47. Mohs Performance, Building/Tuning Cars, TX2K, Drag Racing, w/ Sam Al Soywaymill

All right, hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minnoxide Podcast. I'm your host, Harris, aka man of many automotive aspirations. And this is the Minnoxide Podcast. We are missing the old co-host, Sean, because he is moving on to exciting developments, whatever he's starting a business, which we talked about in the last episode. But nonetheless, this is the show where we kind of go beyond the meat. We go to car shows, we meet people, and it's only like five minutes before you get taken away by somebody else, you know? So today, we have Sam from Mohs Performance. So how do you say your last name?

Al Soywaymill.

Yeah, I'm not trying that. Dude, I have a weird last name too, Jack and Jack, you know?

Yeah.

And people are like, yeah, I'm not trying that at all. But I wanted to get you on because I've been to your shop a handful of times. We already had the other two guys, you know? We had Bryce, we had Dave when he was there once upon a time. So I was like, all right, let's just run the whole group and get you on. So just kind of, let's just kick it off this way. Like, how'd you get into cars and how'd you get into tuning and building cars, I guess?

I mean, basically grew up in a family, you know, since a very young age. My brothers, my uncles, you know, they were all just about cars and racing overall in general. So there was really no way around it. You know, I had to be in the industry basically. So that's how it kind of started, you know, just, you know, at a younger age, you know, hanging out with my older brothers, you know, taking me to the racetracks and stuff, you know. I just kind of grew on me over the years. And like I said, there's really no way around it when you grow up in a family, you know, that is, you know, passionate about racing and cars in general, you know. Yeah, but that's kind of how it started with me, really, yeah.

What kind of cars were you kind of like around as a kid?

Mostly muscle cars, honestly.

Okay.

You know, V8 engines, obviously, you know, muscle cars. Lots of imports when I grew up as well. That's kind of why I am kind of on both sides, you know. I love imports and I love domestic cars.

I've noticed that with you, because you'll be working on like, you know, a 2,000 horsepower GTR or whatever it is, 1,600. Yeah. And then like, you know, like the other day, I was at your shop and you're working on a Copo Camaro, which is such a, you could do a little bit of everything.

Correct, yeah.

Yeah.

And just so everyone knows, I'm not a full-time tech, so I'm not really, you know, the full-time tech over there that does all the builds and stuff, but I do help the guys where they need it. I do help a lot with a lot of stuff here and there. You know, I run a lot of stuff at the shop, so it's kind of hard focusing on being a full-time tech. I was never a full-time tech to begin with, so sure, I do my own thing, you know, I know, you know, a thing or two here and there, you know, and I'm learning along the way, honestly, you know, just learn along the way. That's just kind of how it works with everything, really, in this industry, you know.

Always something new to learn.

Always something new, you know, the new platforms coming up, you know, hanging out around people, knowledgeable people, you know, just, you just learn from them, you know.

So then I get, what's your kind of like, what's your day-to-day kind of?

So day-to-day, I do run the dyno full-time, actually, so. Whatever dyno schedule, whatever is on the schedule for the dyno, I take care of that. Whether it's a rental dyno, whether it's remote tuning for an in-house car, you know.

No, you're good.

And then I do the fuel injector service that we offer as well, fluid testing and cleaning on the bench machine, basically. I run all that stuff, inbound phone calls, emails, building estimates for customer, communication with customers, walking customers. There's really not some...

You're just kind of filling in where you need to, but you're...

I'm filling in what I need to, exactly. We do need help.

Always, yeah, every shop needs right now.

Every shop thing, we do need help, especially we have an expansion coming up soon. So that's gonna grow a lot of more shop space and obviously we need more hands.

It's tough to find in this market, dude.

It's tough, and then once you find, it's also tough to just keep track on everything and just maintain the whole workflow, basically. No, obviously, any growing shop will need a lot more help as they grow, obviously. So we're not growing huge stills, so.

Right.

It's just-

It's just doubling kind of like the-

Kind of doubling the size of what we have.

More storage space.

More storage space for shop equipment, you know, stuff. The whole layout is gonna be changed. We're still working on the layout stuff.

Would you- So you guys are gonna like tear down that wall and-

So the plan is to tear the whole wall down, yes. And then to- And we kind of have two post lifts in an angle, four or five of them, whatever we can fit. And kind of focus on the bills on the other side of the shop, not the side that the dino sale is right now. Just to, not separate, but keep stuff away from the dino in and out for the dino stuff, basically. You've been to the shop, you've seen how screwy stuff is.

Because you gotta move stuff around.

Yes.

I went to a detail shop in Coon Rapids a couple weeks ago, so they just, again, doubled their shop space, because before, they would have to wait. I'm gonna have those guys on, too. I think it, what is it? The name isn't coming to me, god damn it. But basically, they would have to spray cars on one side, and they can't do PPF or ceramic because they have to wait to clean the cars. And just a crazy mess. The same thing over you. It's like you can't work on this, because this is in the way.

One thing gets in the way, and then it runs the whole day, basically. Yeah.

Especially when you have a couple guys, or a few guys sharing the shop. I can see that being an issue.

It's a struggle, but we're working through it. We've been doing good through it.

Okay, so you mentioned before we started the podcast that you, I've always wanted to ask you this. So were you born overseas, then?

I was born overseas, yes.

Okay, where at?

Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia, okay. Gotcha. And then how long did you live over there?

Basically half of my age, literally. I mean, I've been here for 13 years now. But I've also went to kindergarten here, so. Total of 15 years, I wanna say, is here in the States.

Okay.

And that was all Minnesota as well, so.

Gotcha, was that because there was like a good program to come here or anything, or?

No, actually my dad back in the day had a scholarship as well. So he basically had to take the whole family, me and my brothers, you know, and just come over here and then finish up his schooling. And then basically went back, and then I finished high school over there.

Okay.

And then came back here, you know, that's kind of how.

Okay, okay.

I'll try to back to Minnesota because we started with Minnesota to begin with.

I was gonna say, like, you started kindergarten in 16.

Yeah, no.

We had a similar story. So my parents actually were refugees too, you know? So a lot of my family actually ended up here in Minnesota at first, because Minnesota is really great with like, you know, refugee programs and stuff. So like, you know, for example, we have a lot of Somalis here. So same thing kind of applied to us, you know, back in, what is it, late 90s, early 2000s, whatever. So that's how we ended up here. And then the rest of our family just kind of moved across the country, but we stayed in Minnesota, because it's, I kind of like it here. I mean, even though we have snow next week.

I'm not gonna lie, I love Minnesota, but the weather just kills me. 13 years and I'm still complaining about the weather, you know.

Every year. Every year.

You know, I was just talking to the guys downstairs. I'm like, I'm not really liking this weather.

I'm surprised you brought your Corvette out in the snow here. That's a Z06, right?

That's a Grand Sport.

Grand Sport?

Yeah.

I can never keep up.

That one is sold and going overseas, actually, soon here. Most of the ones I had, they were all sold and just going overseas, basically. Just helping a friend over, you know. They're really expensive overseas, and it's hard to find a clean one, per se.

How expensive did it get? Like, in dollars, I guess? How much more expensive could it be?

I want to say, like, $6,000, $7,000 is an average.

Just for the price of the car. That doesn't even include shipping it.

Not shipping it, just the price of the car, basically.

Pull this closer just a little bit more. Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, suppose people want something new to their area, you know. They don't want to buy a local car, you know.

Yeah.

That everyone saw before, you know, that everyone did this to it before. So you want something new, basically.

So what's hot over there for, like, the tuning industry, or, like, what's big for cars out there?

So everything is big over there, but import compared to the US over here is huge over there.

Like two J, like Supras and...

Supras, two J's, you know, basically, you know, GTRs, the overall, you know, it's just huge over there.

Always GTRs. I see, like, these big shops, like AMS and all that. Like, they're always sending stuff to the Middle East.

Correct, yes. Especially GTRs, actually, in the last couple of years, it's just been huge over there. I haven't gone back in a while, so it's kind of, I've been kind of missing a lot on what's going on over there.

When's the last time you were over there?

2018.

Oh, that's not too bad, five years ago, okay.

But even before that, I just go there for like a month, three weeks period, and just come back here. So I don't really get to spend a lot of time over there and see what's going on, really, you know. Most of the time that I've been gone back is the summertime over there. Summertime is very hot. And there's really no race events. There's no car events.

Yeah, because it gets up to 110 or whatever, right?

Yeah, there's really nothing. So it's just a bad timing for me to go back in the summertime and not see anything, car community over there, basically. But it's all right, though. I mean, I've been following, you know, and seeing progress of what's going on over there. So it's been really huge on the racing side of it, too. More tracks are opening, obviously, over there.

Really? Don't they have a big... Don't they have a Formula One track over there?

Bahrain.

Bahrain, yeah, that's what it was.

So that's the official F1 track in Bahrain over there.

So they probably have a really good... I guess, who's the team that they support out there, right? Because if you go to Japan, they love Lewis Hamilton for some reason.

Yes. Not sure who exactly they support. I don't really follow much of it. But actually recently, I've been just watching, as the guys do, watch over there. And I just want to follow and see what's going on, really. I'm not going to say I'm not a huge fan of F1.

You just don't have the time.

I just don't have the time. Not the time, really. I mean, I just don't have the... I don't know. It just doesn't get me. You know, it's one of those things, you know. There's nothing bad about it. And, you know, it's obviously one of the best, you know, sports out there, honestly, in my opinion, you know. Maybe because I'm also not a huge road course, you know, type of a guy, you know, that kind of track circus.

Are you more like track racing, then?

Drag racing is what it's at, really. So, for me, at least, you know. Maybe that's why I don't really follow the track side of it, the track racing side of it, but it's definitely, you know, has been growing the last couple of years as they grow in the Middle East area as well, you know, they have. So last year, I think, yeah, that was last year. They had a first time in Saudi Arabia, actually, it was last year. It was last year for the F1s.

Was last year the first year?

I think it was last year the first year.

Oh, that's okay. It's coming back to me.

And they're actually building a new track now, and they're hosting back this coming year as well in February, I think.

Yeah.

It's back to back Bahrain and Saudi Arabia is back to back. So that's going to be huge for them over there.

Yeah. Didn't you guys go over there recently for F1? Or is that somebody else I'm thinking about?

Not me. No, I have not gone.

Some people at the shop did, right? Or no?

Nope, not from the shop.

I'm confusing somebody else. Somebody brought their entire shop out over there.

Actually, we do have a plan of going earlier next year. The entire team at the shop. So we do have a plan of going to have one overseas.

And you'd probably spend a few weeks over there, maybe?

I would. I would love to spend a couple of weeks down there. Yes.

Especially during the winter when it's a little...

It's gonna be a really nice weather.

What's the weather like over there? Like when it's like winter?

Mid-50s.

Oh, that's actually really nice. That's the trend.

And that's really cold for them over there.

Excuse me.

But it's nice, you know? I mean, the weather, I think the weather in the 60s is nice even over here, you know? If it stays like in the mid-60s, it's just perfect, you know?

So then, yeah, you said a lot of tracks are opening up over there. Is that more like drag strips then?

Both actually.

Road course too?

Road course and drag strips, yes.

Well, they also, I feel like they don't have as much b******* rules like we do over here to open stuff.

It's everywhere, but they kind of get around it somehow, someway. You know, a lot of rules everywhere, really. I think the newest track in the Middle East now is Kuwait, I believe.

Okay.

So it's called Kuwait Motor Town. So that's the newest one. Okay. So it's a full road course, full drag strip, quarter mile drag strip. It's literally a state-of-the-art track, basically. I haven't gone there, but from the videos and pictures that I've seen, it looks really nice, you know. I really want to visit someday, actually.

So I guess, have you done a lot of road course, then?

I have not, actually. I've done several in Brainerd. Several open track days in Brainerd. I mean, obviously nothing professional level, or whatever, but you know. I've enjoyed it, to be honest, you know. It was fun. I did it in my GTR, actually.

Okay.

In the GTR, yes.

Yeah, actually, so I was kind of scrolling on your Instagram, because it was funny, because when I followed you back, you actually shared your old GTR in front of a helicopter.

Yeah, sometimes I do just go back and just share some older pictures, just to bring it back, you know.

Yeah, that was like perfect timing. So what year was that car?

95.

95? How long did you have it for?

About five years.

Five years?

Yeah, 2014 is when I bought it.

That's, what's the, 95, that's R33, right?

R33 GTR, correct. Yes.

Yeah. I was kind of like scrolling a little bit. So what did you have all done to that thing?

That was a very basic setup, honestly. I mean, I bought it completely stocked with just an exhaust, really, nothing crazy. Obviously, I tore into it, took the engine out, transmission out, and just dug into it. Bottom end was still healthy, so kept bottom end stocked, obviously. Just built ahead, just with mild stuff, nothing crazy. It's just all off-the-shelf stuff, you know?

I think it was like 450 or something.

Just a mild 500 horsepower, 400 torque, really. All-wheel drive. It was a fun car.

That's a lot for a little, I mean, it's good for a car like that.

It is good. It had stock turn turbos when I bought it. That got old quick, so I had to go to a big single turbo, obviously. But yeah, stock bottom end, big single turbo, just mild cams and nothing crazy stock intake and just a little fuel system upgrade to support the power, nothing crazy.

Was it left or right-hand drive? I didn't see that.

It was a right-hand drive.

They were so, before COVID, they were all so cheap.

They were cheap, yes.

