67. Air Flow and Building Heads For Racecars w/ Jason Anderson

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minnoxide podcast. I'm your host, Harris, aka Minnoxide, man of many automotive aspirations. And this is the show where you go beyond the meat, talking to car enthusiasts from in our local community, across the country, all that fun stuff. And I do that with my trusty partner, Dan.

Hi, Dan with Gunna Garage.

Perfect.

See, I think this is the perfect intro. I'm going to listen back to this, and I'm going to practice it in the car from now on. And today we got Jason Anderson from Janderson Heads. Is that the official LLC?

That is.

Is it Janderson or J Anderson?

You're opening up a can of worms.

Yeah, yeah.

It's fun to say Janderson, but your heads have been on a lot of really cool cars. Some may remember the RS4 Avant that was on the dyno a few weeks ago or maybe last week.

I can't remember.

And it's just it seems like you do a lot of race car stuff.

Yeah, it's it's all over the map, honestly. It's probably 75 percent race car stuff, though. Yeah.

So and maybe I can't remember if we talked about this on the phone or not. But do you do do you is there any particular type of build that comes through your shop or drag race, road course, whatever?

So yes. Yes. To all of that.

I'll just make minor adjustments here.

A good portion of what I'm into right now. It's always evolved into different things. But what I'm doing mostly now is road race and drag race and then like some street car race, street race stuff sprinkled in. Like the like the Audi that was here a couple of weeks ago, week ago, whenever that was. Yeah.

Yeah. That thing was rowdy. I think it, I think they shared, I think it was in like high eight hundreds to the wheel.

Yeah, it was. Yeah, it was close to 900, I think. Yeah.

Yeah. Making steam. And that was like the the avant or not. The the wagon version of what trade downstairs had. But I think more power, just just crazy. So I guess so some of our listeners are very, very in depth. And then some of us, some of the listeners are more like me. So do you want to kind of get into why, since you specialize in heads, right? There's nothing to be said about people who specialize in things. You know, these guys specialize in that, this, you know, whatever. Sure. Why, I guess, is there a way to kind of explain to the listener, why are why is what you do so important?

Sure.

And how did you build your reputation, I suppose?

Yeah, I mean, how I got into it is a long story in itself.

We could start there, too.

But but essentially what cylinder heads and the importance of a cylinder head and making power is, if you look at an engine like a self driven air pump is really what they are. The more air you can get through there and efficiently as possible, the more power the thing is potentially going to make.

Yeah, correct.

Whether and that we found that whether it's boosted, supercharged, naturally aspirated doesn't matter. So that's, you know, essentially why I just getting into it. I mean, it started when I was a young kid wanting to. I wanted to be a race car driver when I was a little kid. I knew that wasn't going to happen with my family. My family didn't have a ton of money. So I knew that, you know, mechanical things are something that was really intrigued me.

So you're big on like tinkering then?

Well, and you know, as soon as I could hold a flashlight for my dad in the garage, I was doing that classic flashlight. Exactly. Grab the 916. It's not the box and the ratchet. So I was doing that as much as I could with car stuff. My uncle was a race car driver. He drove Formula cars and just around cars and racing all the time. I think when it clicked as far as the engine stuff for me was, I was in junior high industrial tech class or something like that. And you had to, at that time, they had an electronic section, and you had to build a wooden rocking horse or something like that. Just the stupid little things you had to make. But one section of the class was you had to take a little 049, the little model airplane engines apart. They're this big, they run on nitro. The unit was you had to take this thing, take it apart. It was super simple. It had a piston, a connecting rod, a crankshaft, and not really any kind of carburetor or anything on it. But take this thing apart, put it back together, and yet it had to run. It was a pretty simple deal. But being a kid and not really doing anything like that at that age yet, taking this thing apart, seeing all the little pieces, putting it all back together, seeing these parts and then putting these parts back together, and then you put a little nitro in the thing and spin it, and it starts making noise, and it's smoking, and it's so cool, right? And that was it for me. I was hooked.

Well, my small engine from small engines class never got put back together. But I have completed a few builds as an adult, so I made up for it.

Yeah, exactly. We can't hit a home run on our first one, right? But from there, it was like, this was the road I was going down. This is what I'm doing. And I did everything I could to get to this point, basically. And for whatever reason, the cylinder head part of it, I don't know exactly how I got just pigeonholed into the cylinder head side of it. It started with engines, and then it was mechanics class when you're in high school, the shop classes and stuff. And then when I was in high school, there was an opportunity to do like a Vo-Tech thing at the, it was Hennepin Tech, and they had an engine machining program through the high school. You go to the Vo-Tech and take this course. Well, I'm a procrastinator. I signed up late, but I just got in. And what you were supposed to do, so it was my junior year in high school, I was like, so you'd spend half the day at high school, and then you'd either get on a bus or drive to the technical college, and then you'd start your college course basically. But what they did at the time was, once you got there, if you're a newbie, like a junior, you had to go through some, you had to do, I think it was a semester of just like a basics mechanics course before you could get into what you were trying to get a degree in. I was like, well, crap, I've done all that already, you know. In the high school, I took shop class every year I could, so it's like I'd just be like learning what I've already learned. And because I procrastinated, there wasn't room for me in that anyways. So they're like, well, I told them, I was like, hey, I've done all that before. Get me into the, you know, I wanted to do the engine stuff. So they're like, okay. So they, as a junior, they put me right in to the engine machining program at Hennepin Tech. And so I did that junior year, senior year, just as much as I could learn.

For Minnesota people, is that kind of one of the go-to schools then for them?

Not anymore.

Really? Okay.

I think I was one of the last, let's see, I think it was three years after I graduated that it's done.

Really?

Yeah, so I graduated from that in 97, and I think it was done by 2000. So if you want to do any, like if you want to learn any kind of performance engine stuff, I think there's a couple schools around the country. One's called the School of Automotive Machinist. That's a really good school. There was a WIO Tech or UTEC or UTI. I can't remember, but there's a couple others.

I think UTI, they advertise it. They have like a performance program there.

Okay, sure.

Were you doing any of this stuff and working on cars or building cars for yourself or for your dad or uncle?

Just working in the garage with my dad.

Okay. So not building any race cars or anything at this point, you're just kind of learning it.

Yeah, learning as much as I could. It was at that point, I think it was my, at the end of my junior year there, the instructor called me over and he's like, hey, do you want to start an actual job in this? I was like, yeah. I was like, well, I have a shop in Bloomington that like needs someone, like a young kid, to try to, you know, mentor and do this. And it was a shop called Headworks in Bloomington, a guy named Steve Chauvin. And so I interviewed with him and I went to the interview. I didn't even drive at the time. Like my buddy had to drive. I was all about engines. I didn't even have a license yet. And so my buddy drove me over to that shop and they're like, and Steve, great guy. Steve's like, I'd love to hire you, but I need I need someone more full time. Yeah, I guess maybe he didn't realize I was still a junior in high school. Maybe I was a senior at this point. Somewhere, somewhere in high school. And he's like, but there's another shop here in Bloomington that's looking for someone, you know, part time after school type of guy. So why don't you try these guys out? That was Total Engine Service in Bloomington. They're still around. And it was Bruce and Kenny. And again, my buddy had to drive me to that interview. And they said, yeah, we'll give you a shot. And so I went there basically every day after high school and started sweeping floors and cleaning parts and got, even though I'd learned that stuff at the VOTEC, more machining type stuff and building heads and boring blocks and whatever else, they had a very particular way of doing stuff. And they wanted to start me out on the ground floor and bring me up. And I was fine with that. I'm just happy to be in this shop. They worked on all kinds of engines, too. Race engines, drag race, truck pull, everything. Big blowers. It was crazy. And high school kid, showing up to that job every day was... I didn't care if I was sweeping a floor, bead blasting something. I was where I wanted to be.

A kid in a candy store.

Yeah, exactly. And I worked there up until three years ago. So, 23, 24 years or something like that.

Well, that's how you're supposed to do it. These kids that come out of school thinking they're hot shot, know they know everything. Especially going to a shop where an old guy has been building race cars forever and ever. That's not going to fly. I'm in the trades. That doesn't fly on the job site. When I worked in kitchens, there used to be kids that come out of the corridor in blue, and I'm like, dude, you're at Green Mill. You were all here to just punch a clock, dude.

And I hear that from... I have other... I know I have so many friends in the industry, even around here. I have friends with a lot of the other shops, and they're always in the same boat. Every kid is like, it sounds like it's a cool job for a while, and then they last six months, and then they move on to something else, just because it sounds like it's cool to say that you work it, but there's no skill there.

Yeah, you've got to put in your time, show that you can show up, be reliable, and then you'll get your shot at some point in time. Sometimes somebody will either get sick, not show up or something, or they'll just say, hey, I got this head here, try this out. We'll see how you do.

Yeah, and it was... Yeah, how I got into the cylinder head side of it specifically, I just remember picking up every book on making power, you know, because this is before Internet was huge. So I was picking up every book I could on making power, and the common denominator was cylinder heads, intakes, and headers, right? You know, it's all about getting the air in and out. And so that's what I just ended up focusing on. And that's how that... That's how I kind of started the niche of sticking with just the cylinder head side. So when I was at Total Engine, I moved myself up to pulling engines apart, taking heads apart, machining heads, valve jobs, surfacing, all that kind of stuff. So I was pretty well known through our customer base that I was a cylinder head guy. And that was my focus.

Did they offer port service through that shop, or was that something you kind of just started on your own then?

So we did not. We farmed that out to some other people in the area. And that's what got me into the porting side of it was, well, there's a need. Why do we farm this out when I could just learn how to do this? So I was still friends with the shop that was going to hire me in Bloomington, that headwork. So that Steve Shobe, he went a different route. He kind of, I wouldn't say a different route, but he tried to get into the performance cylinder head site. He was mostly a production shop working for, you know, garages that were doing head gaskets. And so he'd do valve jobs and surfacing, and didn't do as much in the porting side. But he had wanted to get more into that. So he went to, he befriended a guy named Joe Mondello, who was a, he was an old guy back in the 50s and 60s. He was a pioneer in the cylinder head, performance cylinder head side of things before, you know, all these big companies started coming up. And he, he went to see Joe and learn how to do the port work from one of the guys that's one of the best at it. And so I was like, how could I, how can I do that with that guy? And I heard that he was coming to some kind of like an engine builder, not like a kind of like a conference type thing or, you know, open house. It was at a place called Goodson Machine in Winona. So it was in town. He's from, I think originally he's from California, but he came to live in Tennessee, but he was going to be in town. And along with another big Cylinderhead guru guy named Darren Morgan, and, you know, to be able to see both these guys and meet them at the same time, it's like, I got to do this if this is what I want to do. So I went to this thing. I'm sitting there listening to both of them, taking down as many notes as I can and studied the notes. I mean, I was just like, it was all about heads and stuff at that time. But I got to talking to him, to this Joe Mondello, and got a relationship with him. I'd call him like after that, you know, after meeting him and telling him, hey, this is what I want to do. He's like, you should come out and see me sometime and, you know, learn from me. Got a relationship with him, went and call him with advice, and finally, you know, it cost money to do this, you know. My wife and I were freshly married and didn't have a whole lot of money. So I went to Total Engine, my employers, and I said, okay, I'm going to do this one way or another. I'm either going to pay for it myself, and then that's going to be my thing, or if you help me with it, then I can do that here, and it would be something that we do and build the shop that way.

