201. ARS On Winning TX2K, 2000hp Camaros, and Why MoTeC Runs Everything

This episode is brought to you by 6XD Gearbox. More on them later. Texas 2K was awesome. Okay, because I was up in the suite, I was watching you guys race up there, and you guys actually won that weekend, right, with Billy's car, correct? Correct. His name's Billy, right?

Billy White.

Yeah, so, and funny enough, on the way over here, I saw Griffin's car, which, like, you guys had an awesome line up at Texas 2K. How did we get there? Because you had four cars running this year, right? Was it four?

Four cars, yeah. Four cars. Man, I don't care how prepared you are for a race and know that race is gonna happen every year, the same year, at the same time. We end up, the week before, not sleeping and thrashing on cars, getting s*** done. Billy came to us. That was the first car that got the whole thing started. He's like, I don't care what it takes. We are winning Texas 2K this year.

When did that come? When did we heat you up with that?

Last Texas 2K.

Last Texas 2K, okay.

So we, last Texas 2K, we just took a brand new car there. We were learning a lot of stuff with it and had a few troubles with it. And we made some passes, but didn't go too far with it. So when we left that race, that's where he got serious. He's like, I want to win it. Like he got really pumped up. And last year's or the year before was when Todd was doing really good, the yellow Camaro, and he was just going rounds and rounds.

That was a supercharged car too, right?

Magnuson Supercharged, Triple 400, MoTeC. So I think we had such a high as a team that year too, that he was like, I'm winning this thing next year. And we knew that a year before that was the game plan. And it's just crazy how many months go by in between. But we did a whole roll cage in it. So we switched from a car that's going to kill you. Yeah, a six point bolt-in roll cage to a full-blown roll bar in it. And just went through a lot of the car. And we just saw stator converter changes. And we updated a lot of the electronics, added EGTs. We knew we were gonna push the car harder. The whole week before, I would say almost no sleep again. Just the ration on everything. Wes was over here every night with me after his regular job would come over here. And just go through the car, found all our weak links. And we loaded that car up and went to Texas 2K with no testing, so almost a year from the last time we tested it.

I have a question in there before we get too far ahead. What did that conversation look like last Texas 2K? Do you guys go to a coffee shop and all right, here's the list, oh, we should probably do this. Did you have a game plan in your head at that point, or what did that look like?

Whiteboard. Whiteboard, whiteboard. So that's how it really gets broken down, is we got the whiteboard and we knew we had Mark's car, Billy's car, Griffin's car and Dan's car. And when we really got into the, let's say a month before, two months before, when we really buckled down and made those lists. At that time, Dan's car had no engine in it at all. So we had to write down everything it needed. Mark's car, we were gonna take apart and switch to a billet motor. We didn't get it in time. So we had to do some updates with that.

Which one was Mark's car again?

The one right behind you, but it's the pink sticker one.

Okay.

So Magnuson Supercar, Triple Foreigner, MoTeC, like the fabulous Ford thing that we stick on all the cars. His car, we didn't get the motor ready for it. We had a big list on that one. We did like trunk breathers on all of them. So if something were to blow up, it ends up in the trunk.

12 ribs. We added 12 ribs.

The 2i PSI came out with the 12 rib that allowed us to spin these blowers without breaking belts. So we upgraded those on all the cars, including Dan's. So a month before we get the whiteboard, I just draw four columns, everybody's names, and it could be nine o'clock at night, and I may walk and put something up on there to remind myself in the middle of the day.

Just rotate that a little bit. Just smackin stuff around here.

Middle of the day, I'll go add a note, and it just comes down to getting all the items on there. And then I'd say about a week out, you're like, oh man, I better order this, or I'm not gonna have it by Tuesday. So we start going on all those. But all four cars, Griffin was coming from Florida, so his was already done. So all three cars are in the shop at the same time for the last week. And that's just me and Wes thrashing on things, going through everything to make sure there's no hiccups at the track. But we went to Texas 2K with that fleet untested.

Well, after the last Texas 2K, we didn't hit sevens in Billy's car. But then we had one track day.

Yeah, they're right.

And we hit sevens. So, and that was like a baby baby pass. So we knew that we had more in it, ready for Texas 2K. So safety was the first thing to do before proceeding to go on faster than 790s.

How long ago would you say that test one was?

Like a month after last TX2K. So like, the car had sat 11 months.

I think in April. So literally, I believe it was that April.

We wanted to redeem ourselves from not going sevens at Texas 2K.

Cause that was the goal last year.

Yeah, we wanted to do it. We just went with too new of a car and learned a lot of stuff.

But that was the first time driving that car. That set up, right?

Yes, yes. So I forgot to even add that into it. Like we had to teach, we taught them how to use the bump box Monday morning of TX2K last year in the pits. Like he had never used a bump box before. We had to teach him everything with the car from how to do a burnout.

It's the first time I've heard a story like that too. One of my friends had his, I think it was his first time using bump, like he was using in the parking lot. He had a pits of TX2K with his Viper.

We were on this last year's, the prior TX2K, I was on the dyno Monday night with that car, sorry, Monday morning. And we left Monday morning fresh from the dyno on the trailer. Billy was already standing outside of TX, dropped him his car off and went through TX. That's how fresh that car came off the dyno and straight into TX. And then here, let's learn how to use a bump box. We just ran out of time. And that's why I laugh about it comes around the same year every year. It's just, it always ends up being the week before, the month before to actually finish the car.

I've talked to other people like well-known people in this industry. And it's like, they'll be like a month out. We finally are ready and then something happens. We don't have, we have three cars not going anymore. Like it happens, like something comes up.

And we try, like we, on top of all the regular cars that are in here, we do slim the schedule down during that week to focus on the racers that week. And you could have a whole week, 12 hour days and just all day, all night and still not get everything and you're ordering things this year. We had like Dan's car out of some mechanical stuff that we could go over, but like as far as Billy's car, we showed up with that car, didn't touch s*** the whole time. We had the car like the one time the tree failed us. So we're in qualifying, trying to qualify and the tree just redlit us for no reason. And then so we went back up to redeem ourselves and the Billy does go sevens, but clips the cone, so that didn't count. So then we finally got our real seven second pass and I put the laptop down the rest of the weekend because you can't shoot yourself in the foot against all the cars over there.

So one of the things we're talking about off camera is that you are getting a lot of high caliber builds in here. What does the year look like overall though? Like is it like 80% bread and butter builds? Like E85 simple stuff, lots of high caliber, like where does it land?

It's changed. So this last year, it's switched to bigger builds.

Race car stuff, typically?

Correct, race car stuff. Or even jobs that would take a week or three weeks rather than a couple hours.

Okay.

So like the previous years, let's say we work on 50 cars a month, it could go down to 10 now, and we had the most profitable month in April.

So like a car like, just for an example, the blue car over here, that car has been a five year process of building that car in New York, and it gets shipped to us like, okay, finish the car and go through it all. So that car has probably got 100, 200 hours to finish a project that big. Like install a MoTeC, wire a whole car. So those projects could take up so much time, or somebody dropping off a ZL1 saying, hey, I want a thousand horsepower. It's a week long project to do that stuff, or I want a MoTeC and all that. Like the projects have gotten bigger, where it's just, it's just me.

So not necessarily race cars. It could be the guy that drives his car once a month and just wants it and wants the best stuff out there. So I don't want to necessarily say race car only because it's a lot of garage for car show or drive on the weekend guys too.

Yeah.

I don't know if I've ever asked you this question last time, but are you the one doing all the scheduling for him then?

Yes.

Okay, so you like, you have an idea of like how long it's gonna take you and then you.

Correct.

Okay, gotcha.

He, I hand him the paper and the parts and that's what he does. Everything else, he doesn't know what's before that.

I won't even know what's coming in. Like the car roll up and then, you know, let's see it roll up and what's this one? Oh, it's getting thousand horsepower and MoTeC and blah, blah, blah.

I thought, oh, okay, cool.

Okay.

How does that differ from something like, again, let's call it a thousand horsepower Magnus and build or whatever, 1500 horsepower, something that you've done already compared to something entirely new like Billy's car. How do you even schedule for that?

Yeah, good luck.

I have one. So with the yellow car, Todd, he's building the cast, the compressed air supercharger system in which someone's fabricating all that cause we don't do fabrication here, but Brandon has to wire the whole car. So I have that whole car booked for a whole month. We'll start there. Right? And then obviously you gotta order parts, maybe, possibly. Things change. Opinions come up and then I will have to possibly schedule more, but like right now, I have it scheduled for a month.

Customer side or his side? Like, is it like you tell a customer a month or, and then, oh, so you're just staring at it for that long?

Until I'm stopped, like this blue car, like I worked on it a whole week straight two times now, just to get things done, and then I end up at a stopping point, like, all right, I need to order all this stuff, and I'm gonna go back to these projects.

Things are added.

Yeah.

Right.

People like adding things, they do, and we do too, we don't mind that.

This is like the two questions on a car of that caliber, it's like, you can't ask how much or how long, like it's a ProMod, the yellow car is a ProMod, essentially, by the time it's coming back to us, like full double frame rail car, really wild, like it went there for like a cage update, it's coming back like...

3500 horsepower Camaro.

Yeah, like a street outlaw's car.

Wow, okay.

So, and he's, I think the fastest he's gone in the car is like 820, 820 or 830, so now we're just looking for like 620s, like it's gonna be a whole different ball game, but the chassis is phenomenal, but you can't, you have no clue how long it's gonna take, we could do our best judgment and block off that time and see what it's gonna take, and that doesn't even account for any of the testing time. The program, like there's a, just programming a dash in a car could be four or five hours of getting all the sensors to read and stuff like that. So yeah, it's hard. I don't know how she does it. I just get the invoice back here and I work on it.

Hey, here's the schedule. When I change it, it beeps and it's a constant.

My Google notification for my email, she puts it in an email.

It's constantly moving around. I'll wake up in the middle of the night because some days I'll be very like optimistic, and then the next day I'm like, that's not realistic. You need to chill. This man needs to breathe a little bit, so I'll change it the whole next day. Like the whole schedule, like four months of stuff booked out, I'll change.

So you got like this pulse on the business as a whole then at all times. That's awesome.

24-7.

In bed, dreaming it.

Yeah. And you got like your customers that have been your customers for years, like, hey, let me get an oil change on a Saturday. I'm like, all right. Let me move the lift over. Like we just, you got to squeeze some stuff in there too to help people out.

Do you take a day off though?

No.

Not recently.

This last Sunday, I actually just went to California to tune on a Sunday. I left here at 6 a.m., got to California at 10 a.m. I tuned till 10 p.m., hopped back on a red-eye and got back here at 5.30 in the morning.

I worked on it.

So I slept on both flights, both ways.

Since Texas.

Since Texas. Three, two, three hours. Since Texas 2K, he's been working seven days a week.

Yeah. But you guys also like to take your vacations too, right?

Yes, we do fit in at least two or three a year.

Yeah, we'll work.

We have one coming up.