Well, relatively speaking cheap, because now they're way more.

They are. They are way more. And I cannot justify that, honestly. I mean, I would never pay that much for that, such a car like that. I mean, don't get me wrong. It's a nice car. It had its legacy at some point in life. But for how much they're asking nowadays, it's just insane to me, at least.

What are they asking for?

Well, I sold mine in 2020. But I bought it in 2014, I believe. Yeah, 2014. Actually, funny story. I bought it on Black Friday. It was a smoking deal. It was a smoking deal, so I bought it on Black Friday. Actually backtrack on that same deal, speaking of liking both platforms, domestic and imports. MK4 Supra was my all time favorite, obviously. There's a lot of people, too. They just kind of deny that. And I had a plan to go down to Oklahoma City to buy one from one of my friends, actually. That deal just didn't happen. So I was like, well, I'm not going back to Minnesota with no car. I'm down here already. So I keep driving down to Dallas, Texas, you know.

Oh, you just kept going.

Well, I had a lot of relatives down there, too. So it just made sense to go down there and just hang out for a week or so. And just I somehow found the GTR down there and just went and looked at it. And we just sealed the deal with this guy. And I just was just gone from there, really. I mean, it was a smoking deal. People were shopping and I'm buying the GTR on Black Friday, basically.

Was it pretty clean, then?

It was decent when I got it, but I had to do a lot to it. No paint, though. Nothing paint-wise. Interior had to change a lot. It had buckets, older seats in it, so I had to clean up the interior, really. But otherwise, no, it was not that bad.

That's one of the deals that... So I think he might be a mutual friend of ours, but I can't say who it is, unfortunately, because he doesn't want to release it yet. But he just picked up a ZR1 for a smoking deal. But same thing. He has to redo the interior.

Yeah, I know the whole story.

Yeah, you know the car I'm talking about.

Yes.

Yeah, so I'm really excited. He's going to... It's going to be my first time riding in a ZR1 once we get to... Well, hopefully, the weather stays good, because I'm going to see him on next week. So I'm not sure.

I know the whole story. I was talking to him, actually, and I basically know everything. So, yeah.

Well, you say you will with the thing?

I know everything about it, so... I talked with him. I know who you're talking about.

Yeah, yeah. I'm super excited, because that car is legit, and he's already looking at buying, redoing the interior and all that stuff. I mean, it's definitely...

Yeah.

It's a race car.

It is a race car.

Yeah, it's not clean by any means, but...

It's a race car.

Yeah.

Race car are not meant to be clean.

Well, that's the thing. Yeah, like, Sunny's like... For example, I just came back from Milwaukee. I went with Minneapolis Mopar out to Milwaukee, too, because he was testing his Viper with the new setup and all that. And even though, you know, a lot of people are like, oh, ACR, gotta keep it clean. And then you get guys like him that are, I'm gonna go track the f****** thing.

Yeah, I mean, it's a race car. You gotta track it. You gotta enjoy it, you know. I mean, you sure gotta keep it clean.

You gotta take care of it.

You take care of it, basically. You're not gonna just destroy the thing out there, you know?

Yeah.

But I've seen some people don't really care, honestly. They will just destroy your whole race car, you know? They just don't care, I guess, yeah.

Yeah, I just saw a Viper go out for sale recently. It was like extreme GTC or whatever it was, and it had like 18,000 miles, but it was only 180,000. And it's like that same car, if it was not tracked like crazy like that one was, it'd be like 250,000 or whatever. So it's crazy like having that race car depreciation. But if you're a shop owner or if you work on cars, it's a lot easier to do that too.

Definitely is, yes.

Yeah, so then, okay, so when you got that car, so you had it for about five years. Did you have anything else? Did you have your Corvettes or anything back then too or no?

Well, I actually had a Corvette before the GTR as well. So I started with the Corvette actually. That was an older Corvette. That was a 1994 C4 Corvette as well.

Okay.

Yeah, so that was a completely stock, just clean, your typical clean stock Corvette. I did some stuff, some simple exhausts, wheels, the R1 wheels actually, and some simple stuff, nothing crazy. It was a six-speed car, so it did held its value. Being a tan interior, white exterior, six-speed, so it was a really clean car overall. So I think I've had that one for three, four years, I want to say. And I actually bought the GTR before I get rid of the Corvette as well, but it got to a point that I had to let one of them go, basically.

Right.

So yeah, that was a really fun car, to be honest.

Dude, it's so funny. I was watching, so my mom sometimes, she'll be playing music videos in the house or whatever, you know, typical immigrant stuff. And in the music video, it's a Bosnian song or whatever it's on YouTube. And I'm like, I had to double-take, I'm like, is that a f****** C4 Corvette? And like the whole thing was like, you know, it's like a futuristic kind of, you know, whatever, you know how music videos are. And I'm like, why is that C4 Corvette in there? Like, do they really think that's like a futuristic car? Cause it kind of has that like DeLorean look, you know, like kind of like sleek, you know? So then they put like aero plates on the side. I'm just like, oh my God, dude, this is what they're doing back home. Just ridiculous. But so, okay, but yeah, so when did you start working on cars? Then you said when you were like 15, 16?

I mean, I basically, you know, started doing my own on my own stuff. Obviously, you know, I've always, you know, done my own thing, you know, I've never really brought a car to a shop for me, for them to work on it for me, you know? I've just always, you know, learned how to do it myself, you know, just growing up with my older brother, they were always, you know, doing their thing, their own thing as well. My older brother is a certified GM tuner, so. I spent a lot of time with them, you know, on the dyno, on and off the dyno, you know, back in the day before I even come to the US., So I kind of learned a lot along the way, you know, just hanging around, you know, like-minded people, I would say. It just kind of grew on me, you know, from there, really, yeah.

What was your first car?

I had a Nissan Altima, actually.

Oh my God.

Yes.

Do you have big Altima energy? Do you road rage in traffic?

I've had one of the older ones, the 90s. Okay. Yeah.

Man, Altima drivers are fearless, dude.

I mean, yeah, yeah.

It's fricking flying by. So then, okay, so you're not much of a road course guy then. So did you build any like drag cars for yourself or not really?

I have not, actually. I do plan on doing something someday when the time is right, actually. But no, I have not built a drag car before, no. I have not always been a street car kind of deal.

Okay, so go out like Saturday night and stuff like that?

Yeah, go out Saturday nights, kind of street car deal. Even at the track, street car still. Well, like I said, just hanging out with my older brothers and family back then. Drag racing was so big back home as well. So that kind of grew on me on a younger age basically. That's kind of how I kept it in mind this whole time of being on the drag racing side versus the road course deal. But one day, I do plan on building a full-on blown drag car for sure.

Would it be a Corvette?

Most likely.

Most likely?

Most likely it's gonna be a Corvette, yes.

Okay, so when you say you had a little bit of JDM and you had a little bit of muscle, then when you think muscle, were you a big Chevy guy then?

I was never big, like either Chevy, Ford, not type of a guy that would say I'm big into Chevys, I'm big into Mopars. I was never that guy, honestly. I love them all. I love Chevys. I love Ford. Mopars are kind of growing on me. I have not really been into them much, but I mean, it's a V8, supercharged engine, so nothing can go wrong, right? No, I mean, they make power, you know. Anything that makes power makes you happy, really. So that's kind of how, you know, imports. A lot of people think about imports as small engines. They don't make power. The V8 guys don't really like the smaller import engines, you know, that kind of deal. I was never that type of person. You know, I'm both ways. If you follow me, you'll know. If you hang out with me, you will know. You know, I love both of them, imports and domestics.

Yeah, I was really surprised, because again, I've never seen you work on a, or be around a domestic until at Copo, you know, a couple of weeks ago. I was like, okay, what's going on in here? And then you're like, oh yeah, I'm just, you know, getting this car cleaned up or taken care of, get it running properly or whatever. So yeah, I've been watching a lot of like 2JZ and B58 videos lately. Like I've been watching like real street performance on YouTube. Just trying to get familiar with it. Cause like, you know, a few weeks ago, we had a engine builder on, I don't know if you know Jim Hall from TPIS. But yeah, so he, same like you, he does domestic and JDM. So like his specialties is like, like early 2000s LS sort of stuff. But then he'll also do like pretty much a lot of debts and stuff and a lot of Supra, like old Supra stuff. Yeah, so if I probably messed something up in there, but basically old JDM, old Chevy stuff. So it's like super cool. And then I just kind of got this like bug. I'm like, all right, I have to learn how some of this stuff works because I barely work on my own hoopty. I don't do much of anything. Just because like I don't have any work. It's my only car. So if I f*** it up, I must spend double taking it to a shop. But it's super cool to learn about all that stuff. So then how did you end up eventually at Mohs then? What was the story that got you there?

So like I said before, for those who don't know, Mohs is my uncle. And Hussein, Mohs business partner is my cousin as well. So it's basically a family business. It's my family. A lot of people message me, they're like, oh, you still work at Mohs? I'm like, yes. And even if I leave, I will still be with Mohs because essentially it's my family's business. I'm not going nowhere, you know? But yeah, that's how it kind of started really. I did have another job before opening the shop actually, but that's when COVID hits actually. So I was on furlough from my other job for like three, four months.

Like a government job or?

No, it was a manufacturing company. I used to do a lot of the CNC press break stuff. Okay. It's a metal company, basically. But after that, we just never heard back from that company. You know, COVID, everything got messed up. You know, a lot of people lost their jobs and stuff. So essentially I started working, you know, I mean, we built the shop to begin with. I built the shop with Mo and Hussein over there. We literally did everything, you know, from the dyno installed and the dyno cell, painting, you know, epoxy and floor, everything. And since then, it kind of just grew, you know, the business grew fast, you know, obviously.

When did it open?

2020.

Really? Oh, really?

Well, COVID hits. I mean, 2019, we had the shop, but we were not in business yet. We're just building the shop, basically. Getting everything ready. But no, 2020 was the official opening.

Okay.

Yeah.

Gotcha. Yeah, for some reason, I feel like you guys have been around longer. I guess it's so weird.

So, Mohs did have the fuel injector service way long before the shop. He used to do it from his small shop at home, basically. So, he offered the service a long time ago. A lot of people knew him back then. So, that's probably why people maybe thought it was longer for the actual shop being around.

Because the name was just around a little bit longer.

The name was around. You know, Mohs was still Mohs, you know?

Yeah.

You know, that's probably why, I want to say. Yeah.

So then, do you guys kind of specialize? Well, yeah, you say you kind of do a little bit of everything, then.

We kind of do a little bit of everything, really. A little bit of everything. Not everything, it's just a little bit of everything, really. So, sometimes, well, not picking and choosing, but if it's something that we have knowledge and support for, we definitely like to do it, you know?

Or if you can outsource help or something like that.

Outsourcing help is always good, but if you get a big volume of that platform, outsourcing help, it's kind of not ideal. It gets tough. You need somebody right away on top of it. But no, like I said, we do a little bit of everything. If you see exotics around, that's because Hussain the owner, that's where he comes from. His background is from the exotic side of cars. McLaren's, Porsche's, that's kind of his deal. That's where he comes from. If you see Fords and muscle cars, obviously that's Mohs. He came from a Ford background basically. So that's kind of how it is. If you see imports, maybe it's me. I don't know. I'm the one that came from the imports kind of platform. Or in general, any European car, that's all, basically that's all Hussein. That's where he come from. High-end exotics, BMWs, all that, obviously even too. That's why you see a lot of, a little bit of everything really over there.

Yeah, because everybody kind of has their own thing.

Yeah, and the Mopar, obviously, Bryce is a huge Mopar guy. And that community is just huge here. It's just big. So I was surprised sometimes, I get surprised sometimes of how much people wanting to spend on their cars, really. I've noticed that the Mopar community is just, it's one of those deals, they have no questions. They just wanna do it. Even if it's not ideal to us, for example, they just wanna do it. That's what I've noticed at least. But yeah, that's why you see basically everything over there.

There's only a handful of shops, or I think, honestly, outside of Bryce, who else works on Mopars around here?

There are several, but not that I really know of. Like really well. I haven't followed Mopar much, so I don't really know. But there are several other shops.

I know there was one shop here that was kinda messing everybody's stuff up. I won't say who it is, but they were basically just f****** everybody's stuff up.

That's, unfortunately, you see that everywhere. It's everywhere. There's really no way around it. Unless it's a big, big non-support at the end of that shop, and the life of that shop, basically. But I mean, not seeing that happen anywhere here, really. They just keep growing, I guess.

It's so funny. I always want to try to, I hold myself back from talking any s***, because the other day, he tuned an RT Challenger, and I think it was 450 wheel, and I'm just sitting here thinking, well, my GTI could smoke that.

Right? It's impressive looking at these European cars, too. Yeah. I was never really much into the European cars, but over the last couple of years, they've just been evolving like crazy. They're just growing. They're making power. They're making real good power, and they're showing it at the track. They're not just making power, and that's it. They're showing numbers at the track, and that's what I love to see. Everyone can make power, right? But is that power really getting applied to the ground? Is that power really getting your time slipped?

Is it consistent?

Is it consistent? Is it consistent, all that stuff? Like I said, everyone can make power, but you just have to prove it, and show people that time slipped, and back it up with that power that you're making, really.

It was crazy. So at Milwaukee, there was a bunch of beamers came from Chicago or whatever, and the new ones, like the M4, the M4 comms, even a few, I think there was a couple M8s, or 8 series or whatever, dude, it's on the M4s. I don't know what they had done to them, but they were just running, one of them ran a high nine.

