203. Calvo Motorsports, 2500hp Lamborghinis, Vipers, Billet Block, How To Stop Breaking Your Sh*t

This episode is brought to you by 6XD Gearbox. More on them later. Here we are a year and a half later, roughly since the last time I was here at the shop. We talked a lot about Vipers last time. Now I want to talk about Lamborghinis, because about a month or two ago, you just had this awesome outing at the half mile. Where are we at with the Lambos now?

So we never planned on getting into that platform. What we started to do was build engines for other shops. I did a few motors for Sheepie. He was pretty happy with them. I did a motor for Jeremy at EDI, and the car wound up going to Tony's to get a Motec put on it.

Tony, T1 Tony?

Yep, T1 Tony. Tony was like, the motor was great. Awesome oil pressure. Made $1,700 and change. And we didn't get any recognition for the engines. So, my business partner in Florida, I needed a tax write off last year, and I bought a Performante, and had it for the time I needed to keep it. And then Dave, who's my business partner here in the machine shop in the Florida deal, really loved the color and everything. And for me to build that car while I was trying to do like five other things and all this stuff, he said, I'm not going to have the time, right? And he goes, well, why don't I buy it from you? You give me cost on parts and I'll do all the labor, right? So I did all the labor on the car. Wrote it off as R&D, right? And then he got parts at cost and we built the car, and it was our second transmission build, full PPG everything.

Oh, that's right, because you were working on that at the time too, right?

Yeah, we were working on getting the PPG exclusive, but what we would like to do is build motors and transmissions for shops. I think there's a very big void in today's market with good quality engine and transmission builds. Honestly, I think there's like three people, maybe four people I would trust to build a DL 800. Obviously, Heffner is king dick about it. AIM Performance, AMS is on the forefront of that, and Shep, obviously, because Shep's been around forever, but what we started to realize was a lot of these people would just try to get parts and slap them together. They never took the time to really learn like, hey, what should I torque my ring and pinion to? Or, hey, I need to set the pattern correctly, and the dots and shims that come with the kit are close, but they're not perfect. And then I just see people that slap them in. You know, Jaime's been doing all of our gear stuff since the beginning, since 2013. You know, with the Tremec stuff, we've always had great luck. Us and PPG have always had a great relationship. I went to Dotson. Dotson wouldn't make me a dealer. And, you know, I was talking to Hefner about building transmissions for us for the program here. And, you know, me and my guys sat down and they said, like, what's gonna happen if we need to rebuild a transmission at the track? What's gonna happen if we need to, in the middle of the night, build a transmission, right? And they're like, we've never outsourced anything. And that's when I went to PPG and I said, hey, what's it gonna take to get gear sets and be your US distributor on the DL800 stuff? And they said, well, Precision started that whole thing, so you have to buy from Precision. So we did the big buy-in with Precision, Precision Racing in Australia. And we are now the US dealer for PPG on the DL800 stuff. The sequential stuff, we've always kind of been like, they're big go-to people here in the United States already. But yeah, we love building the cars, but we love going racing. So, and we've kind of, the last two years have been, like we've had the best group of racers, and it's been the most fun. And to try to build 20, 30 cars a year, plus going racing is too difficult, right? I just don't have the manpower or the time. The race cars need a lot of attention. The guys always want to, you know, if they hit their personal best, I want to beat my personal best. Let's reinvent the wheel again. But can you do it in six weeks? So, you know, between TX2K, in 2025, there was, I think, five half mile events, right? This year, they knocked it down to four, and unfortunately, the one in like a week was canceled for, I guess, the FFA or FAA, whatever it's called, said they didn't want anybody running on the track. But that's what we like to do. That's where our fun is. So what we're trying to do is we started a gear company, and we're working with Pure and Rob Bonafonte on building us gears. What we would like to do is be able to sell gear sets for Tremec, DL800, eventually come out with our own dog box transmissions and sequentials that Jaime will be heading that whole department and company. We want to be able to sell clutches. So we already have our own prototype Viper clutches, and we're trying to start pushing them into the super world with Sterling's car. I don't know if you saw that super that made 2000 Wheel on Ardino the other day.

Oh, yeah.

So we did the motor in that car. It's DartBlock, Brian Crower, you know, Brian Crower crank, diamond pistons, extreme cylinder heads did the head on it. So uni-seat head, R&R rods and stuff. That all came from Sterling. He provided all those parts, and we put them together. I dry decked the engine myself. You know, we fire ringed it.

Well, real quick, so it sounds like you're just trying to get into, correct me if I'm wrong, into like the parts game, then. Or supply.

Motor and transmissions. Motor and, more drivetrain stuff, because I think that's the biggest void in the market, because it's the hardest thing to do. You know, there's a lot of parts manufacturers, Boost Logic, AMS, Gintani. You know, you can go down the list of, you need something, you can buy it, and not just for the Huracan R8 platform. It's pretty much there for everything, right? So what's the missing void is transmissions, differentials, gears, and you know, Rob Bonafonte probably has one of the, he has a patent on, I'm not really sure what he does, and I don't know how in depth I can go with this, but in the 90s, he helped Boeing with the 747 engines.

Okay.

They were having some issues with them and whatever.

That's why I'm an Airbus guy. That's why I'm an Airbus guy.

Oh, are you? Yeah, so, but yeah, so he helped Boeing, and while he was helping Boeing in the 90s with this, he patented, I don't know if it's a heat treat, or I don't know, he's not allowed to tell me.

Okay.

But he took that same technology, and he's putting it into his gears, and where Rob is most known is the Nitro Funny Car stuff for their direct drive shafts. So they were breaking the shafts every eight to 10 passes. With his shafts, they're going 100 passes.

Okay.

So we're taking that same stuff and putting it towards the gears to just make a much stronger gear. I know PPG has been so good to us. We've had a long lasting working relationship with them, and there's gonna be different tiers of gear sets. We'd like to sell it all. If you want us to build you a transmission, we can build it, but we'd like to sell shops gear sets for the DL800s and let them try to build them themselves where we build them for you. And it's another option in the market.

Right. Yeah. Okay. Well, the key thing that you said earlier is like, if you want to rebuild it at the track, right? Because if you're turning things up, especially at like Texas 2K or something, there's what, five days of qualifying?

That's correct. Yeah. So you have a few days to... You know, the reality is some people think you can build a DL 800 like overnight. You could do that with a Tremac or a Turbo 400, but the DL 800s require... I mean, by the time you pull the trans out, tear it down, clean everything, put it together, it's a four or five day deal. You're not going to do it right in one day. It's just impossible.

Well, talk about that as well, because like you were giving us a little bit of a tour of your brand spanking new machine shop over here, and you were showing us some of these Lambo engines. How different is that compared to working on a Viper engine?

They both have their own complications. The Viper engine, the block is incredible. I mean, we've made 3,800 wheel on the stock block, like stock casting. If you want later in the hone, we have the billet block over there. You can see it for the Viper block, but it wasn't needed yet. The reality was, but now that we have it, Fabricio's car estimate was about 43, 4,400 on that pull that it destroyed the torque converter bolts on methanol. So we were just based off the 26 gallons a minute of methanol we were using. But to have the knowledge of the transmission for the DL800, I think, is the most important thing, to diagnose something at the track. But Viper versus Lambo, the Lambo is just, it's like a Swiss watch. You can't forget one piece. Right, you cannot, it is very, and it's not complicated once you have done a few of them. There's just a lot of moving parts. And you, once again, have to understand really the way an engine works. The 2Js are so easy and people still screw them up. The Viper, it's not the assembly side that takes a long time. It's the machining and knowing what is the 20 little things you have to do to get them to live. The Lambo, if you just cross your T's and dot your I's, it'll work. It's a very, very, very good engine. Like I said, a swift...

Just right out the box.

Straight out the box. Incredible engine. I always go back to the Viper was a 90% car. It was 90% awesome. And that last 10% Dodge f***** up the quality control beyond belief. When you have in your factory service manual, the main bearing clearance being one and a half to three thousandths, that's double, right? So you're telling me I can double my clearance and still be within spec. That's insane. Lamborghini gives you five different main bearings to make sure that it's perfect. The Viper has one, and then the cranks... You can have five cranks that come brand new from Dodge, and none of them are the same size. Unfortunately. So that's the thing. Same thing, not getting too much into detail, but the Vipers, the Gen 5s had this really bad issue where the cams would stick in the middle of the bore and snap the timing chains off of them, and then the blocks were junk. So we go in, and what we started noticing was multiple things. The cam tunnels weren't always straight. They were very, very tight clearance that didn't need to be, and the Viper has no cam bearing. So it rides on aluminum. So you have this steel cam riding on aluminum. What could go wrong, right?

Right.

So the cams, if you looked at the journals on them, the heat treat with the copper coat sometimes would be a little bit protruding over the actual journal, like on the side. So like we go in, we have to cut the side. You know, I'll just chamfer the cam on the lathe, and the front journal on the Viper is larger than the rest. So you can't hone that front journal. So we'll go in, hone it, use a bearing knife, you know, try to de-burr the inside of the bores, or the housing board the best you can. And then we'll put the cam in the lathe and cut the front journal. You know, sometimes you're cutting two, three tenths of a thousandths off it to get the, you know, and it's very, very difficult. I've f***** up a few camshafts doing it myself.

Well, this sounds very easy for anybody just doing it in a garage at home then, right?

Correct.

Just anybody can do a twin turbo viper.

It's just a big dumb V8 with two extra cylinders, right? Like anybody can do it, right? And it's not like, yeah, you can get it to live, like, and you have all these other shops that try to jump in this. And like, because they see like what me and Enthimoto charge. And we're not getting rich building vipers, that's for sure. You have an OK life, you know. But there's, we're not, you see a $400,000 build, me and Aaron were actually talking about this the other day. We were joking about it. Like, yeah, we might make $70,000 off that. And somebody, oh, you made $70,000, but what's $70,000 that took four months? You know what I'm saying? We're better off doing like McLaren oil changes, you know? Like that's the reality of it, you know? But yeah, it's, the Lambo engine is a fantastic engine. It's just, it takes somebody with a OCD attention to detail to get them right.

What surprised you when you started jumping into that platform? Did anything kind of just be like, oh s***, like this is...

How many people try to put these things together that are absolute f****** idiots?

When you get to a certain level in a build, whether it be drag racing or drifting, road course, or just the b***** street car, you'll have to upgrade your transmission. And when we're talking sequential transmissions, there's no one on the planet with a stronger gearbox than 6XD. And the proof is in the pudding here, folks. Half the FD field is rocking a 6XD and even 3000 horsepower Vipers have not been able to tame the best that 6XD has to offer. So if you're ready to take it up a notch, go to 6xdgearbox.com. And when contacting them to place an order, use code Minnoxide5. Or reach out via socials to figure out how one of the baddest transmissions on the planet could fit in your build. Let's get back to the show. OK.

That should not be touching these things. That's the reality of it. There are a ton of shops out there that are, you know, and they're not bad people, right? They just don't know, or they're learning. But they don't have the experience with other things to be jumping into something like that. And, you know, the first, we've done like three or four transmissions now, and all of them have not had any issues. We were very surprised. The first one, actually, we were really scared that it wouldn't do, in the Ross Tech, it wouldn't do the clutch relearn. And I was trying it, and trying it, and trying it. And actually, it was Sheepy that was like, man, why am I moving the car forward like three feet and backwards four feet? Boom, took the transmission, just like that. And then the one on the perf, it took it instantly. And he's like, yeah, sometimes you just got to drive them around like that, or this, that. The old temp has to be 165 degrees or something before you do the relearn. So you got to go drive the car for 30 minutes to get it like that. It has to be on level ground. There's all these little things. Fortunately, Sheepy has actually, believe it or not, given us a lot of advice. AMS has helped us out with a bunch of stuff. So we were lucky to have some people guide us a little bit. But Precision obviously helped us a ton because we're buying their gear sets, and they wanted us to make sure we do a good job. You just see the work from other people. I got quite a few cars. You saw the warehouse over here full of Lamborghinis and R8s. And it's just like, man, you know, it's tough to, like, without calling people out to talk about it, if that makes sense.

