds per degree, we would twist it one degree through the shock towers. And it would took 16,000 pounds to get to one degree. And the new car took 36,000 pounds to get to that same degree. Can you explain that?

I'm not exactly sure. So if we can say 16,000 and 36,000 pounds.

It's how much force. Basically, these cars are sprung through shock, a coil over shocks. So all the load of the corner is going through those shock points, the upper shock points. So the car is wanting to resist through suspension and through springs. But yet the chassis is wanting to coil and wrap up. Like anything coils and wraps up. So the reduction of coil or wrap up has the reverse effect of that is to recoil. So like when you push a car down with a spring, it wants to shoot back up because of the spring. Well, there's a shock there to control that, to control this reaction. Well, on a chassis twisting, you don't have shocks to control the reaction of the twist. So less twist, less recoil. So when these cars, when this car goes into a corner, it's rolling up into the corner, it's absorbing the inertia and the G-load, and the car is wanting to roll, and it has resistance through that. So if it doesn't wrap up so much, it doesn't recoil so much. So this car will take a set, a lot of cars take a first set and you have to wait for that first set to react to the recoil. And then the second set, you can really get with the throttle and come off the corner hard. This car takes a set immediately the first time. There's no second time, and you can get with the throttle sooner, and you can have more speed coming out of the corner, which is a lot more speed at the end of the straightaway. So it just reacts to lap time basically.

Okay.

It was really, it was a total science project. It was really, it's very basic though. I mean, you know, round tube versus square tube, that's not that difficult to comprehend. But in physics, it's way different, way different.

So is this some knowledge you picked up over the years, or is this something that you were taught like during that project or a combination?

No, this is just common sense, just thinking out of the box a little bit. What's everybody else, why am I gonna do, I don't wanna do what everybody else is doing. And there's another reason why it's a dodge. Nobody was doing a dodge. The only guy that's doing dodges, we built five dodges now. And we can't seem to get any help from that department, but you would think we would be able to, but I don't know, people I guess aren't buying challenges anymore, they're just buying Corvettes and Camaros. So isn't that a bummer?

Yeah, they just announced the Camaros coming back too. Yeah, how about for the third time?

I mean, all manufacturers are selling sports vehicles and trucks. Let's get with it, you know? They're not selling luxury cars that much anymore, you know? And even with oil prices and stuff, people love their cars, you know? So give a big shout out there for the Dodge Challengers, you guys. Come on.

Yeah, hopefully we see something in that department, but that's a whole, again...

That's a whole other deal. These cars don't run on jelly beans. They run on thousands of dollar bills, thousands of them.

So, okay, so that's criteria number one. Go the tubes instead of squares.

Yep.

So what's next?

The next was geometry. I wanted more mechanical grip through mechanics, through engineering. And my engineer said, you know, that'd be great. And I can do that through suspension, but you're not going to be able to steer the car. And I go, well, what do you mean? You know, why can't I steer the car? And I said, well, the suspension has to, it dictates where the steering rack is basically going to be living in elevation in the car. And the motor happens to be in the way, you know. Currently, and these earlier years, we had the steering rack underneath the front drives of the oil pump, the water pump, this power steering pump, you know, the crank, the crank drives that come off the front of the motor, the steering rack would nest underneath all of that. And then it would go to, you know, to the uprights and that kind of thing. So, and you don't want to, you don't want to have a bump steer, if any. You know, it's got to be minimal. So that's that chatter that you see in a driver's cockpit when he's being filmed and you see that wheel is just chattering and he's fighting that wheel and fighting that wheel. It's a lot of bump steering and it's also, you know, saving the car. They're holding the car on a knife edge, you know, from losing the car off the racetrack to keeping it on the racetrack. So it's also, you know, there's a lot of wheel input to keep that balance. But there's also a lot of wheel input, just that's not being driven by your effort, but it's being driven by the car, bumping it back out of your hand, you know, basically. So long story short, the steering rack was going to be in the way of the engine or the engine in the way of the steering rack. I said, well, you worry about this, you know, the bump steer or not the bump steer, but the overall grip. Let's see if we can get that. And then I'll work on the steering part. Maybe we'll come up with some other ideas.

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So he did, he goes, and he called me back. I got it, I got the mechanical grip. So I worked on a steering, and when we got together, we collaborated, and we came up with this rocker design, and I'll show it to you later on the video. It's kind of simple but complexed at the same time, and it's got very close tolerances to hitting other things. But through CAD, we could see where those closenesses were, and we could project it, we could cycle it, and we could make sure that it wasn't hitting, and everything was fine, everything lives good. And we've had great luck with it. It's just like no bum steer, we got the mechanical grip, we got the round tube construction, we got the sound through the engine, through this headers. And then overall, we just work really hard on trying to keep the center of gravity down low. Every part and piece you make, you're thinking about weight to try to keep your overall weight down. Then you can add weight with ballast, and you can put it where you want it. These cars tend to get a little, it's a lightweight class to begin with, pretty much for a completed V8 car, a driver and everything, you're looking in the, just a little over 2,700 pounds, everything included, you know, versus what's Nascar, 3,400 pounds or something like that.

That ain't my world.

But anyhow, yeah, it's not your world. Mine either, any longer, actually.

But still, you're talking 700, 800 pounds lighter.

Yeah, with more motor, more aero, more rubber. We've got 14 inches of rear rubber, 13 inches of front rubber, we're two inches off the ground, roughly 900 horsepower, 600 foot pounds of torque, a little bit over 600 foot pump. It's just like a monster. So the trick is to tame the monster, you know? Keep the monster on the track, keep your lap times down, keep it clean, and usually when you're smooth, you're fast, even though it doesn't feel fast to the driver, usually, but so that's what it's all about. And we've been working trying to get some of these younger drivers to come up to the ranks that want to go to Nascar. And so this is a good test bed. This is a proving grounds. This is a driver coaching area and a car coaching area where you can feel that power. This car makes more power, more grip than any Nascar program right now. It's faster than a Cup car. It's faster than an Xfinity, faster than a truck. I mean, you're three categories there. This car at Daytona does 206 at the start and finish line, going into turn one on the road course. It's just fast.

So, do you have a Road America Time, just so I can have my own reference?

Road America Time, I think we're about 185, 187, something like that, I think is about where we're at at the end of the straightaways.

Oh no, I mean, lap time.

Oh, lap time.

Yeah, sorry.

Oh, gosh. That's a long track. Nathan.

203, holy s***.

Yeah, 203.

Yeah, okay. And then, you said this is a Nascar engine then?

It's a Nascar engine. It's, this class lets you use previous Nascar engines, not the current one that they're running. The current Red Airstion or the current design, I can't, my words can't come out of my mouth, but it's before noon, so it's okay. Yeah, with the current, they won't let us run the very current, current stuff, but they usually let us run the, like the last, the last, you know, design basically. So these engines are from Penske when they ran the Dodge program in their Cup cars with Rusty and Jeremy Mayfield. So there's a, there was a room full of these engines that we've been buying over the years and they have R5 and then we were allowed to use the R6. So now we're into the R6 Dodge design. And that was, I believe that that's the last, the last Dodge NASCAR engines that were built at the time, because they've been out of it for a while at NASCAR.

Yeah, 2014, I think, was it 2012, something like that?

Yeah, I think it was, yes, right in that vicinity. So they're great power plants and reasonably priced, if there's anything reasonable price in racing, but it works for me. And nobody was in the Dodge category. So I decided let's be a little different. I wanted to make this a statement. I think we've made a statement in a lot of different ways. And then the performance, we've had some awesome drivers. Boris said was pretty much my main driver for many years and still is a great friend. And Paul Menard, Adam Andretti, all these guys, great talents, Kaz Grala, Brent Cruz, Thomas Inuzziata. I mean, and now we've got Kaylee Bryson, who's just a young lady, she's 25 years old. And she's just done an awesome job at Sebring. We did a test. We did actually the race after that, a few weeks after that, and then we did Atlanta race. And she's she's done quite well. I think she's third in points right now. Oh, wow. Possibly fourth in points. So we'll see where that leads. But she wants to go to NASCAR. So this is we're trying to maybe work towards a driver development program. Boris is an awesome coach and has coached most all the NASCAR guys on road course, so he's a great coach and he's got a lot of talent. And so he's behind us with trying to help the newcomers come along as well as you know, and he wants to race as well. So obviously, and we love to race him because he's just he's really easy on equipment and he's he's very methodical about how he runs his race. He saves his tires. He has something for the end. And that's how we've done really well and been podium pretty much most every time out when we run with Boris or the upper class talent.

What does the rest of this class look like? Are people coming like how different do cars get?