And they're consistent. That's a big thing. If you're not consistent in racing, you're not winning.

Yeah.

It's just basic. If you're not consistent, you're not winning. That's what I like about the European cars. They're really consistent. They make a lot of power. They're really consistent. Not gonna say they're easy to make power, but they do make up a lot of power on a small engine.

Well, downpipe and a tune for a lot of them.

You know, just your simple downpipe tuning, you know, intakes, you know, basically it just... I mean, those cars are kind of de-tuned from the factory. That's why you see a lot of gain once you put a simple downpipe.

Like that M2, dude. You saw that, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. F****** 700 wheel with a downpipe and a tune. Yeah.

I mean, a lot of people will be really, really surprised of it. I mean, honestly, like I said, they're just detuned from the factory. They were built to make a lot of power. They just didn't sell the car with a lot of power, basically. And that all goes to, I want to say emissions, the EPA stuff, all that stuff.

I feel like they also probably, if I was a manufacturer, I would rather just overbuild it so I don't have to deal with warranties and stuff. So it's like, all right, let's make this thing doubly strong or whatever. That makes sense. And then again, like you said, emissions, like that is so restrictive.

Very restrictive, yes.

Do you have to deal with a lot of that? Or I guess, I don't know what to think of what the question is basically, because when you start messing around with emissions or whatever, do you have any issues with that or not really in your position?

No, not really. No, we never had any issues with emission stuff, no.

Yeah, because I don't know what to think of diesel guys, like we're getting hit with that a couple years ago.

Yeah, I've heard some stuff about diesel guys getting in trouble with EPA emissions.

When you start messing with the DEF and all that.

All that stuff, yeah. No, we never had to deal with any of that. We never had any issues, unfortunately.

What's the biggest gain that you've seen on a car? I guess, power wise?

I don't really recall anything on top of my head. I've seen some impressive gains with going back to downpipe intake. Just tuning for that. That's obviously a lot of gain there, but don't really recall anything that I want to say impressive. I mean, don't get me wrong. There's definitely something impressive that had happened, but I don't really recall anything really on top of my head, at least now. B58 Supras are obviously really...

They're ridiculous.

Yes, for what it is. On a stock turbo setup, we've done several of those, and we've seen the power gain on those. I want to say that's a really, really good gain on a stock engine, a stock turbo, with, again, a high flow downpipe, you know? You don't have to touch the fuel system. You don't have to do really anything, you know? It's sure expensive to get it done, but it's really rewarding, power-wise, really, you know?

Because you can get, what, five, 50, 600 wheel on stock turbos?

Stock turbo, I've seen it max out on like 520-ish. I want to say. That's maxing out stock turbo. That obviously depends on the elevation, you know, what it's done, really. We personally have not seen a 520 out of any Supra so far on a stock turbo, here at least, of the ones we did. And that's most likely due to elevation, basically. You know, Minnesota is not, you know, is not a high elevation, but it's technically not decent for power, basically.

We're about, like, we're a thousand above sea level, I think.

And that's quite a bit for making power, you know. If you go Florida sea level, that's a whole different story, you know. So, yeah, I mean, I think the B58 is a really good platform, growing fast. I personally love the Supras. I love how they look, you know. I like how small they are compared to other cars, basically.

Yeah, it's very easy to weave in traffic.

I mean, well, let's compare it to a GTR, for example, right?

Which is huge, just a boat.

The GTR is a boat. And if you look at the price, it's a huge difference as well. You know, Supra is very affordable.

They just dropped below 50, finally.

Right. But if you go look at a GTR, it's, you know, 70 plus, 80 plus, a thousand, you know.

80 or 90 plus for a decent, like if you're talking like comparable, like miles, you know, because like, first of all, nobody wants a 2009, 2008 GTR.

No, not at this point, at least, you know, yeah, 2017 plus is where it's at.

Because you got to jump so much, you got to dump some money into it, you know, get the trans, if the trans isn't updated already, you have to update that.

Correct.

We had Mo or Mo Alabadian, and we were talking about his GTR and like what he did into that. It's like, yeah, you have to update the trans and we're good to go. Or no, I think it already had it when he bought it. But that's the thing. That's something to look for is, does it have the updated trans?

Yeah, unfortunately, some of those cars with the manufacturer defect. Well, not necessarily a defect. Well, the GTR had the big issue with the bell housings to begin with.

Yeah.

So that's a huge issue there. I mean, it's a simple fix, but I mean, still it's an issue. I'd rather not buy a car with that issue, knowing that it might have that issue at least. I mean, luckily, our company found a fix for them and they just come up with a solution for it. It's not cheap, but I mean, it's a solution, you know. It looks like people are happy with that solution, really. So we've had several of them come through actually for the Billhousing rattle. It's annoying. It's really annoying.

You guys have a good bit of GTRs coming through, right?

We've had some. Yeah, we've had some. Yeah.

Do people like coming to you guys because you guys have a dyno set up too? Does that kind of help?

Probably. I mean, that helps. I mean, I have a lot of people come in. They never knew that we had a dyno either. So, I mean, the dyno is definitely a big help for sure. Obviously, we offer the tuning service as well for a lot of platforms actually. So, the GTR is actually one of the platforms that we offer tuning for. So, I get a lot of inquiries about GTR stuff too. So, every now and then, yeah.

I think it helps because you guys did a great job with that event. I didn't make it out, but the night tuning event, or the night dyno event, sorry. Because you guys, what, you were running from what, 5 p.m. to 5 a.m. basically. Basically, we started at 5 p.m. We ended at 5 a.m. Yeah, and you had, I think you said 52 cars?

52 total cars.

That's so crazy.

We've had people register and just leave. We've had people register and just cancel. I mean, it wasn't for anyone really. If they were not willing to stay around, and I get it, it's a long time waiting. I was surprised that people really stayed that long, just for the dino. And some people were not waiting for their cars to go on the dino. They're waiting for cars to go on the dino so they can just watch them. 5 a.m. I'm like, okay. I mean, people love this, so they enjoy it, right? But yeah, obviously, I personally was not expecting that much car count to go on the dino, really.

It was packed.

It was packed.

All the videos and the photos I saw, you had so many people show up.

Yeah, it was a packed house. It was a good time, though. It was a good time. We definitely plan on doing it every year again, but probably gonna be a little bit earlier in the year, just so we avoid the weather. I mean, we got lucky that weekend, honestly, because the weekend before that, it was really cold, actually, like real cold. We just got lucky that weekend. It was an 80-degree sunny day, really, and it just stayed warm all over the night, actually.

Yeah, I heard it was hot and muggy, right?

It was hot and muggy, and cars were not making power because it was muggy, which is fine. It just shows people that, hey, there's not manipulation in this dyno deal. There's no numbers manipulation when it comes to numbers. The car is gonna react and make power to whatever the weather is, really, you know? Ambient temp is 80, the car is gonna feel that 80 temp through it, you know?

It's crazy how different, I don't know if I've talked about this on the podcast before, but it's crazy how big of an effect five degrees has on your car. I know, because I'm front wheel drive, right? So I have to deal with losing traction or whatever all the time. But in the summers, I hook really easy at 90 degrees, but it feels like a slug. But then if I go into 60 degrees like it is now, it's like, oh my God, it's a completely different car. And those guys probably felt it too, 80 degrees.

Oh, definitely felt it. Yeah.

Nobody broke a thousand.

Nobody broke a thousand, no. I was really hoping to see a four digit number. Obviously, you know, it's... I mean, there were cars that were capable of doing it. Oh, easy. Yeah. Like I said, it was a muggy day. I mean, so the average was really, you know, I want to say in the 700 horsepower.

That was the most impressive part.

That was the average, really, you know, which is nice to see cars in that average, because that power level is the perfect power for the street, honestly. You know, anything over a thousand on the street is just... I'm not going to say too much. It's just not as fun, I want to say.

It's not for everybody.

It's not for everybody, it's not as fun. I mean, if you're really doing it to, you know, compete and race people, at least on the street, you know, you're not going to find some, you know, it's not easily to find a high horsepower on the street.

Oh, I get what you're saying, yeah.

You know, to actually compete, you know. You're sure going to roll around with 600-500 horsepower cars, which doesn't really make sense to race, you know.

It's tough in Minnesota, right? And especially, like, again, I haven't made it out to any of these events, but it's like, it's hard to get in those groups, too, because, like, you know, how many people here have a thousand horsepower? And then how many of those people want to even go racing at night? You know, it's like, because usually the people that can afford a thousand horsepower also got families that they gotta get home to, and it's like, I'm not going out at 11 at night, you know.

But I mean, throughout the summer, there are specific weekends that are just perfect. For some reason, it's just perfect, and those cars just comes out and enjoy it, you know. Just for selective weekends of the year, really.

Every once in a while, you'll see it. For example, some of the guys that are downstairs right now, like, you know, you'll see them go out, and it's like, you know, maybe like once a month. But everyone, like again, one or two weekends a year, all the big boys come out to that are like, like, you know, 1600 plus horsepower, 2000 plus horsepower, because the weather's perfect, it's like 60, 65 degrees, some heat in the streets, maybe, maybe not.

Yeah. Especially the weekend of Street Mission Nationals at the State Fairgrounds over there. That weekend is always wild out on the street later, you know, Saturday night, especially. Friday night, not so much. Saturday night is for sure a wild night for every year. It's just a thing, you know, because, you know, everyone is just enjoying the show during the day. They're just, you know, they just want to enjoy the weekend, really. You know, it's a huge weekend for the, you know, big power cars at the state fair over there, you know. They have a Dyno shootout over there, which, you know, everyone wants to compete for, you know. I remember a couple of years ago, that Dyno shootout at Street Machine National, the top five cars were like 14, 1600 horsepower.

Yeah.

The top five cars, you know. It's fun seeing those people, you know, enjoy their, you know, builds and, you know, race cars, really. I mean, they are complete race cars, but they are driving them on the streets.

Yeah.

That's what I like, you know, a complete race car, but you're still able to drive it on the street, you know. I don't know if you follow, but if you ever seen any of those drag and drive events, you know, Hot Rod Drag Week, you know, Rocky Mountain Race Week, you know, that's also a thing that I've always wanted to do, you know, not necessarily in a full blown race car, but I've always wanted to do it for the experience, you know, it doesn't have to be a fast car, it doesn't have to be a really nice, you know, big power car. All it is, it's the experience, you know, just driving on the street with all these race cars. From track to a nether, you know, especially the Rocky Mountain Race Week, I mean, if you've been to Colorado, you know how nice it is out there.

It's beautiful.

You know, I mean, imagine just driving through the mountains in a race car, you know, and that's just something I've always wanted to do. A couple years back, actually, me and Mo were talking, you know, I told Mo, let's just buy a s*** box. I don't care what the car is, it's just a s*** box. And we have a small black floor, the engine just sitting at home. You know, we just put a transmission on it, and we just, you know, somehow get it in that s*** box, and we make it happen to Drag Week. Like, it was a thought at some point, right? It just never happened, right? The idea is still there. I still want to do it. Like I said, it does not have to be a full-blown race car. I just want to do it for the experience.

So what's holding you back from doing it next summer?

So this summer, actually, we were going to do it, but being busy is just not an option.

It's kind of like a blessing and a curse, because being busy is more money.

It's a good problem to have, like everyone say. But for me personally, the last couple of years, I just had a little setback. I just have to take some other stuff away from racing, away from cars, really.

I get that.

After I saw the GTR, everyone just keep asking me, oh, you saw the GTR. What's next?

What's next?

I'm like, don't worry, guys, something is coming, but when the right time to buy another car, I will do it. Don't worry. I'm not out. I'm not done. No, like I said, I just had a setback. I just had a lot of stuff to take care of. Yeah, I get that. For next year, for next summer, even if not me personally doing it, I know Bryce does have a plan for doing Drag Weekend, which is a Midwest thing, actually. So the guy that does that event is from Minnesota, actually. But they basically go around in the Midwest, like Indiana, Illinois, Kansas City, I want to say, somewhere around there. I don't have the full route. That was a thought. But no, me and Bryce actually were talking, and he is thinking of doing the Rocky Mountain Race next year in his Jeep, actually. So if that happens, I'll be down to being a co-pilot. Like I said, for the experience, there's nothing can beat being in a race car on the street, really. That's for next year. For me personally, I think it's a stretch to do next year. Building cars takes a lot of time and money. Not there yet.

To do it the way you want to.

To do it the way I want, yeah. But that's kind of the plan. Building a race car that I'm gonna be still able to drive on the street still. It's gonna be a full-on race car, but still drivable on the street is what I wanted, basically.

So what's that, you don't have to share everything here, but what does that plan look like? Like you mentioned earlier in the episode, you would kind of do like a Corvette or whatever.

Corvette? You know, the Corvette chassis was always the thing. It was always the one in mind, obviously. And specifically a C6 chassis, so a C6 Corvette, so. And not even a Z06, because it's gonna be a full-on race car. There's really no sense of going, spending the money on a Z06, and there's nothing gonna be left from that Z06, basically.

Right, so Grand Sport?

Grand Sport, or just a C6 base, really. I mean, essentially, the whole body is gonna be a ZR1 style body, essentially. So, a lot of people don't know that, maybe don't know that the Z06 actually has an aluminum frame.

Okay.

