77. 1100 HP C6 ZR1, (3) TX2K Pullovers and Recap Street Stories and Built Jeeps w/ Caleb Isenberger

Hello ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minnoxide podcast. I'm your host, Harris, aka Minnoxide, man of many automotive aspirations, and I'm here with my beautiful co-host, Dan, Mr. Gunner Garage.

Hey guys, how's it going?

Oh my god, you're gonna do one of these?

I'm just kidding. Hey guys, what's up?

You know how insane people would go if that's what they had to listen to? Just some like ASMR whispering.

Like three hours of Dan whispering into the mic.

I'd go insane. But anyways, today we are going beyond the meat with our fellow Texas traveler from Texas 2K, Mr. Caleb Isenberger.

Hey guys, I'm Caleb.

Real quick, let the dyno run do its thing. And in case you didn't get the hint, we are based out of Ratified Motorsport and sometimes they do some awesome dyno runs. Today, they got a little five cylinder down there making some steam. I have no idea what it is, but it's probably making a good bit of power.

Right. Good question for Trey. See what this one is.

I'll probably text him halfway through it up. So what is that thing? It sounds good. So yeah, Dan's like, what's that little go-kart down there?

Those things are sweet. I mean, I hit Trey up one time and just asked him, I was like, hey, just curious. I don't want anything like crazy or whatever, but like, let's say in the event I did go buy an RS3, what'd it cost to like make a thousand wheel? He's like, I don't know, 50 grand. That's it. But anyways, I'm Caleb, got a couple of Corvettes and we did go to Texas 2K together.

I want to angle that a little more towards you real quick, by the way. Yeah, there you go.

So a lot of people probably know me from various different cars. I can just start with my history with cars or like the cars I've had over the years, because I think everyone knows me for just getting different cars all the time.

I do hear a lot of like, oh, he's the one with this or he's the one with this, and it's a different car like every time.

Well, we could go down that route, but let's quickly recap Texas 2K, because it was an absolute nightmare for you. And this is our first time traveling as a quad top, I don't know, the four of us, because it was us three and then my former co-host, Sean, which many of you already know, but that was an interesting trip, man. They weren't, the police weren't playing around down in Texas.

No, I mean, during the day, everything was fine. You know, they just liked to see the cars during the day, but at night, oh my gosh, it was a different story. They had the B team working during the day and then they had all of the A team for the state of Texas working at night. I mean, that night we went to the Buc-ee's meet, there were cops everywhere. I mean, when we went to Eric's, Eric's a friend of ours that has a 1200-ish horsepower C7. We stopped there to meet up with him and cruised over to Ennis, which was 15, 20-ish minutes away from our Airbnb. And along that drive, it was kind of like the maiden voyage for the Zr1 at night. Now we had taken it out the night before, but it was Tuesday night early in the week, so things were kind of quiet in the town. Wednesday night is when the street stuff starts to ramp up and the cops really know that. So when we left Waxahatchee and we're headed towards Ennis, we got on the highway and didn't even make it, what, five minutes down the road and I had gotten pulled over right away.

No, we were headed toward, wait, no, we were...

Yeah, we were going to...

Yeah, to the Buc-ee's, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yep, so we were going from the Waxahatchee, from Erick's to the Buc-ee's, and like five minutes out of town, I get pulled over right away in the Zr1. They, because I bought the car in November, I kind of, or it was like October when I bought the car, I kind of slacked around on getting custom plates for it until the week before we left, because I was like, ah, it's winter, the car's in storage, I really need to think about it. And then Texas 2K is like, oh s***, Texas 2K is next week. So I ran down to the DMV and I wanted to get custom plates. I didn't really feel like paying for standard plates and then paying another fee for custom plates. So they just gave me a little temp tag and said, tape it in your back window. Well, back window on the Corvette is not visible or anything taped in the back window is not visible. So-

No, it's horrible. You can't see anything. It's literally like a 10 degree slope. Like it's nothing and it's super tinted.

Well, there's no tint on the car. Really?

No, yeah, that's not tinted. It literally just lays flat. That's the problem.

Yeah. Yeah. The car has zero tint on it, which I kind of like that because I'm blind as s*** at night.

But I can't imagine you can see out of that car very well anyway, especially backing up.

Yeah. Backing up is really difficult.

Yeah. We'll talk about accidents in a second here too.

We can talk about that. Yeah. We'll get there.

We'll get there.

We will get there.

But anyways, we're headed to Ennis. You get pulled over once I think on the way there.

We were just cruising and I can't remember if the cop was sitting in the median or where he was exactly, but sure enough, first cop we pass pulls me over and Bernie comes up and they're asking about the, where my plate is. And I said, oh, well, it's taped up in the back window. Per Wisconsin law, it says right in the bottom corner, it says taped in the bottom left corner of your back window. So it's taped up, it's laminated, it's done correctly, very correctly. And I had taken off the previous Texas plate because it did have a Texas plate. Oh my gosh. Having the Texas registration sticker in the front window, that almost screwed me every single time I got stopped because they're looking around the car. Well, that's native to them. They see that every single car they pull over. So like, what's this? You got a Wisconsin temp tag, but a Texas registration sticker. So anyways, the first cop, he's like, oh, I couldn't see your plate, blah, blah, whatever. And he goes to run it and I hear over the radio that they can't pull it up to anything. I'm like, oh my God, this is like, this is how this starts. Like, and I knew from that, like that kind of set the tone for the rest of the week. But that cop was super cool. And they were like asking questions about the car, asking questions about where I was from, you know, just trying to get their stuff straight to make sure that like I was legit.

That's the best it was. Yeah. It's all downhill from there.

Oh yeah. Now that cop, he was actually a corporal, at least that's what it says on his business card, gave me his business card. And he said, if anyone else pulls you over, hand him this. I was like, okay, sounds good. Let me go on our way. And we pull up to the first official Buc-E's meet of the week. And there were tons of cars there, but we had...

We spent like 10 minutes there, I think.

Yeah, we had other things going on that night. We were going to go actually hit some of the streets off.

I think we went to cash days, I think.

Was that when the cops ran us out of Buc-E's though too? Wasn't it that night?

It was after we left.

Yeah. They said don't park in the...

At the pumps.

Yeah, at the pumps.

But anyways, so we spent like 10 minutes at Buc-E's. Everybody's freaking out over your car, because that night, it was probably one of the fastest cars there.

Yeah, yeah. There were those GTRs on beat box.

I think that was the last night, or what's it called? Friday. I don't know, either way, but you were still...

Actually, you know what? I think it was the night before we went to the Buc-E's when...

People were freaking.

People were freaking.

Because it was Tuesday, nobody's there.

Yeah. I mean, there were still, what? 30, 40 cars there, at least.

I think there were still plenty of cars there, yeah.

There were still a ton of cars there, but yeah. When the zero one holds in...

I mean, Buc-E's makes 40 cars look like nothing, though.

Right, yeah, it does.

Yeah. But yeah, no. When the zero one rolled in, everyone just kind of flocked to it as, what's a zero one without a hood on it?

It gets attention.

I heard somebody go, oh, that's a Zr1 as we're pulling in.

You know, funny story too. The other night, I sold some of my blown up LT4 motors, one of the Z06 and one of my Denali.

Okay, I thought it was plural.

Yeah, there's two of them. But the guy that came up to buy them, he bought some other stuff. He bought the stock blower, the Zr1 too. So we did all the stuff at my parents' shop. He picked up the motors. We were just kind of BS'ing. I showed him some of my parents' turbo bikes. We had some cool stuff in the garage, so I just gave him a little tour. The guy's legit. He's super cool. I don't know if he does like dragon drives, but he's like a big time drag racer. His name's Kyle Dorvac or Dovac or whatever. But he's like, hey, where's the Zr1 at? I said, oh, it's on my storage unit. You want to check it out? He's like, oh yeah, I got to. So after we load everything up, we go down there and I back it all the storage unit for him. He takes a video, sends it to one of his friends in Dallas. And sure enough, the guy he sent it to had a picture of me at the Buc-E's from that first night. He was like, wow, isn't this a small world? That's crazy. But anyways.

So we leave Buc-E's.

We leave Buc-E's and I, you know, everyone was going to follow me. Cause we had a group of what? Four or five cars. It was my Zr1, Eric C7, Gt500, DM3. And then what was the other guy's name? Ed, Edward? Ed, yeah.

EJ. EJ.

And then his C7. It was kind of hard to coordinate everyone leaving the gas station at the same time. I just up and left and I thought everyone was kind of behind me, but we were cruising down like this frontage road-ish. And I'm sitting at this light and I'm waiting for it to turn green and it like took forever. So I just inch forward a little bit. And there was a guy like behind me who was waiting with me. Well, when I went to go inch forward just a little bit, I see him like looking down, like, you know, looking real close. He's like trying to drive around me. And I was like, oh my God, dude, there's not enough space. Like, don't do this. And he keeps going. He keeps going. And then I feel the car just move forward a little bit. And his eyes get real big and he's looking down. I'm like, oh, it's bad. His eyes went from, his eyes went from, oh, I can make it, I can make it to, oh my God, just f****** his Zr1. But he had no idea. No, he had no idea. But he, I told him to pull into the lot right there. And then you guys drive by. I don't know if you guys saw me or.

So I saw you, right, and Sean is calling me a lunatic. I'm like, dude, is that Caleb? He's like, no way that's Caleb. He's gotta be like, he's up the road or whatever. I'm like, Sean, because like you're, I think that's the day you switched the wheels, right? You had the red Forge line or whatever. Like the bead lock or whatever. And I'm like, so I zoom in on my phone and, you know, I'm not cool like you Android guys. So I don't have a thousand times zoom, but I zoom in and like in a very blurry sense, I could see that it's the bead locks. I'm like, Sean, that's f****** Caleb. So we go down the road, we do a U-turn with five cars, just blocking traffic. And we all pull into this gas station, like six cars. And it's just this one guy.

From my perspective, when we pull into the lot there, right? I'm looking at and at first, like there's some white scuffs down the side. And I'm like, oh, like this actually does not look good. And the car is a dark color. It's night race blue. It's a very rare one of 54 color. It's like almost a black blue, right?

Typical Corvette guys. It's a one of well.

This is an actual cool Corvette spec, not just like it was built on a Friday. It was, it is the third rarest Zr1 color you can get. That was my only Corvette.

What's the first rarest?

Actually, I should say mine's the fourth rarest. The first rarest is Le Mans blue. They made it, it's a one-off car. It was Vin 1 for Zr1s, right? And it was made just for the person that they knew was going to buy it at the auction. So it went to Barrett Jackson or whatever, and it sold for a couple, it was either a million or a couple million dollars, but that is a one-off spec. Then there's Carlisle blue, which is like a blue silver. And they made nine of those. And then there is Atomic Orange, yeah, Atomic Orange. They made 29 of those. And that's Knight Race blue, which is my color. They made 54 of those. And then from there, they're all in the hundreds.

I got really nervous he was going to do the entire encyclopedia. Just 4,000 cars, we just covered about 80.

Yeah, roughly, yeah, of the 4,000 Zr1s ever made in the year of that. All right, so this dude hits you. Yep.

Was that, did he have a bad license and all that stuff, too?

I actually have a picture of it. It was a piece of paper. Fair enough. Being in Texas, he might have recently crossed the border. Yeah.

Dude, it's a small chance, but I saw his exact car on a tow truck as we were leaving Texas.

The little s***** white HHR, yep.

So, same silver. I swear to, there's a good chance it might have been him. I'm just saying.

He finally got caught up.

He ditched the car after he hit you.

So I was talking to him and we were looking at kind of the scuffs on my bumper, and it was like right on the very corner of the bumper. I kind of wiped it off my hand, and most of it did kind of come off. But there were just like the smallest little scratches and scuffs that like, unless I pointed out to you, you wouldn't notice. But now like anytime someone sees my car out to meet, they're going to know like, oh, if I look right here, there's a little scuff. But it wasn't anything crazy, but it was still like, done. Like it was, it got hit. So in my mind, I'm like, okay, well I don't want to have a police report and then claim this on insurance because one, it's not worth it. Like, who are they going to tell me, buff the paint or repaint the bumper? Well, if you repaint the bumper, you might as well repaint the whole car because you're not going to match that color. Like it's never ever, it's a very difficult color to match. But you guys pull in and the dude gets real nervous. He kind of like balls up, you know, his arms come in. He's like, oh man.

Well, I want to like, let's just paint the picture here because at first he hits you, he gets out, he's dealing with just you. And then all of a sudden whipping into the parking lot. This isn't like a place where you're going to see cars. This is like a little s*** gas station with two pumps.

There was nobody there.

Yeah, I don't even think there was somebody working there.

No, yeah, it was completely dead all around us.

And all of a sudden an M3, a Gt500 and two C7 Z06's come whipping into the parking lot.

Like, and we surrounded him.

Oh yeah.

You know, he balls up and he's like, oh s***, man. Am I about to get jumped?

Yeah, and Eric and Ed are not small guys.

Oh no, they're huge, very intimidating black men.

They are, you don't want to f*** with them.

Nicest guys in the world, by the way, but yeah, at first glance, I would be scared.

Eric has become one of my best homies, like internet homies over the last couple of years of all of our C7 deals, which we can get into later.

Dude, the hospitality he gave us was amazing.

Just a straight up genuine dude. Eric is good s***.

I wish we got him on the podcast while we were down there, but timing just didn't work out.

Yeah, next year, next year for sure. But everyone kind of comes around and they're asking, what the f*** happened? I'm like, well, this d****** ran into me. And first, once I realized that we aren't going to call the cops, we aren't going to get insurance involved, because this dude didn't even have insurance. I told him, hey, get out your insurance card. He's like, okay, I call my mom to get it. And he's like calling all these different people. I'm like, yeah, this dude didn't got insurance, whatever. So then I asked him, hey, you got like 150 bucks in your pocket. And he's like, dude, I don't even have enough money to pay for my hotel tonight. I'm like, okay, well, you got Cash App, PayPal, Venmo. Like what you got? I need some money from you for this, which I didn't, but we're going to try and work him over for something. But then I kind of felt bad because it's like, all right, maybe he doesn't have money and whatever. Like it's really not that big of a deal. Like it's annoying, but it's not that big of a deal.

You're nicer than I am.

What pissed me off though, was he tried to make jokes after he could tell that I was chill about it. And I was like, my blood was still boiling, but like I stay level-headed in those kinds of situations. Like I don't get worked up. But when he started like cracking jokes or like talking s***, like I was like, dude, shut the f*** up. I thought Eric's gonna beat the s*** up.

He was like under his breath, like it's just a Corvette as he was walking away, which I agree with, but you know. Of course you do.

Get out of here, Plasti Dip.

Well, actually it's not Plasti Dip. It's like a better Plasti. It has automotive clear coat.

I heard that in Texas.

Oh my God. I heard it too many times.

But yeah, no. Eric was like, would you say homie? And then dude gets in his car and speeds off. But from there, oh my gosh, the night just got better.

Did it?

Well, yes. We get on the highway and cruise five minutes, if that, and we're cruising from Ennis and we're going through Waxahachie to Mansfield to get E85 because, so there was a racetrack in Waxahachie that had E85, but it was testing at like 50 to 60% for everyone for the week.

Garbage.

Well, yeah, which take, hold on, the tangent on E. We'll get there. So, but the Mansfield Kroger had 80 to 88% and some people were saying that it was testing 88 to 90%, but that was the one in Mansfield. And then there were two or three other locations across Dallas. So I figured if we're going to get E, it's only 20, 25 minutes away and everything that we're doing, we're going back up north anyway. So it like was on the way, but not really on the way, but kind of our only close option to get E85. Well, anyways, we're cruising from the Buc-E's after I get hit. We get on the highway and not even five minutes down the road, I get pulled over for the first time. And I think somebody else was pulled over and it was another cop that had somebody pulled over.

EJ got pulled over.

Was that him?

Yeah, he got pulled over a little further up ahead.

Well, technically, we got pulled over, but I was already pulled over because we were waiting for you.

Yeah, so that was some b*******, by the way, real quick, because me and Sean and then you and the Gt500, we just pulled over. We're like, all right, we're gonna wait for our buddy. And then some guy pulls like you over.

Two cops got behind us at that situation.

Yeah, they started and they never talked to me and Sean, by the way, but they were interrogating Dan like a m***********.

Apparently, well, yeah, he's got Wisconsin plates on it.

Yeah, by the way, my plate, which was a legit Road America plate that didn't come back either. They're like, this doesn't even come back.

So what I heard is that they actually have to call up to the Wisconsin, whoever, I don't know if it's Wisconsin DMV or the some sort of cop hotline in Wisconsin, but has to call. They have to call up to Wisconsin to be able to check Wisconsin plates. And I'm surprised they were not doing that because with everything going on, you would think that they were going to cross every T and dot every single I when they pulled you over. But it must be, you know, they didn't want to deal with the extra headache of actually tracking down or checking to see what they had a lot of other s*** going on that day too. Yeah.

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But first cop pulls me over and the first thing he says is, where's your license plate? I said, well, it's taped in the back window. I hand him my license and the business card from the first cop that pulled me over. He looks at the business card. He looks at my license. I could tell then that he was kind of frustrated because he's like, okay, yeah, like I'm not gonna be able to do anything about this, but I didn't think I was off the hook yet because then he was saying, well, your exhaust is modified and your tires have 330 seconds on them, which he walked up and like as he walked up, it was almost like he checked the tire immediately. Like he had a little gauge and immediately checked the tire. He's like, your tires have 330 seconds and Texas law requires blah, blah, whatever. So these are not safe for highway use. I'm like, well, they are DOT tires. I don't care if they're a DOT tire. They don't have enough tread on them while they're Toyota RRs. They come new with 430 seconds, which didn't meet the Texas requirement anyways. But he goes back to his car. He's like, all right, you know, I'm going to let you off. Just try and do something better with your plate, like put it on the outside or whatever, which I was not going to put it on the outside because if somehow that plate got ripped off, I was screwed. Like there was no other form of saying, hey, I own this car. Like that was, that was it.

So which my thing with that is, couldn't we have just gone to Office Max and just printed it, like copied it for you?

We definitely could have like copied it, made a second one and then.

Yeah.

Which, whatever.

Hindsight.

Yeah.

2020. Next year.

They still would have pulled you over a bunch of times. You were not explaining it each time.

I mean, the car's got bright red bead lock rings on the rear tires. So like that stands out, doesn't have a hood on it. Car's loud as s***. Like I was, I knew what I was getting into. I just didn't think that I would be targeted as much as I was. But anyways, I pull out and you guys were all pulled over a little bit ahead and I just keep driving. We all kind of meet back up and we cruised for what? Maybe 10 minutes, if that. And we pass Dan Rue in his GTR. I look over and I see that stupid little green with the diamond grill, you know, just smiling. You know, cause I feel like he's permanently got his upper lip just kind of perked up so you can see his diamond grill.

Well, I mean, yeah. You spend that kind of money on one, you might as well.

Right.

I'm going to have my lips removed anyway.

I don't think your fellow four guys would appreciate that.

All right.

But anyways, I passed Dan and I kind of get over like great in front of him. Cause I think it was-

Is this at the gas station?

No, this is one right before I got pulled over the second time. Cause then Dan was cruising in our group of cars there.

Oh, okay.

And were you guys directly behind me or was it Dan directly behind me?

It was probably Dan cause we weren't directly behind you at this point.

No, we were back you a little ways. Dan Rue you're talking about.

Dan Rue, not you, Dan.

Cause we caught up to you after your third pull over.

Yep.

I think.

