74. Dropping Out, Building And Racing Fast Corvettes w/ Omar Aguillon

All righty, hello ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minnoxide podcast. I'm your host Harris, AKA Minnoxide, man of many automotive aspirations. And today, we got, oh, I f***** the intro already. It's okay.

Yeah, you said it was two weeks. As soon as you said that, like, it's been a little while, I knew it was gonna go disastrous.

I don't restart often, but I'm restarting this one. All right, what up ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minnoxide podcast. I'm your host, Harris, AKA Minnoxide, man of many automotive mass...

I'd say you gotta just leave it at this point now.

I'm leaving it at this point. Sounding like porky pig up in here, dude. That's all, folks. But anyways, I am here with my co-host, Dan, man of many Mustangs. What's up, Dan?

Not much. I have, yeah, that's it.

That's over here a lot of times, so I'll put an intro. And today, we are going beyond a meme with Omar. Omar, I'm gonna butcher your last name.

Let's see, let's hear it.

Yeah, let's try.

Is it Aguillon?

Actually, you're pretty close, yeah. I guess in English, most people, like we would say Aguillon, but in Spanish, that's actually pretty close.

No, well, that's the thing. Okay, this is like the 15th episode I'm talking about last names. I'm sorry, y'all. But I always forget to ask before the episode. But today, we're going beyond a meme. You're the owner of what was it? Nightfall Performance, I think it was?

Nightfall Performance.

It's a cool name. Yeah, a little creative. It's related to the nightfall, you know?

I'm surprised you got that. That kind of was the idea behind it. Yeah. Since we're kind of, you know, most of the stuff I've ever done and most of the cars I've worked on, they tend to be, you know, guys who do nighttime stuff. So it just kind of made sense, really.

Yeah, just nighttime cruises and nothing crazy.

Yeah, you know, almost like heading to Walgreens or something. Yeah, yeah.

The CVS cars. Well, I think it's really fitting to have you on because next week we leave for Texas 2K, so this will drop the day before we leave for 2K. So I'm like, all right, might as well get somebody fast on the day before. So unfortunately, I couldn't get Davy on here. It's such an empty chair over there. It breaks my heart. But we'll get him on at some point because I know he has a, what was it? Like 2,500 horsepower vet or something.

He could make 2,500 horsepower. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty quick though. Yeah.

So in looking at it that way, you're just slower of the two friends from the sounds of it. Tell us a little bit about your Corvette build, I suppose.

Yeah, I guess I'd say, yeah, it might probably be a little bit slower just because I kind of built everything just to handle 2,000. I didn't want to go too insane with it and you know, build it for 3,000, 4,000 horsepower because that's a lot of money. But pretty much my build kind of basic. It's a 427LXX block, you know, typical stuff, you know, forged bottom end, forged crank, custom cam, you know, and all the little trinkety stuff, lifters and all that stuff. But pretty much all that based around, you know, twin 76s and, you know, manual transmission.

What are 76s?

Yeah, twin 76, 75, they're from Comp.

Put us a little bit closer like this way, just a little bit more. Yeah, because I was talking to, oh my God, I feel so bad. I forgot his name downstairs. Was it Roscoe? What was this? Sorry, sort of R.

Oh, something like that. He's gonna, I don't know his name.

Excuse me, he's gonna listen to this. You're in trouble.

No, we were hanging out at Texas 2K last year, so I feel bad, but it's like, if you don't see someone for a long time, you forget their name. Yeah, but no, nonetheless, that's the one thing we talked about with, what was it, Joe DeVito. It's like you build your car to handle more horsepower, and you just run it a little lower.

Yep, it lasts a little bit longer, yeah.

Yeah, so what's your, would you say it's cruising around at right now?

Right now, right this instant, I think we've got it at like 15 PSI, and Tuner says should be making with like fuel and everything like that, around 1100. So he sent me a tune, I have yet to upload it, because by the time I was gonna upload it last year, it was getting cold out. But from that 15, we're stepping up to 25. And so-

I was gonna say 15 PSI and 1100 horsepower, that's pretty good for 15 PSI.

That's pretty good, yeah. Well, it's a bigger block motor and everything like that. So it definitely helps. But yeah, once it starts getting nice out, all the salt goes away. I'm loading up that tune and kind of seeing what it does really.

So if you're at only at 15 PSI, and because you have a big block, you still have to run E85 or what do you, can you run a 93 in that and still?

I don't know.

Are you on E85?

I'm on E85. Yep, just regular pump E85, nothing special. But I've thought about doing that. I've thought about putting a second gas tank in the car because I've kind of built that car to do drag and drives. Like over in Colorado and stuff like that, I've always wanted to do that stuff. That was kind of like the mindset that I had going into the build was, I want to do that eventually, that type of stuff they drive, I don't know, I think it's like two, 3000 miles in a whole week. They go racetrack to racetrack. It'd be pretty hard to do that on E85, of course. So kind of most guys, most Corvette guys at least, either just strictly run E85 and they just bring a whole bunch of gas with them and they've got a tune that you can run 93 on and you just kind of switch tunes, or there's some guys that put a second fuel cell in there, which isn't really hard because we've got a lot of room right by the transmission. So that's what I'm kind of thinking about doing, but hopefully this year, next year, I'll start doing that stuff to get that going.

Are you going to build a trailer too?

Yeah, that's the plan. A little open trailer, yeah.

I don't know if you saw, but episode 59, we had Mike Narex and Eric White from Drag Drive Repeat, formerly known as Dragon Drive Addiction. So they run their own events, but they also, what's the word? They document it, they have a whole, they go to all of them. They started a point system and everything, so they just announced the champion or whatever, a PRI when we were there. Super cool guys, but that was kind of like my introduction to Dragon Drive. I was like, that is...

They let me breathe Dragon Drive.

Yeah, that's his full-time job. He's sponsored, he's got a lot of sponsors, but he's sponsored by Summit Racing and all this stuff. They run a legit operation over there, so I'm excited you brought that up, because I would not have guessed that.

Oh, really?

No, because Dragon Drive, it's niche, but it's not niche. You know what I'm saying? The people that do it, it's like a cult following, it looks like. And I'm glad to see that it's getting a lot more publicity, because it's super cool.

No, yeah, it's the same kind of people that go every year. Occasionally, you get new hands of people that show up, but my tuner, he actually does them every single year. So he goes with his buddies, I think he's got like five, six guys, and so he's the tuner for all of them. So he'll just jump in a car, jump in another car, tune on the way there, look at the analogs, jump in the other guy's car, and just kind of shoot s*** around the whole entire, pretty much the whole entire trip. So he's kind of playing a big part of me doing the drag drive stuff because he's got a lot of experience in it. So thankfully I met him.

So who's your tuner?

He is a tuner down in, gosh, I forget, it's down south. So he's a mobile tuner. His name is Matt Elliott. He's kind of a smaller tuner.

The name sounds familiar though.

Yeah, he's a smaller tuner, but he's amazing.

Is that the guy tuning Brian's CTSV?

I don't think so.

Okay, it might be somebody else.

No, that guy's from Texas. I don't know what his name is, but Matt, you know, he also tunes Davion's car. He tunes his C5 and his Pontiac too, and mine too. And then whenever we have cars that come in the shop that need tuning, just kind of send it towards them. But he's, you know, super good, super easy to talk to, super smart guy. He's a big street guy, obviously, big drag and drive guy. So he's pretty knowledgeable. So and we just kind of met him in a whims, too, just on a Facebook forum, just talking and just we needed a tuner at the time because we had three previous tuners before him. All of them just would not get back to us.

Yeah, that's the hard part.

Yeah, they were they were too focused on their drag strip cars. And so they're focused on that and not so much on the street guys. So they just push us to the side, you know, and just kind of ignored us. It'd take us like three, four months to get a revision. It'd take us a couple of weeks to get a reply. Or like if we had a question, we'd have to spam text them just to get a reply. It just became way too much at that point. And that's how we met Matt. We were just talking about that stuff. And he was like, hey, I don't really do tuning much. But well, I don't really do tuning for other people. He kind of does it for his friends and himself. And surprisingly, he's been amazing, honestly.

Turns out to be pretty good.

Yeah, he's super good. I mean, even at 1000 horsepower, we have yet to, you know, dial in the suspension or even touch traction control. So, I mean, that's kind of the big part. I mean, I think the last time I run it, I mean, at 1000 horsepower, my 60 to 130 was like in four seconds, which is pretty solid for only making that much. So, I mean, he's definitely going to have a big part in, you know, how much this car can do, which I'm pretty excited for this year especially.

That's going to be fun. So we actually had our Airbnb for Texas 2K. We have Caleb staying with us. He just finished building his ZR1. And should be low 1000.

Who's doing his tuning?

That's a good question. I can't remember. He's told me about it. He's told me about it a lot. And I forgot about it a lot.

I don't pay attention to those outlast guys.

I feel like maybe it'd be Steven. I forget his last name, but he kind of does a lot of tuning for the guys. So, I don't know, maybe.

We have a lot of fast cars coming out this season, man.

Yeah, hopefully.

I've been keeping a pulse on the scene, man. A lot of people are upgrading, getting faster. You know, Minnesota's got a good scene, though. It's small, but it's still pretty sizable.

Yeah.

If you know who to talk to.

Yeah, exactly. If you're part of the red group and everything like that, it could be really fun. But when you start trickling and going into the smaller groups, it gets pretty hectic, because at that point you're...

Like smaller horsepower groups, you mean?

Yeah. Their meats tend to have like a hundred plus people in them, which can be a lot at night, especially. But when it starts coming up to the bigger horsepower guys, maybe at most 20 people, 15 people, and that's a big meat for us. It's like having 20, 15 people. But I mean, you get so many more runs in, everyone knows each other. It's so much better, honestly.

You act more like adults.

Exactly that, too.

Well, because most of those guys are going to work the next morning anyway.

Yeah, right. If you have that kind of money to get that kind of horsepower, you tend to be a little bit more responsible, right?

Yep, exactly.

Very selective on where you do your hits.

Yeah.

And they tend to be older guys. I think maybe me and Dave are probably the youngest guys in that group, if I remember right. But they're, I don't know, no, I think there's a couple. But it's fairly, you know, they're all adults, and that's kind of what makes it fun.

They got kids and stuff, too. Like they can't, again, like they can't be out all night till four in the morning all the time. They're out to get three or four good races in or however many. And then it's like, all right, let's wrap it up.

Yep, exactly, which is pretty nice.

So how old are you guys then, you and Dave Young?

We're both here, yeah, I think he's turning 25 soon. And turning 25 in April. So 24 at the moment, turning 25. So we're still pretty young.