No, that's fair. One of the things I was talking about with Tony yesterday on the podcast, which will be one week when this airs, but whatever. How heavy are you on collaboration in this industry? You just mentioned AMS, you just mentioned Sheepy. Are you big on collaborating with other shops then?

I think the best way to grow is work with other like-minded individuals. Tony is a good friend of mine. Actually, we were just talking him and I the other night, some engine stuff. I was talking to him, I'm putting my car together and I want to put it on methanol. I noticed he had a mechanical fuel pump in a picture. I'm like, hey, is that a T1 product for sale? He's like, not really, but for you, let's do something. When you get a bunch of, I'm going to say, intelligent people in the same circle, you all want to help each other out because you all want to see everybody grow. And that's, I buy all my injectors from Tony. So Tony makes a ton of money off. I'm probably the little guy in his boat, but before everybody was doing V10 stuff, I was the only me, Enthmoto, Underground and a few others. In 2015, 2016, 2017, I was putting 20 injectors in these cars. So Tony, I would have to buy a set of ID 1700s and a set of ID 2600s. That was a, what, $7,000, $8,000? No, a $6,000 purchase per injector, so, or per car. So for us, that was a big thing. Now everybody's doing the V10 stuff. So we've kind of fallen back, but I, you know, I've known Tony, God, man. I remember boxing his, his manifolds up at Full Race when I was in college as a shipping kid there, you know, I was sick. So like, you know, I've known Tony for a long time. You know, he's always been a great dude. So, you know, he's one of the best. You can't, dude's smart as s***, you know?

Yeah, I had, yesterday was my first time meeting him. It was a thousand, I cannot wait to air that episode. That was such an awesome conversation. When you got into the Lambos, was it easier or harder than you expected?

Dealing with all the electronic quirks, right? The Viper is, even though it's got like CAN bus, body control module, XYZ, you know, it's still a manual transmission car that is, it's a dumb car, right? Like it's not the hardest thing in the world to figure out. Also having Jaime and Tim that were certified Mopar techs and Jaime was trained in the Gen 5 Viper, right? So like that was a jump ahead of everybody in 2014 right there. The Lambos have a lot of electronics. You know, some of it is a pain in the a**, some of it, you know, just, I feel like once we started doing like the way we do things on like the third or fourth car, it got a lot easier for us.

Okay.

You know, there was definitely a learning curve as if there's everything, like I said, like, you know, we were very lucky that we had some good people to help us. Tony, Cody Phillips was, you know, he's a great tuner. It was a new platform for him. You know, like I said, Tony and Sheep have helped us in trying to sort some stuff. So we were very fortunate in that. And, you know, we've had pretty good luck. I mean, that that perf, we finished it for Abilene in October at eight o'clock in the morning.

Oh, yeah, I remember seeing that. Yeah.

I didn't drive the car. I loaded it in the trailer and we said, we'll f****** finish it at the track. You know, we didn't. And then it's it's third or fourth pass. We there was something. So we built a a complete harness for the car. So it doesn't have like the ugly Motec one to ones. It's a full mil-spec harness that Cody did front to back. And something in the something didn't get pinned properly for the auto shift. So we were trying to get it to auto shift and it wouldn't. And then you would hit the paddle and Dave was hitting the paddle just as the Motec was trying to auto shift it. And it was like wigging something out. So finally on Sunday we realized, hey, take the auto shift. I took it for a pass and I was short shifting it. I was shifting fine. And then I just let it eat in seventh. Very, very low boost. The car went like 209 or something without even trying. And then we said, okay, why don't we bring that auto shift where it's supposed to auto shift, turn it off and then just bring the limit where it shifts like 15,000 RPM or something. So it was way out of the way. And then all of a sudden the car went 225. It's third full pass. And then unfortunately that guy Greg passed away. So we couldn't do any more. We were just getting the ball rolling on Sunday with the car. So then we brought it back. We worked out all the little kinks that we had in it. It made 2330, like hot. And we kept creeping up on boost, like on the street, turning it up a little bit, turning it up a little bit. And I think it's probably around 24, 2500 and it's got, I mean, between Abilene and Hondo, I'm going to say 35 half mile passes on it. It was super dead consistent, 226 to 232 in Hondo. The track conditions weren't the greatest there. It was raining on and off. And then Sunday, when we hit that 232, we were pretty happy. And on Sunday we cranked it up and it started to rain. So we waited for the rain to stop and the track just wasn't there. And the car was like all over the place. But we turned it up another 10 pounds over that 2300. Dave was like, hey, we got a billet block going together. If it breaks, it's Sunday, who cares? And unfortunately, we didn't get to see the fruits of our turning up the boost.

So billet block's not going to go in that car, then? Yeah. OK.

Yep. We got a buddy of mine designed his own billet block. We're going to be testing it in there. He's got a few people already running it. His brother works over at Al-Nabi Racing and has one in his car that he's been testing for a while. So we got some. We're working with Hart's Turbos.

Oh, yeah.

So we got some Hart's going on at some big Turbos.

That's a name that's really been popping up the last few years I've noticed.

Dave, I was talking to Troy over at M&M the other day, and we were saying how we use like Zonas on stuff. And I've tried the new Turbosmarts and they were awesome. And we put HTPs on Fabri's car and the General. And so Robin Roberts, the guy that I pulled up in his blue car today. So Robin is sponsored by Hartz. And my business partner Dave with the Florida Deal sponsors Robin's Pro Mod. So they've been trying to get with Hartz to build us some custom Turbos and this and that. And finally we lined out everything yesterday. So the drag and drive car is going to get some Hartz. My Huracan is going to get some Hartz. And what is it called? And Dave's Huracan, the gray Perf is getting some Hartz. So we're pretty interested to see when we take that car apart. There's nothing wrong with it, actually. The only thing wrong with it is the axle boot tore. So I'm kind of happy it rained out because we would have been pissed that we had a good track. And the thing stopping us was an axle boot. So when we replace that in the next few weeks, we're going to see, like, really try to finish off the engine and then see, you know, turn it up and see when it breaks. And then see how far we can get away with it. I do believe that those castings are not all casted the same. Like some seem to be holding a lot more power than others before they crack. And I've seen it across the board and just talking to other shops. So we'll see.

Okay. Bringing back to the... Have you tested any of the Hart's Turbos on your builds yet? Or that's TBD? Okay, gotcha. Is there anything that seems to be appealing about jumping over there? I guess I'm not entirely sure where the hype is because I haven't really read on it yet.

I've talked to one of the sales reps or maybe the owner. I don't know who it is over there. Very little back talk. It's just like, this is what I want. They're like, cool, here's your options. And from what I'm understanding, they don't use, don't quote me on this. I could be wrong.

Yeah, easy to cut to.

No, no, I don't mind talking about it, but I could be completely wrong. But from what I understand, the compressor wheel doesn't have a nut on it.

Oh, okay.

So they get more surface area per blade because basically the surface area is taking the part of where the nut was. So that's why they're able to, an 88 millimeter turbo makes the power of a 94 or something, because you're able to move that much more air.

Okay. Yeah, that was one. So this is like, it's got to be almost two years now. When I had Apex turbo has a similar thing, when I had them on. And the other thing that made it appealing to them was basically, they had more bearings and just spun better.

And I've heard great things about Apex. And it's funny, you said that I was...

The Honda guys love them.

I was talking to somebody yesterday and they brought up Apex.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was, we've been using the Turbo Smarts on a lot of the bigger power stuff. They've been awesome. Blake's car has 8280s on it and they're small. It's like a old school way of talking about it, a 40R size turbo. So I don't know what that converts to precision in the new kids. But I mean, that car made 2630 to the tire on a turbo that was not much bigger than a 35R based Zona. You know, so which it's spooled incredible. Blake's car is really, really awesome. He broke his personal best 220 is like fourth or fifth pass. And he's like, that's all I wanted to hit was 220. He's like, I'm going to park it. I'm happy.

So do you have a lot of those customers where it's just like, all right, I'm actually happy with how far I've made it. Or is it like more so you have a lot of people coming back here and it's like, all right, let's take it up a notch.

I'm going to say it's like 70-30. 70 always wants to go faster. But then as you go faster, it's a wallet game. Parts fail sooner and I don't care who builds it, who makes the part, who installs the part, who machines the part. You're making 2,800 to 3,000 wheel, you're going to break stuff, and that's just part of it. And some people are happy with their, I'll be honest, and the Vipers were pretty lucky, like that 2,000 to 2,500 is pretty damn reliable. The weak link will always be in a Vipers drivetrain. And PPG, I know 6XD has come a long way as well. We had really good luck with the M-Co sequentials. That's what was in the Gen 5 record holding car that we have at 233.2 or something. So that white ACR of Greg's, that was fourth pass on the M-Co and went 233. So we were pretty pumped about that. But yeah, I think with knowing, we've taken every single one of those transmissions apart ourselves and all of them have pros and cons. Not good and bad, but pros and cons.

That makes sense.

Some of them are, the cons are, it's a 20 year old design that they really haven't improved on. Some of them are, you've taken a transmission that wasn't supposed to be a sequential and made it a sequential. You're space constraints, you're limited by what you can actually do. And I think that's gonna be one of the great things when we cut a come out with our own sequentials. I think working with Pure on the clutches and some other stuff is gonna be really good for us as well. Kind of another person in the market. And we are racers. I've been racing my whole life. I'm gonna go and try to just break everything I f****** can and give my customer the best product and not use my customers as the guinea pigs. That's why I think we did so well with the Vipers was the general was my car. Like blow it up, it's gonna just get pushed in the corner and you know, or blow it up. Let's take it apart and see why it blew up. You know, or see why we're breaking this gear so many times. Like the Tremec fifth gear is the thinnest one out of all of them. So in the stock transmissions, even at 1300. Well, first it's the thinnest and it's also one of the tallest, right? So you hit fifth at like 145 miles an hour in the stock gear set and the car just lays over, right? So we had Bonafonte build us these Billet fifth gears. And you know, it took a few iterations. Some were very loud, some weren't. And we narrowed it down and we have this gear that has had zero failures for 1300 to 1500 horsepower. Now we're working on a full Billet gear set.

OK, that makes sense.

For Tremex, PPG, like I said, has been awesome. We're still always going to sell their product. I think they just can't keep up with their own manufacturing. Like they're too big for themselves, if that makes sense. And it's nothing wrong with that. They're trying to expand their manufacturing. But I think with Bonafonte being here in the United States and his patented heat treater metal that he uses, I don't know the exact term to be proper, I think we're going to have a much stronger gear set, but it's also going to be a lot more expensive. Right?

There's that trade off again.

There's that trade off, right? So the PPG stuff works great at 15, 16, 1700 horsepower. That's great for the lower power guys and the higher power guys are just going to have the more expensive gear sets.

That's what it costs to go racing.

That's what it costs to go racing. And it's always good to have different tiers and try to accommodate everybody's financial needs. Because if you just all go for the big dogs, that's a very small pool, right? But if you go for, like I said, the thousand horsepower Tremec, you know, Magnum, Magnum XL, Viper, Magnum F group of people that are like, you know, there's 80,000 of those people building, you know, thousand horsepower Camaros that would want a gear set that holds very strong, you know, very long, very strong power.

Okay. So you're kind of thinking about all the different, you're expanding the business in so many different ways then at this point. Is there something to kind of set you off a few years ago to go this direction? Because like you were very viper heavy beforehand.