So Dan Rue is directly behind me and out of nowhere another cop swings around and cuts Dan off from what I remember and pulls me over and this guy was fired up. I hand him the business card and my license and he takes the business card, looks at and throws it back at me. He's like, I don't need this. I'm like, okay. He's like, I know you're out here street racing. You're in a group of 20 cars. You cannot play on my intelligence. I'm wasted that. I was like, dude, you gotta be kidding me. Like there's literally like five or six cars here. And like all of these guys are random. I was like, dude, we're literally cruising the gas station, getting gas, and then going back to our Airbnb. We've been at the track all day. I'm tired. I just want to go home. And then he gave me the whole spiel. My windshield's cracked. He said, windshield's cracked. Your tires are not safe for Texas highways. Your exhaust is modified. Your plate isn't illuminated. And he was just going on and on and on. And I was like, yep, this guy is going to f*** me. And Harris called me, and I was like, dude, it's not worth cruising this car anymore. Like, I can't do it at night because every single cop I see pulls me over. So I said, when we're done, when I'm done with this, we're going to eat. We're just going to take my car back to the Airbnb. We're just going to go out to the dig spot, have fun watching some racing. So the cop comes back relatively quick because I thought I was getting the book, if not getting towed that night or that stop. And he's like, well, I'm going to cut you a break. There's a pursuit going on. So I got to get going. So he tears off. And when he comes back up, he throws my license at me too. I'm like, damn, you're a f****** prick. But he didn't get me. So f*** you, whoever you are.

At the end of the day, I respect cops. I think we all do here. I think, you know, within reason, but when you get a guy like that, you're not gonna play on my intelligence.

Yeah, no, it was just a big ego trip for him.

You know, 100% that dude was f****** stuttering when he was called on in class to read a page of the book. That just stuck with him. He's like, I'll show you.

Johnny, what's two plus two?

I just, dude, I listen.

He was traumatized from that moment forward. Don't ever play on Johnny's intelligence.

High school was seven years ago for me, man. I know guys like that.

Yeah, it's wild. It's been that long. Me and my girl were just talking about this the other day. It's literally been eight years since I graduated. That is insane. It doesn't feel like that long.

Here we go with the little kid thing again.

Oh yeah, like we did last episode. Okay, so we anyways.

Dan Holder, you again?

So anyways.

The same age as Adam.

We go over to...

Yeah, so we leave or I pull out and you guys are pulled over and I was not going to stop for you guys because you guys are fine. I just want to to keep going.

Get to the gas station.

So I make it up to the Kroger's and sure enough, who is at the pump? Mr. Dan Rue. So I pull up like on the opposite side of the pump from him and I get out and I start pumping eat. I see his d****** little head poker on the gas pump. He's like, well, they get you for a minute. I was like, oh, nothing. They said I had a pretty face. He just laughs at me and he's like, no, really what they get you for? And I said, well, they couldn't see my license plate because I got a temp tag. And, you know, it was kind of the whole nine modified exhaust tires aren't safe, cracked windshield, blah, blah, whatever. He's like, oh, yeah, they're, you know, they're really out to get everyone. Like, I'm not even trying to do no racing, but it's Dan Roat. Dan Roat's not really trying to race anyone. He's just out there to call everyone out.

Yeah, but we literally weren't like we I might as well have had a Toyota Camry the whole time because we drove the speed limit. We did absolutely no illegal s*** in our cars.

Honestly, for next year, too, like I think it'd be a good idea just to rent a car off Turo. Like we can pull like one of my cars. We'll see what I have next year, but pull one of my cars down there. Maybe do some track stuff with it, but just go 50-50 on like a Hellcat or whatever just for the week.

I mean, Dude, Shawn's M3 is a perfect cruiser too though.

It is. I looked to see if there were any on Turo down there, but there weren't too many great options. Like we could get a C8 for 900 bucks. You get that Gt350 for 600 bucks. That was a good deal. I would be tempted to reserve that thing.

That'd be a fun car.

Because it sounds cool. It's not just like a regular Mustang, but you can still cruise around. You can pull up to meets and not be laughed at for pulling up with the base Mustang GT and the standard down there is like a Mustang GT with weld. So if you have stock wheels on it, oh my God, get out of here.

So we should bring our own set of welds.

Yeah, bring your wheels down. Well, that's if we don't lose any on the way down.

Yeah.

Here's what we're going to do next year, Dan. We're going to bring your enclosed trailer. We're going to buy a ton of welds. We're going to get like maybe 20 sets, and we're going to rent it out to people just so they can pretend they're fast.

That's legitimately a thing for truck people. There are guys that will go to truck shows. It's preset up before the truck show, but you can like rent 26 or 28 or whatever ridiculous wheels for like Daytona Truck Week and like Lone Star Throwdown. Like all these different truck shows, these guys, these truck guys can't afford to buy nice wheels. They go and rent their wheels or hit up the guys through a firm and get their wheels financed.

But those aren't cheap wheels either. They're like, what, 20 grand for those big a** wheels?

Yeah, it depends.

Like if you get the forged ones, which you wouldn't even ever need in a truck like that, you're not actually going, but just to have that flex.

No, like to have like a decent set of like truck wheels, say like 24 by 14s, which is wide and big, you know, you're looking at five to eight grand for a decent set. But then if you get into like the really big or like the dually wheels, dually wheels, I mean, right. Looking at, like I said, JTX forged wheels, which are kind of the premium wheels for that. It's like JTX forged, American Force. And then there are a couple other brands. You're looking at like 15-ish, 12 base price for like kind of basic small wheels to 15, 20, 25.

Yeah, I wasn't too far off. I got nervous when I was like no, no, no.

I still think you guys are doing it wrong. I think we just order from Summit a whole bunch of American racing wheels. And then we hot glue bead lock rings around the outside and we get a sharpie and we just right weld in the middle of it. I think that we can just sell them some knockoff.

Yeah, the guys with regular GT Mustangs wouldn't know the difference.

That's probably true.

You guys remember that one, the white one that didn't have a bumper on that was loud as s***. He pulled up to a couple of different meets, but like the rear end was kind of smashed up, didn't have a bumper. It's like a straight hoopty, but he pulled up to the one roll race meet we were at. I was like, dude, why the f***?

That was kind of a common thing to be missing body panels down there from bumpers and hoods, especially because of intercoolers and superchargers.

This one, it was weird. Like it was raggedy.

Missing for no reason.

Yeah. Yeah. The kid looked like a little crack baby.

Aw, poor little crack baby.

Speaking of crack baby, Lethal Performance, those guys went down there and did some work. So Lethal Performance is a shop that hooked me out. When we got down there, I went to go do some testing on the Zr1 because it is kind of a newer setup and found that we were getting ridiculous belt slip and the cam was way too small. So we were having like lots of restriction issues. Lethal Performance, which the crack baby tie.

I was going to say, it works this, you didn't tie it in, but yeah.

Lethal Performance has a car named crack baby. It's a Maroon Zr1 and they went and raced, which at the time was known as being the fastest Zr1 on the street, which was Josh Vargas' car, which was built by Advanced Modern Performance or AMP. And those AMP guys like to run their mouth a lot. They build fast cars. Like there's no doubt about it, but oh my God, Sam Miller is a dick. He just likes to talk his s*** to anyone on the air net.

And he's just airing out all his laundry today.

But I don't care. Me and Sam go back and forth all the time. Well, from time to time, I think me and Sam are cool, but we definitely have our differences and we definitely let each other know from time to time. But anyways, that car was stupid fast. It was a black Zr1, built motor, stock blower, but tons of weight reduction, like tubular K-member, no power steering, no AAC, had carbon seats, kind of the whole nine. And he was going like three sevens, three sixes on the street, 62130. And Lethal went down there with the intention of racing him, which they took the car from the track, which they broke at the track. They broke the diff, swapped the diff and transmission to go race him with their white car, which they call Lethal One. And they put two cars on them. And then they raced him with Crack Baby, which is the maroon car and did the same thing. Those are both 2650 cars like mine. But yeah, the Lethal cars have to be going like three fives ish, 62130, which is, which is moving. But they're super humble down to earth.

And like, they're super nice guys.

Oh my gosh, yeah. Danny, the owner, one, he sent a guy twice down to San Antonio, which is four hours away, one to bring me a pulley so I could go down a size and another trip to bring me a smaller belt. And, you know, I ended up trading him just a suede shift knob that matched a steering wheel that I had sold them a couple weeks earlier. So it was like, he just did it to help me out. And like I told him, you know, how much money do you want? I'll pay Paul you whatever, whatever you want. He's like, oh, you know, we got talking and basically came across that I had this shifter with me. He's like, oh, I want that thing. So it was going even. Oh, okay, sweet. It was worthless to me, but to you, that's sweet. But yeah.

It's a good deal. I mean, everybody left happy. That's what matters.

I wish we could have gone out that night and raced my car with them, even though like my car wasn't doing what I wanted it to do. It would have been fun to go get in with those Zr1 guys and just, even if I could have just shaved like a half a second, just reducing the belt slip, I could have dealt with the ridiculous boost that we were seeing, but just getting rid of the belt slip, the car would have gone a half second or more faster, 60 to 130.

Which would have been roughly what?

I think ballpark, low fours. It shouldn't be in that range, but.

It should be sub four, 60 to 130s, right? Once, all said and done.

Yeah, ballpark, like I would love to see, and it's not easy to do with these cars. It is easy because you can just do a pull in third gear and go from 60 or start at 50 and do 130 plus just in third gear because Zr1s have like the best gearing possible for roll racing. I mean, everyone that has any kind of built Corvette, if you're making around a thousand wheel before you'd ever consider doing more power, which not many people do this, but more people should do this. And the really fast guys do do this. Is swap their trans for a Zr1 gear trans or like a Zr1 trans just because the gear ratios are so much better. The gear drop in like a Grand Sport, the Grand Sport or base trans is awful. When you go from third to fourth, you drop from like 7,500 RPM to like 4,000 RPM. So like that's a ridiculous RPM drop. So you fall completely out of power and the car falls on its face. The Z06 is slightly better, but still not anywhere near as good as the Zr1 gearing. But...

To be fair though, the Grand Sports are built for the guys with the new balance shoes. They want some fuel economy and like, yeah. I just need to pull up to a meet and get there.

Yeah, I got the Z51 suspension package on this thing.

Yeah.

They always like to say that, don't they?

Yeah.

I don't even know what that is, honestly. But back to Texas. So after I got pulled over, we go see Dan. Everyone kind of got their videos and got to chat. We talked to Dan for a while too. He was cool.

He was cool. I like meeting Dan in person. Like he wasn't this larger than life personality. Some people may disagree, but like in my interaction with him, like I thought he was chill. He was all right. Like I could totally see myself like being like, you know, lunch with the guy, not being like annoyed.

Again, though, another internet famous guy that my 40 year old a** has no clue who he is.

I didn't know who he was until I saw it.

Was it you that asked him or asked somebody asked him like a question and he's like, I'm a content creator.

It was no, we were just, yeah, we were chit chatting, but I didn't ask him. He literally, I was like, Oh, did you come down here to race? And he's like, I came down here for content. That's how we got to that.

And I was kind of funny. Like I kind of introduced myself to like, cause like I really don't know him. Like some people have been following him forever. I just found out about his existence. Like maybe like four or five months ago, I showed you his original videos.

They're hilarious.

They're funny as hell. Like when you brought that up, I'm like, oh, that's the guy. Otherwise I had-

The Dan Dan guy, the guy that would go in.

The dancing Dan Rue, yeah.

Yup, he'd go into like Foot Locker and like try on a shoe and they'd bolt out of the door. Yeah.

But no, like it was chill. Like, and then I think he just left. I think he just went to bed or something after that.

He's like, he said like six times, yeah, my Airbnb is right over here in Manfield. Now keep in mind the houses that were around there. They were all massive.

Like super nice.

Those are nice houses.

There's a Kroger right next to them.

Yeah. Yeah.

Of course it's a, yeah.

Super nice neighborhoods. He's like, yeah, my Airbnb is right up the road. Yeah, I got a house right down the road. But no, he was cool. When I got out of the car, I was like, I acted like I had no idea who he was. Cause like, I didn't want to give him like the satisfaction. Oh my God, you're Dan Rue. Cause he was getting all the other day.

You want to go all fangirl on him?

No, I wasn't trying to do all that.

Which is cool. Cause you, you do the complete opposite of me. You're like, oh my God, it's Minnoxide.

But anyways, I think that night, you know, we took the Zr1 back to the Airbnb, uneventful. We didn't see a single cop. No. The whole drive back.

It was like a 40 minute drive back.

Yeah. It didn't see a single cop. And I think on the drive there, we saw easily 40 or 50 cops. Easy.

They were like, there'd be like three or four of them on one side of the highway.

They were like lined up in those little things on the side, like they're literally like ready to go out.

And in Texas, the highways are not like here in Minnesota or Wisconsin, where there's like just a turnaround. Like Texas has all their frontage roads and then like frontage road pull offs. So it wasn't just like the cops are sitting in, you know, the medians, they were sitting on the side roads too. So like you could see two or three of them in a median and they'd see two or three of them tucked over on the frontage road.

Yeah.

So like if a good group of cars came racing through there, they would have got everyone.

So also, yeah, just to put it in perspective, they, we heard going down that if you were caught racing on the street, you were getting immediately impounded, no questions asked.

And not even impounded, like your car could be seized.

Yeah.

And not given back.

And we saw several cars on flatbeds.

Was it that night or was it the night before that we saw?

I swear every night I saw at least one car on a flatbed getting.

Yeah.

It might have been that night or the night after where we saw there was a one series it looked like. So that thing was getting loaded on a tow truck. Oh no, no, he was about to get loaded on a tow truck. Before that it was like a Mustang.

And he was already like halfway on the tow truck.

Yeah.

But yeah, that was crazy.

They were not joking about taking everyone's s*** down there, dude. They were serious. We saw the helicopters. We saw all the cop cars everywhere. I mean, they gave you so much s*** for not having that plate.

Yeah. Yeah. I was just getting harassed, but it is what it is.

But there were some cool guys too. Like you actually walked up.

The very first night, yeah.

The first night, dude, he literally just walks up to a cop car at the Buc-E's. He just like flags him down with true authority. He's like, come over here, I gotta ask you something.

Is this illegal?

Literally, like you were, explain how that conversation went.

Yeah, so the cop was just kind of cruising around the Buc-E's lot. And I waved him over and I was like, hey, I got a question for you. He's like, all right, I got an answer. I said, okay, so I'm down here from Wisconsin. I just bought this car and I have a temp tag. Am I going to get harassed for having a temp tag? And he's like, does it come back to the car? I'm like, yeah. He's like, you're fine. And then we kind of were talking. I'm like, well, you know, like, are you able to run it? Can you check it? Like, can you just make sure? I just don't want to deal with any drama down here. Like, I'm down here to have fun. I want to go to the track. You know, I want to just have a good time down here. And he's like, dude, as long as it's like a legit temp tag, like you are fine. So, okay, you know, I took that to, you know, to heart. And I was like, yep, you know, I'll be fine for the week. Well, when we were kind of wrapping up our conversation, he's like, so what's it make? I'm like, ah, I don't know, a thousand. And he's like, ah, let me hear it. So I jump in and start it. And I mean, the car is stupid loud and he's over there grinning ear to ear.

It's like, you wish all, cause there was a lot of cops down in Texas that were car enthusiasts. Like we met a guy the day we went out to like the Roll Me Tour, whatever, which was kind of a flop, but like we went out there and like, this dude was like out checking out, he's a big BMW guy. He used to have like an E46 or E36, whatever it was. He's checking out Sean's M3, freaking out. And then the next M3 pulls in, has a ski box, like Matt Black. He's like, all right, Sean's dead to him. It was like, amazing.

Yeah, no, I was a little nervous. So this was like nighttime, you know, was like, that was the Roll Race group there. All the fast Roll Race cars were there. And this cop pulls in with the group. I'm like, oh, great. Like this guy's gonna tell us to leave. He gets out of the car. He starts looking at everyone's car. Well, then he goes over to Sean and starts glazing them.

Yeah, pictures and videos of him, like just chit chatting.

You have to send me those.

Then he found the other G80 that was there, the black one with the ski box and talked to him forever. But that was fun.

That dude looks like a BMW owner.

He was a little off.

The collared shirt.

He was airport police, just to put it in perspective.

Super cool, dude.

That meet was a lot of fun too. That's normally, when I went to Texas 2K in 2020, that was what most of the meets were like, were cars more of that, but more of them. So all thousand plus horsepower cars. But then it was just chilling at a gas station, then Junior would send out in the group chat, all right, this is the route we're going. Usually we'd meet up somewhere in North Houston and then cruise up and around over to either the Tombaul or the New Caney Hobby Lobby. So you'd cruise from the Stripes or whatever gas station it was to the Hobby Lobby. At the Hobby Lobby, we'd all park in the lot and they'd pick like five to seven cars. They'd go out and film their races, come back, pick another five to seven cars, go out, film their races and come back.

Yeah, that was so fun when I went down there my first time in 22, I think it was. 21, 22, I don't know, whatever it was. Yeah, it was pretty cool.

23, because it was last year, right?

No, my first year was the year before. Yeah, so 22.

I got 22.

Dude, how about that lady?

So at the same meet, I was talking to one of my buddies, Aaron Barr, another internet homie who has a Zr1.

Down in St. Louis, right?

Yep, yep, he's out of St. Louis. And we have identical builds. Like to a T everything, the only difference was he had the cam that I need. He's like, yeah. And like the months leading up to this, he's like, yeah, man, I'm curious to see what you do with that cam. I'm like, yeah, it'll be fine. He was f****** right.

Which cam does he have in his car?

So it's a custom spec cam from Alec Bledsoe of LMP of Maryland. And they are the ones that build the car for Greg Kong. Greg Kong is like the Zr1 god, I guess you could say, because he's the only guy making new parts for Zr1s. He went like low eight with his stick shift car, which is, you know, that's quick for like a stock suspension, stock everything. Well, not stock everything, but like, you know, a regular kind of Zr1, a Street Zr1. But yeah, Alec builds that car, and it's specced just for the ported 2650, which needs a lot more of the, what it be, technically the overlap. So it would hang the exhaust valves open longer to alleviate more of the cylinder pressure just because there's so much air, so much more air getting in versus a stock blower, which is what I had before, which my cam was specced perfectly for like a max effort stock blower setup. I thought I could get away with it, but we're going to swap the cam here soon. But anyways, you know, me and Aaron are chatting, and this lady pulls up, and you know...

She was staring me down when they pulled in, by the way. Like, I made eye contact with her, and I locked eyes with her.

Dude, she was giving everyone kind of like the f*** me eyes. Like, she wanted to go home with somebody that night. Man, that's bad. But...

But that's the energy I was kind of getting to.

But she was very loopy, too. Like, she was under the influence of something. But she comes up, and she's like, what's going on? And there's like all these cars here. And Aaron just kind of... Yup, yup. Aaron just kind of takes a step back. Were you there from the start? Yeah.

The whole thing I witnessed.

So I'm like, just straight b*********** her. Because I didn't know...

You didn't know she's a fed?

Yeah, exactly. She looks really feddy. At the Buc-E's before that, when we were cruising up to the... wherever... The day before, when I got pulled over all those days, when we were about to leave, there were two old guys that were kind of sketching me out. They were like, oh, you guys going out racing? I said, I don't know. Maybe at some point. He said, oh, where are you going? I said, I don't know. We're going to get some E85. He's like, oh, where's there a good E85 station? I said, oh, we're going to the Kroger's in Mansfield. He's like, oh, OK, sounds good, man. Be safe out there. But it was like super weird vibes. So I almost wonder if he couldn't have been a Fed, which it sounds crazy, but down there, that is 100% how that would play out. So then he sees, OK, this... one of the louder cars there, one of the faster looking cars there. Oh, well, this group of cars is going to the Mansfield-Kroger station. And then we drove through 50 cop cars. Coincidence?

You did it to yourself.

Maybe, yeah.

Way to snitch on yourself.

Right?

But yeah, she had that just weird energy.

Yeah.

Meth head energy.

I don't know if it was that far.

Not quite that.

This is 12... what was it? Midnight-ish or past 12, 1 o'clock? 1 o'clock. Yeah.

