208. Smeedia on the EJ33 Swap, Modding Subarus and Choosing Builds

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minnoxide Podcast. I'm Harris, aka Minnoxide, your host, and I'm here with Harris, aka Minnoxide.

No, I'm Mark. I doodle all day.

You can do it.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minnoxide Podcast. I'm your host, Harris, aka Minnoxide, man of many automotive aspirations, and we're talking Subarus today or whatever. What do you do, Tanner?

Everything.

Everything.

Everything. You know, Subaru is mainly, but I mean, we do everything.

Everything.

We've done rotaries, Evos, Subaru is mainly. We did the Corolla, the GR Corolla, you know, everything. Doesn't matter. Mainly Subarus, but Subaru is primarily.

Sandwiches. They're all sandwiches.

How did you and Mark get linked up?

Mark was a fanboy of me. You're not.

You're honestly not wrong, dude.

I remember why, like the first video I ever watched you do was you swapping injector. You were like, the first time you ever swapped an injector in like 2018, like 2019, 18, 19, 19. Because you were like one of the few Subaru influencer media people that like I could actually relate to.

I'm a normal person. Yeah, right.

I was like, oh, this dude has no f****** clue what he's doing and neither do I. So I'm going to watch him struggle so that someday I can do that. Yeah. And then I start working for CommentsMate3. And the first thing I did, dude, we got the first.

So you're watching him like way back.

Yeah, I was watching him before I ever worked on Super Super.

We had like maybe, I don't know, maybe 300 subs on YouTube.

I started. I think you had six thousand when I started.

Sorry, potentially.

It was small.

I want to say that maybe less. I don't remember.

I think it was less because because I was doing the injector videos and everything else prior before doing the video that kind of like popped off the channel, which was the how to make a super reliable video. Someone was like, I took it all off. But before that, it was like the injectors and the DIY and solve everything else.

I remember the video where you quit your job.

Well, why did you quit your job? What was the job?

I was a product manager for a biochemical company where we made cleaning products that would clean up like oil spills and stuff like that. It was okay, but I hate sitting at a desk for X amount of hours per day. And also I was not a huge fan of my boss. Like my boss and I did not, we are on two totally different personality level, we just did not get along. So like, you know that feeling. I'm sure most people can really get that feeling Sunday night, 5 p.m. where you're like, f***, dude, I got to go back to work. I was like, I don't want to go Sunday. Scary. Yeah, yeah. I used to get those and then the opportunity came up where I started making a little bit of money on YouTube, but I had my house at the time. So I was like, f*** it. I'm going to sell my house. Matt was kind enough to let us rent a house or rent a room from him. So I sold my house and then just went all in on the YouTube stuff and lived with that.

What was the Zillow on that house?

What is your house worth?

I think it was like $350 or something.

You sold that house though. It's probably double that now.

Yeah, it went up. I mean, you sold that at a bad time.

Yeah, well, we didn't know. Hindsight's 2020.

Yes, it was 2020.

No, literally. So you do see the irony in you clean up oil spills now anyway, right?

Oh, we prevent the oil spills. Yeah, we don't have to clean them up. We stop them from happening.

And it's more power steering at this point.

Yeah, it's primarily power steering.

It's always power steering.

That's always the thing.

So I started working with Compto23 and first production batch of stuff that we got, the seal installers, like the flywheel locker, like early 2022. First thing I did was I shipped it all to you because I was like, all right, well, he's still use that stuff to this day. Yeah, same ones, probably. I remember I was like, this dude is like, obviously coming up. He's gone a wave. He's kind of like the only relatable influencer at the time I can remember. Take all the stuff, do with it what you will, but just have it. Yeah. And yeah.

So how do we get there, right? So you, at that point, before you quit your job, did you just want to start a channel for fun? Or how exactly would you get there?

I remember I was watching, I was watching all these other YouTube channels and I was like, I literally, I sat there, I was like, I want to go make videos. So we went to Best Buy, I bought a little Canon M50. I just started making videos. I was like, I want to do this. So I just went and did it. And that's the thing, a lot of people overthink when it comes to doing the YouTube stuff. It's like, oh my God, I have to go out and buy it. Perfect example, if somebody wants to start a podcast, I'm sure you'll tell them the same thing. You don't have to go out and buy all this crazy equipment.

I'm dealing with that right now with a friend.

Yeah, literally just go out. It was like a $400 camera and $150 kit lens. I just went out back in the shop and if you go back to the very first YouTube video that I posted, the camera is literally tilted like 45 degrees to the side. It's not centered at all. My audio is terrible. You can't hear what I'm saying, but it's like the only way you're going to get to doing it is just do it.

So I just started doing it.

And right around what timeframe was that at that point? Like when you started everything?

2019.

2019, okay, so yeah, right around, yeah.

It was like June of 2019.

Okay, do you remember the day? No. Oh, okay, that would have been funny. Okay, so you start that. At that point, are you making money off the YouTube channel and you quit the job then or something else?

At the time, I was. So I was doing YouTube for fun for probably eight months before I even start making money off of it. And that's the thing that a lot of people think. They're like, oh, I'm going to start this YouTube channel. I'm going to make all this money like right away and immediately. And that's not necessarily the case. You have to, A, even to be able to monetize, you have to have a thousand subs and four thousand watch hours within. I think it's like 12 months. Yeah, yeah, something. I think it's 12 months. But I wasn't doing it for the money when I first started doing it. I was doing it for fun just because I wanted to.

And that was still Subaru content?

Yeah, it was all Subaru content. It was it was with the same car doing the same stuff. It was just doing my thing in my little garage that I had at the time. And then it got to the point where I was making some money. It wasn't enough to fully be able to be like, all right, I'm going to quit my job and do everything. Hence why I sold my house to reduce overhead and everything else, which looking back on it, I'm glad I did it. But that's the thing is it's also a gamble because you don't know if it's going to pay off or not.

But yeah, dude, it's so funny to sit here and be like, yo, I sold my house so I could post videos on the internet. Like in hindsight, that sounds insane. It does. But I mean, it seems to work out for you as well.

I'm sure you probably- It's some crazy drive.

All my friends thought I was stupid when I did it. And they've all told me, Eric and all them.

I didn't think you were stupid, but I mean, you also came and lived with me. And you were super good friends. And I was just like, cool. From living together in the apartments to you then selling your house and moving in, I was like, hell yeah. My best friend gets to live with me. I get to see him every day. It was fun without us planning it out and driving places.

But yeah, I remember the other, like the rest of our friends, dude, they were like, this is stupid. Why are you doing this?

So you got the American dream.

I was like, yeah, I mean, I had a house, I had a good job and whatnot and everything else like that. But it's like, I called it like the golden handcuffs where you're like, okay, you have the house, you have all this stuff, but then you get locked into it. And you're like, that's your life. Yeah, unless you wanna change it, you just do it.

You sell your house, you're posting to the internet, you're making a little bit of money, you move with Matt.

Yeah, I think at the time when I moved in with Matt, I was maybe making $1,000 a month off of YouTube.

Okay, yeah, he wasn't doing anything crazy because I remember that was also when you started live streaming more.

Yeah.

And that was the point from like an outside perspective.

We had two live streams per week, every week for like three years.

And I used to watch it. And like the point where I was like, damn dude, like this is actually like working out really well for him. And it was kind of the epiphany moment. We had a live stream and you got like, I mean, he used to get little donations here and there.

And I would never ask for donations. I just want to throw that out there.

And then out of nowhere, we had this live stream where he got like $1,200. Well, it was like the first one was like $800 to $900. Yeah. Off like, I mean, maybe an hour long stream.

Yeah. That's crazy.

Like nothing crazy. And everybody was just like, yeah, you're like you're live streaming. We're so excited. And he was just like donation after donation coming in. I'm just sitting here on the side like also. And I'm like, dang, dude, what is happening right now?

Well, it's like, well, I do the live streams because it's nice to be able to. And I wish I still had the time to be able to do is just the time aspect. I don't have the time anymore.

Yeah.

I'd like to be able to get back to that, but it was like, I'd go on though. Now that I have Instagram live streaming backs, meadow, stop banning me from f****** live streaming. Now that I have that back, I can do it again, but it's primarily to go on there, answer people's questions with their cars, like help them try to diagnose or troubleshoot stuff just to hang on talk.

Real quick, rotate this toward you a little bit, just a smidge.

Kind of a smidgen, perfect.

Rapid fire answers on live stream too.

Yeah.

And you get some wild questions.

That is crazy, because when I'm on the live streams too, and especially I brought this up so many times, but there was one time, because dude, I'm awkward as hell on live streams, I don't like it, I don't like reading the comments, I am not that quick with, Tanner is fast as hell, reads a comment, instant translate, spits it out. And I will sit there and dude, I get so, I don't know if it's ADD or what, but I look at it and I just go blank. You're just like, look at these letters. There was one time where we had a live stream, and dude, it was just going crazy, and there were a ton of people commenting, Tanner's rapid fire reading them off, and then out of nowhere he's like, oh dude, I got a package, hey Matt, you got this.

Yeah, UPS had a package I had to go sign for, and I was like, I'll be back, and I was like, Matt, you got this.

Dude, you straight dipped, and I'm like, uh, and that was the first time out of high school or anything, where I genuinely got straight up nervous, and I was like, dude, I'm shaking, and I'm seeing all of the things, and everybody's like, oh, he's gonna choke, and I was like, and I'm just like, oh, God.

I came back.

Yeah, you did.

Was it weird for you, as his YouTube stuff grew, for your garage to be pretty famous? No. Because I don't think anyone realized it was your house.

I told everyone.

Yeah, well, even after that, so many people, because nobody falls along every little step, so they don't really realize it. But no, I mean, it was fun.

Because what all happened to your house? We had the RX7, we had the Turbo, EJ33, the BRZ.

So in order, it was the EJ STI, the Turbo, BRZ, the EG33 STI, Karma, the FD.

The hatch.

Who? Or the hatch.

Whatever the, yeah, Turbo, BRZ.

There were six or seven cars. Gunther, Gunther, the Golf R.

Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. Well, did he ever make it in the garage or was it always in the streets?

Yeah, no, he made it in there a couple of times. We had Gunther for a solid month before he ate a Spark.

The SRT4 was off to the side.

Yeah.

Chewy.

RIP.

Yeah.

Mittens.

Yeah.

You know, I still think it's funny, more people know Mittens over Chewy, but that's a story for a different day. Yeah.

Was it weird for you to be like, oh, my garage is like...

No. I mean, honestly, that was a fun aspect of it, because we'd go in there and it was just like two friends just doing whatever. I think the only weird thing about it is people associated my garage as Tanner's garage more. So there would be a ton of times where people were like, dude, it's so cool. You get to work in Tanner's garage.

I told people every time, it's Matt's house. Yeah.

Dude, that's so awesome. You get to do that.

You're so lucky, bro.

Yeah. It's freaking awesome, man. Yeah. That's probably the only weird part of it, but everything else is fun.

When you start throwing stuff off of clips, what's the goal with the channel? Are you trying to be like, there is no goal.

