29. Track days, Rallys, Talons and Evos w/ Al3x Talon

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minnoxide Podcast. I am your host, Harris, AKA Minnoxide, local photographer and creator of, I don't know, automotive content. I still need to figure out an intro for myself, but-

That's pretty good.

I'm getting better at it, and I'm a little rusty, but Sean, introduce yourself.

Yeah, hey guys, this is Sean Bryant. I'm on Instagram, 1mnmopar. This show is where we take you beyond the meat, and we get to show you, or you get to meet some of the drivers of some of the cars that you see around town.

Almost perfect.

Almost.

Almost, we're working on that, but please don't sign off the video. Today, we have our guest, Alex Talon. I don't care about your last name, I just saved that as in my phone. And the reason you're saved as Alex Talon in my phone is because you have a pretty cool Talon, you have an Evo, all these fun cars, you've done some fun experiences. And the reason I wanted to have Alex on our show today, Sean, is because I've known you for years. You've done some crazy events, and you have this calm composure about everything you do. But you do some absurd s***, and you're just like, yeah, yeah, it's whatever. So I think you kind of forget how wild it is. So, I mean, let's just kind of jump right into it. I kind of met you, when did I, back in the car scene, like-

We met from Instagram.

Instagram, that's the way, and this is why I tell all the Young Bucks in the community. It's like, just meet people on Instagram. But you had a pretty built Talon, you still do have it.

Still have it. It runs most of the time.

Yeah, let's just jump into the builds you have. Tell us about your car. Let's start with the Talon and we'll get into the Evo.

Okay, so I got a 94 Eagle Talon TSI. It is a car that was my 21st birthday present to myself. It's my favorite color, it's silver. It's by the year I was born, so it's 94, I'm born in 94. And the VIN number has 777 in it, so it's kind of been like my good luck charm, although it's not been great to me. But I've kind of driven it hard, so it is kind of reacting to whatever is going to take. But...

It's no joke when power wise, right?

No, it made 460 to the wheels at DB and has gone through a number of transmissions in its time. But now it sits probably like 400 horse. It's on a smaller turbo and it just is reliable-ish car.

There's a lot of power considering that car weighs, what'd you weigh it at again?

2980 pounds. Oh, wow. Yeah.

400 pounds lighter than my Golf at more horsepower.

Yeah, under 3000 pounds. Anything like under 3000 pounds is like light.

Yeah, and all wheel drive.

And it's all wheel drive? Okay, I don't know a lot about the Eagles. You know, I think what year did they disband?

So they technically went until 99 was the last Eclipse GSX. Oh, okay. But they started in 89 and went up from there.

So right, so they shared the same platform with the Mitsubishi Eclipse. And the engine is the same one that you can find in that as well as Evos.

Yeah, so it's a 4G63. The 4G63 was originally brought up in the Galant VR4 and the Mitsubishi Eclipse GSX and some of the older Evos as well. But it really got big in like the first gen DSMs, which is what it's Diamond Star Motors. So it was a partnership between Chrysler and Mitsubishi and they made some pretty cool cars. So the Plymouth Laser, the Mitsubishi Eclipse and Eagletown.

I'm so excited for this podcast because I remember having our photo shoot. It was like, I think it was in Maple Grove.

It was.

Yeah, so we were shooting over there behind this like dirt mound or whatever. And like he was educating me on all this stuff. Cause like the reason I have this podcast is I want to learn from every walk of life and every type of car enthusiast, from the Honda boys to the Dodge Takeover guys. I got to get one of those lunatics on here. I really would love to see the mentality from one of those freaks of nature. Like for example, I'm sure you guys have seen the video down in St. Louis. Did you ever see the video of a bunch of chargers just mobbing down the highway and they all took their doors off? Like Jeep style.

Oh my gosh. Yeah, that's getting more popular now. I've been seeing that people have been taking the doors off their Jeep trackhawks. So I saw somebody did it to a Durango, but I haven't seen this done to like, or I guess you could do it to challengers, chargers, like whatever, man.

Dude, I would love to have one of these people on my podcast just to see like, look them dead in the eye and be like, why do you do this? Who hurts you? Yeah. Why do you do this? Did you get hugs? Did you get kisses? Did you? Listen, man, I just need to have a conversation. And to be fair, like if you're just f****** around taking doors off, whatever, it's the takeover people that are really interesting to me. Like I just, it's so risky for no reason and just causing s***. Like that lady that had her poor 300 or whatever, like stomped in.

We should do like a Vice News style interview where we kind of hit the streets and we're like, you know, in the action. And we're just like, you know, talking to people in the moment.

That'd be f****** hilarious.

And interview them like on the streets and then have like the s*** going on around us. Just in the background. Yeah, like that would be really awesome.

I could see it already.

I bet Vice News already has something done like that.

We're going to be in like the heart of Minneapolis. Intersections closed off, like 300 people. And we're going to walk up and I'm going to be wearing like a f****** mustache. I'm going to be looking like Bill Nye or some s***. Or like you really. Oh, I should get a Sean disguise. That'd be perfect. Oh my God. So I'm going to be there dressed like Sean, talking like this. Like, why is it that you people are over here?

I'm Squidward.

You're going to be the first one hit.

Yeah. I was just thinking that too. Harris shows up, he's going to get knocked out in like the first 10 minutes.

You're telling me all these things. The reason is to have this podcast is, you know, a lot of people like to learn about different walks of life and all that fun stuff. And I, I've been obsessed with Evos since I shot yours, I'd say. Like I shot Piero's, but like, he's not, he's not a big talker. No. But like you, you, you're like, Oh, here's everything I've done. So you built that car and we went for a ride. I think. Did we go for a ride? Yeah. You took me for a ride when you picked me up on my college campus.

I picked you up in the Talon that day.

The Talon.

That was when we went up and shot because then I dropped you back off in it. I think it was overheating on the way to, if I remember correctly. I was like, I got to get on the highway.

That thing was pretty fricking quick. And there's some videos of you racing Eros Huracan.

Oh yeah.

Well, he pulls away.

There wasn't a video of that. I think you were the only one who was actually there at that time. Yeah. Yeah. But we did a couple of pulls in each other's cars and he was surprised at just how fast it actually was.

Yeah. I mean, it's a Huracan at the end of the day. It's going to walk you, but you kept up pretty freaking well.

I was surprised. Yeah.

Everybody was surprised because again, so light and, you know, driver mods because it's a manual.

Yep.

So it's like, you're able to pull that off. Speaking of races, I actually, you saw me go do a roll race against Derek Stinton, our guest from last week. I had the GTR out. He has his built Corvette. And I'm like, all right, 40. You know, did we do, I think it was a 40 or I think it was a 40 roll. And yeah, I got the jump, but then it was pretty much dead even the rest of the way. So it's kind of like when we, you and I raced in the 1M versus my car, like you would get the jump, but then like I would kind of keep up, you know, like we weren't separating.

Right.

Whereas somebody said I should race the Durango. And I'm like, absolutely f****** not in a GTI.

I remember when you're like, oh, like now we got to race the Durango. I'm like, dude, like I've done the difference. It's ridiculous how fast the Durango is compared to like both of our cars or to the 1M and the GTI.

I was going to say that sounds like it wouldn't be a good race.

But you know, when you were racing aero in the Huracan, I think I was there too. I was in a gray Challenger.

Oh, yeah, you were. That's who it was.

Yeah. That's so funny because I remember like seeing your car because you have the Achoo license plate. I'm like, oh, I know this guy. This has got turbos. This is going to be sick. And then, you know, you're right next to the Huracan and both of you just take off. And I'm just like, I'm flooring it too. And you guys are just gone away.

Yeah, I do remember that. I remember you being there too.

Whole new class of cars.

That was after that Team Stance Out show, like the one actual Team Stance Out event that I actually went to.

That's right.

Yeah.

Well, we started hosting those at Buck Hill as well. I don't know if it was after one of those, but...

No, it was up in like north of the cities. I don't know exactly. It was some hotel parking lot or something.

It might have been like the LA Fitness in Maple Grove. Yep, that's what it was.

Yeah. I remember going inside. It was really hot. I remember going inside in the AC in the LA Fitness.

Yeah, because we were trying to do shows all around the cities. That's one of the problems with the car scene. And even to this day, it's like nobody really takes it around. It's all like, oh, we stick to just the north or just the south or just the east. There's not like a wandering car scene even still. Maybe I should fill that in.

It's mostly like people who host these meets and they don't want to drive very far.

No, which is totally reasonable.

I want to go down the street and host a car meet.

I'm so bummed that Cars and Craft got shut down. And not because I attended it. I attended it maybe five or six times total. Just because even when I was in St. Paul, it's still like a 35, 40 minute drive for me. It's like sometimes I'll go. But then it got moved up to Roseville. I'm like, yeah, I'll never be there again. But it kind of sucks, dude, like that they got shut down.