Art of the deal.

Right, and it really was like a crossroads, because they said kind of... I mean, no disrespect to them at all. They kind of said, good luck. As in, they kind of wanted me to have this be my thing, because they knew that they were getting older, closer to retiring, and they could see that the cylinder head side was the major part of what I did, and the rest of what they did in the shop wasn't something I wanted to absorb. So they said, yeah, go for it. And with that, my wife and I scrounged up as much money as we could, and typically, as Joe Mondello, he had made a course at his shop, and he built race engines, cylinder heads, big-time brain guy on cylinder heads. But because he was getting older, I think he was in his 70s at the time, he wanted to pass that knowledge on, so he started a course. He'd have 10 guys come in, they'd pay him, he'd let them stay at his shop, feed them even, and then you'd spend a day with him, every day for a week, learning how to do this stuff. Well, I call him, he's like, Joe, I'm ready to go. How much is it going to cost? Blah, blah, blah. And he's like, I got no one coming for, like, I don't know how long it's going to be. I'm like, man, I'm ready to go. He's like, just come out. So it was just me and him. So the good thing about that was I didn't have I didn't have to wait for people to catch up to the class type of thing. It was one on one. We could just like for a week, we just just hit it hard, like really hard and could kind of accelerate the process of the learning basically.

So what time period was this in then roughly?

Let's see, that was probably like 07, 08 at this time. Yeah, probably around that time.

There's something to be said about that accelerated experience, though. I mean, especially that one on one experience, like that's one of my favorite things about the car community, like the people that have mentored me in various things. Those one on one experiences are so crucial. And you said you basically did it all in like a week.

Yeah, I mean, you can't learn it all in a week.

Yeah, no shot.

But as far as like the techniques of how to shape a port, we did a little bit of, because I've read every book and talked to him, he could kind of gauge that I understood the airflow side of things. So we spent probably only a day on that part of it. And then it was in the porting room, grinding on cylinder heads and getting the technique, making walls straight, making round things round, making everything look good, because what he did, everything looked good. And I can still hear him in my head when I'm porting heads, like, you idiot, what are you doing? But Joe was, back in the day, he ported heads for, like, Carroll Shelby, all those big daddy Gartlets. I mean, his heads were winning races and records all over the place.

And this is probably in a time, was he, like, an old school guy, like, just using a die grinder and, like, just doing it all by hand, too?

He had no CNC machine. It was all hand. That's crazy. You're talking about... This gives you an idea of how old he was when he's teaching me how to do this stuff. The best part was, I'm sitting there, you know, you're in the porting booth, you know, porting on a head, and he's next to you porting on something, some customer stuff. He kept checking on what you're doing and yell at you for doing something wrong, and then go back to what he's doing. And then I see him out of the corner of my eye take his dentures out. And he takes his die grinder to him and like grinds on the back of his dentures, and then pops them back in. And I had to stop. I'm like, Joe, what are you doing? He's like, I can grind on these things just as good as my dentists can. You made him fit better. But yeah, the guy was, he was an absolute character. Absolute character.

Did he make you pay for that course too, by the way?

Oh yeah, he made me pay for it. And he, every day, I'd go back to my room and I'd be like, God, getting yelled at all day long and blah, blah, blah. Why am I paying to have some old man yell at me for a day, you know, for the whole week? But at the end of it, he was like, so how do you feel? I'm like, I don't know, Joe, you wore me out, man. And he was like, you're going to be a good head porter. And then, you know, I should back up. At the end of each day, he'd take me out to dinner. And he was a completely different person. Yeah, your best friend telling stories about living in California in the hot rod days of 50s and 60s. And God, he was your best friend during the evening. But when we were in the porting room, he's just down your throat all the time. At the exit interview, basically, he gives you kind of a certificate for doing everything right. And he asks me the question, how do you think my teaching style was? I was like, I think it was effective. I was like, I don't know how well I handled it. And he's like, I think you handled it perfectly because look at what you did. He's pointing at the heads that I had ported while I was there.

And so how many did you do in that week span?

So we're working on, he starts you out in iron, which not many iron heads that we're porting anymore. But, and then aluminum, he even was getting into some Harley Davidson stuff, some stuff that's easier on the back. So probably like three or four sets of heads while I was there. Yeah, but you really get that much repetition. You really get a feel for the techniques of it.

Do you do a lot of bikes too then?

Not really.

A couple.

I've done some Harley stuff here or there. That's about it.

So for you, it's just kind of like, I think we, again, we may have touched on this before, but it's like one style. You're just able to do all of it at this point.

Do you have a certain customer base that comes to you more than, do you do it out of small block Ford heads? Do you do a lot of Coyote heads? Do you have one particular thing that you're kind of known for? So you probably have CNC stuff now in your, no? All right. Yeah. So anyway, is there a certain one that you specialize in?

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I don't specialize, I'm known for not being specialized in anything, if that makes sense. Like, so much of what I do is all over the map. I'm trying to like, I'm trying to say no more. But especially the, especially the Vintage Road Race group, they, they're just happy that I'm not young, I'm 45. Well, people see me as a younger mind in this. And they're just, I'm sure they've been to every shop, like, can you port my Triumph TR4 head? You know, it's basically a tractor head. It's ugly if you've ever seen one. And most places would be like, no way am I touching that thing. We do LS heads and small block Chevys and whatever. You name the common cylinder heads. And they don't want to touch the stuff. There's a happy that I even call them back sometimes. And I think they're excited about someone taking the time to test things and try different stuff. And it's all in the name of getting people faster, whether they're driving a TR4 or a, you know, Coyote powered, whatever.

Right.

Yeah. So I don't specialize really in anything. What I'm getting to be known more for is that vintage road race stuff. More specifically, there's a series of engine called an Austin A series engine. They used them in like the early Mini Coopers. So like the 60 early 60s, Mini Coopers, Austin Healey, Sprites and midgets and used in many different sports cars from England and that I have a customer named Greg Wold. He's one of my oldest customers. The reason I've known more, probably most for that engine is I've worked with him for years and years and years and every year we try something different on the head. We do this and can we try something here? And every year he was getting faster and faster and faster. And this last, let's see, when was this last summer? There's a race at Road Atlanta called the Can Am Mini Challenge. It's all minis from all over the some people come all the way from England or Australia to do this race, but it's all early Mini Coopers.

How many of them come out?

Probably like 40, 50. Depends on the year. They do it. They were doing it every like two years, I think. They're trying to do it every year now.

That's a legit track, too.

Yeah.

Atlanta. Yeah, that's awesome.

Yeah.

My favorite as a kid on Gran Turismo.

Yeah, it's a fun. It's a fun track to I've spectated there. Yeah, never driven the track.

But do you drive a lot of tracks?

No, the only time I've driven the track is Road America in Brett Massey's Porsche. He'll tell you a story about that.

But he upgraded from a Volkswagen Beetle. I see. I know he's screaming at the windshield right now. I can't wait to rally with those guys again, man. Those guys are blessed.

Yeah, so the Can-Am Mini Challenge last year, this customer of mine, Greg Wolden, we've done so much to the cylinder head that a lot of people that are running that engine, they're still running stuff that was designed for them in the 70s. Sometimes it's redone and reboxed as new, but if you really look at the designs, it's all still like technology from the 70s, but we're doing different cam designs. We worked with Billy Godbold from Comp Cams. He was at Comp Cams. He's not anymore, but he's just a huge brain in the camshaft world. He designed the cam lobes for us on that, upgraded them into no more modern technology. Close to what we were talking to him, and we're limited to what we can do there. But he's trying to put technology in there that they're using on NASCAR stuff, the flat tappet stuff when they're still running that. And this last year at the K&M Mini Challenge, there's Greg Wold with a fairly small engine. He tries to stay in a certain class, so there's different classes. They're all minis, but there's probably five classes within the Mini Coopers. Some have big fender flares, so they're pushed way out. Typically, that car is front engine, front wheel drive. Some of them, they're turning them, they're making them rear wheel drive, big tires. So Greg is still running. It's a 1275 cc engine and that. Some people are running almost 14 now. But he's still running 1275, stock diameter, tiny wheels and tires on those things, like 10 inches. And I think stock size brakes, because you can only fit so much brake in those little tires. And he won the whole thing. He was probably two or three classes down from the top class.

Wow, that's impressive.

How many phone calls do you get after that?

Exactly. And the biggest thing was, and there's videos on YouTube of it, that car, they were catching them in the turns because they have bigger tires, bigger wheels. But then that back stretch at Road Atlanta, he was absolutely freight training people.

Really?

Yeah, and all these, they catch him in the turns, and he'd blow by him again on that back stretch. And so he won, there's like two or three races that whole weekend, and he won all of them. And so that's when my phone started going off, his phone started going off, people accusing him of cheating and all this kind of stuff. He had to make a video of him pulling the cylinder head off the car and measuring the bore so he could show them that it's just a 1275, you know, it's not a big motor. So it's just from years and years and years of working on that cylinder head. So since we have a system there and something, a recipe that works, where I'm working with a CNC place to digitize and make CNC heads available for those.

It's like more mass production, sort of, or more production?

Well, honestly, it stemmed from hand porting those tiny little heads. You wouldn't think so, but it takes almost as much time to port those as like a full set of big block Chevy heads. Because they're so touchy, it's hard to get the grinders in there. All kinds of reasons. It takes probably 10 hours to port one of these little cylinder heads. It's as big as a piece of paper. So it really came from, I just need to be able, because there's so many coming in, I just need to be able to do these more effectively. So that's why I'm working with Indy Specialty. Nate Overby is his name. He runs an outfit called Override Performance. But he's, it's a hard cylinder head to actually digitize because of its layout. And most people don't want to CNC these things because there's a challenge to do. In fact, there's probably only one company, one or two companies we know of that is CNC porting these, and they're all overseas like England or Australia. So we're going to, as far as we know, we're the only ones that are able to CNC port these things in North America. And because of that, there's a big enough market for them. That's why my phone's been going nuts and his has been going nuts. And there was one time a cylinder head just showed up. I had never talked to anybody about it, and I don't post my address on the on any of my social media for that reason. But somehow one just showed up and I had to figure out whose it was. And anyways, those are funny stories.

I remember Underground Racing posted something last year. It was somebody sent a brand new Lamborghini STO. No clue whose it was. And then somebody eventually fessed up whatever. It was just a funny story. It was one of the regular customers. All right, throw on some turbos. Let's make this thing, you know, 1400 wheel. I really wish I could get into that financial bracket. That'd be a fun prank. Just pick up an RS3 and send it to these guys.

Yeah, exactly.

Out of all the things, though, that when you thought you were going to get into race car stuff, that it's 1200 cc motor Mini Cooper heads.

Right.

Things that you kind of specialize in.

Not a clue that that was going to happen. But, I mean, it just became almost like an addiction of like, you know, every year we're like, hey, it picked up, you know? Let's try something else, you know? You just go down a rabbit hole. And he was excited. I was excited. So it just worked out that way.

Do you have to work with a lot of cam companies then too? Because that's kind of a hand in hand thing, right? So you're like, hey, I need a little more duration on this. I need a little more lift on this. You guys do a lot of back and forth like that then for custom cam grinds?