So once again, shouldn't have gone to college, should have just learned how to build cars.

Yeah.

And then I'd be happy.

So you have a backup plan in case you need to fall back on the college thing.

I actually went to college too. That's actually how, you know, I actually was never into cars until I got into college. So that was a whole big ordeal, because well, I just wasted three years of college going for physical therapy. And you know.

Maybe you can help me with some of my old issues.

But it's like, you know, one day I just was sitting there and I was just like, you know, I really don't like doing this. It was just randomly just sitting in my dorm room, just, I don't like doing this anymore. And you know, that same week I dropped out and I was like, well, what do I want to do then? And I was like, you know, I've been kind of watching all this, you know, car stuff on, you know, TV and, you know, on YouTube and everything. It was like, oh, give, you know, give that a shot. Didn't go to school or anything for it. Just kind of dived right into it. And now it became this whole entire, you know, big money pit.

That's like a crazy car origin story. Like that doesn't normally, like you're just going to college, physical therapy, you all of a sudden just drop out. Cause you're watching TV and you like car shows. You're like, I'm going to do cars. That is, that's not typically, usually it's like, I grew up wrenching with my dad or like my uncle had this or, you know, that's, that's, that's interesting.

Okay. So when you say dive in, what was, what was kind of like your first step? Like how did you start actually working on cars then?

At the time I had bought in like, I forget what year it was, but it was like one of the little Audi A3 wagons. I bought it totaled from the auction. And, you know, that's kind of where I started. And so we pretty much fixed that Audi up and then slowly trickling, you know, modifications on it. You know, I didn't, I was a, you know, college kid at the time. I didn't have much money. So it was sponsored by eBay for the most part. So, you know, typical downpipe, really loud exhaust, you know, intake, you know, your typical stuff that you kind of do when you're younger. Started out that, and then once, you know, I kind of, you know, felt comfortable, kind of got bored of it, kind of moved on to a different car. And then, you know, that's when I got the charger, then did stuff to the charger and also did some bad stuff to the charger and ended up, you know, blowing that car up.

What do you mean bad stuff? Well, expose yourself.

Yeah, pretty much one, I was putting exhaust on it. And since at the time, I was not, I did not have, like, a lot of knowledge at all of automotive stuff. I was putting headers on it and I couldn't fit the headers up into the pocket, pretty much, to bolt them on. And so, you know, at the time, I didn't know, oh, you know, you shouldn't take the heads off because, you know, then you gotta, you know, most of the time, resurface them, then you gotta get a new gasket, new bolts and all that stuff. And at the time, I didn't know that. So I took the heads off without knowing, put the exhaust back on, put everything how it was, old gasket and everything back on with the old header bolts and everything. Didn't really tighten them to torque or anything. And so when I started the car, coolant just everywhere. And I was like, oh no, it's like, what did I just do? And at the time I had a, you know, like a family friend that was a mechanic. So he came out and he was like, what'd you do? I was like, well, I took them off because I couldn't fit the headers up in there. And so I just took them off so I could put them on and, you know, put everything back on. And he was like, no, you shouldn't have done that. It was like, you just ruined everything. I was like, oh, really? I was like, gosh. I was like, wish I wouldn't have done that.

Well, part of the learning experience too. So I'm guessing as a result, you probably started being more careful on stuff too.

Yep, exactly.

It's part of learning experience.

Yep, I had a lot of those. That's kind of like my whole, you know, automotive thing, like, you know, skill set, you know, just, I haven't really been a person, you know, to open up a book and learn and everything like that. So just kind of off experience, do stuff. That's kind of the way I've been learning, really. That's the best way I learn at least. But now that's, it's worked, really. I mean, obviously I've got, you know, the car I have now and it's running and driving, so it worked.

So what happened after the charger, then?

After the charger, I became a Beamer Boy for a little bit.

Okay, yikes.

Yeah, yikes. I had a N54 335i for a little while.

With a verbal tune.

Yep, exactly. Had the typical MHD tune and everything like that. Downpipe, you know, and everything. And so one day, the motor just blew, it was just like, oh, for no reason at all. And ended up taking that motor out and putting in, I think it was like MMP, like twin, like bigger twin turbos at the time, and built the motor and everything, and pretty much went as far as I could at that time. So it could make like 700, 800 horsepower. And unfortunately, another came down to, you know, came down to another thing about having a tuner. Couldn't find a tuner at the time, and when I finally found a tuner, it ran like absolute crap. It just ran horribly, and I couldn't find a tuner at all. And so when I just kind of gave up after a while, and I sold the car, how it was, it was like car needs a tune, you know, your typical stuff that you hear on Facebook, car needs a tune, runs like crap.

Yeah, don't buy those cars.

Yes, I sold it like that, and someone bought it, and I think that car is still driving around now, honestly.

That's impressive.

Yeah, it is pretty crazy. And it was my first time that I built a motor, first time that I pulled a motor, first time that I pretty much did anything major to a car that wasn't, you know, typical bolt-on stuff. So that was definitely an experience.

So how did you go about learning how to do all that? YouTube University?

YouTube, forms, BMW forms, you know, that's kind of where I base most of my stuff off, really, especially since those forms have so much information on them from, you know, even when the cars came out, you know, there's so many guys on there. They're so knowledgeable. That's kind of who I just would go on there, talk to a couple of guys. They'd send me photos. They'd send me videos. And that's really how it started, you know, just talking to guys like that, really.

Did you ever end up meeting like some of these forum guys, like your internet friends?

I met one guy and that was in a Corvette forum because I bought a transmission from him. But other than that, I never met any of them. But, you know, all super nice guys.

Did you have to, so like you just decided you were going to get into cars, did you have some tools and stuff? Or like now you also have to invest in some tools and things like that, or?

Thankfully, my dad had some tools, your basic tools, you know, basic sockets, you know, wrenches and all that stuff. But for the most part, yeah, I had to pretty much invest in all that, you know, buy as I needed, you know?

Right, yep.

Yeah, just, yeah, that's pretty much how it went.

Cool.

Oh, you're taking a deep breath, I was just worried.

No, I'm not. I got up early this morning, I'm tired.

So then, how'd you go about, okay, so you had the Beamer, and then what happened after the Beamer, after you got rid of that?

After the Beamer, that's when the Corvette came around, yeah.

Okay, and what year was this roughly? 21?

No, actually, it was right around when COVID hit.

So 2020-ish?

Like right beginning of COVID, at the time, that's when I also sold that BMW and I've always kind of wanted a Corvette. That was kind of like, I guess, like a dream car for me to have was a Corvette. So at the time, you know, COVID, even everything was going around. But I don't know if you remember that cars were going for dirt cheap because everyone was trying to, you know, get rid of stuff because they weren't really sure, you know, what was going to happen.

They thought the market was going to tank.

So everyone was trying to sell stuff for dirt cheap. And I'd sold, just sold my BMW and probably a week after we sold it, saw this 2006 Corvette for sale and the guy was asking $8,000. All that was really bad with it was a paint job. So I went and looked at the car, offered the guy $6,500 and it was like, sure, take it. So for compared to like today's standards, you can't find a Corvette for not a C6, at least for $6,500. It's almost impossible.

That could have been a short turnaround because cars went actually up when COVID actually hit. So like somebody should have gone around and bought up like everything right before. And then six months later, it could have sold everything for twice as much.

Yeah, because like that same car nowadays even, you know, 20s.

It's a 06, right?

No, it's a base model.

Base model, okay. But even then, those are still $15,000, $20,000. How many miles were on the car when you got it?

When I bought it, I think it had 60,000 miles.

Oh, that's it? That's basically brand new.

Basically. For an LS, honestly, yeah, compared to what you see on some cars, yeah.

And it was running and everything?

Running, driving, same thing, six-speed manual. Just had a plasti-dip paint job. That was the only thing bad about it, but the car was from Texas.

Clean title?

Clean title.

$6,500. Was the paint underneath okay? Like you pressure washed off the plasti-dip?

No, it was horrible. It took like four of us and probably two days to get that plasti-dip off.

Yeah.

Because the car was originally from Texas, and they had plasti-dipped it, the previous owner did. And so that plasti-dip was just caked on there. And with, you know, how the sun beats on cars down there, it was almost impossible to get through.

Yeah, plasti-dip, I don't think it does well in super hot climates like that. Or like wrap. Wrap does, it doesn't do too hot. Like you cannot leave a wrapped car outside. You have to park it indoors all the time. Like even taking it to car meets, like for example, another common problem with like vipers down in the South, their dashes may start to peel.

Oh, really?

Yeah, it just, it depends. I think that's specifically to Gen 5 and some of them. But nonetheless, like harsh climates mess up cars.

Oh yeah.

Whether it's cold up here or hot down there. So like you have to be ready for it.

Yep, exactly. Thankfully my dash wasn't peeling. So that is a big Corvette thing, especially down South. You know, GM has really cheap dashes in those things. They're plastic with like cheapest leather. I don't even think it's probably real leather, honestly.

Those were bad years. Like that was when bailout times, things like that. My wife had an Equinox. That was probably the worst purchase I ever made in a GM product. And all of the buttons were rubbing, paint was rubbing off of everything in there. It was like, oh my God, this thing is a piece of s***.

Yeah, that's how, it's a Corvette, but I mean, the interior on those things, they're not comfortable, they're not nice, but kind of advantages, those cars are super light compared to what other cars weight nowadays and back then at least.

Let's talk weight. Have you weighed your car at all yet? Cause you have some weight reduction under too, right?

Yeah, I got some weight reduction, not much. Took out the, what is it? Pretty much all the OEM wiring, and then also took out the, not heat exchanger, heater core and everything like that. And haven't gotten aftermarket seats yet, but pretty much what the car weighs right now with me in it, with fuel and everything in it, weighed in at 3,300, 3,330 pounds. So it's pretty light for what it is.

Considering how much power you're making, that's a good power weight ratio.

I definitely thought putting an iron block in it with turn tour bros and everything, that it was gonna bump up the weight a lot. But I mean, 3,300 pounds, it's pretty, I think it's pretty light for that car and what it makes.

That's very competitive for a street car.

Yeah.

And I'm curious, Davey on C5 is probably even lighter, right?

It's heavier.

Is it really?

I don't know if he wants me to say how much, but it's heavier.

Yeah, let's keep it off the books then.

I'm comfortable, like for me, I don't really care sharing that stuff. Yeah.

Some street guys like to keep it close to the chest.

Yeah, there's some guys that won't tell you anything. They'll keep the hood down, they won't wanna talk about anything, what's done to the car, they'll just, nothing.