I took it and run with it. So I was straight b*********** her.

I got your energy. Me and Aaron looked at each other and we were just like, yeah, he's about to do this.

I was like, I don't know. I don't know. All these cars, like we were just cruising on the highway and we hit something and like all these cars are broken. So we're just waiting for the tow truck as the C7 is like halfway loaded onto the trailer that was already loaded checking for oil leaks and s***. And I was like, yeah, we all hit something like our cars are all broken waiting for tow truck. She's like, what? That's crazy, man. Like how?

She said, no, she's like all of them.

I was like, yeah, every single one of them.

You literally said it that way too.

There's more cars coming in too.

Yeah, more cars. Oh my gosh, what's going on? I don't know. This is crazy, isn't it? And I just like kept feeding her and feeding her and like she's just buying it. And then finally we kind of got to her like objective being there. She said that she was looking for signatures.

Before you do that though, I had a perfect, what's the word, like something to collaborate the story or corroborate the story. What's the word?

Yeah, corroborate. Yeah, good enough.

I'm learning English today. Because on the way to this gas station, Dan missed an exit. And then I'm like, dude, you missed the exit. So then he just backs up because there's nobody here. By the way, keep in mind, there's a cop following us. Like literally like a minute ago, he backs up. And then I just hear like he literally goes over the curb in his Gt500. So like when you're like, all the cars are broken. I was like, yeah, you should check out the left side of that Gt500. It's probably got some gnarly curb.

That wheel is bent for sure.

Good thing they have the carbon wheels on.

Oh, my God.

Those things would be toast.

Dan will have cried the rest of the trip.

I do have some roadkill on the side of my car. So I don't think I've cleaned off yet.

Oh, disgusting.

Yeah, that was I remember seeing that.

That's more of a me thing to leave guts on a car.

That lady was something else. And then it was kind of funny. Aaron's not going to care. But I glance over at Aaron. He's kind of like checking her out up and down, which I mean, she wasn't like sketchy looking.

Minnesota 7.

Yeah, solid Minnesota 7. But Aaron's kind of like checking her up and down. And I just said something way out of pocket. And I just see him cracking up laughing back there. But yeah, she was, yeah. Texas Gas Station.

She just joined our group of like six dudes. We're just like, who is this? So we're like, yeah, I don't know. So like, I think we just kind of, the evening got a little late. And apparently the dig spot got busted because you could see all the cars leaving.

Yeah, when we decided to finally go check it out, it was like they come flying out of there.

If we would have went to that a little bit earlier, if we would have just went straight to that dig spot, which I had the address for it too, but I think everyone was kind of on board with just checking out some of the roll racing stuff. But if we went to that, there was some legit racing going on. That twin turbo Trackhawk with the turbos out of the hood, the F150 that had the turbos hanging out of the hood too. All those cars that we saw from that first night we went out, all of those guys were there racing. So there were some legit races going on. But I also think that kid with that Maroon ZL1 was racing too. So how sketchy some of it was, I don't know.

That dude almost whacked a few people. We wanted to get too into it.

We kind of got sidetracked on a lot of this, but we could even go back and go over each of the nights. But the first night when we went out, so the first night as in we got to Texas, we went to go hit the Buc-ee's because we were like, oh, let's go hit a Buc-ee's. We got to get something from the Buc-ee's. And then we cruised up to a dig spot. And there were tons of nice cars there. There was a Demon there, some McLarens there.

That crazy TRX.

Yeah, TRX on slicks all the way around. That thing was serious.

Were those 15s on that thing?

I doubt it was 15s.

They were a small wheel.

I'm guessing they were probably like 17s, but what made them look weird is they were probably a 30 inch tall tire. And a TRX come stocked with a 35 inch tire. So it looked like tiny on there.

It looked so small.

But there were a ton of just legit cars there. That was a sweet... I thought there was going to be some good racing going down, but then, you know, cops rolled in when the first pair was going to go down the road. It was a Mustang and like a Bullton.

It snuck up like right behind us.

Yeah, yeah. But so that was like the Tuesday night when we get down to Texas. Wednesday night is when we had the cop incident going on. But did we go to the cash days after that? That's when the first like cash days...

Yeah, that was Wednesday.

It was like a mini cash days. We pulled up a little late, obviously.

Which was nice because it wasn't like insane or crowded. We got to see some hits. Yeah, that was... We were out there till what, 3 in the morning?

Yeah, I think every night we were out till 3 in the morning.

Yeah, and our plans really felt... That's why I told you before Texas, if we can make all the plans in the world we want, they're all going to fall apart.

Yeah, and the other thing too, even though nothing went good for any of us... It went well.

I still had fun.

Exactly. That's the biggest objective. Obviously, you only got the one podcast in. I didn't get any racing in. But for everyone, we just had a blast. It was just a fun time. We didn't get to go to some of the meets that we wanted to go to, like the Shelby meet.

Well, that whole day got screwed anyway.

Yeah, but everything else we did, during the time we were down there, we just did stuff. Everything we did, it was just fun. And I think our group, we all just kind of got along. We all go with the flow with each other. There was no, like, oh, I want to go here, but someone else wants to go here.

Well, helping multiple cars helped with that too, right? Because when I went down there with Chaz, Jess and Marina in 22, the four of us were stuck to the Trackhawk. If I want to go with somebody else, it's not going to happen. Whereas with this, we all had the code to the Airbnb. We had three cars, technically two to choose from. It worked out fine. That's the way to travel, but don't cram everybody into one car because everybody's going to be complaining about something. Because you're out there wheeling and dealing. This guy came back with half a car.

Yeah, I made a junkyard run while I was down there.

Dan brings back two bumpers, two doors, and what else? And a seat.

Minus one tire.

Well, we didn't have room for your s*** after I got my s***, so something had to go.

Dan picks up $200 in escort parts and loses a $500 Toyo RR on the way back.

F****** dick.

It was literally like, I don't know if we want to get into this story.

No, I'm going to get into it. I'll tell you right now what happened.

I tried to get Harris to go get it, man.

He was confused. Seriously, I'm looking at this highway and I evaluated this.

Four or five lanes.

Before we even do this, I'm literally nodding off half asleep, and then I just hear Dan say, oh s***, what? He's like, we lost a tire. He's looking back, I'm like, did he blow a tire on a trailer or something? It's pouring rain or whatever. And he goes to the Buc-ee's over there in Melissa.

In North Dallas.

And he's just going over, and he's like, yeah, we lost a tire. And he's like, I see it bouncing back there. He's like, three cars had to swerve.

Well, just to put it in perspective, it's a drag radio, right? So obviously you know, but it's like 14 inches wide, and so it doesn't roll over on its side like a normal tire would. It stayed straight up and down, and it rolled into oncoming traffic, which was insane. There was cars everywhere, and I saw three or four cars had to go, all over the place to avoid it. And then it just goes up nice and slowly, and it just bumps the little median divider, the concrete divider, and then it just sits there, up on its end, of course, doesn't tip over because it's a ridiculous tire. And I'm looking at it, and I look at Harris, and Harris is like, it's raining, traffic is non-stop. I'm like, this is going to be like, Frogger level 1000.

Well, I'm looking at this, I'm evaluating this, I'm like, Dan, neither of us are athletes here. These cars are going 80, 90 miles an hour, it's a four or five lane. And like, okay, Dan's idea, like he felt bad after we took off. He's like, man, a show went back there and stopped it. And like we thought about it, I'm like, dude, it's a four foot shoulder back there, we can't park on the left side. So no matter what way you do this, you have to run across the highway. It's raining, you slip on one of those paint slicks, it's game over. It's like, so then a few hours later, after our conversation, we hit up our buddy Jay, who's coming back from Austin, right? Because he lives up here in Minnesota half the year. And I'm like, Jay, I got an idea for you. Like, because he's like, oh, man, his trip is boring. I'm about to fall asleep, whatever. He was complaining about something. I'm like, well, here's something to spruce up your trip. So I found like on Google Maps, like I gave him a pin. I'm like, hey, start looking at the left side of the road here. Two miles out, you find this tire, it's a $500 tire. And Dan's like, I got a crisp $100 bill if you come back with that tire. So dude, he sends me a picture. Like, this is maybe like within a quarter mile.

It's eight or nine o'clock too. So I thought traffic would be like down to a minimum, right?

Yeah.

He's like a quarter mile away from like wherever the destination was. You can go on Google Earth, by the way. We'll show you exactly like how bad it was.

We'll get it next year when we're down there.

Yeah.

But it's like tons of traffic. This is at night. And I was like, he's like, dude, ain't no f****** way. I'm not dying for a tire for a hundred dollar bill. It's worth a hundred dollars.

So I was like passed out and you called me and then Dan text me. He's like, I lost your tire. I'm like, they got me f*****. They're f****** with. Well, also this whole trip, Harris is like lying to everybody every single every time someone asks him anything like Sean asked, Oh, how's the drive going? Oh, well, currently we're unloading the cars in Oklahoma. The truck broke down, typical Ford. We're going to drive the rest of the way in the court in the car.

But he didn't know that we had the truck and trailer still until we got down to Texas.

This is like a four hour time period. Sean had to think that my truck was just stranded in some random s***. Frickin state.

To be fair, the first time they did call the truck, the truck went into limbo.

Two times he called us and something went wrong. What was the first thing? I can't even remember.

Oh, I can remember what it was. Yeah, you f***** with him a couple of times.

The first time was when we went into limp mode. And then the second time was when we were in that that gas station or whatever, like right into Texas. What did you tell him then?

Hey, guys, real quick, if you are this far into the show, you are probably enjoying it. That said, if you got five or ten seconds to jump on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, wherever you're listening to just drop a quick review, it will go a really long way in getting us in front of more car enthusiasts. A share on Facebook and Instagram doesn't hurt either. Let's get back to the show. Oh, I don't even know, man. I just know I like everyone. You were just with their harmless jokes. It's like us breaking down doesn't affect him getting to Texas.

No, like when you when like it first happened, I was like slightly annoyed. But then I thought about I woke you up with bad news. And I was like, you know what? Honestly, like the Toyo Rs, they are hard to find. Like one, they stopped making them. They don't make those tires anymore. And they're transitioning over into a new rebranded Toyo R, which is the same tire, just new branding. But they start making those in April of this year, but only select sizes. And my size is not one of those sizes. So I'll have to get a new set later on in the year when they finally release my size again. But I was fine because like I had just traded the set of 15-inch forge lines to Eric for my original set of forge lines that I had gotten two years ago. So I had gotten the 18s back. So I had the set of 18-inch RRs on my CCWs, the set of RRs on my forge lines. And then I had brought down an extra set just in case something were to happen. Just, you know, something happened. I needed one of the tires, not for my car, just to lose it on the side of the highway.

But no, but literally me calling it was like the equivalent of your mom waking you up for school and be like, Hey, we're out of cereal.

Mom, I don't even like cereal.

It's like, I can't make you ego, sweetie. Sorry. They flew out of the truck. So, okay, so we went on to that.

We kind of skipped to the end there, but yeah, I mean all of all the nights were kind of the same. We just went out to the dig spots every single night. And then the last night, oh my gosh, that was kind of ridiculous. It was the start of like the official big cash days. So there were some legit cars and it was like, Hey, here's the address. Don't tell anyone. Well, everyone ended up finding out about it, which that's just how it goes. But I does it.

Cause that was a lot of people that showed up.

What happened at industrial part that all we were there, those cops had to have been setting up. This is that same night.

Oh yeah. So when we get to the first meat spot, right? That's where they do the driver's meeting, the spectators pitching some cash just to pay for the security. And when we go to leave, there were 15, 20 cops just sitting out there waiting. And then they started directing traffic. So you guys called us and we're like, and me and Sean were riding together. So you guys called us and we're like, Oh, I think we're getting led into like a parking lot to all get ticketed. Well, they kind of direct everyone out a certain way. And you could tell who had the address and who didn't have the next address because me and Sean dipped off on the side road as everyone else kept driving straight. All the other spectator cars were driving straight.

Well, to be fair, we tried to follow you, but the cops were telling us where to go. We had no choice.

Well, and that's the thing. Like the cops had all these intersections, but this road, I mean, it literally looked like a dirt road to us. And we pulled onto it. Sean goes to slow down to turn. He's like, is that a road? And he turns onto it. And it took us to like a trailer park or whatever. But then we loop back around like a block and the cops are directing everyone still coming through the way we had just gone through. And we're just trying to go through the intersection the other direction, which they ended up letting us do. But I remember looking back and there were like six cop cars parked on the street and they were all just like sitting there. I'm like, these guys are not going to follow us. And with us, so we were in the BMW, there were three other truck and trailers like kind of in our little group there. So it was like, yeah, we're going to go race, but all these other cars are just driving that way. Why are you following those other cars and not the people that are going to race?

But the truck and trailers is what I would be following.

Yeah. Yeah. But then we pull up to this meet and me and Sean, like when we got on the highway, I don't know if it was like this for you guys, but there was nobody. Like we had a couple of truck and trailers by us, but there was nobody. Like it was dead.

Well, dude, we were going like, cause like I got on the maps. I'm like, Dan, like we did the same loop or whatever. And I was like, oh, the cops are down. Let's not go back there. And everybody, you could literally see like a convoy of like 30 cars behind us following us. And I'm like, all right, we need to get away from these people now. So, cause like, again, like you said, you could tell who had the address cause everybody was taking the same stupid corner. So then I look at the map. I'm like, damn, like, cause my maps isn't loading. I'm like, let's just go this way. So we took like a detour, just going completely the other opposite side.

The truck stop quick.

The truck stop. It was a sketchy truck stop. Yeah. Dan was not happy with that one. He was very unhappy with my navigating there. Yeah. I unloaded one there. It was a, it was a nice comfortable truck stop for me though. But yeah, no, I literally dropped.

Double layer or triple layer of toilet paper on the seat.

Nah, it's raw dog.

Okay. So it was a nice truck stage.

All right. First of all, unless it's like a nice Buc-Ease or, you know, a nice gas station, if you raw dog, if you raw dog, I don't know what to say, dude. You a menace.

So everybody's doing that.

Yeah, you dirty.

Okay.

So anyways, off topic.

When we pull up to the spot, we started seeing more and more cars. Well, the original-

When they were shuffling out, before we were out of this other spot here, I was convinced they were pushing us to a parking lot to like issue us tickets. Like I thought for sure they were funneling us somewhere.

Organized crime, repercharges.

And just for all the haters out there listening, I had my 13-year-old daughter with me this whole week. And it was before you go ahead and judge me, yes, I had her out till three o'clock in the morning at street races and things. And I don't really care. She's a straight A student. And can you imagine that kind of life experience at 13 years old? Talk about mind blown. So-

Yeah, whole new perspective.

Absolutely.

Cause keep in mind, this is my first like, cache days in like street racing experience. Sort of, sort of. I honestly wasn't even racing. We didn't even do any racing, which is kind of funny. Like me and Sean kind of tried last year, but it was kind of a bust for us. Cause like, that's the other thing about Texas. If you're the last person to get this information, you're just going to show up right when all the, like I remember we got the address to one spot. We showed up within 20, the cops pulled in with us. They must have just got the address.

They're like, yeah, this guy brought the cops.

Like Sean was like switching his tune or whatever in his parking lot because f****** Mopar, you can't just click a button.

See, and that's the thing too. Like Texas is really fun when you have the right connections. Like if you're just, and you know, you don't have to, you don't have to have the right connection. So you can go to the track. You can have fun at the track. I mean, just doing the track thing all week, that is an experience in itself. You can enjoy your time down there. Go eat some good Texas food for dinner and then forget street stuff.

Go to Buc-ee's. There's plenty of meats. There's thousands of like hundreds of flyers and other meats and stuff like that. The illegal activity is not, but very small part of it.

It's an extra curricular.

Yes, absolutely.

You can go and enjoy Texas without doing that. And there are people that try so hard to go down there and just street race. But if you don't know the right people, you won't be in with the group that can actually get runs in. And you'll see there are videos coming out from Street Science Texas, from Racing FX. And then I think Streetcar was down there too, but a very abbreviated version of Streetcar. Normally in Houston, Streetcar video is the ones that like run all of their street racing stuff. And it's funny. Last weekend, they did a meet that was 800 plus horsepower. And there are going to be better videos from that than the entire week of Texas 2K because all of the heavy hitters came out. I mean, like Justin White, Justin White is a big LS LT tuner. He's one of the better ones out there. Me and Justin have talked a lot. I really considered using him, but I'd love the guy that I use for my cars now. But Justin White was down there. A bunch of AMP cars were out there. A bunch of midnight Mustangs were out there. I mean, you name it, it was down there. A bunch of fast CR1s. And just some of the videos I've seen so far from the weekend after Texas 2K down in Houston, it was better than any of the Dallas stuff, which, you know, it's hard. Dallas is not impossible to get the racing stuff off.

But if you're a heavy hitter, it's not worth the risk. You would rather go to another event that's like an off season type thing that would be not during Texas 2K.

I think you had to kind of give it a little bit of slack too though, cause it is a new event. People got to figure it out. Like the Houston location, what? They had like damn near 12, I think it was what, 12 years to get that sorted out. Cause Texas 2K started what, 2000?

I thought, no, I thought Peter said that, cause he explained it during-

2000, yeah. 2000.

Was it 2000? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's like, as dumb as this sounds, this is how the Texas 2K name came about. It was the year 2000, and we had just changed into the new whatever, and I came up with Texas. Texas 2K, just like that. And back then it was hosted at Hennessey performance. So Hennessey had its own little track. Well, I think at the time it was operated as like its own separate drag strip, but Hennessey happened to be right there. And I think now Hennessey has absorbed that track as part of their facility to do all their testing, which I'm not going to give Hennessey any more praise because they're an absolute joke in the modified car community. Anyone that doesn't know anything about a car will see a Hennessey car and be like, oh my God, it's a Hennessey car, a Hennessey 1200. But yeah, Hennessey's a real one. Hennessey's an absolute joke. I mean, you can go spend, let's say, for instance, a C7 Zr1. You can go get a Hennessey 1200 package. So I think there's one local here that may or may not be, I think there's technically two. One of them may or may not be legitimate, I heard. Interesting.

I only know of one, so.

Yeah, I think I've seen, I think I've heard that there's a story of like two of them. Somebody called down to like check on one of the cars because like they didn't think it was legit and like it wasn't legit. But anyways, send your C7 Zr1 there to get a 1200 horsepower package, right? You'll go spend $80,000 with them, which should never cost that much to do one of those cars, but go spend $80,000 with them and you'll end up with like 800 wheel, 900 wheel, which is like a basic, you don't even have to do anything to one of those to make that, except the LT5 that comes in the C7 Zr1s has port injection and a 2650 from the factory. So like that's what everyone does to the C7 Z06s anyways. They do port injection and a 2650 and then they go make 1200 horsepower and run 360 130. But yeah, Hennessy's, Hennessy the joke, end of tangent. Back to the street racing in Texas.

Or lack thereof.

Yeah, well, yeah. So we get to this spot. This is Friday night, so, or was it Friday night?

Yes, it was all a blur.

Yeah, Friday night, we get to the actual cash day spot. And we pull into the lot, and the front lot of this building is all full, like completely full of trailers, cars. That was for the racers. People were parking in the grass across the street from this front lot. And then there's these massive warehouses behind this front lot where everyone was kind of parking. And that's where we ended up parking a lot of other races were staging their stuff between these two warehouses. Well, we get there and there's maybe 50-ish spectators, 100 spectators when we get there. So a decent, like that's a decent amount of spectators for like a street race.

You're talking about when we met the guy with the red Zr1, right?

No.

Or is this the other one? You're talking about the first cash days or which one?

No, this is the last one.

Friday night, this is the last one we go to. This is the final location, which I thought was a horrible location.

Yeah, because there was construction out on the road that they were racing on.

Residential houses down at the end of the run there, too.