Yeah, a little bit of back and forth. Sometimes it's also just, I send them like flow sheets, you know, other parameters. Like this is the engine parameter, bore stroke, RPM range, power level, what they're trying to do with it. And I just let the cam designers, and I give them all the flow data, so what the cylinder heads flow when I'm done with them, and work back and forth. But a lot of times, the cam design stuff, that's a whole other level.

Right, and that's a very fine-tuned thing as well. So basically, if you really want to do it right, you build the head first, and then have the cam done to the head?

Yes and no. They can go, sometimes I'll work back and forth while the project's going on. But yeah, a lot of times, it's optimize the head for the RPM range and the power level, and then let's make a camshaft around this whole combination.

So you have, I don't know what they call them, a flow bench and all that stuff then too. What is that like? Is it just like a thing that looks like vacuum cleaner tubes?

So I have two flow benches. When I first started doing this, I couldn't afford a flow bench, but you can always make one. You know, it really is just a vacuum box that has some sensors on it, really. Monometers, you name it. Some way to measure what's happening, how much air is flowing through. So I have that one still. My dad was an engineer at Thermo King, and him and I put our heads together and built it for like $1,500. I mean, a new one at the time was about $10,000. And I just couldn't when I'm first starting out. So I still have that one because it's still really repeatable. I use it mostly for the R&D because it's really quick. I can grind on something, put it back on that flow bench, flow it quick, see what it's doing. And then I also bought just recently some years ago a Super Flow 600. It's what it's called. Super Flow is the standard in flow benches. So because most heads are flown on one, most flow data you get from a cylinder head manufacturer is flowed on a Super Flow. I was like, I better have one. But it has things that I like about it too. They flow air differently, but they both do the same thing.

You get the same parameters at the end of it?

Yeah, exactly. So what you're doing on a flow bench is trying to simulate what's happening in an engine. It can't exactly, but you have different bore adapters. So you get one that's close to the bore of the engine, and then you center the cylinder head on top of it, and you measure air flow through the intake side at different valve lift levels.

So they're completely assembled springs, lifters, all that stuff, and then is it something that mimics the lifting them?

So it's got test springs in it, because some of these springs have almost 1,000 pounds of pressure on them. So you take the springs out, and you put just checking springs that you can push with your hands. And then you just have a device that measures lift in certain increments. So you lift it at, say you have a camshaft, that's 550 lift or something like that, 650 lift. You want to know what's happening before it gets to that maximum lift. So you test the head at every 50,000 increments, so 50, 100, 150, 200. And it just measures air in a static rate of 28 inches of depression. And that's the industry standard. So say a set of LS1 heads flow, a lot of flow numbers are thrown out there. Say they flow 300 CFM. That's 300 cubic feet per minute at 28 inches of depression. I know I'm throwing a lot of numbers out there.

I guess I never thought about that. They always say it's CFM, but at what volume or whatever.

Right, at the depression. The industry standard is 28 inches.

Can you explain that again? You said depression is the word?

Yeah.

Just to make sure I'm keeping up.

Right, exactly. That's just how much vacuum you're drawing on that. When you're flowing an intake port, the vacuum motors in the flow bench are pulling 28 inches of vacuum, is what it's doing. And that's because that flow rate, so 300 CFM at 28 inches of depression, if you were to only be able to pull 10 inches, it would be way lower. It'd be like 200 CFM or something. I'm just throwing a number out there. So that's why when heads are advertised, say 300 CFM, it should always say after it at 28 inches, and you'll probably, now you'll, when you see that, you'll be like, yep. It should also say what bore adapter it's flowing on, because all that makes a difference. So, yeah, but the flow bench is a tool, like a dyno is a tool. It's there to collect data. It doesn't always simulate what you're trying to do, because in a cylinder head, you know, on a flow bench, you're just pulling a vacuum, opening a valve, and it's measuring air through it. Where on an engine, it's not, air isn't always flowing through a cylinder head. It's, when that valve shuts, the air flow actually comes to a stop in the port. That's what a lot of people don't quite realize. You know, they think that air is always going through there. But when that valve shuts, everything in that port stops and actually sends a wave going back the other way. And on the exhaust, we still flow the same way, so you just turn some knobs and it changes some valving in there. And it changes it so that the vacuum motors are on the blowing side, and that's how you flow the exhaust side.

Will it measure turbulence, too? Because for people that don't know, if you just get in there with a really harsh die grinder and you do it up and it's all rough, even though you've got the volume, the air is not moving because if you have a rough surface, it can throw it all off, too.

Yes. It doesn't measure... How does it measure turbulence?

Or do you just make sure things are baby smooth before you're throwing them in the machine?

Well, that's not always the thing you want to do either.

Oh, really?

So there's a whole... We can go down a huge rabbit hole.

You struck a nerve with this one.

I'm just picturing people at home with a Dremel and a set of GT40 heads trying to port their own heads. You know what I mean?

And I've seen it all, man. I've seen so many heads come through my shop that it's... And I don't want to... Every set that comes through my shop and it appears like someone's ported them, I always try to pretend that the person that gave me the heads is the one that ported them. So I'm not like, who the hell did this?

J******. How'd you learn that lesson?

Exactly the hard way. So you were saying, does the flow bench measure turbulence? And I would say airflow through a head is almost always turbulent. What some people characterize as turbulence is... And here we're getting really technical here.

We got chat GBT nowadays, 2024.

So say you're flowing a LS1 head. Because of the architecture of an LS1 head, two valves, a fairly low angle of attack, on the intake port, the air has to go around a pretty sharp turn to get into the bowl area, or where the valve is, and then into the cylinder. Four valve stuff, the intake port's raised up.

The Ford stuff is superior to Chevy stuff, but yeah, we get that part.

So you're the Ford guy.

Yes, I am. We can carry on.

He's going back to the agency later. I'll get a Chevy guy back on here.

So LS1 head, because of the architecture, valve angles, port angles, everything else, when you start opening the valve up more and getting more air going through the flow bench, you can hear at a certain lift point the air will start to gurgle. And start the port, usually when, you know, as you start flowing the air, you can hear the air is nice and quiet. It's just flowing air. As you lift the valve more and more, you start hearing things. Flow bench, yeah, it gives you flow numbers, but it's also, it gives you something to listen for. And we also use it to map velocity and everything else. But talking about turbulence, what a lot of people characterize as turbulence is actually as you're opening that valve and more air is going through, it's having a hard time making that turn into the chamber area, bowl area anymore. And so it comes detached from the cylinder wall or port walls, especially the floor. And you'll hear that on the flow bench. It'll start gurgling and making all kinds of loud noises. And then your flow, you'll see it, you know, say it's raising to, we always use the word number 300 apparently tonight, but it'll get to 300 CFM. Yeah, say like 600 valve lift. You say you go to 650 lift, it'll start gurgling, making noise because the air can't make the turn anymore. So it's getting pushed out to the outside of the turn. And your flow number will actually start to go down. So you could be at 300 CFM at 600 lift, but at 650, you could be back down to 290 and then go backwards as you lift the valve. Yeah. So that's also what's characterized as turbulence, is when a port goes turbulent, it's not flowing over that short turn anymore, and it's going bananas, and you can hear it.

So this is what everybody was talking about. You know, when I start talking, when I talk to these race car guys, they always talk like efficient builds and flow and all that. Like, this all makes a lot more sense now, because every single one of those bends, I mean, it's crucial. Yeah.

Air doesn't want to go around turns.

Yeah.

It doesn't.

So go ahead.

No, you go ahead.

I was going to ask, what's one of the, I guess, what are some of the better heads that you've seen come through the shop, I guess?

Well, I've done, because I've done so many different heads, it's the overhead valve stuff.

The coyote heads are supposed to be pretty damn good. Just right out the gate. I'm just saying.

I was just flowing. What did I have on there recently? Oh, I was working on some, you've heard of the old 409 Chevy heads? Like old 409. If she's so fine, my 409. It was an engine. It was an engine. It was an engine Chevy made. It was small block Chevy. And then they they were trying to develop the big block, but they had what was called the 409, the W series engine before that. And they still make aftermarket heads for these things. But the ports are so bad in them that I mean, at 500 lift, they're just they sound awful. They're not flowing any air. And so I had that in my head when I put the next set of heads on the bench. Excuse me. The next set of heads was a set of the 4.6 Cobra heads. And they sound so great on the flow. And this isn't even Coyote stuff yet. It's, you know, forced.

They're pretty dang close to each other though. Yeah, they are. I mean, they haven't changed much.

Yeah, the architecture is very similar. But the sound, I mean, it just you can keep lifting that valve and it just keeps flowing and flowing and flowing. And it's quiet. And we have these little, I have these probes that you can put in the port and it measures airspeed. And if you put it like in a two valve, you know, push rod motor, the airspeed can vary quite a bit. The idea is that it doesn't, but in some designs it just does. Whenever you have a low airspeed area, it's dead space. And I was probing that 4.6 head, you know, four valve head. And I mean, the velocity around the port, no matter where you put it, it's so close to the, you know, wherever you put it, it's about the same airspeed through there. And that's really... Cylinder heads is more about airspeed than actual CFM numbers. But that's what most people know about is...

Well, yeah, we're going back to carburetor days and Etterbrock intakes and stuff like that, where, yeah, everything was measured in at CFM.

And that's how cylinder head companies advertise their heads, is this is what they flow. And so people look in the catalog and say, well, these trick flow heads flow more than these AFR heads, so I'm going to go with those. But that isn't how you buy cylinder heads. It's about airspeed, it's about port size for what you're trying to accomplish.

So is the shape, so as you're porting this, it's not always about opening up as much as you can then. So we're talking about how that air would go down into the cylinder. So the way you make the shape, all that kind of stuff all comes into play too. You as an airflow guru, you probably kind of have an idea of how things flow.

Airflow manager, we call it. So before I even like put a grinder to anything, I get what they're trying to accomplish with the engine because so much of what I do to the cylinder head. So I'm not going to port, say two people have a 400 cubic inch engine, but one guy is using it for like a track car, like a road racing, going to be running at Road America, Road Atlanta, all those places. Another guy has a 400 cubic inch motor that he wants to go drag racing with. That I'm going to do totally different things to that cylinder head than I am to the road race guy. Another guy is going to do truck pull or tractor pull or something like that. That'd be a whole nother different cylinder head design. So before I even take a grinder to a head or even put it on a flow bench, I'll ask all these questions about what are you going to do with the car? What do you want the power band to be? Say two guys have a road race car, but one drives it different. Like some people want that torque at like 3 grand so that they can come out of the corner. But some guys are like, I don't care about the torque at 3 grand. I'm never under 45 or 5,000. It all depends on even how the person drives the car. So I try to ask those kinds of questions first. See where, try to nail down where they want their power band. And then that determines, the power band, engine size, RPM, all that stuff, determines really what size cylinder head it needs to be. When I say size, it's like what the area in the port is going to be. And then I start going on a flow bench and trying different things, mapping things, that sort of stuff.

Yeah, it's, the heads are so important. I mean, it's about as important as the head on your body, right? It intakes the stuff, it has all of your timing for when things open and close. Right, yeah. You can change the compression ratio with heads too, can't you? By shaving them and stuff like that too.

Yep, absolutely.