We'll work during like the holidays because I'd rather take a Tuesday through Thursday off in the middle of summer or something.

That makes sense.

But we'll work through all the regular holidays.

Oh yeah, because that's quiet season for you guys, right?

Yeah, no one wants to race in that, but I think we put in a lot of hours, but I love what I do, to be honest. Stuff I'm surrounded with is just phenomenal. I truly enjoy it. Sometimes I'll get burned out, I'll be like, all right, my vision's blurred and need to stop.

Last night.

Yeah, last night I was like, I can't think anymore and you just need to lay down.

Well, compared to what you're doing back at your old job, you're commuting two hours each way, right?

Two to three hours each way, corporate suit, tie, horrible politics, office b*******.

But you were working at BMW, right?

Correct.

Yeah. That's okay. I was thinking surely I'm like, wait a second, corporate.

It was a corporate memory. I ran a dealership.

So, okay, that's what I was. Okay. But you weren't a tech, were you?

I started as a tech. I worked my way up.

Refreshing my memory a little bit. Yeah.

So got rid of all that crap.

I was thinking about this as I was coming in, and we'll come back to the other stuff in a second, but you have such a clean nature about you. Like is every night like a shutdown, like, okay, I'm out, like wax on, wax off.

I can't, I could shut down in the middle of a project and be like, I have too many tools out. Like if I'm working on something and I'm getting a motor in, and now I'm going from the motor, let's say to the differential, I will not leave all those tools out on a cart. Like I will put every tool away, wipe every tool, clean up the workspace, and then go back to work.

I'm learning these habits with my coworker right now.

You can't leave it. And I love people to death, and I've had friends that are great mechanics, and like, oh, let me use your shop, or like, let me, and like, my toolbox doors are open, and it just gives me the, like, I can't do it. Like, someday I'm gonna have to hire somebody, I'm gonna get too old to do this s***, but I'm very, very on top of keeping it clean. Like, these are people's babies, you know? Like, I think some of these cars get treated better here than the one they're at home, sometimes, sitting outside. Like, they're in an air-conditioned shop, out of the elements. Security, you know, gated area. We don't leave windows down in cars, so dust doesn't get in. Like, I don't want to hand you back your car, like, it's going back from a body shop. And if the floors are dirty, that floor machine's got some hours on it. I think it was 48 hours on that floor machine, which is sad to think about how many hours someone stood behind it cleaning the floors. But in the last couple years we've been here, like, we really take pride in how clean the shop is.

You gotta get a shop hand here at some point, man. I know, but I think you probably enjoy being behind that machine a little bit.

That's his break.

Yeah.

Sometimes she's like, do you want me to do the floors? I'm like, yes, please. My parents would be over here and my mom would do it every once in a while. She said, I'll do it, Mark. Please stand behind it and walk. And if the dog steps in, if the dog needed to walk out and work out, we just walk by the machine.

Or does she follow you? Yes. That's hilarious.

She'll just walk behind and let you do your thing.

Back to cars though, I needed to ask that question at some point. It was bothering me. I was like, I wonder, but okay, so... I'm kind of a stats guy, right? So I love the business side of things. So it's like, are you seeing more like Magnuson 2650 builds coming in now as well? Is that starting to become the norm?

We promote them a lot. So if there is a supercharger install, it's going to be a Magnuson. Maybe like a C7 Corvette Weekend Warrior older person that's just cruising around, wants a little more power, like an ANA kit, like the centrifugal supercharger. Okay.

Or you can do some of those as well.

Yeah.

Very nice kits.

And then like we pro-charge, like we mark this as a whole separate conversation on that, but we're putting a crank driven pro-charger on his, but that's when we're trying to make a really big power. But ANA makes a really nice kit for like a daily driver. But almost every car that we're doing for 1000 horsepowers, 2650, or you could port the stock ZL1 supercharger.

And that's what's been popular this past few months.

Do you have somebody locally that ports for you then?

He's in Alta-Kong.

Yeah.

Okay. Kong. Okay.

Pennsylvania.

Yeah.

We've been religious with him since 2016, since my car.

Yeah. They've been doing this 10 years now. This business, me and her together.

This year's 10 years.

Full-time 10 years. Two states 10 years.

Yeah. 2026. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. Because you guys started this in California, correct? Correct. By the way, I'm headed to SoCal in a couple of weeks. I'm excited. First time. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry, bro.

Yeah. We'll see what happens. The weather is nice out there though. Yeah. I haven't been there since. I went there in the middle of COVID to pick up a car with a friend and it was like a ghost town. It was like, I think it was like just after Christmas 2020. It was like the second or third or fifth wave, whatever it was, but yeah, the beaches were nice.

We go back and I tune there. We have our friend that runs a shop out there and our friends are out there. So there's still a place in our heart for it. But as far as the business and the racing, can't be in here in Texas is just unmatched to what the racing scene is there.

Yeah. Back to the hours thing though. So standard, let's call it a 2650 build. When you get to a certain level in a build, whether it be drag racing or drifting, road course or just a b***** street car, you'll have to upgrade your transmission. When we're talking sequential transmissions, there's no one on the planet with a stronger gearbox than 6XD. The proof is in the pudding here folks, half the FD field is rocking a 6XD and even 3,000 horsepower Vipers have not been able to tame the best that 6XD has to offer. If you're ready to take it up a notch, go to 6xdgearbox.com and when contacting them to place an order, use code MINNOXIDE5 or reach out via socials to figure out how one of the baddest transmissions on the planet could fit in your build. Let's get back to the show. How many hours are we budgeting? Give me an example of a cookie cutter build that would come through here. Is there any?

Yeah, typically if I'm doing a supercharger and a fuel system, which we're doing port injection on everything, we're not installing methanol. So port injection, depending on which system we're using, I'll book three to five days. And if it's like a Corvette, it's going to be more than a Camaro. So like the Camaro will be more on the three day side, Corvette, I'm going to have it on the five day side, especially because I'm doing a four innovations fuel system.

Like if you're doing heads, cam, fuel system, supercharger, port injection. It's a week. In a perfect week, if I had nothing else coming in that week and not a project from the week before someone coming in in the middle, I could get that done in a week. From start to finish from a bone stock car to 1000 rear wheel, off the dyno tuned and picked up on a Saturday in a perfect world, we could get that done. It just depends on what happened the week before and what's happened during the week. But we've turned those in a week.

I'll try to put in a tune there just to break it up a little bit for him. Something small. I'm like, here, go tune something like relax.

We set it like the furthest lift is like the longest project. Like that has no rear end, no driveline. Next to it is a car that's a bigger project that's not gonna move this week, but I could constantly pick away at it during the week. And then the closest lift is something I'm trying to finish. Okay, this one I'm putting, trying to put this car together and finish it within the same week to free up that lift. So that long one, I could go do something on as not as often something I could, if I'm actively ordering parts in the middle. And then right here is like, this is my most, I already burned out. I already burned out a motor on that lift. So that's the first one.

For example, this one was supposed to be done tomorrow. But it's not. So I extended it, I'm gonna give him four extra days. Things got added too. So I'm gonna give him that so he could finish that. Switching through projects is not good for him.

Okay.

So if you got two big projects, and then let's say a part didn't come in, and I'm like, oh here, go to this project, it doesn't work out well.

Like the blue one is like a bunch of MoTeC wiring, like all sorts of sensors. So your brain is, okay, this is on AV12, and this one's on AT6, but then the trans break is on this half bridge and all that stuff. And I have it written down, and in the moment, it's very clear to me what's going on. But I'll walk away from the car for four months and then go back to it, I'm like, why is this button not doing what it's supposed to? I'm wasting time remembering where all the stuff's at. So it's an interesting balance when you're getting all that s*** figured out.

Are you like, for example, when you're doing some of the MoTeC wiring, are you like writing some stuff down everywhere and all that?

Yeah, so I print the... So MoTeC, you could get a wiring schematic from every harness. I print that harness out, and then I write where all my inputs and outputs are. And then it's also saved in the software where all the wiring's at. But I know, like, this car has nitrous, this one doesn't, well, I'm using that output for this on this car. But on a blower car, I might be using it for smooth boost. So you have to know, you have a diagram for each car, and I could go back to it when I'm helping that customer a year down the road, like, hey, I want to add this. All right, we have six outputs left. Let's put it on this one and go test it. So you have to keep like a folder for every car pretty much.

OK, yeah, so you got all of that just...

Yes, 100, especially on those cars because they're so... It's not a cookie cutter on every one. They're all so customizable. Every one of them has different sensors on it. So you got to know where they're all at in the software because there's no like, this is where it all goes. And you choose what you want to do with it.

Well, that's also the beautiful part about MoTeC is you can just do whatever you want, like any kind of build. Like the variety. Actually, one of the things I've always heard is like, if you want to put MoTeC on a car, you have to write the software.

Firmware.

Firmware. Yeah.

So it starts like MoTeC itself is a relay box. It's a bunch of relays in there. It's all it's doing. A bunch of relays, switches, connectors. In this box, it doesn't know what it is. That could run a generator, that could run a C7. It could run a Toyota BRZ. It doesn't matter. Someone has to write that firmware in the background to put it into that car. Now, MoTeC makes their own firmware. We have a firmware we use on our M130s and those kind of systems.

From MoTeC?

It ultimately comes from MoTeC. We have someone who writes the firmware.

Okay. So, yeah. So, this is how little I know. So, it's a programmer.

Yeah.

So, I don't want to call it off to shelf, but is there somebody at MoTeC that's made like a Camaro thing, for example?

Yeah. So, Camaro C7 and 6Gen Camaro is a MoTeC USA firmware for an A10, for a M7 or M6 Camaro. You could get that firmware direct from MoTeC and MoTeC sells it, drop in, plug and play into your car.

Okay, but then you stop to do the rest of the thing.

Yeah, I just don't know if it's turbo, supercharged, does it have a coolant pressure sensor, gear position switch is gonna run a trans brake, is it, it's just base. It just lets that car talk to that harness is all it does.

Okay.

So it's just, it's a blank slate to get into the car. And realistically, it won't even fire up a stock car without going through it and changing a bunch of s***.

Okay. One of the other things I heard is that the CAN bus system in these is like a little weird if you're trying to do like, for example, like one of my friends was putting a 150 in it and the shop was like relatively new to it, they were basically running into issues. Is there, what's there to know about that? Like you can't just plug and play a 150, is it pretty easy or?

No, I mean, you talk CAN, right? Like the car communicates on, let's say CAN 1.

Okay.

On an M182 car and then you have a CAN 3. Well, a CAN 3 like these cars, I'm adding EGTs. So I'm gonna stick that on CAN 3. I'm gonna add a dash. I'm gonna stick it on CAN 3. I'm gonna add a PDM. So when we run out of outputs, we have to run an ECU master PMU. I'm gonna put that on CAN 3. CAN basically allows two wires to send a ton of messages to do what you want to do. So it can, I could put in eight EGT sensors and it communicates across two wires. Those same two wires, I could put 16 outputs on a PMU, communicate across those two wires. DASH, I could do all the DASH data across the two wires. So yes, if something's flipped one direction or the other, but there's not, like I can put in 130 and 150 and you just got to make sure all the speeds are programmed right. Because if you go put the Lambda controller on at a thousand megabits, and then you don't have it programmed for the 500, the car communicates that or crash the whole bus and nothing works.