So, does 200 pounds really make a big difference? Does what? So, I just put a number out there, 200 pounds. I see people just gut their whole car, basically have just a seat in it. Is that, what does that equate to on time-wise? Or does anybody actually know a calculation if you take 200 pounds out of a car?

There is a calculation on it. I don't remember what exactly it was, but I think it was every 100 pounds was maybe a couple horsepower. So I mean, it's not much, but I mean, it definitely helps.

It adds up, especially like when it comes to a competitive setting. Like I remember, I've been in a Draggy Forms for like the last year or two.

Oh my God.

Dude, some of the calculations you see in there are hilarious.

The Draggy Forms are hilarious and just entertaining to be on, honestly. Peak comedy, dude.

Cause like you have a few guys that are super smart in there and then you have a few dim wits in there that just make it fun for everybody. But yeah, 200 pounds makes a sizable difference. I mean, it depends. Cause if you remember, we had Joe on and he has a weight rack in his trunk.

Yeah, just to get traction.

Like he puts 45 pounds. Like some people need that extra weight, but also it comes down to where you want the weight to transfer to. I feel like when you start getting into high four figure or four digit cars, like you start being a lot more mindful of what you put into it.

Yep, yep, exactly. And you start dipping into, counterbalancing is kind of a big thing. That's what I'm doing right now. And so we got scales, just put the car on the scales and you see what each corner of the car weighs. And you can change up where weight is by either raising up the front, lowering the rear, maybe putting weight in the rear, or maybe taking something out the front. But with street cars especially, you kinda wanna have almost a 50-50 weight ratio, maybe a little bit heavier. I mean, especially us Corvettes, we definitely want a lot more weight in the rear, so more it's like 55 in the rear. But for the most part, I'll probably be having the add weight once I turn it up. But yeah, weight is definitely a big part of street racing and just drag racing in general. When you start getting into higher horsepower stuff, you definitely see people throwing more weight on there.

Explain counterbalancing a little bit more, I guess.

I guess easiest way to, I'm not really amazing at it yet, since just starting to dip into it. Pretty much counterbalancing is you have your four scales, and each of them weighs what corner of the car. And so you'll see maybe the front left weighs 20%, the front right weighs 30%. And obviously you kind of want to have your left and right as even as possible, and kind of that way you're not swaying to the left when you floor it, or swaying to the right when you're flooring it. Because obviously if that happens, then that could be really dangerous. And same thing with the front and rear. I mean, since our Corvettes, we have IRS suspensions, they kind of really suck for weight transfer. But yeah, that's pretty much what it is, just looking at how much weight is at each corner and just adjusting it that way, it's as even as possible.

Yeah, I just got confused because I've heard corner balancing and I've heard it's called counterbalancing. So is it the same thing?

Oh yeah, same thing. Yeah, corner balancing, counterbalancing.

I know that Dave from DRSC is going to start doing some of that here soon as well, some corner balancing stuff. So that's exciting. I don't know if he's announced that yet. Maybe I should cut that. We'll find out.

Yeah, it's definitely an art in itself. There's a lot of information. It's crazy. There's a lot that can do to it, and how much that stuff could change a car.

Tuning isn't just throwing a car on a dyno. There's so many, like tuning your suspension. It's ridiculous. So have you upgraded your suspension or no?

I got Keltrek Crusaders in the rear. They're like, I think, triple adjustable or double adjustable, I don't remember. And then I got same thing, Kel-Tec. They're pretty much Kel-Tec Vikings. I guess they're Viking shock, but Kel-Tec modifies them to whatever spec you need and such like that. But same thing, Kel-Tec out front, Kel-Tec in the rear. They're just coil overs, nothing too crazy. But yeah, kind of stock control arms, everything else pretty stock, nothing too crazy yet.

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Do you guys lock, do you do anything different with the diff? So I'm a huge Ford guy, I don't know much about how Chevy does it. Do they still, is it like a limited slip in the back then? Or do you, do a lot of the guys lock their stuff up or?

I think at least for ours, they are already locked. I don't think they're limited slip. I'm not too sure about that actually. Haven't really thought about that.

Cause if you're driving around on the street, it's like drag guys, I'm sure they just lock the rear end and who cares, they pull it on and off the trailer, stuff like that. But if you're street and you're doing a lot of turning, things like that, that can get real rough on your rear end. If you're not letting one side spin faster than the other with a limited slip.

Yeah, that's true. I guess I really haven't looked into that. Kind of whatever the stock GM stuff is. I pretty much, my differential is just the same differential like a C6 ZR1 would have. I bought it from a totaled C6 ZR1, I was like, whatever, this is perfect condition, threw it in and haven't done anything since. And it's holding up the power, I mean, it should at least. I mean, there's some ZR1 guys out there making 1300, 1400, doing digs and stuff and perfectly fine.

Yeah, that's such a crazy car. And ZR1s, that's a bucket list car.

Yeah, they're fun cars, fun cars to drive. Surprisingly enough, my younger sister, she had one for a while. So whenever I'd get to drive that thing, those are fun cars, they're definitely nice.

What does she have now, anything or?

No, not anything now. I think she's waiting until, just waiting some time, taking a break from the whole car thing, because obviously having a car like that, it's a lot of a stress in itself, just because of how much money parts cost for that car. She had to do brakes on it, I think. Just the front, I think the rotors alone were like five grand a piece.

Those were carbon ceramics on there, right?

Yeah, they were the carbon ceramics. And so that was a stressful time, just trying to afford and get those done, just because the price tag on those. So it's like, oof, and she didn't know that going in, but it definitely, I don't think I could afford one either. It's definitely expensive to get those brakes done. That's kind of the big thing with those cars, doing your brakes, just because they're so expensive. And it's not like your conventional brake, they go off weight, I'm pretty sure, I think at least. It's not like most regular rotors, you go off how much thickness you have left. I think those, they go off how much weight you have on the rotor, which is kind of interesting.

Interesting. Yeah, no, carbon ceramics are insane. I've gotten some to experience some of them, man. It's just, but the nice thing about them is you don't have to change them often. There's not much to, I mean, yeah, pads, but yeah, you don't, the rotor should last allegedly like 50 or 100,000 miles, I think.

I guess it all depends on your driving too, honestly.

Right, because like if you're doing like track days all day long, well, you have carbon ceramics on the GT500, right?

Nope.

No?

Nope, I can upgrade them for like five or six grand.

Yeah, does Mark have them on his?

He said he was gonna get them. Last time we talked, he was looking at a set or getting a set or something like that, but he had not, he had stock breaks still.

Okay, that would shave off some time on his Road America time.

Yeah.

Man, it'd be funny to see you get carbon ceramics first. And whatever, constant beef with these guys. So then, okay, so you wanna do some of the drag and drive stuff. So then, I guess when did you start dabbling with the street stuff? Mexico.

Yeah, I guess dabbling with the Mexico stuff is right around when I had that charger.

Okay.

And that's kind of the main reason why I started doing them. I didn't, that car wasn't crazy fast, honestly. I had to exhaust, attune an intake, and then I tried to do long two bedders on it, but that didn't go well. But before that, I had to go out to Mexico and just small little groups. And at the time, that's when I think, I think, yeah, the scat packs and everything were coming around town and everything like that. And I was losing against them all the time, and that's how it kind of started. And losing against scat packs all the time, I was like, oh, what can I do to at least make it more competitive? And so that's when I started dabbling into modifications and getting it all into all that.

Okay, and then you had the beamer, did you take the Corvette out at all yet or no?

In its current form, how it is now, no. But I think two years ago now, it was just your basic heads cam intake, I had a little bit of nitrous on it. But when it was like that, I did take it out to Mexico a lot, and that was pretty much almost an every other weekend thing with that car. But with how it is now, not yet. Just waiting until it gets nice out. I've been kind of aching to go out with some guys and go do some hits.

Have you done any hits in it yet, or since the build?

Yeah, I've done some, your typical 60 to 130s, and then 40 to, since I'm planning on going on Power Cruise, and the main roles that they do at Power Cruise is like 40, 45 roles. And so all pretty much last fall, just dial in, dialing in 40 roles, 60 roles, and just making sure the car's quick off, right off the bat, off a 40 and a 60, and that's really all the hits I've gotten in the car. Nothing like really racing someone yet, but that's really all I've been doing with the car, really, just dialing it in, tuning it, and that's it.

That's gonna be rowdy at Power Cruise, dude. Because I don't want the issues that you run into at Power Cruise, especially because it's back to back hits. Have you done much on the cooling front? Do you have to worry about that much? Because this is a turbo car. It's not like it's supercharged.

Yeah, a little bit. It's more just cool intents that you have to worry about. But I've got a big, real thick, it's a DeWitts radiator. I don't remember the thickness on it, but pretty expensive radiator. I think there was 1,500 bucks for just the radiator alone.

I've heard of them before. Yeah, they're pretty top notch.

They're pretty much top of the line radiator, especially for Corvettes and stuff. And so far, I haven't seen any coolant issues. I think right now, cruising around right now especially, back, I think it was last weekend, it was like 60s, 65 out. I drove it around for like an hour, just cause and sat around like 180, 170, and that's the hottest it get. Which is pretty, it's pretty cool, honestly.

It's good for a V8.

Yeah, especially like a big, 427 V8. Yeah. It's, you know, especially like the 06s, they tend to sit around like 200, 225. It's kind of like their maintenance temp. And so the fact that I'm sitting at like 180, 190 at the most, as I've seen, like after a poll, I think that's pretty healthy, honestly. So.

Is there a point at where it's too cold? Like, cause like you want things to be up to temp too, right?

Yeah. I think there is. I really haven't dabbled. I haven't really thought about that, but I'm pretty sure there is, you know, issues that come when it's too cold.

Yeah.

I think you want to be in that like 140 or up, usually.

Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah. Cause like, I know Dave did that with his Mustang too. I can't remember what he says his temp is, but he literally put like a, I think he said he put like a small hole in his thermostat or something, just so it's always like enough. I don't know. I can't remember. I have to go back to that episode.

Where you're sitting is pretty much ideal.

Yeah.

I would say.

Pretty much, yeah. I did the same thing he did. Just drilled a small little, small little hole in the thermostat. That way it's always flowing through. You know, nothing's getting, you don't have to wait till it opens up or closed down. It's just something's always going through at least. But that definitely helps.

Are you interested in road course stuff at all, or not really?

Funny that you said that, actually, because-

Time attack build.

Actually, that's what I was kinda getting around to. What is it? Last year, went to Texas for the first time, and at the time, we went to watch the F1 race at the time, over at-

Kota?