They I'd say they're pretty stable right now. But getting through the different like it's the the arrow program took off here about three years ago, four years ago. And it was a little this and a little of that and try some of this and try some of that. And the tech inspector, Aaron Caldwell, he was, you know, he's real open to what we call innovation, you know, and so he was trying to keep it where it wasn't getting too out of control. But at the same time, we're getting something a little new for newcomers that are looking to come from MSA GT type racing, come into Trans Am, try to make their home with Trans Am, try to build that class again and get up to the 35 car field count, you know, entries.

What does it add now if you had to guess?

We struggle to get 12, you know. And some tracks, you know, we get, you know, maybe 15 or 18. But it's still reduced, you know, some tracks we get eight, you know, and it just depends where it's at. You know, about half of the, I'd more listen that I'd say, probably a quarter of the guys are just, they've got great businesses, it doesn't matter what it costs. They don't really have a budget and they just, they have full time teams. It's a very expensive sport to probably maintain at that level. We try to approach it in a different way because we don't have the finances that those big teams have. So we try to race smart. We try to, we build our stuff, we don't buy it. We sell it to other teams as well. So that's kind of how we make our money a little bit. But at the same time, I'm a racer, I'm competitive, I used to drive and I'm still, I'm not done racing yet as far as a car owner. Or as a builder, basically. So we'll see where it goes.

Driving wise, what did your driving career look like?

I started in off-road, stadium racing and off-road was my big deal. The Baja 1000, the Baja 500, the Mint 400, all the big races out in the desert. Southern California was the perfect place for that. So I was right in the middle of it.

How long were you in California for?

45 years, from birth to 45 and then moved here and been here for, I don't know, 25 years, 27 years, something like that now. It's been a great move. We live here on a huge lake. It's got about 500 coast miles, Lake Norman. It's just above Charlotte, about 30, not quite 30 minutes maybe.

Not too shabby of a drive up here.

So living on the lake is awesome because the boat's in the backyard. Off you go and relax at the end of the day if you want, or you're having a bad afternoon, or you want to go to lunch on the lake, or you have a client, throw them in the boat, we take them to lunch, and it's kind of cool. It's stiffer, but it's almost like being retired, but being able to live your dream at the same time, kind of thing. So it's been a blast, it's been a blast.

No, it's a good setup too. Just come on downstairs, coffee and hands sort of deal. Just get to ranching or working or whatever you're doing that day.

25 years ago, we started looking for property. We moved here, spent the first year, my wife and I and the two little girls, Maddie and Kayla. So we looked around for the first year for property, thinking we might build. Then we thought, well, maybe we'll just buy a house and add on to it. We're kind of ready, we're wanting lake property and of course, it's more expensive obviously. But 25 years ago, it was more achievable. And we wound up finding this lot. This is about a two acre lot. And we've got the boats in the backyard, and it's a three-story house, so the first story is shop. I should have probably built two stories of shop and one story house, but my construction was a little bit messed up at the time.

So this is what we wound up doing. Every house out here has a shop. That's just the norm out here.

Well, that's how we kind of judge houses. How big is a shop? It's like, well, that's a nice house. We're a nice shop. But yeah, it seems like everybody around here, I mean, you have a lot of crew chiefs, a lot of drivers and a lot of mechanics. And so what do they aspire to do is they have hot rods, they have boats or whatever. And so they need shops and it's pretty popular back here. Barnum Miniums are very popular.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Very popular, yeah.

So you started off in off road then.

Yep, off road. Well, I, out of high school, because my dad knew Parnelli and Parnelli knew me and whatnot, and he, they needed a welder and I happened to be a really good heliar, a TIG welder at the time. And so I went to work in his off road department and built his off road cars, or was part of the team that built the off road cars at 19 years old. So it was a pretty big deal for me. And at that time, Parnelli was, had probably 100 employees. They were Formula One, Formula 5,000, Indy car, midgets, dirt champ cars, drag racing, funny car, and top fuel. What else were they into? They were into everything. It was just like, wow. I was just like a kid in a candy shop, you know? So all these guys were great helping me out and teaching me and being mentors. This is how you do this. This is how you do that. And it was my college education basically for what I'm doing today. And so also I was very skinny at the time. I've gotten a little heavier now, especially right in the middle, but I was about a hundred pounds at the time. And so it was, they had a class in a trophy trucks. Walker Evans was a driver for Parnelli in the trophy truck and they needed a co-pilot. So I'm way absolutely just about nothing and they put me in there. So we got, we won the Baja 500 and the Baja 1000 and it just, it was really a lot of fun. So, and I was getting involved in off road at the time with my own single seater that I built. Built my first car right out of high school at this period of time, about 18, 19 years old. And started racing that. And then with the experience with Parnelli and then moving on to with the Mickey Thompson Stadium Series. He was doing like the Angel Stadium, Jack Murphy Stadium, the LA Coliseum, Riverside. They had a huge event out at Riverside International and a huge off road event there. So go to 1977 Off-Road World Championship Grand Prix and on YouTube and you'll learn all about that era. But it was cool stuff, a lot of fun and learned a lot.

Okay. That's very different than working on cars like this then. Did you take anything away from that though? That you're able to attribute to working on these?

The fabrication process for sure. Yeah. Getting a little more tricky with that and the outcome. A lot of people can, you give 10 different guys the same job to do and you're going to come up with probably seven different ways that it's being made. So there's no really right or wrong way of doing things, it's just the technique that you used. Overall, the end of the day, it has to be functional, it has to be aesthetically pleasing. It doesn't want to look like nobody's, somebody built it that doesn't know what they're doing or whatever. So there's a lot of things to fabrication. You can make it work, it doesn't have to be pretty, or you can make it work, it could be awesome and outperform and be pretty. So there's a lot of different things with fabrication. It's a challenge in itself and competition amongst fabricators per se. Drivers want to be the fastest driver than the other driver, or that car needs, that engineer outperforms another engineer. So it's driven in so many different engine power plants, it's just driven so many different places. Transmission 6XD, that's a great speed advantage right there, for crying out loud. With no lift shift, you hold your foot down, full throttle, and just pull a stick, you know, no clutch, nothing, just grab it and go. And it's amazing.

It was cool to witness that for the first time. So one of my friends, it got sold since then and changed up, but my first time experiencing a 6XD was in a 2000 horsepower Viper.

Oh yeah.

And, you know, because Enth Moto does those and they run the 6XDs and it was just, it's such a crazy, crazy experience in those, with the no lift shift and everything.

Right, right, right.

Yeah, so how did you get to know those guys by the way?

They actually came to see me here in this little dungeon that we work out of, which is a really cool dungeon actually, but they came to see me about a reverse lockout, and I was doing an electronic reverse lockout at the time for a different transmission. And they wanted to know a little bit about it, so we kind of hit it off, Clay and Rick, and I was open with them and what we were doing, and they were right here about a half hour away from my shop. So it kind of stayed in touch a little bit over the years, and I was kind of stuck into the, I moved into the four-speed NASCAR transmission because of its lack of huge expense. It's a dog ring transmission. It's what NASCAR used before they went to this new Gen 7, and it's just a dog ring four-speed. In my car, it was hanging out the bottom when I put it in a conventional transmission location, standing straight up. So I went, man, that's, what am I going to do about that? And then the light went on and said, God said, turn it on its side, dummy. I said, what? He said, turn it on its side, rotate at 90 degrees. And I go, huh, I guess I could do that if I redo the oiling system and the shifter, you know? And so that's what I did. We rotated at 90 degrees. So normally you have the stack on top of each other, the main shaft and the lay shaft. And what we did is we just laid it over. So now we've reduced the weight center of gravity. We've got clearance for the bottom of the car, because we're five inches of clearance between the crank center line and the bottom of the car.

Oh, wow.

This is very, very short oil pans. And you really can't get any shorter than that and still have an engine on that close to the pavement, right? So that transmission worked great for us for a very long time, but it was four gears, you know? And I was getting beat. Boris and I and a couple of us in Menard, we were getting beat with not having that fifth gear. And so the handwriting was on the wall. And 6XD, I started investigating. We had several different sequentials to choose from and from different price ranges and different weights and different affordability, well, affordability price ranges, and then dependability. So the 6XD was real dependable from what I could find out. It was a little bit heavy, but the weights in the middle of the car, it's down low and it's mounted the same way I was doing the four-speed. We took it from a straight up and down style to a layover style. I asked Rick, can you lay it over for me so I can fit in the car better? And they had already done it in another car. He says, absolutely, we can do that. And they had all the bugs worked out of it already.

I work so well.

Yeah, because when you're a guinea pig, that's what you are, you're a guinea pig. You're throwing money at something and an idea and you hope that it works. And sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Usually it's a little refining that goes on through the process. And then you achieve your goal anyhow at the end. So that's good stuff.