But it was right next to a wildlife sanctuary, so that's why they were doing it, is because there was a...

We're not giving anything away here, are we?

No, no, no, I mean, I don't think so.

There was a reason why they picked this spot. I thought it sucked for where we were at.

Yeah.

This is not the spot where there was a thousand people, was it? Yes, yeah. Okay, you said a couple of 50. I was like, wait a second.

When they got there by the time we showed up.

Yeah, when we got there, there was like, let me keep trying.

That's right, yeah, that's right, because we showed up like a half hour later.

Yeah, so there was not very many people there, but as people were getting ready, they were marking out the road, measuring out everything, getting everything set up. More cars kept coming, it was just car after car. And then all of a sudden, before any of the racing got on, the first 300 feet of the street, now this is a four lane street, and they were racing on the middle two lanes. So the cars were right next to each other, and then there was a center divider that went down to separate the two cars. People were lining up on the dotted lines that separated the lanes from each other on the two directions of traffic. For the first 300 feet of the track, and the eighth mile is 660 feet. So half track, it is completely lined with people. Like if you take 10 steps back from the car, you can't see the cars until they're halfway down or towards the end of the track, right? It was the stupidest thing I've ever seen in my entire life.

Oh yeah, and drag cars, nothing ever goes wrong in that first 250 feet, right?

Well, and Jack Barkley, my buddy down there, well, he's up here, but he posted on a Snapchat story later that night. One of the cars went from the left lane and stayed in it, but completely went into the right lane. Now, let's say that you're in the right lane and you're going down and your car goes to the right and he switched an entire lane. There are people right there. There are people at the dotted line. I mean, how wide is a regular street lane? 10 feet, 12 feet. So there is no room for error. Like there is no room for error. That, I mean...

It was really dumb. Yeah, and it's like, you know, that was way too many people. Somebody put that ad just straight out, dude. Cause like that first time we went, like it was maybe like a hundred people total.

To be fair, that was also a Wednesday night. Like I heard that as it gets into the weekend, it gets more intense.

Right.

But have you ever seen anything with that many people before?

And Jack was even saying too, like when he went down to Pad Wars, Pad Wars, there were 96 cars racing. They have food trucks there. They have like people selling like everything there. And he said that there was double or triple the amount of spectators at that cash days in Texas than what he saw at Pad Wars. For Pad Wars, it's like triple the amount of racers and a third of the amount of spectators that we saw.

Well, you should see, keep an eye out. You should see some 1320 videos come out cause they were there.

That was, that was cool. Ran into them, leading up to it. I had, Fred was looking for cars to ride with. So I sent him a message and I said, Hey, you know, I just got a 2650 Zr1. You know, it's just a Zr1, nothing special, but I figured I'd throw it out there just in case you were interested. And I sent him a picture of it at JWP right after I had my alignment done. And Fred replies with, what f****** color is that with the eyes emoji? And I'm like, aha, so you do know. But the 1320 guys, they're big Zr1 guys. Kyle has a Zr1. They do a lot of stuff over at CT Performance, which is who builds Kyle's car there in Michigan. And the owner there has like the craziest collection of Zr1s. He's got like one of every single one of the rare colors. But we get chat and I'm like, yeah, it's Night Race Blue. I'm assuming you know what it is. And he's like, dude, I think I've only seen one of those ever before in my life. And I know which one it is. It's the one in the CT Performance Collection. But we ended up chatting back and forth just very briefly because like he was just looking to get a couple of cars lined up. And he said, when we get down there, hit them up. You know, he wants to ride in the car. Well, we ended up running into him at the first cash days. And I talked to Fred and Kyle for, I don't know, 20 minutes or so.

Something like that.

And we were chatting about some Minnesota stuff that may or may not go down this coming year. We'll see.

Great, cause I was looking to release all the details on it.

1320 might make a trip up this year.

That'll be interesting.

That'll be cool. Maybe they're just, me and Kyle had a chat about it a couple months earlier, because their schedule for this year is kind of bare, I guess. So they were looking for new scenes to kind of explore. And Minnesota, a lot of people, I mean, if you know, you know, type deal here in Minnesota.

It's a small group up here compared to like some other states, but it's, that tight knit aspect is kind of cool too. Cause everybody knows everybody.

I mean, we could, we kind of wrapped up on the Texas stuff. I could go into-

Yeah, let's get into kind of your background here. Cause we still got plenty of time here. Don't, ignore my yawn from earlier. That's just the coffee wearing off.

Yeah, sorry.

Boring. I hear you say Zr1 one more time.

Come on now.

Just, you know what? Let's just be happy he's not Canadian and saying Zr1. I drive me up a f****** wall.

That is the worst. But, okay. So I'm Caleb Isenberger. Everyone kind of knows me from a different car during my different eras here in Minnesota.

Just rewind sound. Whoop, that's me.

Yup, yup. You might know me from my Whippled SRT Jeep back in like the 2019-ish days. I had the bagged silver Gt500 that did stupid big burnouts on energy back in that 2019 era. Then I kind of went through like a little drought where I had some cars that were more projects than ever out.

Is that when you switched to Chevy?

Coincidentally, yes it was.

Just wanted to clear that up. Okay, go ahead and continue.

No, so kind of how I got started in all the car stuff. Well, I've always been like a car guy my whole life. Like back when I was little, it was the Matchbox cars. Like I have hundreds and hundreds of them from before I could walk. My grandpa has had Corvettes growing up. So I grew up like being groomed into being a Corvette guy. I'm going to call it being groomed, but it wasn't. I mean, if, even if I like didn't have the Corvettes growing up around like my grandpa, my uncle and their cars, like.

You would have found your way there eventually.

I will have found my way there.

I don't know. You probably would have ended up getting a beamer with a burble to him.

In no way would that ever happen.

I don't know. You're really glazing up Sean.

Well, Sean's car is cool. I mean, that thing's sweet. That's the first time I've ever like been around one.

There's a, like, as a car guy, you can appreciate this stuff though. But I don't know. There's something about the V8 muscle that, you know.

100%.

Yeah.

And like, I am not like Dan, where I am very brand loyal. Like, I like everything. I've had everything.

You can just keep going away from the mic. Like every two minutes, you go like an inch further.

But no, I like everything. I've had everything. I kind of started with the whole SRT Jeep thing, cause that's like the most, and this was pre Trackhawk, right around the time Trackhawks were coming out.

They weren't right, figured out.

Well, it was 2018, 2019. So like-

And Trackhawks were released in 2018. So they probably weren't hitting the used market.

No, they weren't hitting the used market. And at the time I was 19, 20 years old. So like I was young. I didn't have, I mean, it wasn't even in the realm of conversation to talk about buying a Trackhawk because they were selling for-

80, 90 at the time.

If not more, I think they were over sticker when they first released. But anyways, yeah, it's still way out of my budget at that time. So I started with a stock SRT Jeep, which I flew down to Cincinnati to get. And we were going to make a trip of it, me and my ex-girlfriend at the time. And we started cruising from Cincinnati, which the getting down there was a nightmare. I mean, I was a broke 19, 20 year old and like bought the cheapest plane tickets I could for the both of us. So we flew Frontier. We had like a three hour layover. So the flight went from Minneapolis to Austin. We had like a three hour layover. And then from Austin we went to Cincinnati and both flights are miserable. Like just anything you could imagine going wrong on an airplane, screaming babies, dirty diapers. I mean, you know, pressure stuff from pilots taking off.

And that was just your ex. No kidding.

Oh my God, yeah, she'll do that too. No, she was great. She was cool. But we get there and our Uber driver, taking us from the airport to the dealership, was like going 90 miles an hour in and out of cars. And like, these are roads you don't go 90 miles an hour on. They were like solid 45, 50 mile an hour roads.

That explains my morning.

So like, I was already stressed out from like the week leading up to this. And then like all the travel headaches. And like, I was just like, if we die, we die. Like it is what it is. But we get to the dealership and the dealer is pissed that he's open a half an hour later than he, you know, than when they close or whatever. And he had texted me during my layover that somebody was in their test driving the Jeep too. So when I took off for the second flight, I had no idea if it was even got be there. It's like, all right, dude, f*** you for that. But we pick up the Jeep and we start cruising down and we get to like the Kentucky border ish from Cincinnati, I think. I think, I don't know. I don't know my streets really that well. But anyways, we get to like the Kentucky border and I get like a voltage light or a battery light on the Jeep. Like, oh, you know, what's wrong with this thing? And this is before I had like, I knew cars like growing up around cars, but like I hadn't wrenched on anything really, like done brakes, had done oil changes, but like I'd never had anything that had broken before. It's like I didn't ever have to fix anything before. So I'm like, okay, so maybe a battery, maybe an alternator. So I grab a jump pack from a Walmart, which is the most hillbilly Walmart I've ever been to in my life. And we cruise a little bit further down and get to the closest hotel and we were gonna assess everything in the morning. Well, I call the parts stores and I think it was O'Reilly's or maybe Advanced hooked me up with a guy named Bubba. Bubba drove like a 1999 Grand Cherokee. So like I've got my 2015 SRT Jeep sitting out in the parking lot and Bubba pulls up in this 99 Grand Cherokee with a jump box. And he's like, all right, we're gonna take it over to the parts store and we're gonna test your alternator. I'm like, okay, sounds good. I don't know exactly what they did because I wasn't really paying attention, but they determined right there, yep, alternator is indeed shot. So they could get one in at like two o'clock. So we follow Bubba with a jump pack under my hood because the jump pack that I got from Walmart was a complete piece of s*** and didn't work. We follow Bubba up into these mountains. Now we're in the middle of like Kentucky, like the middle of nowhere. And we're driving like 10, 15 minutes out of town. And it's like, I mean, you picture what you find out in like the mountains out there, that is 100% of what it was. It was shacks and like everyone's sitting out on their porch with like three teeth and it was an experience. But we get up to Bubba's shop and you know, they get working on it and they put us in this room where, you know, there was definitely some meth done in that room at one point or another, because it was just disgusting. Like there was just a pile of garbage in the middle of the floor and we're sitting on this really gross couch. I've got like pictures of this place. It was super gross.

It's weird. It's the same address as Dan's house. It's his garage. It's crazy.

Sounds like it, yeah.

Bubba's at you now.

Under this mask, it's Bubba.

Bubba takes us down to the town around lunchtime too. Gets us some fried chicken and we're just kind of exploring like the boonies of middle of nowhere Kentucky. Well, Bubba gets us fixed and we continue our drive. We do make it to the tail because that's where we're going. It's down to the tail. That's right. And we make it to the tail and cruise down it. And we had fun, we got to stop at all the little pull offs and take pictures and it was sweet. And we go down to the town that's like right below the tail. I can't remember the name of it. And the next morning we go up there and we're going to go cruise back up at one last time. And then we're going to continue our trip back. And we pull into deals gap there and got like some shirts and whatever else. And I put a GoPro on my head and we got a video of us cruising with some bikes around these corners. Well, we catch up to this pack of Harley's and we pull over to give the Harley's some space because the Harley's are going 15 miles an hour down it. So it's not very fun to cruise down Tail of the Dragon.

Behind Harley's. Now we talked about this last episode about you Harley guys.

It happens. But when we pull back out, we start getting this burning smell inside the Jeep. Well, it's already been a trip. The stress from getting down there and then it breaks in the middle of the night and then getting it fixed in the middle of nowhere. I was on my last nerve. I was just done with everything. Well, we thought that something was on fire. We pull over and I'm like looking around because it smelled like it was coming from inside the Jeep. So like we're checking, you know, the batteries are in the passenger seat. So I'm like checking the battery, like just looking around. I popped the hood and this brand new alternator that we had just gotten from O'Reilly's was rolling smoke off of it. I'm like, oh, my God, you've got to be kidding me. Now, luckily, I got one from O'Reilly's, so there was a lifetime warranty on it. So I had it or I limped it down back to that town. I think it was a Sunday at this point or late Saturday, Saturday night. So nobody was open. No, no, no, it was not late Saturday night. It was definitely a Sunday. And I find this boat shop, well, this boat shop is able to test the alternator with like a multimeter or something and determine, yep, you know, this thing's, you know, screwed. So I call up AAA because I had AAA at the time and AAA sends a tow truck to pick us up. Well, this tow truck pulls up and there's the driver and his buddy and there are two seats in this tow truck. So we're like, huh, how are we going to do this? He's like, well, you guys want to ride in the Jeep? I'm like, yeah, sure. Why not? Well, you know, if we didn't think much of it, you know, whatever, we'll wear our seatbelt, we'll be fine. Well, every road around that, that area is like the tail of the dragon. Like every single road is tons of corners, cliffs on one side, mountain on the other side. Like it was, it was sketchy and we're sitting up on, on top of this tow truck. I have a video of us like cruising down the road and like a self-driving Jeep and like the Jeep's not on. I'm not steering the wheel and we're like going around corners and stuff. But it was like a three hour drive or three hour tow truck ride. Thank God for AAA, because that would have been expensive. But to this O'Reilly's and then the tow truck drivers helped me swap out all the air in the parking lot. And then we straight shot it back to back to Menominee that that same night. And like the whole time I had like the the voltage gauge up. So I'm watching like any kind of fluctuation in the battery voltage. I'm like, oh my God, not another one. It's happening. But yeah, no, I got rid of that Jeep shortly after and nobody, oh, when I was trying to sell it, AJ Mehta of all people hit me up and he's like, oh, do you want to trade for my C7 Z06? So this is back when he had his, his, I think it was white C7. And I was like, oh yeah, I'd be interested. But at the time, like I still didn't have a ton of money. He was like, well, I'd trade with 15 grand on your end. And I was like, oh, I wish I could make that happen. But I just don't think I can, which that would be a good trade for both of us. But I ended up selling it and regretted selling it immediately. Like it was the worst sellers remorse I've ever had. Like I wish I would have kept that thing. Like I was texting the dude like weeks after like, hey, can I buy it back? Can I buy it back? Well, I ended up buying another SRT Jeep to replace it. But this one had a Whipple on it, which is what I wanted to do to that one, but didn't have that extra money at the time to go drop eight to ten grand on the Whipple kit. So I was like, OK, sweet. Like this is, you know, this is awesome. Well, there were some red flags in that because the dealer was like pressuring me to put a deposit on it. And I had it inspected by this other this other dealership. And they're like, yeah, everything checks out. So I went with that. But they said it had like a little hiccup sometimes. I was like, OK, you know, it's probably just tune related.

That's how I'm going to sell my car. But it's just a couple of hiccups. Yeah, it's German.

It's part of it. Yeah, that's the best way to describe any kind of weird issue. Yeah, it's billowing smoke and it hiccups every once in a while. But I ended up buying it and this this the owner of the dealership, which I can't say the name because I did end up signing an NDA with this whole deal. Basically, I just can't blast them.

It's okay, we'll pull up the car next.

Yeah, if you guys want the VIN, just hit me up.

It's not outside of my NDA.

Yeah, don't go anywhere in Michigan to buy any kind of SRTG.

This guy is literally going to f*** himself right here. I keep looking at him like, dude, shut up.

No, no, it's all good. It's just an NDA.

Those are just for fun.

Yeah, no, no specifics were given.

Shout out to Donaldson Dodge.

But anyways, the owner of the dealership swore up and down. I own a warranty company. I will give you an extended warranty with the Jeep. I'm like, OK, cool. Well, this extended warranty company that he owned then was asking questions about why is it modified, which I had asked him too. I'm like, hey, this thing, you know, it has a whip line. How do you plan on making this work? He's like, oh, it's fine. I own the company. I'll make it go through. I'm like, OK, so whatever, whatever. I was like, if you're willing to do this, cool. They met me from the middle of Michigan in Chicago at the O'Hare Airport. I fly in and I do my test drive around the O'Hare loop there. I actually got pulled over on my test drive. Now, this Jeep was like loud as s***. It was Whipple that had Cook's headers and then the Gt Haas catback, which is or yeah, catback, which is stupid loud. But the cop was like, you know, what the hell are you doing making all this noise down here? I'm like, oh, just, you know, doing a test drive because I flew in to buy this thing. He said, OK, right on. He's like, do you need gas or anything? I said, well, yeah, I mean, I think I have enough. He's like, dude, just take it and go fill up. I'm like, OK, sounds good. He's like, I might escort you to the to this gas station and you guys can finish your paperwork there. So the dealer, the salesman fills me up and the cop is like, all right, when you leave here, whatever you do, don't go left at the stoplight. Go right. Well, in my phone, I had put in avoid tolls. So not quite remembering what the cop had told me at the time. I'm like, did he say don't go left or don't go right? My phone is telling me go left. It took me right through the hood. I went right through the hood and I'm in a SRT Jeep, which that is vehicle of choice around there. But ended up making it through the hood just fine.

And it's funny that the cop told you that, though, right? Actually, I think they told us that too, when we were down there, we were coming back from the rally or whatever too. It's like just away that area.

Yeah, yeah. Ended up cruising back and I beat the living s*** of it on the way back.

But the paperwork went all right?

Yeah, yeah. We finished all of our paperwork and everything at the dealership. I shouldn't say I beat the living s*** of it. I didn't like, it wasn't like I was wide open the whole drive back.

There were some poles on the way home.

I raced a Mustang or two, leaving Chicago and just had fun with it. Like I just bought it. It made 700 horsepower, 600, 700ish horsepower. Like it was fun.

All wheel horsepower.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's fun.

I get back to Menominee, where I lived, and I picked up one of my buddies. I didn't even make it home. We pull out of this driveway, pull out onto the main drag, and I rip on it. Big cloud of smoke behind us. And I'm like, oh s***. Well, we pull back in and it's smoking pretty bad. And I send a video to the dealer and he's like, hey, take it down to the dealership, have them assess it. You know, we'll get the warranty stuff straightened out. Long story short, I cracked six of the eight ring lands on the pistons, right? So of the eight pistons, six of them had broken ring lands, which is common failure in the six fours. Basically what happens when the motor has that much cylinder pressure and the rings start to... What's the best way to explain this? Basically, there's too much friction from there not being enough ring gap in the top ring. I don't know what each ring is called. So there's like four different rings going down. And that's why LS guys will gap the rings a little bigger for boost to reduce that cylinder pressure. But basically the friction then caused the very top chunk of the piston to break off. So that happened on six of them.

So that's crazy.

I was like, well, this thing's f***** up. What do we got to do about this? Well, after going back and forth and actually filmed some of these phone calls with the dealer because it was ridiculous stuff. Like he's like, I'm going through arbitration with the dealers or with the auction auction right now. I'm going to get them to buy this thing back from me and I'll just write you a check and we'll take this thing back and it'll all be good. And this is like months, like two or three months of just like dealing with like, what are we, how are we going to find a resolution to this? Because you sold me a warranty. Obviously this warranty isn't going through because it's modified. Like it's not legitimate. Like, you know, what you sold was fraudulent, which I wish I would have known that, like what I know now due to have given me a lot more than $2,500. But that's what we ended up settling on was a $2,500 check to replace the pistons in what ended up being like a 20-ish, $25,000 rebuild. So I went and did the whole nine then, like, stoker motor.

Yeah, I've heard that dodges don't handle boost well.

No, the 6.4 in particular. So the 6.2 will do just fine when it comes to boost, especially like when you start getting into, because I think, what is it, the red eyes come with forged parts, I think, too. But the 6.4 is the one you do not want to boost.

Yeah, like, if I were to go back and do it again to anyone that's listening that is considering any kind of dodge, if you want to go fast, if you want to boost it, just be patient. Don't waste your time, don't waste your money.

Get a Hellcat.

Yeah, get a Hellcat.

Well, okay, so actually I've heard this, so we were talking to Bryce when he was on the podcast, I want to say episode six or something, and he suggested if you're trying to go, like, you know, for that seven, eight, whatever, 900 range, Hellcat, right?

Yep.

But if you're trying to go higher than that, like into the thousands, he's saying, like, just build a 6.4. Like, just go to full nine.