That's nuts, man.

Yeah, there's a lot to, there's a lot to cylinder heads. And that's why I didn't want to be working in just an engine shop at all. You know, it's like, I wanted, I knew that my brain capacity was cylinder heads, and I wouldn't be able to focus on.

Well, that's a lot. I mean, that's a lot going on.

And we're always learning, like, I'm always learning new stuff. Always.

Do you do, like, even just valve jobs and machine stuff, too, or you basically just port stuff? So if I need a set of heads freshened up and just nothing ported, you do that kind of stuff, too? Oh, yeah.

Yep.

Okay.

We'll cut seat angles in and, you know, face the valves and surface and, yeah, all that kind of maintenance type stuff, too. But there's a lot of airflow in the valve job, too, is what a lot of people don't realize. Not just the ports that are flowing air, it has to get around the valve and the valve seat and everything else. So it's actually that's probably the biggest choke point in a cylinder head.

Tell us a little bit about that, then. So we're just doing industry secrets today.

These are not secrets. These are things that I would I wish that more people knew about.

You still like lap them and everything, too? I mean, is as simple as that little suction cup wooden thing and that kind of stuff?

No, it's specialized angles. So the valve seat, they say an inch before the valve seat and an inch after the valve seat are the most important parts of a port, honestly. And it's true because it's always variable. So as a valve is opening and closing, that area is changing constantly. I mean, and this is happening, you know, in milliseconds, valve opening and closing at RPM. So you got to make... It's all about filling the cylinder. That's what we're trying to do. And that's why airspeed is such an important part of it. But back to the valve seat and the valve itself, you go on a flow bench, and I'll have a port that should be flowing pretty good, and it's not, and the air... You know, all kinds of things are wonky. I'll change some things on just changing some angles. So valve seat is more than just sealing the cylinder. You know, you have a... Usually it's a 45-degree angle on the valve itself, and that seat's on the 45-degree angle on the seat. But if you just had that, you'd just have... There's no transition as it's the air and fuel are coming out of the valve itself. What you do, you've probably heard of multi-angle valve job, five-angle valve jobs, things like that. That's what we're doing is we're putting different angles below the valve seat and after where the valve seats to try and create almost like a venturi coming out of the valve as it's opening. And all that creates flow, signal, yeah, all the things that we're looking for to fill the cylinder. Yeah. So that's where the angles come into play. And I've seen things on a flow bench where I'll change just the what's called the top angle. And that's the, you know, say you have a 45-degree valve seat. If you put like, typically, the next angle after that is 30 degrees. But if we change that, depending on the chamber, sometimes we'll change that to like 35, 37, 38, stand it up a little bit. I've seen 10, 15 CFM just by changing the top angle. So it's not only just ports that are important in the cylinder head, you know, the valve seat is arguably even more important.

Would that be true on the exhaust side as well? Or is that a little more just who cares, get rid of what's in there, or does that also need to flow?

It does need to flow. And that's where the flow bench can lie to you, is so a flow bench is flowing 28 inches, like we were saying, you know, that's what it flows, 28 inches of depression, whether, you know, or pressure on the exhaust side. That is not nearly what's happening in an engine when the exhaust valve is opening. There's all that cylinder pressure in there. It's got to get out. It wants to get out now. So when that valve opens, you know, it's like almost supersonic, the air that's going through that space between the valve and the valve seat itself. So what we found is, on a flow bench, you can get an exhaust valve to flow really well and sound good, but sometimes we'll do things on the flow bench. The flow bench that hurts flow, but it actually works better in the engine because we just can't duplicate what's happening in a real engine on a flow bench.

So it comes in all cool and happy, and it leaves all hot and angry, right?

Exactly, yeah, and really pissed off. So yes, it needs to flow, but the flow bench doesn't necessarily equate to what is happening in the engine at the time. So there's different ways we port the exhaust than we do the intake, for sure. Different ways, yep.

Oh, you're done?

I think my brain needs a minute to stop melting for a year.

Dude, I love episodes like these, I've said it a million times, where, you know, this is a space that, I don't know about you, but I'm completely unfamiliar with this. So it's just learning all this is super exciting. Like today, I actually had a book delivered, How to Build a Car by Adrian Newey. So I'm sure you're familiar with Adrian Newey now. So he's kind of like, what's it go with me? He is one of the best aerodynamicists or whatever. He's in Formula One. He's like the mastermind behind Red Bull, and you know, why they're winning and all that. So I just saw it, I can't remember, just by chance somewhere, and I'm like, I'm gonna order this book. Lo and behold, it was like $45. I'm like, this is a fricking textbook, dude. But I'm super excited to get into this because he gets into a lot of these, you know, especially when, you know, he's known as like the god of error or whatever the hell his name is. Right, yeah. Just when it comes to error. But back to my point, I love episodes like this because when we watch back the highlights in a month or whatever in a couple weeks from now, it's like, it just starts to click.

Right, yeah.

So what's been kind of in your, what are some favorite projects of yours that you worked on then?

I definitely have.

Actually, before you jump into that, when did you officially form Janderson Heads then?

Oh, I was trying to think of that.

Like just ballpark-y?

Yeah, it's been like seven years or so, eight years. And then I did it as a kind of a part-time gig as well as working full-time. And I was like, I'm so busy, I can't do both anymore. So that's when about two and a half years ago, that's when I went full-time.

Okay, I see. Okay, so like peak COVID. What's at her time to start a business? Exactly.

No one can go anywhere anyways. And yeah, I just went out to my shop and just played with Cylinderheads.

I'm going to take a second to support the home team. Many of you know the podcast is based out of Ratified Motorsports, who makes some of the sickest builds out here. But I know you all here downstairs have seen some serious cars. Whether you're looking for a standard tune for your cute little Volkswagen to a full-on Supra or RS3 build, you should get Ratified a call to get the sauce. Check out ratified motorsports.com/performance to see what they can do for you. Let's get back to the show.

Did you already have a pretty good established shop at that point? I mean, you've been kind of just collecting machining equipment and stuff like that as you've been going along?

Yeah, exactly. And I bounced around from different places. I mean, I started doing the side thing. Janderson Heads LLC started about eight years ago, but Janderson Heads unofficially started right when I got out of Mondello's school. And I started in my basement. Yeah.

And that's how it all starts. That's how all good stories start, man. Amazon.

That's some pretty sad stories that happened in basements too.

This is a happy podcast. I want to bring on sad guests. You'll get the memo. Don't worry.

True crime.

Oh my God. I can never. Something throws me off about those true crime people. It's like, what are you planning over there? But back to the question, I guess. What are some of your favorite projects you've done? So you mentioned, for example, you know, a lot of that mini stuff. Does that fall into the favorite category or not?

I mean, they're not favorite. I mean, it's more out of necessity. Not my favorite because they're a really challenging cylinder head. If I had one in front of you here, you'd be like, what? And that doesn't even look like a cylinder head there. So many of those English motors are just like they were industrial tractor things that now they were making 40, 50 horsepower. Now we're asking way more of them.

So that's not my favorite English cars being garbage. What news to me?

Who knew?

Yeah, just jokes, folks.

I really like old school V8 stuff.

OK, old school when you say like 70s.

Yeah, OK, that kind of stuff. 60s. I'm not loyal to one brand, which is awesome.

You see a lot. I feel like that's got to be good to keep you sharp, like just constantly learning new stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's hard to say favorite because so many of the stuff that's rewarding is is is takes so much work and has been such a stress. Yeah, that. But when they're they are done and they work, then they kind of become favorites. So it's really hard to say. But yeah, V8 stuff is is fun. I yeah, small block Ford stuff is always kind of cool.

OK, here we go again. Here goes Dan. Did you say Ford?

Honestly, the the other really fun projects are the ones that are really challenging. Like I was saying, I do a lot with really restricted classes where they don't allow a whole lot of stuff. So I'm working around rules. I'm working to interpret rules and interpretations have to find. Right. Exactly.

Find where they've been, but don't break.

Right.

Yeah.

And I mean, there's do you have an example of that by any chance?

So probably the the most relatable is you've heard of spec Miata's before.

OK, perfect. So tonight we're finishing up my sim, and that's exactly what I'm going to start racing is the Miata class. So all right. All right. Learn me something.

OK, spec Miata is huge class. It's kind of like a feeder class and the other. So so many I don't even do them anymore because so many of my customers have moved on to spec class racers or formula cars or whatever. But back in the day, I was doing quite a few of the spec Miata heads, and I had customers sending me like, he'd send me four cylinder heads and say, because you can't port them at all. So they'd say, flow each one and tell me which one's the best. And that's what we're going to run, you know, even though they may be very like three CFM here or there. But that was the one to get because it's such a close class, you know, because you're so limited as to what you can do. So when I was doing a lot of them, and this is probably going to be secrets revealed in the specmiata world, but because I don't do them anymore, it's fine.

There's no NDAs you're going to violate, is there?

What's that?

There's no NDAs you're going to violate?

I don't think any of my customers will be pissed off. But there was rules. And if you look at the cylinder head rules for specmiata, it's like a three-angle valve job. They can only be this wide. You can't do this. You can't do that. You can't do that. You know, it's so specific. And I've worked with... I've done a lot of NHRA classes that are really specific, too, like in the drag race world. And this is like on a whole other level. And so I started looking at the rules and seeing what you could do. And I was looking at them, and it said you could machine the throat of the port. So the throat area is the area right under the valve seat, or, you know, the lower part of the valve seat down into the bowl area of the port itself. And you can machine that to a certain dimension. And they had like go-no-go gauges. They would check. They'd tear you apart. You know, they'd take the head off, have you take it apart. And they had a whole set of tool kit. They had a tool kit. They'd open it up, and they had all these little go-no-go gauges that they'd set into the head. Okay, that's right. That's right. Oh, you can't do that. You're disqualified. So they said you could bore the throats of the intake and exhaust ports to this certain dimension. And when I started looking at what that dimension was, it was significantly bigger than what the stock was. But maybe we didn't touch on it. But bigger isn't always better in a port. And in fact, if someone wanted to just... If flowing cylinder heads was all about just CFM numbers, you just make everything as big as possible, throw it on the flow bench and be, hey, this thing flowed 800 CFM or whatever. But it doesn't mean it's going to work because it's way too big, all kinds of things. So that was the case with this, was you could bore that, throw it out to a certain dimension, but that dimension is way too big for what this engine was asking for. So I was like, well, I'm just not going to do that. And then I looked at all the other stuff, and I interpreted a couple different rules slightly different. Like, they said you could use a three-angle valve job, but they didn't say where on the valve that valve job had to sit, all these other little technical things that I did differently. And I told the customer about what I did, and he's like, sounds good. And he went out, and he was a customer that built his own engines, and he did a really nice job. And he was not a big-backed race team. It was him and his nephew. And they went out, and they were right with the top five pack, like, all the time. And they were making more horsepower. They'd, you know, chassis, dyno, all these things, and five horsepower to them was like, good.

Yeah, I mean, what are those stock horsepower? Why is it like, what, 150 horsepower?

Yeah, something, I don't think it's even that much.

I mean, five horsepower or whatever it is, that's a three to five percent increase, which if you, all other variables being the same, that three percent difference every lap after a lap, that's huge. That is, yeah.