So I cannot wait to go down this rabbit hole after I post this episode. Because again, there's so many little niches within this, that's like just so much to learn. But okay.

And that might have been a problem that five years ago, I would have spent all night figuring out. Now I plug it in, I'm like, nope, this isn't right. This one's not communicating here. Let's put a dash in this one. We're out of outputs on this.

We're doing so much now.

Yeah, we do so many of them that it's very clear on what we're doing and how these things communicate and what we could expect from the product. But like Billy's car, we add EGT. We're out of inputs and outputs on the M182. So now we got to go run a whole second ECU in there to communicate, to add the EGTs and then to run all his outputs like his ice tank, his scavenge pumps, all that. Now Todd's car, for the compressed air, we're running an M182 and an M130. Because we're running a throttle body at the engine, a throttle body in front of the ejector, and we're running two little throttle bodies that control the compressed air stuff in the back. So you have four throttle bodies on that car that take four, five, six wires each. And they all got to go into this harness, plus all the pressure sensors. Like compressed air, MoTeC doesn't care what it is. Like you write it into the firmware and you tell it what it is and you give it the strategy you want and you're tuning it at the end of it.

I love how it's all like so simple, but also complicated. Is this your first time dabbling with compressed air, by the way?

Yeah, it's been around forever and I was, I don't want to say against it, but I always wondered like, why is this not taken off like all these years later? And I've driven, our friends have one that they built and I've driven it and Tiana's driven it too actually. And it's the weirdest feeling technology, but as fast as we saw that car go, I was like, okay.

What kind of car was this? 6Gen Camaros? Oh, 6Gen, okay.

Yeah. With one ejector, like is using half the system and the car flew, so it's capable of 3,000 horsepower if you use both ejectors.

Okay. Injectors like on the actual compressor?

Yeah, there's like two dash 20 lines, I go to a ejector in the front and they were only using one half.

Okay.

And it like, I don't, it's a no time car, so I can't share too much about it.

Yeah, fair enough.

Stupid fast, comparable to 20 pounds of boost on a car, they're running like 10 pounds of manifold pressure.

Okay. So why hasn't it taken off?

I don't know.

Price? The compressor is $10,000 that you're gonna have to put in your trailer. Then you need four or five mother bottles, like those big nitrous bottles in your trailer. So it's just like, I would say it's like your scoop of Steve at the track, like you're just this dude twisting dials and put, like it doesn't like-

Think about the price. So our friends, they have multiple cars. And if they're gonna put that system on all their cars, that's actually cheaper than adding different power outers.

They're ahead of the curve to do it. But the car, I think the system, I'm gonna quote me on exact, but I think the system's like 17 grand. And then let's say you need an M182, that's 13. They need an M130 on top of it, and they need a $10,000 compressor. And then although it's-

If you're gonna make 3,500 horsepower, you need a motor to hold that too.

It's comparable to what the type of cars in that power range are. Like you're not building a car that power range for under 200, 300 grand, you know? That 3,000 plus horsepower of that caliber of car. So it's, I think it's able to match a pro charger car at that power.

So if I'm understanding this correctly, you have, tell me where I'm wrong and stop me at any point, but you have one big compressor in your trailer.

Yep.

Okay, and then you have five little ones that you basically just throw in the car.

Five bottles that you transfer the pressure into that are still in your trailer, and then that one line fills two to three bottles in your car.

Okay.

So you're talking, you're sitting on eight tanks at any time. Five of them are in your trailer.

You have them in the shop over there.

Three of them are in the car, plus the scuba diving pump that's running for six hours at the track filling them other bottles to fill the bottles in the car after each pass. And it fills within...

Yeah, it's not a long time.

20 minutes just takes a process.

It's just not a get in and go.

Well, it's kind of like you said, it's like once you get to like a certain amount, like if you have multiple cars...

And you have people doing it. Like I can't sell that to the regular guy driving down the street.

No, it's not a daily appointment.

We accidentally left the system on. Yeah, we left the system on in a burnout. Like so the car, NA doesn't make much power, so it's really hard to do a burnout. Well, we accidentally left the system on the burnout and it's like, holy s***, this car just did the nastiest...

And all the air is gone.

I mean, it uses all the air. So it has some downfalls, but same thing with nitrous, you leave your nitrous on, you burn through your nitrous. It's just not for everybody, but I think the car that Todd is building right now will actually dominate the 6XN platform. It's gonna be a sub 3000 pound double frame rail, floater rear end, really gnarly turbo 400, zoomies, Lexan everything. It's gonna be cool. 14 inch rear wheel. I'll give you some pictures to put in there, but like probably the nastiest car I've put my hands on to finish. Like even it made our race cars look like.

Well, we were talking, we were like, we've never been to this caliber of car. So we're gonna figure it out together.

Yeah. And getting into that caliber of car, it's like we've put our whole race program on pause, our own personal race program on pause, sold our race car in the process.

Did it finally sell by the way?

No, not yet. I can't give that thing away, but it'll sit in a cover on the side of the shop for all I care for right now. The caliber of cars we're coming out with this year, there's no way in hell I could run my own race program. Like it's just not even possible. Like there's races all these weekends and everybody wants them there and I would rather promote the business and do good.

Damn right.

Have I ever asked you what you drive on this podcast?

Well, we know. It's funny, of all things we drive, we drive an electric car. You know?

What do you have, like a Plaid or something?

No, we got a Blazer SS.

A Blazer EVSS.

How do you like it?

I love it.

They're great.

It goes zero to 60 in 3.4 seconds. It's actually pretty fun.

I feel so nerdy talking about it. But it's like we drive an electric car, but it's like I sit in these all, like I literally this morning.

We don't drive anywhere.

You got to take a moment and say, I'm driving a 1200 wheel C7 on MoTeC manual transmission through the back streets of our back country of Texas. Like you gotta take a moment and soak that in. I was like, damn, that was pretty cool. Like it just, I get to drive so much cool stuff all the time that I don't need to beat up my stuff. I'll let them break their cars and I'd do it. But like our own race program's completely dead right now. They come, we used to, when we moved here, we were at the track two times a week constantly. But then we started getting into these bigger builds and you can't take a car like this to the track by yourself. Like, you know, Todd's car will never be a one person car. We'll need people there.

That's a team car.

Yeah, that's a team car. Mark's I'm out there with that car every time. That car was going from a Maggi car to a Elami Billet Block Aluminum Rod, F3 Pro Charger. F3 Pro Charger. I'll probably put Mathenol on that car. Like, you're talking 2,500 horsepower car. We're going to be pulling plugs between rounds. We might be pulling oil pans, checking rod bearings. Like, that's a full time job when you're at the track.

So this is for one car.

That's one car.

Yeah.

And this year at TX2K between Dan's and Billy's.

And not just one car just wants to come out when you're going out.

I was going to say, so what's the solution for that next?

Right now, Wes has been my right hand in this. Like Wes is somebody who's just like, I don't trust a lot of people to be around cars like this. And he's somebody who I trust to help. Like he was in the pits during TX2K the whole week thrashing on stuff. Like he's, all right, let me go swap the belt while you're at the starting line. It was bad this year. Like I'm at the starting line for three or four hours at a time, but the cars are going back to the pits and I'm getting back there to check logs and go over all that stuff. When the rounds started going, I had to duplicate myself at that point. There's nothing I could do. So I either got to take less cars, which I don't want to do that. I want to take, oh, you can't race this race because there's these. But I could fly in my other shop owners from California that would help out. Wes has always helped me out. I can only do so much myself. My talent is behind the laptop and all the data and all that stuff.

So somebody to take over like turning the cars around between rounds.

Exactly. And like we broke, we knocked a Bermane Seal out of Dan. So we had to pull the trans between days and Dan's car. We pulled transmission overnight. Like I think 10 o'clock at night, we finished it and we're back to race tomorrow. So I couldn't do that at 2 p.m. during the day with all the other stuff. So somebody to look over the mechanical stuff. But we spent a lot of time going through them prior to getting there, though, too. Like the whole Monday, we were checking over cars and making sure everything was fine.

Yeah, you can only have so many of you, though. That's at least you got a little you got something of a support system at this point. So this one's getting that LM, LMB block, LME, LME, LME.

It's like, OK, to pick, go to an LME catalog and just pick the baddest thing they make. That's it. OK, for the LT platform.

OK, what made you go that like that route?

He went his fastest pass one day and he just walked up to me. He's like, let's put a billet motor in. I'm like, OK.

He knows. So I think he's a big race. He's got really fast, small tire Mustang as well. He's been around. He knows racing. And I think he knew number one, we knew we were out of motor with the Maggie. We make, let's say, at 4000 pounds, we go the speed we went. We're making 1400 crank. We already knew we're out of Magnuson. Magnuson could build us some cool wild s***, but it's not like a production piece, so it gets real custom. So when we talked about like, okay, let's put a bigger motor under it and then add nitrous. So we're gonna leave the motor, the Maggie and nitrous, spin it as hard as we can, but we're still limited to what that Maggie can produce. So let's say I go from 1400 to 1600, well, he wants more than that. So now we're talking turbo and he's like, I don't want to do turbo, then press air route, just not something.

Was that a preference thing, like no turbo, basically?

I get where he comes from.

Yeah, he was like, it's boring, no turbo. And then he's like, what about pro charger? I'm like, well, Tiana's car is F3, 112, 2,500 horsepower. We're not going to run out of pro charger. We'll run out of chassis next. So right now it's F3, 112, billet block, LME manifold, intercooler built into it and everything. Turbo 400, nine inch. So our next limitation on that car is chassis.

Chassis and rear.

So what do you do in that case then chassis wise?

There's Todd's car. So you either go off the deep end and go that far, but we actually are converting Billy's car now to solid nine inch. So we're going to put in a Bolton nine inch so we can get anti-squat and actually have a full nine inch. The weak link on these is we're ripping the nine inch differentials out of the independent suspension. So we started welding them to the chassis so they can't move, you'll break axles, I don't care how nice the axles are, you're going to break them. So you switch to a solid axle and that puts you in between Todd's car so there's a middle ground before you go to just crazy full blown race car.

Yeah, and that's where you're talking like sand windows and all that craziness, yeah.

Yeah. So that's the middle ground we're going to try with Billy's where hopefully we'll be testing before TX2K and switch on it. I just talked to him today, he's like, I don't care what it takes, we're winning again.

Okay, let's start again. So we actually started to gain Billy today.

He was here today.

Okay.

So we started game planning today. I was like, at a certain point, I'm going to pop the motor. So we want to get an aluminum rotted motor and some fire hoops and just build that motor stronger. I feel like we're 400 horsepower shy from reaching the limit of where his car's at. So I got a little room left. We'd like to go sixes in it.