Versus the base and Grand Sport are all steel frame. Building a roll cage, you know, race car around an aluminum frame is really hard. It's not ideal, you know. Obviously, steel don't weld to aluminum, you know. So building a cage and integrating that cage to the frame is doable, it's been done. Is it ideal? No. For the price, too, you know, you don't want to buy a nice clean ZO6 and just cut it up and ruin it and just start cutting and welding into it, right? So I think it's just a better idea to start with a C6 base or a Grand Sport. It just makes sense money-wise, and then the structural build of the car actually. Steel frame might be a lot stronger than aluminum. You know, building a chassis for that much power, obviously, you need the strength in the chassis, basically, all the way around, you know?

What's the magic number for power?

15 plus, basically. Okay. Yeah, 15 plus is what I, you know, it's not really a magic number, but it's a lot of power.

It'd be the goal.

It'd be the goal, yeah. It's not, I mean, I've never really had any specific eighth mile, quarter mile build. Quarter mile, definitely. I will have to see a number in a quarter mile, for sure. Is it gonna be more eighth mile? Possibly. Yeah. The reason behind that is it's less wear and tear on the car doing eighth mile versus quarter mile racing. I mean, a lot of people don't realize how much wear and tear you can put and stress on the car doing quarter mile versus eighth mile. But that's kind of how the plan is. I mean, so this is gonna be a full on street car. Well, not a full on street car per se, but it's gonna be drivable on the street. If you look at it, street cars really go for the quarter mile, no eighth mile street cars really. They all follow the quarter mile numbers, eight second street car, seven second street car, that kind of deal. They don't talk eighth mile.

Yeah, I got a five second street car.

It just doesn't sound right, a eight mile street car. It just doesn't sound right.

But that's the other thing. This is something that I learned, again, this past weekend, I learned so much more. It's like the eighth mile is so important though, in the quarter mile.

Correct, the short track is very important, yes. Basically, if you start with a good 60 foot, basically, you make it to the 330 in a decent time. And then short track, 660, eighth mile. If you get that really good to begin with, and then you can carry on the quarter mile, that's really important as well.

Yeah, that was super cool to learn about that stuff. Because again, like the Minneapolis Mopar, he was having a consistent 60 foot of 1.5, and that was every single time. It was really good. He posted on his story, and it's just like some legit times on that. But yeah, it's super cool. Honestly, I feel like that's the one I would probably do the most. I don't know, I really liked autocross. I still have to try road course. But I don't know, something about drag racing just gets, it's just exciting to me. It's different.

I mean, not being biased, but it's just different. I've seen all of other type of racing, and they're not just as excited, I want to say. Even just watching them, they're going to be wrong. Road course stuff is fun. Even watching them, just taking corners on higher speed. That's definitely impressive. But also going real fast in a straight line, drag racing is really, really impressive to me at least.

Especially if you understand it too.

If you understand it. You know, a lot of people say, oh, there's no skill in it. You know, it's just a straight line. If they just like go and just hold on to the steering wheel, you know.

I thought that too, once upon a time.

Well, that's not it. You know, it's just a lot more than that. You know, I mean, it definitely has skills in it. You know, lots of skills, you know. And I can prove anybody wrong with that. You know, I can bring you a full on race car. And I just want to be like, hey, go do a seven second pass in that car. I will give you a whole week. If they never drove a race car before, right?

Right.

I'll give them a whole week. Just get over it. I'll guarantee you they will never do it. So, you know, that's kind of where the skill comes in. You know, skill in knowledge, you know, how to get the car to work on the track, basically. It's a lot of stuff. You know, it's a lot of stuff that comes into it. Speaking of temperatures earlier, you know, how different temperatures, you know, makes difference. Track conditions is really important, honestly, huge track conditions. A lot of people don't really think it's huge, but every single bit of it really, you know, affect the race car, basically.

Yeah, time of day was a big one for us because it was very cold in Milwaukee. So it's 55 degrees out there. You know, that was at 2 p.m. That's when it was hottest. So, and we didn't get the car on track until, I want to say it was about noon. So it's like you have all that day, you got to let the track warm up because then it's got to be sticky. But then the other thing is, is like, you need the air to be cool enough still. So that's why, this is why it's so sad that Houston got shut down, right? Because it had that cold ocean air.

They do have that cold air.

Yeah, they had that cold air right there. But then because it's Texas, it'll get hot as hell.

During the day.

Yes, during the day. So then, you know, that's kind of like the sweet spot for drag racing, right? Just like, you know, right as the sun sets, you still have that hot track. It's not cooling down too much. But then you have that, you know, 60, 70 degree weather, which is perfect boost weather. So you have traction and you have power. So it's really sad that that track got shut down because that was like, that's where I...

That was one of my favorite tracks, honestly.

That's where I met you the first time, I think.

I think so, yeah. Yeah. What was it, 2021?

21, I think. I was there with Chaz.

Yes, yes, with Chaz and the guys over there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That was one of my favorite tracks, honestly. It's just sad to see it go, you know. It's just sad for the whole Houston area, really. They don't have a quarter mile track anymore. You know, I mean, if you think Houston, a huge city like Houston, and there's no quarter mile racing down there, that's no good for them.

They gotta drive three hours, four hours north to go to Dallas.

Correct, the Texas Motoplex in Dallas, NS Texas over there, yeah. That's where, obviously, they moved the event over there now, so. And that's a good track, too. It's very similar. It's a little bit older, though. It's very similar, though. I honestly love that track more. I mean, I love the area more than Houston, not the actual track, but the whole area is just, I like Dallas more than Houston, basically. Less traffic, I mean, it's traffic everywhere, but less traffic than Houston, so. And it's also closer to us here, so.

That's what I'm excited for, because it is like 13 hours and 58 minutes from my house. That's a day trip.

Yeah, that's a day trip, yeah.

That was the thing about Houston. It was just far enough to be a pain in the a** if you do it in one shot.

Yes. Yeah.

I'm really, really excited for that one. That one's gonna be really good. And I heard that it's better for like, spectators is what I heard.

I mean, if you think about it, it's gonna be not, well, it's more central than Houston, basically. Closer to other people.

Yeah, it's closer to Fort Worth.

Closer to Fort Worth, closer to the Oklahoma guys. It's just not as far as Houston, you know.

It's more central, yeah.

It's more central, basically. No, I think it's gonna be good. I think really it's gonna be good. I skipped last year.

That's right.

No, this year, actually.

Yeah.

23.

Are you planning to go for 2024?

I do plan on going 24.

That's like a non-negotiable event for me now, like ever since I went for my first time.

So I've done TX2K a lot in the past, I think my first one was, I want to say 2012. My first one, I think. And then it just kept going on, 2012, 13, 14, 16, just back to back. It just never stops. I just never missed it every year, really. I usually go stay down there for like a week or two, just hang out, really. It's just a good, a fun escape from the winter, I have to say, really.

Yeah.

Yeah. So no, I mean, I think TX2K is a really good event. It's growing over the years. My opinion about the event, though, versus other events, I don't see competition as big as other events at TX2K. People that do TX2K, I feel like they're more there to prove a point rather than compete. You know, that's how it felt like, at least. Big name, big shops, competing, obviously, out there, chasing records, you know, on a great, prepped track, there was really no side-by-side competition, per se, on all classes, you know. Not saying there's really not, I'm not saying really, you know, there's no real fast cars out there, but I mean, there's no, there's, I don't feel that competition vibe at TX2K.

I think I get what you're saying, so kind of like, like you said, side-by-side, right?

Side-by-side.

It's usually just somebody blowing the doors off the other guy?

Correct. Yeah. That's kind of how I feel TX2K is, you know. I like the roll racing over there more than the drag racing, obviously, obviously. So the roll racing events at TX2K is really good, actually. You know, you see all this high horsepower, you know, big horsepower cars coming down, you know, it's just looking at those guys just want, actually, the competition is in roll racing. Let's say that. TX2K competition, I see that in roll racing. Drag racing? Not so much.

Okay. Yeah, because I do one of the best, there's a few good moments, but the year that you went down there, the year that I met you, when it was Calvo and Enthomoto, remember when the Kratos lifted ahead or whatever it was?

Yes, something happened.

But nonetheless, still one first place, correct, because it was a faster car. But it was cool, because it was pretty close, actually.

Yes. So that's, you know, that's why I like drag racing, you know, side by side racing is what it's at, really, you know. If you compare it to, you know, road course racing, you know, I don't see a big competition in road course. You know, the road course guys will hate me for this, but I mean, I'm just being honest, you know, it's fun, don't get me wrong. It's you know, people has their own passion, opinion about stuff, but I don't see that competition really on the road course, not that excitement, at least.

I'm not sure how it works on the classes, but so when I was putting together a highlight, so we had a Piero on episode 43, and I was actually looking over like the grid life. What's it called? Times or a competition or whatever. It's actually it was actually I was surprised how competitive it was like it was like first place was 99 points. Second place was like 98 points.

They are really tight field, you know, the field is always tight in this grid life stuff, you know.

So do you think that is that kind of what you're saying? Like it's a different like because that's also kind of road course. Do you mean something like different road course then or?

No, just in general, like open track day, for example.

Oh, okay.

Let's say locally, you know, just locally.

Like Brainerd proving grounds.

Brainerd, you know, nothing big, you know, nothing, you know, nothing international, nothing really, you know, crazy. I don't feel that competition vibe, you know, don't get that excitement vibe basically, even from a spectator point of view, really, you know, spectating, you know, I would rather watch something excitement, you know, powerful, you know, you feel you feel that. Feel that basically, you know, yeah.

That's one thing I actually almost said earlier is, I think this is the big thing where drag racing is so much more exciting than a road course, right? Because think about, okay, let's say Road America, what is it, 12 corners or whatever the hell it is.

Yeah, something like that.

There's a stand at each corner for you to spectate. So whatever happens on corner 12, you don't see the people on corner one don't see it. No drag racing. We're all right here. We all just saw the same thing.

See everything. Yeah, that excitement, you know, you see everything.

I think that's what it is. I think everybody has that shared excitement. We all saw the same thing. Even when I watch F1, it's like, oh, we got to wait for the camera to switch.

Correct. You know, every every couple of minutes you see them just pass by, you know.

Yeah, I think that's a good point. Yeah, because like, again, like, for example, unfortunately, for me, I'm a Ferrari guy. Okay, when it comes to F1, they're like the f****** Vikings, I swear to God. Just always get your hopes up and then they f*** it up.

I mean, yeah, yeah, that's kind of how it is. Unfortunately, yeah.

Yeah, but no, it's like, I'll be over here. I want to watch Ferrari. And it's like, all of a sudden, it's showing me like, you know, Williams or whatever. It's like a different team. And it's like, well, it's kind of hard to, you know, watch the exciting stuff because they can't, there's 20 teams to focus on. Drag racing, it's this guy and this guy. We're both on both sides. You know, just, I don't know. I think that's what it is.

Yes.

It's all one shared experience.

There are a lot of different type of drag racing too, you know, if you follow, there's like the no time stuff, you know, the no prep stuff, quarter mile versus eighth mile, you know, bracket racing, heads up racing, you know, a lot of different sections, classes in drag racing, you know, a lot actually. Some people in this class don't even know what's going on in this, you know, I know a lot of people in drag racing, they don't even know Texas2k. You know, that's kind of how it is, you know, it's so big and they have so much class so much classified type of cars where they don't really, you know, well, let's say, you know, bracket racing, if you if you're familiar with the bracket racing, you know, the bracket racing is basically is a certain time that, you know, that you have to, you know, achieve basically, you know, let's say 8.5 index class, quota mile, you have to run 8.5 consistently. I'm not a big bracket racing guy, but to think about how consistent these guys are is really, you know, impressive, you know, being being again, being consistent, you know, is impressive because that's what's going to do it. It's so crazy winning basically, you know, not a big fan of bracket racing, though. But if you watch bracket racing, it's all side by side racing, you know, people are really passionate about it because, you know, side by side, they're they're chasing a certain number. Everyone in that class is chasing one number. They're not going as fast as they can. They can go faster, but they just don't, you know. That's how the class is built, you know, you have to hit that certain number and, you know, there's a breakout, you know, if you break out, you disqualified, you know, that stuff. And that's kind of one section in drag racing, really, you know, if you go to the no prep side of it, you know, which is really growing, actually, the last couple of years, you know, obviously no prep means no prep, you know, there's no prep on the racetrack, basically. That has been growing really, really, basically like a wildfire, really, you know, it's growing like nothing. It's crazy.

Because it's taking people off the street and onto the track.

It's taking people off the street. Big superstars names, you know, people look for those stuff, you know. Big payout, you know, for the racers, you know, if you have a good payout event, people will show up from anywhere and everywhere, really. Lots of people say, oh, Minnesota don't have any good racing up here. Well, because there's not a good event that, you know, pays out that makes it worth it for people to travel all the way to Minnesota, you know. That's, you know, kind of one thing, you know. If you have a good payout event, people will show up no matter where the event is, really.

What's a good payout? Like, you're talking about the purse, right? Yes.

Yes, basically, yeah, I mean, 25,000, 30,000, 40,000, it just, it's a lot different from event to another, you know.

But it has to be worth showing up.

It has to be worth it, you know.

The wear and tear on your car.

Wear and tear, you know, travel expenses, you know, it's a lot. It's a lot. You know, you gotta think how much these people spend just to get to the track, not even raise, just to get to the track, you know.

Yeah, I mean, you're talking, you know, 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 and shipping.

Yeah. That's a lot of money.