Especially when you, so many of those drivers are so tuned to that car. They've got the car figured out. So getting five more horsepower, you know, that translated, you know, because they already had the car. They knew how to drive the car. And so, yeah, five horsepower was big. And it didn't matter. Five horsepower on the peak is one thing, but five horsepower, that, not doing that modification that everyone else is doing because you can do it. It said in the rules, I could go this big. Because they weren't doing it, they were getting, the problem with going too big there is it's going to kill your down low horsepower in torque. And so by not doing it, he had better power coming out of turns. It wasn't about the peak, it was about the drivability of the car out of the corner, was better, the pull down the straights, you know, all that stuff, it all translated.

So how does it being, I guess, I don't know, what's a good term here, tighter, smaller or whatever, how does that translate into?

Not hot dogged on a hallway. That is the label you can put on that highlight.

It translates into the better airspeed around that valve. Like I was saying, the valve seat and the valve itself, being the most important area, if you go too big there, you lose all your airspeed through that, with the Venturi that we're trying to create there. And so that kills your low end horsepower and torque, for sure.

We saw something with Formula One, what's it called, with their new regulations, introducing like Venturi tunnels, I think it was or whatever. I'm not very familiar with the specifics of it, but do you want to explain what Venturi is?

Right, so as the air goes through that smaller space, it speeds up. And in a port, airspeed is important because it's about the cylinder fill. And what that airspeed going through the port, especially through that valve seat area, what it does is as the, you know, you get this momentum going through there with that airspeed. And you can cram as much through that valve as it's closing because of the momentum going through there with the airspeed. And that's the biggest benefit to having airspeed. That's why it's always about airspeed, even though CFM is what everything is advertised, or what people brag about. It's important, the CFM, but man, if you're trying to fill that cylinder, that airspeed is what it almost like ramcharges the fuel and aircharge into the cylinder. You're making the most of what you can. Especially in naturally aspirated things, you're making the most of what atmospheric pressure is.

Yeah.

Yep.

So do you do a lot of intakes and stuff, too, then?

Yep. Yep. Port matching to the cylinder heads and plenum work and yeah. I don't like the import guys, the Honda guys and stuff. They'll cut a plenum off and do a bunch of port work and weld it back on. I don't do a whole lot of that because there's a lot of guys that do that. But I don't do a whole lot of Honda stuff anyways. But I've had so that Levi Tipke, the guy that did the RS4. Yeah. His motor, he built his own intake manifold for it. And we were just testing that on the flow bench, trying to get the distribution right from runner to runner, because it's a V6. And you have one air entrance basically where the throttle body is. So what I did is I just put it on the flow bench and ran it backwards. So I'm blowing air through it where the throttle body would be, and I'm testing the velocity at each runner. So yeah, the runners are important. It's all connected. Yeah, for sure.

Was it a... Because now I'm getting all my freaking Audis confused. So was it a V6 or was it an inline V6? Okay, gotcha. Okay, because I'm not familiar with those whatsoever, but that car was just so clean, man. That was just... Yeah, did you see it in person or no?

I did not see it in person.

You just saw the parts, right?

I just saw the heads, and I don't think I saw the intake, but yeah, the heads on that, we didn't do a ton of port work too. I think we just, we put bigger valves in it. Did some minor bowl work, you know, so kind of near the valve seat area and then up a little bit, not, didn't really make anything wildly bigger. Because those heads are really good the way they are. They're hard to flow test, but we were able to flow test them on, from Levi's car at the same 2.7 liter or whatever I think is what it is. It's a V6, but five valves per cylinder. So they have three intake valves and then two exhaust valves. And that's a lot of valve area and a lot of air goes through those things. Yeah. But yeah, I can't remember your question now.

Oh, just me. There's something about V6 versus the inline five or whatever. Yeah, right. So you kind of alluded to this a handful of times, what the customer's goals are and what all that. So after you figure out your customer's goals, what's your kind of process to dig into a project? So I guess, is there any particular order?

Yeah, I get all that data. I run a bunch of numbers, mathematical formulations to figure out what size I need to make the port, how much air it needs to be able to flow, airspeed stuff, and then it's a baseline flow test. And then we put the grinder to work. Yup. And changing sizes of things, smoothing out areas that need to be addressed, because a lot of heads have sharp edges and things that air doesn't like to do to go around. And that's usually the process. And if it's something I haven't worked on before, that's what it is. Yeah.

But you said also that you don't want things like polished smooth. Is there a reason behind that?

So there's lots of, I'd say theories, but they're really not theories, because a lot of it's proven. Especially on the, it's more important on the intake side. Surface finish, you know, they talk about port and polish. You really don't want to polish an intake port. You want it somewhat. It depends on what you're trying to do. Sometimes we really rough them up. And sometimes we, about the finest finish I'll put on a, on an intake port is like 60 grit. Reasoning behind that is boundary layer. You're probably talking, you're F1 guy and the airflow guy talking about boundary layers, things like that.

No, I'm not that educated. I haven't opened a book yet.

Basically, you want it. The idea is you're not only flowing air through a port, you're flowing fuel through it most of the time, unless it's direct injected.

I didn't even think about the fuel.

Yeah, there's a fuel side to it too. And we need to make sure that that's well mixed, homogenized, atomized, all the amized things. And if it's too smooth, you end up with a boundary, like the fuel wants to just come out of suspension in the port, and it'll start puddling and pooling along the floor of the port or something like that. And as it goes into the combustion chamber and into the cylinder, it's harder to light that fuel because it's not mixed into the air well. When the fuel is flowing through the air nice and atomized, once it gets to that chamber and cylinder, that's when you get a nice, efficient burn. So that's why if it's too smooth, you'll get the fuel actually falling out of suspension there. And then just you'll see it. Sometimes I have a way on a flow bench, I'll flow ahead with the valves at max lift or something, and I have like a spray bottle with like a dye solution in it and alcohol mixed in with alcohol, and I'll spray it in a port, and it'll leave like a spray in a pattern in the port, into the chamber, down into the bore adapter, and then I quickly turn the flow bench off and I can see what the fuel's doing in a port and in a chamber as well as the air. But yeah, you don't want to go too smooth on an intake port. Exhaust port doesn't matter.

But like a plenum or like let's say you were doing a blower or something like that, that you would want smoother than not smooth?

Right, because it's right.

Less resistance.

Right, and it's just flowing air. It's not flowing fuel. That said, that part of porting is very minute.

You're not going to see.

Right, the size and the shape being right is 99.9% more important.

At that point, you're just nitpicking.

Right, yeah, you're fine tuning it sometimes with the surface finish.

Is there any like if anybody was going to try and do anything on their own, is that like a big no-no at all? Like, do you just not highly recommend that at all?

Or do you get those, please fix it customers?

I so here's here's why I'm asking, right? So I have a GT 500 and I want to go to 105 millimeter throttle body. So this is a very basic deal, right? So, yeah, my the snout is technically only set up for like, I don't know what it is, 98 or something like that. So I just want to take the little bit of the ring there right at the intake there and just widen that out to 105. Is that something that I can handle on myself?

Only you can answer that. Yeah. Only you can prevent Ford's heart. Yeah, that kind of stuff. If you're comfortable with a die grinder with a bit in it. Yeah, go for it. Yeah, there's not. That's not a problem. I can.

I mean, I don't know. I think I'm ready to like start porting intakes on the heads or anything. But yeah, no.

And because I want to see like people be able to do this, not just cylinder head porting guys. There seems to be fewer and fewer of us.

Yep.

And yeah, I. The only way you're going to learn is if you pick up a grinder and do it. You know, and I can I can tell you ways to describe it. So you're making it the exact size of the throttle body opening. And I can give you some technique ideas. I've had customers actually say, I want to do this myself. Can you show me how? And I'm like, I can't. I don't have time to show people how, but I'll say that a lot of guys won't do this, but it's like it's fine. If you're comfortable with a grinder, what I'll do is they'll just pay me to port one intake and one exhaust port. And I'll even flow it sometimes, depending on what they want to do. And then I'll give it, and then they'll come and pick up their heads, and I'll just say, this is what you want it to look like. You know, get some measuring devices to measure how big this is or that is, and just make them all look like these, and you'll be fine. And I've had a couple of customers I've done that for.

But just so everybody listening knows, at your own risk, like you could definitely, sometimes cylinder heads are not cheap, and you could totally screw.

Yeah, and if you bring them back to me and they look real bad, I'll probably let you know. But sometimes ugly ports flow well, you know, as long as the shape is right, and the size is right, you know, they can look how they look. I make them look good just because that's what people are paying me to do.

Right. You know, I've seen this stuff comes out of your shop. It looks great.

And I want it to.

Yeah.

I work on every head like it's going to be for what I'm running, you know. Yeah, for sure.

I saw one that you must have had to add some material back in because it'll go like something dropped down in the cylinder that probably shouldn't have been there and beat the s*** out of the head.

Yeah, I've had to. If you drop a valve or something and it beats up a chamber. Yeah, we got to grind it, weld it, fill all that stuff back in and reshape everything. So much of what I do is it's like sculpting. It's really kind of what we're doing. Yeah. So.

So you said we is it you or is there other people there to work with you?

So it's me. I always say we. I don't know. I'm not sure why I do have like a high school kid that comes once a week and he's learning more and more. Charlie's his name. He's really, really cool cat. And he helps a lot when I get he. Yeah, he does a lot of the stuff that I just don't have time to do that he's very capable of doing that then I can spend on porting heads or you know, running the flow bench, things like that.

Those little things that put time back into your day to focus on the big things, right? And especially if somebody like that is coming around to learn like, yeah, that's awesome, dude.

Yeah. And he he came to me is like, and I knew this isn't what he wanted to do for a living. At some point, he is like dead set on being a pilot, like a bush pilot to like what he wants to do. And he's starting to rethink that. So and I'm not trying to influence him one way or another. He enjoys working and he gets does good work.

So it's all exposure, man. Like the more things to get exposed to, the more you figure out what you want to do.

Like you don't know what's going to stick to be honest.

Never. That's why you like when you put, especially, you know, kids in like boxes, right? Like it's huge. Like, you know, would I have gone to college if I knew all the things I know now? I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. But it's like, would have been cool to, you know, like, should I have taken some more shop classes? Probably, right? You know, instead of these stupid way lifting classes that destroy my back. But hey, we don't talk about that.

That's one thing that I'll recommend to anybody that's going into high school. Take an Otto's class. Even if you think you don't want to do that for a living, the amount of stuff. I worked on cars with my dad. So when I went in a shop class, I already knew a lot. But I went home and taught my dad some stuff. Oh, yeah. I mean, you learn some stuff. There's things that I learned in shop class, Otto's one, that I still use and remember today.

Right.

So even just in your own life of you're gonna have a vehicle and you're gonna have to have it worked on at some point in time, you probably should know a little bit about what you're doing.

Well, and in trades in general, I feel like kids should take some kind of interest in some kind of a trade because there's a lot of money to be had there, first of all.

Going forward for sure.

Yeah. I mean, there's a lack of people to do that stuff. And I think for so long, there was a bad stigma around anyone that was in the trades.