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Well, off road was, I did off road for, you know, professionally for, I just wanted to be a race car driver at that point and I worked as a fabricator and builder to, you know, to support myself basically in my dreams. But it was taking its toll physically on my neck and my back. Actually, I cracked my neck and cracked my back. And it was just, my frame is, I'm not a large solid guy, I'm kind of a weak suck actually, but, why are you laughing?

That's the fun way of saying it. I'm saying your thing like I have, I'm hurting as well, so.

Yeah, so you got a lot of pain and a lot of things going on. And the doctors are saying, you know, you do this right again, you know, you might not have, you know, work the use of your whole body. So it's like, ugh. But Trans Am, at the time I had moved in 1980, it was after Parnelli's off road deal, I was still racing in stadium racing. And I got a call from a guy down a little bit further south, and he had a Trans Am car, he needed some help. And it fit perfectly for my lack of income at the time. So I said, well, what the heck, I'll try it. I don't know a lot about it, but let's go see. And I kind of fell in love with it. And then I wound up buying my first house down that way. It was about a 30 minute commute, so I don't like the commuting. So moved that way, got married down there, you know, had kids down there, that kind of thing. And but it transitioned to, you know, Trans Am, Trans Am series racing. This guy that I was working for, Les Lindley, he decided he wanted to, you know, kind of get more into it and and do more races and do the full season. And so one thing led to another. And I figured, hey, maybe I could just, you know, build one of these cars and then I go road racing instead of off road racing. I'll be OK if I don't hit the wall. You know, it's pretty smooth and, you know, not not too rough on your body until you get into a bad wreck. But off road, just normal, normal run runtime through the bumps and the whoops. You know, it's just so abusive. It's amazing.

Abusive, especially if you land hard. Oh, yeah.

My gosh. Just like a ragdoll in the thing, you know, so. But what an experience. Amazing how fast you can go over nasty terrain.

Yeah, I haven't had that experience yet.

It's crazy. Yeah. Hopefully, I'm still involved with Trophy Trucks. My buddies back in California. OK, they kind of run one of the trucks. It's the top of the top of the program. And they're their million dollar vehicles now.

Yeah, it's crazy.

And his name is Adam Householder. He's about 40 some years old, 42 years old now. But his dad and I grew up together and we worked together in the Trans Am and off road and this and that. And he wound up making it in business with overhead sprinkler systems and can support the off road program that they're running now. So it's a lot. I get to live both worlds still.

How do you help with that world?

Pardon?

How are you involved with that world still?

They're just so close to friendship. It's basically mostly friendship. I go and attend some of the races and we hang out together and cheer them on. But no, they run their own program. They're totally self-sufficient. They're all professional and they full-time. I think they probably got six guys full-time, six or seven full-time employees now. So it's a big problem. It's a big problem when you're paying for it. That's probably what it's a big problem. But they do really, really well. Hats off to those guys.

So have you ever attended King of the Hammers and stuff?

Oh yeah, King of the Hammers. Yeah, they ran that this year. They won, I don't know if you've heard of the Mint 400 in Las Vegas.

I don't know if I have.

It's a pretty popular race and he's won that now two times in a row, leading it this year. And they had a drive shaft failure, I think. So they didn't win it this year for the third time, but that would have been the first three-peat I think they've ever had.

Always something that stops that first ever.

Yep, yep. True.

So then did you end up building your own Trans Am car at that point then?

I did in California. We were built what we call the Gen 1 Weaver, which is really close to this other car that I'll show you in the video. But then we came up with Chris Willis, my engineer. We changed up some things and did a Gen 2 in the mid-90s. It was still a squared tube construction, but it was a lot stiffer just in the way we constructed the tube package, basically. We worked on some mechanical grip. There was some things were a little different, but the next step of the Gen 1 was the next two, so the Gen 2. Then this one, Gen 3 became completely different like we just discussed.

You said Gen 2 was in the 90s?

In the mid-90s, yeah.

So then what did that break look like between the two? What were you doing? I guess that's when you had your Nascar stint, or not Nascar, but working with the team.

With Earnhardt's, Earnhardt's didn't happen until I got back here in North Carolina. So the Gen 2 was still in California for probably five years before we left California. And so we were building those and selling those to teams and supporting our clientele and whatnot.

Okay. So you were selling the Gen 2s to other teams?

We were selling Gen 1s, Gen 2s to many other teams. At one time, when Trans Am had like a 35 car field, we had about a third of the field in Weavers.

Oh, wow.

So it was like go to every race, make a list of who needs what after the race, go home, build all those parts that got wrecked and smashed and broken, whatever. And then get them shipped out so the teams had them.

Okay, I understand now.

It was, my business grew in that period of time quite well. I think at one point we had ten employees, you know, not very big, not a lot of square footage, not in this shop, but in California. And then made the move to here and brought Mike, the Trans Am company, to this neighborhood and still continue building them. But at the same time was got introduced to Earnhardt's group through a mutual friend. He was actually the contractor that built DEI. DEI is like the Garage Mahal. I don't know if you've ever seen it, but it's, it was like the top of the top. It was the shops of all shops. It was, if it could be gold plated, it would have, it was all gold plated. You know what I mean? It was like Taj Mahal. And what a great place to work. There's just an amazing place. And it started out as, I just was kind of, you know, working with them as subcontractor and bringing like new ideas or just bringing ideas, different ideas from what they're used to doing. So they were kind of welcoming to me, a little standoffish in the beginning, cause they didn't really know what this crazy Californian is all about, you know, but I met Dale Earnhardt at this particular time. I was probably in town here, probably a month or two and got introduced to him. So we were over in his shop that was putting on the bodywork, the body department, and they were running three teams at the time, Napa, Pennzoil and Junior. So Budweiser, Napa and Michael Waltrip, and then they were running Steve Park in the number one Pennzoil car. So there was a lot going on at the time. And Earnhardt comes over to me, and we're standing there looking, he says, what do you think? I go, wow, this is quite a process. You know, this is pretty interesting. And he says, so what's your claim to fame? And I go, well, I don't really have, I'm pretty easy going and just methodical about the obvious things. And he goes, well, what do you mean about that? I go, well, I got this question. He goes, what's your question? And I said, do you guys work off the center line in your cars? Like when you're putting body work on, do you work like from center line out and put your bodies on or the way you set your cars up? Do you work off a center line to match your four tires on the pavement? How do you actually make sure you're doing things correctly? And he goes, that's a great question. He says, let's go to engineering. So off we go over to engineering, go through some doors and around another little department building and we walk in there and they had those half walls, kind of like those little cubbies, right? And so Dale walks in and he goes, hey, I got a question. And all these little heads pop up like prairie dogs. And it was like, I just start laughing. I could not believe it. And yes, what do you need, you know? And he says, do we work off center line? Well, of course we work off center line, boss. Absolutely work off center line. And he says, okay, well, this young man's got a question. And he said, what's your question? Well, okay, that was my first question. Do you work off? Now, can you show me where center line's at? Well, let's go, come on, we'll show you how we do it. So we go back to the body shop with the engineers, with a engineer. And he says, where's our, you know, I said, where's center line on the chassis? Can you show me where your marks are at on your chassis? So how do you do the process? So, well, we don't do it like that. I go, how you do it? Well, the tables are blanched ground and they're cut out on a big mill, big, thick inch and three quarter flat steel plates, 12 feet long, about six feet wide. And they put the chassis up there and it has a groove center line in the plate that's done with the machine. So it's absolutely parallel, right? And so the car sits up there and they put the frames, the frame corners where they want them in elevation. And now it comes down to the center line question. I go, how do you get it centered on your center line that's in the table? But it's elevated off the table about five inches. It's mimicking ground clearance for the chassis. And he says, well, we measure this right side frame rail. This right side frame rail is a four inch by three inch tube and it's an eighth wall. And it's the right side of the car. And that is the tube they call zero. They measure from the outside of that tube to the edge of the table. That's parallel to the other edge and to center line. So they're like, if it's 12 inches and 12 inches, they know that they got that tube equal to the table center line, right? Is that making any sense?

Yeah, I'm tracking it so far.