And you got to get, you know, like if you want to have an exciting event to watch, you know, again, 1,000, 2,000, whatever horsepower cars, you know, we have an all right amount in Minnesota, but not enough for all day for an exciting event. So you need those people from those other states to come over here. And like you said, it has to be worth it for them to show up.

It has to be worth it. It's to show up basically. Yeah. But yeah, that's how kind of I look at TX2K, you know, competition wise versus other events, you know, there's really not much competition there, really. A lot of people know that. There has been a lot of big discussions about this actually over the years, you know.

Like on like forums and stuff?

On forums, yeah, on Facebook, you know, forums, yeah. I've met a lot of people at the track that, you know, say the same thing too, you know. End of the day, it's a big event. It's been growing. It's a good event. Don't get me wrong. It's a really good event. Virtualizing with people over there is just so great, you know. You know, just meeting the people that you see all the time, you know, on videos and stuff, you know, it's just nice, you know.

Yeah, that's super crazy. Like when you like, eventually put like, because you see people's videos or their cars all the time online and then you see them in person and, you know, get to, you know, be like, oh, this is actually a really cool guy.

Yeah.

That's been really fun to do over the last couple of years. So would you say No Prep is your favorite then or what's your favorite song?

I'm not going to say No Prep is my favorite, but it's definitely something that I've been to and I do like, you know, watching it, you know, it's different, you know, it's really different, you know.

So what's your style that you would kind of prefer to do?

I still love to be on a prep track, basically, you know, legit prep track, heads up racing, heads up racing, they call it basically, you know, I do like the no time events. I mean, we don't really have much up here. I mean, we actually do have a local no time event. It's called a catch of the creek, if you ever heard about it. That's that has been really growing over the years over here. So it's probably one of the best racing you really find around this area for eight mile no time race.

Where's that one at Rock Falls, right?

No, that one is at Grove Creek Raceway. So it's just west, west of the city, basically, just like an hour west of the city. It's not even far away, you know, it's just a small eighth mile track. It's a really nice track, though, you know, it's really nice. So that event has been growing over the years, lots of out of state people started showing up to that event, actually, even though the payload is not huge, per se, but people love the event. So they show up from South Dakota, Iowa, you know, Wisconsin, obviously, you know, North Dakota, just surrounding state, obviously. But no, we've had a lot of people show up to those events every year. So it's a three event every year, basically, I think, July, June and August. If you haven't been there before, I highly recommend going and seeing that event. It starts at night, actually, and they start at 5 p.m., and it goes over the night, all night until they're done. We've had nights until like 1 a.m., 2 a.m., just racing, really.

Wow.

Which is nice, you know. I love the night vibe, especially for racing. I love the night vibe over the day.

It's actually wild how late they're working here, because right now we're recording, I think it's probably around 7 p.m. and they're still working here at the shop.

It's no different for me, obviously. I do it all the time.

That one might have actually been picked up on, like most of the stuff that happens around here doesn't get picked up on the microphones, but on that, I don't mind. Just because I'm slowly getting more and more familiar with this world, so what is heads up racing, then?

Heads up racing is basically when you say heads up, it's not a no time, it's on a prep track. Well, not necessarily heads up. Basically heads up means it's not a no time, it's on a prep track, basically. So when you say heads up, it's going to be your typical staging, nothing in between, because they have a lot of stuff in the no prep world, did a lot of weird stuff, actually, versus class racing. When you say class racing is different than small tire, the small tire, big tire classes, the different classes they have in racing, people refer to it as class racing is when they go from no time to no time racing, they don't call that class racing, basically. They don't call that heads up, I mean, they call it heads up, but to some point, basically. Basically heads up is nothing different, they stage the car equally, clocks on obviously in a prep track, basically. Whether it's an eighth mile or a quarter mile, there's no difference.

So basically tree turns green and you go.

Tree turns green and they go. You know, if it's not a heads up race, it's the, they have different styles of the tree dropping obviously, you know, they have the bracket style, which, you know, if you've seen them, it's not an instinct green on the Christmas tree, basically. You'll see the yellow bulbs just light up one by one and then it hits the green. So if it's not a heads up race, you'll see one car, it depends on how they set it up, you know, because that goes back to bracket racing, you know, bracket racing has a lot of stuff. I don't even know much info about it, honestly, because I don't really follow it. But they have a lot of stuff that goes into the tree. The Christmas tree dropping to, I mean, the green light basically is different. They have what they call a Pro 400 tree, bracket tree, something, a lot of, you know, essentially, is what they use for Christmas tree, basically. It's just a lot of details that goes into it. Like I said, I'm not even much familiar with it. But yeah, heads up racing, you know, time's on, basically, time clocks on. Your typical drag racing is heads up racing.

So in that instance, you're just trying to get the best time.

Best time, basically.

Yeah. And then, wasn't it TX2K, I think, is that, I can't remember, were you winning, I think it was based off miles per hour, right? The roll racing, for example.

So the roll racing, I think they've changed it up the last couple years. And they had a breakout on each class. So for example, you know, one, I don't even know what they call their classes anymore. For example, if a car runs 170 miles per hour, you can't go faster than that. If you do go faster than that, then that's a breakout. And you basically get disqualified from that. Because what happens in qualifying, some people do what they call sandbagging, you know. Their car are capable of running way faster time than what they are doing in qualifying. Just so they get classified in a slower class than their car is capable of, basically, if you get what I mean. And then they start, you know, leaning on it and just, you know, go faster in a class that is not supposed to be that fast, basically. And that's why they started having the breakout, you know, and that stuff. And all of that is to keep parity in classes, you know, and just keep it competitive all the way around, basically. That's what they do it, how they do it over there, you know, which makes sense, you know. You know, I would, like I said, again, I would want to always see a side by side race, you know.

Yeah.

That's how it is really. Excitement, you know, side by side.

I can't wait to go back there, dude. I'm, well, not back there because it's a different track, but I really wanted to go to FL2K this year, but just financially just didn't make sense for me this year.

Yeah, FL2K looks like it's been growing like big over the years. I've always wanted to go to FL2K as well. I've just never made it to any one really.

I heard the street scene isn't as good as like the Texas 2K scene.

Yeah, that's what I've heard too. But they do have some street scene over there.

Yeah, I think it's tougher because it's more middle of nowhere, I think.

Not really in middle of nowhere. I mean, Bradenton, the track, they have FL2K out there. It's like a 40-minute drive from Tampa, so it's not that bad, honestly.

Okay, that's actually, yeah.

Yeah. Sarasota is like not even 20 minutes from there.

I wonder why it is, then, because I've always heard that the street scene just wasn't it compared to...

Yeah, I mean, Texas has always been known for the street scene. Yeah, it's something that kind of started there, really.

It's so crazy out there.

It is crazy.

Yeah, I finally got to experience it properly this year because the year I went with Chaz, it just... We had too many people in the car. Too many people wanted to do different things.

That's the problem. Going with a big group of guys and each one wants to do something different, and it just gets messy all the way around. That's why I stopped doing it with a big group of guys, honestly.

Yeah, it was just me and Sean last year.

That's perfect.

It was perfect. We were in a Durango. We got a couple races in. I think one of them, against the Supra, pretty sure he was sandbagging, he's like, I only make 550. B*******. I'm only on JB4. I'm like, you're full of s***, dude. But then again, a Durango is heavy as f***, too.

It is heavy.

Yeah, that does not help. And then we just raced a Plaid just for fun. We knew we were going to lose, but there was actually a good bit of a few Teslas over at Milwaukee this last weekend, which is really interesting, even a Model X. I was just like, interesting. There was a lot of weird stuff there. There was a lot of stuff that was just six, seven-second cars or whatever that are ridiculous. And then there was a Civic Si, just a stock Civic Si running 16s.

I mean, if they're having fun, they're having fun, right?

People got to start somewhere, too, right?

Correct.

Yeah, I've always wanted to take my Golf and see what it would do, because again, I don't make a lot on my 380 wheel, but it'd be fun just to see where I stand.

Yeah. I mean, I think that being a different car, just like the Durango down in Texas, it's definitely fun. It could not be the fastest thing out there, but I'm sure it catches a lot of people's eyes out there. Oh, yeah, because people don't know.

They only made 3,000 of those, the Hellcat Durango.

I've never seen one other than Sean.

I see a lot of them. Yeah, I see a number of them just because in my area, there's an all right amount. I know why, but it's... Yeah, but that's the thing. There's only 3,000 in this. They just opened production up again, but it's like people are like, what the hell? They don't even know it exists. So it's like one of those things. And he's got that bright blue on there. I'm surprised how few people noticed. So we went to the first meet up down this year, the big Houston get together, which is honestly, it was just a Mustang parking lot. Just Mustangs and just a bunch of red Corvettes. And then some exotics and some cool stuff out there. But again, mostly just Mustangs. Because everybody over there in Texas, we always make this joke, right? The second they turn 18, they get a pair of welds in a Mustang.

That is true, actually.

They don't even have to be fast. They just throw welds on.

No, yeah. You see a drag pack on a completely stock car. I mean, it sure looks good, but I mean, it's not serving a purpose there.

It's like dead. But yeah, we were parked over at the car show. So Sean wanted to put on his welds. He wanted to go do some street tuning, right? And then what happened? So he had this jack or whatever, and he jacked the car up, and then the car shifted or something, and the car fell off the jack. So did you ever see the photos or videos we posted about this? So yeah, his Hellcat Durango had fell off the jack, and he had the wheel off, but not fully off. So he literally was taking the all season wheels that we drove down on or whatever. He wanted to throw on the welds real quick, you know, do some street tuning, and he had the wheel just barely off, and then it fell right on the wheel. So he was just resting on that, because the whole car shifted. I think we changed three of the four wheels. So what happened is then we had to, we didn't have anything, the jack was broken. So we called AAA, took forever to show. They get into the show.

This was at the show?

This was at the show. And people kept walking by, by the way. The car is like, they see the front welds, because we get the front welds on. So like, oh man, that's freaking awesome. And then Sean's standing in front of the back wheel, so they wouldn't see that it's on the ground. So people were walking by. But anyways, the first AAA shows up. Guy comes over there, and his jack wasn't working. So this AAA truck showed up, his jack was broken, whatever. So then he has to call back to HQ, whatever the f*** they are. He's like, calls back to HQ, and the guy's asking him on the phone, like, do you know how a jack works? Because it was like his first week on the job. He's like, yeah, dude, I'm doing it right. So the second tow truck comes up, and at this point, the show's clearing out, right? So we have a couple tow trucks here. It's just a fiasco. Everybody's coming over to the Durango. They're like, oh no, what happened over there? Because now they can see the car, because everybody left. And then we got all the welds on, and then, cool, the trucks disappear. Everything's fine. I think the only thing that happened is like the plastic popped out, which honestly, that's the best case scenario. And I think he scratched one of the welds, you know, just polish it. So then anyways, we're like, cool, we're gonna go do the street tuning. And then he starts driving. He's like, he just wants to do a test drive on the parking lot. And then he starts hearing... So I don't know if you know this, but if you want to get those welds on a trackhawk or a Hellcat Durango, you have to shave down the calipers. Because they don't fit. So apparently he didn't shave down the left side enough. Okay, so still here. Yes, he scratched up that well now too. He's just like, there's nothing we can do here. So then we, there's another tow truck. A lot of people are getting towed out of the show, dude.

Oh, I mean, I'm not surprised, honestly. You know, you see a lot of stuff happen down there, you know.

Yeah, so we asked the guy like, hey, can we borrow your jack or whatever? Like, that's all we need. We'll do all the work ourselves and whatever. So he's looking at us like, man, f***, how long you gonna take? You know, so I was like, I don't know, 15 minutes. And Sean's looking at me like, dude, you're crazy or whatever. Or no, I told him 20 minutes. So then we're saying, we'll use the jack. I'm like, you could time us or whatever. So I'm literally sitting here timing Sean, and he's doing every single wheel. So he did it all in like 13 minutes. And he had to switch from the welds to the all seasons. And that basically just kind of, he's just like, I'm not f****** with it the whole trip. Because we thought about doing it in the Airbnb, just shaving down the caliper.

I mean, you gotta do what you gotta do down there, you know.

But he's just like, no, let's just, the all season will be fine. Whatever, it's whatever at this point. But yeah, it was so funny. I think it just fell off. It's just one of those stories. It's just like, the weirdest s*** happens at Texas 2K.

Yeah, yeah. And you know, it's nice down there though. I mean, most of the shops will definitely, you know, open their doors and help people out there too, you know. They will lend you a lift, you know, tools, and do whatever you want, really. I've seen that happen to a lot of people down there. Actually, I think it was 2017 or 2018, I actually took my GTR down to Texas, too.

Yeah, that's right. I saw that on your Instagram.

But the minute I made it over there, so I got to the hotel and I forgot what area it was. You know, just stopped and unloading, you know, got the car out of the trailer.

Oh, you trailed it down there?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, because winter up here, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. No, I had an enclosed trailer, so. Got the car unloaded, it didn't feel right, didn't sound right. I'm like, whoa, what's going on now? So I started diagnosing, digging into it, and then I found out that I had an injector sticking open. So I was like, okay, there's got to be someone in town that can service injectors, right? And then I just remembered that I had a spare set of injectors. Not a whole set. I had like two or three spare injectors basically. Unfortunately, even the spare set that I had were not working properly basically. They were failing. So I had to take the whole set of injectors from the car and just hoping to find somebody that can fix them in town. I started asking people, making posts on Facebook, calling the people that I know around. Unfortunately, no one had anything to help with. I was like, okay, you know what? We literally just got there. This was like Thursday. And this took a little bit longer time to figure it out. And the hotel parking lot is just a pit area over there. Luckily, I had tools. I had everything on me. I had everything to do, whatever I wanted to do, really. Then it started getting late. Everyone is hitting out to the meets and stuff. I wasn't down there doing anything. I wasn't planning on going full out racing out there. That was not the purpose. I just needed to escape the winter, just enjoy the car down in Houston.