Yeah, I think it was Circuit of America. And so, we went there, and they had obviously the Porsche racing going on, and all the, I think it was F2 going on, too, and I think so, I don't remember exactly. But once I started watching all that stuff in person, I was like, oh my God, this is sweet, I wanna do this. And slowly but surely, hopefully, if things line up, I'm planning on buying another Corvette, but making like a Time Attack C6 Corvette. And I've seen those things, they're pretty successful. There's a guy.

I'm guessing you've seen Farras's.

Yeah, yeah.

That thing is sweet. He lives down in Dallas, I think.

Yeah, I think so, yeah.

I tried reaching out, it'd be awesome to get that dude on the podcast, because that thing is, he just set the world record at Okayama or something.

Something like that, yeah, I think it was that.

It's okay, no, it was, it was oh something. It wasn't Okayama, it was the other one. I don't know, something interesting.

He's got a lot of, you know, time records at tracks. It's ridiculous what that car is doing.

Do you remember what that car makes? I think it was like, was it 15, 1600 or something?

It was a lot.

It was ridiculous, like ridiculous time attack Corvette. We saw it at, I think it was at SEMA or PRI. It might have been both, but ridiculous Corvette. Ridiculous.

I know, the full, what is it? Kevlar body, twin turbos, insane build, massive wing in the front, not wing, I mean, massive splitter and then massive wing in the rear. That car is insane, but hopefully, one day we need to build something like that, and that'd be pretty sweet, honestly. Or even buy a totaled out Porsche and just kinda start messing around with the Porsches a little bit. But we'll see.

Funny you should say that, I might be able to get you a damaged GT4. Let's talk. That'd be really cool. Yeah, so that the road court, yeah, I'm curious, who's your F1 guy? Who's your guy?

I really don't have a guy. No, not really.

You have a team that you cheer for?

Red Bull, just mainly because Sergio is on there. And well, you kind of have to have that, Hispanic respect, Mexican to Mexican type of thing. So, support each other pretty much. So that's kind of the main guy. I guess, yeah, that's the main guy I root for. And kind of this main reason I support Red Bull.

Yeah, dude, I'm telling you, I don't think, I don't know if there's any country on the planet that supports their teams as much as Mexicans, dude.

Oh, it's insane.

Dude, when you see the F1 races, and you see, like, the racetrack down there is incredible, because it goes through, it's kind of like a stadium. I don't know if you ever see, have you ever seen the Mexican drag down there? I think it's Mexico City, right?

I think, I'm not too sure where their track is.

Dude, it's literally like, think of cars driving through a stadium full speed. That's basically kind of what it is. It's just, dude, that's on the bucket list, is to go to the Mexican Grand Prix. It's on there. It's just ridiculously cool.

Even when we went to Texas, the amount of just Mexican and Hispanic people that were there, every single time he would drive by, oh my God, it was like, you're at a concert. It was like, everyone's like, yeah. It was like, what is going on? It was like, geez, I didn't think we'd love this guy this much, but dang, okay.

Well, it's like, he's number two. I mean, yeah, it's great, but Signs is my guy. That's the guy I cheer for. Since I got into F1, I was like, that's my guy. So I'm curious to see where he ends up. But yeah, no, I want to go to Coda. That's a Buckylist track. I went to the Miami Grand Prix the first year. So we went there as a family. That was cool. Saw the GT3 cars or whatever. That was super cool to see. Just ridiculous. So Buckylist, we want to go to Montreal. That'd be a fun one. I almost had a chance to go to Vegas, but I don't know if I'd like going to Vegas. Dude, it was a c**********.

Yeah, especially with the infamous drain plug incident. I couldn't get, I got cracked. Happened to my boy, man.

Happened to my boy.

That was pretty funny. Super unfortunate, but it was pretty fun.

And then it happened again to Ferrari at Bahrain. Did you see that? Yeah, a drain plug or sewer cap or something came up, and I think it took out Leclerc's Ferrari this time. I don't know.

They got some crazy luck.

Dude, they got the worst luck, man.

They're an interesting team to watch, though. Yeah. There's been a lot of times that you just watch them and you just kind of question what they're doing. Sometimes they occasionally have those super late pit stops, like five laps before the race is about to end. It's like, you got to pit, you got to pit. It was like, I don't know if they forget. It's stupid. It doesn't make any sense.

Yeah, it's tough. It's tough. But ultimately, I just like... I'm sorry, we're going down an F1 rabbit hole here. Yeah, it's just... Signs is my number one driver, but I also like... I'll just say who I don't like. I want Yuki going. Give that seat up, bro.

No, Yuki is probably like my second favorite guy, honestly.

He's fun for his spicy energy. That's the best part. But I'm just like, man, like, can we get someone else over here? Like, I don't know.

Yeah, he's probably my second favorite.

Well, I saw him in person in Miami at the airport. Yeah, at the airport. I think my mom and my dad got a picture of him. So I was like, oh, man, like, I really liked him at first. But then it's just like, I don't know, this last race when he dive bombed into Ricardo, I was like, bro.

Yeah, that was interesting.

I'm like, that's petty. He literally, dude, at the end of the race, like after the race was like over on their cool down lap, he cut in front of Ricardo. He tried to like dive bomb into him because he was like pissed off about the team orders to switch them. Yeah, it's just BS. I don't know.

I get it. It was kind of late in the race. They wanted to driver swap, which, you know.

I get the frustration, but I was like, man, that was a part of the game plan for Nagiko. We all knew Ricardo was going to be on soft tires at the end. Like if he has the pace, like if he got, if he was able to pass Yuki two or three laps earlier, he probably would have passed the, what was it? The Haas. I don't know. I'm starting beef right here. Somebody over here is screaming at the windshield.

So they have road rage problems too, is what you're telling me.

Dude, that dude's got the biggest road rage.

Yeah, every other word is a curse word in his vocabulary.

Honestly, I think I'd be a bigger fan of him if they had an open mic on him the whole race.

Oh, that'd be great.

That's what I should do. I should go, what is it? They have a Sky Sports or whatever. I should just go watch his stream, the whole race from his perspective.

That'd be funny.

I'd probably be his biggest fan then. Just like a road rage stream.

Because even the small clips that he has, they're just amazing. Yeah, they're the funniest thing.

All right, you convinced me I'm a fan again. Okay, I'm back on team. Okay, so you want to build a road course card. So what would you go for power-wise there? Would you still go pretty high like what Ferraz is doing?

I don't know. That's scary. Yeah, that's a lot. And especially, you know, 1500 horsepower taking turns that fast. That's a whole different ball game. Like, I can handle it, you know, going straight. But I feel like taking turns going that fast, that's definitely like a whole, that's a whole different ballpark. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Honestly, I'd probably start out, I'd honestly probably start out with a stock motor, like a LS7 or LS3. Get familiar with it, you know, kind of get used to how you're supposed to take turns and such like that, you know, because obviously there's an art to that too. So I'd probably start out there and depending how that goes, and keep on going up as we go.

Where'd you get your 427? Did you get, was it already long block fully assembled, or did you build it or?

No, local shop, Wigamond Brothers, they built it. Well, they built the short block, and pretty much I just built the rest. And so they got a 4, a LSX block. It's like their GM's bow tie block. It's a fancy, expensive block.

But Ford has their Illuminator series and all that stuff.

Pretty much like the same thing. Yep, and just stuck in, it was Waysco rods, diamond pistons, a scat crank, and they just did all the block stuff. And from there, I took it, got some heads from AFR, and did all the springs and valves and all that stuff on that, installed the cam, did all the timing stuff. And so that's pretty much I did with the motor. They just did, I guess, the important stuff, the stuff that I was a little too fine.

All the really fine clearances, all that stuff too. I usually have somebody else do that part too. It's my Harbor Freight torque wrench is probably not going to get them as precise.

I got an Amazon one, so maybe it's a little bit better. But yeah, I guess all the really important stuff like that, I just leave it up to the professionals. If it's, you know, at some point, I'm planning on doing like just a small 5.3 turbo truck, I don't know, nothing too crazy, then I'll probably build a boat.

Yeah, there are a diamond dozen, right? You can find them everywhere.

Exactly, like, you know, if I blow it up, well, hey, I gotta go to the junkyard, get one for 500, 600 bucks. Oh well. But blowing up, you know, that block, just the bare block was five, $6,000. So definitely goes up a lot, you know, when you start breaking those.

All right, so you're welcome to disclose this or not. I'll leave it up to you. But take us through the build. What does it cost to have, again, so you're rated for $2,000, right? That's what you're built up to. What does it cost to get a Corvette up to that level? Get the calculator out. Let's go hit up your accountant. Let's get you 23 tax returns.

$256 magnum or something like that too then? Or you said your manual?

Yeah, it's a TR6060. TR6060 from RPM Transmissions. I think it's like a level six transmission, and it's supposed to handle up to 2,000. But I don't know, might have to mute this out for the girlfriend when she listens in, honestly.

That's why I asked you, because it's like I can have this up in my head. I have a built TR6060 in my 2015, so yeah.

They're expensive. Manual stuff, especially manual stuff in general, it's expensive. It's an expensive group to be a part of.

Yeah.

You know, teach 400 guys, you can just go offline, buy one on Summit or JEGS for 2,000 bucks, you know, like 800,000 horsepower or 2,000. Yeah, 2,000 bucks for like an 800,000 horsepower rated one. And that's easy, but manuals, you're spending upwards of six, seven, $8,000. If you break it, you're kind of screwed, honestly.

So you're keeping your car as a manual then?

That's the plan, honestly. I've had opportunities to go teach 400 or 4L60 and all that, but I don't know. There's something about being manual. And when it comes to those drag and drive guys, there is, I think, like three, four guys. There's obviously Cletus, you guys probably know who that is. Then there's Speedy Petey. No, he doesn't do drag and drives anymore. But there's a handful of Corvette guys that are still manual.

They have a special manual class, too, don't they?

Yep, exactly. They got, most places do nowadays, like FL2K, Texas2K, which is super fun. But those classes tend to be the same guys, small niche community that only do manual stuff and watching their videos and following most of those guys. And yeah, that's the group I want to be a part of. It's more expensive, yeah, but it's just the way they talk about it and the way they mention it is just, it seems like it's so much more fun than just jumping in a car, either bumping it forward and calling it good. You know, but back to probably the subject of the cost, I'd say overall without the cost of the car, I would say-

Well, the car was $6,500, all right. That was chump change.

Exactly, that was honestly compared to everything else, that was some change. But I think so far at this moment, I've probably spent around like $70,000 to $80,000 on it. That's with tuning, suspension, the motor. The motor was the most expensive part. I think I spent, feels something ridiculous, like $30, $30 on it, $35. It's definitely, that's definitely the big bulk of it. And then from there on out.