It's like one of the big monthly shows.

People love that one. If I had to choose between going to Cars and Coffee or that, I will go there every single time because I've got zero interest to go to Minneapolis for Cars and Coffee.

Well, I'm always working in the morning. So like I'm never working at 10 o'clock at night. I can always go there. Plus St. Paul Brewing is literally 12 minutes from my house. So I just would shoot down even in the town with making all sorts of noises and not sure if it's going to make it home. But I'm like, it's close enough.

Bragging about working, are we? No, I always had to drop that joke in there. But yeah, no, we've had a lot of fun over the years. You've come on my rallies.

A bunch of them. I only really missed one.

I think so.

I only missed the one where you guys went south because I couldn't afford it. That was when I lost my job.

Oh, you had a whiplash?

Yeah. But otherwise I did every Venom rally. I don't think I missed a single one. I did both Colorado's and East.

Did on the second Colorado, did you have to rent a trailer for that one as well?

No, I just had the truck.

Oh, you just took the truck?

Yeah. I got the Roadside Crew T-shirt from that one.

Yeah, because he was a volunteer for that year. So that's the one event that Sean missed, and unfortunately I lost this test.

I'd done the event the year before.

It was the same thing, but it was still just as fun.

And I ended up being in Denver, Colorado at the same time as you guys, so in spirit I was there.

Perfect.

Sure, we'll say that.

The trailer.

Anyways, back to our actual supporter.

I still can't believe. I took the trailer all the way out there. I think about that all the time. I'm like, why? Why didn't I just take the truck?

So for people listening, what this lunatic did. So we were trying to coordinate, because you wanted to go on the rally, of course. This is going to be your first rally ever, I believe. And you're like, my car is on corn. And I'm like, yeah, if you're on corn, this isn't going to f****** work.

And it was leaking really bad.

And leaking really bad. So there's that too. But when you go out west, and when you're going through the Dakotas and Colorado and whatever, it's hard to find E85. And even then, if you can make it to the station, there's no guarantee that it's actually good E85, which is the next biggest issue. So he rents a truck and a trailer.

I brought my own truck.

You brought your own truck.

But I rented a U-Haul trailer for in-town use because it was cheaper.

Yeah, because they're going to check that. Oh, what's the mileage on this trailer?

That was like 2,300 extra miles.

A little life hack. By the way, I don't know if you guys saw the meme that I posted yesterday that I shared. It's like if you go to Hertz or whatever and you just rent a car and you just swap your tires and wheels with that car.

Oh yeah.

So it's like instead of paying a thousand bucks for new tires, just go to a rental company, take the car for a day and swap everything.

Heard of people doing that with engines too.

They used to do that with the Hertz Mustang. They used to rent a GT350s or the GT500 back in the 70s, and people would rent it for the day, pull the engine out, put their V6 in it, return it, and then they have this brand new VA and then they slap it in their Mustang. It probably costs like 25 bucks.

Hold on, you were able to rent Mustangs in the 70s and 80s?

Yeah, have you not? You didn't know? That's why Hertz has the Hertz, yeah, the GTH Mustang. It's a special edition Hertz Mustang.

It's like black with gold stripes.

Yeah, holy s***. I didn't even realize that they even had rental companies that long. Like, when you think about it.

I mean, like back then, it's like, you know, who's really renting cars?

Well, people barely had credit cards back then.

Yeah.

Like credit cards were just starting to become hot.

You had to like really be like, I know who you are. Yeah. I got your name on a piece of paper.

$25, eh? Just ridiculous. Dude, that is because I remember watching like Full House, right? I want to say like 10 years ago, but it was like an older episode. And it was one, I want to say it was Joey or whatever in the show. He just got his like credit card or somebody was like running up a credit card in the show and they don't understand how credit cards worked because it was like new to everybody. And I was just like sitting here thinking like, man, credit cards, like we're so used to it today. Like that's how we live. And it's like back then, like it was only again, I'm not sure when they were introduced. I wish we could pull it up.

But like it's like some people still don't know how credit cards work.

A lot of people don't like that's one of the problems in this country is like financial literacy. Like it's ridiculous. And I'm just glad we have free information everywhere nowadays. Like what's the podcast you introduced me to? Or a number of them?

Bigger Pockets. That's one.

Yeah, Bigger Pockets. Like that's a great financial like literacy podcast. I don't listen to it regularly just because I'm in other aspects of my life right now. But it's like that's a great one to listen to. We listen to it on the way down to Texas. It's like, oh, that's a good idea. Let's learn about that. You know, so we got a little derailed. So we went through hurts. Oh, yeah. So yeah, stealing wheels or whatever. I might do that. We'll see.

Oh, yes.

I was like, yeah, go to a driveify and just take, you know, swap with the R8 or something. I'm doing a lot of videos for him right now. So why not?

Might as well. Yeah.

Yeah. You should check to see if C8 wheels are the same offset as your as your other cars.

No.

So I completely got sidetracked him before that. I can't even remember how we were in a rally. Rating a trailer. Yes. All right. Thank you. This is why I have Sean here to bring me back. So, yeah, you've freaking brought this thing across the country. You went through the Black Hills.

Dude, I ripped it through the Black Hills.

Full tilt. You were ripping it with a truck and trailer. Dude, there's people like on the rally that weren't going as fast as you.

Really? I feel like you were in the back.

I was. I was following Carissa most of the time, but I was literally like right behind her for most of it. And then I got lost through some of it. But it was wild. I have videos. My one video I made for that actual trip, there's shots where I was looking through my mirrors on both sides. And you can see I'm like literally on the white line on both sides on a single paved road, just going through.

Oh my gosh, we got to get that video.

Dude, that's so nuts. Like I remember like me and Doug back in the day, we were just like, this guy's insane. Like it's just incredible. And you took it across the country. You tracked it at PPIR.

Yeah, that was a whole adventure.

That's a great track too. That's a small track, but it's so good.

I had never driven my car on a track before going there. And I'm literally like, okay, I don't know how this is going to go. And all of a sudden, I'm just like flying through corners and not really knowing what it's going to do. And I'm on s***** tires and the car doesn't really drive all that good. And the clutch is slipping and it's leaking oil and all these things. So I only was able to do a couple of laps and then I had to pull off and clean things up a bit.

Which is more than enough for a lot of people. Did you do autocross at all before that or no?

Well, yes, I did one at DCTC back in 2014 or 2015 with my stock Mazda 3, but other than that, no.

So you took a five-year break, basically. This is your first time on a track. That's cool. I guess I never really realized that.

It was a hell of a track to jump on.

I think it was 1.4 miles, I think it was. It was a smaller track, but it had banked corners and infield.

And that one bump.

And the bump.

One of Piero's buddies hit that bump and actually broke a wheel off and hit the wall. It's a crazy video. He literally snapped the whole wheel and just went spinning backwards.

Did you watch the Formula 1 race today by chance? It was hilarious. One of the Alpines or whatever got whacked or whatever, and the tire flew off the wheel. So you could see the camera from the car. It's the car's perspective, but facing back. And you just see the wheel in the distance. It was hilarious.

I was on the highway the other day, and I saw a dude with an older car, and he was on the shoulder on the right, and he's sitting all funky, and I'm like, hmm, weird, why? And I'm on the shoulder on the left-hand side, there's a wheel. I'm like, oh, yeah, that would be why.

Dude, that's just scary. I really do wonder what I would do in one of those moments. Oh, who sent me a TikTok the other day? It wasn't a TikTok or an Instagram reel. There's so many of them now. Somebody sent me an Instagram reel the other day. And I think it's these dudes. I think they're in Infinity because Infinity drivers are lunatics. And he's just driving. They're bumping music. He's like, dude, what was that? He's like, I think your wheel fell off. He's like, nah, bro. They're just driving. You can see the wheel. He didn't believe him until the wheel went past him.

No. I saw that too. That video is f****** gold. No, he's ripping it, in it. And there's just a kachonk, and he's like, what was that? And then turns on the music. It's looking around, and then the passenger is like, I think your wheel fell off. He's like, no way, dude, no way. And then you see it come up, and the driver looks to his left. That's my wheel? Slams on the brakes, stops. They get out, check. They're like, yeah, that's your wheel. How does that happen? I know how it happens, but how do you let that happen?

Right. Listening to music too much, now I'm listening to what the car is.

That weird rattling noise, just turn up the music. It goes away when you do that.

Because that's totally not important. That's what Harris is doing right now.

Shawn sees me pull up to parking lots, and right now I'm on a Wiz Khalifa kick. F****** all the way up, blacky yellow, blacky yellow. Nope, no rattling noise. I should take you for a ride. I found the perfect road that shows the sound very loudly. They're doing some gravel work by the school. I'll take both of you for a ride. You guys can help me diagnose this before I take it to ratified. Today was probably the loudest day, actually. It was pretty loud.