Oh, jeez.

Yeah, we went 750 on like, yes, I had some boost in it, but you got to remember, we're racing a race where we couldn't beat ourselves. So once we ran that 750, we stopped. I can't push it harder and shoot myself in the foot.

We knew we had it.

Yeah, as arrogant as that sounds, I knew walking on to that property, we had that race one. I knew I had the car to do it. There was some good contenders in it. Billy had a scramble button. I was like, if you don't care about this, grab this one, bro. And it was in front of you. So I put like 10 more pounds on it. I knew we had enough car, but once we made that pass, I'm like, pack it up, put the car away, don't screw with it, don't open the hood, don't touch something. Our team did really well looking over everything as we did. I came as a whole team of us getting that car to that finish line.

The pass, that wasn't the winning pass, was it?

No, 750 happened on it. So what's crazy is early, we had negative DA, phenomenal weather, cold as hell, and then the weather turned on Wednesday or Thursday, and it got hot and we ran that time in the heat. It was like noon and we went 750.

The final pass, the winning one was like a 760.

Yeah. So we floated between a 758 and a 760.

We were like, don't red light, just let the other guy go. You're fine.

When I say put the laptop down, I close the laptop. Done. You would imagine you click something the wrong way, you load the wrong tune, and I take that away from Billy. If he was going to lose, it was going to be on Billy.

Mark would have been in the finals but he red lit at a time.

We had our ARS finals.

Well, he was on two classes, but the other one he red lit that he didn't need to.

You talk about being too stressed out, TX2 game, Mark was racing two classes on top of everybody else that was racing.

Yeah, okay, so we know that's no easy feat to go from seven fives to sixes, and that's the goal with Billy's car at this point?

I think it's an easy feat to go from seven five to seven 20. I don't even got to think twice about that. Seven 20 to six 90, I'm sure there's a hard barrier, just like when you're eighth mile and you're going from five oh to four nine nine nine nine, huge barrier, period. So I think I could get to the seven 20s with the weather alone, weather and a little bit of tweaks. To go sixes, I got to get a chassis under it, as far as just, I need to 60 foot, like we're 60 footing one one or one twos, where Mark's car is 60 foot, so one one and four thousand. So it's like, we got more left in the 60, but I need to be able to anti-squat the car. So instead of, we're losing ET because the car's doing this. If you saw that car down the track, it looks like it's doing a wheelie, a whole damn track, because there's so much extension. It's not right. I would rather have the rear end coming up and driving the car forward. So I think seven 20s in the bag, six 99 is going to come with some chassis tweaks. And then we might make a little turbo change, but we got to stay with the rules with the 72 millimeter turbo.

Oh, is that what the limitation is?

The limitation is 72 millimeter on the impeller size. So we are limited by that, but I was just doing the math today. I think we're horsepower wise, we're sitting probably 1600 right now at that weight to run that mile an hour. Motor's rated at 2000, and I'm going to use every bit at 2000. So I know I got some more boost left.

What's that have in there for a motor then?

That's an LME.

Oh, it is an LME?

Yeah, LME LTR block with CID heads. So it's not as stout as the Billet stuff. It's still got water in it. It doesn't have, I don't even think it has fire hoops yet. We would switch to like fire hoops with aluminum rods to like, they're more forgiving on the bigger boost application. So we just got to go up a little in what we're doing, but the goal was to go sevens and now it's sixes.

Isn't that funny how that happens every time?

Yeah, well it went this fast, now we need to do this. That was easy. I mean, I've had that car since it was a nine second car. Billy's come a long way with that thing.

Oh yeah, and as a driver as well. There's a lot there as well.

He killed it, once he got in the zone and the bumping and one of the X3s or something double-bulbed him and he stayed perfectly on what he was supposed to do. Where someone probably could have lost that race to themselves, dude killed it. We watched Todd as a driver and Billy as a driver. Todd, the last X2K, we were like, holy, he was really in everybody. In two classes then too. And then Billy, this one, Billy, once he got in the car, in the zone, became a driver and he's like, turn it up. You know, there's no more fear in the car. We just had such a new car the year before. Now this is his baby. Like he's one with the car.

How long until this is a full-on promoc shop? Is it five years?

We, man.

I mean, we're talking about that. We're upping a lot of things.

So we recently purchased a new dyno. Like our other dyno did really good, like thousand horsepower, 1200 horsepower cars, very reliable.

What did you have for hub? It was a hub from who?

DynoCom.

DynoCom, okay.

So I have one of theirs. It's like, it got us this far today. It's really good. We switched over to a mainline hub dyno that's rated at 3000 horsepower now.

And I wrote that today.

Yeah, I just bought it today. And I told Todd, I was like, well, now is a better time than ever to upgrade because there's no way that dyno is going to hold that in Todd's car. And then you think Mark's car with an F3 pro charger at 40 to 50 pounds of boost, that's another 2,500. Billy's car at 2,000. So the blue one's a 2,000 horsepower car. It's got twin 80 millimeter turbos on it, the blue one. So I have multiple 2,000 horsepower cars lined up this year. We moved all our plumbing into, Brown and Miller, which is like top of the line. I would consider it, if you want to say a Pro Mod, you find that stuff on Pro Mods. It's aerospace quality, all billet one piece fittings that crimp together, that are rated at like...

Aren't they California?

Yeah, they're from California.

Maybe you can see that?

Yeah, so you go see, that'd be a really good one. That crimp rated to 500 PSI on stuff. So we are pushing... To how much PSI? 500.

Okay.

Where a transmission's got like 90, 100. Coolant pressure, you don't see more than 20 or 30. Oil pressure, let's say 150 on a pretty wild car. So they're rated at some extreme pressure.

I'm sure they're so cheap too.

Oh, man. Like 190 degrees, like 50 bucks, but 50 bucks and keep your car from going into a wall or person aligned. So naturally, if you just looked at the progression of cars we're doing and the products we're having to provide to get there, like this fittings was a big investment to get into them as a company to get a 35 ton crimper to crimp them all. All our wiring comes from MoTeC. It's all mil-spec wiring from MoTeC, all the right DTM connectors we use. So it's kind of our clientele have shifted us that way, but I'll still take in a flex fuel Camaro tune a car and do some headers, but I'm very comfortable taking in, you know, one, two, 3000 horsepower car and wiring it, doing plumbing with it, building fuel systems.

We got a few resto mods, like 69 Camaro with LT swaps that he's doing full wiring and plumbing on. That's coming in this year. So that's, it's-

You might see, I wouldn't be afraid, someone's like, hey, I got this plumb in the car. Like it's not something I'm against doing. So I'm familiar with wiring. I know how to wire it. And then the plumbing is just another level of, it's another service we could provide. I could provide good, better, best or options like that.

What's your least favorite service to provide?

Man, I don't know.

Do you have one?

No, I don't like working on F-bodies. We don't work on F-bodies, though. If you had to pick something like, I've worked on, I had a F-body in high school. My arms are still cut up from that. That's, honestly, I like-

Brakes?

I don't do a lot of suspension and brakes and stuff, but that's like, I'm not against it. But I do like the piece of having a month-long, two-week, one-week-long project where it's start to finish and you just gotta build a whole car uninterrupted. I like that.

And before, he would say he didn't want to do race cars.

Oh yeah.

So he's really transitioned. Like he's like, I don't want to do full race cars. That's not something I want to do. Last two years, that's all he wants to do.

Is it getting, is it easier? Cause like one of the things that I heard is like, race cars are easier cause you don't have to worry about a nice interior and all this stuff.

You still want to keep it nice though too. Like I still am super, you know, with getting things nice. But like I've had race cars, like I've been doing racing for 20 years. I've had plenty of race cars. I've built plenty of race cars.

We get like the used and abused ones look messy. Like it's a race car stuff. You just get it done if you have to get it done. But our customer's cars aren't like that.

No, they can't like, there's no lie about it. These are all a hundred thousand dollar cars. Like easy to be like the ZL1. You put any kind of modification to it, you're almost sitting at a hundred grand for a thousand horsepower car. But like I've had them all. I just never worked on them as often as we do now. Like I used to do it all just in my own and like in the garage myself and on our own race cars and our businesses really push that way too.

And he's not intimidated by it. Like people were literally bringing him a whole box of bolts for the whole car.

And I laughed. I was like here and he's like, OK, I laughed because I say, you bring me a box of bolts and someone actually did it twice.

How do you go?

I mean, you've seen I've done so many of them. You could bring me C7 or C6 in a box of bolts, lay it all over the floor. And I'll figure it not wouldn't even think twice. It's just something I've done so many times.

So have you ever seen those? I think it was a Volkswagen commercial, but I think some other people did it too. It's like basically like what goes into a Volkswagen. It's like in a million pieces.

Yes, I remember that.

But could you assemble a car?

Yeah, yes, he has a sixth gen for sure. No, it's just so many. I know I could tell you where every nut and bolt goes in those cars. So we've just we've been working on them since they come out. We've been in business 10 years. The car's been out for 10 years. C7 a little bit earlier than that. But as far as a sixth gen Camaro, we've been in this platform since it was produced. So I think we're still getting a couple more in 2027. We're not out of business yet, we're not out of production yet.

It's not.

What about, I think we talked about this last time too, any interest in the C8s yet or not quite?

Yeah, we're doing pro chargers on them. They just unlocked the ZR1 stuff and Z06 stuff. Maybe a lot of people are just keeping them mild, like some people doing cams and stuff.

So our fabricator, he just got a Z06 and he's making twin turbo kits for them now. So we'll get to play with that.

That's...

Jay.

Yeah, so Jay got one and they're gonna build turbo kits for that and we'll start playing with those.

I might have some questions for him, which by the way, yeah, I should probably hit you up about maybe having him on on Sunday, if he's around or something.

He's big into the F-150 stuff and he's been...

When are you gonna start making some fast cars?

What?

F-150? I'm not messing around, but...

I miss that generation, but cool. My buddy has one, I drive it. I'm like, whip a car down. I really like the market we're in and what we work on and all the stuff that comes with it.

I love how perfectly entrenched you are in this. Again, I can't compare you to Aaron from Enthmodo. He's just... I mean, he does a couple offshoot things, like Ford GTs and whatever, but Vipers is what he's known for. You're the Camaro slash Corvette LT, whatever guy.

And it's like in the beginning, you didn't think... I don't know, I don't even know what I thought.

You didn't think you can narrow it down to that small.

Yeah, I'd have like a G8 in here and all sorts of C6s and all over the place where I really wanted these. The cars are just getting older now, so it's hard to find someone with mileage that you're not doing a disservice by working on it. Like someone wants me to cam a 200,000 mile C6, I'm not gonna do it, because I feel that's a disservice, that they're gonna dump all this money and it's gonna lose a main bearing or something. So we gotta keep it to stuff that I know I could provide that service for.

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And it's really geared like it's all 6Gins in here most of the time. A couple C7s every once in a while, but just more of the ZL1s out there.