We were. There's only so many vipers. You know, we've built, I think, like 230 turbo cars and about 100 or 120 NA cars over the last 12, 13 years. Those cars will always be in circulation, right? Unless they get total or things of that nature. But like, we're always going to have that refresh business. But I'm going to say between having kids, you know, and just wanting to spend more time at home and not having to build, like I was saying, 30 cars a year, I think these are very good avenues. Put stuff in a box and ship it, you know. You can call it parts, but like, it's not really like, we're not a parts manufacturer, right? We're more of a, I think what we're going to try to do is have Calvo Motorsports be more of an R&D facility that we use on our race cars to basically, so the machine shop is its own entity, the gear and clutch company is its own entity and their own businesses, right? But we're all going to be under the same roof, right? And have Calvo Motorsports be more of the test bed by going racing, promoting the products.

Oh, I see.

And make it fun again for us.

Yeah, so kind of like, you know, race on Sunday, sell on Monday sort of deal.

Yeah, I mean, we're always going to support our old cars. We're always going to move forward and build new cars. The other thing out there is like, there's no new cars that really interest me. Like I'm a car guy. I love cars, right? Like I don't want to go buy something to be in a market that I don't like, you know? Like that's one of the reasons why I never bought a GTR. Like I worked on them when I worked at BoostLogic, I worked on them when I was at Cobb. And like, there are some cool cars. Like some of them are cool. Like I'll say, like Ciccio's blue car that he had, I don't know why I always loved that car. Like just the look of it, everything. I think it was just a really good looking car. And if I can have 40, 50 cars in a car collection, I would love one one day, right? But it's not a priority of mine that I want to jump in that market. And there's really like not a lot out there that really piques my interest to get into.

You had that Temurario visit you a few months ago, didn't you? What did you think of that car?

Didn't.

I don't know.

I didn't really like the front of it. I don't know.

Did you get to drive it at all?

No, actually, Dave and a buddy of his were picking up their cars at Lamborghini of Austin. They got two cars delivered at the same time. And that was there for a demo. And we got to drive it. And actually, they drove it over here to look at the machine shop and everything. And I drove my Maverick.

I love that Maverick.

Everybody makes fun of me about it. And I love that thing. I got to commute 35 miles to work every day.

Okay, so you do have a little bit of a commute then.

Yeah, so I've had it for a little under two years and I've put 35,000 miles on it already. So it gets 45 miles per gallon. So it's pretty, I can throw stuff in the back of it. And it's funny, it's the one car I never cared about and it doesn't have a single scratch on it. It's the one car I'm like, I bought this thing because it was like 35, 36 grand or something. I bought this thing because it gets great gas mileage. It's a hybrid. It has a pickup truck bed. I can throw a few blocks in the back when the machine shop was still at Dennis's. And it helps with the commute every day. And it's comfortable. Like my F350 that I was commuting with beats my backup pretty bad, commuting. So yeah, it's, I don't know. It's been an awesome little car. But yeah, I don't, like I said, there's just not many new cars out there that really piqued my interest. I'm starting to go back into like my old 90s cars.

Is that your 300 out there by the way?

No, that's one of the detailers from what he's been keeping it here.

Do you have one right now?

What, a 300?

Yeah. I know you wanted a white one, right?

I had a white one. I almost bought another white one about five months ago. I found it here in Austin. It had 46,000 original miles.

Brand new.

Brand new. And I went to go look at it and it had some hail damage. It was repairable. But then the passenger side, that little waffly stuff on the bottom of them, where the fender comes down, underneath the black stripe. It must have ran over something. It was all pushed in. It was all little stuff that I could have repaired, but it wasn't perfect. And I'm like, man, I don't... I'll tell you, the interior was brand new. It even smelled new. It was really nice. I just, it wasn't... For the price, I'd rather have paid a little bit more and look for something that I could just literally go take to get clear broad, put a set of old school blitz type threes and lower it and call it a day, you know?

Are you looking to bring a trailer or anything every once in a while?

I haven't. It's... With us moving to Florida in the next year, me and cars are like... I just sold my blue ACR. I don't have time to drive them. The more stuff I accumulate even here, the shop and my house, it's just more stuff I'm going to have to move. So I'm trying to declutter my life.

That's fair. Speaking of moving, so in the next year or whatever, is the entire team going to be moving with you as well? Or, okay, so every...

Oh, wow.

Okay.

Everybody.

How many... Cause you mentioned earlier that you got up to 13 employees at one point and that chaos ensued obviously, but where are you at right now?

It's funny. We're back down to the original. So Tim and Jaime, I think Jaime came on board 2014 and Tim was like mid 2015. And then Charlie came in 2017, 2018. And he left, he bounced around a little bit. He went to underground and worked at this resto mod place in Chicago for a while. And then he came back here. So it's kind of like the OG four of us. And then we have Charlie's like childhood best friend, Rudy, running the front office, the logistics, answering the phones, office, main office guy. And then we have this guy, Miguel, that actually came from Cisio, ended up in Austin. And he saw that I was looking for tax. He's been awesome to work with. He's coming back with us. And then Tony, one of the machinists is going to retire when we move. And Mitchell, that does all the cylinder heads, is going to come with us.

Gotcha. Okay. Haltech has once again pushed the envelope. Today we are talking GM. Sorry everyone else. At the end of 2025, they announced their new transmission interfaces for our GM listeners, which is a solution for those with 4L and 6L series transmissions. So whether you have a drift car, drag car, or a high-powered street car, you can finally rip out that rinky dink almost 2-decade-old OE setup and get set up with everything that a standalone ECU has to offer without the compromise. To learn more, go to tunebyshawnshawn.com to learn about how a Haltech can take your build to the next level and while you're at it, check out the various plug-and-play solutions for your platform as well, including some install videos. As always, you can use code Minnoxide for 5% off. Let's get back to the show. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about your machining capabilities here because this isn't exactly a small room. So what are you all able to do in here?

Pretty much anything. Bore, hone, align, hone, line, bore, cylinder headwork, balance. It's a full machine shop crank. The only thing we can't do is crank grinding.

Okay.

I prefer not to do any boring here. So usually when we sleeve the engines or sleeve this CNC place in Dallas, I used to be the investor there. He purchased the machine from me. We still have a great relationship, but he does all my block, my block sleeving for the Vipers and the Lambo stuff. So it's a lot easier for a machine to bore something very quickly than it is to set it up on a boring bar here or so. But yeah, that's the surfacer there. That's a Sonnen CK. I think it's a CK100 line hone. That's our cylinder hone there. There's a Rottler here, TCM25 behind us. That's the balancer over there. That's actually one of my favorite machines right there. The old, it's a Hyundai Le that came off like a 1937 World War II battleship. That's sick. And it's like one of the most accurate machines. Burko surfacer there. You can deck blocks, deck cylinder heads. Yeah, it's pretty much everything you need to build a motor. Oh, we have like back in that corner, that's our valve facer over there, spring pressure checker over there. And then I think right around there, you can see we have this little thing that tells you if the pins are bent. Basically, it's a little tool that you see and it will tell you how much they're bent. And we have our rod hone over there. Yeah, there's not much we can't do here. I had, when we were doing the billet block, there was a, obviously it was the first one, it wasn't gonna be perfect. One of the things we missed was the lifter valleys were a half an inch too tall. So the tie bar was hitting the lifter valley before the lifter would touch the cam and we had a complete engine. And it was the middle of the night and we're like the whole motor's together. So I got a little creative, well, they didn't have heads on it, but I got a little creative in the mill. And that gantry over there was basically holding the block up in that mill and I got real creative and wound up like, I would plunge, plunge, plunge, back cut and take, I don't know, almost a half an inch out. So whatever, I think like 480,000 is what had to come out of it, but yeah, we did that in the middle of the night into Sunday morning and then the guys were able to on Sunday finish putting the motor together. It worked, so. But yeah, there's really nothing we can't do here. We have our engine assembly, transmission assembly room, that big transmission table, everything. So it's, I mean, there's really nothing we cannot do here.

Dude, this operation exploded since the last time I was here. I was telling him here when we were pulling up here, because he started joining me for these trips and he's checking out these various shops with me or whatever. And I kind of have a lay of the land of a handful that I visited. I'm like, this is a way bigger operation than it was a year and a half ago.

Yeah, and people didn't, so Dennis has been doing our engines for, man, five, six years. And when I said do the engines, he would machine them. And then Tim would always spec the bearings out, assemble everything. Dennis would do the main caps, the balancing, the valve jobs, seat install, guide install, all that stuff. The cylinder head stuff, he would do. We used to use Dave. Dave's awesome. It was just a shipping thing. Dennis is great. We CNC'd all the ports and everything on our CNC machine, so there was really no point in sending stuff to New Jersey when everything could be kept here in Austin, between Austin and Dallas. But yeah, I just also, you control it, right? You're not having anybody else, hey, I need this done today. Stop what you're doing and do this.

Well, it's like you mentioned earlier, it's like you just did it overnight. You have an issue, you could solve it right now. You don't have to call anybody, nothing like that.

I'm still learning. There's like, I was splitting my time up between my shop and Dennis's, and Dennis was teaching me a lot. I only got to work there for about two years before he retired, and this is now all of his equipment in my shop. I would like to spend more time here learning from Tony. Tony's, I think, 66 or 67. He's going to be retiring when we move. Their knowledge is like a dying art. I enjoy doing this more than anything. Same thing with the fabrication and welding, it's kind of like my go-to sanctuary of fun, so.

Yeah, so what's a day in the life of Calvo look like?

Oh man. I get up early either the last few weeks. Gordon Ryan started getting me to go to his Jiu-Jitsu school.

Okay.

So I've been getting up in the morning three days a week going there. I've been trying to be a lot more healthier, you know. I have twins that are gonna be two years old in August.

Yeah.

So I'll be 58 when they're 18. So, you know, when I'm 50, I don't want my son running through me at like football practice or something. So I'm trying to, you know, I dropped like 30 pounds since last year. You know, get up in the morning, go to work. I've started going to having breakfast at this diner down the street, then just get eggs and avocado. You know, it's kind of like my calm before the storm. Get here, try to answer emails. I go over every morning stuff with my accountant from the day before. You know, our cash flow for the day, things of that nature. Get with Rudy on emails, things like that. Then usually hop on the dino with Cody probably three days a week, two days a week. Then it's weld stuff in the fab shop, kind of oversee stuff, and then try to get in here and talk to customers, things of that. So it's kind of I've jumped around a lot.

For your team, obviously even with these guys for a better decade, a little bit more than a decade. Did they just come in? They already know what to do pretty much. Here's the whiteboard, do what's on it.

Yeah. Jaime is the overall general manager of the office and shop, and then Charlie's the shop manager. So Charlie knows what cars need to be done by what dates, and him and Jaime are the connection, the fuse from the back to the front. If Jaime doesn't have transmission work, he's doing paperwork and trying to see where parts are for what builds and trying to manage everything.

OK.

I think, man, at the beginning of this year, we had like 35 or 36 cars in the shop, and we're down to, I think, 17 in the main shop and eight in the storage facility, but two of them are mine and Jaime's, so there's like six cars here. And I think in the next week, we're having another four or five cars leave. So we'll be sub 25 cars very soon, which is nice. I think every week one or two cars are going to be leaving. And unfortunately, we're not going to be taking any big projects in for the next year, because obviously we're moving. So I'm trying to time it where, like we said, we don't have to take any big cars. We have the drag and drive project. We have Joseph's car. Obviously, all the race cars that want to go to all these events are constantly going to need maintenance and things like that. It was kind of, as much as we were bummed, it was kind of like a breath of fresh air that the half mile got canceled in May because it was just like TX2K, Honda, Indy, Indy again in August, right into Abilene. And then it's like, man, what are we?

Constantly, just go, go, go.

Yeah, and then we're going to be right back in TX2K. And I'd really like to spend a lot of time. Fabricio's car has been this always evolving ball of power and carnage. And it's just been like wire harness on top of wire harness to modify this. And I think, you know, we're at where we need. He finally went automatic and really saw the light. You know, he was like, this is so fast.

So OK, so that car up until this year was always sequential.

Air shift to sequential. And then, yeah, he finally went. He's now got an air shift and automatic.

OK, so this year was the first time he was using it. Like what? TH400, I'm guessing.