That's what it is. Because it's by a beautiful 60, 70 degrees down there.

Yeah, it was nice. So it got late that night. I was like, you know what? I'm done. Let's just put it in the trailer and just figure it out. If I don't get it figured out, it's what it is. We're down here. We're just going to enjoy it. I don't even care anymore if I get it to enjoy the car down there. But even though it was a long haul with the trailer, it's different. You're just towing a trailer. It's heavy. It just makes it a lot harder than not doing anything, really. I just put in the trailer that night and just left and just hung out with some people at the meets out there. The weekend just kind of went by, and the car just stayed in the trailer, really. I couldn't do anything down in Texas, really. And that was the first and last time that I brought the car down there, honestly.

It sucks.

It was not fun doing that.

Everything just falls apart once you get there.

Once you get there. Even though I did go through the car here before we got down there, I've checked everything, everything works fine. But it was one of those deals, 85 and cold weather. I just never had the maintenance correctly, I guess, at that point. And the injector just failed and stuck open, really, along with either set of injectors that I had. Funny, we do the fuel injector service for these stuff. And we had it back then. We had an injector bench machine as well. This was way before the shop, right? But we did have an injector machine that I could have used and tested the injectors, but I just never did, because the car went perfectly fine. Looking at the data logs and all that stuff, it's looking perfectly fine. The minute we got there, it's not fine. Something is wrong.

Same thing happened to Brian Duboe, whatever, caddy daddy. He got there, he was going to finish up something, or he was already finished? Yeah, I remember seeing that. So then he spent the whole weekend over there working on that thing.

Just working on it, yep.

But trying to get it, and then...

I think it was a crank sensor. Yeah, I think it was a crank sensor sync issue. That's what he told me at least.

Yeah, so it's like by the end of the weekend, he's just like, you know what, I'm just going to enjoy the last two days I have here. Because like...

That's kind of how I did it, honestly.

Well, I don't know, I know some people that race over there, it's like, you know, once they break, they're not going to like waste an entire day trying to fix it, try to get back on track. They're just like, you know what, I know better.

Yeah.

Just save it for next year. Just enjoy the rest of the weekend, because there's no point, because then if something breaks, you compound. Yeah.

Yeah, there's really no, I mean, no point. If you're not really like going there for, you know, racing for money, at least, in order to track, you know, there's really no point of, you know, wasting and thrashing on something that, you know, I'd rather enjoy the time. I'm down there anyway, you know, I'd just rather just enjoy it, you know.

Are you a big, do you listen to, do you watch a lot of YouTube or watch a lot of podcasts or anything like that?

I do watch YouTube. I watch a lot of, not a lot, but I do see a decent bit of YouTube stuff. Yeah.

Yeah. You know who I've been enjoying a lot lately is like Cooper Baguette.

Actually, he is doing really good, I want to say, you know, you know, it's just a simple guy, honestly, you know, doing his thing, you know. I like how simple he, you know, he does things, you know, very simple, you know, simple and different, you know, is what gets people, you know, simple and different is what gets people. Yeah. And, you know, the 2J Camaro that he built, you know, it's that's that's an interesting one to me, honestly, I mean, for what he for what it is and for what's what is doing. That's really impressive, honestly, you know, a lot of the F body guys are not happy about it, you know, just seeing the 2J and the Camaro, you know, I really don't care, you know, it's cool. I love the Camaro. I love the 2J, you know, I don't really care, you know, it's it is what it is, you know, even though I'm not a big swap guy, you know, you keep the engine what it's at. Really, you know, yeah. But still, like I said, simple guy doing a simple thing, you know, it's just, you know, it's just fun to watch, honestly.

Yeah, I love listening to, especially when I was walking every day, I would love to throw on his podcaster because he has interesting people come on. He has like the owner of the Bradeton Park or, you know, Cletus or whatever. It's just that that's one of the ones that I like to listen to, because, like you said, simple guy, but he's, you know, I like learning about that. That's one of the reasons I love doing this podcast, because I have so many different people on. I have road course guys, I have autocross guys, I have drag race guys. You know, and these are all people I like getting to know. One, to educate the people to listen to us, because, I mean, a decent amount of people, especially the highlights. Oh, my God, like I have one that's about to hit a million views.

I've actually been seeing the highlights. I like the highlights.

It's cool, because not everybody can listen to a whole episode.

No, yeah, I mean, it's I mean, the highlights gets you gets you, you know, gets your attention quick, actually. Yeah, it's something that interests you, you will probably, you know, circle back to the full, you know, podcast.

Yeah, well, that's the thing, like tomorrow, I have a big Camaro guy coming on. You know, he does big road course guy, too. So we're going to talk a lot about his road course experience. But he talks about, you know, like servicing, basically servicing, like, you know, the supercharged platforms or whatever, just anything all GM or whatever, because that's what he grew up with. But then we'll have Ford guys, you know, like like Mike or like, you know, like Dave or whatever. Then we have Euro guys like Rat and AJ, you know, it's like, you know, all these different people. So it's like, you know, you might not listen to the Ford guy, but you'll listen to the Chevy guy, you know. So it's super cool. It's like, you know, now this is your episode 47 now, right? So it's like when somebody goes in there, they're going to scroll and be like, oh, that's f****** Sam. I'm going to go listen to Sam's and then scroll again. Oh, who's this guy? Oh, well, there's this guy.

You know, so that's kind of how I did it, how I see it actually, you know, because I've seen a lot of people that I know on the podcast here. You know, like, oh, OK, I know, I know this guy, you know, I'm just just just listen to it really, you know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Have you listened to some of the ones?

Oh, I have actually. Yeah.

I'm just curious.

One of the early ones, actually. The earlier ones. No videos. Just just.

Oh, well, OK. So back like maybe like Mike or well, Bryce, probably.

I listen to Bryce. Not all of it, though. Just a little bit. Yeah, I actually actually go back and circle back and see it.

Yeah.

Check them out, actually. I have not really, you know.

Yeah, we've come such a far way, you know. It's like I mean, it was really when you think about it, it's really it was a hell of a hell of a commitment because me and Sean started this in January. So like we almost we've never missed a single week, you know. So it's like every single week, at least one episode.

I mean, really good.

It's you know, it's pretty awesome. And the amount of guests, a lot of people that are excited to come on. That's why I wanted to get you on like, especially when, you know, when Sean was here, you know, rest in peace though. Because like, he's very capable of talking of technical stuff. And, you know, I'm getting better at it. But like, you know, he does a lot more work on his car like me. I just do oil changes on my hoop. Do you know everything else like rat gets all my business, you know? Because he took care of me in a pinch last year. And, you know, the fact that he's I mean, he's a space is super cool, too.

But yeah, I mean, this is this is this is good. This is great.

I'm excited because like back where you're behind you, I'm going to start putting up some shelves, you know, with someone like Jocko and then 3D car care as well. So I'll be an affiliate with 3D car care as well soon or soon. They sent me a really cool care package. I can't wait to share that. Super sick, like all this detailing product. But like, but no, that's the thing. Like, you know, back last year when I almost sold this f****** piece of s*** car, I was so mad. So I had a leaking bed play toward ever on it. And it was literally like just a couple of days before my rally, I was going to take this car down, you know, on my event. So I ended up riding with Chaz and his Corvette because I was like, even though Rat fixed it, I was like, I don't trust this car. I'm so mad right now. But yeah, he helped me out because like, you know, he was able to get me in right away and all that stuff. So it's like that's why. And he's my neighbor, too.

Oh, OK.

I could throw a rock at his house. It's hilarious. But but no, anyways, our community is so tight knit.

It is actually. Yeah, it is.

Everybody knows everybody.

Everybody knows everybody. Yes. You know, I like other states, you know, I've been to other states and seen the scene out there, basically, the community out there. It's not as tight as here. You know, a lot of people don't really get involved with anyone else, really.

They stay in their clique.

They stay in their circle, basically, you know. Well, for example, for us over here, you know, we people think we don't know each other. Like performance shops. We all know each other. You all talk, you all talk, you all communicate. I mean, people think we are just looking at each other, you know, in a group, competitive way. It's actually not, no. I mean, we send people everywhere, you know. If we can't do it, we send it everywhere, you know. I've sent a lot of people to Rath over here, you know. They send a lot of people to us, you know. And that's kind of how it works. You know, we work with, you know, JWP, you know, they, we send cars over there. They send cars to us, you know. We know everyone. It's a big circle, but we, it's tight, you know. We don't know each other, basically, you know. A lot of customers think it's, it's, it's, it's otherwise, you know, you know, if this place did not, you know, do what I wanted to do, or they did not do a good job on something, they would go, you know, talk about it in a different shop. For example, you know, they don't know that this different shop is probably our friends, you know, and they, you know, we all, you know, communicate, we all talk, you know, we all know each other.

Because you guys help each other out too, right?

We help each other out, you know, it's, it's, it's, that's just how it works, you know? We really work with everyone, really.

Because like, who was it that posted the other day, somebody was asking for like a last minute part, and then I saw all the shop owners like come, I saw JWP come, and I saw somebody else come, and it's like, we might have that, like I need a part, you know, emergency or whatever.

Yep.

So it's really cool to see that collaborative. Like, yes, at the end of the day, you are competitors, like, for example, a mile from here is Eurocharged, right?

Correct, yes.

But at the same time, there is that collaborative nature, which is really cool to see.

I mean, it is actually. Yeah.

It's so funny when people try to go price shopping, like, you know, and you guys all kind of just like, all right, this guy just came here. You know, like, I've heard of the blacklist.

Yeah, yeah, actually, there is a list actually. Yeah. You know, all shop orders have, you know, one way or another of communication on that blacklist, you know, and it's a good thing, honestly, you know, you don't want to waste time and get involved in something that other people have already gone through and they know about. You know, there is really no sense of doing it. You know, it's just a waste of time, money, you know, reputation overall is really big, you know.

Yeah. Well, like you said, some people will talk bad about one shop or the other. And here's one thing I've noticed, by the way, because I like to be very clear that I'm a neutral person in this car community. I kind of let people just kind of talk on here and whatever. I think I've only had one or two people kind of burn themselves, but that's really hard to do. Because again, at the same time, everybody collaborates, but what was I getting at? Oh, somebody will be like, oh, I freaking hate that shop. But then they will know that those guys work together all the time. But at the same time, somebody else has a bad review about you. So it's like, at the end of the day, we're all humans. We're all people. People make mistakes, but sometimes people do incredible service too. It's weird, but it's so funny watching the people at the top collaborate because they know how it is to run a shop.

Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, if it's something we can do, we will do. If it's something we're not capable of doing, if it's something we don't have the knowledge to do it, we definitely know people that can do it. And we will refer you to that place. That's how we do it literally, like really every day. I get phone calls every day from a lot of people. Oh, hey, I have this Subaru. Can you fix it? I'm like, we do not work on Subarus, but I can refer you to a place that can do it for you. JM Auto, it's just like 10 minutes from us.

Are they really that close? I've heard of them before.

They're just off 610 in Maple Grove, not even like 10, 12 minutes really from us. They specialize in Subaru. I've known them for a while, so I know they do a good job. So I refer people over there, because we don't work on that platform, basically.

How about more bigger builds? I know, for example, like JWP, he'll have somebody's car in, and then he'll kind of do certain things, but then he'll have another shop come in and do something. For example, if somebody comes to you guys and they're like, all right, build my GTR, but they also want a cage, do you outsource somebody to do the cage too?

Like I said, if it's something we can't do it, we'll definitely outsource it. And we're going to outsource it with somebody that we know, we trust, basically. I'm not going to just go and try something. I want to do something for the customer that I know 100% is going to be legit, 100% is going to be the right way. That's why we work with a lot of people. We have a lot of support from a lot of people. That's what makes the service that we offer a good service, basically. For example, for the tuning side of it, most of the tuning we have in-house is mostly remote tuning. Most of the remote tuners that we work with are actually overseas. They're not even in the country. But we work with them because we know them and we trust them and we partner with them for a long time before.

Because they're the best at what they do.

Basically, we work with the best to offer the best, basically, at least that we know of. But like I said, if we have the support, we're going to offer the service. And going back, offering service for different platforms because we have the support for these platforms, that's why we are able to offer it, basically. And when I say support, it's everything, not just tuning, everything. From anything building from a mild to a wild setup, we have the support for it, we can do it. And I love doing it starting from scratch and all the way to finalize the tuning side of it. It's just one stop, basically. I'm not going to build it and send it over somewhere to get it tuned. I don't know what that place is doing. I'd just rather have it all under one chop, one hand, basically, to take care of the whole build, basically. We get a lot of cars in that were built somewhere else, tuned somewhere else, and the owner is like, oh, it's having this issue or this issue. And we were like, okay, we did not build the car, so we don't know what's going on here. We have to jump in and diagnose. Diagnosing takes a lot of time. It adds up quick. If it's something that it's not worth even fixing, I would rather rebuild the whole thing and tune it from the get-go. It's just not worth it. Both ways, from us and for the customer as well, it's just not worth it for the customer.