It's always been the same thing. It's just like, I like to film building my car. Just do whatever the car is. Just doing whatever I want to do. It's not like I have a goal of like, oh, I have to hit a million subscribers. Oh, I have to go do this build. Because if I only bought cars that would do well for views on YouTube, I wouldn't enjoy it. I wouldn't have fun with it. I wouldn't be authentic. Because I could do that. I buy cars that I know are not going to perform well on YouTube. But I want it. Why do you think I buy back to back to back to back Subarus? I like Subarus. It's like, how many times is this guy going to build the same car over and over and over again? I genuinely like the cars. That's why I continue to build them. It's like, if I really want to...

This is my last EJ car.

Shut up, Mark.

If I genuinely wanted to just build a channel for views, I would do the, let's go buy a supercar off Copart and fix it.

Yeah.

Method that is guaranteed views on YouTube.

Weren't you looking at C8s earlier?

I don't want a C8. He said, I don't mind the C8s. If I got a Corvette, it would be a C6 or a C7. Ideally, a C7 over a C6.

You're the first guy to EJ swap a C8 off a Copart.

It's not worth the money. I don't want to do it though. See, that's the thing. Yes, it would get views, but I don't want to do it.

It's kind of weird. Who knows what's going to get views now because it's so saturated too.

Yeah.

It's like you...

And I think that this is going to be the future of YouTube is the people that stay authentic to what they want to do because the people that just view farm for... I'm not saying there's anything wrong with view farming. Obviously, get your bag, get your money, do whatever you want to do. But I think the people who are authentic and true to the hobby and enjoy doing what they do are going to be around a lot longer than those are just doing it for the views. They're going to get burnt out. They're going to be like, I don't want to keep doing this. I could build 200,000 Subarus and keep going. I don't know why I like it. I'm a masochist. I just enjoy it.

Yeah, I personally feel like there's been this giant wave in car culture, influence or whatever, where at the beginning, everybody started like you guys. I just like doing this super relatable. I could go do that in my garage. Then we saw this giant peak of what's going to get built and no shade on Stanceworks or whatever, but building an F40 from a bunch of parts you found, I will never do. I will watch you do it, that's cool, but I don't relate to that at all. Then you have all these dudes buying hypercars, supercars and all that stuff. It doesn't really interest me as I get older.

That's cool. Don't get me wrong. I have my RS6 and I have a couple other things here and there, but I don't fundamentally do those on the channel because I know it's not something that's relatable for everybody. I go out when I buy it.

Yeah, I just want to play with my s*** box Subaru.

Well, that's the thing with having the Audi and whatnot. It's something different for me to work on. I don't film everything I do on the other because it's something different for me to work on that's outside of what I normally do, but I enjoy doing what I normally do, so I'll film that stuff. But it's like this sense of connectivity. It's like if I can do it, you can do it type of deal and anyone can go out and buy a $10,000 s*** box Subaru and do any of the stuff that I can do.

I feel like that's what automotive YouTube is starting to come back.

That's what it used to be.

Everybody's got a Huracan these days.

Cool.

Or a diamond doesn't if you got billions of dollars. I don't care. I know it is cool. Like restoring a s***** Subaru.

Like my 98 RS. Like most people wouldn't go to the level. Like I do it because I enjoy it. Like I took my 1998 2.5 RS completely stripped it down to a bare chassis, repainted everything, f****** redid literally everything on that car. I've been working on that car for almost two years now. I still hate it. There's still defects in it that still bothered me to this day.

There's bullet holes in it?

No, thankfully not yet. There might be by the time I'm done with it. But like that's the passion, the hobby that I think most people can relate to. It's like, hey, I have this car I want to build. If this random dude on the Internet can do it. And my shop's not big either. You don't need a massive shop to be able to build a whole bunch of stuff in. Yeah.

And I think if you were to ask like a hundred Subaru enthusiasts, like y'all, if you had all the money and time in the world, what would you build? I would build like a GC Turbo Swap, Widebody. I would build that and they watch VBW. I'd build a stage two plus VBW.

It's like a GD or GC. Someone's going to pick the older ones.

The older ones hit hard, especially nowadays because they're so hard to find not molested.

So yeah, the white one would be shame.

Shut your mouth. Nobody knows about that one yet.

It airs in like six weeks.

The white one's a shame, dude.

If anyone wants to watch it, we got like a super mint unicorn 05 STI.

They're going to wide buy it.

I wanted it really bad, but I don't have money. So now I get to watch it go to one of you guys.

So you started squatting in his garage then.

I was the biggest squatter.

So where does it go from there? You're at what, 6,000 subscribers at this point, making 1,000 a month.

Yeah, I mean, we continued to do the videos. And then, I mean, honestly, we just continued to do the videos. And I think when I moved out of his place, we were at 165,000.

I was going to say you were above 150.

Yeah, we were above.

Because it wasn't, I mean, realistically, in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't that long ago. It's been almost two years.

Yeah, like two years or so.

And he was at my house for what, four, three and a half, four years?

So obviously growing a channel from zero to what are you like, 185 now?

I think somewhere there.

Did you ever have like a viral moment where you got like a ton of subscribers or has it always just been a super Easter eggs?

Yes.

I mean, that one did make three, four, five.

So, yeah, super Easter eggs. I mean, the one that like really like jumpstarted the channel was how to make a super reliable, which I mean, at the time, looking back, there's there's a lot more that I know now that I didn't know then that I wish I could go back. Like, hey, don't say this, say that instead. But I mean, that's part of learning and whatnot. But it was like that one. So there was a lot of like older, I would call them like discussion, debate topic videos that I would do. That would just be like generalized, like appeal to everybody. But in the hindsight of things, I f****** hate making those videos, dude. I hate them, dude. It's not fun. You sit there. It's like this. It's like, I'm talking to a camera. Then you get, then you get into arguments with people in the comments. And cause everybody has a different opinion on things.

It's like, especially in the Subaru world.

Especially in the Subaru world. The bandwidth you have of being able to read the, dude, like Subaru, like some, I'm not going to say some Subaru or all Subaru owners, but some Subaru owners, the most self-deprecating people against their own community members I've ever met. It's insane. It's absolutely insane. And everybody sees it in the forums and whatnot. You can go to any comment section of any YouTube video and find it, but it's like, you only have so much bandwidth and it's just, it gets to the point where like, I'm just tired of dealing with this. I'm not going to do them anymore.

Do you engage with comments at all?

Yes, absolutely. Not a little, absolutely. There used to be a time where I would go through every single YouTube video, respond to every single comment that anybody would ever post. Ever. And I did that for years. Then it got to the point where it's like, I can't keep up doing it. So I would allocate time segments to go through the comments of the videos and go and respond to as many of them that I can.

So you, this is a question for you. You have more experience, I think, in the overall broad aspect of the car community and different groups or models or whatever. Do you think, like, is it a Subaru specific thing where people are like, I know more than, yeah, Toxic is good for it.

LS and BMW. So they're the most toxic.

Dude, BMWs though, like when I had my M3, they are the worst owners to each other.

I've met good people in both communities.

There's good people in all the communities, but like there's a larger majority of self-deprecating owners in these subgroups that attack each other. It's like you're all on the, like BMW owners, there's so much friendly fire on BMW owners against each other. It's not a real lamb, it's not an S55, whatever. I'm like, bro, you're all BMW owners. You're all the same team. I'm like, chill, super owners do the same s***.

Like for what it's worth, like super owners on the internet are one thing. All the super owners I've met at like Subaru Fest Midwest and the events and stuff, super cool in real life. But online, I'm like, I want to punch you.

I've met some Subaru, I've talked to some of these Subaru owners online and they will talk so much s*** to me. I meet them in person, they immediately backed out. Like they don't want to talk s*** to me in person. I'm like, well, just be the same person. I don't care if you're going to talk s*** to me. A person just be who you are. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They always walk up, no man, it's about what I said. It's fine.

Yeah, like just stick to your gun.

I like all your stuff.

If you're going to talk s***, talk s***.

I love the way you're saying it, that's perfect.

Okay, cool.

Like, just be genuine, just be genuine. That's it, that's all you gotta do. Yeah.

Okay, so at that point, you move out of his place, the channel's growing. When do you, do you, so you work on other people's cars as well sometimes, or no?

Yeah, so we have a performance shot.

So when did you start that?

I mean, the shop is kind of relatively new. So the way that the performance shop kind of came out is, people would email over, they'd be like, hey, I've got like this build, my order, my car blew up. Would you be willing to build a car for us? And whatnot, and be like, you know what? Yeah, and at the time I was doing, I was doing a whole bunch of these builds myself and doing the YouTube stuff. I'd film some customer stuff and I'd upload videos on it and whatnot. But it got to a point where I couldn't, I could not physically keep up with it. So that's when Matt got brought in. And now Matt kind of runs the performance side of the shop and whatnot.

I quit my job before I quit my job a couple of times. I was actually at Subaru for about 14 years and I kind of did everything there. So I started out as a tech, I was a tech for three, three and a half years. I was an advisor. So I became their senior advisor is what I moved to after being a tech. And I was that for like eight years. And then I was in sales for the last like two, two and a half years.

Okay.

Don't recommend.

So then once we got to the point, it was like, I can't physically do, I physically cannot do all these by myself anymore. So that's when Matt came in and then Matt's been, it's kind of a cool full circle though.

Like you went from bumming on his couch, whatever, to now like you guys kind of got a thing together now.

That's like a partnership that we got going on and whatnot. Ideally, I'd like to just give Matt all the performance stuff and just kind of let him run it and whatnot. But we're working toward, there's still equipment we need to get, and there's still little things that we're still working out with. Like, hey, we need to get this, or we need to change this flow of it. So it's still a learning process, but.

So it's just you two at the moment then? Okay, so then what does that look like then? Are you mostly customer facing on that front, or is that just kind of like still like somebody comes in?

On the performance shop side, it's primarily customer facing, where Matt has pretty much full control over that. The only time I will jump in is if he needs help with something, or if we have like a tight deadline, where like we had a car before we came down here to California, we were like, hey, we need to get this car done before we go to California, because it's got to go to the dyno. Yeah, so we knocked out like a full build from building a short block to the long block to getting everything done. I built the base tune for it, loaded the file up, we got it started, coolant burped, oil changed, everything good to go. We had our buddy Fernando come up, and he has a shop just south of us called FIM, where he has a Mustang dyno, and Junior flies in once a month and tunes down there. So we'll build them, and we're super close with FIM too. They do builds for people, we do builds for people. It's a pretty synapses, synonymous, unanimous. It's a good teamwork.

Dude comes to Englewood and starts rapping.

What is this word now?

Synergy. Synergy, there we go.

Synergioneous.

So that side, we have two separate shops right now. That side of the shop that Matt works in is primarily consumer and client facing, whereas my side is more the easy side. Teamwork.

Gotcha, okay. So then at that point then, are you mostly just working on your own stuff then, throughout the day? So what's that look like?