Dude, it was like when I was in school. I mean, I'm 24. Right. So we're talking. I graduated high school seven, eight years ago. Oh, my God, I'm dying. And, you know, I noticed some people were going in trades, but like from all the adult adults at the time, it's like, you don't want to eat backbreaking work, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, yeah, but now, you know, fast forward eight years later, it's like my friends that are electricians are making bank, you know, they have GT 500s and stuff. It's like... But I was thinking about this earlier, too, when you were mentioning the Triumph heads, I think it was.

Right, yeah.

It's like, a lot of people don't want to do those. Like, that's a market for you to capitalize on. What's going to happen in 10 years when even less talent is out there to do it?

Well, the other thing is, is the people that are running those are older in age. There's not many younger guys running the vintage. Well, vintage stuff is really gaining popularity, I feel like. At Road America, there's three vintage festivals. The July one is one of Road America's biggest, like, attended events in general, from a spectator standpoint and I think from a, you know, contestant standpoint. And you walk around the paddock there when that's happening and it's such a mix of ages of people.

Yeah, exactly. And some of those younger guys, whether they're 10, 20, 30, they're gonna grow and have a passion. Because the people that want to work on it, I feel like it's going to be less and less, but the cars will still be around. Somebody's gonna pick up that passion. We used to have people buying 68 Chargers like crazy.

Right, yeah. And I have one customer, her name is Jessica Junkert. Her dad raced forever. He finally quit. But Jessica is, she's younger. I don't even know how old she's gotta be in her 30s, I would imagine. But she's into vintage racing, races of BMW. I'm so bad with like what, I couldn't tell you what it is.

You don't see cars, you see heads. Exactly.

You probably know what heads on it, yeah.

Right, exactly. But she's a young, up-and-coming, really good driver, races, I think some SCCA as well as the vintage stuff. But she was always going to the racetrack with her dad and taking pictures. And she was, she loved it so much, and she just kept doing it and doing it. Now she's actually hired by Porsche Racing to take all their pictures at every racing event in North America that Porsche does. So she's not only, she's involved in racing that way, but also she races a BMW at Road America and wherever else, so.

That's awesome.

Now I've also been looking you up a little bit. How many of those cars in the vintage racing have your heads on them?

So when we first started going, only a handful. I think the last vintage event we were at, there was like, there was over a dozen. It was like 13 or something like that. Yeah. Which is super rewarding to, you know, go and see the numbers of customers running your stuff. And it's also fun to just be out of the shop. You know, I see their stuff. It's aluminum and metal and whatever else. And I do what I do to them. And then sometimes I never see them again until something either happens or they need a freshen up or need more power. Yeah. And to just be able to go and enjoy watching them do what we worked so hard to do is super rewarding. It's my favorite part. It's my favorite part. Yeah.

That video you sent me was called Diesel.

That wasn't my favorite part. That's for sure.

Yeah. Freaking runaway diesels. So what's something you take into consideration when you're pricing a customer out for a project? Is there like different tiers? I guess.

I'll definitely work with whatever budget somebody has.

A shoestring.

Yeah. I mean, yeah. If someone, what I hate is when people are like, how much does it cost to port my heads? What do you think? It all depends, man. It could be like three hundred dollars. It can be three thousand dollars. So it's like that's a huge gap. So but I'm definitely willing to work with what most people want have for a budget. If someone is like, I just want like a bowl blend. If they know like that, if they want a little bit of port work, just doing a little bit in the bowl area is like the best bang for the buck. I'll say, you know, this costs this much. We can do this. But for the most part, I need the heads there to be able to like see the condition of a lot of the stuff. It's hard to price stuff out.

Well, so even if you have two identical heads, you're not going to price it out the same then?

No, because the condition could be different if one's more damaged here. I mean, you know, so many of these heads that especially the road race, the vintage stuff, it's all been road hard, put away wet type stuff, you know.

Do you have to hot tank a lot of stuff too, to like get them clean and stuff like that too?

I try not to have too much of that equipment. I just kind of send that stuff out just because it's, yeah.

That stuff's a mess when you got to clean it up yourself.

It's great when, you know, a lot of times it's just new heads that show up. Yeah, it's not a whole lot of that, but yeah, there's always a cleanup stuff. But for the most part, I'll take a set of heads in, and I'll give recommendations, and I'll try to give them a range of, you know, this is the minimum I do. If you really want to do more, here's what we can do. If you're trying to do like an all-out, no-holds-barred, you know, every detail, then that's this package over here type of thing.

Are you pretty booked out? Do you have plans on expanding? Like, I've heard you're pretty, you've got quite a lead time right now, right?

Yeah, it's pretty bad. I mean, especially for, if it's the type of work that we're like, this is the first time we're doing this, like a lot of R&D type stuff, yeah, that's months, you know, you might get it by end of summer. Because right now it's all, it's all race stuff that's in right now. It's all freshen ups or new head builds for the upcoming race season, for sure. Yeah, but those guys I'm trying to get, you know, in the next couple months out. So if someone were to bring me something now that's just, you know, pretty simple, full port, valve job, valves, all the things, I mean, probably two or three months. Yeah.

Well, one thing I've noticed about race car guys, too, is sometimes they tend to procrastinate, too, right? So sometimes somebody will bring you something. You knew you needed this for three or four months now. And like back before it was winter and your stuff was put away, you know, show up in June and be like, hey, I need these, you know, now.

Yeah. And I can't. I just have to be honest with those guys that, you know, that's going to be really hard. Yeah.

That's huge to honesty up front. That saves everybody so much heartache and headache.

And I'm not perfect at that. I try nobody. And it's hard being a one man shop. And it used especially when I first went out on my own, it was getting because people get a hold of me through Facebook Messenger, whether it's my personal account or my business account. Both of those I'll get Facebook messages from emails, text messages, phone calls. And I'm fielding all these questions all the time. And most of them were like, can you give me a ballpark price to do this? This, this, this, and this. And I'd sit down and I'd try to take each person, figure it out. And sometimes you do that and you just get ghosted. Like not even a, thanks, I'll think about it. Not even a that. It was like, and it was taking so much time away from either, like I'd do that out after shop time when I'm supposed to be like hanging out with my wife and kids and stuff. Or I was using shop time to do that. And then, you know, the majority of them were getting back to me. So it's like, well, now I had to finally put something on Facebook that was like, listen, I can't give ballparks anymore until you send me a set of heads. Yeah.

At least then at that point, you know, they're serious. If they actually send you the heads.

Exactly. Yeah, for sure. And that's not me trying to be a jerk or anything like that. It's just...

So I'm a business owner myself, and I'm an electrician, right? And that's what I do. I'm a low voltage electrician to be specific, but now as an owner, we've gotten a little bit bigger and stuff like that, but now I'm in meetings. I'm doing emails. I'm doing all this stuff. I'm like, man, I just want to pull wire and hang stuff. I ran a screwdriver and an impact. That's what I normally do. And then I've got to find time to do all that other stuff, too. It does. It gets to be hard. I don't do books. I don't do that stuff. But thankfully, my wife helps me with that, and we have a CPA. Well, you did work for a tax company, so maybe I should have you do my books.

Yeah, I was also Shik Kan from a tax company. But no, that's huge. Administrative work can bog you down so much. I know shop owners that have a dedicated day just for emails and responding. If I don't respond to you within this Monday, I'll get back to you next Monday. So do you have a structure set in place like that?

I wish I had a better structure. I really don't, to be completely honest. The book stuff, because it's low volume of invoices that I'm dealing with. I just do those myself, but I have my quarterly and stuff. I just have a tax person. I'm happy to pay them to take care of all that stuff.

That's what we do, too. My wife gets everything in line before we take it to the tax person.

Yeah, it's something I don't want to deal with.

Do you have plans to expand? Machining equipment, people, receptionists?

If you've seen my shop, there's no room for a receptionist.

Well, the location. Is there thoughts? Is it churning up there?

I always wanted to keep it small. I'm probably a really bad businessman.

Bowen, Jared, same thing. I've been like, dude, you need another guy in here? He was like, nope. He's like, I have no interest. He goes, I can keep busy doing this. So what I like to do, I want to take my time, know what's done right. I don't have to worry about it.

I know another cylinder head. Well, he's a full engine builder in town here, too. I say in town. It's not like he's in the area. And he started as a cylinder head guy kind of the same time I did. And his business has grown and grown and grown. And when I went out on my own, I was up visiting him. He's like, man, I'd love to go back and do things the way you're doing it. And I took that as a huge like that I'm doing it the right way. I think the more money, more problems, right? The smaller I stay, and I don't make a ton of money doing this, but I enjoy doing it. It's fairly low stress, and there's something to be said for that, I think. I don't know, I just enjoy it.

You could probably just walk out of your kitchen into your shop and your sweatpants and your coffee and go to work, right?

You're not wrong. Yeah, not wrong.

That's what I would do.

Yeah, I'm not a good businessman. I just like making heads better, man.

But I mean, at the end of the day, if that's what makes you happy, like you said, more money, more problems, do you want that additional stress? I know shop owners sometimes they split duties or have a partner. But again, there's stresses that come with that too.

Yeah, and I think a good business person can do that really well. I think that the ideal business is at some point you just don't end up working anymore. The business ends up working for you basically. You have shop foremans and things like that. It's hard to find people to do a good job. So I don't intend to expand. If we ever ended up moving, yeah, I'd probably build a bigger shop. Who doesn't want a bigger shop? It's always not big enough. But I'm upgrading my seat and guide machine, which is the main machine that I use every day. It's what cuts the valve seat angles and a bunch of valve guide work. The main machine that I use other than the flow benches, yeah, I'm going to upgrade that probably this spring. So upgrading that. Maybe one other machine, but otherwise not expanding, not hiring more people. Yeah.

Just in case nobody got that, no, not for hire. No, indeed.

And if you want heads done, get them in now.

Well, yeah, especially if you're booked out until, nobody's getting anything until summer, depending on whatever it is. You might want to start thinking about this for next winter, and we're only in January.

It's just hard to spend, especially the longer projects, the R&D projects, it's hard to dedicate time on that while trying to sprinkle in the other guys. It's hard to focus is what it's all about.

And you still got to make time. I saw you got a bunch of girls.

I got two girls, two redheads.

And you got a car that you're playing around with too?

Yeah, I got a 63 Mercury. The Monterey. She's a boat.

I like those too. I just told Harris, I took him for a ride at the Micro Center, my town car. I'm like, I love this thing, man. I don't know why I didn't do this way sooner.

I want a race car at some point, but it's fun. Yeah, for sure.

That fricking town car, man. He literally just got it just so you can commute to the podcast.

Yeah, that's hilarious.

Just so you can play bumper cars in traffic.

And it did. In traffic, I was way less stressed today. I was sitting in traffic and stop and go, and I'm on my big, big leather couch, and I've got my radio pumping, and I'm just, you know, sitting. I'm like, you know what? This is way better. If somebody even gets close to me, I'm like, go ahead, hit it. I'm cool with it.

When I first got the 63, you know, you speak about sitting on a couch. One of the... I was hanging out with my dad, and I had the car over at his house, and he had a buddy over, and I was leaving, and my dad, he just always says, you know, like, drive carefully or something like that, and his buddy goes, what's he going to do when he's sitting in his living room driving that thing around?

Well, those things are cool. I desperately want a Lincoln Continental four-door in that 60s range, like a 68, 69.

Didn't you have a two-door?

I had a two-door, yeah.

And that's gone now, right?