MoTeC-wise, I'm actually not in the loop there. Do they drop new stuff every once in a while? Like, where do you go up from an M182? Is there any, or is it just adding more stuff?

I think the ECU is the ECU. You gotta determine what you wanna do with it if you wanna develop more software, more firmware for it, or harnesses. But the MoTeC is the MoTeC. They come up with releases.

We update our harnesses quite often.

Yeah, like I'll be like, oh, I want longer can wiring to hook up an SOMC, so I'll update my harnesses, or I want more sensors in the engine, so I'm changing my harness constantly, but my actual firmware and MoTeC itself stays the same.

Okay. Cause I know they also make actual motorsport ECUs as well, don't they?

Yeah.

But that's more so for circuit stuff, I think.

Yeah, and they have a GPU software, which is just like turn a V8 on, like just very basic stuff with none of the cool traction controller or vehicle integrations. So you could run anything with it, but they're still constantly developing stuff. Like the CAS firmware stuff is something that's being written and changed, and that's never been a MoTeC product ever. That's something that's in the works right now.

So here's the question that escaped me earlier. So help me understand this. Why can't, like, for example, I got 6XD as a sponsor here, right? They, I think, let's say they had a transmission you could put in a C8, right? What's to stop you from just ripping everything out and just throwing in like an M182 and making that work with an aftermarket transmission?

You could, like, say, if I wanted to throw a Turbo 400 and a C8 or something like, or that even, yeah, I mean, you could be real basic and rip everything out of it and just put a switch panel, but none of the car's going to work.

Right.

So then, like, when you say that, like you're talking about, like, anything interior-wise, just then nothing's going to integrate. So that's why, like, everything has to integrate with the, I don't even know if anybody's doing C8 MoTeC stuff right now that I know of.

Yeah, that's what I haven't heard of it yet.

I remember this. I went to FuelTech for training a while ago and they were having problems that if they didn't go unlock the door in the right order, the car would go and fail safe. So it's probably just getting all the systems to talk where this stuff is so proven, like you drop it in there. I don't even have check engine light, anything on the dash, nothing, full ECU replacement. FuelTech like, oh, no, we opened the door the wrong way. We have to wait 30 more minutes for we make another dyno pull. And I was watching this live happening while we're doing, like, FT600 training, whatever we're doing.

Yeah, because they're the first ones in the eights with the C8, I think. Was it eights?

Yeah, so they did it, but then I don't see a bunch of those floating around. I don't know. I think MoTeC could be a great product, but someone's got to be willing to go through the growing pains and the problems.

I'm trying to get customers in and just say, you got to be open to it.

You go buy this $150,000 Z06, and then now it's stuck for R&D. So until someone spends all that time to do it, I thought I'd have to go buy one myself and put in a lot of time to do it.

How familiar are, if there was one to throw twin turbos on, would it be a Z06, would it be like a Stingray or?

Depends on what you're, I mean, do you want to, if you're gonna rip it out and put a motor in it and all that stuff anyways.

Oh, at that point, are you talking LME stuff?

Yeah.

Potentially, I guess.

Then you go, I mean, a lot of, even the C7 stuff, people go with Stingrays and do all that. They just don't look as cool. Like, that one's a Stingray and it makes 12 on a horse bar and you wouldn't even know it made 12 on a horse bar.

I'm looking at the tire. I know it makes at least 200 horsepower.

What do you mean? What do you mean? The big old intercooler in the front.

Like we saw Griffin's car at the gas station earlier. I'm like, okay, that's an ARS car.

He came from Florida just because of how lively the Texas scene is. And he was like, I don't know, bro. Like, you know, should I do it? I was like, dude, this has got to be a feeling. Like I moved here on a feeling. And I was like, I love Texas. Like I knew in 2014, I wanted to move here. And he got all like back and forth and he actually just moved here today or yesterday. So that's the first time he drove his car here.

Oh wow, okay.

He just got here.

Which part of Florida was he from?

He said Destin.

Yeah, that's one of those smaller cities I'm guessing. But I don't.

Yeah, and he does.

You got to tell me like how far from Miami? Is it 10 hours or two?

Way up there probably then.

By Pensacola.

Okay, that's like Northern Florida, right? Yeah.

Northern, Western.

Okay, because like you call like Northern California, NorCal, what do you call, is it Nor-Norda?

I don't know.

I don't know. Okay, that's awesome. He's out here though. He was loving it out here.

Man, TX2K was probably the nail in the car. He was on cloud nine. He went eight in that car, stock motor, stock trans. And he was like toying around and moving out here. And he pulled the trigger like today. He literally unpacked his truck like yesterday. He sent me a picture of the heated place that we like.

Okay. This is going to be someone non-car related. I don't think I'm exactly soft, right? Like if you guys come up to the north, you don't like the cold. I'm not a big fan of snakes and spiders. How bad is it actually down here? Like if I were to move here tomorrow.

There was one. I'm not exact.

So Nova jumped the dog. She jumped over something when she was running outside. And I looked.

I thought it was a tree.

There was like a squiggly line. And I'm like, oh, that's a snake.

I thought it was a tree.

Thing was like six feet long.

Really?

Yes. It was a six foot long. I'm staying up north, bro.

I'm not even joking, bro. Six feet. That's tall. And he held it up.

And he went in the trees.

And he went up in the tree. That's a whole new fear unlocked. Imagine a snake falling out of a tree. Yeah, I watched it happen.

Yeah, so we did have a six foot snake out in the back.

Tranchola is like this big, just mobbing it.

You see them on the trees. Trancholas are whatever.

They're so big, you see them on the camera. You see them walking across your drive. And they're like, nah, they're pretty big.

I'm staying up north. I'll take negative 50 all day long. I don't care.

That six foot snake was interesting.

I'll show you a picture of that one.

That was pretty bad. Oh, hell no. I don't mind. We make fun of our parents because they don't like snakes. They just don't like snakes. Me and my brother, these are little garter snakes. Who gives a s***?

What are they gonna do? We brought us videos that make you scream.

It was a garden snake, too.

Yeah, no, he's like, yeah, I'll show you.

These are nonvenomous and all that. I'm like, whatever. But then I look at Manuel's story and he had that crazy spider the size of a hanny. He's thrown it at his friend.

I'm like, that. We're in the country here, same s***.

Yeah.

We have that in mind. I'm known the podcast.

Copperheads.

Yeah.

Nova decided to jump over the snake and not know it was a snake. I was like, well, she didn't get bit, so.

She's locked in in such a funny way right now.

She's suckling.

She's peaceful.

Yeah, but no, I was always curious about that. So it always comes down to somebody has to write the firmware.

Yeah, it's just like the background of doing it. And then once the firmware is published, you don't just go in there and change it unless you have a certain ECU that's unlocked to mess with. But we did a lot of changes in all the years we've been doing this. And we have a package that works really well with these cars. It integrates really nice at all the features, tracks control. And it's funny, like some of the M130 stuff is better than the M182 stuff. The M182 doesn't mean it's a better ECU. It just, the M130 had some nicer firmware stuff that was outside of MoTeC USA's firmware.

Oh, I understand.

So there's more customizable stuff in there. Where I go into an M182, I'm like, M130 would have done better at this function. But there's a different way of doing it in those two ECUs.

But you're so well versed in all of them at this point, and all the, yeah, okay.

I'm very comfortable with the different firmwares and using MoTeC stuff on some of it, using the stuff we provide on it. And it works really well, boost control, everything you want to do with it. And what's nice is just the integration with the vehicle like it's stock. Like I took a Holley out of a car the other day, and the guy was just super unhappy with the car in general. We put a MoTeC and he's like, this thing drives great. You never know what's there if you didn't say it was there. The safeties, all the different logics to watch over things. We've been putting those SLMCs on all the dashboards. So with the driver, if something happens, it lights up red in your face. You're not ignoring that. But then you'll see that before it starts cutting ignition and RPM. And that's a shift light that works for the manual transmission cars, even automatic, if you're manually shifting it. But the seamless integration with a factory car, I think, is the best thing. And then you talk about how expensive these cars are. What is, M130 is eight grand. What's 8,000 to your 100 you got into some of these cars, a prector? And an LME motor's 30, 40 grand, but time you get into these LTRs with my stuff, what is that to protect that investment? And then next level, I don't care that you make 1200, if you can't use it, then on the tracks, control and all that stuff. So for me, it's a no brainer. It's just to protect your car. I mean, you put all that money in it and something happened, you lose a fuel pump and a factory computer is not gonna catch that.

How often are you ripping out Hollies?

Often.

Often.

I haven't seen that a lot. And then it's not just you. Like it's just people are kind of switching. Like I think a Holley, like you don't got ignition control.

Yeah, I'm sure some do, but the ones I've pulled off, like no ignition control. So there's nothing, it's literally a fuel controller at that point. At the end of the day, it turns on your fuel pumps and spray some injectors. That's its feature. At the end of the day, it's all it does. Where the MoTeC takes over everything, like an M1A2 is a full replacement, obviously. M130 still grabbing all the ignition and all the fueling except for the DI. So to pull out, like somebody's, oh, my car doesn't hook. Yeah, there's nothing to slow the power down. There's no smooth boost controller. There was no ignition control.

They just think aftermarket ECU, it should do that, but it doesn't.

Yeah, there's no power management. Like if you look at this-

Is there more advanced Hollys? Anything like that or not really?

Holly being more advanced than a MoTeC?

No, it's more of that caliber. Because if you look at any of the big ECUs-

With the LT stuff?

I think it's just so proven in these. I'm sure there's some one-off people maybe putting FuelTechs in things. There's nothing to say you can't put a FuelTech in it and grab the same signals in the ignition, but to grab, if I want to use my cruise control button as a scramble button, it's in the firmware. If I want to use my, like this car, I want to change the boost modes in this particular car, I use the cruise up and cruise down to jump between boost maps. So I could change on the fly all that stuff. And then if I want rolling anti-lag, it's my cruise control. Whatever you want to take, whatever you're taking from the vehicle, including all your wheel speed sensors, it's all there. You put something basic that's not grabbing all that, it's just more sensors you gotta add where it's all built in.

One of the other things I wanted to ask you earlier was, what made you say no to methanol? Was there a particular time?

So it was phenomenal for a time. That's the only option that was out there. It served its purpose, it did good. Today, on a pro charger car with a less than efficient intercooler, I'd entertain the thought of a real light version of it. But the cost of port injection got so cheap that it wasn't cheap. But there's many options between 2i, PSI, DSX, Atlas, MoTeC, and now there's another level of it that's just going behind the throttle body with two injectors. The options are so endless that the price point gap isn't there. The pumps were leaking. It's just inherent of things that could happen. Then you got hot exhaust next to a tank of methanol and a C7 right in the fender.

A liability.

Yeah, I think liability is where I drew the line. Man, it's a flammable fuel you can't see burn.

But it wasn't like a particular instance. No. OK, thankfully.

You saw the writing on the wall of what could happen. And thankfully, I mean, I've had people call, go to the meth pump sleeping, even in their instructions, say, replace every year.

Oh, really? I didn't know that. OK.