So what goes into the motor cost, I guess?

Motor costs, usually I incorporate, obviously what it costs to get it honed and machined and all that stuff, and then rods, pistons, the big bulk and important part. And then I've got super nice, I forgot what brand they are, Johnson & Johnson lifters. Those were alone, I think were like almost $1,000. I don't remember, they're pricey for lifters. I got super nice roller rocker arms, which were like $1,000. Also, the heads alone were, I think they were like three, $4,000.

I was gonna say in that three grand range probably, AFR.

AFR, and that was a little bit, I guess, cheaper because I was gonna get their custom heads. And so the like $4,000 or $5,000 that I spent was on their cheaper end because they could have gone further with it.

That's crazy.

Yeah, because like those are-

Buy the cheaper ones and then send them to Janderson heads.

Janderson heads, yeah. Thankfully, these heads are perfect. I think they're like 280 CC heads and they flow amazingly and they're super nice. And they're six bolt heads. And so I should never lift the head hopefully, but-

You got all ARP hardware anyway.

Yep, yep, yep, all ARP studs and everything like that. Pretty much same with the main caps and everything. Everything's ARP. So also ARP is pretty expensive too. Especially recently, I feel like they've been jacking up their prices or something, but-

Well, they're the best in the game, so I suppose they can. You know?

But yeah, kind of that's where it been, yeah. I guess the motor was a big bulk of how much I spent. And then there's suspension, maybe that was also stupid expensive. It was like $5,000, $6,000. That's including sway bar links and little odds and ends, bushings, and all that stuff. Crazy part is I could even take it further with suspension. I don't have model ball bushings or anything like that. That alone, just to get those, I think it was $2,000. Just alone, just do that. But there, from there, it's fueling, fueling. I think I've got four innovations, like triple pump. Yeah, triple pump. So it's triple, 525s in there. That was pretty expensive. Well, for fueling, I guess it wasn't too bad.

This should be like 2,500 bucks, probably, for a system.

Yeah, I think so. And then injectors or fuel injector clinics, I think 210-pound injectors, I don't remember off the top of my head, but should be good until I think they said like maybe 1,400, 1,500, which is kind of the most I want to make on the street, because I don't think the car is going to hold up any more than that, honestly.

In its current form, at least.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, you get to a certain point where, yeah, it's got more horsepower and you probably go, but it's not going to be a fun street car then either. I would imagine it gets to a point where it's really not that much fun to drive, because it's just a monster and it's just impossible to put down traction. And unless you go to traction management, I suppose, like those Viper guys.

Well, Holley has a pretty good system too, don't they?

Holley has, yeah. Depending who's tuning it, obviously, Holley could do some crazy things too. In comparison to what those Viper guys have, I think Holley's up there too. I mean, it's nice because with Holley, you're not spending, you know, I don't know how much those, their ECU systems cost.

The MoTeX, they're pricy.

They're ridiculous. But with Holley, I mean, with my Holley and all my computer stuff, I maybe have like, I don't know, $2,500 bucks into it with all the sensors and stuff that you need to add it on to it. $2,500 bucks compared to what that's, you know, all that goes for is like six times more. Super cheap. And their traction control is honestly, I think it's really great for what it is and how much just everything costs. I think it's, I think it's worth it alone, honestly. But that's pretty much going to be, that's, we're going to, we haven't touched our traction troll yet, but we're going to keep on downloading it up pretty much. If I start spinning on this 25 PSI tune, we'll just, you know, adjust the suspension, we'll just wait. And if that works, you know, we'll keep on going up a little bit. But the second we start having to dial in, you know, traction control and everything, that's where we're going to cut it off. Because, I mean, traction control, you know, it's nice to have, but I guess my tuners had, you know, some bad experience with it too, because it's pulling timing really quick and it's throwing timing back in. So it could do some damage if something goes wrong. So that's trying to, especially since how much money we've got in the motor, he's trying to prevent that. So it's like, at least for the street, that's kind of where we're going to keep it. You know, once we start having to do any major to the, you know, traction control, we're just going to call it good. And that's how it's going to stay.

Yeah. Why build it all the way up just to have traction control pull it back down, you know, as you're taking off?

You know, if it was a quarter mile car or eighth mile car, oh, definitely ride traction control like all the other guys do. But you know, it's just a street car, really, you know, drag and drive cars, street car, you know, really don't, honestly, especially here in Minnesota, you don't see many 2,000 horsepower cars.

It's slim pickings. You can probably count them on your hand, how many of those guys are out here.

And most of them are Vipers and GTRs. That's, that's really the big bulk of them, honestly.

That's pretty much it. Otherwise, I mean, you know, that's pretty much it. And there's really a small handful of that. I mean, we again, we have more people coming to our faster, but I feel like we're starting to see a lot more people get just above that four digit club out here.

Yeah, I think so. It's starting to be a little bit more common, which, which is, I guess, nice because for a while I'd go out with Davion, obviously, and you'd see what you'd see the same guys over and over and over and it'd be the same runs over and over and over because it was just, you know, there's only so many people that, you know, can hang out and, you know, keep up with you. So it is definitely nice having, you know, a new crowd, but, you know, it's definitely also a little bit scary to have a new crowd because you don't know how the people are. You don't know how they're going to handle themselves if they're going to be mature enough. So that's, I guess, yeah, that's something that's going to be interesting to find out this year.

In the next few years, it will be interesting to see because like more and more people are going to start coming into money, get further in their careers and can afford to fund toys and stuff. And, you know, it's getting easier to get four digits. I mean, how many Mustang guys we've had on like these new 10 speeds are just mopping up the floor right now. It just doesn't take much to get a thousand out of them. Same thing with the Supras and the RS3s. You know, they're all, I mean, look where we're at here. I mean, how many four digit builds have we seen from ratified, you know, it's crazy.

It's crazy what everything's turned into. Even like nowadays with like Dodge, they're starting to make, you know, a thousand horsepower cars right out the factory is like that's starting to become that's maybe going to start becoming normal at some point, who knows.

But I think we've seen a lot these last few years, like, I mean, even like the Ferrari SF9, the Aventador or not, the Aventador, the Rivalto, like we're starting to see more and more stock cars at a thousand. You know, and the fact that we saw it in a Dodge, it's like, oh, here we go.

Yeah, it can't, you know, hook up or turn a corner or do any of that stuff. But you know, other than that, it's great.

Well, you know, what's crazy, though, is like, again, when you come back to like, you know, traction management and, you know, tires are getting better, everything's getting better.

Yeah, technology is catching up.

So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's pretty awesome. So would you ever consider going up to a MoTeC or you want to see how this shakes out with Holley?

MoTeC, I think it's MoTeC. It's either MoTeC or Haltech, either one of them two actually recently started offering a LS just plug and play kit.

I think it was Haltech.

Yeah, maybe it is Haltech. I don't remember. It's one of one of the two. But Haltech also has great, you know, traction management and everything like that. But I think it's definitely it's something that I might try eventually just because they price theirs pretty close, not super close to Holley, but I think it's like 800 to 1000 bucks more than Holley. And when you're comparing the two brands, I mean, and Haltech is pretty superior to, you know, Holley. I mean, but I think maybe eventually I'll, you know, either have a customer car or something like that. Maybe, you know, they might be interested in doing something like that. But I think it'd definitely be sweet to do, go one to one of those two brands.

So speak to your customer cars, then what have you put out there? Any fast things or what are you mostly doing?

Nothing yet. Not yet. It's just kind of been your basic maintenance stuff, you know, diagnostics and that's kind of the main bulk of stuff right now. I've got one guy that he's teeter tottering if he's got a C6 Z06 too. And he had a previous shop that had built the motor on it. And they'd built the motor, they'd put rods and pistons and I think they left the stock crank in it. And I don't know what they did, but they went on to start the car and the car didn't start. They pulled the oil and it was just sheared metal. And the whole entire oil pan, they took everything apart. Within just trying to start it, it just ate everything.

So it never fired up and it still had all that metal. They had to really f*** something up.

That's exactly what I was thinking. I was like, oh, maybe they forgot a rag inside or something and it just caught something.

Didn't put any pre-lube on the assembly lube on anything.

Uh-huh. But that guy, he scheduled in to come the end of this month. And so I think right now we're just pretty much thinking about he wants to do like a thousand plus horsepower build. He wants to do like a YSI supercharger on that and then everything supporting mods. But he's not too sure if he wants to spend that much money on it. So we're still on that. But either way, it's definitely going to be, you know, either a really fast NA car, like 600, 700 horsepower, any car, or it's going to be, you know, a thousand part, a thousand horsepower supercharged car. We don't know yet, but that's it's it's really going to come down to if the motor is salvageable or not.

Yeah.

Because like, if we can salvage it, and he said, OK, then if we can save as much as you can, and then at that point, you know, I'd have my motor guys just go through the motor, just refurbish everything that needs to. And we could, you know, not have to buy a new block or have to find a used block and he could afford that supercharger. But if that block is junk, we're just going to have to start all over again. So I guess, yeah, that's the only big interesting build right now that's coming through. But other than that, yeah, just kind of normal stuff, you know, like it's not really normal. It's, you know, differential swaps and other Corvettes, you know, oil seals and transmissions and stuff. I guess just mainly, yeah, diagnosis, repairs and stuff like that.

Yeah. 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 make some of the sickest builds out here. That dyno you all hear downstairs has 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 motorsport.com/performance to see what they can do for you. Let's get back to the show. Dude, those NA builds are sweet. Like Derek Stinton's C6. I think it's pretty sweet. Yeah, because he does a lot of autocross and road course stuff. Have you met him before or no?

I have some friends on Facebook and we've talked to maybe like once or twice.

Yeah, I think he's rowdy.

I think he might have bought something for me. I think that's why I met him.

Maybe.

But yeah, those NA's Z06's, yeah, you can make a lot of horsepower with those too. I've seen them, a couple of them making like 800 and almost 900 horsepower.

And ridiculous.

Some of them are revving up to like something crazy, like 8,000, 9,000 RPMs, like not even hitting the rev builder yet. It's like, oh my God, that'd be a fun car to drive.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's fine. I love his build. That's where you wonder is like, oh man, like 600 to the wheels and A like that's even need a supercharger at that point.

It's fun. It's definitely fun. Like even when before I did the whole turbo thing, it was just, you know, a decent cam and everything like that. My car was making like 450 and you know, that car alone making 450 and how much it weighed. If it weighed 3300 now, I'd probably weighed close to 3000 then maybe a little less. But that car was so much fun, making 450 horsepower, you can just jump in it, flirt whenever it's been the tires off. That car was so much fun just making that much horsepower. So I can't imagine what 700, 800 horsepower NA would feel like. Definitely be something else.