Okay, so I go, well, that's all great, but that tube's not straight. He goes, what do you mean that? And Earnhardt, you know, senior, he says, what do you mean that tube's not straight? It's four inches by three inches. It's thick wall. And I go, it's not straight. He goes, how do you know? You're just looking at it. How do you know that it's not straight? I go, cause I, cause you welded on it. There's a, there's a truck cross member in the middle, a truck arm suspension point that's measured. It's welded right to left. And he goes, yes. So I go, well, you weld on it. It's going to arch the tube, you know? And he goes, ah, there's no way that's, that tube is solid. And so I said, well, you got a six foot scale. I'll show you. And we just stand here talking at this. So, I mean, I haven't measured this car. I have no idea. I mean, I'll probably look like an idiot now, you know? But so here comes a straight edge and Dale's, he's right, he's looking right over my shoulder and it goes clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, you know, on a high point where that weld was made, you know? And the tube was just arched. There was no well obstructing it. And it was welded on the other side of the tube, but through welding, it just arched. And I knew this from just fabricating, right? Whenever you do things like this, this is what happens. And his eyes got huge, you know? Like, what the heck, you know? What is this? And I said, so there's no way this is consistently centerlined every time you're trying to get centerlined, you know? So I said, you could have your chassis, you think it's centered and it's going forward, but it might have some yaw in it. And then you put a body on that doesn't have any yaw in it. So now when you get down to the racetrack, you got two things fighting. Tires and wheels are going this way, body's going that way, and they can't get their mile per hour at Daytona. You know? They built five cars over the winter. Three of them were really fast. Two of them were terrible and they can't figure it out. And they were all built the same way, same process, same people. And this was the reason why they had inconsistency in putting bodies on skeleton chassis. So that was number one. And then number two was, you know, when they were doing setup, they were doing the same way. They were projecting a line and they were squaring up their four tires off of this right side frame rail, which really wasn't center. It wasn't equal to center line. So that started a whole other process. And he says, what do I do now? What do we do? And I said, well, how many cars do you have in inventory? They said, well, we got, you know, 69, 70 cars in inventory. He said, well, if you bring me each car to my shop, we'll put on the lift, and I need a fair warm and an engineer, and we'll category each car how bad it is or how good it is. And we'll put center lines in the chassis. And so anyhow, we did that. That's where it kind of all started with Earnhardt.

What did that categorization look like then? So you take it to your shop.

Yep.

So what were you using?

They were all bad. The best one was about a 16th out from where they thought was zero. And the worst one was five eights out from where they thought was zero. So it made a huge difference from there in the way that the bodies consistently got put on the chassis. And then we came up with a string bar program that puts strings on the right side and the left side. And it's exactly centered. The string bars are centered when you place them on the chassis. And then you get a string on the outside of your tires on the right, a string on the outside of your tires on your left. And you measure to your wheels, to the string, to square everything up. Just make sure the rear end is not off to one side or not. Making sure your rear end is not leading on one side or not. Or you can make it do those things too. You can control through measurement what you're taking to the racetrack, basically.

And then, so is that how that relationship started then?

Yeah, that's how that just kind of start. I mean, it had no intention of working for Dale Earnhardt. I never had a dream about doing that, you know? But just came to town and got to meet him through the contractor. That was the only way that it really worked was from, I mean, I wasn't trying to sell myself, going to the front door and they're going, no, we don't need you. We don't need any of that. You're from California. So, but the way this worked was I knew somebody at a high level, his contractor, who was his buddy at the same time. And so we had some one-on-one time that made all the difference in the world. And he was really a cool individual. I really enjoyed him. A little intimidating, as they say, but underneath all that persona, he was like a little kitty cat kind of guy. And once you got to know him, it was easy to talk to him. And we had some good stories there about that, we only got to know him for a little over a year and then he passed away. And we talked about building our own chassis, or having DEI's own chassis. They were buying them from a manufacturer down in South Carolina, Ronnie Hopkins. And most everybody was. Roger Penske was just starting a chassis program, and so was Hendrick, Rick Hendrick's program. They were just starting to build their own product, but everybody else was buying. And I said, Dale, why would I want to do that? I go, why do you put your own bodies on? Why do you build your own engines? Well, so we can try things and do things different. There you go, same thing. It's no different in the chassis world. You could try suspension things. You can try tube placement things, because NASCAR wasn't as stern and locked in as they are today. I mean, this is 25 years ago, it was a lot, a lot different roll packages, you know. It was all steel sheet metal, you know. They put templates. Everybody knows the story, you know, all these templates that they had and whatnot. But today, completely different. Composite comes out of a mold you bolted on with this bolt and this hole. And it pretty much takes the thought process out of it. And I don't really enjoy it at all anymore.

Yeah, one of my friends, he used to work, I can't remember what role or whatever, but he was at Hendrick. And he was saying that it all comes down to what's underneath the car nowadays. Is that pretty much what the case is?

The aerodynamic panels underneath the car. And the way they can be shimmed.

Give this a little bit of a nudge, just a little forward, just push it a little forward. Yeah, perfect, right there.

The way they can be shimmed to help you or hurt you. The diffuser down there became really important, way more important than anybody kind of initially thought. And that's been something that's evolved into a completely different deal. I was involved in that process too. We built the first five prototypes for Nascar. Actually, for Technics, Ronnie Johncock has a company called Technics, and it was up in Michigan, or it is, and he has these fabrication processes with lots of machinery, different computerized, controlled robotic benders and tube cutters and fish mouthing and things like that. He came to me while I was at DEI and said, look, I'd like to introduce myself. This is the kind of business that I have. It's up in Michigan and we laser cut chassis components that you design yourself with your engineers and they're proprietary to your design. I send you a kit and you put the kit together and weld it up in your fixtures. I thought, man, that sounds really repeatable and time-saving. It's hard to fit a tube. There again, you can take 10 guys and ask them to do the same job. You're going to get it done different ways, or how long it takes to fit a tube in a junction, or even a simple junction versus a complicated junction. But with the lasers and the CAD files, it's pretty much spot on. Once you get the process in, it's just repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. So we wound up starting the chassis shop in 0405. They started that new chassis which was the COT, what they called the car tomorrow. And so that's kind of where it all started. And we built, I believe it was 83 cup cars, a couple of bush cars before the end of it, in the end of 08 when the company just ceased basically.

Technique, is that, that's not the one that's undecided a car on the photo up there, is it?

No, that's this car right here.

Gotcha, I was just wondering if the sponsor or something was...

Oh yeah, Technique, yep, that's him.

Okay, yeah, gotcha.

Yep, yep. Yeah, because he kind of, whoops, we were good buddies. And he also was a race car driver prior to business, you know, to major business. And so he had a soft heart for racing and he helped us out for several, probably three or four years, I think, something like that. And it was, I tried to talk him in to driving the car because I think he'd be, he used to drive midgets and Indy cars and I think he'd be perfect for this kind of a car here and have a lot of fun doing it, you know? And maybe someday, we'll see.

This just came to mind here, a little off topic, but what are these tuned on? Is it like a standalone EC or what exactly is the tuning situation with the Trans Am cars?

Tuning the engine?

Yeah.

Well, I mean...

Yeah, it should have been specific.

You tune a fish? You know, tune a piano? I don't know.

Yeah.

It's left up to the professionals. They don't let people like me touch that kind of stuff. No, I'm just kidding. The engine builders play a big part of this process. And with the Penske group, they had their own engine shop when they had the Dodge sponsorship. They were doing their own engines. They were building their own engines, developing and dynoing and tuning. And a different facility, not too far from here, but a different facility. So at the end of the, let's call it the 2012 season, and they'd Dodge pulled out and they went to Ford's. Now they lease all their Ford engines through Rausch Yates. It's just a lease program. And so they didn't need an engine shop anymore. So the engine shop got displaced and the guys working in it got displaced. The head engine guy over there was Scott Collier. Scott Collier still actually works at Penske today. He's the only one I think that they kept on staff. But the other guys that were doing the head work and the block work and a lot of assembly, and Scott was more involved in running the program and probably tuning and these, I don't know his exact, what his daily schedules was. But anyhow, these other guys were really proficient and good at what they did. So they got together and they opened up their own engine shop to continue building engines for hot rods, boats and race cars and things like that. So I purchased my, I figured what better to have the guys that were working on this stuff, have the same guys work on the same engines and producing power for this Dodge, and they do a wonderful job. Chris Sumner kind of leads that program now. Kelly Thacker, he does block work and Hot Dog gets head work. Danny Glad does a dyno work. They just together, they know how to work together and they know how to make power and how to make dependability, reliability. And it's very cost effective for my position. It's not $38,000 for engines. It's more affordable and we can make it work as a group. And they kind of race through us, actually. They're kind of grassroots racers as well. And so they enjoy being part of it, I think, and we enjoy having them be part of it as well.

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. What does a race weekend look like for you? You travel across the country.

Yep.

From the moment you leave this shop, what's that weekend look like?