My dad keeps giving me crap. He's like, you know, it takes up the space of like two cars.

Those are the ones that had like the suicide rear doors?

Yeah, that's what I want. I want suicide doors.

We call those JFK Lincolns.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that's what he was shot in.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Those are really cool. Strange engine in those, though. I think they have the, what they call the MEL series engine in them.

Yeah, so they have 460, and then there was some years that have something a little bit different. It's like a 462 or something like that.

Yep, exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah, those are the weird ones. Yeah. But those are sweet cars. Really cool.

I usually, anytime I get a car like that, I start with, I take, I get that Petronix makes up points, it basically turns your points into electronic injection that goes inside the distributor.

Yep.

That's like the first thing I do. It makes me start a little bit better and run a little better.

Yeah, and the Petronix stuff is, when it works, it's great.

Yeah, exactly.

Some people have issues. I've never had an issue. I have it in the Merc, too, so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love the 63. It's got the Breezeway window, they call it. So it has the rear window that rolls down.

Oh, really?

On the back. Yeah.

Oh, that's cool.

Yeah. The kids love it. The guy that I bought it from, wanted, like called me just last year and was like, I really want that car back. I was like, I don't think about it. And the kids, as soon as I told them, both my kids are like, no, dad, you can't. I was like, well, I guess I can't.

Yeah.

For now, anyways.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I've got my kids have got some cars that they've picked out. I had one that I just sold and I felt horrible because my son's like, this is going to be my car. I love this thing. It was just it was an 86 Mercury Capri. It was a four cylinder automatic. It was like a biggest piece of s***. And he was, but he was like, dude, I love this car. I was like, we'll get you a Capri. That's a little bit nicer in this one when, when your time comes, I promise.

The Capri. Yeah. Love it.

I just, they're Fox bodies, but they're, you just got those differences to them where they're like, what the heck is that? So that's that. They're my favorite.

Yeah. So that's like the two, what the four cylinder, is that the one, the turbocharged force?

No, the one I had was a carbureted two, three. It was the two, three, but not turbocharged.

Gotcha.

I think it was a C three or yeah, C three transmission. Um, you know, one of those transmissions that if it starts slipping, you just dump a little more fluid in it and she keeps going. I mean, there were, it was pretty bullproof.

Yeah.

Um, I think one time even the throttle stuck on me. I started up to warm it up and I came outside and the coolant is bubbling out of the thing. It's like red. The manifold's red hot. And I'm like, Oh, I shut it all down. And then she's still just flawless fires up. No problem.

They use that engine. A lot of stuff.

Yes, they did.

A lot of stuff.

Yeah.

It's not their greatest, but it's a, yeah, I mean, they, they put a turbo on it and yeah, those those turbo like the Thunderbird turbo coupes and turbo coupes is my favorite.

I love that car.

Really?

I have an 88 turbo coup, but I can't get a title for it and I could do a bonded title, but it's not that nice. So okay, I think it's going to get parted out.

But okay. I had a customer. I did a head for one of those, the Mustang version, but big turbo bunch of port work to that head. And I never heard what what it did. But yeah, those heads are weird. Yeah, really weird. Not as weird as an A like the Mini Coopers, but weird. They all they all function the same though.

Yep. It's air out. Yep.

Yeah.

Man, I can't stop thinking about JFK conspiracy theories. So we're I think we're getting close to the two hour mark here. But you kind of mentioned one thing earlier and I just kind of want to come back to it. So you kind of mentioned a difference between applications of like drag racing, truck pulls, road course. I'm just curious. Do you have any? Well, I guess one touch on like what the difference would be in those because like, for example, you mentioned like something would be a little bit torque here versus not torque here on road course. How does that apply to like drag racing and truck pulls, especially that, you know, diesel stuff? I'm just curious.

Is it more air, less air? That's it.

So, it's more in the cross sectional area, the size you make the port. So drag race stuff is typically more RPM and a narrower power band. But you also got to think of where the shift points are. It's not always about peak horsepower. It's about making the most power in the power band that you're looking to make it in. So, yeah, a lot of times with the drag race guys we talk about, a lot of times it's limited class that I'm working on, so I don't get to make stuff as big as I would like to. But typically in the drag race stuff, it's you need to know where the shift point, you know, what the RPM drop is at the shift point. So we're trying to just fine tune where the engine is going to make the most power in that RPM range and then size the port accordingly. So typically more RPM in the drag race stuff. So we need more area. So the ports get bigger in the drag race stuff versus the road race stuff. And then the truck pull guys, their power band is even narrower. They're usually I don't know if you've ever been to a truck pull before.

It's on my bucket list.

Those guys are nuts, absolutely crazy. And it's a blast. I took my wife to one because I had like three customers running in one and she was pregnant with our first kid. And she's like, I can't do the first truck went by and she's like, I can't do this. I'm leaving. So she like went out. It was a county fair. So she found she sat with me for a while, though. And then it was like, this is too much.

What was it that threw her off?

The absolute noise.

Oh, yeah, they're pretty, pretty rowdy.

So how does that compare to because I've never been to one, but I've seen NHRA like top field dragsters in person. How's that compare noise wise?

I mean, top. There's nothing compares to top field dragster. But I mean, you're sitting. First of all, the guys are nuts. I mean, they're strapped into a tractor that is making ungodly amounts of power, and they're strapping it to a sled that's trying to slow it down the whole way. And they're just things are all bucking. And like, oh, my gosh, my uncle went with us once, and he was the race car driver guy. He's like, those guys are crazier than I am. But yeah, the truck pull guys, their power band's really narrow. So if you haven't been to one, go. I haven't been to one in years, just because I haven't had customers running in it recently, but I have some more coming up. So there's difference. There's truck pulls and tractor pulls. They combine it. The tractor pulls are the diesel, like either a farm tractor. Like I sent you the video of the actual semi-tractor type deal. But a lot of them are just fuel trucks, or they run on alcohol or different classes. But they typically, they run it up till the, till it hits the, you know, whatever RPM it is, and it just stays there. It doesn't ever drop. They just, it's tire speed and momentum pulling that sled. So they just, some of them are going to like 9,000 RPM and just holding it there. So they want to make as much power in that, like that small RPM. So they're even bigger yet, typically. I don't do much diesel stuff anymore. It's too hard on the back.

Yeah.

Those are heavy throw around for sure.

Especially that big cat diesel on the, on the tractor pole that, that exited the tractor. That, that head was as long as this table. Yeah.

Really?

Massive. I had to move it around with like a chain hoist. And that head in particular, I spent, I think I counted 24 hours of just port work on it. And then that was the first time out with it. It split the block. There's so much cylinder pressure in those things. First of all, they're diesels, which make a ton of cylinder pressure to begin with. Plus they have three compounding turbos that make like 130 to 150 PSI of boost, you know? And the block was like, nope, can't do this anymore. And just broke it in half.

Yeah, they're typically a lot stronger, two heads and cylinders. I mean, blocks as well, because it has to be a little beefier. That's typically why your diesels will go three, 400,000 miles.

Yeah, the cylinder pressure is insane in those. And then you put three turbos on it, and it's unbearable.

All right, I really desperately need to get a diesel person on the show. Somebody that's okay with me knowing absolutely nothing, because it's just, it's always fascinated me, man.

It's pretty cool. I mean, I know enough to get in trouble, but yeah, they don't really have an ignition system. Once you start a diesel, it's just running on its own. Just the compression of the fuel in itself makes the ignition, which comes to that cylinder pressure.

Right. And then the difference between like a fuel engine is you're adding more air and fuel to the cylinder to make more, you know, to accelerate. Where diesels are, it's just adding more fuel.

Yep.

Yep. Exactly.

You get that beautiful black smoke.

Yep.

It's just so cool. I don't know, maybe it's just my freedom talking. Who knows, but it's ridiculously awesome. But so at the end of every episode, we like to ask everybody to choose, or no, it's your thing. Nevermind.

Hold on.

You go ahead, Dan. It's been a while.

I'm slowly getting fired.

I took away his intro. I'm taking out his outro.

You get him down to one a week and he's like, he gets all off his game. You know, he's not doing this.

Dude, it's ridiculous. Like it's just, that's why I love doing two a week, because I was just on it. Like, but I backed it down to one a week, just to one get caught up to just focus on living. Yeah. Yeah. Cause it's easy to come in here, do a two hour conversation. It's all the backend stuff that's just, yeah. Not the hot dog in a hallway thing, but anyways.

I was just, if I don't see it as a highlight, I'm going to be disappointed. All right. So at the end of every episode, we like to ask our guests to pick three cars, a daily driver, a show car, and a track car. You have, I mean, you can, anything, only your imagination is your limitation.

Unlimited budget.

Yep.

Who else is not on their game?

Well, I figured imagination was good enough.

So daily driver, man, I'm not as big on the daily driver.

I see the Ford Flex out there.

Yeah. That's, I mean, I can haul cylinder heads. I can haul kids. I can haul hockey bags and drum equipment. It checks all the boxes for me. But in an ideal world, it'd be fun to have just a beater wagon or something. You know what I mean? Like an eighties Malibu with a, you know, something fun in it. That would be a fun daily driver.

I'm already considering coyote swapping a Lincoln town car as much as I've been loving it.

Or coyote swapping like a Ford Fairmont. You know, like the ugly.

I've always, cause the Fairmont and the Fox body were on the same chassis, right? So I always wanted to do that. Get a Fairmont wagon, the 302, put the GT front bumper on it and do all that stuff to make it kind of look like a wagon.

That would be so cool.

Yeah.

Just an ugly, ugly eighties boxy. With some fun under it.

Yep.

Yeah. So yeah, daily driver, something like that. Show car. I kind of like my 63 Mercury, man. I, when I was thinking about, when the guy wanted to buy it back, I started thinking about, well, what else would I get? Like, I don't really want anything like different than this.

Unless it's a budget, you're sticking with that.

Yeah, kind of.

Hell yeah. I love it.

Yeah. It's patinaed, but it's like, it's rust free.

But colors.

It's like a pinkish.

Okay, sweet.

It's like that rose color, but it's, I call it the baddest a**** pink car ever, because it doesn't look pink, but it's kind of sinister looking. Everyone says it reminds them of like an old 60s, like stock car, NASCAR deal.

I can see that.

But it's two door. It's got a 390 in it, C6. It sounds cool. It doesn't make a ton of power, but it sounds cool and the kids like it. And it's, I can park it anywhere. I don't have to worry about it getting dinged or. Yeah. And it gets a fair amount when I can get to a car show. It gets a fair amount of attention just because it's patinaed and original. And.

Yep.

You know, it looks kind of cool. So I'd stick with that.

Sweet. So, so far we have, what was it, the Malibu?

Yeah, something like that.

Okay, perfect. And that, and then what else we got? Track car.

Track car. Man, if there was anything that I was considering when I was selling the, if, if I was to sell the Mercury, it'd be fun to make like a 70 Javelin or AMX track car.

I'm sold. I like it.

Yeah, they're so cool looking. In my shop, my brother bought me a big print of, at Road America, from like 1969 or 70 of Trans Am cars on the, right on the grid. And it's two Javelins. It's their big front ends. Like the camera's way down low, so you see the front ends. And that hangs in my shop. And every day I look at them, I'm like, God, those are so cool looking. And to see them running around those actual cars, they still run them in the vintage event in July sometimes.