Depends on what is going on, what's on the agenda, what needs to get done. Like right now, it's been the 2.5 RS, because I just need to get the car done, because I need it out of the shop. So typically, I'll finish one build, and then cycle in the next one as I'm wrapping up that one, just to keep it going and keep it moving. So the next one that I have coming in is not even a Subaru. Ironically enough, it's our buddy's 240 that we're doing. He already has the Jay-Z installed in it, but I'm doing the wire harness for him, some fab work for him, and some other stuff. But my buddy wants to get back out and go drifting again, so we're kind of knocking out some of the stuff on that car just to help him. It'll probably be our next project to rotate back through.

So you have experience kind of beyond Subaru at that point as well. What's the...

Building a car is building a car. It doesn't matter if it's a Subaru, a Toyota, Mitsubishi, a Chevy, they all operate the same. It's all the same thing, just in a different package.

Did you always start with Subarus?

Yeah, yes.

What about as far as full tear down and build?

Yeah, as far as full tear down and build, but the cycle of how I got into cars, my first car was a 1988 Subaru XT6. I call them the wedges, super cool little 80s cars. Then I got my 350Z, went over to an 08 STI or 7 STI, and that's when the STI train cycled. And I've had probably 65 WRXs and STIs, which ironically is funny because everyone claims that they're unreliable. I'm still 65 and 0 for killing EJs. I've never killed an EJ engine.

Okay.

And I will die on the hill that they're reliable cars.

Who do you, I'm just curious, right? Cause you're on that side of the country.

EG33s though.

Oh, what's the story?

Supers are reliable.

This is not a paid sponsor. What's the story there?

My six-cylinder swapped STI as I've gone through engine after engine after engine after engine on those.

It's the exact opposite.

What's the most amount I like, I'm not even going to say miles. What's the most amount of hours you've gotten on an EG?

Like driving hours?

Like running hours? Yeah. Like driving, running. Davies.

Are we talking like base tune or like full tune? Because that matters.

Total runtime.

Total runtime? 60 hours.

What's going on?

Oh, 60 hours?

Let's not talk about that.

He had a good run where it was a started up and moved.

That's not a podcast-worthy topic.

Okay, fair enough, fair enough.

Started up and moved for like a solid month and a half.

We can talk about that one off camera. Sure.

This poor EG's.

Yeah, okay. What about when it comes to building a Subaru? What's the highest horsepower Subaru that you build, whether it's for yourself or a customer?

Subaru?

Yes.

In general, like 6-cylinder and non-6-cylinder? Well, I mean, our 6-cylinder one did 1,000 horsepower and like 900 foot-pounds of torque.

Okay, let's not talk about 6-cylinders.

If we're not talking about the 6-cylinder, we're just talking about like EJ-based. I mean, Michael's car made so much power on the dyno, it was spinning, so I mean, we couldn't get an accurate representation of how much power it made, but I'd assume high eights.

Okay, which one was that?

Michael's blue STI, it was a 68-70 car, full tilt. It was making probably mid to high eights on that one.

Yeah.

My white STI, that's going away. That one does 760, I think it is right now. So I mean, we'll do them all day between 6 and 800, no problem.

How do you make them live at that level?

You don't.

What do you mean?

No, you do. It's the keeping them together, keeping them live. It's about building them correctly. I mean, a lot of the supers that you're going to see on like Marketplace or all these other places, they're put together with shortcuts cut. If you want to do a right supers, they're not cheap cars to build. They're very expensive if you want to build them right. You're looking at, if you're paying a shop to do it, a 750 wheel build, you're probably looking at 50 to 60K with labor, machine work and everything else. It's not cheap. But I will say the driving experience on them is phenomenal. Keeping them together though, it's proper machine work. A lot of people will tell you you can't reuse EJ casehaves. Every engine we build is used casehaves. There's seasons.

Every single one season.

We take these casehaves and a lot of people get this misrepresentation that you can just take these casehaves, rebuild them without doing anything to them and send them, which is not the case. There's like two machine shops in the country that I trusted the machine work on the EJs, which you're familiar with one of them. Out front, we send all of our stuff to Jeremy. He machines them all. We send the pistons with it. Piston to wall clearance is set up. All that stuff sends it back. Then we assemble them. It's all about like bearing clearances, oil weight, proper head stud selection. As people, people try to push too much power on 11 mil head studs or half inch head studs. And it's figuring out, it's just figuring out the right recipe for the car. And then what it really comes down to is how is it cared for? Like every year, if you're treated like a race car, it's gonna act like a race car. Obviously, running a Subaru on fully E85, it's going to require maintenance sooner. And a lot of people don't understand that because people will come to us and be like, hey, I want my car to make 800 horsepower. I'm like, awesome, we can do that. You've got to do your oil changes every 1500 miles on E85. Your spark plugs every five to 10,000 miles, depending on how aggressive it is and all this other stuff. And people don't realize that they won't do it. And then obviously the car starts to develop issues. Treat it like a race car. It's gonna act like a race car. It's gonna have problems.

That's a good quote. You should get a T-shirt with that. That's a T-shirt.

Trademark.

Trademark, yeah.

It's going to have issues. I mean, at the end of the day, it's a seven to 800 wheel horsepower four cylinder.

Yeah.

Like if you want that much, and I tell people this all the time before we even start building the car, I'm like, if you want this much power reliably to last a long time, sell it and buy something else. We can't do it. And we will do it if you want us to. But like, don't be surprised if like you come up with these little issues every now.

Also, if you go and hit every light to light.

That's the other thing. A lot of people won't let IATs come down enough and they're just going to be sucking in all this hot air. Obviously, hot air inside high compression. Well, I don't want to say high compression, but you start throwing a lot of boost into it. Obviously, cylinder pressure gets higher, you have hotter air going and it's more likely to detonate one bad detonation event. It's going to take out an engine.

Are you the one doing all the tuning as well?

Yes and no, I don't I do tuning on my own stuff. I'm still learning tuning. I'm not so familiar with it where I feel confident where I can go out and like tune clients cars. I have tuned some client cars just because it's like in certain situations it's like hey, we need to get this car tuned because something came up, the tuner can't come out or something like that. So I'll step in and I'll put a base tune on it. I'll fully tune it on wastegate or spring pressure only because I don't feel comfortable or confident enough to be able to be like, hey, let's throw 60 pounds boost at this and send it there. I will say there was one customer car. I told you about this. I think I told you about this. There was one customer car. He wanted me to tune it for him. I had wastegate zeroed out on everything, so it should have just gone off of spring pressure. His car had sat for a couple of years, and his boost controller was very old. That boost controller failed on the first pull. It did all 60 pounds on the first pull. I was like, dude, that's not, nope. I was like, new boost controller, man. I let off of it as soon as I saw it. But when it comes to tuning, you have to, and I'm a very novice tuner. I'm not going to sit here and tell you, I know everything about tuning. I'm still learning, but I can tune enough to be able to start from scratch and get a car fully tuned on a wastegate.

Are you doing mostly stock ECU stuff then, or?

Stock ECU, I can work my way around to Haltech. I'm learning the Mtron stuff right now, but that is significantly more complex in the way that the Mtron operates in a stock ECU, but primarily it's stock ECU stuff.

I thought that car was on Haltech.

Which one?

The RS.

I'm not even talking about the RS. It was on a Haltech.

Have you ever yelled at a customer? Have you ever scolded him, and been like, no, stop, bad boy, sort of thing?

Yes.

Yeah.

You kind of really have to, because a lot of people just don't get it, and you'll tell them a couple of times, and they still do not get it. So you have to be like, dude, seriously, if you don't do this, this is going to happen.

We had a perfect example. We had a customer call us back the other day. We built this car a couple of months ago. This was the one that made like 850 or whatnot. He calls us, he's like, hey, how do I get anti-lag in my car? I'm like, what the f*** do you need anti-lag for? It's a stock ECU car. I'm like, what the f*** you need anti-lag for, dude? He was like, I got gapped the other day. I was like, you want anti-lag? You go to a stand-alone where you have the proper safety.

Well, you can fake it with that.

I know you can put a switch in between the IAT sensor, but there's so much.

If he's paying, I'll do it.

We won't. I told him the method. I was like, if you want to do this, it's all on you, man.

It's funny again if it messes stuff up.

With some people you do, I don't want to see you scold them, but you have to kind of hold their hand and be like, no, don't do that.

You have to educate them. Yeah, you have to say it.

I would have done it.

You would have done it? What are you gonna start tuning?

I'm working on it.

No, for like other people.

I'm working on it.

He's not gonna do that.

What?

You're not gonna do that. You're not gonna tune for other people.

I'm doing it right now for my boss.

You don't even want to tune for your own car.

I don't tune my own car. I'll put a 20G on it. I'll tune it.

On the WRX?

I don't have the WRX. Oh, what do you mean you don't have the WRX? The blue one. The black one. The black STI. Yeah, I'll put 20G on it.

Have you fixed the fender on that yet?

Why is it Piccon Mark Day?

I haven't seen it, so I can't.

Nothing's wrong with it. It's fine.

You have to see it every day. You're over there.

No, he doesn't because it's on the far side, away from his desk.

Fair enough.

That wall came out of nowhere, dude.

The wall just jumped out.

It did.

Dude, that happens sometimes. I used to get really mad when I'd work on my Neon, and I took a big-a** sledgehammer and like was doing something and could not get some part of it. I was working on some part of the suspension and I was so like fed up with that car not working for like 10 plus years. I remember I was in my garage and like something happened. It like crushed my hand and I just took the f****** hammer and threw it at the side of the car. Dude, I put a massive dent in the passenger rear door and it was instant regret. And I turned and looked at it and I was like, why did I do that?

So, it's, stuff happens, you know. That's wild.

Yeah, I didn't learn PDR, so I sold the car this last year.

That's why you sold it, isn't it?

Yeah. Shame. I sanded half of it and never finished.

Shame.

The roof looked really good, okay, but the whole left side of the car, not so much.

So, I got a question for you. If you were to line up every one of the cars you've built on your YouTube channel, so RX-7 Evo, the Audi, everything, and you can only pick one, you want to keep one. Which one's it gonna be?

No one's gonna like my answer. Well, okay, we'll hang out. I need more...

It's so honest, you could answer whatever you want.

I will answer all, but what is the car? Is it a daily, is it a project car, is it a weekend? What is the car?

You only have to keep one. What am I using it for? He gave the correct answer.

So, it's everything.

It's a working Goonther.

Honestly, I really liked the, I really liked the Golf R.

I knew it.

Well, if it was...

I did, man. I really liked it.

It's not your daily. It doesn't have to be your daily. It's like a fun car.

If it's daily driver, I'm taking my RS6. If it's weekend car, I'm taking my 2.5 RS. If it's project car, probably, weirdly enough, I'd probably take the Evo 8 back.

Really?

But all around, if there's only one, it's the Golf R.

If there's only one, it would be the 05 STI, the first iteration of Karma, when it had the FP Black. That was the best. When it was still black, still stock body, still factory BBS wheels, FP Black. That was my favorite reddition of that car.

What did it make on the black?

450 on pump. It was reliable, 450 on pump. It looked factory. It was perfect.