OK, yeah. I think it's awesome.

Did you tell what happened when he switched lanes and got back into it, by the way, at Texas, you're just like, I'm just going to finish my run.

Yeah, he's like, I'm having fun. I don't care. I paid to be here.

I saw that.

He's like, I'm the best driver. And I'm like, you saved it. Very good. You saved it. I'm very happy. I like I like trying to modify cars instead of repair frames on cars, you know. So we were happy. He was pumped. And he was just like, man, I just want to keep making hits.

So OK, fair enough.

Can't my goal for that car is to have it set up for the half mile in Abilene.

Oh, OK. So that requires some changes, I imagine, then.

No. I mean, it's geared to like, I think, like 245 right now at 9,500 RPM. OK, so we are well, we took it. We used our standard rotating assembly in the billet block. And, you know, after we didn't think we heard anything in the motor, the the valve train looked good. The only thing that happened was when it sheared all the bolts off the converter to the flex plate, it saw like 10,000 RPM for a few seconds. And we noticed some of the push rods came came undone. And then we noticed that the pedestals were bent and started pulling the threads out of the head. And it was just from staying on it when everything broke from going loaded to unloaded. That's not an assembly issue. That's not just the luck of the draw. And we planned on pulling the motor out anyway to inspect everything. And that's when we noticed stuff that would last for years in Fabricio's car lasted like four passes. And it wasn't the pistons look perfect. Every wrist pin was bent. One of them was bent seven. And every aluminum rod had some some sway to them. So we are going back to the drawing board with some companies and, you know, trying to now put bigger, better parts, not that we didn't have the greatest of parts, but we're now entering kind of like pro mod territory. And it's just different, different avenue of looking at it from what we're, we didn't know, you know? So now that we know, it's like, wow, it didn't break from, it didn't break, but it didn't, you know, hurt those parts from tuning. It just hurt them from sheer power. So, you know, back to the drawing board on that stuff.

That's gonna be, so is that car gonna come out in that trim in August then? Is that what you're thinking for the half mile?

Yeah, Abilene is in October.

Oh, no, okay, yeah. That's our goal.

Yeah, I want to clean up the wire harness. We had, I don't think we had enough ignition system. We had enough fuel pump. It had a 32 gallon per minute fuel pump. Okay. A mechanical pump, but we were out of injector. I think it was breaking up a little bit. We turned it up to 65 pounds of boost on Twin 98s. It was, you know, head gaskets look great. Fire rings look great. The valves looked a little beat up, but I think that's from when it was over revved. But everything else looked good inside the engine. You know, the bearings look good. One of the bearings looked a little beat up, and I don't know if that's just from being over revved or whatever, but there are some things that we do want to look into and learn about.

That's R&D.

Yeah, R&D. Listen, for a block that was never ran, that was finished once again, and we finished, John Reed was actually the one helping me on the dyno that night because Cody was flying to 2K, or not flying, he was driving to 2K, and I pulled in at like 5.30 in the morning. So for something that had never been tried or never been done before, it went together, worked, and yeah, it made, you know.

What more can you ask for, right?

Yeah, one more like, it wasn't the outcome we wanted. We really wanted to go to Elite 8, we really wanted to compete. Unfortunately, when those converter bolts broke, it tore a bunch of stuff up.

Right, yeah.

So.

It goes back to what we were talking about earlier, that's just racing.

That's just racing. You know, we are addressing why the converter bolts broke. They started pulling the threads out of, I think it's a King Cert that the converter has in it. And I think the flux plate started to move and stretch the threads and then just broke everything. That's what happened in my opinion. So we need a thicker flux plate. It's just one of those things like we didn't know, you know? Right.

Oh, okay. So with you moving to Florida then, how does that affect events, right? Cause like you got Texas 2K in your backyard, you got Abilene in your backyard.

We're still gonna just commute.

Okay, just simple as that.

Just simple as that.

I mean, does that mean more FL2K Florida stuff then?

Probably. The cool thing is, so we're on the intersection of Highway 54 and 41. If you take Highway 41, like 20 miles north, you're at Leadfoot City, which is this new eighth mile track that just opened up.

In Florida?

In Florida.

Okay.

Yeah, so we're gonna have an eighth mile track 20 minutes from here.

That's gonna be awesome for testing.

For testing, yeah. That's like, go there, take a car on an open trailer. If something happens, just go back to the shop. You know, Bradenton will be an hour.

Still not bad.

Still not bad. There's nothing here in Austin. And unfortunately for me, I like road racing.

Yeah, Kota's right. We're actually going to Kota today.

Well, they're now doing a membership only at Kota.

Okay.

I think it's gonna start in 2027. It's a million dollar membership and $8,000 a month. So that's gonna wipe out the one thing that kept us in Austin, which was fun. And the service work on some race cars. Not that that was a big thing for us. There's a bunch of other shops that do it, but I think the Austin car scene over the last 10 years has just died to almost nothing. Unless you have a hyper car and exotic and you like to go on these little frou frou cruises or whatever these guys do, like, you know, revving their f****** engines off the, I did, I went with that exotic networks when I had the perf and I did this like Christmas parade lap around Kota. That was cool that I had all the lights and everything. I had some f****** a****** in this SVJ next to me just the entire time bouncing off the f****** rev limiter. I had to like, you know, it was at night, I had to roll my windows up. I couldn't see any of the lights.

Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Yeah, there's some Ferrari event going on over there. It's like free to the public. And I was just like, you know, we're going to be next to Koda, checkouts on the calendar. Looks pretty sweet.

I think it's been like for a few days, right?

Yeah, it's like a few day event. It's like the first time they've ever done it. I think there's like 300 something race cars there.

I saw they lined them all up around, I guess they call it the carousel. They had all the big carousel or in the S's. I forget which one I saw it. But they had them all in where the stars and stripes are so it looked pretty cool.

You know what breaks my heart? No, it's not the 2% female demographic. It's the fact that 80% of you guys are not subscribed and following the show. So go ahead, hit subscribe or follow. And of course, if you're on YouTube, hit that bell so you are notified when we drop a new episode. Let's get back to the show. Yeah, no, that's gonna be exciting. I'm excited to go back, or not go back, first time going to Kota. I mean, I haven't been to an F1 track since Miami or whatever, so it's gonna be cool to see. And they have like some old pre-Halo F1 car there. So, yeah.

It's, like I said, when I had kids, kind of everything, especially two at one time ever, and we don't have any family here in town. My dad lives here, but like, he's barely here, you know? So he's always traveling, enjoying retirement. But yeah, it's a cool facility, but not a, I don't have a million dollars to spend on a membership, but I don't think there's, you know, the only tracks you have is going to be Harris Hill that's local. That's, it's cool if you have like a Miata. You know, it's a very small technical track.

It's not fast. So, right. So you can't rev out the Viper or whatever.

Viper, GT3, GT2, like any of the fun stuff. Kota is a very fast track and very technical track. You know, that's why the Vipers and the GT cars do so, have so much fun there, you know? Right.

Were you an instructor there for a little while as well?

For a few weekends, yeah.

Yeah, okay.

It's, I don't like riding with people. Especially people that don't listen to you. You know, it's very, when you're like, the worst thing to do is like, get a guy that bought a really fast car, you know, and doesn't listen or doesn't know how to drive it.

What's an example of a fast car, like at Kota?

GT2 on the back straight will hit like 170, 175 miles an hour, but then you're going into 120 degree left-hand turn.

Okay.

There's like gravel and then a wall, which I've seen a lot of people hit, or like in the front straight, you can hit, GT2 will hit like 150 something up that hill and there's a dip and like people don't like to break or they don't know how to like, basically let the car unload and then reload itself after the dip. And if you don't make that almost 180 degree turn, there's just a wall right there. And it's, I've seen a lot of cars hit that wall head on, just going way too fast and then they don't know how to turn or they freak out. And you know, or just the biggest thing I've seen is just people that overdrive the cars, you know, and you get these cars that have all these nannies that really assist you. The new GT3 is a prime example. That car is, it's a track car that has a VIN number, that has a bunch of safeties on it to save your a**. You know, so you can have a guy that thinks he's really fast, because when you're not smooth, right? It feels fast. Like when you're smooth, it doesn't feel fast, it just flows. I haven't tracked the car in probably a year and a half or so, but I'm probably terrible now. But it's a very intuitive, you know, like you got to be one with everything. And sometimes it's just the hard breaks, turn, this, that. I would go through one set of brake pads a season when I was going to Kota, as much as I could, or even I would go up to AJ Peterson. His shop is on MSR Crescent. It's outside Weatherford, Texas.

Oh, okay, yeah.

So it's an awesome little, it's a very technical track. It's got some nice straightaways. You can hit like 140, 150 in the front straight. No, 130, 130 in the front straight. And he would have like an open track day there once a month and I would leave my house at like 5.30 in the morning, go up there, three hours straight, not just get off for gas, load my stuff up and still be back at work after lunch. So I'd only miss a half a day, you know?

Right.

And still even doing that all the time. I never smoke breaks like the way I see some people smoke breaks. Man, it's like you're just on off, on off, on off. That just, you know, it's, yeah, I didn't like riding with people. I don't like riding with customers.

Yeah, how does that work, right? Like somebody takes delivery of their car. Do you still hop in there, coach them, or do you take them for a ride?

I take them for a ride first. Here's a great example. This guy, Mike, from No Limit Fabrications, I told him to come down when he bought Colin's dad's car, Tiff's car. And I said, come down and let me show you how the sequential works. It's a 100% feel, right? Like it's very hard to describe how to get it to drive right over the phone, right? So he gets the car, absolutely hates it. Like this thing sucks, this ad, this sequential sucks. So we went on that Autotopia show for that Autotopia YouTube channel.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I think the guy's name was Mike. No, it's not Mike. I'm forgetting what the guy from Autotopia's name was, but he got in it and he's driven a bunch of sequentials, but didn't have all the electric assist stuff. And he's like, this is awesome. And this car is this. So then he tells Mike, he goes, this is one of the best driving cars. And Mike's like, I don't get it. He goes, Calvo, tomorrow morning, you and I are going to go. I spent 30 minutes in the car with him, and it's now his favorite car. OK. It's hard to, it's like if you're going to kick a soccer ball, it's hard for me to tell you over the phone how to kick a soccer ball. Right? It's like turn your foot 35, 37 degrees to the left and kick it with an open, you know what I'm saying? It's one of those things that you got to sit there and do it with somebody. And I tell everybody, the best thing to do is to come drive the cars.

Yeah.

I don't need to go wide open throttle with you. I don't want to go wide open throttle with you. One of the last times I ever got in a customer car with a customer, we had this R8 that we did, a 1300X package, makes 1500 wheel, it got shipped to this kid in Beverly Hills. And he said something was going on with the traction control. I happened to be in the area with that Autotopia. So he's like, oh, come and do dinner, this and that. It just turned out it was something with the all-wheel drive controller when you were turning the steering wheel. It wouldn't take the all-wheel drive out of it. It's just something we overlooked. Rushing to get a car done for a deadline. So I went, but he lives off Mulholland Drive. And this kid was going like, I mean, it's a 2, 300 foot drop in some of these hills. And you have coyotes and driveways, and he's just ripping like 130, 140 miles an hour. And the car's fast, and it's going down hills. And I was like, dude. It was like five or six times I had to tell him to slow down. And I just, that was the last time I got in a customer car. I said, I will never get in another customer car. And he's, this is the best part. He's telling me how he just rolled his R33 GTR off one of these clips like three weeks before. And he showed me, he's like, me and my friend survived, no big deal. Like I said, I'm like, dude, I definitely do not want to be the next person. You know, I've used up some of my nine lives, and I definitely tried to limit my liability in life. So that was the last time. I'll show you how to drive your car. Do not do a poll with me. If you want to learn how to drive the sequential or just drive around little stuff, that's fine. I don't need to go triple digits with anybody anymore.