It starts out with a lot of driving. But I kind of enjoy the driving and seeing the country. It's another part of the dream that you never expected to see so many things across our great country. And we race a little bit in Canada as well. But it's a lot of neat places to see. But usually because you're racing, you don't take the time to go to the Grand Canyon because you're zooming by it to get to the West Coast or back and forth. And there's a lot of things I wish I would have changed a little bit and added more time to my schedule to see even more things. But the weekend, it's traveling for usually a day. If it's the West Coast, it's going to be a few days. But from here to Texas, to Circuit of Americas, the Formula One track, that's about a 20-hour drive. You break it up a couple of days or a day and a half, something like that. But you get to the track and usually in the first few hours, you're just setting up, going through registration, credentials and whatnot. Get your rigged park, get the car unloaded, get things, you know, kind of pit set up, whatnot. And usually there's not any other activity that first day that we get there. Get to the hotel, get some good rest, get up the next day, usually starts early. And I usually have two runs each day. Like, let's say you'll set up on Thursday. Let's say you travel on Wednesday, you set up on Thursday. You have two runs on Friday, two runs on Saturday, one of them being qualifying, and the race on Sunday. So it kind of gives you a breakdown of the days, and then another day to get back. So it's a full week, pretty much. You're away from family and whatnot.

So the runs, these are sessions? I'm guessing like 20, 30 minute sessions?

Yeah, yeah. They have about 30 minute sessions. And it gives you a chance to get out there and feel the car and get, you know, work through your little issues that you're probably gonna have or not. And so this car actually is a very happy car to run. It's been well sorted out. We've got a good relationship with each other. It lets me know what's going on and we let it know what's going on, you know, pretty much. So it's been a good program.

So data-wise then, so you get to track, let's say you're going to Road Atlanta. I think that's one of the ones you recently did. What does that look like? Are you just fresh off the trailer, do some runs, come back, look at data or what changes look like?

The first run is just getting the driver acclimated to the whole day and the car and the track and whatnot. Depends if you've got a driver that's seasoned or a newcomer, you know, there's a lot of different things there. Somebody like Boris, he's got great feedback. He's driven the car. He's driven pretty much, I think, three of these new Gen 3s for me. And we just have so much fun racing together. So, but he's so seasoned, he can tell me exactly. Put a couple clicks in that shock over there, or let's drop the ride height, you know, on the rear, you know, half a turn. Just little things like that, and he can balance it really quite quickly. And it doesn't take much data. It's all pretty much old school. We can overlay and see what he's talking about, and then it kind of makes sense, and what the correction was, and what the performance level is now, because of the correction. So, data is important. And we do use it. We probably should use it more.

What are you guys overlaying with?

Well, we can overlay with, because the car records from video, driver's hands, and then out the windshield. And then it also records throttle position, how much throttle is being used, how much steering is being inputted, how much brake pressure is being applied, how much rear pressure, how much front pressure. There's a lot of little things like that, that you can see where the driver might be complaining about this or that, and then you can overlay it, and you can see, yep, here it is. It's in this corner. It's worse in this corner than those corners. So you might work on a corner and make it a little quicker, and it might take a little bit away from this other corner, but it's not as important because you're carrying so much more corner speed or something like that. So you just balance all that out, and usually get quicker.

No, it is cool to admire this in the background though. Again, seeing it in person the first time, I was like, this thing is insane.

They're a lot of, they're more detailed than you think they are, and you got to think about every little thing is a mount, is a weight, is a placement. And you're trying to balance the overall construction of the car, weight for the driver. Like Boris is a pretty heavy, he's a heavy guy. No, he's like 200, 220, something like that, right? But we can jab him all the time, because he loves to eat jalapeno pickles. I could tell you a story about him at a supermarket in Indianapolis, it was hilarious. But really, just a lot of fun. And so that's the other side of the racing thing, that you just can't put a price tag on, is the fun level that, you know, the people you're around and the talent pool that you're around, because it takes a lot of talent to run a car like this up front, especially the finances, with reduced finances, you know, you've got to be really on your game to be up front and come up with a little better package.

What's the season cost with this car?

You're probably looking at about 600,000 to 700,000 on a week budget. That's not a real substantial budget. We do have spare engine, but we don't have a spare gearbox. The gearbox is pretty dependable and awfully dependable and hasn't been necessary. So we spend the money where it's necessary to run up front and to be able to finish You've got to finish to be up front. So you can't have weeks up parts. You've got to spend the money where it's necessary or you're not going to have the outcome.

Okay. So how many tracks are on the calendar in a typical Trans Am season?

There's like 12, 11 or 12, it varies back and forth. Some tracks will be like this next race in Sonoma is a double header. So there's a race on Saturday and there's another race on Sunday. They did that because of the travel expense to the West Coast for the majority of the group and trying to just reduces hotels. You might have one more room of hotels instead of all these other travel expenses and whatnot. So they're trying to consolidate a little bit.

Okay. That makes sense. So then, okay, $600,000, $700,000 on a conservative budget. So you're looking at maybe $50,000, $60,000 in a race on average. Is that kind of how you think about it?

You come up with a number per race that's in your local mileage, what we would call. But like a West Coast race, obviously, a lot more fuel, a lot more travel time. Texas is the same thing. A lot more fuel, a lot more travel time. But for the most part, that's kind of how you have to break it down. And then on that, you're kind of amortizing some expenses, like your engine expense, because you don't use an engine for one race, you use it for multiple races. So we tag a number to it that helps rebuild the engine, helps put new valve springs on it. But it's usually at its minimum, it's never at a maximum number, where there's never anything left over for some place else. It just seems like it's running tight. But that's how we have, if we're going to race, that's how we have to race until we get a major backer that can help us. We've had some good subsponsors that have really helped us over the years. We had one guy, John Cloud, really neat guy and enjoy racing with him. An older gentleman that has done well in business, and he enjoys Boris, he enjoys myself, and he would help us occasionally. Some other companies like that, and friendships that have really made it possible.

How often are you refreshing the engine? Is it every race after the race?

No. We'll go probably 600 miles, which is roughly around a 200 mile weekend, roughly, to 250 depending on how much practice time you get in. Do you run every lap of every practice? Usually not. So we go about 800 miles, and then we'll refresh the valve springs and look it over, check clearances and whatnot, and then back on the dyno, and then it's good for roughly another 800 miles. So it's 1,600 to 1,800 miles before a fresh rebuild, which is fairly affordable, but we've had some catastrophic failures, too, where we tried to get one more race out of that engine and it just wasn't going to do it, and we shot rods out the pan, you know? So that was not a very good economical move on my part.

Is that you doing the refreshes or is there?

No, the engine builders.

Engine builders, okay. So yeah, it's all a big team at the end of the day.

It's all a big team, right? We take them out and they service the engine. Same with the gearbox, Rick and actually Todd services the gearboxes for us and mag checks everything and make sure that everything's looking good or they're experts at what they do, right? So I don't need to get in the... I mean, I was learning the gearbox, like I was going to... And I've done most of my gearboxes in the past. And not that I won't get to doing this one on my own. I probably will at some point in time, but right now they... Let's not mess up something that's working, kind of a thing.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Right. And they're close by, and they don't mind doing it. And we do things, whatever we can do, to expose the 6XD product and how happy we are with it.

Because it's been how many years you've been running it now?

This is just one year.

Just one year, okay.

And what was a limited year of only four races, five races. So it's not a ton of time on it, but I must say we haven't had one failure. Knock on wood, haven't had one failure. And the guys, they've become good buddies too. So and because of this and how this all worked out, I'm involved in a land speed project, which is we want to go 500 miles an hour with the wheel driven piston powered vehicle car. A lot of rockets have done it. Some people have gotten close. Right now, I think the record is like 486 with the Speed Demon guys. 446? 486, I think it's very close to 500, very close.

So nobody's broken the 500 barrier with the wheel driven car.

Nobody's broken the 500 barrier yet.

Okay.

In a wheel driven piston powered car.

Wow.

They've done it with turbines. They've done it with jets. So it's a little bit different, you know, thrust versus, you know, traction, you know. So this vehicle is 36 feet long. It's about three feet wide. And most of it's two foot tall, except for the canopy for the head is three foot tall. So it's more or less just a needle. It's a needle going through space at ground level. Yeah. So and it has two engines, two Viper V10s.

Oh, really?

Those are 2,500 horsepower a piece. So we're going to be roughly 5,000 horsepower for this vehicle.

Wow, okay.

It's got five miles to pull this off.

Yeah.