And I give someone all my customers leave with a little slip and it still hasn't been replaced your methanol pump every year.

And this isn't a knock on any company that's doing methanol. But if you go get any RV shower pump, same thing you take a shower with, right? And a methanol pump, put them side by side. You're not going to know the difference. That's that's what that is.

That's controlling your whole engine. Like that's what's fueling your car. And it's like the thought of that.

I don't think anybody ever blew a motor because of it.

No, we haven't had any issues. It's just we've been port injection fans since 2017 with the ProEFI one and the Haltech. So we've been doing it on our vehicles, but it was costly. And then when we got the MoTeC stuff in 2020, we started dialing that in and like, we need to sell this. Like then Too High came out with a Reflex with an even cheaper option. And I'm like, this is a good way to introduce people to it. And then so I think that probably was the main start of it is Too High's Reflex affordability with port injection, where it's sometimes even cheaper than the larger DI injectors, which we don't promote those either. The cost of them, they're still not efficient for the bills and dollars for injectors. And they're still not efficient for the bills that we do. So a customer's wasting four to five grand on these larger DI injectors, and I'm like, don't even get those, there's a waste of money.

So there's no point, you guys just upgrade DI injectors here?

No, no, we stop LT4.

I have drained more fuel out of oil than oil out of cars before, from those things hanging open. I won't use them. There's a lot of shops that won't use them, period. And that's not going to knock on any of the shops that have them. I have seen too many times bent rods or hydrolock motors where I go pull the oil plug out, and bam, it's all fuel.

It's just not worth it.

The big high pressure pumps, it's just like I did a car, exorcist car, like I had an extra DI pump that was all this complicated stuff. I got rid of all of it. I put a four triple and a MoTeC on it, solved every problem that car had.

Do you lose anything by getting rid of the DI?

In theory, DI will make more power. Brian Tulli did a whole thing on it. It atomizes the fuel better. I don't think that is worth the risk. Yes, I'm sure there's a percentage that you do gain from DI.

My next highlights is Tulli talking about that actually.

He has a, they did all the math behind it, all the testing. It does make more power 100 percent.

But in an NA application is what that are like.

I'm sure the boosted stuff does too. Like this M182 car, I do push the DI to four and a half to five and a half milliseconds of injection before I start bringing in the port injection. I'm still using on M182. I'm using both, but I'm just using it to the capacity of a factory LT4 injector. I'm trusting a stock fuel injector. That on this car, it may be good for 600 of its horsepower, let's say, coming from the DI.

So all these cars still do have DI in there for that portion?

Yes, the only one that won't is Marks.

Well, I'm going to get rid of it on Marks. I worry about injector seals at like 50 pounds of boost. And I think some of the R8s and Lambos, I don't quote me on them, Tony would have an answer to that, but I think they've deleted some of it too. Cause it's hard on me. It's hard on injector seals, what I hear on those too, is they blow out something we want to play with. Yeah, you blow out an injector seal, and now you got fuel at a really high compression ratio coming out of the EnjaiBurner car down. So Billy's car is deleted. I don't have it on Billy's car, cause I knew I was gonna be pushing tons of boosts, so I don't want that there. And then think about when you're on a two-step banging and popping and you have induced misfires going on, you blow out a seal. Mark's car, I do not want to play with that. Todd is really set on using the DI, so that's gonna be a conversation that we have at a certain level. I'm probably gonna want to delete that too.

With the yellow car that's gone full Pro Mod, basically.

We're trusting a GM factory injector in there, and I have so much compressed air on deck for power, I'll give up what I could make with DI.

That makes sense.

He's not gonna like hearing that, but we'll cross that bridge another day.

Or when he listens to this, he'll be like, hey, about that.

Hint, hint.

No, that thing's gonna be awesome. Where do you even compete with that? What class would that even be in?

He wants to compete with Brett LaSalle. All sorts of hate for that, but his goal is to brace Brett LaSalle.

Okay.

Like he wants that caliber of car. So Brett has set the standard. I was talking to him. I was like, the amount of hours that man and his team and his program, like hats off, like that car is stupid fast. They put in the work. They've got the data. They test new things. So Todd, we have done this before. We could do it. It's just a lot of like, we're gonna try to build a car of that caliber, but it's just gonna take a lot of time, a lot of trial, a lot of error, but he wants to race to be the fastest, is his goal. So that's his marker he wants to go race with. It's gonna take us a lot of time to get there, but we'll get there.

Oh yeah, I mean, Brett wasn't doing what he was doing right overnight either.

Yeah, so we'll have to put in the same amount of work, but the caliber of car, I would say the caliber of Todd's car will match the caliber of that car as far as the chassis.

That whole world is crazy. I saw like when that whole breath thing went down last month, everybody was saying, throw a stick shift in it. Like start to chase that record next.

Yeah, just go for it.

And I remember you guys talked about last year. Do you have any interest in competing in stick shift or any of your customers?

My pockets are not big enough.

People, so you got some people who build stick cars and don't realize, because we've done it, right? And I've had a ZR1 motor in the Mustang with a stick behind it.

I was not like the stick cars out now.

So people build them, they either know what they're getting into or they're like, what do you mean? Like this could break. So you could break that brand new differential that you just bought that's level 50 built, and you break it, you drive it wrong one time. So we have customers at Roll Race, but I don't think I'm going to...

Not to that caliber of...

Like the NX Shift guy with the freaking Hemi Pro Charge. It's a cool car. That's cool as hell, but I can't...

Wait, which car?

The one from TX2K, the black C7.

Oh, that thing is stupid.

Yeah, I can't imagine what that program cost to enter.

If anybody was going to stick class, it would be me.

Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, it would be me.

You were driving that car stick, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

Until you went through the transmissions and clutches and...

I just don't have the pockets for it.

Yeah.

Straight up honest.

I was the one who put the power gliding, so I was sick of taking that transmission out. That was my fault why that car went auto.

I really... Is your familiar with Nick Coleman then as well, right? I think he's still the record holder for stick shift.

What car is it?

It's the black... Is it S10?

Yes.

Yeah.

It's on Twitter. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think he's still holding it.

Yeah, that's cool.

I think that Corvette's coming forward.

I will go watch that class every time it comes up.

It's very entertaining.

Yeah. My caliber of cars increased, but not to... No. They're racing three, four hundred thousand-dollar cars.

That can cost a hundred grand every pass almost, potentially, is what you're saying.

I'm sure that C7 is half a million, probably, I would say, to do a car of that caliber. ProCharge, Proline Hemi, probably three spare blowers in the trailer and a spare motor.

Yeah. What are you bringing for backups to these events?

We are getting there.

I brought my whole damn shop. This is funny. Like I didn't bring a car in my trailer this year. I brought my entire wiring cart. I brought every spare hose. I brought spare axles. I go to track for-

We did have a spare short block.

Oh yeah, a spare motor too.

We did.

This year with Billy's car, I will have a spare motor. I'll be prepared to change Billy's motor between nights because I plan on pushing the car that hard.

Wow. Okay.

We will have a spare motor in the trailer. We're not afraid to not sleep at TX2K. Every one of them knows I'll stay up all night and get the car to the next round.

And you are committed as committed kids, man.

Yeah.

That's the week to do it.

That week, sleep does not exist. We get sleep that week. It's like phenomenal. It doesn't happen. But we go, like when we go for our track support, we come as a full shop. Like we could have done anything at the track this weekend. We had tools, everything.

Other shops were coming to our trailer for stuff.

Yeah. I go there because I don't want to drive all the way back here and get stuff. So we come ready to work for an entire seven days. Oh, wow.

So even though you're, what, an hour away from the motor place?

Hour and a half.

Hour and a half.

Okay.

Yeah.

Not as easy, but yeah.

We set up shop there. We're not like T1 set up where they got like, we were watching them where they had the DJ going at night and Terrence was pulling out a...

Trance.

Trance or something.

Or the R8.

10, 11 o'clock and I'm not that level yet, but...

I mean, you did do that, but... Yeah.

Not on that.

No, the DJ.

I didn't have a DJ going while I was pulling transmissions out.

You guys don't have a DJ going this year?

No.

I know.

So, no, I didn't. Mark said he was going to bring his buddy and he bailed.

Next year. Next year.

Next year?

We need a DJ.

Yeah, DJ. Okay. We'll make that happen.

And more employees.

And more employees. Or an employee.

And yeah. I'm going to have to get Julia out here from California. I think Wes might be racing with Crystal's card, so I'll lose Wes.

Who's going to start forcing your friends to move out here? Do the Rogan thing.

I mean, Griffin came. Griffin, come help, but Griffin's going to race.

Yeah, they're all racing.

I strong-armed him in the movement here.

What about the rest of the cars at Texas 2K? So I know you had a couple of small issues with Dano's car, right?

Dano's was a new build straight from the Dino, straight to the track pretty much. We broke the first pass. We broke an axle, which was a five-year-old axle. Yeah, it was a five-year-old axle, but we diagnosed it together as like a steering issue because the car was all over the place and we didn't understand what it was doing. And then we got in the car, I'm like, it's a f****** broken axle, put the axle in it. Next pass, break the 12-rib. It broke the balancer, sheared all the bolts. We got parts sent to us, ubered them to the track, I fixed it, went back up there. We made like a pass, almost PB, like not too far off. Like it made a few eight-second passes. Baby. And then we started leaning into it, and then the one pass had knocked the rear main seal out of it. So we pulled the transmission out to change the rear main seal. And then we went and tested it and we had a little hit, and we did okay. And then we went through first round, and then we knew we needed to get a little spicier with it, and then we spun. But we just lack of data. Like we'll get there. That car went five years with almost no changes and no problems. It's just any new car, it's new carb.

Sometimes you gotta go slower before you go faster.

Yeah.

Well, that was a big, there's a lot of changes too going into that, right?

Oh yeah. Yeah, and then we went into it with a 248 first gear trans. We're changing that. It's too aggressive for that kind of power. So all of our Turbo 400s have different first gears on them to try to tame that kind of power. But we just got a Billy's car didn't go as fast as it did the first time out either. I'm sure we'll go sevens with downs.

And we get something stupid next year. Yeah.

Yeah. Ideally, we'll get there.

Yeah.

Just it takes time. Nothing goes straight. We all bleed the same. I don't care who built your car. Like we all bleed the same. We all run through the same things, trying to get cars to go fast.

I love watching your camper on. Like I said, I met you guys last year. I'm like, it's just awesome. As a spectator, it makes Texas 2K so much more enjoyable when you know the shops there, especially like what go, again, coming here and checking this out, seeing where it's made, it's just, I don't know, it's like, oh, ARS is gonna do it. I gotta get up there. It's cool to be excited about that. This car, though, I've never seen this car, I don't think. The one right here, yeah.