Yeah, it was a nice car.

And then I ruined it. And then I f****** ruined it by putting a 6062 on it, wide bodding it, wrapping it yellow and making it look like a taxi. That's where YouTube got ahold of me where I was like, dude, I'm gonna do something crazy for YouTube. Regretted it ever since. I will never do that again.

A couple years later, 6062 was a bold choice. You're the only person I've ever heard use that turbo.

It was a terrible idea. It was a bad turbo for that engine.

Still running though, isn't it?

No.

Boy, didn't the guy bring it back? It's not running anymore?

No.

What happened to it?

No, it blew up shortly after.

Oh.

Yeah, don't worry though. It's coming back for a new motor. Honestly, that engine, that was the first built motor I ever put in a car. He got like 45, 50K miles on it.

That's honestly impressive.

And that car lived at 700 wheel, 40 to 50K miles.

Yeah, with unknown maintenance and all that stuff.

This version of the car, show them that version of the STI.

Looks just like mine.

It was perfect.

That car was so clean when you got it. It was, it was, it was great.

Like it was, you know, there's that white one. Maybe you could just do 2.0.

That's the thing I've learned. You can't rebuild a car that you once had like a set feeling for you can't rebuild it. It's not the same. It's never the same, dude.

I don't know about the G the wingless GD STI.

It's trash.

I could go either. No, it's definitely not trash.

I like, I like them.

There are, there are certain wingless guy.

That's right. Yeah.

There are certain iterations of wingless GD STI's that I'm okay with, like the carbon fiber with the little lips where they're like, I think that's pretty good. But like overall, factory wing is my thing.

I don't know. I'm kind of going back on Gunther again, man. I really liked that Golf R.

Really?

It was a Mark 7, right?

Yeah, it was a Mark 7.

No one is going to like that answer.

I don't care.

Personally, I like that answer. I, it's a good car.

It's like our GTI, you had a Mark 7 GTI. We still have our Mark 7 GTI. That car has been like the most problem-free car we've ever had.

I only had a couple problems with mine.

We've had small stuff like timing cover was leaking. That easy fix. I mean, basic maintenance, I don't know what not.

I have the eight, which is grown on me. That's grown on me. The electronics are rough.

Honestly, the Mark 7 and Mark 7.5 Golf R's are just so good. As an all-around car, they are so good.

If I can get a 7.5, like I genuinely thought about selling my Mark 8 to go get a 7.5. I would.

I do the 7 point, they look better. They're more basic on the interior, but they still have enough tech where you still feel like it's updated enough. They're so good.

I will say the Mark 8's interior, all the Subaru people just clicked off this podcast, but the 8's interior is awesome. The only issue I really have is sometimes I just lose my infotainment. It just goes black and disappears.

R7 does that every now and then too. I didn't know that. If we want to tie this back in the Subaru, my newer, when I had my 2023 WRX would do the same s***. Infotainment would just go away.

Volvo that we're renting, we lost all audio yesterday. Yeah, it's a 2026, we're the second renter.

Yeah, it's like, nope, it's gone.

It's 700 miles, having issues already.

Volvo's don't have problems ever, so that's super weird.

Are you kidding?

The Volvo I had down in North Carolina, the one I rented in North Carolina, I got lost out for 10 minutes. I couldn't get back into it for 10 minutes. Yeah, I got locked out of it. I tried everything, I couldn't get back into it.

Weirdly enough, you know what car never gave me a single problem?

What?

Never was my M3. That thing never gave me, talking about like, sell it at E92, right? No, it was an F80.

F80?

Never gave me a single issue, ever.

Which is amazing from when you bought it and it was all hot-boiled out.

Yeah.

I would have guessed it.

It's like any car that I buy is always hot-boiled out. I love this car. I'm never going to get rid of it.

Tanner Smith, 2026.

Actually, no. Here's the thing.

The following day, what is this?

So I got rid of the BMW.

Matt can vouch for me on this. The average time that I will typically hold a car well before even YouTube was what, six months?

If, yeah.

Well before, and people are like, Oh my gosh.

That's the point where me and all the rest of your friends would be like, Good job.

This is normal.

Yeah.

Hey, you're kidding me.

But everyone on YouTube is like, Oh, you just got bored of this car. You got rid of it. Ever since I've been into cars, the average lifespan of an average car for me is like six to eight months. And then it cycles out for a new one. There are very few that make it past that.

Just a car whore.

I like variety. There's nothing wrong with that.

I'm devoted to my favorite was when I got the Maserati.

And now I had to deal with all the old men that were hitting on me.

That was weird. That was weird. Out of all the cars, OK, out of all the cars Tanner's ever owned, there was a point where he traded in there. OK, there's a point where the whole YouTube process of Smedia this was right. Not it became a thing because right before he fully pursued YouTube, he sold blue the 17 SDI, the one he traded it in on a Maserati Gran Turismo.

Oh, really?

Yeah, I traded blue in, I gave it to the dealer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and then in that you only had that car for like three or four days.

I had it two weeks because the dealership messed up on the paperwork and they called me. They're like, hey, we need you to pay us an extra $5,000 or bring us our car back. I said, give me my Subaru back. You can have this thing back because I'm not giving you additional $5,000.

Which is the whole reason why the whole thing unbound.

Yeah, which is they unbound the deal. They took the Gran Turismo back, which honestly, I'm glad because I had buyers remorse after buying that thing after a little while. Because I was like, f***, dude, if this thing ever has issues, I have to go to Ferrari because it had the stupid Ferrari engine in it. So I was like, I'll happily take the Subaru back. So I just had this Gran Turismo for like two weeks and I got the SDI back. And then that's when I started doing the YouTube channel stuff because I had blue modified before on the channel. And then I parted out, put it back to stock, traded it in. And then got it back. I was like, well, we're starting with fresh slate.

What about the, you said men were heading on you in this Maserati?

So, okay, so it was.

I like how that's what you focus on.

Oh yes, it was so awkward because we would go anywhere. And for some reason, like, okay, if two people walk out of a car, I don't know if Tanner gives off more, I drive a Maserati Energy, but like we would both get out of the car or we'd both park somewhere and you'd be walking out. And for some reason, like 60 plus year old men would just pop out of the woods and be like, is that your car?

Bro, they would spawn in.

How did you get that? Where did you get that? How much does that cost? Is that a Maserati? How did you get that? How old are you? What do you do for work? And like all of them would freak out and I would just sit there like, Oh my God.

Bro, this was a depreciated, like 2014 Gran Turismo. It was like a 30K car. It wasn't even expensive.

Yeah.

These 60 year old men that we love.

It was the most awkward, weird, like out of their Corvettes. Everywhere we went.

Dude, they'd just come over and be like.

Dude, it was so, so what do you do for a living? It was so weird. There has not been another car that you have driven that has done that.

It's never attracted 60 plus year old men.

No, and it was so weird. I never would have guessed. It was weird. Don't ever, okay. People watching do not ever get a Maserati unless you want 60 plus year old men. Some people like that.

I just got one off Carvano. It'll be dropped off at my house by the time I'm home.

Go rent one for like two days and tell me what happens. It's weird.

Okay, so if I had to go get a Subaru, right? Because I've been here at Carboy Company 23 for a little while now. Which one should I get?

What are you using it for?

Weekend race car, daily driver.

Otherwise, daily driver. I'm going to tell you to get 18 to 21 SDI weekend car, 05 to 07 SDI. Or if you want a good mix of both, I'm going to tell you an 11 to 14 SDI. Hatchback horse today and whatever your flavor is. The 19 plus or the best day. Obviously, they have the most updated tech. I'm not going to say the engines better because it's always, it doesn't matter with stock. It's the same engine, but with those engines, it's a toothpick pull. It's like one might last, one might not. I've seen factory EJs go 320,000 miles unopened. I've seen other ones go 5,000. But then again, it also no rhyme or reason. And well, people tell us like, oh, you know, I was just merging on the freeway and I was getting up to 60 and my car just pulled.

Always, always.

That's the same story every single time.

Literally.

I don't believe them.

I was cruising on the freeway as in 6X Gear.

Well, here's the thing, what people don't understand is like when they bring us their cars, we can plug into it and see all the data in the black box. We can see what your highest RPM was. We can see what your max speed was. No, we can do it on EJs too. We can do it on everything. We can see all the black box data. We can even, You money shifted. We can see it.

It's like, I don't know how EJs captured that. I thought it was only FF.

EJs capture it too. And the thing is, is they think they can hide this information.

I think Dimitri from Prime had a rant about that last week on his YouTube channel. Yeah, he's like, yeah, OK, you got on the highway and you would, I just accelerated 60. Dude, it's literally, oh, you did 125.

Just be honest, like you blow up the car, you blow up the car. It's whatever. It's fixable.

What's the highest RPM you've seen?

I think 11,000.

I was going to say over 10.

Yeah, it's been over 10.

You can see clearly in the black box data when they money shift.

Yeah, it doesn't go that high. You don't use an access port for it. We have a scan tool where we can plug in and pull all this black box data.

Well, did I show you my FA? The red line is 6,800, I think, and they saw 92.

And it'll tell you, when you pull the data, it'll tell you at what RPM, at what time stamp, at what odometer. It'll tell you each of these values.

Dude, my WRX, someone hit 9200 RPM and it was like 140 miles an hour, at like 1500 miles an hour.

Like, oh my God.

Because it's still going. Because that's the thing that a lot of Subaru owners will try to do is they'll blow up, they'll modify their cars, blow it up, realize that they can't afford to fix it, take it to the dealership or revert it back to stock, take it to the dealership, not realize the dealership can plug into it. There are PID numbers and all this other stuff in the ECM that when you tune the car, it changes that number permanently. It does not match what the record is from Subaru. So they can literally plug in and be like, this car was tuned. We're not honoring the warranty. Then people freak out on Subaru like it's Subaru's fault.

So, Matt, you were a service advisor. How many Subi bros did you have come in, and they were like, this has been stocked the whole time, man. Like, you guys plug into the ECU, I'm sure you can see.

It's a solid, like, three out of four STIs that would come in blown up.

That's a high percentage.

No, really, and like, even, I mean, I would have, like, talks with them, too, and be like, hey, dude, this is how... I mean, I was very much kind of a people's advocate, which got me in trouble a lot when I was senior advisor, but you kind of, you chat with the people, and you're like, dude, this is, if you're looking to get this warrantied, this is kind of the route you have to go. You have to call Subaru customer service, explain what happened, be an advocate for the brand, and kind of understand it's very unlikely that they're going to cover it.

Yeah, you just said, just be honest.