And you have some shut down room after that. So we just recently, and this vehicle is owned by ex top fuel driver, Doug Herbert. Oh, he was like, I think the second guy to go 300 miles an hour in a top fuel car. So he's used to speed and he's used to records and he wants to go 500. He's like a little kid in a candy shop. Are we ready yet? How are we going to go this year? We got to hurry. And we are. But this project's been going on for many years. And it's just a money soak, of course. Oh, of course, yeah. It's hard to get backing on a dream to go this fast on a salt bed in Bonneville, you know, Utah. So, but that's what dreams are made of, right? So you put it out there and then you strive and you achieve. So we're going to achieve. We're going to run it. It's going to get finished. And it's becoming, it's gotten a lot more traction here lately. And so we decided to go with the Rick Lambert 6XDs, two of them, one behind each engine. And we're going to shift them with air charges with the button on the steering wheel.

Okay.

Yeah.

So that's one thing that always kind of boggles my mind is when things have two transmissions.

Yeah. How you got to sync everything together? Yeah. Yeah. Well, if you have compressed air on board and Rick's got a set up with Clay, his other partner, on the transmission that is it's in a solenoid, it's an aerosolenoid basically that works off of a charge. Because it's like a motorcycle all down or all up, it's like you pull back or you push forward. So it's a pretty simple actuation of selecting the gear. It's just pushing that rod forward or pulling it back. We're going to be nothing but upshifts with that vehicle. We're not going to be downshifting it, hopefully. You don't need to downshift when you're trying to do that. So yeah, upshifts and an air charge, it'll be a button on the steering wheel. Actually, a button could be anywhere. We actually thought we'd do a high beam, low beam, old time school button down by your clutch pedal. You know where you just push the horn button, or a high beam, low beam button, whatever, and it shifts the gear. But we'll probably just put it on the steering wheel and have a button that you just push on the steering wheel, and it will activate air charge to both transmissions at the same time, and it'll select the gear on both transmissions at the same time.

So you're saying that they would be basically like engine transmission, engine transmission, like they're gonna be mounted front to back sort of thing?

They are mounted, the engines face each other, because we wanted to cancel the torque of the engine.

Okay.

So like if you, you know, you see like an engine when somebody is wrapping it, wrap up, wrap up, you know, and you can see the whole body twist. That's the rotation of the engine, the counteraction of the rotation.

Gotcha. So they'd be canceling each other out.

So they would cancel that out. So hopefully we won't have to have steering input. You'll see like other vehicles have steering input to keep them straight, you know, just to keep like he's, just to keep it on that black line on the salt. So that should, that's a good, that's a different engineering approach, I think, what we've done there. So it's two engines, two transmissions, two differentials, it's four-wheel drive, and because we need traction. So why not use the other two separate systems running each end of the car? And we're gonna marry them through MoTeC's electronic system. So they will marry the engines, you know, their fuel consumption, their RPMs, their, you know, all their different vitals. There's gonna be a ton of sensors on this particular vehicle.

Yeah.

A huge wiring expense.

This is the craziest undertaking I've heard in my life.

And this will be, we can juke it with computers, you know, to lead one in or to trail another or vice versa. So there's gonna be a lot of electronic setup on that particular vehicle and testing.

How's this vehicle progressing? Is it something we're gonna see?

We're gonna go see it today.

Well, I mean, but like at Bonneville, I mean, like is it gonna like when's it's made in voyage gonna be?

You're starting to sound like Doug Herbert, you know? When's this thing gonna be done? I want to see it run.

I'm the customer side of things.

Yeah, come on, you know? Like just relax, it'll be done when it's done and then we'll go.

No, I'm more so curious, like, I guess, where is it currently in its progress?

In its progress state, in my opinion, it won't make this year.

Right, yeah.

Next year is possible.

Sure.

Next August, 2027, August.

Well, it's kind of like me asking, it's like, oh yeah, when are we gonna be able to time travel? You know, it's like, we'll get the, like it's a whole new undertaking.

I mean, we'd like to be able to, but you know, we have limited crew, limited, you know, huge expense, you know? I mean, with money, you can drive anything, right? Pretty much.

Yeah.

So, you know, that takes it, you know, that kind of thing.

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 Sure Thing 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. I want to talk about this, though. This project is just...

Oh, yeah.

I can't escape Subarus anywhere because I'm talking Subarus every day for my day job.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

What? What's that about?

Are you familiar with the company called Company 23 by any chance? So, they make specialty tools and parts for Subarus. That's the big...

Really?

Yeah. So, like anything... For example, we just relaunched a new product where you could rebuild AVCS cam gears. That was something that you historically just had to go and buy.

Really?

Now we provide something to where you just rebuild it yourself, save yourself a few hundred bucks sort of deal. And then the other one is a company called Carboy, same ownership group for the most part, where short shifters, bushings, all that stuff. So every day I'm answering Subaru support e-mails, learning that whole market that I always started recently. So that's why I was like, huh.

Now you can kind of put something together with what you're actually moving.

A little bit. Again, I'm just a youngin, right? I'm only 26 years old, so I have so much to learn. Everything's starting to click for me. I mentioned to you before we started, this is episode 197, I'm pretty sure. Episode 67 though, I was talking to a guy I had on the show, and he's an expert in porting heads. All he does is, heads, heads, heads.

Yeah.

And I'm sitting here and I'm looking at this guy, and I'm like, I don't know what the hell this guy's talking about. I was like, I realized that I had so much more to learn, and then for the next 20 or 30 episodes, I went down, because there was, at the time, I had this bucket list guest, and I was like, I don't want to have this guest on the show until I can at least know what questions to ask, right?

Exactly, yeah.

And now, almost 200 episodes later, it's all starting to make a little bit more sense, right? So that's why I love the technical stuff.

Yeah, instead of working it, it's more natural now.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it's like, it takes a little less brain power, thankfully, you know, because the cavity is getting deeper back here. But anyways, so yeah, this is, from what you told me, going to be a three-wheel drive.

This is a three-wheel drive vehicle. Again, it's a, they call me Dream Weaver sometimes, you know, because what are you doing with these dreams? But dreams are the beginning of something usually, you know, for anybody, right? They have dreams, follow your dreams, as I always say, follow your dreams, you know, achieve your dreams, achieve your goals. And it's been kind of an interesting looking vehicle. I thought the three-wheelers, when they first came out back, I don't know, when was that? Back in the early 2000s or something.

Are you talking about like the slingshots and stuff?

Yeah, the slingshots and the T-Rex and some of these other ones.

Yeah.

There's a few of them if you Google them, but there's nothing that's really performance based. And what's more performance in race car guys' background and the way they build race cars to build a vehicle for the street, because this eventually will be street legal, is my goal, is to mass produce these chassis. There'll be, again, pre-bent CNC, laser coped, put in a jig, welded, robotic welded, and then powder coated and then assembled and off on the street they go. So, this will be a vehicle that you can, you can do yourself in a two car garage, and you can purchase this, hence the three wheels, or what we call the three phase. So, you can order all phases complete, you can buy it welded, painted, your color, and just purchase it and take it home, put it in your garage. Or you can build it yourself as a kit, and your son, or your daughter, or your girlfriend, or whatever, you know, some buddies. And you can, you don't have a lot of room in a two car garage, so phase one comes, it's a minimal amount of boxes, maybe the chassis to begin with and whatnot, a few parts, and you get through phase one, and you're still interested, and you can go to phase two, so you're not laying out all your money initially, maybe just part of your money for phase one, you maybe lose interest, you don't even want to go to phase two, maybe you sell it to somebody, they order phase two. You're not out all your money, but maybe you want to stay with it, you know, so you can go phase one, two or three, as your progression goes, you can build it yourself, you can customize it yourself, you can color it yourself, you know, the way that you want it. And it could be a two-wheel drive Subaru with just a rear wheel hanging and not doing anything. It can be three-wheel drive, like we talked about. It could be a two-wheel drive Volkswagen air-cooled, no radiator. It still bolts up pretty much the same thing. A lot simpler, a little lighter, less costly. If you want, you know, let's say you got your kids turned in 16 and you want them to know a little bit about cars or, you know, learn about, here you got a safety package with roll cages and roll bars and built by racing, race car guys, you know, that knows a little bit about safety and performance. So, yeah, I just thought it'd be kind of an interesting vehicle for, it could be open, like a motorcycle, it have a full cage, it could have a windshield, it could have, I thought maybe we might do different body styles, like five-year increments or three-year increments or something, where you'd have this style and then you might be able to Zeus on or clip on bolt on this other body style fits under the same chassis. So, then you can get different looks and everybody likes to personalize their stuff.

Right.