There are different ways for people to do it. I wouldn't do that personally because, like, let's look at it from a resale perspective. If you build a 6.4 and you stick, let's say, 50 grand into it, you're not going to get anywhere near that back versus, so, you know, you're trying to sell like a built scat pack. You'll maybe sell for what a stock Hellcat sells for. Maybe and there's not that much of a difference. The amount of money that you would come up technically from a stock scat to like a built one is minimal. But if you're selling like a built Hellcat, there's more money or more of a margin to recoup if you were to try and sell it from the money that you put into it.

I can kind of see that argument. We'll have them back on here soon.

That's just one part of it.

First of all, does it really take 50 grand to build a 6.4?

We're talking built though.

If I threw 50 grand at a Coyote motor, I could get 2,000 horsepower out of it.

Well, and that's everything from what I've seen. I've built a lot of cars. Everything that I've seen, it all kind of costs the same to get to... The smaller levels past capabilities of stockbomb and stuff or stock train stuff, let's say you want to get to 1,500 wheel, it's going to cost the same for basically all platforms. Because if you want to get to 1,500 wheel on like a 10-speed Mustang, you have to do a built trans, you have to do a built motor, probably a sleeve motor at that point.

Is that what Dave said? I think he said built trans.

He built the trans. I don't think he's sleeved yet, though, in his car.

I think that was on the agenda. Yeah.

They're pretty safe up to about 12.

But all the stuff costs the same. A built trans universally is between that $7,000 to $12,000 range for all platforms. And it's the same, like the LT4 stuff for like a Tim King Max Effort 8L90, which is in my C7. That's $4,000 without a core, which is relatively cheap. But like a built trans for a Trackhawk, you're looking at that $6,000, $7,000. A built 10-speed for like the ZL1s, you're looking at that $8,000, $9,000. Built trans for the Zr1, if you go to the Moon, it's $8,000, $9,000, $10,000. And if you do like a PPG sequential gear set in it, you're looking at like $18,000 to $20,000 for built motors. I haven't priced out like Coyotes and Hellcat stuff recently, because it's been a while since I've had anything of that realm. Well, the Trackhawk I had last year, but I wasn't really looking at building that one. But you're going to spend $20,000 to $25,000 on a good 2,000 horsepower capable motor. And that's easy to do. Like the motor that's in the Z06, I have all of $35,000 into between the short block and then the LME heads and everything. You know, it all just adds up. But end of the day, everything kind of costs the same. A turbo kit for all platforms is really $10,000. And that's if they make like a nice bolt-on kit, which there wasn't really anything available for the C7 market. That's why all of my stuff is all custom made. Now, On3 came out with a cheaper kit. I haven't heard anyone having, like I've seen people run it, but whatever.

I've seen people buy On3 kits and then upgrade the turbos.

I think On3 has really stepped up their game recently. Early on, they were at the bottom of the barrel. If you had an On3 kit, it's like, oh my God, dude, what's wrong with you? But now it's like, On3's coming around. But every single, everything that you do, it all costs the same.

It's gonna be pay to play.

Yup.

Yeah, especially if you get into that, like you said, 1500 plus category.

And realistically, the 1200 horsepower to 1600 horsepower, it's all really the same. If you plan it at the same time, it really costs about the same, unless there's some sort of serious upgrade that needs to happen on the R8s and the Huracans where that stock motor, the safe limit is kind of 1400 wheel. Like, 1400's really pushing it for a stock motor, but not like...

Stock trans is the big problem, I think, on those.

So that's just it. All these companies, AMS, UGR, Sheeby... Well, we'll sell you a stock motor deal. So they'll do the MoTec, a built trans. So typically they'll do like a billet second gear for up to like 1200 wheel. If you get past that 1200 wheel or if you have plans of going past that 1200 wheel, you'll do like a full billet gear set. But the limitation is at that point, they'll let you run around with 1400 wheel. I've not heard of a shop letting customers out there unless like the customer is full, like they are, they know if we turn it out past 1400, like you're going to blow your s*** up. If you blow those up, like if you went to the block, from what I've heard, kind of sounds like you're talking engine fire. And that's when you see the cars blow to the ground or burn to the ground.

Interesting, cars burning down, huh? It's almost like they're giving it away.

I think it makes it easier to claim on your insurance, though. Well, if you're going to blow a hole in your block, might as well. If I blew a hole in my block, I would hope that my car burns down immediately afterwards.

Well, especially at that level too.

Thank you, Dan, for hosting our new segment, insurance scams.

Speaking of insurance scams.

Yeah, but I can be like, I don't know what happened.

Speaking of insurance scams, don't ever try and change your insurance or take your car off of storage insurance and then have an incident happen because they will not cover you. You need like two months of your car being insured before they even think about covering you. I had an incident with a rock on my way back from storage and Progressive wanted to send the FBI after me. So I ended up just paying for that one.

Do you still have this rock, sir? What did it look like?

What color was it? Let me go back and try and find it off the highway.

You're talking granite, limestone, like what?

They were asking for security footage of the storage complex. They were asking for phone records to verify that I called my girlfriend to tell her that, hey, this rock just broke my windshield.

Like what are you actually asking for all that?

100%. Yeah. Well, one of my employees was sitting right next to me. We were sitting. I was going to go get hamburgers and brats to cook some lunch for my guys at the shop because we were just doing some, you know, shop work and whatever. One of my guys was with me and we were sitting in this Walmart parking lot for 20 minutes while I'm like getting questions. She's asking the same questions over and over.

It's like trying to find a hole in your story.

It's like, holy s***. Like next time I need to make a claim, I'm not going to tell you anything. Yeah, a rock hit me. I don't know what happened. What time was it?

I don't know.

When did it happen? I don't know.

It was probably all just fluff that she was just trying to get you to.

100%. Yeah. I mean, they were onto something, but I could give them that.

They were on.

They were pulling the right thread.

Yeah.

They totally worked.

Security camera, huh? Verify what time I said I left there.

Here's the storage unit. Call them and get the records. They're not going to follow up on that s***. Oh, but they might.

Anyways.

Oh, you didn't see it there?

Weird.

It's race midnight blue. It's probably really hard to see. It doesn't even come up on cameras.

Dude, that's a black car. That's definitely not mine.

After he hung up, he's like, f*** you, Flow.

Yeah. But no, building like a 64 versus Hellcat, like it's at the Hellcat level, it's easy to make a thousand wheel. And the tuners are getting better. Like early on, like 800 was kind of like the safe range. Now like my tuner for my Trackhawks, his is stock bottom end, stock transmission, stock blower, but he put turbos on it. He made his own turbo kit and he makes 1100 wheel and he beats the s*** out of it. But he's one of the better tuners out there. He tunes for Ripatuned, Ripatuned has held the record multiple times for fastest Trackhawk. I think they still hold the record for the fastest Durango. So like they're going fast, but these tuners are learning how to keep these cars alive, which is really the biggest part in like making-

My favorite part of tuning, keeping the car alive.

Yeah, but anyways, back to the SRT Jeep. We kind of did the whole build and Joey from G-Force, right? Ends up finding me on Instagram somehow. I don't know how, because I'm not a big social media guy. I don't really post a lot.

He's like me when it comes to sales, like we can find anyone.

Yeah, he tracked me down on there too, so.

You want to do a rally? We're speaking out. Come to the community rally with us this summer. Continue.

Yeah, he got me, because I went and did the second or third G-Force rally, while I did both of them that year. But I get the Jeep back together and it's barely running. This is before I had any kind of understanding of anything at that point. And my tuner was like, hey, don't beat on it. I don't have a wideband in it. So like your tune, like you can drive around on it, but don't beat on it while I was kind of beating on it. And he knew that I was out beating on it. He got pissed with me, whatever. And I ended up going up to Sheridan. Oh my God, what a mistake. And blew my transfer case like the day after I left there. Yeah, that was a mistake. But anyways, long story short.

Yeah, we had to get into Sheridan. Anybody listening, if you know, you know.

Yup, but Joey has me come up to the cities for like a little car meet deal. Well, I didn't know anyone in the cities. So this was like my first exposure into the car market or the car scene around here. So I met Joey, I met the Seals brothers, which they aren't really around in the car stuff anymore. But like 2019, they were hitting it hard. If you saw a Hellcat out at the street races, chances are it was probably them or one of their friends. They're super good guys. I think you did a lot of pictures for them.

I did some photo shoots of those guys. They were some of the nicest people I met.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, they kind of, so after that car show, they kind of took me in and...

Those are your boys.

Those are my boys, yeah. They don't have like, they're not like my typical crowd that I would hang around. I was coming from a small town in Wisconsin.

Yeah, nobody out here was your crowd.

No, no. But they kind of took me in and we like, would hit the street racing hard that year. Like every single night, like I would come up, every Friday and Saturday night, we'd go out and we would race the s*** out of their cars. And my Jeep, I was smart enough not to like, go out and race at the time because like I knew I couldn't race. But like, we went out and raced the s*** out of them. Long story short, I took that SRT Jeep. And after I blew the transmission, after I, or the transfer case, after I had shared and tune it, which I'm assuming they didn't put TransTune in, like they do a lot of other cars. I took it to Apple Ford, traded it in, and got my Gt500, which was like a pulley tune, exhaust, buzz on bags, which I'm not into the whole stance thing. Like I was-

What year Gt500?

It was an 11. So-

Where'd you get it from you son?

Apple Ford.

I wonder if it's one that Bowen worked on.

Could be. That might've been around that era where he was doing a performance stuff out there. So-

Yeah, anyways. Yeah, the first year of the aluminum five four. So like that was kind of a better year Gt500 to have of the early ones. But I was actually talking to Joe DeVito about pulling the airbags out of this. And we were just going to do like the full BMR catalog. So just get rid of all the bag stuff and make it into like a drag car. And yeah, that's when I first met Joe. I was out at the Galpabees with him.

Yeah, that's when he lived down here in the cities.

That was like early on for, well, not early on for him, but like, you know, early on in his business days, I think. And he was super nice to me. I dealt with another guy local that had a faster Mustang with the same car when I had my Gt500. And I just asked him, Hey, can I order some welds through you? And I got the cold shoulder on that. Like I had never been, he treated me like such a dick. And I kind of hold onto that now, because now we're kind of like at the same level as far as cars go. I'll tell you about it later. But yeah, but the way he treated me when I asked him, because like he had a shop name on the side of his car. I was like, Hey, you know, can I buy stuff from you? And he was just a straight dick to me. But Joe was so nice to me.

Like he's super nice. He said, I got my racing seat through him for for the sim. Like he, like he literally reached out. Like he's like, I got, I got the hookup for you, bro.

Yeah.

Nicest guy ever.

Yeah.

He's got, he's got to be one of the nicest people ever. Go listen to it. It's got over a million views and highlights already. Crazy stories.

Yeah. So I wish he did. You know, obviously he's doing great out there, but I wish he was still around here. Cause he was, he was cool as hell. Yeah.

But anyways, Dick.

Dick, yeah. Richard.

Yeah. Spartan race team.

That, that car had done a lot of burnouts in too. It was just really good at doing burnouts. And like, I beat the piss out of that car. Like we would race the s*** out of it. And like we did everything in that car. And that was, so that was summer of 2019, half way through, like we were on July's when I got it. I needed to get new tires because I had done so many burnouts and I was cruising home from works at the time I had worked in St. Paul before I started working for the family business. And we had gotten rained out because I was pouring concrete. So I was cruising back on 94. And right before you cross into Wisconsin, before you get on the bridge to cross over the St. Croix, there's this little bend. And when you come off, when you come off the bridge, there was a little pothole or a little bump, right? I was changing lanes from the middle lane to the left lane. I was maybe going 70 miles an hour. I hit the bump, the car hydroplaned. I was backwards before I like even knew what happened. And at that point, like I had, when I felt the car start to slide, I had like cranked, I had like tried to turn the wheel at conference gear and it didn't do anything. So I select all the wheel. I was like, yep, this is, there's nothing I can do about it. And I'm sliding down into the ditch between 94 and the on-ramp. And while I'm sliding in, I hit like a mile marker or like a little, like sign, sign right off the shoulder. And that hit like the door and then wrapped around and smacked the roof. So the whole like door and then like the frame around the door was all just kind of messed up. And then the roof had gotten smacked, both the front and the rear bumper had gotten ripped off. The bags were leaking. And like the couple of nights before, I was doing a pull and at like 150, I went to go grab fifth. And I think my reverse lockout failed. And I think the car went into reverse. I can't verify, but the car no longer had reverse.

So you added an extra neutral is what you did.

Yup, yup, yup. So insurance, when they were asking about it, they were like, did it have reverse before? I was like, I think so. So add that to the box of all the repairs they didn't want. What really scared them from fixing that car is because the car was fixable. I mean, it needed a front bumper, a rear bumper, and then whatever to fix the door situation and the roof. But the bags is what really scared them on that. So they're like, oh, we don't want to touch that. And I was actually talking to Joe about the suspension stuff, like right around that time. I was like, hey, I just wrecked this thing. They're going to replace the bags, but can I just get a quote through you to have you repair all the suspension stuff? And he's like, yeah, let me know what insurance needs and we can do that. Insurance just ended up tolling out the car. I got a loaner car. I drove that loaner car for like two months, put like 19,000 miles on it. Not a single oil change done on that Mazda.

Don't buy used rental cars, by the way.

It was like a 3000 mile Mazda that ended up with 22,000 miles when I was done with it.

Well, let's check with our senior scam consultant. Dan, anything else you do on the insurance front?

No, I think you've covered it. You did it.

You nailed it, hit it right on the head.

Oh my God.

Did you ask what the buyback was on the Gt500, by the way?

I think it was like 13 grand.

You get a part of it out, got your money out of that.

I bought the car for $23,000. It had 90,000 miles on it. So it wasn't really worth buying back.

That's fair.

But after that, I had bought my first Denali Duramax, and that was another one that I wish I hadn't sold. Me and my friends had such a good time with that truck. It's a truck. You can only have so much fun, but one night we took it out to the races. This is fresh.

They are fast, but you're not having the race car fast fun. But there's a whole nother level of fun you can have with a truck.

I'll send you guys this video, or I'll show you guys this video when we're done. We took it out to the races shortly after I got back from Texas 2K when I went with Kyle in 2020. And I dig raced a Hellcat in Mendota Heights. Do you remember the big Mendota Heights Road bust back in 2020 when the cop got our foot ran over and I was like on the news and everything?

Oh, I think I did hear about that.

A cop got his foot ran over?

Yeah, she was like trying to stop a car and like somebody ran over her foot. And then like the week said that was a really good spot in Mendota Heights there, like right in front of the college. It was like a mile and a half long and like four lanes, all concrete. Like it was a sweet spot.

Nobody really uses it anymore?

Well, after that incident with the cop.

Well, now that we've just brought it up on the podcast.

Well, yeah, the spot's been dead for a while. Maybe the slow groups go out there. I don't know, we haven't gone out there.

Yeah, because you're hanging out with the fast guys now. Like that's a completely different ball game.

Yeah, towards the end of that summer when I had the Gt500, that's when I like started, you know, spreading my roots in the Galpabees group, which we can talk about that later.

Oh, not that group, who is probably shouldn't?

I have guidelines.

You have guidelines, okay.

Yup, I have guidelines for what we can talk about. But that spot, after all that stuff had happened, they started putting barriers up to block all the parking lots. So they put concrete barriers up like Friday afternoon, they block up the parking lot. It's like, this spot was done. But where are we going with this? Where are we at? Oh, racing with the Denali. Yeah, yup. So before all that had happened, there is a young kid had a Hellcat, didn't know what he was doing. And he was racing to everybody. So I was like, you wanna race my truck? Well, being racing everyone, he's like, oh, yeah, I guess. And I asked him for one car and he got the leave, right? So as soon as I saw his headlights move, I went, but I was one car out on him, right? He had his window down and he was on my passenger side. I don't know if you ever had a diesel truck, but.

Well, especially a freaking Duramax, they're like the smoking banshees.

So that truck used to just dump, like it would roll coal like crazy. So, and I intentionally asked him for one car just so I could do that to him.

You're such an a******.

So what we're raising in this spot is so long. But I stay out on for the entire 8th mile. And it wasn't until like I hit the brakes and then he finally comes around me. But that was a tuned and deleted Denali, otherwise stock. And I had smoked this Hellcat to the 8th mile. The video is sweet of my buddy. He misspelled work truck. He's like work. It's spelled W O R L. So it kind of ruins it when I pull it back up because it's like, oh, man, I look illiterate on it.

But that's how them Dermax guys are. They can't spell. So it's cool.

That's one of the world's first world's fastest Dermax Denali beating up on a hellcat.

But yeah, the video is like my mirror and I'm break boosting. So I'm immediately like before we even leave, the truck's just rolling coal into this hellcat.

He said his window is open too.

Yeah, his window is open. I see his headlights come up just a tiniest bit. And I go and maybe he just lurch forward just a tiny bit. I saw his headlights move and I was gone. And yeah, we're just dumping coal on him for the entire eighth mile. And it's just my mirror and you can't even hardly see the car because it's all smoke. But that truck was a ton of fun.

And what did it make for power and torque?

Any idea? So it was 2015, so it had an LML motor in it. I think those are right around like stock, like three upper three hundreds, little four hundreds for horsepower, maybe 450 horsepower, but then like six or 700 foot-pounds of torque.

But on a diesel like anywhere in that five to 700 range is usually.

Yeah.

Well, after just getting a tune and delete.

And then tune and delete is probably in that five to 600 horsepower range and probably a thousand foot-pounds of torque. Give or take.

You're right in the ballpark is the same across all those platforms too. They're pretty much the same.

And that was right around the same time that I got my first Corvette. I went out to, I bought the cheapest Corvette in the country. It was a rebuilt title, automatic decision. Yes, awful decision. And there were red flags to this one too, but I was ignoring them because it was like, oh, like I got the extra money. I can go buy this Corvette and I can do everything that I wanted to because I had just missed out on when Davian's car came up for sale from the original guy that built it over in Eau Claire. That car was selling for $16,000 and I had...

What was it making at the time? Any idea?

A thousand.

Oh wow. And that's a CE5?

That car has been built like how he has it for years. Like he's changed stuff on it, but that car has been a single turbo with a hood dump for years, right? But I had missed out... So I went to look at it, but then we went down to Florida for vacation and I was like, hey, when I get back, you know, I got the money, I'll come buy it from you. And he hits me up, the mic, the guy that was selling it, he hits me up and he's like, hey man, there's somebody here that like has cash, like, do you want me to hold it for you? I'm like, I do, but like, he's there with cash, like I get it, like you can sell it to him. So I was kind of bummed that I missed out on, and at the time it had the TH400 swap, which is really expensive for Corvettes. Like it's not like a direct bolt-in like it is for the Mustangs or a lot of other cars because the transmission's in the back, it's a, they're transaxle cars.

What one Mustang?

The trans is bolted to the diff on the Corvettes.

I mean, having the transaxle on the torque tube helps with weight.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Corvettes are not really made to like do the whole day-gracing, dry-gracing thing, so that is what it is.

Hot take.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, it's a fact. They just happen to be really good at everything. But so I missed out on that car, I bought this, the cheapest. It was, and I looked everywhere. I had found a manual car out in California for $7,500 and then this auto car in Detroit for $8,000. It might have even been less than $8,000. It might have only been $7,000. I can't remember, but it was dirt cheap. I was like, I got to have that. So me and my buddy load up the Denali and my enclosed trailer and we go out there to pick it up. And we get there like an hour before this dealership opens. And this dealership is like in the hood, like in the hood, hood. So while we're sitting there, we've had, we had like four or five different crackheads like come up and knock on my window. Hey man, you got a cigarette? Nah, we don't smoke. But I ended up buying it because it was like, I didn't care. The car was going to get built. It was going to get everything that I just missed out on put into that car. So I bought. I bought the car, and it really didn't run right. I knew it had a mess fire and just some other weird stuff. But I bought the car, and we did everything to it. But I never finished it. It was like, it got to a point where I was just annoyed with it, and I didn't want to deal with it anymore. Not a difference nearer than my C7. It was more or less just, I was working on everything at the time, and I was sick of working on it. Because I can work on my own stuff, I know what I'm doing. Now I do, but I don't enjoy it. If I enjoyed working on cars, I'd definitely work on cars, because the amount of people that hit me up for advice on what they should do with their build, where they should send it to, this, that, whatever. I direct so much work around this area for different cars. I could stay busy myself if I was doing it, but I just hate working on cars. But, I get sick of this, the C6, and I sell it with everything. Like, the turbo kit was bolted on. It was running, like everything was done. I had done a cam swap in it. Really all it needed was the fuel system put in, the converter put in, and then it to be tuned. But like-

The classic needs tuned.