Oh really?

And to see that exact car running around at Road America and just killing it is a cool thing to see. So if I could get a race car, that'd be it. I'd build a track car.

I'm sold.

Yeah.

Is there any, like, cause I know like there's a lot of big vintage events around the country and the world. Is there any in particular that you would love to make it out to?

I'd love to go to, so.

Doesn't Goodwood do one, I think?

Yeah, Goodwood in, yeah, that's in England. I'd love to get Laguna Seca. It's such a cool track. And I had a chance with the Mini Cooper guys. They had a big race out there called Minis versus Mustangs. So it was literally Mini Coopers on the same, on the track at the same time as Mustangs. And I think the first year they had a Mini won that thing. Oh wow. But I had a chance to go out to that and it just didn't work out. I can't remember why, but I want to go to Laguna Seca real bad. Yeah. Road Atlanta was fun. Road America's the best track I've been to as far as a spectator standpoint.

We're very lucky to have that one in our backyard.

Yeah, for sure.

The spectating is amazing. Like I was shooting cars over there for the rally. And it's like, I mean, the vantage points were all amazing. Like some people were like, Oh, go to this turn. I'm like, dude, every turn's awesome.

Yeah. Have you been to the, like the Tiki bar they got now? They call it the beach?

No.

Oh, they just put that in this year. It's right at the kink, right before the kink. So you go over that huge, like there's a huge bridge there that takes you over the track. And there was nothing there but sand. So they made like a beach. They got like Tiki huts and like a Tiki bar there. It's awesome.

I hope it's different than the Tiki bar that Gary took us to.

Yeah. And we were relying on Massey as our guide at that one, and he did not show us that one.

So we'll have to yell at him. Well, just, it was brand new for the July event last year.

Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Massey's fun.

Yeah.

We knew that Road America, our Road America trips would be way more fun once Brett started coming to those.

Yeah. I've seen pictures. Well, now I'm friends with you on Facebook, but I've been friends with Bowen for a while. And I don't know if Brett's even, he's on there, but he's not very active on her. But anyway, that's how I found out that he, that, cause Jared posted pictures of you guys all partying at Road America. I'm like, wait a second. I know most of those guys in that room. So that was kind of neat.

Yeah. And we all, so there's a group of us, the group has grown. It started just me and a buddy went with a customer. This is Greg Wold with the Mini Coopers. He took us the first year and we're both like, holy cow, this is so cool. We've been back every year, but we tell everyone about it. So our group has grown to like 15 people, but we've split into the guys that camp at the track, which is what we are. And then the guys that get the, you know, the Airbnb, the big old house with the pool and all, you know, all that kind of stuff. Maybe not a pool, but that's what we, that's what we think they're doing over there. Yeah. But yeah, Jared.

To make it a bigger group, we'll have to get the truck camper in and-

That'd be fun.

It's so cheap too. It's like you get a whole weekend pass, there's like 95 bucks. And yeah, you're in for the whole weekend.

Dude, after I just got back from Texas, I went down with Minneapolis Mopar and the Anthem Auto Gap. I saw some really... Ever since I went to PRI, I've been obsessed with these truck and trailer setups, dude. And I'm just sitting here thinking, what idiot would buy a house? And then I remember, oh yeah, that's right, people have families and kids and all that. I'm like, that's right. So being in my age and life, I'm looking at everything through the eyes of a single man's perspective. And I'm just like, dude, that'd be awesome. As on those totter homes and stuff, they were super cool.

Oh yeah.

So you would see me camping.

Some of those you could raise a family in, they were so damn big.

Dude, some of them were huge.

They're just getting bigger. The wife and I, we want to do the full on retirement thing and just get a, not a massive RV, but we're talking about when the kids are gone, have a home base where I can still play with people's cylinder heads when I'm 70.

Or get some young one to get in and scream at.

Yeah, there you go. Start his school.

Come full circle.

Right. And then just park a small RV somewhere, like year round. Just go to a different space. Yeah, it'll be fun. Different racetrack.

Yeah, that's kind of, we've toyed with the idea of doing that too so we can tow a car around with us and check out the different places.

Well, part of me wants to get like a Sprinter van of some kind, just outfit it for the road. I've seen people that do it, man. Get a Planet Fitness membership for showers, and you're good to go, man.

Yeah, exactly.

I don't know. I've thought about it. If I go off the rails, I might. And then just have multiple podcast studios across the country or go out of shops or something.

Why just the country? Go to all over the world.

Well, it's one of my ultimate vacations that I want to do is I want to do a 10-day trip where I would go to Formula One and Goodwood. It's like a three-hour drive, which we're all accustomed to, at least here in the States. I don't know about people across the world how much they do their driving or road trips.

They take their racing seriously overseas.

Oh, yeah, racing. Oh, yeah, absolutely. These stupid simulators that we're building, it's like the EU just crushes it because they've been in it longer and better and whatever. Their race culture. I don't want to say it's necessarily better because we got NASCAR, IndyCar, drag racing. It is ridiculous. I'm looking into Ford getting into F1 or whatever, and they're taking some of their drag racing knowledge to put into F1, and it's like there's a place for it.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we, the wife and I went for our 10th anniversary, went to France, so we did Belgium, France, like the Normandy area, but we were going to go down to like wine country. But we ended up, my wife was figuring out, we're going through Le Mans, right? And then she's like, wait, we're going through Le Mans during the 24 hours of Le Mans. So like she planned it that we would stop at Le Mans for the 24 hour race. And we were only there, we were only going through there during the qualifying stuff. But even that, like the stands were absolutely packed. There's concerts going on, Ferris wheels, and I mean, just, they take their series, their racing serious. But to see Le Mans was fantastic. I mean, it's such a cool place.

And we have our mainstay of racing is NASCAR, and it's the number one beer drinking sport.

No one goes to it anymore. That's a sad thing.

Is it dying off a little bit?

I think it is.

It's interesting watching it try to evolve because they're trying to do, like, what, more road course stuff and like city circuits, I think.

Yeah, they were at Road America for the lower series. I think it's called the Xfinity series.

It still goes there, I think. Yeah, the QuickTrip 400 or something.

Yeah, and I think that's well attended, too, because it's road course and it's Wisconsin. Everyone knows that track is great to spectate at. I don't get into the NASCAR stuff. Most of that, you can't do what I'm doing anyways. Yeah, I'm curious.

I wonder. Kamil, actually, when we were down at PRI for the SIM stuff, he was associated with a NASCAR team or something.

Yeah, they were there. I didn't feel as a Chevy team. I didn't pay attention.

They had SIMs at PRI. I've been to PRI many times, and just haven't been able to go last year.

Yeah, it's really, really growing here right now, like leaps and bounds. So we've got their studios that are popping up. They've got 10 or 12 SIMs in an area, and you can go in and pay hourly to race and do stuff like that. There's, with the rise of eSports and racing kind of coming up right now. So those are kind of merging together. They've got full circuits and stuff. They run just on simulators. So yeah, there was a lot of simulator stuff at PRI.

It was cool. I wish I could have tried out some of the other rigs, because I tried Cummills, and then I also tried the Podium 11, which is a $45,000 rig. And that was like mid-range, compared to like everything else that was there. Well, I heard the most expensive one there was like 180 grand.

Yeah.

And I'm like, at what point is it, and I'm sure somebody who knows would be screaming at the windshield here, but at what point is it, what was the difference between a 45k rig, which is already insane, and a $180,000 rig?

Yeah.

So I'm just curious. I should probably talk to some of those others.

Well, we've been playing around with it, so we did a couple there, and then you and I are both messing around with our own right now. Yeah. And there's a difference, but it's not that amount of money difference, for what I can do with another 10 to 20 grand, I could go hookers and blow, and I'd have also an awful lot of fun.

All right, Dan, you're fired.

I'm a client who works for one of the big SIM places down in Florida.

Oh, really?

Yeah, I don't know which one it is. I think it'd be cool to have a SIM, but not in my bandwidth right now.

Yeah, it's good. Just if you want to get on something that's a semi-professional level, you're probably looking at your lowest. You're going to be in that 3 to 4 grand range just to build something halfway decent.

But it pays for itself. It's a blast. One of my friends who races GT4 Porsches, which we'll have on next month, he says it helped him so much. Think about it. You could practice on the track when you're not there. Sure, it's not 100%, but even if it's 90% of the way there, that's huge.

Maybe just learning where the turns are and what's coming up and what's there.

I know Road America is so much better now. I mean, granted, I've never been on the actual track, but now if I ever go, I'll be a lot more prepared.

Yeah, I have many clients that they don't have sims necessarily. I think some do, but the Mini Cooper, Greg Wold client, this is before sims were like a thing. Gran Turismo, man. At least he had to learn Laguna Seca, and he couldn't play the game. He's not a gamer because he's not a gamer. And so he just put it on the thing where it'll just run the track, you know, so he could just see it from the car's perspective. And that's how we learned Laguna Seca. It was Gran Turismo.

Did you watch the movie?

I haven't yet.

I highly, highly recommend it. It's on Netflix too now, so it's easy. Yeah, I think it was Netflix. I'm pretty sure. I'm like 99% sure. But no, it was so, so good, man. It's probably one of the better car movies in the last decade. And I know some people might be like, but I stand by my opinion.

Well, I heard Ferrari is supposed to be good too.

I haven't seen it yet.

Yeah, it was Christmas. Oh, okay.

It was in the theaters or whatever, if you can watch it at home yet.

Frickin theaters. You remember five years ago, I would love to go out to a theater. Now it's like after COVID, like it's like, I'm used to just pay the $4.99 on HBO Max.

Yeah, it really is. I mean, now they let you have beer in most of them, but that isn't that still isn't selling me.

Well, the one in Woodbury, they just opened not that long ago. It's for sale right now. So it was at Alamo. You got full food and beer and all that stuff.

But, you know, well, sweet on that note. Where can people find you? Do you want people to find you?

Honestly, I like I like posting stuff when I can. And I don't know, I enjoy interacting with people that way. Janderson Heads at Facebook. Instagram is the same, Janderson Heads. And that's it. I think if you Google Janderson Heads, it brings you I have the domain name is bought, but nothing there yet. So yeah, yeah, I have so far.

Yeah, that's why I see is like, if you're booked out that far, why? What's the point?

Right.

Yeah.

Dan, you can find us at Gunna Garage with two ends. Finally got a little bit of snow. The UP just got dumped on. So I'm going up north this weekend to pull all the sleds out and make sure everything's tip top. And we may be loading a trailer and heading to the UP. You got to get some riding in.

Yeah. Sweet. And if you're this far in, you should know where you're at. But be sure to check out our sponsor, Razorhood, and of course, our home, home base. I don't know how to describe it. Yeah, the where we are hosted, ratified motorsport. I feel like some of you people need faster cars, and they will help you with that. I would love to see them do some more B58 builds, like Supras, or even an S58. I need somebody to bring in their M3 here. That's what I mentioned for, because I tried to convince Sean, but he's having a shop in California. Do it, silly goose. But yeah, other than that, thank you for coming on. Thank you for reaching out. This is a blast. I knew it was going to be a blast from our first message.

Thanks for having me. This was fun. Super fun.

Dan, thanks for existing, and we'll see you all next time.