Right. Okay. Fair enough. What's it like? Cause like you've had some, you've had a number of famous people, whatever, in these cars as well. The one that I think about, I think you gave Cam Patterson a ride in the car at some point, right?

Yeah. He was freaking out. Even, I mean, I had Brendan Schwab the other day.

Oh yeah. He was talking about you on this last episode of Rogan. Yeah.

He screamed like a little b****. It was a, whoa, ba-ba! Like that. And, you know, I made a good analogy with him. I said, cause he was saying, you're just so calm, right? And I'm like, it was my blue ACR makes 2000 wheel. I'm like, doesn't feel fast anymore, right? And it's not, I know when I said that the last time on this, I had all these people, this cocky f****** a******, this, that, blah, blah. It's like, if you do it every day, you know what I'm saying? You're just going to get used to it, right? So like I told him, I'm like, if you were chasing me to beat my a**, I'd be screaming and running too, right? Cause you're a UFC fighter. You knocked out micro crow crop with f****** one punch to the head, right? Like I do not want to get punched by you. It's the same thing. Like if you started off slow with me in five years, I'm sure I wouldn't be scared of getting punched in the face by you. But right now I think you could take my head off my shoulders, right? Like, you know, so it's the same thing. Like plus the passenger seat's always, always the scary one, you know, no matter how used to it, you are, you know, I always give Colin credit when, you know, before we had a dyno, we would do all the, the first cars were all street tuning. And he'd be sitting on his laptop as I'm making hits and stuff, 170 miles an hour, you know, and but, but yeah, it's, it's, it's all relative, you know, but yeah, can't we have Cam Patterson, Gordon Rines taking rides, you know, Brendan Schwab. I built a car for Fletcher Cox before Julio Jones. I did another Viper for, there's been quite a few.

It is, it is crazy when you think about like getting used to cars, so like, you know, Adam, Minneapolis Mopar, formerly Minneapolis Mopar, but like, He doesn't have a car anymore? Yeah, it got sold.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, yep. But anyways, point being, when he was sequential, so making, you know, whatever, 2,000 horsepower at a time, I got so used to being passenger in that car, and there's a photo of me out there, it looks like I'm asleep. I'm like, nah, man, I'm just enjoying this thing, but eventually even I got scared as a passenger. I'm like, you know what, man, because like I started to get aware of like just how fast we were going, you know?

Things can go wrong real quick, even with the best of drivers.

Yes.

You never know. Like look what happened with me with the green car. Like that wasn't even a fast pass and it just like it just locked the back up and there was nothing I could do. You know, on the street, it's like you could have a fox run out in front of you. You can have a turtle in the road. You can have like, I'm just, you know what I'm saying?

A gopher tortoise or whatever.

A gopher tortoise, you know. It's just all the little things like that you don't expect can happen, you know. I see it all the time here in Texas is like the car's left on the side of the roads at night with no hazards on. They just like they're abandoned on the side of the road. Like what happens if like something happens to that car and I have to get on the f****** shoulder real quick and I don't see a car that's black left on the shoulder with no lights on. The worst part is the police do it too. And it's like, dude, turn some sort of light on. I get it, you're trying to f****** get your tax dollars out of me. But at least don't put people in danger by sitting on the side of the road on the shoulder. There's so many things that people don't even think of can go wrong. I had a Hoosier unravel on one of my cars, brand new tire, it just unraveled like a yo-yo. And I was very lucky, it happened at 140 miles an hour. And I was able to slow the car down and get it off the track. But yeah, who's going to think of that happening? Yeah.

That's one of the things that always kind of used to scare me is anything could go wrong, especially on the street, right? I use motorcycles as an example, right? You can go to a track, there's no trees to hit on track. There's no light poles, there's no catchers.

And people don't understand either, like it doesn't take a lot when you hit something that doesn't move to stop your organs from moving, like your heart or your brain. They just, when we were in high school, there was a girl that there was this little bridge that came over these train tracks and it was a tiny little bridge, but it went up like this and came down like that. And she, I was in college, she was in high school and she just like 30 miles an hour slid and hit a tree and there was not a single mark on her body, but she was dead. Well, yeah, you know, so it doesn't take much to actually like kill you and especially going 170 miles an hour, 180, things happen so fast. And unfortunately, I'm going to say a good portion of the people that own these cars don't have the reactions or, you know, they haven't been put in the situations that they need to like. That's why I think the going from the big power stuff to going to, you know, circuit track stuff was was so great because I wasn't scared of being in a weird situation with the car, right, because how fast those cars accelerate. So like you go from, you know, a 2500 horsepower Viper in a straight line that's gotten sideways, that you've looped, that you've done, you know, kind of everything. And then you get into a, you know, 450 horsepower GT3 RS, right? And if it starts to come around you, like it doesn't feel like you're not freaking out because you're only going 100 miles an hour or 120 miles an hour, not 190 miles an hour losing it, you know, while accelerating at rates of speed that are much greater than you just part throttle going around, you know, like a double apex or something like that or, you know, tapping the brakes to turn at 120 into the S's or something like, you know, it's good to have both and I think a lot of the people, you know, if you want to better your skill set, it's good to do both, you know, they'll help each other in the end, you know. But yeah, it's, I just don't like being in the cars with people anymore. I don't, it's, there's the cons greatly outweighs the pros. There's no pros. The pro is like you get a slapier, your customer high five for pulling a sequential lever back or, you know, hitting fifth gear. Sorry, Blake and Thomas. But yeah, it's, yeah, I just, I don't like it. It doesn't, especially when you're like, dude, let off and they grab another gear and like, I've done it to customers. I think it's funny, you know, like whatever, but now I'm real, but I have, I had this one customer man, he was like 82 years old and he built this 1300X sequential viper.

Okay.

And he was just one of those guys that like the fear part of life was missing from his brain, you know, so like, or like, hey, this is something that can like kill me very quickly. Like maybe I should ease into it. This guy just, I showed him how to drive it. We went down toll road 45, we looped around, swapped driver, passenger, and he just f****** rails it, man. Like second through f****** sixth gear or something. And I'm like, dude, let off. And he's coming up to a bend and grabs fifth to sixth. Like we're doing like easily 200 miles an hour. And I'm like, this dude's 80 something years old or like late seventies. Like you can tell like his mechanics were not of that of when he was probably 50, right? And like he was good, but like it was, yeah. Actually that guy, I wound up hearing about him going down to different areas of Texas going street racing in the middle of the night. It was wild. I'm like, man, I hope when I'm that old, I can go street racing. But like I just, just to hop into something that you don't know what it's going to do, you know? I just.

Just full send it.

Just full send it. I was like, dude, like f***, man. So, but yeah, that's that.

So that was me when I took a GT 500 around our local racetrack, like hopped in and I was over driving the car right out the gate. It's like I probably should have taken a slower without being overconfident. Probably would have enjoyed it more. So I get it.

That's the thing, especially with like turning, you know, understanding the mechanics of when you're oversteering, understeering and what it feels like. That little chip, chip, chip is like you're on the edge. Just open the steering wheel up to five degrees and see that you're not, you know, you're not going to chunk the tire. You're not, you know, wearing out the, you know, the, the Kumo's were notorious on that on the ACRs. And a lot of it was people just overdrove the s*** out of them. You know, not that the tire was perfect for the setup, but like you see these people driving and it's like, you know, their arms are all the way out here and the steering wheel is like this. What do you think's going to happen when that car wants to snap back the other way? They, you physically, I can't, I'm not, I'm a strong dude. I can't, I can't, you know, see people driving at the tracks like that. It's like, instead of, you know, being nice and tight and, you know, your steering wheel down low and, you know, having control of the car and knowing that like, you don't need to really go more than, you know, let's say 50 degrees, you know, to, that's, yeah, that's 90, yeah, I would say 70 degrees in most, most turns, you know, there's a few that, yeah, you're going to get a little over it, but it's, man, it's, you see stuff and you're like, I definitely don't want to ever go for a drive with that guy, so.

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

MoTeC and Cody Phillips are working on with John Reed on the full wiring of everything. Wiring, we had to stop on it for all the races, and Dave has multiple cars with us as well already. So, the Perf, the Blue Viper, he actually was the one that did Robin's car for Robin. So, trying to get all those out, and then obviously that is a massive project. We, Venomous Carbon is now doing the entire body in white carbon. So, they came out with that normal standard black carbon body, and I sent them a bumper that I modified.

Yeah, I saw that. Is that the one where the front's completely broken?

Yeah, so I modified a front and they made a mold of it. Okay. And we were actually up in Toledo, Ohio the other day for a Marquise lawsuit thing, and we split a room, and he was showing me this white carbon. I called Dave immediately. I was like, Dave, look at this white carbon. He's like, do it. Do it now. Oh, we're like, awesome. This is going to be like the end all, be all of Vipers. But yeah, like I think the only thing we have to do for chassis wise is finish the transmission tunnel and the faux firewall for in the back to kind of... We have some stuff that's going to be having fluids in the trunk, so we want to seal that off from the driver. So we're putting basically behind where the cage and ends, we're just going to make it like a little window, but then have the rest be sheet metal.

Gotcha. Okay.

So that's that. We're doing full Inconel headers. So the header collectors were 3D printed. They got done a few weeks ago.

Oh, like metal 3D printing?

Yeah. So it's 3D printed Inconel.

I didn't know that was a capability. I know 3D printing metal, but not Inconel.

We're, if you can do it, it's going to be done on that car.

Okay.

It's hopefully still going to look like a street viper. We're going to try to put as much interior as we can, but we do want to show off the bead rolled floors. We do want to show off all the little intricacies of the harnesses and all the things we're doing on it, because it is, at the end of the day, still a race car.

Oh, 100%. No, that thing's full on race car.

It's going to look like a street car rolling down the street, drag and drive, but I think it's going to surprise a lot of people, now knowing what the billet block is capable of, and just from that one event. So once, I think Dave was waiting to see if that was going to be a good go, because as soon as he was like, it worked, I'm like, it worked. He's like, cool, order me two. So yeah, I'm actually really excited for that car. I'm going to be doing a lot of the fabrication myself again on it. So that's going to be one of my final big projects here in Texas. That's one of our goals is to get it done by the time we move.

Got you. I'm curious, on the bumper, because you guys sealed off the front there, does that affect anything? For example, turbos or cooling or anything like that?

The turbos are going to be getting air from the hood.

Understood.

The firewall was moved back a little bit, and there's nothing. It's got a pedal box and stuff in it. So there's nothing on the side, so the turbos are going to be up a little higher. And actually, each one of the runners is an individual piece. So you take each runner and it goes to the collector, so you can take apart the header to go around the chassis.

Okay.

Yeah, because some are going to go under, some are going to go over the tubes.

Understood.

Yeah, so we're making it so it's fully disassembled. You can disassemble all of it, but the turbos are going to be sitting up, and we're going to 3D print some scoops that go to the... I'm trying to get it. I don't know if it's possible. My idea is to try to get an inlet to be where the factory ACR fender well vents to draw air from there.

OK. OK. I see what you're getting at.

For cruising around, it's got an 8-inch wide front, so we do have a lot of room around there. I just don't know. It's been on the chassis table for so long. To visualize everything and look where that wheel is going to sit versus where the turbos are, and to try to scoop something in from the side of something maybe, or I don't know if it'll choke the turbo. But that was my cool goal. If not, it's just going to have a tube that goes straight up to the hood for inlet.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kind of like not like funny cars, what is it?

No, if you look at Morris Malone's car, the Corvette, how he has those inlets in its hood right there, something like that.

I still want to, I've never met Morris in person, but I want to see that car run in person. That thing is stupid.

It's the craziest thing too. I was there when he went like 254, and I'm like, oh, that didn't look that fast. It was like 254 something. I guess they, John was saying they just pour all the power in on the top end, and it back halves faster than everything.

Isn't something stupid like 120 mil turbos or something stupid?

I think they were like 106s or something.

Yeah, it's just something craziness.