Literally. That's what it was. I was just sick of it at this point. And I knew of, my buddy Miles, it's like, hey, there's this 1300 horsepower C6 for sale. You should go buy that thing. You'd save yourself so much money and time, whatever. Like, well, I already have all this s***. He's like, oh, let's sell it. So I sold it to a guy down in Milwaukee, delivered it. And I think I sold it for 16 or $17,000, which was way less than what I think total for like the cam and the turbo kit and fuel system stuff. Well, maybe like five or six grand into parts. So like I was making a decent chunk of money off of that.

Which is not something that happens often when selling a modded car.

Well, and a modded car not finished.

I've made money on every single car I've sold except for my Silver Trackhawk. That one I took a bath on. But that was kind of like a weird point in the market where it was like starting to take a downturn and people were panicking because this was like right around this time last year. So 2023, right? The market started to take a little bit of a downturn. So people were like panicking, like weren't buying anything. But then the Trackhawk market picked right back up like right after I sold it. It's like if I would have waited a little bit longer, I would have definitely got what I paid for it. But I was ready to get rid of it and just like not have it anymore. I just wanted to focus on getting the C7 done, which hasn't panned out for me. Which we can talk about that in a little bit, but we'll get there. I sold and this Corvette was maroon. It matched my Denali. The Denali was maroon and the Corvette was maroon, which are my favorite colors for those cars. And I went and bought this black C6 that was told it was completely built front to back, worked on by the best shop. It had the best parts, which turned out to be like partially true. Me and the previous owner kind of went back and forth a little bit and I kind of called him on some of his s***, but he got upsold by a s***** shop and I don't think he knew any better. But at the same time, like the car had some really shady work done to it, but I took it out, I raced the s*** out of the car and ended up spinning a bearing and going through like the whole rebuild process and that's how I found the shop that I use now for my stuff. But I bought that car and that Corvette was my only car at the time. So I had sold my Denali and I sold my other Corvette to fund this new built Corvette. I was just gonna buy like a cheap little beater daily. Well, I went and bought my little Passat, which is down there. Who would have thought this car that I'd bought because I didn't have any other cars to drive, would turn into the car. We could. I've never gone wide open throttle on that car.

Yeah.

Ever, like not a single time in my life. Let's not find out what happens. But I had bought this little Passat and I was like, ah, I hate driving this thing around. Cause I was used to driving around my Denali. I mean, it was a nice truck. Well, I went and bought another Denali right afterwards, like two weeks later after buying this Corvette and not liking driving this Passat, went and bought another Denali. It was a white Denali, same as what I had just had, but I went from having a unfinished turbo C6 to a finished, very nice Pro Church C6. And then from my Maroon Denali to a white Denali, everything else is the exact same. That Denali ended up needing head gaskets, like shortly after I bought it, which is like a $5,000 job in those. So we threw some Blue Devil in it, and I sold it right away. It made like four or five grand off of it. So that's when the COVID market really picked up. So I was just driving the Passat again, and I had met Orlando Kanto in the process, who runs Kanto Racing down in Victoria, Texas. I flew down there to go look at a Glide C6 Z06, which I ended up going a different route. That's why I bought all my lake properties. And I don't regret selling that truck. I don't regret passing on that Glide C6 because it led me into better things for me.

Painter pastures.

But my buddy that works in my car is now, he referred me to this engine builder, who ended up being like 10 minutes down the road from his shop, which he didn't really have a shop this time. He was still like a, he was like a pipeline.

Garage.

Yep. That type of deal. And I asked him, you know, how much will it be to put the motor back in this thing? He said, well, I don't know. Let me think about it. Cause I had had him go pick up the motor from the builder for me when it was all done. And he texted me later that night. He's like, how's 700 bucks on? 700 bucks? Yeah, I'll bring you the car next week. I was so sick of working on stuff. Cause I had just gone through the whole process with my other C6 where I was working on everything. And I had pulled the motor out of that car with my buddy Miles. And I was so done with working on stuff. I was like, yeah, sure. Two weeks later, three weeks later, and I had brought him the car and four boxes of parts. And he's had the motor seen there. He didn't know how it came apart, but he had a Pro Charge C6. So two, three-ish weeks later, he calls me up. He says, hey, car's ready. Came back, picked it up. And there were a couple of little issues, but him and the engine builder addressed everything, covered everything, and had really started what turned into a really good relationship for us, for the most part. And now everything goes there. He had done, after I had gotten that car back together, it gave me belt issues like crazy. That's why I cannot do pro charger stuff anymore. I'm just sick of them. Some people have good luck. I didn't, and I don't want to go down that road again. But-

People are in different camps when it comes to like, you know, root style versus centrifugal.

Oh yeah, I mean-

I'm struggling today. Century blowers.

Root style blowers are so easy. Like there's no drama. I mean, I'm dealing with some belt slip issues, but it's because we have the wrong belt size. Because I have brand new stuff that just came out for the car. So nobody's really tested to see what belts work, with what combo. So we're all kind of guinea pigs right now for Kong, which sucks, but you know, it is what it is. But I ended up selling that black C6 and then getting my first Trackhawk, which I bought from the Bellingers, which that they bought brand new. And anyone that's ever raced a Trackhawk early on, when Trackhawks first came out here in Minnesota, they probably raced that one because they raced the s*** out of that thing. They were racing everyone every single weekend with that thing back to back. They were piling in five deep in it and they were gapping everyone. But it had a pile of miles on it. It had like 120,000. Yeah, like it had a pile of miles. And I still think that I've traded the cheapest Trackhawk to ever trade with a clean title, period. So I bought it for $48,000 and that was in 2020. So that's like ridiculously cheap for that. And I did like the full repituned 800 kit or 850 kit, raced the s*** out of it. I put 30,000 miles on it and had a blast and didn't break a single thing on it. I ended up selling it for $60,000. So I made another good chunk of money. I put a pile of miles on it, modded it and got all of my money and some back. And I had sold it because I was on a Viper kick. I had got-

Well, how many miles did you sell the Trackhawk with though?

Like $160,000, $165,000.

That is crazy, dude.

$160,000 hard miles.

Oh, hard miles from when it was brand new because the Ballingers beat the show of it as hard as I did. And when I got it, I was racing everybody with it. Like I've got videos of me racing a couple of these ratified cars with it. And even when it was modded, it was modded for $20,000 of those miles. And it was upper pulley, lower pulley, injectors, E85 and intake, and then cat deletes.

What are you not telling us?

What do you mean?

You're telling me this car is perfect all 160,000 miles?

Yeah. That is crazy. There was not a single thing that ever broke for them. They never dealt with any of like the screen delamination issues that the Trackhawks have. They never broke a transmission. They never broke a transfer case. They never broke any axles. I never broke any of that stuff. They maybe did a water pump, but I don't know for sure. And it was like, if they did, it was around 100,000 miles, which any car could have a water pump go out around 100,000 miles.

Which goes back to our earlier conversation. Six fours just meh. The six twos, which is in the Trackhawk.

Dude, it was so bulletproof for me. I beat the living piss out of it. And it was for 20,000 miles of it, it was 800 to 850 wheel horsepower, which that's kind of like the limit for the Trackhawks because going through the all wheel drive system, that's really closer to what like a 900 to 950 horsepower charger or challenger would be. So it was like really up there with like kind of the safe limit of like a stock trans and the stock motor kind of likes to like go around a thousand ish wheel. That's when you break rods. But that thing was great, but I was on a Viper kick. The bank had approved me on a Viper out in New York. And it was actually on one of Joey's rallies. I don't know which one, but somehow I came across it. It was on one of his rallies. It was out in New York. And this is like right when the Viper market was starting to go crazy, like just before it really started to take up. And this Viper was $95,000 with three sets of wheels for it and like three nice sets of wheels. I can't remember exactly what they all were. It had the big wing, it wasn't an ACR, but it had the big wing. It had, you know, the nice splitter. Like it had all the cool things. So I was like, yeah, like I really want this car. I got approved for the loan for it. I was going to fly out there to look at it, but somebody else, one of the Viper pagers had gone and looked at it and said that it was like kind of rough ish. So I backed out and at that time I was, I had talked to Aaron and I was like, hey, you know, I think I want to get a Viper and down the road do a twin turbo build. So Aaron sent me a couple of cars to look at, but nothing like quite fit, like either they were like a little bit too expensive or they just didn't quite fit into like the scope of what I wanted to do. So I was like, and that's when Viper's really like, it was like a two month period from when I sold that Trackhawk to what happened after, which I'll get to. But there's like this two month period where I was like really shopping for Viper's, but then they went from like 90,000 to like 120 to like 140. It's like, ah yeah, I can't quite swing that anymore. So then I bought my C7 Z06 and that was just going to be an interim car. And the market on these hadn't quite gone super crazy. They were high, but not super crazy. And I got a really good deal on my car. It was an RPM, so Race, Boomer, Motorsports out in Delaware. They do Paul Roadie's car. His Z28 is built by them. But it was like a full max effort, heads cam, ported blower, made 850 wheel, 900 torque. And like, I knew that that was going to be a legit solid build to buy. Me and Alex Goulet fly down there to go pick it up and we drive it back. And when I was there looking at the car, I had noticed the oil pressure was a little bit low. Well, I had chalked that up to, maybe the dealership put like 30 weight oil in it when really it should have 50 weight oil. And I had called my buddy Jack who's a tech at Key Cadillac, you're one of the head techs at Key Cadillac. I had called Orlando Can too and I was like, hey, does this oil pressure seem right? Which it was like between 19 and 21 pounds at Hot Idol. So like, yeah.

But it's a dry sump motor.

But it was a dry sump motor and technically dry sump motors do have lower oil pressure compared to a wet sump motor. I had called RPM and I had talked to Fran, the owner, and he said more than likely the dealer just put 30 weight oil and put 50 weight in and it'll be fine. Well, I had asked the dealer to do that and they called all of these shops around or all of the parts places around and they couldn't find the 50 weight oil that I wanted to put in it. So I was like, all right, fine, we're already here. I want the car, you know, so in the paperwork we drove out of there. The car had meth, right? So it used meth for like supplement of fuel, right? And we drove the whole way back without going wide open the car. I waited, you know, I didn't want to be done without any meth in the tank. And I park it in my buddy, Ave's garage in Inver Grove, and the car just sits there. I got some new wheels for it, a set of Bogart's, which I think I might get another set here very, very soon. But we go to take the car out to go wash it, and then it was going to go to the shop to have all the fluids changed. Well, on the way to the shop, right around the Hammond exit, I started hearing this chirping noise, and I thought it was the semi that I was passing. Well, it ended up not being the semi. I take the Hammond exit, and I rolled on the windows, and as the car comes down to an idle, I can hear it knocking. I can just hear a knock, and I'm like, oh, what the f***? Now, there's no warning, there's no oil pressure is consistent with what it had been. Like nothing crazy that had given me a weird red flag. So I pull into that parking right there, and I pop the hood, I'm just kind of listening to see if it sounds like top end, like a broken valve spring or like a blower issue or like a broken rocker or something on the top more that's easily fixed or if it's worse. It sounded like it was coming from the top. So I called up the shop that I do all my stuff with. He comes out from the opposite side of Eau Claire, picks it up, truck and trailer, brings it back to his shop. And when he listens to it, cause we drove it onto the trailer, when he listens to it, he's like, Oh, I think it's, it sounds like it's coming from the top middle of the motor. I think it's the blower. So we get back to the shop, we pull the belt off and start the car. Cause if the belt, if the blower is not spinning, it won't be making any noise. So we pull the belt off and it's still making the noise. So my heart sunk. I was like, here we go. Well, he checked all the valvetrain stuff and didn't find anything. My engine builder that built the motor for the C6 came over and they're checking it out. And they turn it over with the spark plugs out and they can hear it coming out of the spark plug holes. And they're like, yup, it's coming from the bottom end. Pull the motor out. And we find it had spun basically every single main bearing. It spun like two or three rod bearings. So like it was f*****. The crank was f*****. So when the engine builder started to tear it down, it was like, all right, we're just going to do like a piston rod build because like a piston rod LT4 motor, that's like a solid 12 to 1300 safe motor, right? So we're just going to do piston rods and then a nitrous kit. So I had the nitrous stuff. We had ordered pistons and rods. Well, then we find that the crank is messed up. So I order a crank and then he tears it down some more and finds that the block was cracked. And now this car had been blown up before where it looked like something had gone down between the cam where I showed you at summit where the cam spins kind of in the top of the motor there. That also happens to be kind of right around the bottom of each cylinder, right? So it looked like something had gone down and hit the cam and gotten wedged up between the bottom of the cylinders. So it cracked right between the two sleeves. Well, there wasn't any like coolant in the oil. Like the oil wasn't milky. So like it wasn't cracked into the water jacket, but we're gonna try and make over a thousand horsepower with that motor. So I ended up ordering at the time, the baddest block that you could get was an LAT block. So they had just made 2000 horsepower, 2400 horsepower with that block at SEMA. So I was like, all right, I'm gonna order that block. We've got my pistons, rods and crank already and we'll put it all together. We'll do the nitrous on the stock blower and we'll make like a thousand and 1100 horsepower. And that's when I got linked up with my tuner, Brian Huntsberger, who's Dinosaur Juice Tuning. He's, I mean, that dude's track record. He has some of the fastest cars out there, period. He had a C7 back in the day, Ryan Lewakowski, McRippins on Instagram. Before he had his Viper that he went famous with, had a C7 Z06, and that was a Whipple with exhaust and then a two or 300 Wet Shot. No cam, no nothing, like nothing else. The car made 700 without the nitrous and it made 1200 and 1400 torque, maybe it was 1300 torque on spray. And when he went out and raced that thing, he put 600 pounds of nitrous through it in the time that he owned it, broke nothing. He was on a stock trans, stock motor, stock converter, stock fuel system. That was a very, very simple, when I hear people talk about, oh, LT stuff is so expensive. It's expensive if you do the right way, but there are other ways to do a build and be fast.

What did you say your tuner's name was again?

Brian Hunsberger. So his shop is called Dinosaur Juice Tuning, but he had done all of the development with Harrop superchargers and all of their LSA and LT4 style blowers. He had done a lot of development with Too High PSI, which is the port injection kit that a lot of the guys run in their cars. He still holds overall quarter mile record with C7s. AMP just recently broke his eight speed record in the quarter mile. But when they set that record back in 2020, it was like the third pass off the trailer on a fresh build where they were having issues with their boost controller. And they went eight one. AMP went eight, like eight oh six or something stupid like that. Or maybe AMP went eight one, he went eight 13. So like they were very close. And they didn't go back to the track since the guy that had that car that held the record also has a twin turbo R8. He's like, well, we have the record, you know, whatever. But I heard that they might be going out to re-break that record and put a couple more eight speed cars. There's not an eight speed Corvette in the sevens yet, but I know of like four of them in my tight circle of twin turbo C7 guys that are like right there ready. And everyone just wants to get a track around together and go do it at the same time. It's my tuner and Sam, the tuner for AMP, go back and forth. They butt heads a lot.

Got to love those groups sometimes.

So we had been waiting on my pistons for a long time after we'd ordered everything, because they were cost some spec from Diamond. Well, when I am given a lot of time in a non-running car, I start ordering stuff or getting ideas put in my head. So I just happened to be scrolling through Facebook and a guy by the name of Ryan Mitchell goes and comments, Hey, I've got, or is it Ryan Mitchell? I don't know, whatever it is. He says, Hey, I've got one dry sump LT4 Magnuson 2650K available. Does anyone want it? And they were really hard to get at that time, because that was like middle of COVID part shortages. Like you couldn't get anything during that time. So I hit him up immediately. I'm like, yep, send it my way. I want it. So I grabbed that thing and I send it immediately down to Waco Texas to Nitrous Outlet and have them add spray bars to it. So we're going to do the same thing, but instead of a stock blower and nitrous, we're going to do the 2650 and nitrous. And that's when I got linked up with Brian. We're going to do the exact same thing that he did on Ryan's car. So it was going to be kind of stockish fuel system. Like I would have a cam and everything that you'd need to run E85. But we were going to play the game. So basically if you mess around with the nitrous jets, if you understand nitrous, you'll understand what we had to do to add the supplement of fueling that you need. But we're going to play around with the nitrous jets through the progressive control. Well, not the jets, but play around with the progressive controller to make up for the fuel we didn't have. For all the nitrous that we were going to spray through it, we're going to try and make like 12 or 1300 wheel with that blower. Well, that blower didn't even make it to Waco before my buddy Eric, who we met down in Texas, posted up a hot side of a twin turbo kit that came off of Tim King, who my tuner happens to do all the tuning for. The car that Tim King went and set the quarter mile record with in his C7, it had gotten wrecked by the owner that it sold it to. He was selling the hot side of the turbo kit, so just the manifolds, turbos and wastegates for $9,000. And I was like, I hit up my shop, and I was like, hey.

Change of plans.

What do you think about this turbo kit? He's like, you with nitrous is not a bad idea, or not a good idea, because I like to, I can do my maintenance, check plugs, change my oil, that kind of stuff. But when you're spraying a s*** ton of nitrous, like you have to check your plugs all the time, and there's filling the bottles, and just staying up on your system all the time, because one failure and you're doing it all over again. He said, I know you, just buy the turbo kit. So I hit up Eric, and I was like, hey, you want to trade for this 2650 that I have? It's brand new, and it's right down, Waco gained, Spray Bars add, and Eric was like, I don't know. We'll see, because Tim King was trying to buy that kit back from him, because that turbo kit installed at Tim King, so TKR Performance or TK, whatever it is, TK Performance is $28,000. Now that's with the cold side as well, but that's still a good chunk of change. Well, Tim, for whatever reason, didn't have the money or didn't want to cough up the money until he had another car to put the turbo kit on, which is fair. So, Eric's...

That's not car guy s*** though. Like, a guy will buy a turbo before he even has a car.

You don't always want to have inventory.

So me and Eric do the deal, and like me and Eric hadn't known each other, hadn't had any other interactions before this. And at first, Eric was just going to go pick up the supercharger, and like I was kind of trusting him that you're going to pick up the supercharger from Nitrous Outlet, and then you're going to send me the turbo kit. Well, me and Eric became homies through this process, so Eric's like, ah, screw it, I'm just going to send you the stuff. So he sends me all of the turbo stuff, all of the blower is still sitting at Nitrous Outlet, and the crank that we had originally ordered wasn't up to what we wanted to do, because we want to make 16 to 1800 horsepower with it, because that's what the turbo kit made before, that's what they went and set the record with. And I have all of the same stuff. I have this Max Effort Trans, I have the baddest motor that you can build. Well, I was changing over to the baddest motor that you can build, so we got rid of, and actually Eric bought the crank that I had had, because he was building the motor for his car. So I went from the Cali's Compstar crank to a Cali's Magnum crank. Well, the Cali's Magnum crank was not available anywhere. So my shop kind of gave me the runaround and said, well, I can't find it anywhere. And he then found one or ordered one through BTR. And we waited for like two months. And this is when the C7 build starts taking longer than, way longer than planned. First, you know, it blew up in April. We were waiting for pistons until like the end of June. Then that's when I made the switch from the blower to the turbo kit. But you know, everything was still kind of, we were just waiting on parts. Well, then switching over to waiting for a crank because this crank that he had ordered from BTR, apparently he ordered a discontinued part number. So we were waiting for weeks and weeks for this crank that didn't exist because it was discontinued. And BTR didn't tell him until finally, I was like, dude, where's this crank at? And this is months later. Like this is like September-ish. And he's like 23 of 22, 22. And all of my bill had been paid in full July of 22 because I had paid like half of my labor upfront when he took the car in. And then we had worked out a deal for the rest of my, the rest of my bill for my nitrous stuff. Cause I had that full nitrous kit. So he got like my progressive controller, my dual bottle mount, the bill of mount, the bottles, and then bunch of my other s***. So like that covered the rest of my, my bill. Now, after we're waiting for this crank forever, I was like, I gotta do something here. So I made two phone calls and found a crank in Texas speeds warehouse. I told them, go put a physical hand on this crank and make sure it exists because I've gotten the run around or my shop has gotten the run around. I want to make sure this crank exists. Well, it does. And then three weeks later, my shop finally orders this crank, which ended up being $3,000 more than the original crank that we put in.