That means it's getting worse.

Is that what that is?

Yeah, unfortunately.

Yeah, I hope it's not expensive.

Isn't there something like Volkswagen tax or something? Is that just Evo things? Everything with an Evo is expensive.

No, we're not quite there yet. By the way, let's take a f****** moment for this. F*** Carvana. I got an email today just as a reminder, because six months ago or whenever when I was looking at Supras, three months ago when I was doing well in life, I threw my s*** into Carvana, and I'm like, Oh, I wonder what my car is worth. I'm like, All right, that's garbage. Today, I got an email saying your car is now worth less. It's like, thanks for...

I didn't need to know that.

I still get emails like that for my Challenger, even though I sold it so many or like two years ago now. And when I first got the offer, it was somewhere like around like 39k or something like that. And then today, and I've gotten like multiple emails in the past that say like, Oh, it's gone down. It's gone down. But this last one that I got said it's worth like 29k. It like dropped really far down. I'm like, okay.

Yeah, used car prices are sinking right now.

Yeah, car prices are going down. I do like it because I do like to like keep up with like, you know, the car market and seeing like prices like that.

And if you're in a buying place, then that's really good news. I could use a new truck. But it also means that my truck is going to be worthless.

I don't know. Like I'm kind of...

Trucks are never worthless. They'll always be worth more than...

Especially in good condition.

Yeah, they'll always be worth more than like the past decades or two decades Porsche's. Like nobody really needs those. Everybody needs a truck.

Everybody needs a truck. Oh my gosh. Trucks are the best.

I miss having a truck. I remember bottoming out my Gladiator.

It's not a truck.

It's light duty.

Okay, how long is your bed?

Five and a half.

Oh, that's not a truck either. Suck it.

How much can the Gladiator tow?

We're not talking about towing. No, you can't fit s***.

About 7,000 to 8,000 pounds, I believe.

I thought it was less than that. As much as your mom.

It might be that.

Which actually is pretty good for a Jeep. That's pretty good. I had my buddy's Land Cruiser behind my truck the other day, a couple months ago actually, on a U-Haul trailer. And I was like, damn, the truck is kind of struggling with this one. And I asked him later, I'm like, how heavy is that thing? He's like, I like 7,500 pounds, 7,200 pounds. I'm like, so you're telling me I was towing over 9,000 pounds. Like that makes sense as to why it was struggling.

Oh, yeah. It did great otherwise. Durango is more of a truck than the Jeep. It can tow 8,800.

That's a lot for an SUV.

Yeah, but not anymore with the lowering springs, because then now it touches, it rubs.

Whatever it wasn't going to be towing anyways.

No. No, but it would be sweet maybe in the future if I, you know, get something else and I want to tow it behind it, and maybe I'll throw the old, you know, stock springs on and, you know, it'd be sweet.

I always put just like a rear air helper type of thing on there so that you can just put it right to the level you want.

I'll have to talk to Bryce about that. He's got so many ideas for what I can do with a Durango.

Yeah, that would be fun.

I would love to see that boy win the Powerball.

Bryce?

Dude, the s*** he would create and do, I, you know, yeah.

I mean, that's with a lot of people.

No, no, no. Some people never deserve money in their lives. They would not do anything good with it. Bryce would do good stuff. Like I just, here's the deal. I'm in a camp of, like for me, I would never want to win a Powerball. Like maybe a small one, like, you know, like, you know, one of those. But like, I just feel like I would not value it as much, you know, like unless I work for it. Like, listen, I'll take a million. I'll take a million today immediately. But like, if I got like two, three hundred million, it's like you will constantly have that chip on your shoulder where people will be like, oh, well, you know, you know, if you really feel that way in your supercar.

Yeah, if you really feel that way, you just donate all of it.

That's true.

First of all, it depends on what you do. What?

It all depends on what you do with the money.

Yeah, I guess that's valid, too.

But it's like what we were talking about earlier. Some people are just dicks.

There's that like there's a reason that like most Powerball winners end up dying broke. Apparently, that's a real statistic, allegedly. It's like I could see it.

Hey, you get into this like, oh, I can just live like this forever. And then it's like, oh, no, I can't.

Because all of a sudden, you have 45 cousins that are like, hey, yeah, I'm by the way, my brother is in Bosnia right now. I did not know I had this much f****** family. I'll be honest with you. I'm just like, he's like, oh, we got this cousin, this cousin, this one's a dick. Like, it's like, whoa, what? Oh, no, these people. So it's like, it's kind of wild. I didn't realize that. So that's what happens when you start having or even like with the podcast, like the more success I have with this, more people are coming out of the woodwork. Like, hey, buddy. It's like, what? What do you need?

So I think that's great. I think getting that contact is really important because we've gotten a few people who we've never talked to, you know, hit you up. And, you know, now we're getting we're meeting new people and they they seem interested and just grows the audience. Yeah.

The more people listening, the more people interested.

Absolutely. One hundred percent. And I love that aspect of it. Ninety nine point nine percent of everything that comes with this is amazing. But every once in a while, you get that one person that's just like they kind of feel like entitled. Like, I've listened to all this. Like, you give me a freebie, you know, like every once in a while that comes. But at the end of the day, like, it's such a blast. Like, I love it. We're excited. We're gonna have some guests next month that are pretty sweet.

That's awesome.

Yeah, like people who are like, okay, I don't know. I don't want to share too much here. But one of the guys is like like an engineer for a large company a few years ago, like an automotive company, perhaps the one you work for. Wink. Don't give that away. Or once upon a time. But nonetheless.

Oh, what do you do for work?

Am I supposed to answer that question?

Yeah, sure.

Well, I'm interested because apparently it has to do with automotive.

I'm a service advisor at a Ford dealership.

Oh, okay. So you're the guy that when I bring my car in and you're like, this is what you need.

Yeah. Yeah, that's me. It's fun and really not fun at the same time.

Right.

So a lot of people who think they know things and really don't like, oh, your diagnostic just means you plug a computer in. It's like, no, no, it does not. No, it doesn't. I can't just plug a computer into something and have it tell me why your windshield washer pump doesn't work. That's not how that works. I wish it was, but it's not. And then you explain that to them and they're like, well, it's still not worth $200. I'm like, OK, but are you going to do it? Yeah. All right.

Cool.

So what was the whole point of that conversation?

That's one thing that that really grinds my gears is because people come in there. They'll be like, oh, $200. That's a ripoff or even like sometimes the photos people like, oh, that's expensive. I'm like, OK, you go take it. Oh, but the camera is $4,000. Oh, is it?

Yeah, right. Exactly.

The tools to fix your car are really expensive. Oh, you don't have friends that will let you borrow tools. Thanks, Sean. You don't have friends that let you borrow tools. Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's expensive. That's why it's $200. You're paying for the experience because guess what? If you go to try to fix whatever pump or whatever by yourself using f****** ChrisFix or something, spending probably going to break more things and you're going to break more things. It's going to take you six times as long.

Yeah, it's like that's great if you just want to learn how to fix it and get better.

But if you are, let's say, somebody that has to go to work tomorrow or you value your time, and you're not doing it as a hobby or whatever to save money, like that's the thing. I know people who work on their cars to save money. Hi, that's me. You know, it's like to a degree, but it's like f****** pay it.

Yeah, and that's something that I've seen online. People say, you know, that's outrageous. Six hundred dollars. Like I could do that myself. And it's like, OK, well, I'll go ahead. I'll let you do it. But, you know, you need the time. You know, when you're not working, are you going to you want to spend your free time doing this? No. Well, then, you know, you got to, you know, pay me, do it or, you know, suck it up. You got the tools to do it. No. Then you got to go buy them or rent them. Some of them are specialty tools.

And what happens when you break something?

Yeah.

Oh, do you know how to get that broken bolt out? Because I don't know how to get that broken bolt out.

Yeah, it's convenient.

They know how to get that broken bolt out. That's why you pay them for their knowledge, their skills.

Speaking of broken bolts, did you guys ever see the video? I want to say this is like half a year ago, a year ago. I think it was like an SVJ or whatever. And they had like four or five techs standing on the torque wrench trying to take a wheel off or whatever. Like something was just completely f***** or somebody messed something up.

Oh my gosh, yeah.

You remember? You know what video I'm talking about?

Yeah, somebody torqued it to like a thousand foot pounds or something. Like, unbelievable.

And they had to cut the wheel off.

Yeah. Oh no. A Lamborghini SVJ wheel?

It was an Aventador of some kind, but it might have been an SVJ.

I mean, like it had the, what, the solo locking nut, what is that called on F1? Just the one wheel nut?

What the f*** is it?

Like center lock. Yeah, center lock. And, you know, somebody with a massive air gun just went at it, just ba-ba.

That's craziness.