And dude, it was like the half-assed kind of try and cover up, because you'd have where people would have their access port wires still plugged in, so they had the wiring, but no access port in the car at all. I'm like, I don't know what happened, man. And then it has the stock tune back on, which kind of going back to that, a lot of people don't get that even when you revert back to like, oh, I unmarried the access port, oh, it put the stock tune back on. It's not the stock tune, because Cobb saves a version of the stock map parameters. And when it goes back on, it's still a Cobb number. So it's still essentially a Cobb tune. It's non-Subaru number on there. So we look at it and immediately it's like, what is that? What did you do? So for the longest time, like you would sit there and you'd be like, hey, I get the fact that like this is this and that's that. But you'd kind of have to tell people like, if we go to tear down and like we determine it's your fault, or like Subaru comes out and they pull this black box data like they have to before they do a warranty, and they see like, yeah, this is obviously this guy's fault, or yeah, it was tuned. You're kind of SOL or at the mercy of Subaru deciding to do a goodwill.

Yeah.

And so yeah, I mean, three out of four.

The Subaru ever goodwill it?

Yeah. Sometime.

Yeah, and I mean, it greatly depends on a lot of factors, because I mean, I've seen ones where I really hope they made goodwill it, and they were like kid F dude, like sorry, and the guy's only like 26,000 miles, but it was like modified as heck. Yeah. You know, and returned back to stock. We're like somebody that's genuine and they like admitted, yeah, okay, if you guys can warranty this awesome, if not, I totally understand. And then I've seen them come through and like, we'll do a one time goodwill. Like where we are essentially telling you, this was not under water, like just so you're aware. We don't have to do this, but we're being nice. And this is, everybody gets one, this is your one. Congrats, don't screw it up again.

I'm honestly amazed they would even do that because it's not cheap to put a new engine in it.

No, especially at the dealer.

Like, I don't care who tunes it, if it's a junior, anybody knows really what they're doing. It's still tuned, it was never meant to make a hundred more horsepower than stock.

No.

Why would I warranty it?

I totally agree with Subaru denying them.

Yeah, if I was Subaru, I wouldn't goodwill.

I mean, no.

So I wouldn't goodwill it.

That's the other thing, is people think that they should honor a warranty on a car that's tuned. I'm like, if I sold a car from scratch and I sold it to you with a very specific tune on it, you change that tune and you blow it up, why in the f*** would I warranty that?

Yeah, right, right. It doesn't matter who tunes it. I mean, the best tuner in the world, still, I mean, it rolled out of the warranty with...

Well, like we talked about earlier, one bad knock event can take out any engine.

Yeah, exactly.

There's other things we've talked about with customers and stuff in the past and then even presently each time we kind of have a consultation with people where one of the most common things that we hear from like super enthusiasts that are looking to build their car or looking to modify their car, they're like, well, I don't want it to affect my warranty. And so...

Yeah, I'm like, don't touch it.

I'm gonna wait until I'm outside of warranty to start modifying the car. And then I always sit there and I'm like, dude, if you're gonna wait, like what's the plan? So you're expecting it to fail before the warranty, so you can get one replacement. And then you're gonna start modifying it. Like if it doesn't have a warranty replacement, you're gonna start modifying a tired engine. Because it's like, if I had a race horse and I was like, I'm gonna enter you in the Kentucky Derby, but you're like, I don't... Okay, honestly, I don't know how old horses live to be. But you're close to dead.

25? Yeah, it's like 20 to 25.

We'll say 20, edit this out.

I don't know anything about horses.

If your race horse is like 22...

And then you're like, in the Derby, you go.

Yeah, there you go, go in.

Yeah, I'll get them sparking. I've never once understood the like, I'll wait till it's out of warranty to modify. Like, you modify it anyway.

Because you're like, I'll chase it anyway.

This goes for you too, because you're doing the same thing.

You saw the oil leak under mine though.

Okay, but in theory, even if it was tuned or not, that's a different story, like an oil leak.

An external, a tune is not going to affect an external leak.

I'm like, honestly, yeah, you should take that back and get a warranty, but I never understood that like, I've made the decision on modifying my car, I'm gonna wait till after warranty.

Yeah. Or here's the other thing, if you're going to wait till after warranty, start buying the parts while you're still in warranty, so when you're out of warranty, you have everything ready.

I don't get paid enough for that.

You will after this podcast goes live.

You don't have to, well, that's the thing, you don't have to buy everything at once. I like your turbo, save up by your turbo, save up by your up pipe or whatever it may be, just buy the parts over time.

He's sitting over here with the GTI, all he's got to do is tune in.

Downpipe tune 500.

Triple the horsepower, yeah.

I don't need a downpipe, I can make 100 horsepower already. I just just, bloop.

Stupid Germans don't have to work for it.

Yeah, like, actually I'm curious, because I was talking about this today with my friend Shawn, who has an RS6. What does the RS6 make with just a downpipe and a tune?

I don't know, I don't have downpipes. I can tell you that with intakes, a turbo, from what I have done, intakes are intake, turbo inlets, cat back in E40, it's like eight something. With a tune, it's like eight something.

Are they like 620 stock or something?

Like 591. Yeah. Downpipes, I mean, I've seen things vary. I've talked to different people, but it seems like the general consensus is once you add like downpipes and whatnot, you can get mid-sevens.

Yeah, I support this consensus. My neighbor has an SQ8 that's literally flash tuned. See, okay, somebody who's like, it makes 700 on our 91 s*** gasoline in Wisconsin, it's dumb.

As somebody who's in like a huge Subaru lover, that is one thing that I genuinely love about my RS6 is it makes so much power and it makes it so reliably. I don't have to get in. I don't worry when I get in it. Like I know I can go out and I can beat the piss out of this thing.

How many miles have you put on?

Like 5,000 in six months. I love driving. It's so much fun. But like that's the thing is like in a if I'm hopping in like an 800 wheel Subaru, I'm like, f*** dude, every little noise I hear.

Yeah, that's a different story.

I'm like, this is a little stressful. Whereas if I get in the Audi, it's like it'll do it all day long without any issue. And this is going back to what I was saying earlier, like if people want this higher reliable horsepower, I tell them before we even build the car, spend the money, like buy something else. Yeah, like we like we have told a handful of cut. There's a one customer we have. He's put so much money in the Subaru. Like, dude, I really just want to see stuff. And I'm like, stop putting money in the Subaru. Go buy the C7, dude. There's another customer who's been through a couple of different setups. And he's like, man, I really want like a G80 or something and just make this power easier. I'm like, get rid of the Subaru, go do it. Like as a huge Subaru lover, I will 100% advocate if people want more power reliably out of a car and they want like that seven, eight, 900 range, I'm gonna tell them to go buy a different car. Like they're not like, if you want like a Subaru, like my 2.5 RS, that car is built out to the f****** tooth. You can do anything you can do to Subaru has been down to this thing. That car will not be tuned past 600 wheel because it will live forever at 600 wheel. It is capable of doing significantly more, but that car will live forever at 600 horse power. And that's a lot of things that people don't understand is like Subarus have these like power ranges that they like to live in.

Okay, what are these individual part like tiers like stages?

400 to 450 perfect street car. You can do that on pump gas E85. No problem. Obviously, if you do it on E85, it's going to be a little bit more reliable. You get a little bit better knock resistance. 500 to like 550. You can do that easily. You can do it with stock location or rotated depending on what you're talking.

EJs, by the way, right? Just EJs.

Strictly EJ25s, EJ20s are a little bit different because it takes a little bit more to get them up there because they just don't have the displacement for it. But we're talking strictly just for power targets. Some people are like, oh, I have a 2.0 and I want X amount of power. I'm going to tell them go to a 2.5. Just go to a 2.5. 600, like that is you want your Subaru to last forever. 600 wheel. It'll live forever there. Rotated setup. Because obviously, if I'm not telling people to run the biggest turbo they can on these cars, but obviously, the larger the turbo you can run, the less boost pressure you have to run because you can move more air. So you have a lower cylinder pressure. Lower cylinder pressure means happy engine. When you start getting these cylinder pressures that are so extreme, especially with Subarus with EGT issues, especially on cars that still want unequal-length manifolds because they want the Subaru Rumble, you get this heat build up on bank cylinder 2 and 4. The runners are just longer in nature on those unequal-length ones. So you get heat build up in those and then more detonation and everything else like that. So it's like, and that's what we talk about. There's these formulas, there's these equations we have. You want this power, you use these parts. You want this power, you use these parts. So it's like we already know the parts to make this power. And then we, with some customers, we run into these issues where they're like, well, I want to use, I want to use these parts instead. I'm like, we could do it, but like, I can't guarantee you anything.

It's like when they start mixing and matching.

Yeah. Yeah.

Cause it's like, we have a formula we've kind of built over the years of doing this so many times. That's like a tried and true method.

Yeah.

We're like, it's clean.

It's the easiest part.

I hate calling it cookie cutter, but I mean, Subaru built at this point, they are cookie cutters.

It's just tried and true at this point. You know, it's like the stuff that we know and we can basically guarantee like, yeah, we're going to get the power you want at the reliability you want because we've done it over the years, put this hundreds of times at this point, all these different engines, we know it works. And yeah, without somebody like, well, I want to use this specific intake and I like how this looks. And no, it's, I like to look at this part more.

And you're like, or this one's $20 cheaper. I'd rather go to some like, stop, just go with the list.

$20 cheaper part than we have to do.

Like, I don't care if you want to buy the parts or if you want us to order the parts for you, just buy the parts on this list. These exact ones.

What's that? So actually, I'm really happy Mark walked away for this one. What's the perfect Subaru oil change interval?

On pump gas 3000 miles on E85 1500.

Okay.

And the main thing is just making sure you have oil.

Okay.

It's also using the correct oil grade.

You're walking away from me by the way.

It's also the correct oil grade.

Yeah, fine. I can't wait to edit that.

Because it's like some people will just randomly pick an oil. They'll go to the store, they'll just randomly pick an oil and throw it in their car, especially with built motors. I'm like, consult the person who built the engine because each engine is built to different tolerances. Like if we have a customer and we're building an engine for 400 horsepower and we're building an engine for 800 horsepower, the tolerances are going to be different between those two engines. Because obviously they're going to see different levels of abuse. It's like the tolerance is going to be different. The oiled grade that we're going to recommend is going to be different. So don't just go to the store and pick some random oil grade because you read on a random forum that this is what so-and-so told you to use.

2050, baby.

In some cases, yes.

No, never.

There are some cases I use 2050.

There are no.

What's the case where you use 2050?

If it's loose.

Okay.

If it's a looser tolerance to do something that's going to see more track abuse. And I mean, we have different things where we'll like, we'll build different tolerances, even if they're the same horsepower, based on the use case of how somebody's going to use that.

If it's a street car, it's going to be a little bit tighter. So that way you don't get as much blow by, but it's not going to be living at such extreme abuse as the one that's going to be beating the s*** out of every day.

Well, tolerances, you're talking about specifically though. So there's a lot.

There's really not that many tolerances.

Main bearing, rod bearing, piston to wall, head to cylinder, valve to piston, ring gap, valve clearance.

Keep going.

I preferably like to set the valve to piston clearance.

Cylinder deck height. That is one thing I've always been curious about.

Okay, so this is how typically any tolerance that is going to be machinable tolerance, we let Outfront take care of. Because obviously they have the tooling, they have the machines, they're the ones doing the machine work. So we let the machine shop obviously set stuff up like that. If it's a specific case used where we're like, hey, we're looking for this or we're looking for that, we'll tell them in advance and they'll get it done. The main ones that we focus on, main bearing, rod bearing, rings, those are going to be the major three. Everything else we typically let the machine shop handle. Because there's no point in us doing it. We don't have the machines to be able to adjust.