Yeah, because you want to know what you're working on.

I want to know what I'm working on, and then I will guarantee my work at that point. If it's something I built, if it's something I did the tuning on, I can definitely support that and warranty the work at some point, at least.

Yeah, it's hard, too, because then you know where something failed or why something happened, but if it's something that you didn't touch, then it's like, well, it's this who's who game.

Yeah, it's hard. We'll be calling this guy, oh, this shop built it. They used this engine builder. This engine builder used these parts from these companies. We circled, tracked back a whole list. Well, that's not how we want to do it. That's not the way to do it. That's why it's having this issue. It needs to be fixed. It's going to cost this much. The customer is going to complain. Why is it costing this much? I just spent a lot of money building it. It's just not an ideal situation overall. That's why I rather build cars in house from scratch, basically. Start from scratch, we know what's going on, we know what's done to it, like everything. Sometimes we get Gen 5 Corvettes, the LT4 engines, for example. People just buy them off the dealership or something, and they got modified at some point in their life, and they don't have any specs on them. The dealership don't have any specs on them when they sell the car. So these customers just buy the car and just flow with it until an issue happens or something, and they bring it over, and they're like, well, we don't have any info about this car. Well, tuning, I need some info to get it tuned, at least. To get it tuned properly, I need the cam spec, for example. If I don't know the cam spec in that car, I can't really lean on it and actually make power because I don't know the cam spec. It's as simple as that. A lot of people say that it doesn't really matter. I can 100% say that it does matter. To know specifics, to get the tuning side of it correctly. A lot of people will tune cars not even knowing what injectors are in the car. And that's completely wrong. I mean, does it work? Maybe. But is it right? No. You have to have data for the fuel injectors. You have to know the cab spec. You have to know what kind of supercharger you really connect over here. We have to know what kind of fuel is this car using. All those stuff are essential for tuning. Like I said, tuning is also another one of those things that really, there's no end to it really. It's a big, big, big thing, and it's different from platform to another. It's very different. Tuning European cars is different than tuning domestic cars, import cars. Tuning stock ECU cars is different than tuning standalone cars. And that's why I go back. The way we do it, we have specific people, specific tuners for each platform.

Yeah, we had a big tuning special with Kyle Larkin from MAP. That was a really fun one.

I've seen the highlight of that one.

That dude knows his s***, dude. He's sharp.

Kyle is good stuff.

But we had him on, and I learned so much, too, from standalone ECU to the stock ECU and all that stuff. Again, every single episode, I get just a little bit more information. I get a little bit smarter, so I can have a smarter conversation. So it's like all the Chevy guys use Holley and all that stuff.

It all depends on the build, obviously.

But it's so cool to see. Chaz's Porsche, for example, you guys use somebody. He's a tuner from the Middle East, I think?

It's from Turkey, actually. ES Motors is the company, and it's in Turkey. So they're known for the fastest Porsches in the world, basically.

Yeah, they're the best.

They had their record sets. They had the... They proved the point in the Porsche community. I mean, that's all they did, really. And Hossein, the owner, is a really good friend with Emre, the owner of ES Motors, basically. Really good friend with him, actually, because he had tuned a lot of his cars in the past. That's why we kind of have the relationship with ES Motors. And that's one thing. That's another thing. Having a good relationship with these guys is actually huge. Having them in your corner is always a plus. Like Chaz's car, for example, like you said, Chaz knew ES Motors beforehand, obviously. So he really wanted that car to be tuned by ES Motors. Like no one else. He just had that in his mind. He wants this car to be tuned by ES Motors. And we made it happen for him, obviously. And that goes back to the relationship. Having the relationship and making it happen is a big deal, actually. Because most of these big companies, they won't really tune random cars out there. No one, no random, especially the big companies, I want to say. No random people pick up the phone and call this company and be like, hey, I have this car, I want you to tune it. Most of these big companies rather have their turbo system on this car that they're going to be tuning. Their engine program basically, they just feel more comfortable tuning something that they have built.

Correct.

For example, in Chaz's case over here, I want to say if Chaz just reached out to them, they'll probably not do it. Just because to the fact they don't have much info about the car. Chaz himself did not have enough info about the car, buying the car. That will set them kind of, you know, they'll be like, okay, this car has a lot of question marks. And we're not there personally to see it. We're probably not going to be able to tune it basically. But circling back to the relationship, you know, for us to look at the car and then have our communication with ES Motors basically, and just get it all figured out. We all made it happen basically. But like I said, I mean, some shops will do it, some shops will not do it. Like the bigger name shops will not do it really. Like I said, it just goes back to the fact that, you know, if you're not using their engine program, if you're not using their turbo kit system, for example, you know, their parts basically, it just doesn't make sense for them to tune a car that they have not built.

It's a risk they don't need to take.

Or got involved in building the car itself. So that's kind of how it works, basically. And like I said, we have specific tuners for every specific platform. You know, the Mopar, we have one guy that's specific, that specializes in the Mopar. You know, the Hemi engines, basically. He specializes in them, you know. We have one guy that specializes in the GM engines, you know. Another guy that specializes in, you know, Ford Mustang engines, you know, Coyote engines, basically. We do have specific tuners for each platform. I mean, I have had some people think that all these cars are tuned by one person. You know, that's not right, no. Each one has a specific, knowledgeable tuner about the platform, about the engine management that's being used, you know. Going back to the Copo that you guys saw, the other...

I was just thinking about that.

That one has a stand-alone in it, right? I got to find a specific guy that knows the system very well to tune it, right? Luckily, like I said, we have the connection and the support from a lot of people, and luckily we have a specific MoTeC guy, basically. And that's who's working on it right now, actually.

Yeah, that was an older MoTeC system.

That was an M800, so an older gold box MoTeC, yes.

So in that instance, then, so you're working with somebody who specializes in that. So then what are you doing on your end while you're talking to the tuner?

So basically what I'm doing is I am observing. So listening to the engine, making sure the engine is running correctly beforehand, actually. Basically making sure that the engine is running healthy, correctly and ready to be tuned. That's before even having the tuner jump in and doing his thing, obviously. The simple stuff before any dyno session, spark plugs, spark plugs, wires, make sure the car is not misfiring, make sure we have fuel, make sure we kind of fuel the car uses. And obviously I just observe everything. Listen to the engine. I get a lot of feedback to the tuner, for example after making a pole or something, or just the car idling, for example. I'll be like, okay, this is what I see, this is how the engine is sounding basically. I look at the dialog with the tuner as well, and that's what I learn along the way obviously. Learning this stuff will make the process easier in the future as well. Correct. Working with those tuners, each tuner has his own style tuning, his own style of communication. Some of them like to talk on the phone, some of them just like text messaging. It just depends on the person really.

So with the Copo then, when you said you were getting all set up, does that include you getting the base idle set up too and all that?

I have to make sure that the engine is mechanically sound and healthy basically. I just have to check every spark plug in every car that goes on the dyno. That's essential. A lot of people think about spark plugs as a simple thing, and it's actually the most important thing. In boosted applications, spark plug gap is a huge thing. I'm sure you guys talked about this with a lot of people on the podcast over here maybe, especially tuner guys. So spark plug gap is huge in boosted application basically. If it's not set up correctly, the car will have issues, will have misfire on higher boost RPM. I just have to make sure that all of that stuff is done correctly. We've had cars come in for tuning supposedly ready. They had wrong spark plugs in them, wrong heat range of spark plugs, wrong gap of spark plug. So we have to check all that stuff to avoid any possible issues during the tuning session basically. And after we do that stuff, I do observe again and just give the tuner feedback. I'll be like, hey, the car is not idling so well. It feels like a little finicky, a little hesitation to it. The throttle response is not that great. I just give the tuner feedback, and he will work on that basically based on my feedback. And then obviously it's all observation. It's all observation and feedback. If you have good feedback to the tuner, you will have a successful tuning session basically. Working with overseas tuners as well, language is different obviously. So I kind of jump in and do a lot of stuff because we have a lot of overseas tuners. It's just an easier communication in a different language sometimes, honestly. Obviously, English is not my first language, but some terms, it just does not come into mind. We just switch languages quick and we do it quick. It just works. Sometimes at the shop, me and Moh or Hussain will be talking all in English and all of a sudden we'll switch to Arabic. And Bryce is just sitting there in the middle. He's like, what are you guys saying? That kind of deal. You know, it's sometimes it's just easier to switch back to, you know, native language, basically.

So what is the native language then?

Arabic.

Okay, so then, okay. Just a little sidetracked. I always wonder, so then do multiple countries speak the same language then?

Correct.

Oh, okay. Okay, that makes a lot of sense then. So then, what language do they speak? So I guess, what do you, do you speak English with like someone like from ES Motors, for example?

That's all English.

Okay, yeah, because they speak Turkish.

They speak Turkish. Yeah, so English is basically the main communication language.

So who's an example of someone you guys would speak Arabic with? Like what platform?

Well, for example, this Motec car right now, that's all Arabic. I mean, I do speak English with them. You know, some terms are essential in English, and some terms are just, you know, just in Arabic, really. But GM4, standalone ECUs, GTRs, that's all from the Middle East side, so it's all Arabic basically.

Okay. They just have a lot of experts over there?

They have a lot of experts over there. And like I said, we have the relationship and the support from these guys. So they support us, we support them basically. Not that there's no good tuners here in the States, no.

It's just relationship.

It's just relationship, you know, and willing to work with somebody, you know, on a smaller level basically.

Yeah, because you guys are a small shop too.

Very small, obviously, you know. I mean, a very small shop, you know. But yeah, I mean, feedback is really the main thing to a successful tuning session, really. Remote tuning, you know. I do have some local tuner guys, tuning people that, you know, rents out the dyno basically and just come tune their own stuff. We do have a lot of those people actually. That's good to see too, you know. It's just, you know, you know that there are a lot of people out there doing this thing, you know. Excuse me. But yeah, I mean, overall, like I said, I just got to make sure that car is sounding healthy before we, you know, go basically wide open throttle, you know, tuning stuff. Also, you know, watch the air fuel ratio numbers, you know, that's essential, you know. Make sure the car is not dropping fuel pressure, you know, make sure the car is set up with the proper base fuel pressure to begin with. Make sure what kind of injectors that car has, you know. I've had cars come in and the customer were like, oh, it has a, you know, 1000cc injectors in it, you know. And they go, look, and it's like 1300cc injectors. So that is completely different tuning wise, you know. That will mess up lots of stuff because that will change the whole scaling of the fueling and that incorrect, you know. So it's very, very important to know these stuff, you know, before starting the tuning session, basically. Also, you know, just basically listening to it, you know, when I'm doing wide open throttle, pause on the dyno, you know, if something is wrong, I know when to let off, you know. I'm looking at the numbers, I'm looking at the data log. I'm actually feeling the car. If something is wrong, I have to let off because the tuner is just over there. It doesn't know really what's going on in a couple of seconds of making a dyno poll. So yeah, it's all important stuff. I've had cars that I could not really do one poll on the dyno because they had issues that I'm like, I will have to stop at this point. There's really no point of continuing because this is not right.

What kind of issues would you see?

Fueling is mostly cars maxing out fuel systems.

It's like wrong size injectors and something.

Wrong size injectors, cars maxing out fuel systems. They think they're fine on the street. They come to the dyno, they're not fine. Another thing is a lot of people think the dyno is just a number. I think it's actually an essential tuning tool to begin with, rather than making horsepower numbers. Numbers are numbers. Numbers are just numbers, honestly. I mean, sure, it's nice seeing big numbers, but I mean, essentially, it's a tuning tool, basically, at the end of the day. It's a very expensive tuning tool.

It was so cool. My first time ever seeing a dyno actually was your shop, actually. So I came there for Kerry's birthday when they were tuning the Red Supra.

Oh, yeah. That was like two years ago.

Yeah, so that was my first time seeing a dyno in person, seeing the graphs and all that stuff. So that was super cool for me. So then when you're talking about it's more than the number, are you talking about how it looks on a graph and all that stuff, too?

You know, the dyno graph tells you a lot, actually. A lot of people will look at it as just a power band, it's just a couple lines and numbers. It actually tells you a lot. If you see hesitation in the power band, the lines on the graph, you know there's an issue. Hesitation typically refers back to a misfire. Some misfire, you don't even feel it, but the dyno will show it. It's just one of those things that it's very, very little that you cannot feel it, but the dyno will show it. The data log will show it. If we have a car that the clutch is slipping, for example, the dyno graph will tell you that, hey, this clutch is slipping. You'll see a dip in the graph, and then power continues back up, so you know that dip is a clutch slip. If you see something abnormal on the dyno graph, you know there's something wrong, and you have to diagnose, and just figure out what's causing that, basically. Because you always want to see a dyno graph where it's clean, nice curve, no hesitation. That's where you want to see it, really. You see a lot of people will be like, oh, the car feels completely fine on the street. We put on the dyno, and it's a horrible dyno graph looking, and it's misfiring, it's doing weird stuff, it's limiting the throttle, it's freaking out, going to limp mode, doing all weird stuff, especially with the newer cars. A lot of stuff like that, I've seen those every day, really. Nice clean graph is what you want to see on a dyno graph, really.

I remember I also came there one time when Chaz had his M4. Was it M4 or M5? I can't remember.

That was M5.

M5, that's right. And he put a JB4 on it. Didn't it look a little bit weird on the graph, too?