So it's one of our grudge cars. So we got people who wanna light time boards, get time slips, show how fast the car is. And you have the flip side of it, which is grudge racing. It's all about money, hustle, gambling, not knowing what's next to you. So if I had to pick my top grudge car, let's say it's like my top track car right now, it'd be Billy's car as fast as it is, as Mark's and all them's come in the work and get fast with those. But we show everybody how fast the car is. This car's never lit up boards anywhere. So this is a grudge car where we go as fast as we can and no one knows how fast it is. So this is a pretty fast car as it is.

It started out being a yellow belly car. Now he's wanting more XRP stuff. So it's evolving.

Okay, what does that evolution look like?

So no prep, so the trans was set up for it.

Yeah, you set up like different gear ratios, power management strategies. Like, I don't wanna say anybody could go down and text 2K, but you're on a fly trap surface, right? You're gonna go down that track. Yellow belly could flip. It's all right lane, left lane. How many people spill their beer at the starting line? Whatever's happening up there, it changes night to night. It's never the same. So the strategies are way different for this car when we were racing that. And then he got into garage racing and a lot of them, or he's always been in the garage racing, but he got into the XRP garage racing. So we're making changes to go race radial tracks with them now, just suspension, motor tweaks, stuff like that. So, but then he said he wants to go back to yellow belly. I'm like, you're killing me, bro. There's not one tune for both of those. Everything changes in it. So as of right now, it's a grudge car. So when these guys race, some of these races are 10, 20 grand. And you have no clue how fast the guy is next to you. So you may underestimate him, you know, and have no clue that car's faster than you. And that's what it's about. So complete polar opposite of TX2K crowd. So he would have no interest of ever going down TX2K. I would love to put a time slip up and show what that car runs, but I can't. So it's like a doctor's office quiet on what's done to that car.

Right. I'm trying to think what questions I'm even allowed to ask.

Two over 400? Yeah, I mean, he's got my usual two over 400 MoTeC 2650.

Okay.

Got all the usuals. Yeah.

Okay. And then the rest is all the secret sauce at that point.

Extra labor that goes in. Like there's been nights I've been at the track with him at Yellow Billion, two in the morning or something, trying to get s*** out, but.

And is that you accompanying him as well then? Like, you know, looking at logs between races.

With him, yeah. We've had some long nights in developing the stuff on this car.

Okay. What do you even test for something like that? Is it just at Yellow Billion?

Yeah, you go to Yellow Billion.

Yeah, it's a great place. The worst of a night, the better you could get the data. So you want to go on a night that's not, the track's not great. You want to make sure you could get down so you have a default. And then you go on a better night when you actually race for money.

Okay. So, okay. Let's talk a little bit about setup, I guess, any of these cars. How many different tune-ups do you have saved? Like, or do you just basically try to work off a fresh data every single time? I mean, you're probably going to need to ship your car soon or know somebody that will. And as someone who used to work in freight logistics, I understand the difficulties of finding reliable transport, especially when trying to make it to rallies, racetracks, or the warehouse to hydro Corvette because you're going through a messy divorce and when she says everything, she means everything. Anywho, Nick Shearer is the proud owner of SureThing Logistics. Having traveled much of the country with every type of vehicle you can imagine, he's got the experience and reliability that you want to ensure a safe journey for your pride and joy. If you want to find out what it takes to ship your vehicle, go to surethinglogistics.net, fill out the intake form, and be sure to let him know I sent you. Let's get back to the show.

You got to look at the data from that day. That's a vital thing to make a shakedown. I know like I'll save something. I'll save it like cool night, tight track. I do know how many pounds of boost by how much time. So I got a gauge and I could go walk on the track. And in the MoTeC cars, you could change on the fly as a driver. So I could like put it in two or put it in three, like as we read the track. So it's a balance. Like you can't just go load a tune from a year ago and go here. The fueling made a change over that.

Sometimes we do. Cause sometimes these guys just go and race off the trailer.

And you're like, and you got to, as I don't want to, as a tuner, I don't ever want to lose the race for you. I don't want to make a laptop mistake and you spin or wheelie or something like that. So you may have to go to your, go to your go to. And he's notorious for like, we're going right now off the trailer for Tengra, like whatever it is. And like, do we haven't tested the car in three weeks?

Like three weeks, like three months, six months.

If the garage races at nine, he'll show up at eight 30 and go straight to the lanes. He loves that kind of racing. He does good. I can't take it from, you know, he doesn't know that's awesome. But yeah, it's very dynamic and shock settings, boost settings, transverse on our toes. Yeah. Like we're Billy's car. I shut the hood and walked away from it for three days. At TX2K, every time this car makes a pass, you are right next to it making adjustments. So.

No, that's freaking cool. At what point do we start getting to like, let's say we're at TX2K, throw up a little small weather balloon, you know, like, and then we don't have weather stations, none of that stuff.

I mean, there might be weather stations.

Or the track thing where you torque the track. I'm sure like teams like Brett's team and stuff, we're looking at stuff like that.

Well, they'll just get as much data as possible. Run it through chat, GPT. Here's what our weather balloon says today.

I'm sure that's what we're looking at. We're looking at DA, like we knew. And you test like Billy's car is going to come up on the break totally different in 50 degree weathers and 80 degree weather. So you do test trans break in the pits and make adjustments on the CO2. So you will not go with the same trans break settings on a cool night and the hot night. Yeah, no. Like you're tuned, when you go negative D8 or positive, there's a huge tune change in there. I mean, humidity will take place of fuel, too. So you got to watch. You could run more timing when it's humid outside and not as much when it's cool and dense, when you're getting free horsepower. So at this level of car, it's never done. Like you may have a, let's say a 1000 horsepower ZL1 with an Atlas on it. That car is done and leaves here and there's really not much revision after. But then a car like this, like you're changing the tune every time you're taking the car out. So it's very dynamic on what's changing.

What's the leaderboard look like now? Because last year we were talking about the whole 6th gen leaderboard or something like that.

5 on there? 5 out of 20 or?

I think we still got 5.

We should have 5 out of 20. That's what sucks is it doesn't...

Billy's number 3?

Yeah, it doesn't include this one, obviously, so we don't light boards up in it. The blue one, we need to get on there. I have a red one from Houston, big single turbo one.

A white one.

And I have a white one from Midland. Yeah, we got a big turbo car.

Three more we're going to put on this year.

I have three or four that are like 7 second cars. I just got to get them to the track. We're going to go do an XRP day and test all three of them together. And then we're going to take them all to a quarter mile.

Okay.

So I have some pretty serious.

So we might get eight in the next couple of months.

Eight in like the top 10 or something?

Oh yeah.

Oh wow, okay.

No, not in top 10. Maybe it'd be four in the top 10.

Yeah, four or five. And all the turbo cars should be real easy, seven second cars. But it's like the red one, he built the car himself. I did the MoTeC install or MoTeC and tuning. The white car, mechanically he built most of it himself. I finished everything with MoTeC wiring, tuning sensors. This one, all the hard parts are built on it already. I'm doing the MoTeC wiring.

Was it tuned on something else before?

No, he's raced it with a Whipple on it way back in the day, but on factory computer stuff.

Okay.

But I'm doing a lot of these MoTeC and finish ups, I would call it. They got all the fab works done, the engines and transients, no sensors, no wiring, no suspending, no plumbing, and I gotta go build all that stuff. So a lot of MoTeC. To think I've already done in the last year, just four of those.

You put a nine inch on that one too, right?

No, his already came up with a nine inch.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

What about Corvettes as well? Is it hard to make those as fast as a Camaro?

Expensive.

Expensive. What makes them so expensive?

C7 tax, like just, if you want to put a Turbo 400, a good Turbo 400 in a C7 is like $40,000.

Compared to?

15.

Yeah, less than 15 for a Camaro.

Wow.

I just, it's just, it's just pricey to do all that. Like the whole kit that gets involved with it, it's just an expensive platform. Like it's, and then you see these cars go for sale, they got quarter million into them and they're going for 50, 60 grand.

They have a lot of spares too. Like if it's a overdrive with like the stock rear, they all have spares.

Trans, differentials, all that stuff. Like they're carrying a bunch of them.

Really?

Yeah.

It's just heartening.

Yeah. That's why I put Turbo 400s in everything. They last longer.

Yeah. Have you ever thought about getting into like the parts game? Have you ever had an idea of like doing anything now?

I sell the MoTeC, but I don't... I think we build for the relationship with our customers. Like we want to be part of the journey. Like we want to be part of the chase, half as fun as the win. I don't want to just sell you a set of headers. And like, I don't like the transactional stuff. And you got the whole charge back.

You know, I'm even like designing something yourself or anything like that. You got ambitions in that? No, I don't think I'm a parts distributor.

No, I don't think I have anything. And like, I'm not like, like, like, like midnight has like their turbo kits and stuff. Like I could see that, but I don't, I don't know.

No, we are, we are doing something, port injection.

Yeah, but that's just, that's just building the lines for it. Like I can prevent, like I want to provide a product.

That is something new. We are going to build, set up port injection.

Plumbing basically.

Plumbing, that people can buy from us, from the shops that we know and trust, and we're going to sell them.

Out of all those aerospace fittings and stuff.

So we are.

I could provide, like I could provide a product like that.

The next month, we are going to do that.

I'll get into something like that, but I'm not a fabricator, I'm not a welder. I don't build things, you know, like that. So maybe this is nothing I've really, who knows man, I wouldn't thought I was putting a compressed air supercharger.

Yeah, future employee problems.

Yeah, yeah. Like that could be some next year's deal.

Yeah, yeah. So we're evolving. Like in the time we've been here, from when I opened my doors, like you know, the first person who brought me like 20 grand 10 years ago, I was like, oh my gosh.

Like now that's like, was that nerve wracking the first time?

Yeah, because you had to stand up, like they saw our car and they're like, I want you to do that. And like, oh man, I got to do, I got to deliver this product.

So I mean, it was easy to duplicate, but it was cool. Cause you get to play with it and go to the track too.

I'll shoot myself in the foot. Sometimes people are like, I want this. And I want it to be safe and reliable. I'm like, don't call me. Like you want to double the horsepower of your C8 with a blower and not worry about your trans going out. Like sometimes it's hard to not take all that in, but I don't see that.

There's a lot that goes into that. I feel like all your customers have grown with you, so they kind of know at this point. Do you often get like new people entering, or is everybody just growing with you guys? Or is it a little bit of both?

We have a good customer base that we've watched them take.

This last year, I think it's been a lot more the same customers, but then I say that in like last month, we've got a lot of new customers coming in too.

Zero One just came in from Houston for MoTeC. We think we've reached pretty far.

A lot of out-of-state. I'm getting a few out-of-state guys coming in. ZL One's for a thousand horsepower builds. They're staying at somewhere, and people are calling me and shipping their cars here.

Yeah, some grow a little bit of both sometimes.

This year's been, I think this year's been a lot of repeat customers, like you said.

No, I'm excited to see what the next year's Texas 2K looks like for sure.

A nightmare. I'm not ready.

No, you're not ready.

No, I'm not even ready. A year and I start talking about today is a year in advance, and I'm still like, oh, man.

You're still panicking. Oh, when's the main line get here?

What's that? 12 weeks.

12 weeks. OK, it's coming from Australia.