Holy s***.

We went from like a $1,200 crank to the one that he ordered through BTR was like $2,200, $2,300, which is what Magnums used to cost. And now this one was like $3,800 ish.

So crazy.

Yeah. Thanks. But it's got the best of every, like my motor is the LAT block. It's the Magnum crank, ultra-enforcer I-beam rods, the LT2K pistons. And then I found out after I got this turbo kit that it had these LME Edelbrock casting heads. So the heads, because it's not a stock casting or like a CID casting, they shifted the exhaust ports back an inch, right? So how the exhaust comes out of like a stock LT4 head, so it comes out and it kind of has a little angle, right? It's almost like a slanted exit. And the heads that are on my car now come straight out. There is no angle. It is just straight out of the exhaust, straight out of the exhaust port. Well, what that did is it shifted the exhaust manifold back a half inch. On stock heads, my turbo kit does not clear the back ears of the block that bolts up to the transmission. With these heads that are shifted back an inch, then the turbo kit clears everything. These heads are $11,000. So you don't really have to do anything with cylinder heads on LT cars. Like the stock ones worked just fine. But I was like, well, to make this turbo kit work, I need these heads. So, ordered up the heads and and then I had ordered a Haltech for my port injection. And then the build really just spiraled. I mean, you name it, LT stuff, my car has everything. It has the best of every single part you can put on it. The only thing that's lacking, and it's the only thing that you see. And I had ordered one of these, but it's the intake manifold of a BTR intake that came with my Haltech port injection controller, which we are not using the Haltech anymore. But it had just come with it. So I figured it'll be fine. I'll just keep it and order a billet intake. Though the billet intakes are four or five grand, which I ordered a billet intake from Plasma Man, which is out in Australia. But the place I ordered it from didn't tell me that it was drop shipping from Australia. And they make them per order, and they were six to eight weeks out, and my car had to get to fab. And at this point, like somewhere along the process of finally getting the crank, like in November of 22, and February is, end of February is when my motor was actually assembled. My engine, my bare block was sitting at the machine shop since June. My pistons and rods were, or my rods were sitting down there. The pistons when they came in were sitting down there, or actually the rods were not down there. Somehow the rods got lost between my shop, the engine builder and the machine shop. And they didn't tell me that that's what they were waiting on, but they were in somebody's storage unit along the way. And that delayed the process from November, which I was hoping to have the car, like the motor back in the car before Christmas of 22, to go to fab before Christmas of 22. So like I was trying to get everything done like that first year when I bought the car in February of 22. Like it was not like most of these cars, it's like when they take forever, it's usually when people are lacking funds to buy the parts for the build, everything's been paid for. Everything's been there, but it's consistently people dropping the ball around. Who's who? Yeah, which is frustrating. So nothing was getting done. And then finally, you know, they got everything sorted out and the engine builder goes to assemble the motor. This is the beginning of February. So a year after I had purchased the car and finds that the machine shop did not line bore for the crank. So the main bores for the crank were oval. So my block had to go back to the machine shop that had been sitting at since like June and they had done everything. They were supposed to, they knew that everything had to be done on this motor and they didn't do it. So I was just madder than f*** at this point. It's like, dude, you've had my stuff for so long. Just get it done. You know, do it right. Like it's none of it's cheap. You know, I've given you guys everything that you need. Just get it done. Well, it kind of gets all put back together. And then the car goes to fab. And fab has been my favorite part of this because we had to build the cold side of this turbo kit. My turbo sit right on the bottom of my motor back next to the trans, well, the torque tube where the transmission would be. Right. But my fab guy, my fab guy is awesome. When I take it over to, when I took it over to him, right.

I'm going to take a second to support the home team. Many of you know the podcast is based out of Ratified Motorsports, who makes some of the sickest builds out here. 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 give 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.

Tony Bickford, he's been great to me. It's been my favorite part of this entire build. We get to Tony's, and me and Tony sat on his garage floor for probably 20 or 30 hours, just playing with different things, cutting different stuff out of the car to see what has to fit where. And Tony has been so transparent with every little step, every little hiccup that he's had. He's like, hey, this doesn't work, we have to do this. But everything has been so transparent. Tony does not take everyone's work in. Like you have to know somebody to get into Tony. Like if some random just went and DM'ed him and said, hey, will you build me a turbo kit for my whatever? He won't respond. But he doesn't do it full time. Like this is just a hobby of his on the side. But Tony is who does Joe DeVito's car.

Okay.

So the twins that they did on Joe's car, Tony did that. Tony does like top-notch work. But I get the car goes over Tony like in May, and it's all done like middle of June. And that's how the car sits right now. Everything's in it. Everything's done, but it needs the oil lines made for the turbos. So off the turbos, the fuel lines have to be ran from my external pump up to the port injectors, and then the converter has to be put in. The car has been sitting like that since, sitting at the shop since August, because he had had like a period of time where he had some stuff going on, so I didn't bring it to him immediately after it left Tony's, but it's been sitting there.

But it's almost, it's at the bleeding edge of almost done.

It is literally done. Like all he has to do is the oil lines and we can start the car.

Yeah. So there's a good chance we'll be seeing it here shortly then.

Yeah. He told me that end of April.

And this will be what a 1600 horse build?

You know, honestly, I'd love to see 1400 out of it. It can make all of 1600. It can make all of 1800. It could probably even make 2000 if we really push it. But like realistically, if I see 1400, that'll make me happy.

Which brings me to kind of like my next question, unless you want to continue going down that rabbit hole. You might also just get rid of it.

Yeah.

Do you want to touch on that at all?

Well, first of all, during all of this b******* that's going on, when does the Zr1 come into the picture?

So the Zr1 comes into the picture.

Don't you remember two hours ago? He said November, dude.

So September, he doesn't finish it for this deadline of a wedding that I had.

Yep.

And I was kind of shopping around for like GT3 RS's or like a GT3 at that time. Cause like I had just got my first Road America experience. I'm like, oh, like this is sweet. Like I really want to get into this. So I had come across this. Oh my God. This is going to go for like four hours. Cliffs notes.

I just hear people dropping off like flies.

Well, you're talking about the build. You're talking about your C7, all of the issues you're having or whatever. But in the meantime, if you collect any parts, you know, you pick up another freaking Corvette.

Well, and I kind of glossed over the fact that I bought another Trackhawk in the winter of 23, or end of year 22. And I had also bought my single Turbo Denali in June, immediately after I had bought the C7, basically. And those are whole different rabbit holes. We don't need to go down there.

Stop putting quarters in him.

People don't even know that I had the Silver Trackhawk, but people don't even know that I have the Denali. That thing just sits. But the Zr1 came in, so I'm not going to get too much into the details on the Zr1 because I don't know what the future holds for that thing either. But basically this track spec Zr1 comes across that needs some love. And when I went to go buy it the first time, there was some weird stuff going on with the title, as in like he didn't give me like a straight answer on whether he held the title or the bank held the title. Like there were some weird games I didn't want to play. So I came across this other twin turbo C7 that was blown up that had 7,000 miles. So it had 30,000 less miles than my C7. And that's why the shop put the car on hold after he missed my deadline in September was I was going to buy this other C7 and we were going to transfer all of my stuff to this lower mile car. Everything from this lower mile car was going to get put onto the white car. And now it's going to sell the white car with the stock motor. And then it probably cost a lot for 75 grand. We bought that car for 55 grand and been 5,000 into labor for all of that. But then I had found out that that other C7 was a dumpster fire. Like it was hacked up awful.

And I wouldn't get into the details on that one.

No, no, no, no. It was a good idea, but it was rough. It was bad. So when that deal fell apart, that was like a Monday or that was like a Friday that I was gonna fly out to go buy it. And I literally backed out like the night before my flight. And-

Cause you found out these details.

Yeah, I had found out like that morning of that it was, or that morning that it was like hacked. The next week I had wired the money for the Zr1. I didn't fly down to look at it. I just knew that however it was gonna be is how it was. So I wired the money for the Zr1. I sent a transport to pick it up and sent it up. And I've been improving it ever since. It didn't have an interior. It had a lot of track stuff on the wiring was a mess. All of the plumbing and the engine bay was a mess. Everything was a mess.

It was a full track car.

It was a full track car. It was function over form to the most extreme version you could ever think of. So we've just been slowly cleaning it all up. And because my shop is busy enough and can't get the C7 done, I've just been doing it all myself.

So you bought another car and built it in the time that your C7 is still not built.

The Zr1 was basically built, but I have, yeah, I've redone everything on the car. The car did go to him for a short period right before we went to Texas because I was dealing with that misfire issue. That ended up being a weird fluke in the tune.

Just a hiccup?

That's literally what it was, a hiccup.

Just a hiccup, isn't it? Our next t-shirt.

Spartan racing team and hiccups. But yeah, no, I pick up this Zr1 and do a poor 2650 almost immediately after. Like, I bought it and I was just going to leave it alone and just clean it up, right? Because this was like my dream car. This was my poster car growing up. And I ordered the poor 2650 and the entire con catalog that hadn't already been on the car, because the car's already built front to back, like built motor, built trans, all the suspension stuff, like it had everything. And I just wanted more. So we did the poor 2650. I was looking at nitrous kits. Christmas day, nitrous outlets, was running a killer sale on their Zr1 kit. I sent it to you and you're like, dude, stop.

I tell you, stop maybe every two to three weeks, like, okay. Which brings us back to our other conversation. Well, actually no, finish the Zr1 story.

Well, first of all, if Harris is telling you to slow down and calm down, then you have a problem.

Which let's be clear here. I am the worst friend for your pocket.

Yes, absolutely. That's what I'm getting at. Like you're all for like, yeah, that sounds like a bad decision.

Like Joey from G-Force just got an R8, right? And he's like, photo shoot. I'm like, yeah, let's do it this week. And he's like, there's snow. I'm like, and? You got Quattro, m***********, let's do it.

But yeah, no, I, I did wait. I didn't do the nitrous kit by some miracle. I didn't do the nitrous kit, but yeah, we're just going to finish cleaning up the car and kind of dial out some of the issues. And then the C7, I'm not going, we have so much like just time and thought invested into the build. Forget the money. The money into it is whatever.

It's burned.

Yeah.

It's car build problems.

Yeah.

You don't, that's not never an investment.

But we have just like, there are only so many twin turbo C7s out there. And in the time that I started building mine, they've probably doubled the amount of twin turbo C7s out there because before there was maybe 10 of them when I started doing it.

It's really that few.

Oh yeah. There's not very many out there at all.

I guess because there's none in the sevens. So it's not like there's much advertising.

Well, in every, yeah, every fast like fast, fast C7, they're all twin turbo. I would say now there's probably maybe 40 of them that I know of.

What do they mostly do? Procharge or 2650 builds or what?

Well, so early on it was Prochargers. So they do like an F&A 94 and they'd make a thousand pretty easily with like a cam and then meth.

Don't they come supercharged?

Yeah, they come with like a, so it's like a 1700 CC blower, which is tiny. They max out like at 900 ish wheel horsepower and like a max effort port. So what like the go to build is now for C7 guys, and you can do this for about 20 grand. They'll do cam 2650 and then a lot of guys will do a port injection and you make 11, 1200 wheel. And with an auto car, you can run high threes pretty easily. Like a low four to high three is like very, very, very easy for like that 20,000 ish range, which isn't too crazy. But where were we? The C7, we have so much time and thought that I'm not just going to give up on it. We are going to see it through. We are going to go run some times with it. I'd like to see like a low eight at the drag strip with it. I'd like to see like a mid three 61 30 with it, but I never bought the car to keep it and never along the process that I really think that I was ever going to keep the car. It really snowballed to what it is now. But the whole goal is to get into a twin turbo viper, which I don't think I plan on doing that anymore.

We'll see what happens. You know, when we sometimes see these cars go for sale at like Chicago Motor Cars or any of these other places, we think what idiot would put $100,000 into a car, put a thousand miles on it and sell it?

Hello, I'm Caleb.

Here's your idiot.

I never had intentions of keeping it.

So actually this has just been an intervention for you. These aren't rolling. We're not recording this. This is...

Can I leave that now?

We just wanted to get you to this point.

No, you can't leave. There's security at the bottom of the stairs to tackle you, to take your everything.

They're gonna cancel your PayPal.

Which brings me to my next point. Sponsored by Capital One. What do your credit card rewards look like?

Like I said coming in, if somebody robbed me today, they wouldn't get anything because I don't have any credit cards.

If you want to rob Caleb, go to his shop. That's where you need to go.

Find the shop that I have not mentioned once here, and then you can find the car, find my storage, you can find a hundred-ish thousand dollars in there.

I like the little backup you threw in there. The shop I never mentioned once here. But no, I think you will get rid of it at some point, but I would really like to see you drive it. Cause there's some people that just, you know, flip through three cars during the winter cause they get bored and they never get to drive the car. And then they just end up buying it again in a year or two. But I, I do think whatever you end up doing next would be interesting too. I mean, do you want to touch on that idea?

Yeah, you know what? I'll, it's a very broad, like.

Maybe.

I am at a huge crossroads in my life right now where I could go 10x my income if I'm very smart about what I do. Boring. But I just have this really bad impulse of cars. So.

Oh, do you?

So I'll go ahead and say like the goal right now, what I've kind of been looking at since we got back from Texas is probably an AMS, R8 or Huracan, something like that, Alpha 12 range. Cause that's kind of like in my budget, if I sell the Z06, maybe sell the Zr1, I can probably keep the Zr1 and do it, but.

Our roads are a hot topic right now.

Yeah, very hot.

I mean, you know, it's just, it's like a fire sale.

Not sponsored by Sheeper Racing.

I'm just saying, if you picked up a few more bad vices, I could totally see the resemblance.

But who knows, you know, I'm very happy with the Zr1 right now. It's kind of, you always hear, you don't want to meet your heroes because they'll let you down. But this car has like lived up to all of my expectations. Everyone always talked about, oh, the C6s have like such s***** interiors. Well, mine didn't have an interior when I got it. And I put an interior in it. So right now the interior feels pretty nice to me.

I spent like maybe an hour total down in Texas because your passenger seat, it's a quirky metal seat.

Like it's just metal pad, no nothing on it.

Mine had a pad, but.

Yeah, I'm sure it did. It's like, it was comfortable.

Yeah.

It was plush. So here's a question for you, right? What is appealing about going the R8 Huracan route? Cause you said something about the 1400 horsepower range, like something about the 6130. I don't know, kind of explain that.

Yeah, so we're friends with a lot of the Viper guys, right? And the Viper guys will be the first to admit this. All we'll drive is the cheat code. Now, GTRs are cool, but like everyone's got a built GTR.

Out here in Minnesota.

Yeah, there are tons of built GTRs. And I don't know enough about the GTRs, but from what I understand is they're not nearly as reliable as like a twin turbo V10 platform. I know some of like the well built ones can last, but of the very fast ones here in Minnesota, it sounds like they make a couple of passes and they break.

You're asking a lot of that V6. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's really what I'm after is that next level. Going from like, you know, the Zr1 will be in that thousand to 1200 horsepower range. The Z06 will be in that 1400 plus range, but that Z06 is not gonna punch with 1400 horsepower cars. Just won't work. Corvettes don't work past like 1200 wheel. That's like the limit on the street for them.

Why'd you say that was again?

It's just traction limited. But the Viper guys, right? One local makes 2000 ish horsepower and he runs three twos ish, 6130, give or take. And that's 2000 horsepower versus an R8. You can go make 1400 horsepower and actually at their claimed 1200 horsepower for the Alpha 12 package through AMS, they claim like a clockwork, 3660 to 130. At 1400 wheel, there are guys that are running like twos, like two nines, two eights ish with 1400 wheel on the street, which is fast. It takes like a very, very fast Viper to outrun them on the street. Now they will come around to you eventually, but.

Yeah, it's the after 130 where the race finishes.

Yep.

Yeah.

And you can get so far out on that it takes a good driver, which I've seen Aaron pilot some cars here local against some GTRs that have outpowered him. And it really comes on to the driver on the Vipers, but.

In what aspect? Cause I've heard that a few times.

It's, see, and I haven't gotten the seat time in the car, so I don't quite understand it.

That's true, yeah.

But from just my perspective, it's all about one. You'd think that shifting a sequential is easy, but it's not. There's an art to it. Like there's such an art to shifting a sequential, and it's all in the launch. When I saw Aaron racing this other GTR, it was like whoever got the hit, and now this GTR made 2000 wheel, and Aaron was in like a 1300 or 1400 wheel car, and it was whoever got the hit won the race. And that's really.

Oh yeah, I remember, I feel like, I don't know, I might be making things up.

Yeah, I don't want to, there's names in that that I don't want to get into too much, but.

I'm getting stories confused.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Got something in my eye.

Funny enough, the actually off camera, we can touch back. But I want to do like the R8 or the Huracan, just because like there are twin turbo ones around here, but nobody in our group that we race with has one yet.

Nobody's really like fast, fast, right? Like when it comes to the Huracans and the R8s out there.

No, AJ's had a couple like UGR builds, but like.

He has, but like, he'll never see the streets.

Yeah, AJ doesn't go out at all.

That's not, and that's not his scene, right?

No, he's got too much to lose.

Right, you know, he's got, you know, two really young kids. I get that, but it's like his R8, it's like, it's a mild build. Like it's capable of making, you know, I think, I think he said 11 or 12.

Yeah.

But he just runs it at 8, 850, I want to say. We talked about it on Swapping Keys.

Yeah, I'm sure it's fun. It probably makes all the cool noises. I'm sure it pulls really hard. Like it's fun. They just work.

But it's like, and we just haven't seen an R8 with a parachute here in Minnesota yet.

Maybe I'll be the first.

I mean, yeah. I mean, granted we had that Sheepy, which, you know, became a giveaway car.

Yeah.

We'll see what happens with that.

Oh, I heard there were horror stories, even with that one game built. So I had talked to AJ about this time last year. I was like, I had a hard on for doing a Sheepy car. Like I was-

I remember this.

I was like ready to kind of sell the Z06 at, like I had all the stock parts to put back on the car. I was ready to like sell the car, sell my motor, sell the turbo kit and like return it to stock, recoup, you know. I would have gotten all of my money back out of the car, selling it stock. And then I would have gotten a lot of my money back from the parts selling, you know, the turbo kit and the motor and whatever, where I could have, you know, went and bought the R8, probably finance the R8. I would have had all the cash just sitting there to do like a Sheepie Race 1200 kit, or maybe even like their Elite 1500, might have been a stretch. But like I was, I talked to AJ, I was like, hey, you know, I'm considering doing this. What do you think? He said, I wouldn't do Sheepie. I was like, why is that? He said, oh, I just think there's a lot better options out there, but AJ wasn't really giving me the full story. So he said, stay away from Sheepie. And this was a year ago that AJ was saying this. So anyone that was like really into the Twin Turbo V10 scene, they knew, like everyone knew.