But this could be, it could be two-wheel drive front. For instance, it could be a Volkswagen two-wheel drive front. It could be an electric rear wheel drive. Okay. So, you could, and you could, the floors could be batteries, right? Under the seat. So, you could get, fire up your Volkswagen, get on the freeway, put it in neutral, run the air conditioner and your alternators and everything else. Turn on the electric rear wheel drive and go, you know, 30 miles or 40 miles or wherever to your destination. And then it recharges when you're getting there while you're at work and off you come home again. It's virtually you spend very little in fuel, very economical, or you can go all out, throw your money away and just go fast and have fun and do Brody's and all kinds of crazy things on the street. You know, but I kind of the whole thing that drove this, one of the whole things that drove this was this particular car is going to have roughly 430 horsepower turbocharged Subaru. I can't wait to dump the clutch and get three patches of rubber on the pavement. With the rear rubber being 16 inches, I was going to say, you're not even going to break any traction with that thing? Oh, no, it'll break it. We'll break something. We're going to break something.

Yeah, that's a big tire on the back.

Right. But you got to be a fun vehicle. And then, you know, it's got Brembo brakes, Italian expensive brakes. It's got Tilton hydraulic master cylinders and clutch assemblies. It's got 300M axles. It's got JRI shocks and hyper-coast springs. So a lot of the product that we use in racing, you know, we're using in this fun vehicle as well.

So what inspired this project that you just one day, did you rent a sling shot somewhere?

No, no, I just, I saw one and I thought, well, that looks kind of cool. But they got little tires and they got one wheel drive. And I think they had a Briggs, Briggs, a lawnmower engine or something in there. I don't know what it was.

I think it was an Ecotec.

Yeah, I'm just being an idiot.

Either way, it's the same thing.

The way I think is, it's gotta be mosh macho. It's gotta be the most it can possibly be. So we're gonna start with the most it can possibly be and then work it back to like a real person, that a real person can get involved in something like this, not a crazy person. So, but it ought to be fun. I actually, I'm looking for a, you remember Ken Block.

Yeah.

And he did all these crazy things with vehicles and stuff. So this, the first attempt, this is gonna be kind of like that, where it's just gonna, rubber's gonna be flying. It's gonna be doing brodies and circles. I've got like a four different braking program in this car that you can, you can manipulate the car to do different things. And so that'll make it kind of interesting too. And, but the real drive with this is to do the hard work now and enjoy the build, get the performance level up and then turn it into, you know, a money making mass production street vehicle process. It can be, it can be a license as a, as a, as a three wheeler or a, what do they call them? A trike.

Yeah.

Yeah. So it's almost like a motorcycle license. It's not really a car license. Oh yeah.

I suppose.

Yeah. And so they call it a trike. So anyhow, I think it works off motorcycle licensing. I got to still dig into all that stuff, but it ought to be fun. And then, you know, you could, you could clip on a surfboard on the back, a golf clubs, you know, bag, a 10 speed, your last girlfriend, you know, excuse me. She doesn't want to go, but yeah, I think it'd be, I think it'd be fun and, and exciting. And then I'd like to actually turn it into a three-wheeler racing platform where you have to have a riding mechanic like the old days. And so you have to have two occupants at say, Road America, and you're both flying around the track with, you know, 15 or 20 of these other three-wheelers out there and just racing and have a great three-wheeler race. It'd be the first three-wheeler race that I could ever think. I mean, I don't think I've never heard of it. So maybe we should try it.

No, when you mentioned some of the Ken Block stuff, I actually had one of the gentlemen who built his truck on the show at some point. Are you familiar with Mark McDonald playing Chance? He used to be over at Detroit Speed.

Detroit Speed.

Yeah, however long ago. But are you thinking of like a hydraulic disconnect in the rear wheel or something like that?

There's possibility for that. It's got a turning brake in it to where it'll lock up either one of the front wheels.

Yeah, oh yeah.

Which is going to be a little tricky because you're gonna have to have a pretty good grip on the wheel to counteract that pull. But I think this car will snap or this vehicle would snap in a turn initially, immediately. It's got a rear brake only where you can set the back of the car and get it going. So your regular clutch pedal or your regular brake pedal, which operates all corners, or individual front or individual rear, separate. And then a third one is going to be kind of like a parking brake almost. Like, if you can imagine like an old Volkswagen ratcheting park brake, you know, with a button on it, you know. But it'd be something similar to that where it would, when you pull it up, it will deploy linkage out the bottom of the car in the exact center of the balancing point of the car, front to rear, as far as weight, front to rear weight. And it's going to deploy a rubber pad that will touch the pavement and pick up the weight of the vehicle about a half inch. You just lift the weight of the vehicle and it'll have a wheel bearing in this pad basically. So, the car will spin once you get the car and dump the clutch and hit the turning brake, it will spin on its own axis, is what I'm, in a rubber blaze of smoke. So, you're not going to be able to even see the car, I don't think, and it's just going to spin on its own axis. It just do, like what's more dumb than that?

I'm just thinking like, this is going to mess you up.

Then you come out of this in a big parking lot, in a big area and you come out of this tight little spin like an ice skater. When they put their arms up and it's spinning on its own axis, it comes out and it just swoops and does this big ol brody and just hazes rubber forever and out the parking lot it goes or something like that. I don't know, we'll see.

So this is just kind of like a crazy dream project.

A crazy dream project, yes. That's what it is, yes.

No, what do you have running for transmission in there?

Well, that's gonna be the weakest link. That's the Subaru stock, basically, gearbox. So right now I'm actually in the middle of contacting Subaru Rally Racers and trying to see what they've done with their gearboxes for, you know, because rally is so intense and just wants to destroy the gearbox. So I'm thinking I might get a year or two to older gearbox because that always increases with time and they come up with stronger parts and they come up with this and I better this, better that. So I might be able to acquire, you know, a rally box and have a little more luck with that and get to learn it. You know, that's another process with this particular vehicle. Maybe I can get the 6XD to build me a nice little gearbox for that thing. Hey, what do you think? Todd, Todd, you get me here? Hello, Todd. Are you there?

No, that's going to be... Oh, that's what I was going to ask you earlier. So this is going to be like a stock ECU sort of deal, an aftermarket, like for the tuning side of things?

It could be. There's an aftermarket. It's called the Link.

Yeah, I was going to say Link is kind of a go-to for these guys. Yeah.

And that's what this engine will run on. Yeah.

Yeah. Link and MoTec, I think those are kind of like the main go-tos from what I hear. But again, slowly learning that whole world. Every single niche has its own kind of thing going forward.

Sure. Sure. Sure.

So other than that, and as we slowly start to wrap down here with the podcast side of things, any other exciting projects going on? What does the next five, ten years look like for you?

Oh, wow. Well, I've got several of my own projects. As you can see, this whole room that's filled up. We've got a NASCAR DEI Cup car. We've got a vintage Trans Am car from 1986 that won the championship V6. We're storing that.

Which V6 was in that one, by the way? You mentioned that earlier.

That's the 4.5 V6. It's basically like a small block Chevy with two cylinders lobbed off of it. Okay. They came out in the streetcars around that time.

Oh, is that the one that was in the Grand Nationals?

Yeah. That would have been, I think, that same engine.

Okay. I got more research to do. After I listen back to this episode, how much do you want to do?

They were good running V6s. They were a little weak in dependability, but that car was reduced weight by about 200 pounds just because it lost two cylinders, right? So it was a good power to weight recipe for that car. So there's that. And then we got the current Trans Am car that we're getting ready to go to Indianapolis with. Then over there in the corner, we've got an off-road doom buggy.

Yeah, I was looking at that earlier.

Four fat guys and ice chest. And make sure you got a good solid ice chest. And then four of your best looking fat guys and then go for a ride. But it's all airbag. Because my back, I wanted a nice cush deal. So it's got lots of wheel travel. And it's got the same engine, this turbocharged Subaru, 430 horse. It's got an aftermarket gearbox, a Mendeola gearbox to take some of the abuse. It's got the drive shaft shop out in Salisbury. Did all the axles for both of these vehicles, the three-wheeler and the doom buggy. And they're used to taking major abuse and major power and appliance to the drive train. So we use those guys over there to help bring it to the racetrack.

What's the most abuse in a build like that? The buggy style builds.

What's the most abuse?

Yeah. What's the most beefed up part on there?

Oh, the most beefed up part? Well, suspension is pretty beefed up on there. Because it's just slamming. Off road is violent. So it's the first thing that sees the durability, weakness, and it'll show its ugly head and snaps up and break it more or less. So over the years, you learn what you can and can't get away with. Hopefully, we've outguessed what can and can't happen. But that's a light duty off road vehicle too. It's more designed for sand. Big paddle tires, climbing huge hills. Harsh off road is rocks, terrain, harder than concrete. And so it's a whole other kind of abuse to an off road vehicle. That car will do stuff like that, but in a more tame atmosphere. Looking after your vehicle more than just thrashing it across a desert.