Here's a question. Why Chevy? What made you go down that route?

I think it was more just cost honestly than anything else.

Nothing like a junkyard LS.

Yeah, honestly. Yeah, it was just more cost efficiency.

This is a guy who's now got 30 grand into a motor.

Yeah, I guess. But it's like when I was starting, yeah, that was kind of the big thing because I mean, at the time, when I first started college, straight out of dropout college, I was a dropout college student, so I really wasn't making much. I was working at part stores, part time here and there, and I think full time at my dad and stuff, and other than that, I wasn't making a whole bunch of money. So I got into the whole BMW thing and realized, oh my God, this is expensive. Not only are all the parts super expensive, maintaining it. It was every other day, oh, I've got to change out this coil pack, oh, this injector is stuck. It was just dumb little things. And that was just kind of also the big second reason I sold it. I was a guy, I like Euro cars, they're super nice cars. Like those RS3s, amazing. But to do stuff with them, it's crazy expensive. Even more than what I put into my Corvette even. I can't imagine what a thousand plus horsepower German car or something like that would cost. I'd imagine maybe close or maybe even more. But at the time, that's kind of my main reason I went to Chevy, it was just cost efficiency really was cheaper, you could find parts at AutoZone, you can find stuff on Facebook market, use stuff all the time.

You probably weren't going to find anything in that $6,500 range in a Ford compared to what you got. I mean, Corvette already is pretty performance based for $6,500 bucks. You'd have gotten a Mustang for that kind of money, you'd have had to do some mods to it to get it to that level.

Yeah, I think for $6,500, you could maybe afford like an 05, 06 Mustang, maybe at that point.

And who wants that 463 valve that's not our flagship there?

Yep, and then with German cars for $6,500 bucks, I don't know, what could you afford for that much? Not really much, like performance based at least, probably not much.

No.

A Jetta.

Yeah, maybe, probably a GTI, something like that.

Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't say performance based. Yeah, because like f****** Carvana just gave me an offer on my car again. I'm like, nope, get out of here.

Trying to give you more than what you paid for?

No, not even, dude, they gave me a ridiculously low amount. I'm like, because I get emails, like updates, like, oh, here's your car's worth now. Oh, I can't wait.

Car market's in a weird lull right now.

I just can't wait for Carvana to go out of business. That's all I'm waiting for.

Yeah, I thought I thought they were like a year ago, two years ago.

If they do, I'm going to buy one of those vending machines and have it moved to my house.

That would be a new storage lot.

Absolutely.

That would be pretty sweet.

That would be friggin awesome.

Yeah, no, I think the cheapest like maybe they can get like a Mark V GTI. Mark sixes are getting pretty cheap, too. But even then, it's like they're not exactly high horsepower cars. Yeah, by any means. Yeah, no. Euro is not cheap.

Yeah, so like, you know, 6500, I think those cars make maybe like maybe 350, 400 to the crank. Maybe that I think. I don't know, really. No, but I mean, either way, it's a Corvette. I mean, I think it was a good, you know, good, good place to start.

No, it's a great platform. I mean, it's a good looking car, too. I mean, it just it has everything you need. Like it's it's a good bargain build. Like I would love to do like a C6 06. That's like it's it's up there. Like if I that would probably if I wanted to get like a budget thousand horsepower build, I think that's probably where I'd start.

They're definitely fun, especially in a manual. Oh, just something about driving like thousand horsepower manual cars. It's it's fun. It's a lot more. It's it's a little bit scary, but it's it's fun.

It sounds like well, I watch some of these like some of these Enth Moto Viper videos and like, you know, they're making like 2000 or whatever to the wheels and they're still manual. And I'm just saying you're thinking like, how do you even do that? Yeah, because I panic in a 200 horsepower Miata. Like, I'm not good at manual. Like, I don't drive it enough. I need more practice. But like to even think of doing it at those speeds in a competitive sense, it's like, holy s***.

I haven't done it much in a competitive sense, but it's probably a lot more nerve wracking, especially, you know, thinking about, you know, maybe money shifting on accident. You know, that's that's definitely scary because that could be a whole lot of things, especially if you're going 40 or 60 miles per hour and just going into the wrong gear that, yeah, that does a lot of damage. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully, hopefully within the next like year or two was it take performance offers like a four speed transmission that is actually I think they've also got lockouts or they've got a shifter with lockouts. And so I think it's like button based. And so when you press the button, you it prevents you from going to third to second. It's like just a weird lockout that's in the center of them. So that's pretty cool. And I've kind of talked to them about that. So that may be something in the future.

They'll save you a little bit of heartache potentially.

Exactly. Yeah.

Just freak accidents happen like that every once in a while.

Yeah.

So I wonder if the mic picks up that train.

I can hear. I listen to some episodes lately and I can hear the cars pulling in and out of the shop. So I bet you can hear that train horn.

Sometimes you'll hear them honking or whatever to open the garage down there. Yeah. I enjoy being in a shop. They haven't done a dyno run in a few episodes, which breaks my heart. Those are awesome.

Are they? Yeah.

When they have like a thousand horsepower car and a dyno, it's pretty rowdy. It shakes the whole building, dude. You feel it up here. It's pretty sweet.

It is pretty sweet. They got a nice shop. I've never actually been to any of their buildings, either this one or the one in Janehassen, I think.

Chaska.

Chaska? I've never been to either of them. They definitely have a nice shop. Yeah.

No, I think they'll probably do an open house here at some point. So that's pretty exciting. I don't know. It's just, it's fun. It's not like it's necessarily, cause like some other shop owners like come over here and dyno their cars time to time. Cause like this isn't like a public dyno, like you can rent it or whatever, but shops collaborate. You know how it goes. And that's one thing I love to see is when shops collaborate.

Yeah. Yeah, I feel like you tend to see the bigger shops, like Moe does. I feel like they do decent amount of collaboration stuff, but they do their dyno days, which honestly is super big turnout.

That was huge.

That is also super cool. Like the one they did just recently. I went to that one. Oh my God.

I was going to go, but my God, I heard some stories.

Like I was thinking about putting my car on the dyno, but then I went to go talk to, I forget who I talked to, but I asked them how long the wait was. And I was like, oh yeah, it will be like four to five hours or something like that. I was like, no way. It's like how many cars do you have lined up? I think it's like total is like a hundred something.

Something like that.

It was ridiculous at one point in the night. I was like, well, it's like, I'm not going to do this then. It's like, that's outrageous. Yeah.

We'll probably see some of that down in Texas. 2K. That's yeah. Have you been to 2K?

No.

No bucket list.

Yeah, bucket list. I'd like to think if pretty much my idea with that is if I'm going to go down there, I'd want to bring the car with.

Right.

And if I'm going to bring the car with there, I'd want to do like quarter mile stuff pretty much or the raw racing competition.

Or like in a competitive sense, you want to do street stuff?

No, I've talked to I have a lot of friends like local Corvette guys that are local in Texas. And I just hear a lot of horror stories of, you know, the immense amount of people that show up just for Texas 2K and how how hectic it is and how much cops show up. Yeah, just talking to them, they just convinced me alone going there just for this night stuff. It doesn't really sound like it's worth it. Honestly, it's more risky than anything else.

Oh, it's ridiculous. They'll impound your s*** there. No, you're on site like it. And that's kind of why like, you know, this is Dan's first time going down there. Like I'm just like, let's take it easy.

Oh, we're going down to watch the night stuff. We're not going down to participate.

Yeah, exactly. If anything, I'll go and watch. But to ever participate in the night stuff, it's it's cool and all. There's a lot of people. There's a lot of big horsepower cars and everything like that. But I don't know if I'd ever do that.

Last year, me and Sean, I think only got three hits in and that was on only one of the nights because it just it every spot was just getting shut down, like left and right. Like even like the meets, like there was like one meet, like I think it was one of the gas station meets. And we there was everybody took over the parking lot and then like eight or nine cop cars showed up from every direction. It's like, get out of here because they knew what was about to go down.

Yeah, I can't imagine being out of state and getting your car, you know, taken away. But that itself is probably such a headache, especially during the weekend. They're probably closed.

Yeah.

It's like just imagine trying to take your car out on the weekend, you're not even from the state.

Yeah.

Well, you may not even get it back. It might take you months to get it back to court and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah, that's true. And then you got to hire a lawyer, just a lawyer that's local down there, and you got to deal with all that stuff. That is just like, oh, that seems like such a big headache.

It's not for everybody.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see who ends up competing down there. You and I might have to bring some bail money. So then ultimately, so then what's next for you then, I guess, in the next year or two, what's on the agenda?

Agenda, mainly just focusing on the business, really. Yeah. Ideally, I'd love to become something, you know, big shot performance based. Not really specific on a brand, I guess, or a certain make, kind of enjoyed. I just honestly enjoy working on cars. It's like no matter if it's like foreign or if it's, you know, domestic, whether it's Ford or Chevy, I mean, I got a Mustang coming in a couple weeks even. So it's like, you know, I just ultimately just want to grow that business into something to where, you know, that could be, you know, pretty much my baby pretty much. And I just focus on that, not have to do my daytime job and just do something I enjoy pretty much.

And that's definitely a big plan. And that was bodywork, right?

Yep, bodywork. Yep.

So that was probably, that probably made your life a little bit easier with the Corvette then? Yeah. That's your background?

Yep, definitely. Doing bodywork, it's...

Are you shooting any pain? Are you blocking sand? Like what are you mostly doing over there?

Pretty much. Yeah, so I'm a body tech. So fixing all the cars that are in crashes, you know, doing bodywork. It pays well. It pays very well compared to what, you know, a lot of other people are making nowadays. But like, it's a lot more strenuous on your body. It's, you know, always, you know, on your knees, always having to pick up heavy doors and gates by your stuff, by yourself and all that stuff. You're... It's a lot of work. And it's, you know, it's, it's, it's difficult. And then you're always having to breathe in dust and everything like that. And you're having to deal with, you know, with lung issues in the future. And I've seen, you know, they don't really have like a good, let's say, like retirement. So most guys are working until they're 60s, 70s, even more. So it's like kind of going into the industry, had that idea, you know, I find working here for a while. But then as I, you know, my other body techs, they're just, they just keep on talking to me. He's like, leave when you can. He's like, you don't want to, you don't want to be here this, you know, until you're 50, 60, you know, gets to be a lot. And that's kind of like the big reason why I started my business is, you know, all those guys know what I do. They've seen my like work I've done on cars. They've seen my car and they've just always questioned me and look at me as like, why are you here? It's like, why, why are you doing this? It's like you have better skills elsewhere. You have a better opportunity elsewhere. It's like, why don't you just go out and do your own thing? And it kind of took me what I've been here for three years. So it took me a while to realize that I think it was more of, you know, gaining the confidence of like putting myself out there and offering, you know, services to the public because that itself, you know, it's, it's, it's a lot or at least I feel like it's a lot, you know, but that's kind of, I guess like, yeah, the big thing about that is, you know, just focusing on that really.