I loved what, every once in a while I get mesmerized by these, we're back to recording. I just tapped it and stopped recording. I get mesmerized by these techs or whatever that work on Formula One cars, right? Like, when they come in for a pit stop, and it's like a 2.3 second pit stop, that is insane, dude.

Yeah. It takes me about 10 minutes, no, 13 minutes to change all four wheels by myself. Even if I had four me's going at it, I think we'd still only be able to change.

But it's specialty design tools with those specially designed parts. It's all meant to, you know, they've done it a hundred million times.

Yeah, they practice, you know, they have like, you know, setups where they're like, okay, and they just do it for like probably hours.

Oh, yeah.

So two things on there. So we actually, we were down at F1 Miami last year, and you could actually go and change a wheel. Like, you know, they had timers and stuff like competitions. It was pretty cool, actually. I didn't get to do it, but I saw other people do it, and I was like, oh, that's cool, like a simulator or whatever. Like, yo, let's be a pit stop mechanic for a day. Honestly, that's probably just their scam of trying to find someone talented to do it for them. That'd be a good paying job.

Pennzoil last year at the SEMA booth had an oil change, like, simulator thing, and you could, like, try to do an oil change as fast as you could.

I feel like you're kind of limited by gravity on some aspect, right? Because, like, the oil has to come out, right?

Yeah.

But I guess...

Well, it was water at that point. I mean, it was just water that they were going back and forth with.

Oil is expensive.

Yeah.

Yeah, true. Yeah, I just ordered it today. It's going to be here in a week. S***, what was my other point?

I feel like that would be really dangerous because as you're doing that faster, you risk stripping a bolt or messing up the torque.

I think most of everything was plastic. It was literally just on a big stand.

Oh, it was for a kid's game.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was cool, though.

Whack a wrench. No, I think it was Ferrari back in the day. I can't remember what team it was, but basically, it might have been decades ago now or whatever, but the idea was that some automotive team and then some hospital or whatever, they collaborated or whatever, because like surgeons, think about it. As they're preparing for a surgery, they're getting all their tools. Like, you know, they come up with that stupid tray or whatever that's going to cut into you, and all their tools are there and ready. All their nurses are prepped. So then once you actually start the event, you are completely prepared, whereas pit stops, you know, probably 100 years ago, when everyone racing first started, whatever the heck that was, it's like, oh, the guy's coming in, like you have no radio, you had no way of planning for it. Everybody's just scrambling, you know, like, well, even last year, we saw that with Ferrari when they accidentally did a double pit stop because strategy. Nobody was ready, and it cost them like 30 seconds. It's like, it's kind of ridiculous to think just how much of a science they've got it down to now.

Oh yeah, I can't remember if it was like 24-hour Le Mans or what, but it was like a big race. And back in the day, like all the drivers would usually take like a break to like drink tea or like have a sandwich. And then they would just like stop. But then like one race team was like, what if we don't stop and we just keep driving? And everybody else like, wait, those guys didn't, yeah, those guys didn't stop for a sandwich break? And they're 10 laps ahead now? What the heck?

That's me on any road trip.

And then from that point on, all the teams stopped doing cookie and tea breaks.

It's so ridiculous. What a concept. Like every road trip, this is why I love traveling with Sean, by the way, because he actually respects the fact that we've got to get back on the f****** road and not do a half hour break. It's like, come on, let's get this s*** on the road.

I didn't just pass 200 people for them to get back in front of me.

I know, right? I feel the same way.

And people look at me like, I'm the lunatic. I'm like, no, we just we have so much ground to make up. Stop it.

Yeah.

I'm actually going to be starting a new series. I want to say Reels or TikTok, whatever. Where have you guys ever seen the video of the guy that I have a lot of video references this episode for whatever reason. Did you ever see the video of the guy where he's like staring down the camera? Go to the gym. Go to the gym. Go to the gym now. No. Oh, my God. One of the funniest things ever. I mean, it gets old after a while, but it's like he's just staring at you. Go to the f****** gym. And that's the entire video. And I spent 30 seconds of him just walking and pacing around.

I think I can see that, actually.

Yeah, I mean, he's been everywhere.

That's Harris humor for you.

You would giggle, too. Don't you lie to me.

Guy yelling, go to the gym at me? I would have swiped it immediately up.

Yeah, that's what I did.

It's funny, like he'll be holding on to that sometimes.

But I retained that for some reason.

Or I would have kept watching, waiting for the punchline. And then like, wow, that was really disappointing.

Point being is I want to do a similar series, but for driving etiquette, get out of the left lane. Get out of the f****** left lane. Just, you know, get really tilted.

Yeah, but the people who do it aren't going to see it.

They will, because I'm going to tell people to send it to their f****** grandma and be like, hey, have her watch this video because clearly it's been 45 years since she got her license and she needs a refresher. So.

So new series, Harris yells at grandma.

You think I don't?

Harris yells at the camera again.

Yeah, I'll have to tell you this story off air because the day I got let go, you've heard it a million times, Sean.

Have you not shared this on the podcast? I could have sworn you told this story on the podcast right after, because you were telling this story to everybody.

No, I don't think I told it on the podcast. This is one of those in-person stories. I'm always trying to perfect it in a better way of telling it.

I think you've perfected it by now.

Yeah, that's true. I'll tell you off air, because I like to keep certain words off of the old podcast.

Well, keep it PG-13, then.

No, then. It sounds funny. Me yelling at grandmas is the best thing ever. Honestly, I wish I could do it more, but not all of them have convertibles.

I'm sorry to everybody who doesn't get to hear this story. You're just going to have to bug Harris about it.

I'm a storyteller at heart, and my brother hates going to car shows with me because I'll tell the same story to 8 to 10 people during the course of the show.

Yeah, because we'll go to the car show, and I'll be hanging out with you, and we'll go start walking. Some people walk up. You start talking to them about what just happened to you. We keep walking. New group of people show up.

Same story.

Same story. I'm like, oh my god, I'm going to hear this all day.

It might not even be the same exact story. It might be a story you've already heard, because I haven't seen this person in like three months or four months, and it's just relevant. We start talking about tacos, and then I start b******* about Chipotle. How do they f****** skip me on my chicken again today? But, you know, just all these... I really should have a separate podcast for ranting now that I think about this. I think I'd be good at it.

Sounds productive.

Yeah, I think it is. It's therapeutic, I believe. It is therapeutic. There's a lot of comedians such as Bill Burr and Tim Milne. They just have a buddy, such as Sean here, sitting at the distance, and I just sit here and rant, and occasionally I hear Sean giggle.

I just absorb all the hate that you have.

That actually does sound entertaining.

I've thought about it. Actually, I wouldn't be a bad idea. Have Sean here as somebody to bounce ideas off of. Instead of being 50-50 how we are now, you'd be 10% or 20% sitting on this side, and then we pull something up on the screen here, and then we'll see, let's say, give me something stupid that's come out in the car world in the last year.

Burble tunes.

Burble tunes. Oh my f****** God. Pull that up on the table. I'll pull up a video of a burble tune, some stupid BMW that makes no power, but it goes, and then just start ranting about it. I don't know.

I think you could go off on that for a while.

I can go off for a while. I think so. Listen, I love, there's a skill to ranting. There really is. Okay, here's the deal, and I'll push back on this.

You're doing it right now.

I will, and then we'll get back to Alex, because I keep forgetting this episode.

It's been like 15 minutes. It's been the longest tangent ever.

We started with f****** stealing wheels from Driveify, and now we're here. But it's like, some people talk for the sake of talking. Like, there's no point to it, and I'm kind of here right now at this moment, so I know some people are chuckling in their cars right now, or at the gym or wherever they listen to this. But it's like, I try to entertain. I'll b****, but some people will be like, oh, so I went to Chipotle, and Stacey is over here talking about her vacation, and she went to Hawaii, and it was so fantastic, and oh my god, the sand was so dry because it's f****** sand, and just ridiculous. Cars, all right. I got a lot of, there's some bad energy in here today.

All right, so let's get back to you.

Evo.

I think we talked a little bit about the Eagle, so let's talk about the Evo.

Okay, all right, so the Evo, I guess the biggest thing that's happened with that car is it blew up on Venom Rally. Technically the rally was over, but...

You made it, sort of.

I made it through the rally.

And that was for New York?

Yeah, that was really fun. Yeah, I had 125 miles an hour with my dog sleeping on the center console. Oh yeah, I had my dog with me the whole time.

I remember that. I think you were one of the only solo drivers, but you brought your dog with you. And that was just so cool.

Yeah, because she had the co-pilot badge on. That was fun. Yeah, and then I got to have Derek ride with me. And he rode with me for most of the time, which was pretty cool, because he got some really sweet shots of Shay at Niagara Falls and whatever. And it was fun being a camera car for a while. But yeah, so my AC went out one hour into that. I did a pull next to the videographer who was riding in the Challenger charger, the Silver charger, Trevor's charger.