So I'm excited to see that car run. Him and I have always gone back and forth over the years. I think our first little rivalry was when he had the blue Corvette, that compound turbo set up in 2015, 2016, and then he started building that car, and then he went faster than us, and I think he broke, and then we were creeping even up. And then, yeah, he was leaps and bounds every year going faster than us, because he was smart. He went full race car instead of trying to do this street car, race car stuff. So it's still a Corvette. It's got Corvette body panels on it, so I can't take anything away from them about it. It's an awesome car. I love watching it run.

So back to the drag and drive car. I'm guessing TH400 for that as well. Yeah. Is there any particular event you guys are trying to do, or just any drag and drive to just sort it out?

I think Sick Week was what we're aiming for. Sick Week, I think we would like to take it to TX2K for drag racing. We're going to double check that.

Like an exhibition class sort of deal, maybe?

Exhibition class, and then definitely half-mile stuff.

OK. With the billet block, right, is when you were designing it, were you also designing it for the intentions of being a street car, so like cooling and all that?

It's got full water jackets, everything. Actually, to be honest with you, we were having some problems getting it hot.

Oh, really?

On the dyno, yeah, with methanol. I don't think I saw over 130 degrees like old temps.

Wow.

Yeah, so it kind of messed with the clearance stuff a little bit, but I think at the track, I don't think we ever saw full throttles at the end of the past, more than 140.

Really? Okay.

The coolant temps were like 120. Now, we didn't obviously drive it for 20 minutes down the road, and that was on methanol, so obviously, it's going to be different. I'd like to see, put it on pump gas and drive it for 45 minutes or so, or three hours pulling a trailer. But obviously, there's going to have to be some changes made if you don't have a radiator in the front of the car to do the drag and drive.

What about when it comes to balance wise? For example, for drag racing, you're going to be going higher with the turbos. Is that going to affect your launch and all that? Are you thinking about that?

I'm going to definitely have Billy Stockland and Al help with it.

Those are your Pro Mod guys or whatever?

Yeah, Billy Stockland used to crew chief for Al Anabbi. Al was the chassis guy there.

OK.

He helped, I guess, Stevie Jackson is the guy's name?

OK.

Fast, Stevie Fast Jackson, I think, is one of the Fast Pro Mod guys. They've helped him with his chassis setup and crew chief frame, so we definitely have some like...

You have some resources.

We've got some resources that are the skill set and the knowledge with those guys is beyond anything. So we're kind of catapult ourselves to going fast, but I think just power alone, that things should go f****** fly.

Yeah, OK. No, I'm really excited for that, because I think Dragon Drivers are one of the coolest events. It's kind of like a road... You've done road rallies before too, right?

It's like, not only do you have to have a fast car, you have to have a fast, reliable car that can tow a trailer with all your suitcases, fuel, tools, everything, anything you need to swap out. I've noticed some of the other Dragon Drive guys, they'll take the water out to go drag race and then put the radiators back on and cruise with no hoods on or no front bumpers on.

Just some crazy stuff.

Yeah, so what we're hoping to do is do something with the Dragon Drive that still allows us to... I hate to say this because it's going to give so much credit to the Huracans, but do what a Huracan does. You can just drive wherever you want with one, go to the drag strip, click off a seven and drive home.

That's what Tony was saying yesterday, he daily drives a 1200 horsepower STO. He's like, it's way better than the GTRs, he says when it comes to daily driving. But you could also daily drive some of your 1300X packages, no problem.

I drove, it's kind of funny, I drove Manny's 2000 horsepower sequential car to my house and back the other day. And obviously 2000 horsepower, it's a lot louder. It's an ACR, so there's less sound deadening in it. Sequential, and the little adjustment nut on the reverse lockout was loose, so it was rattling like f****** crazy. And it was just like, it's a awesome car, but it's a race car. And there's a few little things I need to clean up with it to make it better, but it's f****** loud. Then I drove Robin's car home last night. It's a GTS. It's got Laguna interior, which is the diamond seats, like bolstered seats, and the 21 speaker surround sound, so I could actually listen to music. And it was just, I'm like, I could daily this car. You know, Manny's car was, I guess I'm getting old. I used to love driving sequentials, and now I'm like, dude, I just want to put it in drive and go. That's kind of one of the things about the R8s and Huracans that are so nice. You know, I drove the General to my house and back once with the auto in it. I'm like, man, this is so nice. I just keep it in third gear and cruise at 70, you know? So, but yeah.

Where are we at with the General, by the way?

Jaddy finally broke 230 in the half mile. The car has big turbos on it, automatic. Jaddy is slowly easing into the power of it. So, unfortunately, we changed the set up on it this last time, and Jaddy, he didn't realize it. We kept telling him, like, dude, you're letting on and off the gas, on and off the gas, on and off the gas, the whole run, like, look at your log. He's like, no, I'm not. And then he looked at the video and he's like, oh, man, I really am letting on and off the gas the whole time. I said, yeah, and you still went 230, you know? And he's like, just stay on it, you know? He's like, but it's spinning. And we're like, no, it's not. Like both wheels are moving the same speed, dude. Like you're, it's moving around a little bit.

The logs tell you everything.

Yeah. And he's like, we had a talk the other day. He's like, all right, I want to start going to more events. I want to get it really dialed. Unfortunately, he let off the gas, the last event, like almost all the way as the converter was locking up. And then when he got back on it, I think between the converter lock, getting locked, pulling the motor down, and when he stepped on it, it hit with 50 pounds of boost on twin 98s, it chunked some rods out of it. So we're putting the motor, it's actually, he's got a block over there, we're putting together for him right now.

Okay.

And yeah, that's, I think what we're gonna try to do is get it, we always try to go for the moon. And I think what we need to do is start slow and work our way up with that, especially with the drive, because it is true, he only comes to two events a year, you know, and that's the only time he drives the car. And it's a fast car, I mean, twin 98s, and then we've changed the setup a few times, you know, because we learned, oh, back, these servos had too much back pressure, we, you know, made it too tight of a turn here, you know, the fuel pump took a s*** here, you know, things like that. So it's, I think we're in a good spot on setup and chassis wise on it, that we're just gonna leave it alone and not, I mean, it's got twin 98s on it, so how more do you need, you know?

So, and those zonas too, by the way?

No, no, those are HPTs or HPT, HTP, HTP.

Oh, yeah, OK.

So that's what we have on Fabricio's car too. So they're 98s and I think like 103 millimeter turbines. So they're zero back pressure. We haven't even started to, the general with the stock block will never see what, you know what I'm saying, what those turbos were produced or stock casting, you know, but Fabricio's were sending pretty hard. So, yeah, it's a, I'm very happy for the course we're taking, you know, to go back to having fun going racing, you know, I think that's, and then R&D parts for engine programs. We, you know, we work with a shop, Complete Performance Motorsports. We've been doing a lot of their engines. They're a road race shop. So have great relationship with them. If you know, like we said, we can find seven or eight shops that, you know, you work well with. I know I was talking to Tony the other day, and I think he said he's no longer doing engines for other shops, that the liability is just too much and he's kind of over it. And I, he goes, good luck to you, because I don't want to deal with that headache anymore. And I think if you just work with, like I said, a select few people that makes life so much easier. That makes life, like Sterling with the Supra, he had an engine issue with another 2JZ builder, and I don't know who was right or wrong. The semantics of it are not important, but engine failure right before TX2K, he said Calvo, he's a local guy here, Calvo, can you rebuild the motor? Can you do this? Can you do that? Can you go over everything? We did, car made 2000 wheel, the clutch started slipping on the next pass, so we turned it back down and kept it at 2000. He did two or three events, we took the short block apart, it looked brand new. So like, you know, we're now, I talked to Brian Crowder the other day about getting, you know, becoming a dealer for his parts and being able to use them, and he was super ecstatic about it. He was like, man, I've heard nothing, but the good things about the motors that come out of your shop, and it's like, wow, really? Because I didn't realize our motor program was that big for people to talk about, you know? So I'm pretty pumped about that. You know, the 2J Market is kind of what we originally came from, you know? And it'd be cool to have, you know, I was talking to Brian and I said, I'd like to start putting motors on the shelf for people. You know, obviously this is not gonna be a two man operation for long. It needs to be like a 10 person operation, and I'm trying to put Tim in charge of everything with that, you know, so we can actually have blocks on the shelf and sell them to, you know, in different packages, you know, kind of like what Real Street was doing for a while.

Yeah.

You know, I know it is overwhelming to try to keep the logistics of all the, making everything the same, and then motors come back, well, this one's a five over, this one's now, we're four months out on pistons, you know, and then having the inventory of all that stuff. And I think, you know, Dave sees that if we can get the inventory, right, which obviously he can purchase, it would be really good for us to have stuff, because everybody wants everything right now, you know? So if you can get it right now and I have it, like, you know, you can charge a premium for it. And I think just in general, a lot of people are racing to the bottom, you know, to do stuff cheap. And then I see it with the Lambo stuff, like, you know, some of the quotes I'm getting from other, from people that are like, you know, price shopping. And it's like, there's no money in it for me. Like, I'm not here to, God forbid something does happen, I have to eat this, like, you know, I need to cover my cost. So like, you know, building a 2,000 horsepower Lamborghini engine for 40 grand does not, you know, I had some guy the other day message me and it's, he's one of those shoppers, right? He'll message me and ask me, oh, will you sell me one of your turbo kits? Or, oh, will you sell me that wire harness that you did on the perf or this and that? Finally, he's like, he asked me, what's it going to cost to build a billet block? And I said 115 grand, right? I think Tony's like 110 or whatever, right? And, and he's like, what happens if I provide my own block? And I straight up said, I'm like, I'm in the business to make money. If you want to come to me, you know, you come to me because I'm the, I'm potentially the best of what we do, right? Or in the realm of the best people, right? Like you can't be the best because there is no such thing as the best. You're, you're, you're in the upper echelon of people that do what you do. Right? So it'd be to say where the best is unfair to.

There's a lot of talent. There's a lot of really smart people.

There's a lot of really smart people, really good machinists, really good engine builders. But we're in the, that group I would put us in, right? That category, right? So you're going to come to me or one of these other guys, because you want your car to work right, right? You don't want to have to do it again twice, because it's expensive to do it again twice. And unfortunately, a lot of people don't learn that lesson. And this guy was like, well, what happens if I provide my own block? I'm like, not going to happen. Like this is, this relationship is ending before it even started. Like you will not become a customer here. Like you've already gotten to the point where like, even suggesting that is, is you are, because the first thing that goes wrong with your car, you're going to point it at me, right? Even if it's not my fault, and you're going to have me try to eat it, you know? And I'm like, I just, I don't need that in my life. So I want people that like are here to help the company grow, even though they're customers, and we set up good relationships with them, you know? Long-term relationships is what we're looking for, not the single sale, you know?

Right. What does customer education look like as well, right? Cause like, again, we're talking twin turbo Vipers. People love to do their two step in their anti-lag with them. Are you educating these guys to be like, hey, this is gonna be expensive if you keep doing this?