Yeah, yeah, I literally just finished it today, but we just got to try. I want to put it where I could put it out. The turbo cars in that room are a little tough sometimes, because there's no exhaust to get sucked out. So I want to be able to get them outside and dyno outside to not kill myself with the exhaust fumes.

Oh, like you would have the dyno outside?

Yeah.

Oh, OK.

So I could do that with mine right now. I just don't have the electricity for it. But you got a car with a hood exit exhaust, that room wasn't built for that. It was built for full street car exhaust. And now Todd's car has zoomies on it. So I cannot dyno that. Not a little safer outside on cars.

Are you just going to have a little canopy or something over it?

Yeah, do it on a nice, I'd hope to tune that in the fall time.

I guess you wouldn't always use it. Would you still keep this dyno as well?

No, you'd wheel it in and out. So you could put it outside inside their mobile. So you just move it.

That makes sense. Yeah, I forget that they come on wheels too.

They're 1,100 pounds each, but you could get it over there, you know.

This glossy floor would be fine.

Yeah, keep my floors clean and go over it. Yeah, I just wanted, that's just part of the thing that pushed us to step up the game a little bit there. And this dyno's done as good. We've had it all this time.

Have you played around with the main line yet? No, I don't quote me on this. I've heard it's different to work within the software.

It looks weird. I just watched a YouTube video today, but I reached out to all the shops that have them. Let's say five of them and not one of them could say something bad.

Yeah, no, everything I've heard, yeah. I mean, it's just, I've heard it's different between the two. That's basically, yeah, that's all I've really heard.

Yeah, and I watched, I clicked on a YouTube video today. I'm like, oh man, I'm about to learn some bad stuff. And then, and if it is like, it was the best purchase I ever made in my life. It's like some online guy does also, but he like ran it and raved about how well it worked with all different cars and used it every day for three years. So I'll take that review. Yeah.

What about like, when it comes to suspension stuff, are you guys getting into some crazy stuff with that yet?

Todd's car will be, I mean, doing all that setup. And then Billy's will be probably the furthest I've pushed a sixth gen platform into doing that. She wants me to get an alignment rack. I'm like, man, I don't want to get into all that stuff. Exactly.

We have room over there too.

We're gonna have an open room over here soon.

Yeah.

I don't know.

We have another area.

We discussed what we want to do to, cause we do do suspension, like 15 inch conversion stuff. Who knows? I put Solid Axle in this car and we go 1-0-60 with it, then.

So I'm trying to get him to get an alignment rack.

I might look into something like that.

I just love how this is like your personal playground here.

I get to work on a lot of cool stuff all day long, so.

It would be useful, but the best is to make your money back and get it. I think we'd be fine. I think we'd make it work.

It's probably $60,000 investment prize. I'm sure they're not cheap. I think that's what they are. I haven't looked that seriously into it.

Yeah, but would you ever consider getting a used one?

Yeah, that'd be an option to find something.

Some time to shop them.

Yeah.

I'll start with the dyno this year. I'm good.

Yeah, that's one big investment at a time.

That's all I need right now.

We'll talk about it next year.

Is there like, I guess, is there like a go-to? Like for example, I know like Calvo is big on Penske when it comes to like shops and stuff. Is there anything like?

Mensker, Viking.

No, we've been using a lot of Viking.

Yeah, we use a lot of Viking. Like Marsker is 60-

Viking and Avco.

Yeah, 60 foot of better than any sixth gen we've built. And it's like 119, 118, 60, which is really good for 4,000 pounds. Mensker makes a nice product. This takes a little longer to get, but Viking we could get pretty effectively and they're triple adjustable. You have like high speed compression and like a little more adjustment than the Mensker, but Mensker is such a big proven name. You know, that's going to work too.

We like the Vikings.

Billy's cars, Mensker's marks on Vikings.

But Billy's that nine inch that we just ordered today will have Avco's.

Avco's, well, Mensker's are.

And that's what my car has too.

Yeah, Mensker's are pretty much Avco's. They're evolving.

What did you say your car had?

The Avco's.

Avco's.

Oh, okay, gotcha. Well, anyways, I feel like I've gotten everything off my question list today. I'm pretty efficient. What's next for you guys? Obviously, all the camp and stuff. Are you still just going to stick with the drag racing stuff? No aspirations to get on to road course or anything?

Eric's car, he's going to do roll rate, half standing, half mile. Yes. Oh, he wants to break 200 miles an hour. That's who actually introduced us together. He wants to break 200 miles an hour. So he's got a twin turbo manual trans C7 that we're putting a MoTeC on.

So they're in our stick shift car.

Stick shift car that wants to go 200. So that's a good goal to do roll racing. Drag racing is just in our heart. So I think we'll always float around that area. And then roll racing, a lot of our customers do in general. It's draggy, stuff like that. So I like what we're doing. Just keep pushing the platform faster and harder. Maybe it is gearing more towards race cars. I always laughed, like in my head, I dreamed a whole shop full of full-blown race cars that I just traveled the country and support with. Like as far as that sounded like not something that was possible, we are traveling with some full-blown race cars to support. And that'd be a goal, I guess, to do some of that stuff.

Do you travel around the country much?

We'll go to the Dominican Republic.

Oh yeah, I have a car in Dominican. We're gonna go help. We're gonna go track support a car in Dominican Republic next week. So yes, other stuff's local. We don't want to go too far.

But you haven't gone out to Florida, like Bradenton or anything else?

Todd wants Florida.

Todd wants that.

Florida too.

He's been wanting that for the past five years.

Yeah, well, he's from there, I think, or he has a house. Yeah, he lives there or something. But we want to go support him through that race. I'm sure Mark will, Mark's from Houston. Like some of the stuff you could do remote, but at a certain level, it's easier to be there. So I mean, we will, I'm sure we'll travel with Mark, Todd, Billy. This is Billy's car. He didn't race all last year. Now it's ready to go. So I'm sure he's going to want to go hit some events too. Load up and go travel, but we'd be up for that. Okay.

Well, sweet on that. Now I'm going to pop my usual question. Did I miss any topics? I don't think I did. Don't we talk about beforehand?

We talked MoTeC, we talked plumbing, we talked.

All the big stuff.

Yeah.

All the fun stuff.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, in that case, let's pop the usual three and the usual three goes like this. At the end of every episode, I like to ask my guests to pick three cars. It goes, you have to pick a show car, a daily driver and a track car. You have an unlimited budget, choose whatever you want, build whatever you want. Who wants to go first?

You go first. So, man.

I know, it's so hard.

Like drag, any kind of track.

Any kind of track, yeah. Because you've never even been on a track.

No, I have to pick a drag car.

Hold on, either of you have been on a road course ever?

No, I told myself I was going to build a drift car one time.

We did, it was a 240, but then we put slicks on it and then it became a drag car.

So if I had to pick a, I would redo a 240 with a V8 in it as a track. I think those is like as a no prep car.

You do look sexy in that car.

Like a no prep Nissan 240SX, some kind of LTLS platform on MoTeC, of course. Something like that. And then that's track car. Daily, something on MoTeC too. So like, you know, a little bit of budget. Yeah, like when you put MoTeC on like Huracans and stuff. Something like that on MoTeC.

Like a twin turbo Huracan?

Yeah, that sounds fancy. If I have no budget or SG, whatever one's like half a million, 700,000. We don't even know.

Or the SVJ, the V12 one.

Yeah, I once told my buddy, Alex from Guantanamo, builds those things. I was like, damn, this thing's like 300,000. He's like, he looked with disgust at me. He's like, no, brother, it's like 750. I was like, I have no clue. That's all, none, I know what this is.

No, I have a friend, he paid well over a million for his, because it was a special edition.

He should have punched me in that moment, because I thought like 300 was a lot. Like I had no clue what I was freaking talking about. So SVJ, that one on MoTeC.

Okay.

And then a show car.

He's just making s*** up.

He's not a show car guy.

I'm not a show car guy. I literally couldn't even own a show car because I'd breathe on it the wrong way and it'd get dusty and then I'd never drive it.

You're in Texas.

No, 80s Porsche, like 911. Something like that.

Like an air-cooled, like an 87 Porsche.

Yeah, something like with real exaggerated wing and nice big fenders. Yeah, I don't know what 911 turbo or something. There you go. See? And I'll put MoTeC on that too.

OK, track car. I want like a 3,000 horsepower Viper. OK.

I think you said that last time, too.

Did I say that?

Or EnthMoto.

I'm going to make it ourself. OK. We need to get a Viper someday. Even if it's just mine. Just Viper. Sure. Show car, 51 mark.

Lowered, chopped.

Daily. Oh, that's a good one. I always love me a lifted hoe.

Land Rover.

I do. I think I said that in the last one. I love my Land Rover Defender, but I like lifted Tahos. I'm sorry. It doesn't have to be bougie or anything. I like G-Wagons too, but when I see a lifted hoe...

I love how G-Wagons and Tahos are in the same discussion.

I know.

About $250,000 a gallon there, but...

One's cruising, one just feels like I'm just like, it's just a lifted hoe. I like Tahos.

So the Tahoe? Yeah.

Okay.

On that note, where can everybody find you guys?

So you could find us on Instagram, Accelerator Racing Solutions, YouTube, Accelerator Racing Solutions, Facebook, Accelerator Racing Solutions. Oh, I got a brand new website. Oh, do you? Yeah. So it's brand new, updated. I gifted myself. So our 10 years, a new website. So go check that out.

What did you go through? Shopify?

I went, no, CR23. We actually met him. Cole Reynolds. We met him on Fastest Car, Netflix.

Okay.

And so I've been following him for eight years now.

Yeah.

And then so he opened his own marketing business. So Cole did that.

And you can find us at TX2K.

I was gonna say at the track.

Oh yeah, you can find us at the track, TX2K.

We got a target on our backs this year. I can't like, I want to say we're gonna win, but I just say you're gonna win. Yeah.

Good place to be though.

You gotta put it in the universe. We are going to win again, TX2K.

2027.

You can see us there. We should have a pretty serious fleet of cars again.

I can't wait.

I think it's gonna be more than four cars.

Yeah.

And at least three of them are gonna be in the sevens.

Yeah, we're gonna get big old canopy. Like we said, we're gonna do that this year, but we will have a serious fleet of cars there.

The hard palpitations are starting already.

Yeah, I feel so bad. People are like, oh, I'll come see you at TX2K. I'm like, I apologize in advance if I'm running between. I was like going laptop hop hop hop on all four cranes. You will see me there physically, mentally.

I try to feel out the vibe. I'm like, is he working? Yeah.

I didn't see him.

We say goodbye to each other when we wake up. I'll see you tomorrow.

No, we'll see you next week.

Yeah, like when we get up in the RV in the morning, I'm like, I'll see you tonight. Like that's how our days just go. Yes, you'll see us at Techs2K.

That's awesome. Well, thanks, guys. I'm glad we did it around too. This is awesome. Glad to.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you for coming.

Come on back down. Thank you to the listeners and we'll see you all next time.