They can't line up on anything or do any of that.

Yeah, that's one thing I've always wondered though, is everybody in the Subaru world, obviously decks their heads a bunch, right? Like every time they come apart, they get decked.

Yeah, obviously the more you deck it, the more it's going to change compression ratio because you're changing it. But you can compensate that with a thicker head gasket or a thinner head gasket, depending on what compression ratio you're trying to achieve. I mean, there's workarounds, or if you deck it too much and then your timing belt's too short, you can get the adjustable idlers that can pull slack out of the belt. I mean, there's always workarounds around it.

Yeah, I mean, me for example, deck, get the heads deck, OEM head gasket, meh, send it.

In both cases, that's the other thing.

That's fine.

Smeedia, let's talk about Subaru head gaskets. That's another thing is everybody always assumes that the factory head gasket is so bad. We will 100% always use the factory head gasket in every situation that we can, unless it absolutely requires us to use a fire ring or a fire lock for very specific use cases. But the factory MLS gaskets from Subaru are so good.

You ever use the factory head gasket on a closed deck block? All the time.

Yeah, all the time. All the time. We've done plenty of cars making 750 plus on factory head gaskets.

What are the head gasket options like very high level these days? We have obviously the OEI one.

You're gonna have like your standard MLS and then yeah, you have the fire ring.

You got the firing, you got the copper ring.

Yeah, you can either.

Cause there's the Athena with like the three ribbies.

Well, you can machine the head block and run an actual copper ring in there. You can buy the Athena which has the slip in ring, which will compress down or there's MLS. Like that's really it.

Yeah. And the Athena one.

I don't like using the Athenas when I don't have to. It's a great head gasket, but it does dig into the head and the block quite a bit that you're machining a good bit out.

Basically does the same thing as copper O-ring without actually machining.

No, because the copper over the groove. No, no. Cause the copper O-ring, you have the groove machined in. Yeah, but it's not going to dig like these copper rings on the Athena's.

That's what I'm saying. It kind of accomplishes the same thing with a metal.

Yeah, but without eating into the head.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Because you're machining out a good bit on those. Like we've taken a couple of part in this. It's a couple of thou that you're taking out the head every time, which I mean, in a race car, if you're if you're going, if you're just trying to go as fast as you can, you don't care because you're going to buy new heads anyways, eventually. But for the average person, just like a fire, a fire lock ring like that isn't always the answer.

So that is another for like a street car. That's where we would recommend it.

OK, Mark, have have your time to shine.

And now it's a mark.

That is actually a pet peeve of my when you're like, oh, race car. Yeah, 99 percent of the actual track. Now I'm speaking, I'm going to bed. Ninety nine percent of these consumers go to Target. They go to Walmart. They go to work. Yeah. How many people actually have ever actually tracked their car or dedicated track car? One percent of the one percent.

That's about right. I mean, when I go to Texas, OK, there's no Subarus.

It's just I'd say I realize I'd probably say one to three percent of Subarus, like have been to a track or get tracked.

Well, gone to a track, I would probably say 10 percent. Actually specific like track car based ones, I would say one to maybe five.

It's got to be one percent of one percent.

It's not a huge percentage.

Like I'm talking about like stripped out cage, like race cars.

The word race car has been thrown around so much over the past 10 years that everyone just is.

Yeah, I'm like, that's my that's my point. I'm like, dude, just because you put a verbal tune on your car does not make race car.

It's funny, the one way tore apart the other day where it had five different crackle tunes on it.

Yeah, I like no wonder this thing blew up.

And honestly, that goes back to your point earlier, like you treat like a race car, it's going to treat you like a race car has been broken all the freaking time. Yeah, well, pop and bang everywhere you go.

Very specifically, we'll look at my EG33s for whatever reason. I took that car out to the roll races. I was doing rolling burnouts in that car just for fun, just because I could like, I was doing the s***.

Is that the one that lasted 60 hours?

Yeah, I lifted both heads on it. I kept right, I went up against Twin Turbo C8, I won with two lifted heads and then drove the car home after that. Still made it back.

What do you think the C8 is now?

Bent every single valve.

C8's at the golf course.

Yeah, C8's still got a warranty.

Yeah.

Oh no, it's Twin Turbo.

No warranty.

It's probably blown up by now.

What were you gonna say?

My favorite thing.

Oh, hey, hey, hey, get in there.

Get in there.

Oh, yeah.

Can you, does it like show you how loud it talks?

Yeah, not very from over there. Yeah.

So, my favorite thing about the EJ33.

It sounds so good.

I was going to say, with how many different failures it had, being there for almost every single one and feeling the pain also, it hurts so bad.

My favorite was the shattered oil pump. The flywheel backed off.

It was like a series of unfortunate events.

I just kept doing it too. That was a thing.

Well, but a lot of it wasn't even really your fault. So, it was just so sad as a friend to watch when you first got the block built and then it gets shipped, it gets delivered. He's so excited.

That was the day that I found the car that had bent valves too.

Yeah, Tanner lit up and he's like, yes, my block's here. I'm so excited, Matt, let's open it. We put it down on the ground and we're each lifting up part of the box. I lift up my end and the side of the block is cracked.

It just falls off.

Because they had dropped the engine and UPS or FedEx.

It was right on the engine mount too, so it's like, I can't use this.

Yeah. Dude, you waited so long for that block and we're all lifting it up. I just, as we're lifting it up, I see a little piece fall out and it was terrible because right beforehand, I joked with Tanner that like, it's f***** up.

It actually was up.

When we lifted it up, I was like, bro, it's broken. Then he goes, dude, stop with that. Then I'm like, no, it's actually broken.

There's a piece.

I was like, no, it's really broken.

Bro, I had some weird failures.

Did the out front make you another one? Yeah, of course.

I sent that one back. Jeremy was kind enough. He expedited me a replacement.

Jeremy is such a nice guy.

There was another one. Jeremy replaced another one for me too, because that was the one where I was using the half-inch studs. I was following their directions. With the EJ33s, there's not a ton of information publicly available. The people who do EJ33s don't typically share a lot of it. I was putting the head studs in on one engine, fully built the motor, got everything timed, got all the accessory put on, dropped it in. I go to put coolant in it, and I just see a couple drips coming out from under the car. So I'm like, maybe a coolant hose or something. I go under the car, I'm looking around a flashlight, put my chain on it, pull it up, take off a motor, and the f****** block cracked from the head stud. The head stud, as I was tightening it, it drove the stud. Because as you tighten the nut, sometimes you'll have the stud slip a little bit. The stud slipped, and it kept slipping. And on an EJ33, there's not as much meat inside of the engine for a half inch stud as there is on an EJ. So it drove the stud into the coolant jacket, causing an external coolant leak on this engine that I never even got to start. I was like, you're kidding. These engines are not quick to get. It's not like an EJ, where you can just hop online, order one, you get it within a week.

Do you know the story of the EJ?

Give me the story. I think you told me at one point.

The EJ33 was only available for two model years, right?

It was only the SVX.

I think it was like four years. Was it four years? It was like a mid to late 90s Subaru's attempted, what do you call it, a super car ish?

It was like to complete like the NSX and things like that, but it was a failure in my opinion.

It hasn't been manufactured for 20 years. Super rare.

It was cool.

I mean, it's a cool engine.

Have you not seen an SVX?

Not in person, no.

I haven't seen one in person either.

Dude, I like them a lot. They are pretty cool. I would love to build one up and like manual swap it.

No, you don't. I don't want that.

My boss at company 23 six speed swapped one years ago and ice raced it with a straight pipe on it.

Yeah, that's it.

That's it.

That's cool.

Check out the window.

With the weird, yeah, the weird double window.

So that thing got an EJ25 basically with an extra, or EJ22.

EJ22 with an extra cylinder.

With an extra cylinder. How was it a fail, you think?

The car?

Yeah.

It was an auto only.

Oh, that's okay. That's why I could see it.

Oh yeah, it was, it was.

We don't need to say.

It was only an auto. It didn't make as much power as its competitors. I think styling at the time was very subjective to most people.

There was a lot of strange things on it too, because like it was trying to be different in the way that like the Mitsubishi 3000 GT was trying to be different, but the Mitsubishi 3000 GT was like, okay, this has some like aspects to it.

I saw one on the street out here. It was so clean.

I think, honestly, I think if Subaru launched that 10 years later and like the WRX is out and the STI was out and their brand image was completely different, it's probably a different story with the SVX.

Yeah.

In my opinion.

But why are people building them though?

Like they're not building SVX.

They're not.

No, no, not SVX, but why are you taking the EG?

Because I liked the idea of it. It sounded really cool. I remember, because at the time I wasn't going to do an EG33 to start with. I was going to do an EZ30, but Matt was like, bro, check out this EG33. And he showed me it was Andy Forrest and Suvi Performance in Germany. I was watching their EZ30 and their EG33 engine side by side. They were like, yeah, the EG33 is just stronger. So at the time I'm like, f*** yeah, dude, let's do this. Let's do this instead. So I went on eBay, I bought EG33 complete engine off eBay, had it delivered, started tearing apart. I was like, cool, I'm gonna send all this all out for it. And I didn't know what the f*** I was doing. I've never done an engine swap.

He is quick with that stuff too. I will say. Because I had, okay, like the original thing that I saw on it was my friend way back when, Steven, did an EG33 swap.

Oh no, you were there when I met Steven.

Yeah, he did a EG33 swap in his Impreza, his first gen. And he had kind of led me on to Andy Forrest. Like his stuff is super cool. And so watching that, then I watched more of Andy Forrest stuff. And it's like he had, yeah, he had the craziest, he's like the Scottish dude that is just like, he's funny as hell. But he built this car up to be like a full blown track car, like crazy time attack car that they called the Stormtrooper. And yeah, he like, I mean, he talks in this like really heavy accent, but he was like, I'm going to build something up. And if I get it, I'm going to get tunnels. And I asked for tunnels and they said, it can't be done on this. And I said, well, no, you're going to do it. And then they said, it's not going to work with the chassis. So we compromised and I got tunnels. He went back and forth, but they did so much on that car. And we just watched that. And he was like, like, yeah, these things are crazy because he built this car up that ran like high sixes, low sevens in a quarter mile, but it was a time attack car. And it did it back to back to back. So it just s*** on everything in a drag race and then go on the track and s*** on everything on the track.

So naturally I was like, dude, like this is so cool.

This is the ultimate.

The thing that we didn't realize is how expensive it is.

Oh yeah.

Like going into it. How expensive is it? I mean.

Break it down.

To do it right. I mean, you got to like basically re-work everything.

If you're looking at a full EJ33 long block, if you can find the gaskets fully built in what?

Spoiler, can't. I'm talking about. Tanner's got them all.

I've got them all so you're not gonna find them. But like closed deck cams, rods, pistons, whole kit and caboodle, you're probably looking at like 15, 20K.