Oh yeah.

Yep. So I'm like, oh, I'm going to do this pull. And all of a sudden, like literally 30 seconds later, I'm like, oh man, it's really warm in the car now. Oh, that's not good.

Just blowing a hot air.

Yep. And then we made a wrong turn and had to catch back up. And I remember looping through that, whatever back road in Wisconsin that we took that was like running parallel to 90 or whatever.

Yeah, I remember that.

We were going up over those hills and whatever. And I was running with, due to the GT500 Mark. And he was behind me and I was like, let's see if I can outrun him. And I did. And then I was running with a bunch of people on 90 coming into Chicago where it's like six lanes. And I looked at Derek, I was like, do you think I can outrun everybody? And he's like, I don't know. I was like, okay, here we go. And like a while later, I'm like, there's nobody behind me anymore. And traffic's getting thick at this point. Took like 15 minutes for anybody to catch up to me. And I like slowed down to the speed limit or less, and we're just cruising. Racing, sliding the Evo at that s***** racetrack.

It was autocross.

I mean, that was sort of autocross. It was.

That was interesting.

Don't set off another ramp.

It was a banked oval track.

That had just had a demo derby run on it the night before.

I wasn't there for that. I didn't hear about that.

And not only was it banked, but it had all these crazy divots in it from the way they paved it. So like my blown front suspension was not having fun. And I was on my Firehawk Indy 500s, which are terrible autocross tires. I highly don't recommend that. All they do is squeal and slide, which did make it fun when I figured out I could slide it around. But I think I was right behind Mark. I was like a second behind Mark going around that track, which was pretty fun.

Really? Because I got to do a ride along with Mark in the GT500, and he was sending it through there. And he was like, how do I do this quicker? How do I do this quicker? He's really competitive. So he was like, he wanted the best time that day.

Yeah, when he got it. I remember I was talking to Doug, I'm like, how much more do I got to go to catch up to Mark? He's like, 1.9 seconds or whatever.

And that's so much time, because when you're already giving it all you got, you just make the slightest mistake, and the lap is awash, you got to start over. And it was, I want to say, not the most complicated track, but it had probably one of the tightest, what would you even call that?

Yeah, that crazy turn.

It was basically a U-turn.

Yeah, it really was. I was going into first into that turn to try to get power out of it. And then going on that bank was hard, because if you go too fast, you're going to slide, and you're going to go straight into the wall.

Yeah, I did a few laps in the BMW, and I'm just not feeling it. I'm sure I could push it even harder, but on this track, there's no reason to. And then I think Trevor in the Charger beat my time. I'm like, okay, you got it. He was having the time of his life going around that track.

It was pretty fun. It wasn't PPIR, but it was a good track.

Oh, yeah.

What else happened on Rally East?

That was the second track day, though, wasn't it? Didn't we have another track day on that event?

No, we did go-karting.

That was a blast. So yeah, that was the Le Mans style.

One hour of Le Mans.

Yeah, I'm taking myself out of time out, by the way. The caffeine hit really hard. I realized, like, I looked at the time, and I was like, holy s***, I'm really going for it. But yeah, so that was the Le Mans style go-karting, and I wish there was somewhere locally.

Yeah, that was probably still, like, one of my favorite things that has ever happened on a rally is doing that one hour of racing karts and having teams of four. That was so fun. Each person having to race, you know, was it a certain amount of laps, or they just had to do at least one lap?

It was one hour, and I think the minimum was, like, 10 minutes a person or something.

Because it had to be fair, you know, where you didn't just, like, have one person just do one lap and then have somebody, like, carry the whole team. You could have just thrown the fastest person of the day into, you know, a kart, call it a day.

That's a lot of time, though, an hour in a kart.

Oh, I did about 15. Our team was, like, very fair, where we were like, okay, each of us gets exactly 15 minutes, because none of us were, like, the best or the worst. So, you know, we were just like, okay, you know, we'll do it in this order. Everybody gets 15 minutes, and it's all fair. And we ended up getting second.

I remember f****** Doug came into the pit lane sliding sideways. Did you guys see this part?

Yeah.

I barely remember that.

I was there because I was like, because you guys were in front of us, and if he didn't do that, you know, which when you're coming into the pit lanes, you're supposed to come in, you know, slowly. He came in at full speed, slammed the brakes.

Oh, now I do remember that.

Yeah, that was so, so rude of him.

It's very Doug.

Yeah, you guys should have got disqualified for that.

Yeah, that is one of my fondest memories of Venom Rally, for sure.

That was so fun.

Yeah, no, I wish we could do it locally. Nobody wants to do it locally. Well, Stockholm is the only track that could really support it, but they don't have a pit lane. They do, but you have to go up a hill, and if people are doing it as fast as they possibly can, people aren't going to get hurt when they fly off the hill. Yeah, for sure. So that was what, Pennsylvania, I think it was?

Pennsylvania. I think the race was called Pittsburgh Race or something. Because they also had a racetrack.

Yeah, that's what I thought.

And at that same time, they were doing autocross.

Yeah, there was a ton of cars there.

I know, we showed up, and we were like, you know, all these really nice cars, and we just go go-karting.

Yeah, I think that overall, I mean, I think it was a good bang for buck event. The autocross, again, there were some issues with that. Looking back at it.

Better than not autocross, though.

And there's some things that, again, I'll speak about off camera as to what went horribly wrong there. But yeah, no, I think that was fun. A lot of people had fun. Mark really, like you said, got super competitive. Dude, I love that guy. He is the rowdiest rallyer ever. Like he is here to f****** win. And him and I won on the, what's Balto's rally? Land of 10,000 Lakes rally. I think he got first or whatever last year. So I'm up there. I give the stupidest speech ever. It was not PG. Look who you're talking to. And everybody's just like chuckling. Did he just say that? I can't even remember what I said. All I remember is everybody looking at me like a psychopath.

I've never done that rally, the 10,000 Lakes rally.

Oh, it was a blast. And you should do community this year. Use code Minoxide for 10% off. But no, it's a blast. Balto puts on a good event. Yeah. And each of them have been good. I've been on one and three. I never got to go on two. Three was a blast. That's the one I did with Mark for two days and a thousand horsepower GT 500. What a blast. And one is when I got pulled over in a GTR that I will say borrowed.

Yeah, I do remember that.

Yeah. And everybody still to this day, a lot of people think that I got clocked at 150. That is not the case. I got pulled over for passing on the right.

If you're doing 150, you'd be in jail. That car would have been impounded.

Well, I didn't say I didn't do 150. I said I didn't get pulled over for it.

Didn't get caught doing 150. Well, that's what I mean. If you did get pulled over 150, you'd probably be in jail. Car would have been impounded.

Oh, with how angry that city was? Dude, it was like a hornet's nest. Did you say you were?

No, I've never done any of them.

Dude, it was like a hornet's nest. I think there was 13 or 14 pullovers within like two miles, because everybody was passing on the shoulder. Newbie rallyers are the worst because they have something to prove.

That happened on the first Venom rally to Colorado. We were driving to the first checkpoint, and I think people in front of us were stirring the pot.

It was seven cars. I remember this.

We had cops come up.

That was still in Minnesota, wasn't it?

Was it in Minnesota?

I remember passing a bunch of people that had gotten pulled over, hearing something about it on the radio. I was way in the back.

It was either just before or just after Mankato.

I remember the cops coming up to some of us. I think we had pulled over for lunch, and they're like, yeah, we're getting a lot of calls about some people with vinyls on their cars and going a little too fast. That wouldn't happen to be you guys. We're like, no, we're here.

Just looking at David's Porsche that has f****** meth and 900 horsepower. It's like, no, could not know who it is, officer.

We drive the speed limit. And use our blinkers.

Literally a Hot Wheels car. I wonder what that man's up to today. No, his page blew up. I think he's like a quarter million followers on Instagram or something. He had a video that got 50 million views on Instagram. I think it was a Subaru or something, and it came up with a bunch of cardboard arrow to a meat. Just something ridiculous.

That would be something that blows up.

Yeah, but no, dude, rallies are fun. I do intend to bring one back in the future. It just has to be the right circumstance, the right time, and I have to have the right people on board. My biggest problem was just I didn't full send it.

I feel like you full sent it.

Oh, I f****** full sent it.

Going south, that was an amazing experience. You put us in really nice hotels. You catered dinner for us every night.

Right, but my ideas did not match my action. If I had 15 more rallyers, we'd still be having a rally. I didn't put the effort in to get more rallyers early on. The rally itself was f****** phenomenal.

It's hard to get people on board for something that's that expensive and requires a level of karma.

The thing is, it really wasn't that expensive.

It kind of is, though.

I mean, this was the best that you hosted through Team Stance Out and Venom Rally. You really went big, and I felt like the price even reflected similar rallies that you'd done in the past. For a full weekend and destinations and tracks and everything that you did, it was that track in Georgia, Atlanta Raceway.