So then one of the things I was thinking about there is, is that like a dry sump setup or no?

That is not. That's a wet sump setup.

And have you ever been up to Silver Lake? Silver Lake. Like the sand dunes in Michigan?

Oh, I've heard about those. Yeah. No, I never have. I never have, but Michigan is not too far from here. Maybe it's a good test, huh? Well, yeah.

How is it? 16 hours, I think? Maybe. Maybe no less. It's got to be cool.

Yeah.

I don't know. Something like that.

But that's better than two, three days to California, you know?

But it's worth it out there too. I think it's way, way more to choose from out in California, I believe, from what I've heard, like for dunes. I don't know. I haven't visited Silver Lake yet, but I've had people on the show who like go out there.

Right, right.

Just because they say it's awesome.

They love it. Yeah. Yeah.

It might be a good time. Not that my curiosity.

That's what I, but I do need to test before I go all the way to the West Coast. But Silver Lake.

Let's find out. Now I'm curious. From here, it is a grand total of, well, put that load for a second. Twelve hours. No way.

Twelve hours. That's not.

Yeah. Okay. That blew my mind.

It's not terrible.

Yeah. Good little test bed.

It'll be there by the end of the day.

Oh yeah. So I'm in Minneapolis and Dallas is 13.5 hours. It's just go straight down to the events that I go down to do in Texas. Same thing with Austin. I haven't been to Dakota yet. That's actually a great question as well. What's your favorite track to attend? Do you have one?

There's a few. They all have their own little nuances and whatnot, and what you like and don't like about them. But I like Atlanta, and I've driven Atlanta a bit myself. And it's very challenging because of the elevation changes and the kinds of corners. I don't know if you're familiar with the track at all, but if you-

I've never driven it myself, but I'm serious.

That last corner, you're coming off the bridge hill and diving down to the last corner, or turn one actually at that point, I think it is. And no, it's the last corner, excuse me. But yeah, that'll get your attention. Road America, the kink in the back coming out of the carousel, and you go out a short little straightaway, and then you have this high-speed kink. And it's like to get that right and to get that fast, it really takes everything you have. You're talking to Jesus on that for sure. And so, there's lots of, Sonoma is another cool track. You come up at a turn two at the top of the hill, and you go to turn three A and three B, and then you shoot off turn four, you don't even see the landing. You don't really see the whole corner, but you have to guess where to launch the car, and it actually gets a little bit airborne sometimes on the right front. And you land right on the edge of the racetrack, because it's a left-hand turn at the same time, a slight left-hand turn. So it's hard to say. They're all challenging. I'd like to know VIR. That's actually our closest track to here, to this place. And I've only driven that a bit, but I'd like to master that a little better.

That's an awesome track too. Again, I haven't driven it personally, but I have a lot of sim time.

Well, and then you get in something like this, and it's terrifying.

Oh, I would never.

And you're trying to learn and be terrified at the same time. It's really an interesting combination. But it's so amazing. And the G load, well, this car here sees, you can't believe you're going to the corner that fast and not shearing off the racetrack. It's amazing.

That's one thing that I've gotten for is a respect for race cars. Like, you know, a 600, 700 horsepower street car, that's one thing. 600, 700 horsepower race car. Yeah, I don't think I, maybe it's, I might have had a rude awakening a few years ago. I'm just like, you know what? I don't think I got it in me.

And then add another 200 horsepower.

Yeah, exactly.

Just because you don't need it.

Well, as we start to wrap up here, I will have a final question here in a second. But what are you most proud of in your career?

Oh, gosh, my salvation and the Lord Jesus Christ, I think is the most thing and being a parent to great girls and having been able to play and have an income and a livelihood in the thing that I truly love. I mean, I wake up each day with a new smile on my face and what do I get to play with today? You know, and that's been a great outlook for anybody's life. I think I've just been blessed with it. And I'll tell you, it's been a great ride and I can't wait for what's next around the corner.

Well, perfect on that note. Last and final question. At the end of every episode, I like to ask my guests to pick three cars. You have an unlimited budget and it goes like this. You could build whatever you want, buy whatever you want, however you want to go about it. It goes like this. You get to pick a daily driver, a track car and a show car. What are you picking?

Daily driver, 1935 crew cab Chevrolet pickup truck that's been cut down the middle and widened a whole foot so that you've got a lot of elbow room inside and slight chop to the top, a handmade bed and a handmade chassis with probably air suspension on it with amazing brakes, lots of power, and that's your daily driver. I'd like to build that.

That's the best, quickest answer I've gotten. For such a custom car. I didn't even prep you with this question. It's hilarious. You were ready for that one.

I mean, just kind of over the top with creature comforts and leather interior, just really nice, solid, a four door with suicide rear doors, you know, regular doors in the front. So a lot of leg room for the back, like an extended crew cab, something you can go to Lunchfoot and not get the seat in front of you dirty with your shoes, basically. So track car, I'm building it, right? I'm racing it. This is, I can't think of anything cooler. And there's certain reasons why I say that, because it's something that you come up with, it's something that you build. You don't have to buy it. You can build it and you can compete with it and you can try to beat the other guys that have all the money in the world and they buy the best of everything, but they don't build it. They don't come up with their ideas. They buy their ideas from somebody else's ideas. And I enjoy that part of it a lot. And building and being able to race across this country at all the iconic racetracks with, and nowadays, some of the awesome iconic pilots that we've had in the past, like Boris was retired and I asked him, you want to come back to race and you want to let's go do some Trans Am? Well, he said, what do you got? And I said, I build a new Trans Am car. His next question was, is it fast? I said, I think so, but you got to drive it. So, and once he drove it, he goes, oh, this is it. This is a great recipe. Let's continue. So we have, and then Paul Menard was about retired from Nascar. I brought him back in. Now he's running, we're competing against him in another team. He jumped ship and he's, he signed up with another team, which is cool and I understand, but I missed having him part of it, part of our program for sure. Adam and Jetty, same kind of thing. It was racing for another team. And now he's off racing with another Trans Am team. We're actually competing against him weekend and week out too. So it's a good camaraderie of good friends over the years. And I've been in Trans Am for what, 46 years or something like that. And then racing in general my whole life. I mean, since I was probably about three or four years old washing mud off my dad's midget, so good stuff. And the other vehicle was?

Show car.

Show car. I kind of enjoy the Riddler Award for Hot Rods. And it's like the top award for the coolest hot rods out there. And it employs again, amazing innovation and technology into usually older body style cars. And I think that's kind of cool. I would probably, I'm not sure what that car would be exactly, but something that you'd come up with and something you'd probably make in that regard, a show car like that.

Anything in particular kind of in the back of your head, you're thinking? What did you go Chevy, Ford, Dodge?

I'm not really stuck on any one thing, you know? I mean, maybe even my Crew Cab 1930 Chevrolet pickup truck would fit in that category as well as your daily driver. But then it's too nice to be a daily driver, you know? You know, what I really enjoyed when I was a kid, I had a Volkswagen station wagon, and it had probably 300,000 miles on it, and it went everywhere, and it was ugly, and of course, it had a great motor in it, but I enjoyed that car a lot. It was a lot of fun, and I don't even know that I wouldn't probably try to go find something like that again.

Make that a little show car?

Who knows? Who knows? I mean, it doesn't make any sense, but it's just different.

Why not, man?

It's just different.

Well, perfect. I don't know, where can everybody find you?

They can find me at 704-609-7423.

Do you have a website?

I don't. I intentionally don't have a website, and I don't really intentionally give out where I, my place of residence or businesses, but you can get ahold of me and we can chit chat and talk about things. Sure. I'm looking for actually a partner to run the Trans Am car correctly. Somebody who's got a viable company that really loves racing is just an enthusiast who wants to be part of a front-running team. I would enjoy that. I have never had a partner, kind of done this all on my own over the years, but, and not necessarily do I need a real partner, but somebody that wants to invest and be part of the program. So anyhow, that's probably what I'd do.

When you say partner, what does a partner kind of look like? Like I'm just curious.

Like just a real enthusiast. Somebody that's financially has done well in business and doesn't really, maybe needs a tax write-off. Maybe just really enjoys Trans Am racing from when he was a young man, you know?

Gotcha.

And wants to be at the top of the food chain and beat everybody else.

That's a call to action if I've heard one.

That's, you know, let's beat their a**. That's what it's about, you know? And I really, I get the most out of that. I really do. That's fun being on top. Of course it is. Who doesn't like to be on top, right?

That's a good way to, let's end on that note. Yeah. Let's kick some a**. Okay. Well, thank you very much, Pancho.

You're welcome.

I'm very grateful to be over here and meet you. So yeah, thank you everybody for listening and we'll see you all next time.

All right.