Well, that's huge too, is like putting yourself out there to the public and the community because like the car community, like we're great when we support each other, but man, you f*** up.

They go after you like crazy.

Yeah. I mean, you'll see people like, you know, if they're running late on fab work or cages and stuff like that. And it's like, that's a callback for anybody paying attention. But you get blasted, you know, if you make a mistake and you don't correct it, you know, and sometimes, you know, it's a little reality check for people, but you know, part of it is taking a jump. Like I'm kind of in that taking the risk phase right now with all those, you know, everything Minnoxide, you know, it's yeah, having to tiptoe on certain things, not say certain things, you know, that's the other thing, just maintaining a good reputation and putting out good work. It's not easy.

It's like, yeah, that's kind of the big thing, like tiptoeing, you know, watching how you talk to people and such.

Picking your fights.

Exactly. Picking your fights. Because I've had some in the past couple of months, or the past, I guess, month since I've, you know, opened up, you know, the business, I've had people that, you know, I haven't had good relationships in the past and they want me to do work at the car. And you know, I so badly want to tell them to screw off. No, but it's like, I don't want to have that image on me. I feel like that's kind of like the big, difficult part is, you know, you kind of have to, yeah, like you said, tiptoe around things, you know, be respectful, even though you don't like the person.

Yeah, you don't want to be the petty shop owner.

Yep, exactly.

When you use petty shop owners, it's hard to be on their side sometimes.

Yeah, it definitely is.

Yeah. So you don't want to be that guy. Like, but like, then you get guys like, for example, like JWP, right? He is good with everybody. He is friends with everybody. Like he doesn't stir drama, nothing, you know? And that's why he has the amount of success he has, you know? Same thing with the rat. Like he's good friends with everybody.

Yeah.

For the most part, like every once in a while, everybody has like, you know, whatever. But yeah, who knows?

Yeah, that's ideally the plan, you know, be able to just like, you know, ratified Mo's and you know, JWP, you know, we have a lot of respectable guys. Yeah. Get to the point to where, you know, I could start, you know, giving back to the community, you know, host events that, you know, people can come and, you know, enjoy the shop to have dino days like they do, maybe, you know, bring some of the bigger horsepower cars that don't really come around town and, you know, show those off to people. Just kind of, you know, yeah, that's kind of also the big thing, just being a part of the community and, you know, give back, you know, obviously be owning a shop and being a shop owner is like, you know, they definitely help you out a lot. You know, people here in Minnesota, it's not very big. So it's a lot of, you know, mouth to mouth, you know, talk about, you know, go to this shop, go to that shop.

It's tight knit, man.

Exactly.

You know, you know who to refer everybody to, like even competitors here will refer to each other. And that's the best way to operate. And that's why I love, like, especially this podcast, I've met so many shop owners at this point and they all the successful ones, I should say, the successful ones, they are doing exactly what you want to do. You know, they want to take care of the people around them. So it's awesome.

Oh, yeah. Especially since Minnesota, we don't, like I said, we don't have a big guard community. You know, there's only so many people here, there's, we don't really have any big, crazy events. And so it definitely be nice and, you know, be a part of that. You know, we can be.

I'm excited. I'd like to make it out to at least one or two power cruises this year.

They're definitely fun.

I'm getting more and more leaning towards hitting that first one of the year. We might have to talk about that if you're interested in going.

We'll see.

Yeah. I've heard the first one of the year is always the better one. I was talking to Mike Johnson, and he's been there how many times? And I was honestly on the fence of which one to go to just because it's my first year going. And he just straight off the bat, he told me first two things. Go to the first one and get VIP. No matter what, just do that. Just because the first one's always, it's so much less packed. It's like you get so many more runs in, it's so much more enjoyable and fun. You're not having to wait in line for like four hours to get maybe a run in before someone oils down the track. So it's like, he was just, just go to the first one. It's so much funner. Sure, not as many people go out, but it's fun. Like you go out, even if you don't race anyone, like that's in your same horsepower range, you could at least go out and test your car, dial it in.

He's so good at that too.

Yeah, exactly.

Like he raced Kyle Flicker in his 2500 horsepower Viper. It's like, yeah, he knows he's going to lose, but it was still a great video to see how much he got gapped.

Oh yeah, but like from a 900 horsepower car to a 2000 horsepower car.

Because 900 is fast, man.

Yeah, it is.

It depends who you ask, but at the end of the day, we have to acknowledge that 900 is a lot of horsepower.

You don't have to win to have a good time. I mean, that's why I think people get all like, oh, I'm going to be blah, blah. Just getting out and getting on the track is already a blast in itself. So who gives a s***?

Sounds like somebody has a slow car.

Oh, what? It's like, especially, I mean, we're not like the guys down in Texas or, you know, Arkansas and all them or Ohio that, you know, they do their whole racing thing and they're putting like $10,000, $15,000 just for a race. Like, Minnis opens up here. We really don't. You really don't hear about that. We just kind of race for fun. Really.

Oh, sorry. I beat you there, bud.

I knew someone was going to say it. If that ain't a highlight, I don't know what is. You said it so much better than I would have too. I was about to say the same, like a similar thing. I was like, nah, I can't execute. Well, sweet dude. I mean, I know we're coming up here on an hour and a half here. So I mean, unless. Time flies.

Where's your shop at? Oh yeah.

My shop's over in Buffalo. It's a little bit out of his way. It's like 30, 40 minutes from the cities. Right now, I share a shop with Davion. And so, for the time being, until I see that it would make sense for me to move into like a bigger shop, pretty much I'll be staying up there for the time being. But if business ramps up, then it makes sense for me to move closer to the cities. But till then.

And get your own shop.

Exactly.

You live here in the metro or are you off by Buffalo?

I live over in Blaine, so it's a little bit of a drive, but it's not too bad.

Anything above that $6.94 interchange is the sticks for me.

If you're not within that $4.94, $6.94 loop, then just screw you.

Well, I'm technically outside of it too, where I'm down. I'm down in Cancun. We were talking about that yesterday, because I drove all the way up to the far part of Brooklyn Park to go get lunch or dinner with some of the car guys or whatever at this burger place. I was like, man, that's a 40-minute drive, bro. But that's going to be the regular down in Texas. I was explaining to some people, we're going to be driving an hour just to go to some meats. Everything's bigger in Texas. But I don't know, that's part of the fun. It's a festival, man. Texas 2K is a festival across the whole city.

That's the best way to put it.

It's just awesome. All the shops have, at least in Houston, all the shops hosted their own meats, dino days, stuff like that. It's cool. And this year, I'm going down knowing so many more people, and I'm going to be doing so many more podcasts down there. I'm excited. Because when we went down there last year, I was only on episode 11 or 12. I was figuring all this out. This year, it's going to be interesting.

Definitely sounds like it's going to be a lot of fun for you guys, yeah. It'll be interesting to see what Caleb's card does down there.

Dude, that boy is going to be a menace.

Yeah. He's pretty much like my competition, so it's like kind of going to keep an eye on him.

Well, I got a winch on the trailer in case he breaks. And then if he gets impounded, then I can buy another car and trailer at home. Might buy some rust-free s*** while I'm down there.

Facebook market real quick down there.

Yeah, absolutely. If he impounds his car and I'm coming back with an empty spot on the trailer, it's going to get filled.

I can guarantee you.

Maybe we'll start looking at some of those Vipers we were looking at.

Yeah.

It was swung by Andy House as a dealership. Do you know who that is, right? That's the guy that put his Bugatti in a lake.

Oh, really?

He has a dealership down there. He moves a lot of Ford GTs and Vipers. I mean, everything, but...

That's crazy. Yeah.

That's somebody I'd love to have on the podcast just for the stories, dude. That guy is... It looks like he's a rowdy time.

I took my Bugatti into a lake. That's the story itself.

Well, he just did a podcast, I don't know with who, but or an episode or something talking about it. I can't remember. He had to set the record straight on some stuff too. So yeah, but I know, I think he was trying to start a podcast, and then I think his first guest was supposed to be Calvo or something. I don't know. That's his whole group down there. I'm sure we'll run into him in Texas, but...

Yeah, it'd be cool to meet those Cisio guys, those crazy fast GTRs too.

Yeah, that's ridiculous. I think we got fast Cisio around here. I know that Rapp does some work with Cisio.

Yeah, I've seen him on his Facebook a couple times. Yeah.

Yeah, that'd be some... Yeah, because they just had that really fast R8. I think it just set the record on a 6130 or whatever.

Oh, really?

Something like that. Fastest R8 Huracan platform. I don't know. It's ridiculous. But UGR, because UGR doesn't do a lot of street stuff. They really don't. They just posted a ridiculous video. I think they're 6130, it was like in the 1.8s. Something ridiculous. I don't know. I might be talking out of my a** there, but I know it was around... I'm about to pull it up on my phone here. I posted on my story the other day. It was crazy, but that was the yellow one, that one Texas 2K that one year. Oh, like two, three years ago?

Yeah, I remember that one.

Which is a 3000 horsepower STL. That's a lot of power to put down on the street.

Yeah. Or that GTR that won it last year, I think, was it? That all black one, that road racing one?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the T1 one.

Yeah.

I don't think you'll ever see that car on the street.

That thing's insane. Oh my God. Dude, imagine, I've seen like, I think one year he had like a GoPro inside the car and just seen like his perspective of it. Oh my God. That's crazy.

The way those cars shake.

Yeah. Well, it's terrifying. Yeah.

Well, again, like I've been in the Twin Turbo Viper, right? And it's like that car starts getting scary after 130. Like up until then, yeah, it's violent. But as it, as you know, like the higher horsepower cars, they start ramping up the boost the faster they get. Cause like you're not going to put down all that power at 60. It's just never going to happen.

I don't know how those Vipers feel, but like with at least Corvettes, when you start getting up past like the 120s, 130s, something goes on with the front suspension and you start feeling it. It just slowly starts to sway and skate around. Even though you're not losing traction, it just feels like the front end, it just almost like lifting up and like starting to turn by itself. It's the weirdest thing ever, but maybe it's just a Corvette thing, because I've talked to a couple other people and they said they don't really deal with that stuff. And I was like, oh, but then I talked to other Corvette guys and like, yeah, it was like, we don't know what's going on with that. It's like, oh, okay.