And Atlanta Motorsports Park.

Motorsports Park. That was an amazing track. That was absolutely gorgeous. One of the best I've driven.

I know a thing or two about big things. No, that's the thing. And it really wasn't. Listen, I get it to people who are on a budget. This wasn't a budget rally, but it was a bang for buck rally. Because for $24.50, it was a k****** event. And I was targeting that sweet spot between 10K Lakes and Crown Rally. Because that was people who have, like Chaz and you, who have modified cars and they have some disposable income.

Your rallies have gotten progressively bigger and bigger. It used to be your first rally, my Challenger, just a base 392, was one of the nicest cars there. Then in Venom rally, even the first one, it became mid. We had McLaren on that one too. Then we get to Whip last year, final one, and I took the 1M, and I was probably the slowest car there.

That's the one I wish I would have got on.

A lot of people do, and I wish you did too, otherwise I'd be in business. Kind of blown up. That's something I've talked about before too. If you had this great idea, you had to meet it with great action too. I've been reading the 10x book by Grant Cardone, which, say what you want. Some people are iffy on him, but it's like I just am in this weird mentality right now, which is like, I gotta f****** send it. But no, rallies will be back at some point. Obviously it'll be one of my first people to hit up as a volunteer, or a participant, just because you have such a blast. You are top tier rally spirit. You're just down to have a good time. And you're just chill. A lot of people get antsy and nervous on rallies. Not a lot, but a decent amount. I feel like it ruins their event, because they're always worried about something breaking. Not Dan. Dan's got it figured out. He brings a trunk full of tools.

Spare parts.

Would you bring the Evo or the Talon in the next rally?

I don't think the Talon will ever go on a rally again.

That one's more for local.

Honestly, I've looked at that car differently over the last few years since getting the Evo. It's really just a collector status type of cruiser car. It's not going to be anything fast anymore. I mean, it still is fast, but it's just not replaceable at this point. And taking the chance of having something happen is just not worth it to me.

Yeah, you really don't find those ever.

I know of one other silver, I don't know what year it is, 93 or 94, same body style as mine, that is as clean, if not cleaner than mine. I know of one other one, but I don't think I could find another.

Would you ever consider reverting it back to stock, or maybe even tapering it down even more?

I would keep the turbo setup that I have right now, because it's actually like a stock frame turbo, but it's the biggest so you can make a stock frame turbo. But I would love to put power steering and air conditioning and all the nice stuff back into it to make it something that I can drive around and be semi-reliable.

Make it more showy rather than power. I could see that, that'd be pretty cool.

Yeah, I feel like a lot of, like that's, that was kind of like me with the Grand Cherokee. I just went a little bit too big and it kind of outgrew the platform. And then it was like just too much of a headache, and I just really didn't want it anymore. Like, I didn't want the headache. And so the only solution was to part it out or sell it to somebody who I knew would love it. And that's where Bryce came in and saved me from my project, from my own project.

I'm so excited for him to do that.

Yeah, he's been texting me nonstop about what he's doing to it.

Hey bro, I'm f****** your ex.

No. What the f***?

That's what your car is. It's your ex. It's like, hey, look at this.

I don't...

That's a stretch.

Yeah.

You don't see... Okay, I'll be back to going quiet.

He's taking care of my baby. That's all I cared about.

Yeah, I feel that.

Yeah, what do you do with your cars?

What do you mean?

You've met heirs.

You obviously do touch them or something.

What? No, I'm just saying...

You're the guy that kissed on the exhaust? Good night, honey.

I don't know how to respond to that.

Neither did I.

I'm just saying, you know, the dude took your possession, and now he's having fun with it. Oh, so you're pimping out your possessions?

You have such a weird way of looking at cars.

He is really, really on one right now.

But he's also the one that leases cars.

No, I haven't leased a car in two years. You think I could lease a Stage 2 Golf?

Well, I know you're not leasing the Golf. But the Jeep, and whatever the heck... What did you have before that?

A Charger, a Jeep Compass.

No, f***, duck. I can't fit in a Compass, duck.

Cherokee.

Okay, but I think a lot of people... I still think leasing is a good format.

I'm not saying that.

I'll lease a car all day long. For a daily or whatever? F*** yeah, all day long.

But I'm always into modifying all my s***. I never want to have anything that's not modified.

That's what I told my wife. I'm like, if I get a car, I'm sorry. If I tell you I'm not going to modify it, because it's going to get modified. It's going to happen.

Right away.

And I saw a video too that proved that fact, where it's like, oh, I promise I won't. Oh, it's just lowering springs. It just helps with the ride. Oh, it's just an air intake. It just makes the engine sound cooler. And then new turbo.

Yep. Yeah. You can't have a not modified car.

Yeah.

It's just it's got to be fit to your personality.

Yeah. I just I'll just tell her from now on. It's not going to be like the Jeep.

It's not going to get out of out of once you once you full send a car and get to the point where it's like, oh, OK, I can't really drive this thing anymore. This might have been a mistake. You kind of cut back a little bit and do things a little bit more modestly or at least look at it a different way. Like with the Evo.

It turns into like a car that I want to drive into a car I don't want to drive or I only want to drive it very sparingly on like, you know, prep surface. That's the only time I'm ever going to use it.

Like with the Evo, when I had it rebuilt and modified and everything, I brought it to RS to have dyno, and I was like, go to 400? Stop. I don't care what the boost level is. I don't care anything else. Once that 400 horse on E85, perfect. Leave it at that. 19 PSI, 400 horse, air conditioning. Great car. Drive it every day. It's an awesome car. And it shouldn't tear itself apart. I mean, it's still a Mitsubishi, so it probably will. But so far, so good. I already have 16,000 miles on that car since I bought it two years ago.

Nice.

I've had 40 since I got the Golf a year and a half ago.

That's his daily driver.

It's quite a bit more than daily. I actually rekindled a friendship with...

How does it get more than daily?

You look at him. He drives literally everywhere every day. He just drives to whatever he can.

It'd be nice if you drove to me every once in a while.

You live across the street.

I was going to say, Alex, I rekindled a friendship with somebody from my Xbox days when I was a f****** kid in middle school. It's been 12 years or whatever. He's looking at an RA to whatever. He's my age. He's looking at an RA. I'm like, God damn, what do you do? He's probably listening to this. But he's talking about what car should I get? I don't want a car that's unreliable. I have all these friends that have modified cars. They're always not working. I'm like, all right, tell me the list of cars that your friends have. He's like, oh, one that has an NSX. I'm like, huh, strange Honda. That shouldn't be falling apart. But he's like, WRX. I'm like, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And then he's like, yeah, one of my friends has an Evo. I'm like, yep, right on the nose.

Yeah, high maintenance vehicles.

Well, it's not even high maintenance. When you start throwing a lot of power at them, things break. It's high maintenance. My Golf right now, it's reasonable. It's gone 40,000 miles. I only had to reseal the... I'm trying to remember. My brain's not working today, clearly. But it's a bed plate. Bed plate. So I had to reseal that.

What is a bed plate?

A VW part, who knows?

I was leaking oil out of the motor. But out of 40,000 miles, I only had to real maintenance. We're not talking about perishables. Only two, two and a half grand. I still have a 380 wheel. It's a modified car, but it's not overly modified. The second I started getting on corn, even then it's still pretty reliable, based off everybody in the community. But if I were to go hybrid turbo and all that, then I get dangerously close to bending rods. And even if it's within the parameters, you're addressing components.

You're approaching that point of no return.

Yeah, the more you beat it, a car can only take so much before it's like, please kill me. But that was funny enough to remind me. What about your track stuff? I wanted to ask you this literally, let's say 45 minutes ago. Sorry. So you do a lot of track stuff nowadays. You had some issues with the Evo last event I saw you at.

Yeah, you showed up and it was already puking its guts in the parking lot. Yeah, that was fun. I knew I needed brakes. That was a known thing by me, but I was like, surely I can get through another track event because brakes are kind of expensive. I've come to find out they're actually not that expensive if you do it smart. They're just expensive if you do it the easiest way, which is buying a whole kit online. That's expensive. But if you go to Rockado and get your rotors, and then you go here and get your... Because I got my pads from the place that built the Evo, and they were a lot cheaper, and flew what I did myself. So as long as you do it smart, it's actually not as expensive, which is a fun fact to learn. Would have been really nice to learn that before.

What did you do with the Durango pads?

Oh my god, they're so expensive.

Well yeah, but didn't you...

Brembos.

Fun fact about Brembos, the Kia Stinger uses the same brake pads as the Evo. Same one.

Really? The newest Kia Stingers still use the same brake pads that... It's an Evo 8? Used.