Okay. So what's that break down to hours driven?

Well, there's more.

That's just like 20,000 per mile.

Custom fab for turbo kits, full wiring harness, stand alone, chassis modification. There's so much more that goes into it. I mean, all in all, it's so much more money. Now total like we'll talk about this after the podcast. Yeah, that's fine. I think out of all, like I said, I want to preface this. I still have never killed the EJ25, but I think out of all miles driven on my EJ33s, I think in total, I maybe got 6,000 miles. Maybe. That's pushing it.

Just to throw back for one second to you mentioned Andy's Subaru Performance. I miss when he used to actually like do his videos in English and like before he got.

I could understand them.

Yeah, before he got huge and he's doing the V10 stuff now and he's got all the big C. I'm like, dude, he still does Subaru stuff. He doesn't like do it on his YouTube channel though. And I like just watching him build stuff.

Yeah, he was on the duty and he does such cool s***.

He has like all these crazy C and C's.

Like when he like overboard the main tunnel on cases with like the big mechanical thing with the wrench on it. That's so cool, dude. I wish he still did that in English, but you know.

Subtitles. Yeah.

No, I want to hear the English. Yeah, he had some cool stuff back in the day. I used to watch his stuff all the time, like religiously.

Oh, all eyes on me. Oh, damn. Okay.

We're looking at you.

Yeah.

You're the host here, man.

You don't know Andy.

No, no. Mark was on a streak there.

Andy is a super performer.

I miss you.

Okay. So what's next in the world of Smedia then? What's the next year or two look like?

Okay. So wrapping up my 2.5 RS, which that should be done July. I mean, all I have left on that is little s***. We might be taking that down to SubiFest SoCal back down here again in July. After that, like I mentioned earlier, I got to help my buddy with his 240 project and his Jay-Z and whatnot, that shouldn't be more than like a month or so. And then after that, ironically enough, the EJ33 comes back into the shop. So I still have my 2017 chassis because that's what everything is swapped into. It's 2017 STI. I sent that car out to Fab a year and a half, two years ago, and I had them flip it. I had them flip it all. So now the engine's in the trunk, the transmission's flipped around 180 degrees. The rear diff is down the front. The driveshaft is still in there. The driveshaft angle is all sorted. So now it will be an all-wheel drive, rear engine, twin turbo, 3.3 liter flat six. So it will be like a DIY Porsche made entirely out of Subaru parts. Why? I don't know, because I can. I've built so many EJs and EGs and whatnot, it's like I want a little bit of a challenge, and it hasn't necessarily been done before that I've seen.

Okay, and it's something that you actually want to do too. Yeah, it'll be fun.

Yeah, it challenges me in a new way that I haven't done before.

Like it pissed off the internet, so I'm fierce too. It'll never work. Just ask the internet.

A lot of people tell me it won't work.

It's never going to work, dude.

Theoretically, it should.

I've never done it, but it's never going to work.

Yeah, theoretically, it should work. There's no reason it shouldn't because we just run a reverse ring pinion in the transmission, which changes one through six from forward gears to reverse gears and then reverse to forward. So flipping the trans 180 degrees should sort that. Now what I don't know what will work is if just turning the rear diff upside down and putting it in front of the car will work. I don't know.

Oh, that sounds like a Tim Roman question.

Are you going to turn it upside down?

Yeah, we turned it upside down. We put a new breather port on the top and then we took the the faceplate off for...

What does turning it upside down do?

Well, if you don't turn it upside down, it's going to spin the wrong way.

Oh, sure. I mean, I have reverse in the gears.

I gotcha. So we had to flip the rear diff upside down.

Tim Roman would find a new diff that would work.

Yeah, I can't remember exactly what he did.

Tim Roman, I don't know if you've heard of this dude, he lives in Minnesota. He's friends with Chad and Ryan, the owners of Compa23.

Yeah.

He has taken a... What's the chassis code for the Mustang?

S550 Mustang.

S550 Mustang and using OEM parts and stuff from all these different vehicles.

Hilux's.

Yeah, he's built it into an all-wheel drive Mustang. He's either put a turbo on it or he's going to put a turbo on it.

Supercharger.

It looks factory. If you look at it, you're like, that came from Ford that way.

Yeah.

But it's crazy. But yeah, he sources off pieces from different cars and like figures out what works.

Yeah, but it's like, why would I source a new piece when I have a piece that works already?

Upside down.

That's why he does, because it wasn't working at the time.

Yeah, like if it obviously doesn't end up working, then yeah, I'll source something else. I'll just go, that's a future me problem, but you know, it'll be interesting.

I mean, worse comes to worse, it's just rear wheel drive.

I mean, at this case, that car is so cut up, so hacked, it's not worth anything. So it's like, why not just do fun stuff with it?

Yeah, I love it. Have you ever watched Super Fast Matt on YouTube? That's a problem for future Matt. Yeah.

I said it all the time, I was like, that's a future me problem, not a present me problem.

Honestly, ever since I started watching his channel, and he started, when he says that, I'm like, you know what, I'm gonna apply that to my life. My life's been a lot more carefree.

It's great until future self gets to that problem. Yeah. And you're like, what if present self would have dealt with this?

Yeah. What's the, has anything in particular, what do you argue with the most? Is there any comments that you just like, know you're an idiot?

I gave up on arguing with people. What's the point? It doesn't accomplish anything. Yeah. I'm gonna argue with some random person on the internet, we're not gonna get anywhere, we're just gonna sit there going back to back, calling each other racial slurs or whatever.

Oh, is that how you resolve things? Bro, what's your favorite?

And then Tanner gets banned from live?

No, some of these people will come out of the world, they'll call me the wildest s*** out for no reason. Like I'm just doing my own thing, you come out of the woodwork. It's like, you don't get banned, but I do. I didn't do anything. Okay, that's a whole other point, but it's just like, there's no point in arguing with people on the internet. You're gonna see all these negative comments, you're gonna see things, it's just natural. Yeah, people like to just hate because they are either they just like to hate to hate hate because they are not doing what you want or what you're doing or what they want to be doing. So they just they just spew. Hey, it's just like why why spend the time to even give it the attention?

And then when they see you in real life, they're like, bro, I love your stuff.

Yeah, I've had a few of those flip flop. Discussed idiot.

Hi, bro.

What's up, man?

Huge fan.

You know, I was kidding, man.

You know, awesome.

All right. Cool. That's exciting. And are you guys able to talk about what you're doing down here or not? Really?

That's well, if this is airing later, I don't see why not.

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know the rules and what's what we're doing.

Like we haven't really signed an NDA. Yeah, I'm sorry.

Oh, well, there's no NDA. Oh, I don't know.

We can talk about it. Why not? And then cut it out.

Unless is it in the e-mails?

No, it's not.

No. So no one has ever told us like, no, you're not saying that. Really?

That's kind of weird.

Yeah. So Donut Media reached out to me because I met Justin over there at a couple of parties we went to last year over at OTL. He reached out. He said, hey, man, we're doing a Subaru build and whatnot and looking for some advice, which I don't. You can bleep this out if Mark tells you to, because I don't know if we're allowed to say it or not, but we're doing a we're doing a swap into a GFA wagon, which is like a first generation Impreza out of you work with him. So it's like we're at Donut and they say, hey, don't say anything until it airs. You literally sit f****** next to him.

I get drawn into this. Mark will tell you to believe it. Anyway, here's exactly what we're doing.

Okay. So if we hear otherwise relate to Harris, we'll just ask Danny tomorrow.

Okay.

During their high car, low car series with their WRX as they did, they got a lot of flack from the Subaru community because blatantly they did a lot of stuff wrong. They'll sit there and be like, no, we built it right. We did everything right. As people who deal with Subarus daily, there is so much stuff on that car. I'd be like, get rid of this, get rid of that, get rid of this, get rid of that. Regardless of the fact, they're taking their high WRX and they want to show everybody how easy it is to swap a WRX or an STI into a GFA wagon. And I'm not going to sit here and tell you it's necessarily hard, but it's not as easy as what people are just like, yeah, man, you just kind of like take this out and put that in.

What's the premise of the series we're doing to show how easy it is? To show how easy it is. Really?

Easy and cheap, which it's not necessarily difficult or expensive to do if you have a donor car. But I think that kind of defeats the premise of cheap. If you already have a GFA wagon and it's your daily, then you have to go and buy a complete donor car. But that's another $10,000.

Didn't we figure it out?

It's like a GF2.

GF8, GF2, it's an impressive wagon. It's a first gen impressive wagon.

We had a fight on this about what chassis it was.

So Justin reached out. He's like, hey, we're doing this project. And I think they just want some people who have done these swaps. I've done two of them now for these, well, one and a half because we're still in progress. The other one. But regardless of the fact, they want some help doing it from people who relatively speaking know what they were doing.

I don't have a clue what I'm doing. I don't even work on cars.

Mark's going to, we're going to make Mark do all of the.

We are going to make you do everything.

I'm just going to take, I'm going to make cat images of it.

The moment we walk in tomorrow, I'm going to be like, I'm not on the list and I'm not a talent. But I'm not a talent. Looks like my makeup's not getting done.

And then we're just going to tell you what to do.

Yeah. I mean, to your point though, like you're like, oh, the point is to make it seem like it's easy and quick and cheap and fast or whatever, but like you're starting with two full cars.

It's kind of contradicting because you, you will say hypothetically, the average enthusiast has one car.

Yeah. And they're going to piecemeal the stuff.

And then to do this WRX or STI swap, which technically theirs is like half WRX and half STI. I don't know if they did the poor man's STI swap or not, but they, they six-speed swapped it. But what is it? Is it 5 by 114? If not, then it's poor man's six-speed swap.

Hold on. What's the poor man's STI swap?

Poor man's six-speed swap. So they don't have a six-speed swap and a poor man's six-speed swap. The six-speed swap, like the full true and true is if you have a WRX, you do the STI transmission, driveshaft, rear diff, axles, knuckles, and shocks, because the five by 114 and five by 100 shocks are different for how they mount to the actual knuckles. Then you also have things like brakes, brimbos versus non-brimbos. So like a full STI six-speed swap includes everything, brimbos, axles, knuckles, suspension, diff, transmission. A poor man's six-speed swap is the six-speed and then WRX in legacy and everything else and you make it work. Because you can take older five by 100 axles and they'll work in the transmission, but it's not the right way of doing it. So then when you get into doing like this swap that we're doing now, it's like we're going into it. We don't know what we're doing. If it's a poor man's six-speed swap, then there's going to be things that are different that we need to, they're going to have to order parts or things like that. So it's like a full STI six-speed swap is everything. Poor man's swap is just the transmission and then you make everything work. It's used like an automatic transmission drive shaft because that'll fit up to the rear diff. You still use an R160.

So I'm supposed to hold on, but real quick, what's the drawback on that then? Like to the average enthusiast, is there any drawback to doing it that way?