You know what? I've taken the Heffner approach, and I love it. And it's just like, you're a f****** idiot. You are a dumb m***********, stop doing that s***. Like, that is the best, most direct way. And like, you know, that's the one thing I love about Heffner is like, he's so direct and to the point of calling people f****** morons. But like, I think in today's society, they need to hear that. Like, if you're sure, man, that's not a good thing to do, you might hurt the motor or this, that. You know what they're going to think? Oh, I can do it a few times, then a few more, then a few more. No, you're a f****** moron. Stop doing that s***. Stop f****** up my work. You know, we had we had a good talk the other day. I had an R8 in here that had this weird f****** issue, and it turned out being something tire related. And I called him and I said, have you ever had a car do that? And he goes, yes, it was bad tires. Like the tires were bad. It did the same exact thing. And sure enough, we changed the tires. And it was I've never felt anything in my life like this. And he's like, yeah, it literally feels like somebody picked up the back of the car with a forklift and started going side to side. Didn't vibrate. It would just go side to side. I've never felt anything. He goes, I've had it happen once. And it was like something when the tire was made. I don't know. He goes, it's happened once to me. I changed the tires. And I know exactly what you're feeling. Changed the tires and it was it. But we were talking about tire sizes and the splits, because the R8 Huracan and all all-wheel drive cars, they're very sensitive to changing circumference, rollout, things of that nature, and trying to keep it under a certain percentage. And he made a good point. He's like, the people that spent millions of dollars, if not billions engineering this s***, know more about it than you. So why would you change the ratios of the front to back? Right? Because you're a f****** idiot. And I was like, I 100% agree. I was like, but sometimes if you want some wheels and you're changing the, there's a very small window that those cars can be f***** with that make them do all sorts of wacky s***. And I guess he was telling me that he had a guy that he did a transmission for. It broke, you know, then he rebuilt it. Then he told the guy to go. Tony, I guess, was tuning the car. And he said, have Tony check your wheel speeds to make sure you have the right s*** because it does not sound like you have the right tires on there. Well, like a year and a half later, he's like, my trans broke again. And he goes, did you ever call Tony and ask him? And he goes, no. And he goes, well, you're just a f****** idiot then. He goes, what would you like me to do? Like, say that you're not a f****** idiot? Like, you know, I've told you not to break your $70,000 transmission. This is the third time, because you don't want to f****** ask somebody a question because you're too f****** lazy. And he goes, so you're a f****** idiot. And that is like, you can warn somebody once and then when they f*** it up, like, you're a f****** idiot. Like you can have these cars live such a long, and I have a customer, his name is Ned. He lives in Arizona. He's got a CM 2000. Cargo is like 220 every time he takes it to the half mile. Very happy. This guy will fire up the car, wait two minutes in his garage, rolls it outside, warms it up for 15 minutes. While that 15 minutes is happening, he's checking all the spark plugs, he's checking the water pump in the back to make sure the air to water is working, this, that. And he's like, I'll drive it to a car show, do one or two pulls, double check everything there, come home, do a pull, double check everything, make sure if a check engine light flashes once, he goes, I creep it home, I call you and this and that, I don't go make another five hits to see if it keeps coming on. And he goes, if something ever does happen, or I don't feel comfortable, I call a tow truck. I've had other people that are like, man, I heard a noise, but I was like five minutes from my house, so I just kept driving and then it kicked the rod out.

That's two very different approaches.

Yeah, you know, guess what? Ned's car has never broke. You know, he's had little things, like, you know, he likes to set the lash on. It's a solid roller engine. You know, he caught, I guess like the, where the roller goes through on a Jessel, it started wallowing itself out, I guess after five years of getting pounded on. And, you know, he likes to inspect everything. He caught that three rockers were about to fail, but he caught them before they failed. Guess what? It was very easy to replace the rocker instead of digging the pieces out of the engine.

Yeah, yeah. That's one of the things that I'm very grateful for being around Adam in the Enthmodo campus. Like I got to like see how Adam treated his car. Like that car, he treated it so well. And like, I kind of got to understand like what the term mechanical sympathy means.

Yeah, yeah, you know, Aaron does a very good job at vetting his customers into not being idiots. I wish I was a little bit better about that earlier on. I am now, and I have a better clientele, I would say, you know, about like being responsible with the cars, you know, not sitting there off anti-lag every 10 minutes. And, you know, like you said, I know Quiet and Thomas Mendoza the other day made some video, and like the two of them are both next to each other shooting flames. And they're like, we both know already that you're going to call us f****** idiots. And I said, exactly. I was calling the both of you at the same time to call you guys idiots. But they're like, we know. We had to do it for the gram. But yeah, if you want to abuse something, listen, if you want to keep paying me to fix your car full pop every time, sure. I don't like fixing broken s***. I like freshening stuff up that's lasted a very long time and looking at our work and saying, man, this guy took really good care of the really good work we did. And this is what it should look like. We're going to hone the cylinders a few thousands, put a new set of pistons in it, the rods look great, put a new set of bearings in it, valve job it, put it together, check the spring pressures, everything's good, reassemble. Not like, oh man, this s***'s bent to f***, this is that, these springs have no f****** tension left in them, that's not fun.

That's not a fun phone call to make.

That's not a fun phone call to make unless you just don't care and you're like, I want three engines, top to bottom, ready to go, this, that, but the people that usually are the ones that have those engine issues are not the ones that are like, I can pay for three full engines, top to bottom, like up front, they're usually like, oh man, I didn't realize, I've literally been on podcasts to tell people that they're f****** idiots about the bouncing off the f****** rev limiter all the time. So to each their own, if that's what they want to do, thankfully we don't, I have a customer down in Corpus, his 16 year old son has one of our cars and he's more responsible than half the customers I've had. He's got a CM1800 and his dad has a 1300X and that manual Gallardo we're building. And yeah, 16 years old, responsible, right? Like does not want to break the cars. 35 years old will sit there and not listen to me, beat the s*** out of it, f****** when it breaks cry f******, oh, I don't know what happened. I'm like, dude, the log shows you used anti-lag like 37 times in a matter of 10 minutes.

It's like those old Alex Choi videos just bouncing off the rev limiter with the sheepy cars.

Dude, and it's like, man, sheepies made so much money off those flame tunes or whatever, like people love that stuff. But I saw this one video, I forget, it wasn't Alex Choi, it was another guy in California. Like the whole back of the car is f****** glowing bright red and then it catches on fire. Did you see that one?

I don't know if I have, maybe.

It was like, I think a pink STO or I forget what, I think it was some weird car, the whole back of the car, and caught on fire because it popped the motor from sitting like, literally I think it was a minute straight of doing f****** anti-lag. You know, everything's glowing bright red and he just keeps going and going and then it's like, fire, fire! You know, and it's like, you idiot. Like, who likes destroying stuff, you know?

Whistling diesel for one.

Whistling diesel, right? But he can make millions of dollars doing it, so he is the, you know, the exception of the rule, whatever. But even then, like, I mean.

He stretches it out over a few videos.

Yeah, he stretches it out over a few videos. The thing lasts more than f******, like, a minute, you know? Like, these guys just go and beat this s*** out of stuff for no reason. It's like, why did you buy this? Like, why did you buy a Lamborghini or a Viper or, you know, an R8 or a GT, well, GTR is a Nissan, so I'm not gonna really, Viper's a Dodge, but like, you know, just to sit there and go. You should do it with a car that makes 1500 horsepower.

Call the builder.

Call the builder and ask the builder the smart questions. What should the oil be at? Because this is a car that a dealership took in, you know, that was a fourth or fifth hand Viper. You know, is there anything we should be concerned about? We only have 91 octane here. I built, I did a motor for a guy and we tuned it on the stock ECU. This is well before we said no more stock ECU stuff. And he lived in Oklahoma where they have like ethanol free 90.

OK.

Like, and like, he didn't tell me that. And the thing is like literally like knocking it idle. Like, and when you tune the stock ECU, you have to turn the knock control off. So like, he heard a motor. And then like, we tuned it here with what we thought was the s******** fuel that we could put it in. And it still had some issues. And it was finally like, dude, we're just putting a MoTeC on this thing, you know? But yeah, it's like people felt to mention that like, hey, I don't have 93 octane here. Like, you know, like that sort of stuff. And it's, but yeah, that's.

Back to the, let's say I have a twin turbo viper. I'm two stepping at every stoplight. I actually have to come in because I broke something. What's that cost? What's the expected, what are you expecting to see broken when somebody just abuses it?

Usually like you cook the valves, right? The short blocks will somewhat stay good. Like unless you pound the bearings out of them. But that's a very rare case. But like usually you gotta pull the motor out. So you're gonna be, you know, I have no sympathy for you on that. You're paying full pop on everything. Engine in, engine out, just alone is about 15 grand. Then you gotta take the heads apart, valge them. You'll be 30 grand into it.

Wow, okay.

Yeah.

Just, yeah, okay, just for a few pops and bangs.

For a few pops and bangs. If you have the firing setup, probably a little bit more, because they're just expensive.

Sure.

But yeah, I have no sympathy for you wasting my time when I could be making good money doing other things to fix your pile of s*** that you decided to pop and bang all the time. I'm sorry. It was cool 10 years ago, or once in a blue moon to do it, but not to the point that you're damaging a car.

I saw a video recently, I think it was of you cruising around, it was like an NA car and you were just popping and banging too. Was it you?

The red one?

I think so. There was a video that went viral on Facebook. I think you were tagged in it. I think it was the red car and there was just a bunch of fire was coming out of the bottom.

Yeah, it was my NA car. But yeah, they were filming next to me and I just did it for a few seconds. But it's not a turbo car that's producing boost. Yes, it is retarding timing, but it was like I said, I did it a few seconds.

Yeah, it was a cool video.

Yeah, and it's like that is probably the once every three years I do it.

I was just curious, because stock vipers can't do that.

No, my car is a nine liter on a Motec with high compression, runs on ethanol, things like that.

Yeah, I was just curious how that worked because I was like, oh, that's an NA car. Why is it doing that?

It still had anti-lag. So you're retarding the timing, so it's firing the cylinder when the exhaust valves are open.

OK, gotcha.

Like no matter what, you're taking the combustion event and throwing it out the f****** exhaust.

Yeah, OK, I guess that makes sense.

So instead of the combustion happening under pressure in your cylinders with the valves closed, it's like that whole event is happening inside your turbo. But in my case, I don't have a turbo, so it just goes out the exhaust.

Gotcha, OK, that was a cool thing. That's why I brought it up.

It was the one rolling down the highway at night or something.

Yeah, that was me being like, gotcha, are you doing it?

No, no, no, that was me doing it. No, that was me. I did it. There was two BMWs next to me, and they were giving me these thumbs up and this and that. And then we did a little poll. But that car, no matter what, when I let off, when I used to road race it during the day, people would say, dude, that thing just spits flames the whole time, even at Kodos.

You're never going to sell that car either, are you?

No.

If I won the Powerball, I would give you the stupidest offer for that car, because that is one of my favorite cars on the planet.

You know, it's funny, I did that 5-Log conversion on it.

That's right.

And I put it on 20s, and it's just, those wheels too are usually my style of wheel. And I don't know why it just worked really well on that car. That car just looks great. Even Will Doog is always, whenever I post that car, he's like, man, that is just a really good-looking Viper. And for having another shop's top dog commenting on how good that car looks, it's always a little like, you know.

Yeah, no, and I've said this on the last episode, too. If there was a perfect Viper, I think you've got it.

Truthfully.

I appreciate it. There's a few handfuls out there that I do like. Sal's green one is awesome. Yes.

Beautiful car. Snake Skin Green. And I think it's a Snake Skin Edition, I think it's called. I forget.

Maybe, yeah, I want to know.

I forget. There was only like 30 of them built.

Something like that.

Yeah, because the stripes, if you get close, it's actually like imprinted snake skin.

Oh.

It's not just black. Yeah, you gotta get real close and you'll see like this little octagonal kind of weave going down it. I don't know if it's paint or how they do it, but yeah, it's the stripes actually have something in them.

Are you gonna be a Dodge guy going forward at all? Like, for example, like there, it looks like they're ramping things up. They're gonna drop this new street truck, it looks like. Like, do you have any Mopar support or are you just kinda like...

The problem is, like, I hate to say it, they don't really support their customers, you know? Like, everything's discontinued on the Viper, you know? Me and Aaron were having to talk about this the other day. I guess there's a group of people that are trying to get Dodge to sell them the rights to go to the manufacturer. Like, obviously Dodge doesn't make an airbag module, right? But like, and it's discontinued and they go bad. There's a yaw sensor inside there that like, you know, it eventually breaks, so your slip light's always on. And it's because that yaw sensor is meant to see 1.5 Gs, right? So you're having a car that's pulling 2 and 1 half Gs or something. It's pegging that sensor, and the sensor thinks the car, or the car thinks it's getting hit from behind, but it doesn't throw an airbag, right? I didn't know this. Jaime actually told me, if the car's keyed on, you flip that thing upside down, it deploys the airbags.