Yep, that's pretty cool. Because the Stinger pads were on backorder or something, and one of my friends in the race group has a Stinger, and she needed Hawk pads, and they're like, oh, just throw them on from an Evo.

So apparently, the Challengers, SRTs, Hellcats, with their Brembos, they use the same pads as Mustangs.

Nice.

So they're... And for some reason, Ford sells their Brembos pads for about $200 cheaper than Dodge does. So you can just go to Ford, buy their pads, and then swap them on. Yeah, and then put them on your Dodge vehicle or Jeep. Hell yeah.

That's cool.

How does that make sense? And then even after that, you could go to aftermarket brake manufacturers, and they sell them for even cheaper. And they're usually better because they don't leave as much brake dust on your wheel and on your brake calipers, and they don't squeak as much.

I was telling him on the way here, I hit the brakes kind of hard to slow down on one of the stoplights, and it squeaked so loud, it actually scared me, and I put my foot off the brake, and I was like, oh my god, what was that? Oh wait, it's just my car. And then I pull up to the stoplight, and everyone's just looking at me.

It's either this guy's got no brakes or he's driving a race car.

It's so fun. I've never had brakes that were that squeaky until I put those pads on.

Are they like a full track?

They're HP Plus's in the rear, at least in the rear. I have HPS 5.0's in the front, and they're not as bad, but the HP Plus's are really bad.

I don't think I could ever do that. I hate squeaky brakes.

It is beyond squeaky. It is literally ear piercing loud.

It's embarrassing. I feel like secondhand cringe for everybody else that has to hear it. I'm like, I'm sorry.

Is it as bad as Burble Tunes? Is it that level of annoying?

Is it what, Auto Tune?

Burble Tunes.

Oh, Burble Tunes. I think Burble Tunes.

I feel like it's so different, because this is track stuff, whereas that's just like...

I don't know. If I hear a rusted out GMC, and it's got squeaky brakes...

That's terrifying.

I'm like, that's terrifying. Get your brakes looked at. I don't know. You should not be driving.

But you see a nice car roll up and the brakes squeak, and you're like, okay.

Something might be going on with that. I see the carbon ceramics. I'm like, okay. You're not warmed up yet, but when you do, they'll stop squeaking.

Oh, mine get worse.

Oh, they get hot. Yeah.

They're actually not bad. I don't hear them at all.

I thought they're supposed to get better once they heat up.

No. I don't know what the deal with Evos is. They're way worse when it's warm.

I don't think I'll ever get one then.

Oh, dude. It's so bad. Like cult. It's really fun. Actually, I think it's funny. I just laugh whenever it happens because I know people are looking around like, what is going on?

I mean, like if I showed up to a car show and everybody's like, oh, what is that? Like if your brakes are louder than like your turbo, then like something needs to change.

I don't know.

Your turbo.

I don't know.

Yeah, your turbo needs to get bigger.

Race car.

I love that.

I mean, that'd be perfect if you just put it on your vinyl, like race car. Like, you know, everybody go, oh, race car. You know, it's kind of like when you see like somebody driving all stupid and you're like, and then you see on the back, it says student driver, please be patient. And it's like, okay, I'll give it to you. You know, you're owning up to it.

Yeah, you had a student driver sticker for a while.

Yeah, fun fact. One day I just walked outside of work, you know, when I had that and it was just gone. Somebody took my student driver magnet.

I guess you graduated.

Yeah, it was like my second or third week or whatever at the job or whatever. And like, you know, we had like 11 employees or whatever around there and the owner and the company and everything, they're like, so what's that student driver sticker about? I'm like, so that's about, I'll tell you right now.

It's his, you know, get out of jail free pass.

No, and fun fact, I still got my ticket when I had that on last year. She's like, you're not a student driver. I was like, damn it. But yeah, I was explaining the story. I'm like, oh, well, the reason that's on there is because when I cut someone off at 120, they'll be like, oh, he's learning, you know, so learning.

I've never seen a student driver go the speed limit.

No, always under.

If I ever get stuck behind one, yeah, they're like, all right, slowly get on the accelerator. Don't go too fast. Like, okay, I'm just, I'm gonna show you how it's done, how the real reality, how you drive, you swerve around people and you just go.

Yeah, did you, well, okay, so we can go around the table on this one. What was your biggest problem when you were learning like to drive? Like for me, my two biggest problems, my first one was whenever I had switched lanes, I'd let off the accelerator. So I just started naturally slowing down. You get 10 miles an hour below. So that was my first one when I first started. And then I remember taking my mom's jeep. I was starting to turn, but I wasn't breaking yet. So I took like a turn, like a right hand turn at like 30, 35 or whatever. My dad's like, what are you doing? He's like, whoops. Yeah, so those are my two biggest mess ups. But the regular thing was like, I'd be switching lanes and I'd just start decelerating. He's like, what are you doing?

I know for me, when I caught it pretty quick, but when I would look over my shoulder, I would turn the wheel.

Your whole body would go with you.

Yeah, yeah, I'd be like, oh s***. Yeah, I scared the s*** out of my mom once with that.

And that's me when I do rollers.

My big thing was, that's terrifying. My indecisiveness would be when I'm driving and then the light would change yellow and I'd just freeze up. I'd be like, do I gas it? Do I brake? Do I gas it or brake? And like three seconds would go by and I'd just roll right through the red. And my dad would look at me like, you gotta make up your mind, man.

Floor it or stop.

Yeah, stop. And I'm like, my indecisiveness, I can't make a decision right now.

For the longest time, I always just went with, I have to hit the brakes. And I would just slam on the brakes every single time. And finally someone was like, why are you doing this? I was like, I don't know. I just don't know what to do. So I just stopped.

And something else that never got brought up to my attention until like a few, I want to say like a year or two later after I got my permit was somebody asked me like, do you know how to coast? Because apparently like when I used to drive, I would just get on the accelerator and then I would just like get on the brakes, get on the accelerator, get on the brakes. And it'd be like, I don't know why nobody told me about it this sooner. But my friend was like, how come you don't coast? I'm like, what? What do you mean? What do you mean coast? I don't know what that is. I'm new to this. And then he's like, just let off the accelerator or just coast and feather the pedal. I'm like, I'll try. And then after that, never did that, accelerate, brake, accelerate, brake. I don't know, dude. When I think about how stupid you are, or not like you are, but me as a young driver.

Yep, you're stupid.

Yeah, I'm still stupid. So I just think back and I'm like, there's so much that you have to learn. Even if you think you spend so much time racing in Forza, or you go to the go-kart track and you just race there, it doesn't really apply to real life driving. There is no red light simulator.

I don't know, I always used to play Grand Theft Auto as a kid and I would play like I was following the laws. I learned how to park a boat in a slip just because of trying to do that in Grand Theft Auto.

Really? I don't think I've ever done that.

Or learning how to back up a semi-trailer or something, or like parallel park, or all sorts of dumb stuff. But I was obsessed with driving, I've been obsessed with driving my whole life.

You know, Grand Theft Auto, you can use it for anything you want. That's why it's one of the best games ever made.

It teaches you life lessons, learn how to park a truck, a boat, strippers, I mean all that stuff, I mean all the important things in life. If you really learn how to make sure you avoid the cops, running on the run.

How to hit the hill and get into the Air Force base.

That's important.

Yeah, I mean, I know how to get airborne. We all know that. I'm sick in the head though, because whenever I see, your yellow light story reminded me of that. It's like, I've gotten so good at timing lights. I'm like, especially if it's an area I know, but it's like, hmm, I got exactly one and a half seconds after that turns red to make it, or I am toast. So I'm like, all right, let's see if I hit 120 going through just 30. Oh my gosh. These are the games I play.

Yeah, I'm not like that.

Yeah, so it's, I mean, within reason, of course, but that's where I'm at. Track, so yeah, so you've been doing a lot of tracking stuff. Again, we're in a little group chat, yay. You've been doing a lot. So how have you seen your track days progress over the last few years? Like, would you say you're like, I guess where do you rank yourself amongst other drivers now?

I don't really rank myself against other drivers. I'm not really that competitive. Like I'm, it's fun to see what kind of times I can get and just see like how my car is performing and whatever, but I'm just there to learn. I'm not there to be competitive or be faster than anybody else. I'm there for fun. I just love driving my car and to be able to not have to do that on the street and actually take it somewhere that I can throw it around and see what it's gonna do and see how fast I can go and see what happens when I put the right tire on the car and the right suspension and the right brakes and see the improvements that makes. That's why I'm there.

Yeah, being able to measure your ability is so much better than just going out on the street and thinking, I'm the greatest. I should be a baby driver. What?

Well, I mean, if only you saw my oil temps on the way here. I mean, oh boy. Yeah, set some records.

But I like bringing people to the track too. I keep trying to get new people to go and push their cars because it makes everybody such a better driver. And it's so much fun. When you buy a cool car, f****** drive the car. Like, don't just drive it every day. Don't just, you know, it's my daily or it's my weekend car. Go out and race it. Go see what it does. Like push it, play with it. Take it somewhere so people can see it. Like, holy moly.