It's going to get dialed in maybe or something.

I don't know. It's weird. It's scary.

So I think I've been in that car for 10 or 15 hits. And that's when it was me, it was making 2000 or whatever at the wheels at the time. And it's really dialed. There's been like maybe one or two brown starfish moments. And that's because it was like that car was hooking. It was 38 degrees the first time I was in that car.

That car is fast.

So it's, you know, I don't know if it's the people that work on it or if it's just the fact that it's Motec or what or everything. But when you start getting into those six digit builds, it's they perform like it.

So yeah, that that big wing that they have, that is a big benefit those for those cars is the amount of downforce that wing creates itself. It's it is ridiculous. I don't know if you've seen Davion's car recently, but he recently tried to like get a closest wing just like the Viper guys do. So he just recently put like he got a custom made wing for that car. It's kind of same height and everything as wide as the car. Super sick. But that's the kind of the plan for that one is he wants so much downforce on the car.

I wonder who he's talking to. I wonder where he got that idea from.

I don't know. I don't know. He's got he talks to a lot more people than I do. I mean, that that C5, if you guys think like my car is a little bit like some people think my car is crazy. It's like I'll show them their car and I'll talk about his car and that things that things on a whole different level.

Well, when I started talking to him early in 2023, I think he was telling me like the limiting factor on his car was the injectors. I can't remember. I think it was something fuel related. He's like, yeah, dude, once I upgraded this, I'm good for 600 more horsepower. I'm like, what the f***?

I believe that honestly.

Yeah. No, it's ridiculous. But yeah, no. The thing is, especially on the street down, downforce is huge. You need that extra weight on those. Again, it's like, do you put weight in the back? Do you do downforce? You know, it's just, there's a lot of, there's hundreds of tricks you can do to make your car go faster.

It's a big, yeah.

There's a lot of science that goes into it, especially too much downforce and you're not going a whole lot faster because then it'll go slower.

Well, depends on how it's set up and everything. I mean, it's just, that's, I feel like if anybody listens, like by the time I get to episode 100, if somebody listens to all the episodes, I bet you some people will start picking up tricks to make their s*** faster.

Oh, I bet probably, honestly.

Yeah, especially as this podcast grows and I get faster and faster guys and some more shop owners, you know, you pick up a trick from this shop and this shop and then all of a sudden some new kids on the block. I don't know.

Maybe we'll inspire somebody to drop out of college and open a shop.

Yeah, I think so.

If you are currently in college for physical therapy, drop out and start building Corvettes.

Here's your sign.

Yeah, this is your sign.

Come work part time with me, you know, I might know a couple of things.

Well, one of my childhood friends, actually, he just opened up a shop down in Savage. And again, LS kind of guy, that's his background. And my problem is, is I'm good at having conversations like this, getting the best out of people, because at the end of the day, you're the one doing all the technical talking. But like, I don't really have a lot of wrenching experience besides, you know, changing my f****** oil, you know? So I asked, and I'm like, man, you're like five minutes from my house. Can I just swing by and you just teach me things? He's like, absolutely, you know. So I might start getting some more hands-on experience here in the next few months as well, because, you know, I feel like everybody's a visual learner.

Yeah.

Like you can watch a YouTube video on how to work on a car, but you're not going to really get anything out of it until you actually do it.

Yep. No, I agree.

So that's on my bucket list for 2024 is just to get more hands-on with the things that I'm talking about. So I'll be cool. Maybe I'll end up buying a Corvette and building it myself.

Maybe. Or you just send it my way, whichever one.

Dude, that's the tough part is, like, for example, like when I ended up hosting the podcast here at Ratified, it's like other people are like, boy, what about me? I'm like, you know, it's hard to spread the love to everybody.

There's so many shops out here, it's ridiculous.

Dude, there's six Euro shops within like a few miles from here.

Well, it's kind of like when photographers get all butt hurt when you want to get pictures taken by other photographers, and then they get upset.

Well, you know, certain photographers are, you know, I'm just saying.

Yeah.

I'm on your, I'm number six on your hotline. Like, I don't know why. I love Derek. He's my boy. But what the f***? You're cheating a little bit.

Spread the love.

Which brings us full circle to the little b**** conversation. This is another off camera conversation to happen. Sorry, guys. But no, nonetheless, it's super exciting to see more shops come to this. It seems you're very passionate about this. I really hope that you just keep doing, fighting the good fight. Yeah, definitely.

Appreciate that.

And now we're at an hour 30. So Dan, do you want to pop the usual three?

I do.

You sure about that?

Yeah. Cool.

F****** do it.

All right, sweet. All right. At the end of every episode, we like to ask our guests to pick three cars. We need a track car, a daily driver, and a show car. You got unlimited budget, anything you can imagine. You can swap, build, do whatever you can cut one car in half, weld it together. What are you going to pick?

That's a tough.

Yeah. It's very tough.

I bet you the daily is the hardest.

Honestly. Yeah. Because like, I don't know, track car, you have so many different possibilities you do, but it's like, you know, it's only a track car. Gosh. Show car, insert there, show car. Surprisingly, I'd probably do a something dumb, like a LS swapped S15. I guess it'll be S15, but with an LS and like a turbo and such. So I guess a little bit of track car, but it'd be more for a show than anything else. Daily, oh, I'm obsessed with those new RS6s. Those are amazing. Those are crazy. I've seen a couple of them in person. They're beautiful cars.

I'm glad you bring that up because I'm about to drop my first article because I've started, you know, wanting to like, you know how like Motor Trend and all these other, you know, companies like they have like articles and such.

Yeah.

I'm thinking I want to start doing that for stuff that we get from the podcast, right? Like, you know, kind of like turning the highlights into articles as well. And the first one I'm going to do is going to be the dailies that our podcast guests have chosen. R6 is number one.

Oh, really?

By a lot. Like, I went back through the data because I have a whole sheet of it. Somebody put it together and then I just kind of like, so his name is Tony Krantz, he put together like 40 of them or whatever, like the first 40 episodes. And then since then, I've kind of taken over. And yeah, outies in general are kind of number one picked daily. It's kind of wild.

That is that. Yeah, that's pretty surprising.

They build a lot of dailies with a lot of horsepower.

Yeah. But that R6, how much is that thing making?

Five or six hundred. Really?

I don't think that it was more than that.

The thing is, you could tune the s*** out of them.

Oh, I mean, that's what it is. Because I heard there was a couple like 800, 700.

Yeah, definitely not stock.

Yeah. Yeah.

I think it might be maybe it's like 640 at the crank stock. I might be wrong. I might be off on that.

Euro guys keep saying downpipes in a tune.

Ridiculous. Ridiculous. But anyways, back to daily RS6 Avant.

Yep. And then track car, probably go back to that. Probably C6 Corvette. Just souped up crazy like that one, guys. Twin turbo, as much as downforce you could put on it. Super light. That'd definitely be a lot of fun.

That'd be rowdy. Dude, I'd love to get that guy on the pod just to talk. What the f***?

Only if you had a passenger seat. You'd bring it with. Oh, that'd be a crazy experience.

Dude.

Put a milk crate or something. There you can sit on that.

It's one thing to ride shotgun in a straight line in the high horsepower car. I could not even imagine on a road course. Because that's the thing. When you're coming out after the apex, and you start getting on that throttle, just a little too much throttle, you get oversteer or understeer, and it's like, ooh. It's another element, so at least when you're trying to do time attack wise, I don't know. It's like drag racing, but with turns.

Yeah. A lot harder. I give those time attack guys a lot of big props. That takes a whole different skill set than just going in a straight line. Not just that. I mean, especially those big horsepower guys, that amount of Gs that you're feeling just around the corner. Oh my God, that's probably insane.

Dude, the thing is, is like a lot of people within clicks and niches, they talk s*** like, oh, road course guys, whatever, that's boring or drag racing, that's boring. That's just a straight line. All of these specific niches have their own challenges to overcome. That's why there's so much money in drag racing, so much money in, you know, whatever. It's none of it's easy. Once you start getting to like the top tier stuff. So I don't know.

It's all expensive and all hard to get into, honestly.

Yeah. All of it takes practice, like even driving in a straight line. It's not easy.

Yeah.

Not as easy as you think it is, at least. So well, on that note, where can everybody find you?

Facebook, Instagram, look up Nightfall Performance. You know, I'll be there. And yeah, pretty much emails there on my Facebook phone number if you ever want to get in contact. And yeah, pretty much it.

Sweet. Damn.

You can find us at Gunner Garage. Cars are coming back out. So hopefully, we'll get some more content going.

Same. That's what I've been aching for is getting the cars out. It's like, oh, what do I have left in the camera roll? What can I use?

And as for me, guys, you guys should know where you're at at this point in the episode. Otherwise, for the track date that we have planned for May 20th, we finally dropped the date or the details on that. So 395 plus tax for anybody that wants to get some coaching done from an instructor on how to go on a road course. That's Monday, May 20th. Look out for the flyer on that. I should probably put that out. I'm really slacking on that front. But nonetheless, that's the official date, the official price. Just let them know to use code Minnoxide. You could do a call and do the website, whatever. I'm just trying to get more people out to the track day. So I got to give the shutout. The car community rally. Let's see. We're getting a lot of signups for North. South is starting to trickle in. The thing is that's in August. So yeah, you know, we'll probably start seeing a lot of people register for that.

As somebody that says that I know is that that's a July problem.

Yeah, no, when it comes to rallies, dude, I like to plan very far in advance. I've been on the stress. I've seen the stressful side of planning a last minute and that'll never happen again. Right, Balto? Shout out. Shout out to Dan.

Well, if you're waiting to buy your ticket to you never know it could fill up.

Oh, that I am convinced that North we're gonna sell out.

Yeah.

South will get really close to it. That depends on some stuff that we have going on in Chicago, some marketing stuff that we have coming up, and I'm doing too much behind the curtain stuff here, but the North signups are pretty awesome.

Nice.

We got some cool cars for South, too, that I won't disclose yet. That's really exciting. So sign up. Code Minnoxide. You can save some money there, too. I don't remember how much. I don't really care. Shout out to our sponsor, Raise a Hood. Of course. I don't know. Usually there's like an actual ad in the episode, but today I'm feeling very energized. On that note, guys, we'll see you all next time. The next episodes will be from Texas 2K, so see you all then. Thank you again for coming on Omar, Dan, thanks for existing, and see you all next time.