Axles are weaker, rear diffs weaker. If you don't match the gear ratio from the trans to the rear diff, you're obviously going to have gearing issues. You're obviously, you're not going to have sufficient brakes that technically speaking match the transmission and the axle size. And then you're going to have things where on the five by 100 wheel bearing or the five by 100 knuckles using press and wheel bearing, which is weaker than the five by 114s wheel bearing. So you're going to run into wheel bearings failing. So like it can be done, but it's not the right way of doing it.

It's one of those like buy one's cry one's scenarios. It's like just do it right the first time.

Well, which honestly, it's not even that expensive for full six, six speed swaps anymore. I've seen them on marketplace and online for like $3,500.

Oh wow.

That's for brimbos, knuckles, used rotors, used rate. Like it's all used, but it's all there.

I know it's a six speed swap. I don't know if they did brimbos later as like another episode of race.

You can get five by 100 brimbos. That's not the thing.

I don't remember if they did knuckles or not.

But we're swapping high car.

Yes, which is a WRX.

Did it even have brimbos or did they do more expensive? I thought they did AP racing or something.

I thought that was dead a**.

No, because this was high car. This was the one that they spent money on. I thought they used AP racing or something.

They could.

Did they do a big break? I know they did breaks, but I don't remember which breaks they did.

Then I totally forgot that high and low series was WRX is not an STI.

It was WRX is. So I would argue that like...

But you know, if they did a high low, shouldn't the low car be a WRX and the high car be an STI?

One could argue. My hot take on that is I don't think they did anything inherently wrong with their build. They just did stuff that was not the norm, like a stock location precision turbo, or no, it wasn't a precision, it was a Garrett. Yeah, it was just...

We're getting in the weeds here, man. This isn't what we were even talking about.

Well, I don't remember what we were talking about.

We were talking about... He was asking about what we were doing. The non-poor man six-packs.

Well, we started analyzing car parts.

I think we got that. Yeah.

No, okay. I was just trying to get us back on track.

I don't know.

We were going to help Justin swap an 06 WRX with STI guts into a 97?

We don't... No, it's pre-face lift, so it's 93.

93.

You guys are only here for three days, though. What happens if things don't go right? Good luck.

Realistically, if they let us just go at it, we could have it done in two days.

So also, they invited us and they will be filming this for two full weeks.

But they're not paying us, so we still have jobs, so we have to go still make money. Like, it's cool that they invited us down, but it's kind of like they just invited us down for exposure.

Sure.

It's like, we'll pay you an exposure type thing if you help us, which it'll be cool to go down there and meet everyone and kind of do all that stuff, but in the reality, we can't afford to spend two weeks down here to help you guys through this entire thing. So it's like we can show up in the beginning, give you guys the guidance you need to set you up for success, and then after that, it's kind of all on you.

That makes sense.

Yeah. I mean, I'm really curious too if we just show up tomorrow. Like, yeah, I don't even know what we're doing. We'll knock this out quick and then we're off.

Like if they were just like, hey, go at it, we could have the bulk majority of it done in two days.

Yeah.

Fair enough.

Yeah. I mean, I thought when we started all this, obviously we made the accommodation, we were going to be there Monday morning, like ripping stuff apart and that's not the case. So there's a bunch of prep work and stuff tomorrow.

We got to fluff us up.

I'm ready.

You got to fluff us up, you said.

Yeah.

I mean, why are you saying you said it?

I don't think that's the normal term.

Earlier in the call, you said that we were the talent and that we're getting fluffed. Yeah.

That's kind of weird.

Is that not right?

That's what you told me.

That's the only reason I'm here, dude.

That was an email.

We're good fluffing. Yeah.

I mean, you get fluffed up in Hollywood, right?

Is that how the industry?

Yeah. Okay. Well, you know, to make you look ready. Yeah. Let's see how it goes. I have no idea how I have, of all the things I've ever done.

If they try and do our makeup tomorrow, I'm just going to...

That's how I'm done, dude.

I'm just going to totally accept it because I want to see what it looks like. Hell yeah. Make me look Hollywood ready. Yeah.

Catch up my gray.

Professional hair makeup person. Yeah.

It's funny because going in tomorrow, I have no idea what's going to happen.

I don't know what's happening at all.

It's going to be fun to listen back on this and after this is all done and see where it lands.

Yeah. It really will be because we're...

What if they sacrifice us?

That might happen.

The Subaru guys.

I don't know, man.

Are you talking about Inglewood or Donut?

Either one.

I don't know.

One or the other.

Well, sweet. Is there anything that I missed?

I don't know.

How long have we been going now?

Hour and a half.

Yeah, about give or take. Give or take a cut.

I don't know.

Well, sweet. At the end of every episode, I like to ask my guest or guests to pick three cars. And it goes like this. You have to pick a show car, a daily driver and a track car. You have an unlimited budget. Build whatever you want, swap whatever you want. Who wants to go first?

Track car. John Cooper works us.

The hell what?

John Cooper works. Mini Cooper.

Oh, okay.

We each go one of these things.

One by one.

Onyx, eh?

Bro, I love, dude, they're so fun and so good and so cheap.

F1 car.

Hey, you'll get your turn, sir.

Don't judge me. You shut your mouth.

I've always, okay.

You know, you shut your mouth. So my turn.

You shut your whore mouth. Can you do one by one? Cause my brain doesn't think that way.

Okay, fine. We'll go right into track car.

Okay, track car.

I'm going to, okay. I've wanted this car since I was like a little kid. I'm going to say a Lotus, a Lotus Xsige.

Ooh. Okay.

Just cause they're cool looking. I get that if I'm sitting in it with someone else, we're definitely touching.

No, the Xsige is good.

But they're cool. They're cool looking cars.

But that's fine.

I fit just fine in an Xsige. At least is where it's a little tight.

I don't like Mini. I can't do the toggle.

Do I f****** love them?

They're just weird.

It's a weird love I have for Mini Coopers, man. I don't know.

All right, we'll do track car for Mark.

So I think I've had a different one every time I've been on your show. I had a friend at Alonzo's V8 F1 car? V10 F1 car?

We're running a crash course. What's today's choice?

Today's is a KTM Crossbow.

Ooh, a Crossbow?

Yeah, KTM. Or you mean the Expo? Crossbow, whatever it is.

The car, right?

Yeah, the car, the carbon one.

Can you just pick a normal vehicle?

The track car.

You picked a Mini Cooper.

You can go get a good look at it from the back of your Mini Cooper.

Why do you hate on Mini Coopers?

They're so cool.

His answer to all three is going to be Mini Cooper.

Bro, I like Mini Cooper.

All right, OK, OK.

Show car.

Daily driver, Mini Cooper.

Honestly, I'd probably take my FD back.

OK, oh, OK.

I'd probably take my FD back for that.

Hot take.

FDs, dude, they just look so good.

They do look so good. And the white.

All right, what's your show car?

I'm going to pick.

Oh, hey, hey, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike.

I'm going to pick weird on this one, and I'm going to say a VIP out 1965 Lincoln Continental.

I know exactly why you chose that.

I've loved that car.

It looks, it does look so.

And it's weird because I don't really like classic cars at all.

Fair enough.

There was one up at Griot's garage and it was so funny.

This is super clean.

It was so good.

All right. Show car for you.

Show car for me. I think I'm going to have to go up Pagani Huayra.

Okay.

The carbon one. Only only because it's not a show car.

I mean, it is. Hold on. Hold on.

Hold your applause. OK, hold your applause.

OK, OK.

When I went to SEMA for the first time in 2017, they had carbon one and just clear coat over. I forget if it was like purple carbon or blue carbon or some shade of that. The carbon weave on the hood matched the fenders like every panel. The weave was seamless into the next panel. I just thought that was the coolest thing because some Italian dude Tony was like hand laying that s***. Like I could give a s*** about like the V12 LS. That's cool. Some dude like went gray, pulled his hair out, like trying to get the weave in one mold to match the weave. Even another one. I thought that was super.

I just can't wait for Tavares to find a wrecked Pagani and put an LS in it.

He's got to finish his P1 first. Yeah.

When's that going to be? All right. So then Dailey, my RS6.

You're honestly dude is the best daily.

I drove them today for the first time. They're awesome.

Incredibly spacious. Looks great. Has all the power.

They seek it off.

They turn off the power.

No, we do have quiet hours at 10.

Yeah. What's the daily?

Oh, that's right. I'm just going to go with what I currently have. 24 VBWRX.

Unlimited budget. That's true.

Any car in the world.

That's it. Any car.

I don't care.

You pick what you got.

I genuinely thought mine was a great daily.

I'm subtle and fine with what I drive now.

He's chic.

I have no complaints.

He's being chic.

I'm going to go to whatever the newest Raptor R is. But I want the EcoBoost engine and not.

Oh, I remember you like your cam phasers failing.

I want the turbo six, not the five two supercharged cam phasers. Hot take. Whatever, dude. My ego says, we call it fine. My ego is 180,000 miles on its stock timing.

So I'm going to get a Raptor later this year, so I can't touch it.

What? Which one are you going to get though?

Probably a third gen.

So that's what Tanner does now. What's your dream car? Yeah. Okay. I'm actually buying that later this year.

These f****** YouTubers, man.

I need a full size truck. Like name a better.

Raptor is a great truck.

Yeah. It's like the best fun full size truck.

It's a great truck.

That's great.

It's super cool.

You're going to love it.

I agree. I agree with your daily.

Send me pictures.

I still owe you that white Lamborghini.

I bet it's going to be sick.

On that note, where can everybody find you guys?

My dream car is Smedia, Instagram, Smedia underscore, TikTok. It's just Smedia, but watch out for the scam account. Who's the crypto scammer? Don't go to him.

You sure I can't get some crypto out of him?

You I mean, he'll probably have you send him some.

Okay. Okay. Fair enough. Same things to me to find you as media then. Yeah.

Or my personal one is MattlessDI.

Okay. Fair enough.

And you can remember that. Digital inertia.

Oh, that's right. I remember that profile.

It's my photography.

Sure. All right.

Mark.

No, no, no. It's support email.

Yeah. If you have any questions, comments or concerns about any Carboy products, Carboy23 products, you can email supportboyatcarboy.com or what's Carboy23?

Support at carboy23.com.

Oh yeah. Support at carboy23.com. If you send an email, I won't get back to you because I don't have to answer that s*** anymore. Harris will answer you. He's really good at it. Anyway, I am Mark underscore C23 underscore KB.

Bro, you've already said way too much.

I'm talking to the camera, not you.

People don't talk to the camera usually.

Yeah. Anyway, with that being said, I'll have you goodbye. Oh wait, that's the wrong video.

No, no, I think that's it.

I'm doing the sign off.

That's everything.

Anyway, you can find I said, hello, ladies and gentlemen, this is Harris, AKA, I'm losing it.

Did you imagine a mind podcast starting over again? All right, well, anyways.

He's resetting.

Yeah. I'm so tired.

Turn him off.

Thanks for coming on, guys. This is awesome to meet you finally in person.

Did we come out or did you come out? We came together.

Yeah, we all traveled. Mark, thanks for existing and we'll see y'all next time.

I definitely didn't, so I missed out.

We all came out.