What are you thinking about right now? It feels like this is very directed at somebody.

Push it, play it.

Is it to a certain car owner?

No.

Or?

Not particularly. Just like.

Cause I feel that way. Like if you buy a GR Corolla, you really should be like the kind of guy that's like, oh, this is going to be great for the track because you know, it's very track oriented. And then they never take it to the track. It's like, but here's what, you know, these reviewers got for their times. And like, I can state these as facts, but like, you know, firsthand for me, I have no clue.

Yeah. No, I'm just like, I look for anybody that I know who buys a cool car to like, okay, now you can come in and be in my circle and you can be cool with me. And I try to get them to go and like just race with me or like go somewhere with me. Let's go cruising, let's go this, let's go do that. I have a pretty small circle. So I just try to include people in racing.

I loved that when I went up for my first and only time so far. How much the car changes on a track? That's the other thing. It's ridiculous. Like when I, so I got my temps, my oil temps, the hottest they've ever been, which wasn't really all that crazy because I got an intercooler set up and all that. But like compared to my brother, like it's kind of funny. So his oil temps, like cruising in this weather is like 220. Whereas me, it's like 40 degrees cooler in this weather. You know, 20 to 30. Yeah, 2020 is more accurate.

Yeah, 40 degrees, holy.

Well, in the spring, like when it's like 70 degrees, it will stay at about like 180, 185 temps. And my brother will be like 210, 215. So it's like a 30 degree difference. But anyways, it's ridiculous. Like when the tires are up to temperature, holy s***. Like how sticky it gets.

Yeah, you learned a lot from your first track day.

I do learn a lot too.

And watching how your tires wear and.

Yeah, I didn't understand that much.

Did you let the tire pressure out when they were hot and you feel all the hot air come out? That's craziness.

I really wish that I checked my tire pressure a little more closely that day.

It makes a huge difference, no. Oh. No, cause I was way too focused on.

How was it like 15 PSI on my front left? Like in my, yeah, it was bad. Like it was not even like, I'm pretty sure like my tires were like under the force of like hard turning. They probably didn't have, they weren't stiff enough.

Full on just sidewall wear.

Yeah, I think so. Yeah, so next time I'll be better. You know, once we're back at the track. So yeah, I hope to do more of those Morgan's Motorplex events. Did you autocross it all this weekend? Oh, you didn't go to Stream Machine. That's right.

No, I'm going to Morgan's Motorplex on Saturday though.

Yeah, I wish I could go for that. That'd be fun. But again, like right now, I'm just keeping things nice and frugal.

Yeah, it's probably a good idea.

Yeah, last thing I need is, and plus, like I said, we should probably go figure out that rickety sound is.

That'll be fun.

But yeah, so I like it that you're just trying to get better. You're just there to have fun. You're not too competitive. You're here to just be another guy in the community, just doing some cool s*** for yourself.

Yeah, I'm not really in it for anybody else. There's no reason to be.

Yeah. Should we put a ribbon on this?

Is there anything else that you wanted to bring up? No? Then I think if you've listened to the show, we have one last question for you. You got to pick three cars. One car is going to be your daily. One car is going to be your track car. One car is going to be your show car. These cars, they have no budget. You can go absolutely wild with it. Your dream set up for any of these.

All right, play the Jeopardy music. We'll get back to you. Yeah. How's it going, Sean?

It could be better.

It could be better? Do you need a new roof?

I don't need a new roof.

Yeah, I stopped playing those ads for the time being because like, yeah, whatever. But are you ready yet?

I would say a GT3RS would be probably like a track car. I'd probably daily an Evo just because I love dailying an Evo. I don't know what I'd have for a show car though, to be honest.

Ponder, ponder away. Sean, I'm back to you.

I think some of, or at least, what was your show car?

I think it was Liberty Walk Aventador.

Right. Just like Liberty Walk, anything, I think.

Not necessarily anything. And by the way, I should really yell at someone for this. They took a picture of a Liberty Walk car and they edited a photo to make the rivets look like even brighter white on a black car. And I'm just like, oh, you're not supposed to see those that well.

I really don't like seeing like the rivets or like screws on a wide body kit. I really like like the clean look.

Like the molded. But some of them do look cool with the rivets. Some people will push back on this. But most of them look like, all right, it'd be nice if it was molded, but yeah, lots of different options. All right. And back to Alex.

I got nothing.

Nothing.

I think my show car was the RX-7, you know, just for, you know, two step competitions or exhaust competitions like it just doesn't get better than having a rotary engine.

Let's help Alex with his hopes and dreams. First of all, are you do you like bags or no?

Yeah.

Would you do a bagged car or no for a show car? Okay. So you like the, all right. So would you stick to JDM, German, exotic? I mean, do you have any preference? DSM.

Yeah. I would have a bagged Eagle Talon.

Bagged Eagle Talon.

Sure. We'll go with that as a show car.

That sounds very, very different. I don't, you know, very unique, not a lot of Eagle Talons. So then to like bag one would be a pretty crazy look.

Yeah. You should do that because like bagged cars, low power makes sense.

Yeah, it's not, it's not going anywhere.

No. Yeah.

There's very few cars that are on bags that make actual power. Like what's his name? Um, who's the Hellcat, Hellgato or whatever. It's like a thousand horsepower challenger and he's on bags.

He loves bags.

Yeah. Well, that's cause he got the car that way, I think, but everybody's like clowning. I'm like, Oh, you can't blah, blah, blah. Do with that car. He goes to drag strip and just destroys everybody. Yeah. It's awesome.

But yeah, but it could have been better.

It could have been.

He didn't do bags.

But then now he can't be a showy. That's so weird. A car that's like on welds that just airs out. So interesting.

That sounds unreliable, but if it works, then it works.

Anything works when you have a big enough wallet.

Yeah.

True.

I can imagine the amount of modifications he would have to do to get those welds to fit in those fenders. A lot of cutting.

I'm pretty sure it's welds. I'll have to take a look and see if I'm talking on my a**. Or maybe he switches between wheels too, like show car day, track day, who knows?

I mean, if you can, why not?

Yeah. You switch your wheels daily on the Durango.

Not daily.

An absurd amount. More than I would ever have patience to do.

Tears are expensive.

It gets exhausting.

All right. Where can people find you?

Alex Talon. Alex with a three.

So Al3x Talon.

Yup.

Instagram.

YouTube.

Are you still doing YouTube?

No.

Are you going to get back into it in the future?

Yeah.

Just do some basic stuff. Throw the GoPro on.

I bought a house, it got expensive, so I don't have the money for cars.

That makes sense. Yeah. Just throw the GoPro on. Do some stuff. Doesn't have to be anything crazy. Share your experience with the world.

Show off that Morgan's Motorplex Racing.

I have been wanting to do that. I just haven't done it yet.

I remember when we got to PPIR, I really wanted to know what the standard lap time around there was. And I was looking up videos of different cars. And I think what I found was a Porsche 911 Turbo. I think that's what it was. And whatever time that they put down, I was like, okay, that's what I'm aiming for. You know, I want to be like around there. Or I know like I took a Challenger. So I was like, oh, no, this is maybe like plus 10 seconds plus 15. But we'll see.

Oh, Reed did the same thing at AMP last year for Whiplash. Because like the car that set the time or whatever at Atlanta Motorsports Park was the same Porsche that he had, I think. Or a Porsche.

Yeah.

So he's like, all right, I'll see how close we can get to that. Like, you know, so that's pretty cool.

But he was more modified, probably.

Yeah. Yeah. Who the hell knows? But where can people find you, Sean?

I am on Instagram. That's 1mnmopar. You can check out the Durango. Check out the BMW.

You have a BMW?

Both of them are really cool cars.

Sure. You know, it's a bummer, dude. Like I really hope more people start, because like the 1M, like everything is a one series, which I mean it is, but like it's everything's like, oh, it's whatever, another 135i. Like I really wish it got the respect it deserves.

I feel like it does.

From the people that know, I guess.

Yeah, I never really knew what that car was.

See? I mean, salt on the moon. And as for me, so guys, first of all, make sure you're signing up for the newsletter at minnoxide.com. Get on the newsletter. That way you can get updates on all fun stuff. You know, our podcast guests, fun videos, wallpaper Wednesday, all that crazy stuff. If you're here, you probably know that, you probably found it through Instagram or Facebook, all that fun stuff, but at Minnoxide, literally everything. So oh, and since this is getting posted tomorrow, make sure to get the limited edition print of the GTR spinning flames. That thing is gonna be sold for July 2023 and never again. So I should probably figure out what the next one's gonna be. So yeah, thank you everybody for supporting the show. Our guests, and see you next time. Say bye, you bastard. I already did.