Speaking of JB4, the worst dyno graphs and the worst performance I've seen out of cars is when they have JB4 on them.

Or like a piggyback tune in general?

Piggyback, I mean, not necessarily all piggybacks are bad, but obviously, honestly, from what I've seen, JB4 is the worst. JB4 is horrible. And I'm not going to lie. I had a BMW once on the dyno, and I made a poll, and it did not feel right. It was all over the place. I'm like, this was on JB4, right? And this JB4 is just... I'm not right, it's just acting up. I took that JB4, like right on the dyno, I took it off the car. Completely bypassed it, took it off the car. Car was so much happier without JB4. I mean, obviously, you know how the JB4 works, you know? It basically tricks the system, you know? It's not tuning, it's tricking the system, you know? It's not good, I don't know why people use JB4.

So explain what it is, I guess, kind of too, because not everybody understands how these systems work, so kind of explain what JB4 is.

It basically tricks the ECU that it changes the fueling to some point. It does not have full control of anything, really. It just integrates to the map sensor, basically, and the map sensor, whatever. I don't even know how exactly it integrates to the system. All I know is it's just a horrible system because of the cars that I've seen come through. It's just a horrible, I've seen Suprise, actually, the MK5 Suprise with JB4, you know? The 2022s, the ECUs are locked, the people are not able to tune them. Take the JB4 out of it. And I've had one, I think, a year ago, and it was on JB4. So, just like any other car I do, make sure the car is running right, make sure nothing, make sure the car is ready for the dyno, basically. And typically before I go wide open, I just go through the gears, just get a feeling of the car, really. This particular Supra, I could not even go wide open throttle, because it was on JB4, and everything, data log in front of me, the dyno graph looking at it, it's just not right. It's just scary, actually. It is scary.

What did the graph look like?

Oh, I actually made a post about this one. Because essentially the same car came back to us this year, and we did ECU unlock, and we did custom boot mount tuning on it. And I made a comparison basically in between the two, and looked day and night different. The car felt completely different, because nothing beats custom tuning. Even off the shelf tuning, is what they call off the shelf tuning, the flash tunes. They're okay, they get you to some point, but obviously there's nothing better than custom tuning. Because you gotta give the engine what it needs, really. If you bring me two identical cars, they will be tuned differently. Just to the fact that they're different. Each engine needs something different.

Yeah, the small variations between the two.

The tolerances, the small variations, a lot of stuff goes into it, really. That's why off-the-shelf tuning is what they call it, off-the-shelf.

I have an off-the-shelf in my GTI, for example. I have a United Motorsport tune on mine. So it's one of the better ones, not like an APR tune, but it's off-the-shelf still. You have this particular build and then throw the tune on and it's good to go. But if I were to do a custom tune, and I could take it up another notch, it'd be a lot smoother or whatever.

Correct, yes. It works for simple stuff, because they've done lots of R&D on these tuning files that they send out to people.

Correct.

And I've seen it. We've done a lot of Unitronic tuning, actually. Like the Flash Unitronic tuning, stages, stage one, stage one plus, stage two, all that stuff.

They're simple.

They're very simple. And I get that because they've done lots of R&D on these tune files, and they got them where they're really dialed in almost 90%.

Like universal kind of.

Universal kind of deal. I've seen really good result on GTIs, actually, with the Unitronic tuning. Actually, I've had a lot of those come through, actually.

They're hot right now. So I'm in a big group chat with about 70 MQB owners locally. So it's like almost everybody's on Unitronic.

OK, yeah. Yeah. No, we are an official authorized Unitronic dealer as well. Their tuning is really conservative, I want to say, versus APR, for example.

Yeah, throw out the boost at it.

Yes, I've seen APR, they're really aggressive tuning-wise. Not necessarily a bad thing, but if you're getting an aggressive tune, not a custom aggressive tune, that could essentially lead to some issues, basically. That's why I refer back to custom tuning is always the way to go, always.

Because it's for your particular car.

It's for your particular car, even for a simple setup, even simple setups. But like I said, the OTS maps is what they call them on boot mod 3 for the Supras, for example. I've tested several of those. They're actually really, really dialed in and close to where they should be. But they definitely leave some on the table, just due to the fact that it's a shelf tilt, is what they call it. They're not going to throw everything at it. So is it safe? Maybe? I don't know. I mean, I haven't really gone far enough to know if it's safe or not. I granted a lot of people do them and use them, and they're fine. But like I said, I always refer back to custom tuning. Whether it's stock ECU or standalone, custom tuning is the way to go, really.

So let's say you had somebody come in with a Supra, then they're going to do a custom tune. So what would you tune it on, I guess?

We have several options, actually. It could be on Ecutech, or it could be on BM3, which is BootMod 3, it could be on two different softwares. It just depends on the customer. I have had some customers come in where they already purchased Accessport for MHT instead of Ecutech or BootMod 3. So we just have to stick with whatever the customer is, and if we offer that. I prefer using BootMod 3 and Ecutech over anything else.

That's kind of like the big names out here.

The big names, yeah. And they're very simple to the fact that they're very simple. Working with tuners actually is very, very simple for BootMod 3, especially remote tuning. BootMod 3 made it a lot easier than anything else. It's all cloud-based tuning files basically. So there's no email involved, nothing really. It's very simple. I log in to the software. It's all cloud-based. The tuner just uploads their file, the custom tune file, and it will show up on my end, and then I flash it to the car basically. Data log automatically shows up to the tuner via cloud again. So it's very simple communication for remote tuning. So that's a really good platform. They did it right for their remote tuning guys actually, BootMod 3. Ecutech on the other hand is really, really good software as well. We use Ecutech on the GTRs too. So all GTRs are tuned on Ecutech. They are stock ECU, obviously. Standalone, that's a different story. Supras though, all of the Supras we've done, they were all on BootMod 3 so far.

That's pretty sweet. And there's so much to learn.

So much to learn. Trust me, I learn every day.

Yeah.

Every day.

Yeah. I mean, that's one of the things. That's why we had Kyle come back 10 episodes later. I'm like, dude, there's so much to learn about tuning. Or like Michael Peterson, he used to be a Ford engineer.

Yeah.

It's like, we had to get you back on. It's like, just always something to talk about. I mean, it's never ending with cars. I mean, when you think about it, I mean, there's thousands of parts in every single one.

It's never ending. Yeah.

Yeah.

It's never ending. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, let me see what we're at here. Dude, we're over two hours here.

Really?

Time flies.

I did not feel like that.

Well, that's the thing. So, you know, with this new setup, I can just throw the computer to the side. So even I'm not aware of the time until I look around.

Yeah.

So that helps a lot. But so one question that we always used to ask at the end of every episode, and I want to keep this tradition going, just to kind of have an idea of what your car tastes are, who you are as a person, what you choose. Sean was a lot better at explaining this than I am, but I got to take on this role. So basically the question goes like this. We actually came up with this at Texas 2K. We did like a five person podcast. It was f****** chaos. But one of the guys came up with this question, and the question goes like this. You have to choose three cars, unlimited budget. You have to choose a daily, a track car and a show car. The only thing that's limiting you is your imagination. So what would those three cars be? Start with that or whichever.

I mean, we kind of already talked about race car over here. So the beginning of this podcast, but don't really have a specific show car, I want to say. As you know, I mean, a race car can always be a show car, honestly, you know, I mean, I'm not, I don't know if I said this before, but I'm not a big car show person. I mean, I've done car shows before, you know, I like them, I don't mind them, but I'm just not a big car show person, you know.

You're more of a PRI guy over SEMA, for example.

Absolutely, PRI over SEMA all day long, big time. And I've gone to SEMA and I've gone to PRI, obviously both of them, you know, I stopped going to SEMA.

I've won for my first time next week, so.

It's fun, don't get me wrong, it's fun. It's different though. If you're going for a specific thing, it's different. You know, PRI is just more smaller, more tight community.

Race car.

Race car stuff, you know. And that's what I like, obviously. So, well, like I said, SEMA is nice. SEMA is nice, yeah. But no, I mean, show car, I don't really.

Would you go newer, older?

Don't really have one in mind. But race car, obviously we've talked about race car. You know, it's gonna be one of full blown race car, whatever it is, you know, Corvette, a Mustang, it's gonna be a race car.

So it's most likely, so. Cause I'm gonna help you figure this one out. So unlimited budgets, it's gonna be, it's probably a C6.

Probably a C6, yeah.

C6, built to the gills, like 1500 horse. Okay, that'd be pretty sweet.

Yeah. Well, I mean, let's, well, one of my old time favorite cars is a C6 ZR1. So that is one of my old time favorites, actually. I mean, that could be a show car, honestly.

Okay.

It could be a show car.

What color?

I want to say Inferno, the orange, the Inferno orange color, you know? Yeah. I mean, I would take red, too, and I love a lot of colors, different colors, honestly.

They have a lot of great colors on the C6 ZR1. Okay, so show car, C6 ZR1.

Let's say C6 ZR1 for a show car.

I got to ask.

I don't know why I forgot about that, but.

What kind of wheels would you put on? Anything flashy, stock, or what you thinking?

I mean, stock wheels look just perfectly fine.

They look amazing on that car.

Yeah, if anything, it's going to be one of them, forged line, for example, you know? Some of, you know, one of those lines, you know, the forged line, I like forged line wheels, yeah.

Sweet, so we got a show car.

We got a show car. C60R1 show car. Yeah, let's go with that, yeah.

Okay, then back to the race car.

Again, that's going to, well, we're talking unlimited budget here, so it's going to be a little bit different than real life.

Yeah, full send.

I mean, it could be a pro mod, honestly. Okay, yeah, you can go that route. Yeah, pro modified is actually one of the best classes in drag racing, in my opinion, actually. So I want to say pro modified car.

Okay, so what that car look like?

So that's, I mean, essentially that's, well, the thing is about pro mods, they're full tube chassis cars, all right? You basically can put any body style on top of that tube chassis car. I want to go with something unique. I want to say, what is it though? It may sound crazy, but Ford GT is also one of my all time favorite cars. I've never seen a Ford GT, a full on blown race car Ford GT.

Okay, like 05, 06, right?

Yes, yeah. I don't know how it's going to look in a pro mod trim, but I mean, if it's unlimited budget, let's throw that on.

Yeah, we'll figure it out.

I don't think it will look the best, but I mean, hey, it's for GT.

We'll find a shop that'll do it. All right, so then last one, Daily.

Daily. Actually, Daily is a hard one.

It's hard for everybody.

Yeah.

That's probably the hardest one for everyone.

I mean, it's unlimited budget. I'm not going to lie, I love the GT2 RSs.

Yeah. That'd be a fun one to daily around, full blown race car.

Essentially, it goes back to a race car, even if it's a daily, it will probably have some sense of a race car into it. So, I mean, the GT2 RS is one of the most beautiful cars, honestly.

Dude, it's phenomenal.

Nobody can argue that, seriously.

Yeah. I love these new GT3 RSs. I was just watching Mr. JWW or whatever. He got a silver one, so all right. Just because Porsche is crazy with their colors, for my own curiosity, what color would your GT2 RS be?

I love red.

Guards red?

I love red, yes. Yeah. Yes.

I'm in that camp. Guards red GT2 RS.

I love red, yes. Yeah. When it comes to colors, I feel like, you know, my least favorite would be silver, honestly.

Really? Okay.

On any car.

Okay.

You know, even though my GTR was silver, I don't know why.

It looked really good in silver.

I mean, it was okay. It was actually the color code of an R34 GTR instead of R33. So it was a little bit darker than the original R33 color. Which is nice, actually. The darker, the better, you know. But yeah, I love red, honestly. Yeah.

Sweet, dude. Well, where can people find you?

Social media. Facebook is just my full name, Sam Al Soywaymill. And then Instagram is Samr underscore one underscore z.

Okay.

Yeah.

And then also Mohs Performance, or... Mohs Performance.

MP Motorsport, basically.

Okay.

Actually, we're in the process of changing the name a little bit and rebranding the whole company, basically.

Oh, okay. Sweet. We'll have to get somebody back on in the future and talk about that as well, so... Yeah, for sure. That's pretty sweet. Well, I appreciate you coming on. Super awesome. As for everybody else, you can find me at Minnoxide everything. I will be talking about some of the affiliate stuff that I'm doing here in the near future, but the two big ones are Jocko right here. So how did you like the energy drink?

I was okay. Like I said, I'm not a big energy guy, but I mean, it was okay.

Yeah.

I mean, it's iced tea and lemonade, so that's fine. I love that.

That's one of my favorite flavors.

Yeah.

These three are my favorite here. So I got the sour apple, the new rosette, blue raspberry, and then the tea lemonade or whatever. But yeah, everybody can get 10% off on that if you use carbon monoxide. And then also at some point, I might get the 3D car care stuff in the back here. That's another one.

It's nice having something in the background, actually.

Yeah, it's a little bland right now. But again, every episode gets better. The next thing I'm gonna fix is this freaking lighting because it's a little, it's not perfect. It's good, but it's not great. It gets the job done.

It gets the job done.

We're not in the dark.

Just trust the process and just go with it.

Yeah. But yeah, the 3D car care stuff. So 10% carbon monoxide or Minoxide 10, I don't know, it's on my Instagram. I should probably check that. But yeah, nonetheless, thank you everybody for tuning in and listening. I think you're now our, I think you're second or third longest episode, so yeah, that was impressive. So I thank you for being the first one with me by myself. Oh, thank you.