Okay.

Yeah, so I didn't know that. So yeah, so you can't buy those anymore. They go bad all the time. You can't buy window switches. There's the fender tubs you can't buy. There's just a lot of stuff, and it's like, Aaron was saying there's a group of people to go, sorry for repeating myself, but a group of people trying to buy this from Dodge. I don't know what happened or the semantics of it, but I think something along the line, like Dodge will sell it to us or this group of people, but they want royalties off each sale, and it became very complicated convoluted for something you don't want to support anymore that's out there. I mean, the Viper, I love that car. I really do. I think it's one of the best cars ever built for driving experience. There's just nothing like it. I'm gonna put manual 997 Turbo, Viper, Toyota Supra, all kind of in that same category of manual b***** cars. I know the 911 Turbo is all-wheel drive, but it's a driver's car. It's not just like a, holy s***, this thing's fast and just did what it... That's kind of like why I like the Huracan R8 platform, but I don't because I can throw my 19-month-old son in the car and he'd probably f****** rip on it fine. You can throw anybody in them and they'll go do something fast. It is such a great car. It's almost too good where it doesn't take much effort. Now, I'm not saying somebody can just go hop in a f****** 260-mile-an-hour underground car and it'd be f******... But sub-2,000 wheel, those things just straight down Broadway. It doesn't require much skill set. And I think you get these guys that get in those cars and are like, man, I handle a 2,000 horsepower R8 without a problem. And then they get in some other car. And that's how.

Different story.

Different story.

Yeah. No, I've driven 1,000 horsepower GT500. Super easy to drive. I could not even imagine jumping in some other cars. It's not the same across the board.

You at least have the mindset, or the forethought of like, this might be dangerous. I've driven an array of cars.

Most people don't have that. They're like, oh, it's got four wheels.

Yeah, it's got four wheels and a gas pedal. Step on it, it goes. Like, all the ECU will do everything for me until I get myself in a situation. You know, some we have on the corner over there of the street, whenever this rains, they opened up some granite f****** place up here. And like, A, it covers everything in this dust, right? And then B, it washes all down the, if you notice, this street's a hill. It goes all to the bottom of the street and collects there. You know, what happens if that goes a little bit further into the oncoming road? You know what I'm saying? And somebody is doing a pull in front of my shop and hits that, it's a little like sand, right?

Yeah.

Loses it there. Like, that's all the other little things people don't think about of like, oh, I've done this hit 20 times in the same spot. What happens if somebody has a sprinkler on and their sprinkler put water in the street that you don't see it? Then the car starts doing something weird and you're not expecting it, right? Because the car, you've never been in that situation before. Right.

As we start to wind down, I have one question that I really wanted to touch on. You've done some Gallardo stuff as well, right?

Yes.

How different is the Huracan and the Gallardo engine-wise?

Pre-LP, 5-liter, very different. Same concept, but like just a very different engine. Like the bore spacing is different. There's just a lot of differences. The 5-2s, it's pretty almost much identical.

Wow, okay.

Almost. There's little things that are different. If I had it my way, I would have a 1,250-horsepower, 5-liter in a LP Supraleggera manual. If I could mismatch all the s*** I want to do in life, like you get the sound of the 5-liter with the looks of the LP, that would be like my ultimate Lambo. And just manual, something fun, doesn't need to be 18 f****** hundred horsepower, just something to cruise to Cars and Coffee, get a little jolly out of. That would be, and the 5-liter sound with turbos, I think, is one of the best sounding.

OK. You mentioned underground there for a second. Is anybody ever going to catch them at the half mile? I mean, 260 is an insane feat.

I don't know. I mean, I really don't. That's not where people think like, oh, man, you guys went 230. You're creeping up. Like, dude, we are light years away from f****** 250, right? Like the jump. And granted, I think that car has got a 240 in it, right? Like the way it sits now. The difference between 232 and 240 is like the difference from going from like 180 to 210, right? Like it's a huge gap. So just imagine what the difference from 230 to 260 is. 28 mile an hour at that speed is insane. On the flip side of it, I don't think any of my customers want to go that fast.

You know, that's well, especially after you know, you had that crash, you know, at the half mile, however many years ago now, it's like, there's so many consequences to going that fast.

Yeah, and it's, we actually, Dave is purchasing a, he realized how fast the perf is, and we're going to run it for the rest of the year, kind of a little bit more power level, adding a little bit more safety that's removable. But he's purchasing a super Trofeo, Evo 2.

Oh, okay.

Because it's already got a cage, and we're going to find like a wrecked car and swap everything over and try to put a DCT in it.

Oh, okay, I see. One of the things that somebody mentioned to me is like, they kind of like, they also kind of jumped from like, I think they were doing 230s, 240s, and then all of a sudden, you know, I shouldn't say all of a sudden, but you know, in the 250s, 260s, is it just a matter of them, like figuring out the transmission, you think, or what are your thoughts?

The, they went 240 in 2016 with Giddy's car, which was a Gallardo, right? So he had that white Superleggera, and that was a sequential car, and I think just until recently, correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not sure. It's obviously, I don't know any of the other business, but I feel like the big power cars that were going like the 255 to 260 range all went, were sequential, are now DCTs, and I think Mark Rowe's car is still a sequential. And he holds the record, I believe, don't quote me on that again, but I do believe Mark holds the record like 260.8 or 261 or whatever it is, but that's a sequential car. I also think that's due to the gearing. But I think there's a ton of cars in that high 240, low 250 range that are all DCT now.

Okay. Yeah, because I was talking to Tony yesterday as well, some guy in Europe has some R8.

Yeah, that red one. Yeah, that's a really good looking car. Yeah, what is it like, A10 or AQ Automotive or something? I forget what it's...

I can't remember.

A9, I forget the name. It's like a letter and a number. But yeah, I think it's got all the coils on the back firewall or on the X-brace or something. It's a good looking car. And I think Tony said that that thing should go. It went 254.

253, 254, something like that already.

With the old setup. So I think also it's unfair to compare numbers from other countries. Like, you know, the timing equipment could be different, the way they do it. I know like Jason uses like an average speed of your last hundred feet or something. Oh, but it's, there's so many different ways to clock it or, you know, and I'm not trying to take anything away from anybody, right? But there's just, it's hard to different event coordinator, different, you know, like it seemed like everybody at that Omega thing went way faster than their cars physically can, you know. There was a Viper that went 246 that supposedly made 2500 horsepower. We know 2500 will not get you 246.

Yeah, I think everybody I found that comment section. It was, everybody was like, yeah, that's not real.

Yeah, and it sucks because it's good promoting for your business, but like at the same time, it's not reality, you know. So, you know, unfortunately, like it should just be nipped in the bud that that was not a true pass, you know.

Yeah, I mean, it still probably went pretty fast, I imagine.

But something had to have been off at the time because it was going like 209, 212, 213, then 246.

Yeah, that's a big jump.

Yeah, you're not picking that up. You're just, you're not, you're in the fastest, a 23 to 2,500 horsepower car will go is in realistically that mid-220s. So you are 20 mile an hour outside your reality range when you are still 10 mile an hour, 10 to 13 mile an hour short of what the car was even capable of, you know.

That should be a T-shirt, by the way, you're outside of your reality range. More people need to hear that. I think we covered just about everything. The only car we didn't get an update on, a purple Gen 3. Was it a Gen 3? Whatever your personal car? Or weren't you going to do some drag race?

I have a gray carbon Gen 3.

Oh, it might have been gray.

Yeah, it's gray, gray, gray black, and it's all flat colors, gray black with a red stripe. That is in the same exact spot, in the same exact condition of when we last spoke.

Yeah, because I think at the time, you were talking about maybe turning that into some sort of drag car or something.

I think that's what it's going to be. It's probably going to be when my son's 16.

It's not on a priority list.

It's not a priority. I would love for it to be. I really want to finish the Huracan. I want to finish Dave's car. I want to finish Joseph's car. Joseph has the other drag car that's sitting next to the Dragon Drive. That's the one that the front bumper was, that carbon front bumper was molded off of.

Okay, gotcha. Well, shoot, man, before I pop my usual three questions, my final question, I suppose, anything else you wanted to touch on?

That's it. I think it's been a good podcast. What was the last one, like three hours long or something?

An hour and 30, it was shorter than this one. Yeah, because you had to get going that day. Yeah, it was a busy day. But awesome, the usual three. At the end of every episode, I like to ask this question, and it goes like this, you have to pick three cars, you have to pick a daily car, a track car, and a show car. You have an unlimited budget, build whatever you want, however you want to do it.

A daily, oh man, a daily 911 Turbo.

New one, like a new Turbo S or something?

Yeah, a new Turbo S for a daily.

Okay.

New Turbo S for a daily, I think that's the all-around best everything. Full-blown track car.

Any kind of track.

Like drag strip or circuit or.

Your choice.

Oh man.

You like turning, I heard.

Yeah, oh man, like that's what I kind of like went for. You know, Rafa has this, I think it's called a 720X.

Yeah, I've seen that.

And I think Cameron Lawrence went sub two minutes at Coda with it, like a one minute 58 seconds or something.

Okay. For context, what'd you do in your Viper at Coda?

Like a 217.

Okay, so that's light years ahead.

217, yeah. Yeah, 17 seconds is no, yeah, 18 seconds.

Do you know, like if we stop talking for 17 seconds, you know how long that would feel?

Like, could you like? Yeah, yeah, nobody realizes like how, yeah, it's, I, when I talked to Cameron, he said this thing is so f****** awesome. I think Colin, Colin was telling me, we had dinner the other night, he's got a stock 765 that he just aligned to put tires on. And I think they were like Trofeo R's he was using. And I want to say, I know for a fact, he was to go on like 14s flat, which is like ungodly fast. But I think he said he was on his way to like a 12 flat. And he had some traffic, but like the, his, I guess what are they called your, if you loop together the turns of all your best five laps or something, it will put it all together. And this is optimal, optimal, right? His optimal would have been like a f****** 10 or something. So it's insane. That's insane for a stock car. You know, Colin's a very good driver. And he's got years of dialing his old McLaren suspension. And we used to f*** with it all the time at the shop. So I think, you know, good driver, lots of experience, lots of set up time. But I'm not a McLaren person. I just, that car always, and it looks sick.

OK, so you're locking that in this time?

Yeah, and then you said a show car?

Show car. Go take the wife out to get some ice cream. Maybe. Maybe even the kids now see those two now. Man, I would love to do a Lincoln Continental. Okay. Yeah. Okay. That or the other car, I would really love to do a project one day, is a Restomod, 1940 to 1944 Chevy pickup. You know, they have those really edged, those wedged front grills. I would love to do one of those. Okay, that or the Continental, which one would you go with? Oh man. Continental. Continental. I love the truck, the truck's really cool. Okay. It would be a toss up, but I think I'm leaning towards Continental, because the kids could fit in the back. That was just a bench seat. That would be the deciding factor, but no kids, maybe the truck. Okay, fair enough. Awesome, on that note, where can everybody find you? Reach us at calvomotorsports.com or on Instagram and Facebook, calvomotorsports. If you want to send me a private message, I'd rather you're not, but, okay, you know, Antonio Calvo. But yeah, that's about it. Do you delete requests sometimes? I delete, every once in a while. I usually respond to them, but there's sometimes. You know, the funniest thing is, Kevin at Underground told me to do this. He goes, this is how you weed out the first people when you're trying to get people for a job. You put an ad, right, on your social media, and in the ad, you say your first job is not to contact me, is to send your resume. Do not contact the social media outlets, right? Send your resume to the email provided, and you would be blown how many people would just message you, I need a job. And it's like, well, you can't read or listen to f****** instructions. So you're right off the bat. You're disqualified before you even started, you know? That's good advice. OK. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for having me again. It's been a pleasure. Yeah. Thank you, everybody, for listening, and we'll see you all next time.