Yeah, that is one thing that we saw is the writing was on a wall, the writing was on the wall for a lot of people. But I've heard this from dozens of people. And this isn't necessarily to say that there hasn't been decent cars come out of there. And this is the thing, like I, people will be like, well, where's your Sheepy R8? I know. I'll get it on the next giveaway. But it's like, that's not to necessarily put it down, but it, we, there's been stories.

No, and honestly, what's going on with Sheepy 2 is going on with a lot of shops. It's just not getting talked about. Sheepy has like the clout behind it, the huge following that has really ignited the flame, right? Of all of this drama going on, but there are other shops. There are C7 shops out there that I know of doing the same, the same thing.

It happens all over the place. Like it's not like it's just like one, this just happens to be the one that gets recognition. And then like, as with literally anything in life, there's good things and there's bad things, you know? And yeah, cause I remember seeing somebody in a comment section saying like, yeah, they're just the ones getting put on blast, but there's other shops out there. And any good shop, you know, can attest to that too.

It's really tough too, to like find a good shop that, one, you want a car of that caliber, you want good support. Like the team-

It's a six figure build.

Yeah, yeah. The team at Enth, like they are top notch. Like they do everything right.

If you want one of the fastest Vipers in the world that's built by a quality team that can just go out there and run. Dude, you know how many times we would go do hits and then we just go to like Applebee's? Like it's like how many 2,000 horsepower cars can you just mangle all day long? Like I don't think there's a better.

And then your support. Like if anything happens, Aaron is gonna take care of you. And when you're at the track with them, if you pay for the track support with them, you show up, you get in your car, you do your hit, you come back, you go watch some racing, you come back, you get in your car, you go do another hit. They take care of everything. And like your car is always 100% with them. They always like, Aaron is the best in the business. Yeah, Aaron is the best in the business.

That six figure price that you pay, you get your money's worth. Whereas sometimes it's just, I'm in the camp of you build the value first and then you price it out. Not the other way around, where you have a sticker in your mind and then you're like, oh, well, how do we make this worth it?

And in the Twin Turbo V10 stuff or the R8 Huracan stuff, there are good shops out there, but the big names that you might recognize are not the ones that you necessarily want to go with.

Right. And then there's certain ones where I'm applying to work at, which I'm wearing a shirt for today.

Honestly, in my opinion, AMS is the best shop.

Dude, they were the first Huracan in the sixes, I think?

The only Huracan in the sixes.

Is it the only one?

Have they gone sixes yet?

Huracans?

Yeah. Yeah, I thought he was still going like low sevens.

No, first one in the sixes, it was this whole marketing thing.

And that's Jordan Martin's car.

Yeah, and he also has an Enthomoto car.

He also has an Enthomoto car and he has an R8 that happens to have a Alpha 12 package car, or it's an Alpha 12 package, which makes 1,390 wheel. And he was doing twos on the way to the drag strip when they had a YouTube video on it. I think they did twos on the way to the drag strip. Jordan doesn't, but AMS does. Yep, yep.

Yeah, interesting.

But yeah, Jordan's in with all the right shops. I mean, that dude, it sounds like he's, I haven't met him before, but it sounds like he's just a super genuine, straight up dude.

Who got some good advice on where to go.

Yeah, and yeah, he's at AMS and he's at ENTH. I mean, you can't go wrong with either of those.

Two of the best names in the industry.

Yep, and I think the other one that's gotten thrown around a lot now, kind of on the come up for R8 Hurricane stuff is Sysio. I've heard a lot of good stuff from Sysio now.

Well, yeah, yeah, and you know, I mostly just like them for their merch. As you can tell, but no, dude, it's just, I mean, Ratt here, he actually works with Sysio a little bit. Like they collaborate. Like I think we have a handful of Sysio GTRs up here too.

Yeah, I believe it.

But it's like, yeah, Ratt speaks very, very, very highly of him too.

Me and Tony were actually talking the other night. I don't think I'm going to go this route, but it would be so cool. The cars just don't hold that resale. And like with how I go through cars, like I need some of that resale to be held with the build. But me and Tony were talking about how easy it would be to actually build a twin turbo kit for them. It's so simple. AMS charges $30,000 for their twin turbo kit.

Hold on, I'm applying for a job.

No, no, no, I mean, it's a great tip. It's an 1800 horsepower capable kit, but it could be replicated for 10, 15, 20 max.

Like if you did it in house.

Yep, yep.

I can see, I see that time to time with like various shops. Like, well, that's why some people have in-house fab guys.

So, and that's, so why I was going with this is it would be cool to do like a local build to incorporate the good shops around here. So go to Tony, get the turbo kit made, come here to Ratt or go to Moe's and have the Moe Tech, the built trans and the fuel system installed. And then outsource the tuning to whoever, cause there are some really good tuners out there that aren't dedicated to just one shop. And you could do the whole build and I bet you could probably slash 30 or 40% off of what a package car would be, but you don't have that support. And that's really what you need.

Same thing like when you build a house, if you do your own contract and you save 30%, I mean, you go around and you just shop around, but if you're looking for a one stop, like that's usually, you know.

And I'm at the point now too, like I've done the build myself. I didn't like that. I hated that. I am having a shop that is not the most expensive shop. They treat me good, but they are very inexpensive doing my work right now. And I hate it. Like it's been just a nightmare for me. So I'm to the point now where price doesn't matter so much anymore. And I just want to get my cars and go race them. And I don't really even have time to do that anymore. As I've become busier and busier with work, I just, you know, if I get to go out once or twice a month this summer.

That's a win.

Yeah.

You just want the support.

I don't want drama. I don't want, you know, hey, there's an issue with my car. Okay, drop it off. Well, I won't see my car again for two months. You know, I just want something that is kind of turnkey. And we're talking like a ridiculous level, like a 1400 horsepower turnkey car. Like that's stupid. But in like the R8 Huracan level, I just want one. In the R8 Huracan level, like that's tame. Like that's very tame.

That's normal.

Yeah.

Because like if you tell somebody, it's like, oh, I have a 1400 horse car. Anybody says like once you get into the 1000 horsepower limit, it's like, it's always going be broken.

Yeah.

Not necessarily the case.

No. Yeah, like an AMS car, they, at 1400 wheel, you will live at that forever.

But you sure as s*** pay for it.

Well, and I priced it out too. It's $100,000 to do what I want to do.

What's that, about $100 a horsepower?

Give or take, yeah.

Kind of the industry standard, I think.

$105,000 is out the door, what they charge to do the Alpha 12 kit on an R8 or a Huracan, which honestly, I'm all of that into, almost all of that into the Z06 anyways. So I'm having some regrets right now.

Yeah, that'll be gone. Congratulations, you're about 30 seconds from the three hour mark. So I think we should probably start putting a lid on it.

Well, yeah, there's so much more for us to talk about, which we probably will actually, we do the usual three anyway.

But I think it's probably a safe bet to pop the usual three now, and then we'll see what other things trickle in after.

What three?

Four days. He used up his seven brain cells focusing for the first two and a half hours.

I mean, drum on about Chevy's for three hours is rough for me.

45 minutes, an hour of it. We were talking about Texas 2K.

Yeah, I was kind of impressed on how it went. But then I like we finished that first hour. I was like, that was a pretty legitimate recap. Pretty accurate.

All right, so hey, at the end of every episode, we like to ask our guest a question. I need you to pick three cars. I need a track car, a daily driver, and a show car. Sorry, the engineer is coming from the side here. You have an unlimited budget. Wait, let me do my spiel. You have an unlimited budget, swaps are okay.

Okay, okay.

Whatever you can think up in that brain of yours. Let's hear it.

All right, give me a Gt500 for my show car.

Yeah, yeah, we're talking, we're talking.

Now I finally have Dan's attention again. Let's go. I lost him about an hour and a half ago.

Yeah, I could tell. I could hear him start breathing, Kathy. I'm like, he's about to pass out over here.

Just passed my bedtime.

Okay, okay, okay. For a daily driver, I definitely do another Trackhawk. They are the best car out there and they're under 100 grand. You can make like a thousand wheel, and that's what I'd want to do. Give me like a Trackhawk, give me a Whipple that doesn't blow up because Whipples like to explode and eat themselves. So give me a Whipple that doesn't eat itself and give me like 1200 wheel that drives like it's completely stock. Actually, yeah, give me like 1200 wheel I want it to drive like it's completely stock and run like high 460 130 while I pull my show car, which I think a show car would like to do a... How about like an AMS, like an Alpha 20 car? So an Alpha 20 car would be like the 20 to 2500 horsepower range, right? On like a Performante. That would be sick. I don't know if I'd do black or if I'd do purple. I really like some of the purple Performantes. They look so sick. But that black Huracan we saw down there at the track with the Ford... No, I think it was gloss black, but it had the forge lines all the way around. That looked really good. So I think a purple Performante with like an Alpha 20 kit, I mean, that'll be a... That would be in contention for like the fastest. I mean, Sissio went 2-2, 61-30 on the street. Like that's insane. And that was...

The video with the green R8, right?

Yup. And that's in the same horsepower range, like right around that mid 2000s, I believe. So give me that, cause then I can kind of swing at the very top on the street.

You could get to each show very fast.

Yup, yup, yup. And then for... Was that my show car or my track car?

You said show car, cause it was on the trailer, so you're pulling it with the track car.

Yeah, not my track car. It would have to be my Zr1, because it's perfect to me. Like I absolutely love it. It's the right color. It's everything, but make it faster for me.

Yeah, and maybe fixed a windshield at a hood.

Yeah. Give me a Zr1 that traps 200 at Texas. And I'm happy with that. So give me a sequential. Give me a, I want to keep the blower, maybe add nitrous, but I just want to trap 200 and be able to qualify at Texas 2K with my Zr1. I'd be happy.

So it's getting harder and harder to do.

Yeah. You need, I mean, you need to trap 188, which took 2000 horsepower. I think this, the least amount of horsepower it takes is like 16 to 1800. But realistically you need 2000 horsepower to qualify at Texas 2K in the roll racing.

Which is insane.

Yeah.

Those classes were really tight this year. Like I think they said it was like a four mile an hour differentiator in one class from the fastest to the slowest in one class. That's crazy.

No, it's, it's insane. If anyone's wondering where all the money went during COVID, all the, all the corporations that got rich right there at Texas 2K, all the business owners.

Yeah. What was it, it was the E, whatever, some sort of fund or tax credit that they were getting. What was it called? Do you remember? It was like $100,000 tax credit I was getting during COVID.

Yeah, I mean, I guess if you're a shop, then you could use your PPP loans to keep your guys busy, build your shop cars.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's what it was. That's where I went. TX2K.

Everyone makes 2,000 hours per hour now, except for that Mustang, the one that almost crashed when the R8 crashed.

Yeah.

He only makes like 16 or 1,800, but he trapped like 196. That's insane. The guy's fast, and he's fast in the street, too.

Okay, quality over quantity.

Sweet. Well, on that note, you're not gonna set the record. I'm not.

That's fine.

It's real close, but yeah, I think the record holder right now is Paul Roady, which is episode 72. That was a pretty sweet episode.

I mean, we could go on more tangents, but.

Well, okay, give us one more tangent then. Okay, fine. Dan's gotta get to bed, but sure. You challenged me. Yeah. Okay, what is one of the funniest thing that's happened to you, street racing?

Street racing, oh.

You had the diesel blowing into the helicopter.

Yeah, that was good.

Do you have any other stories like that? You showed me a video of you just pulling like an absolute like six buses on someone. What was that story?

So, I've got two of them. That one was good, but man, we didn't even touch into like any of the street racing stuff.

Touch it.

Okay, I'll start with the stories, and then we can go into the street racing. We already had three other ways, so this is just bonus for everyone that wants to keep listening.

Yeah, everybody already checked out.

Yeah, of course, that's Jesus, who likes those? But so I was out at this car meet in like, North of the cities, I can't remember where it was. This is still one that's really new. I had my Gt500, right? And this dude from Atlanta was here. He was an insurance adjuster, and he was like checking out cars and whatever, that there was just like some big hailstorm. So he was like, you know, seeing which ones are total, which ones are whatever. And we're out with a slow group. So there's two groups in Minnesota. There's more than two groups, but at the time, in 2019, there were like two groups in Minnesota. There was Midnight MN and then Gapplebee's. Midnight MN was all the kids that had slow cars. Like you were fast if you came out with like a bolt on Trackhawk, like you were king s*** if you came out with like a bolt on Trackhawk. But we were out with the slow group and I was like, hey, you know, do you want to go check out some fast cars? He's like, hell yeah, I want to go check out some fast cars. So we go leave, we go meet up with Gapplebee's and they ended up cruising north up to like Cambridge, right? And which I've never done that with them before. That's not what we would normally do. But we were cruising up to Cambridge and we had gotten far enough away from the cities and I was like, let's go back and go meet up with the slow group. We had already gotten a bunch of races in. I go turn around, I come back and I rip on it like a full pull. We were doing 160, the speedometer pegs out 155, we had it pegged. Spartan pegging. And I start slowing down and I see a cop medium. I'm like, oh s***, that's not good. And I look down and I'm passing the cops, I'm still going like 120, 130. Cop pulls me over and he comes up to the window and he's like, first thing he says is, I'm not going to give you a ticket. How fast were you going? I said, you're not going to give me a ticket, huh? And he said, I clocked you to 135. And I said, okay. Well, before I saw you, I was doing 160. My Spelmer pegs are 155 and we had it pegged and I was still in it. And he said, holy s***. So, he says, dude, there's a lot of deer up here. It's a really nice car and I do not want you to wreck it. So, slow it down, but get out of here. So, we were going to meet up with the girl who I had been talking to at the time, who had a Trackhawk, and we went to go meet up with her at the slow group. Well, they were racing at Energy in St. Paul, one of the kind of OG spots, right? And go down there, meet up with her, and I drop off this dude. I can't even remember where I dropped this dude off, but dropped this dude off somewhere. And we're kind of like ready to call it a night from the racing stuff. And when we go to leave, the two cars race past us going towards the semstone. If you know the spot, then you'll know. They're racing towards the semstone. And this is like a four lane road. And I pull up behind them, and then I kind of rip on it, and I catch up to the cars kind of. And I see a car coming at us. It turns on its lights and happens to be a cop. Turns around. Instead of pulling over the two cars that were racing, he pulls me over. Well, at that point, and now this is later in the night after I had just gotten a verbal warning for going 135, this cop basically was just a dick to me. It was so long ago, I don't remember exactly what he said, but basically, he was a dick, and he was gonna make an example of me.

You remember how he made you feel.

Yeah. Well, and I'm on FaceTime with this girl, and I'm like, yeah, you're gonna have to come get me out of jail. Well, six or seven other cop cars pull up, and a tow truck pulls up, and these other cops are like, asking me questions about the car, and I'm like, joking around with them, getting them laughing. And they're like, yeah, this is a new guy. He's kind of a dick. Like, you know, he might actually like, take you to jail. I'm like, ah, s***. Um, so I'm like on FaceTime, and this is like 20 minutes, we're sitting there with these cops. I mean, there's a bunch of cops at my windows, and we're all like laughing, joking around, having a good time, whatever. They're just like checking out the car, because it's a cool car. It's a Gt500, like they're cool. And the cop comes back.

Wait, Gt500, I thought we were talking about the Trackhawk, or am I tripping?

No, no, we're not to the Trackhawk yet. We'll get to the Trackhawk, yep, yep. The cop hands me, and I still have it, hands me a written warning for street racing, and tells me to get out of here. And the other cops look at me, and they're like, you better frame that up. I've never seen one of those before. So I still have that written warning for street racing, which, yeah, is wild, which that's twice in one night, I got away, got warnings for basically street racing. But then that started with the Trackhawk. Now this was the black Trackhawk.

So now just because I may have gotten confused here because we're like four hours.

That was deep.

So the thing in Cambridge, that was in the Gt500.

Yup. Correct.

Okay, okay, cool. I'm caught up now.

Yeah, this is all the same night.

Can you see how engaged I was in this one? Yeah, yeah. So yeah, we were talking about Fords. I was all in it.

Okay, this next one, this next one is about my Gt500, okay?

Yeah, just, wait, what?

So we were in the Trackhawk, my black Trackhawk, the first one with 200,000 miles on it. No, I think at that point, it probably had 145,000 miles on it, but it was built, had all the stuff done to it. And this old guy had a CTS-V that was built by Carl, TCP, and it made like 600 or so. He was telling people it made 700 wheel. I asked him if he wanted to race the Trackhawk, because that's like a good race for 800 horsepower Trackhawk, like seven 750 wheel horsepower cars for like an eight eight fifty horsepower Trackhawk. That's a good race. Well, he was talking s*** to me. He's like, oh, I don't want to race a Jeep. Well, this this dude had no idea. He had absolutely no idea. So we get out to the spot south of the cities a little way, and everyone's parked on this frontage road. And I finally get him to race me. And it doesn't even look like he moved in the videos. I put an absolute bus length on him. And because we were racing in front of this frontage road, there were like 15 people taking different angles, different videos of me putting an absolute train length between the Trackhawk and this the CTSV. Like, I'm pretty sure we hit like 180 in the Jeep. And as we were passing everyone, my buddy Nick is sitting shotgun. He's like, stay in it. And you can hear the video. And we're already like so far in front of him. But then there was like a corner right afterwards. And we're like, oh s***, oh s***. Like that was one of the sketchiest moments I've ever had in a car because like, I thought it was like a weird spot in the road where it like turned to the right and I was going down a hill and then right back up to the left. I was like, oh my God, like, of course, this is how it's going to go. But that dude, that dude didn't even come back to the meet. He just left.

This was my way home anyway. I was actually just going home.

I wasn't even racing. Oh, yeah.

He showed me that video. Like, it was like ridiculous. It literally would. It's the same gap that Chaz put on me in the GTI when he raced me in his Trackhawk.

Yeah, it was such a big gap.

I remember when he chirped all four tires on that thing. And it was allegedly making, I think he said eight or 900 wheels.

He probably had all the same stuff that I had. So it was probably identical to what I had done.

Dude, it's such an amazing car. Like I get it. Some people like to clown on the Mopar lifestyle, which is fair. But the Trackhawks, dude.

Yeah, they're perfect. I mean, living where we do, having something that you'd need to drive like, or have to drive you around, like you can't beat a Trackhawk. You can make them fast. You can haul your car around. You can throw the family in it.

Can you get them in the third row?

No, you can't.

No, not that one.

That's what the Durango's for.

But it's like, especially for us, like, you know, what's a race car you could daily year round, right?

GT-R.

Trackhawk. GT-R. GT-R. RS3.

Yeah, RS3.

Huracan R8, like you said. I mean, there's only a handful of new M3. Yeah, the M3 is killer. There's only a handful of all wheel drive cars that you can, one, make fast, but also...

And like legitimately fast.

Actually fast.

Yeah, and like Trackhawk's, there are guys out there going low 3s, 61.30 with them, which I keep on making the 61.30 reference, but like, that's kind of like the new quarter mile measurement. Like nobody actually cares where a quarter mile time is anymore unless you find like the niche group of like diehard drag racers. But like everyone kind of knows what a fast 61.30 time is. Like a stock Gt500 is 10 seconds versus like a built Gt500 is 4 seconds, you know. But yeah.

It's crazy when you think about 61.30 is like how, like I remember somebody made a comparison the other day because Stradman did, I think, like a six and a half seconds 60 to 130 in his Koenigsegg. What is it? I think it's a CCX. I don't know. It's an older Koenigsegg.

It's Nagera HH, I believe.

Well, it is a little bit newer. Okay.

Yeah, I'm tripping a little bit. I'm at 13.

So it is older.

Yup.

I'm going back and forth.

Older but newer, but yeah.

Then, you know, you could do that with an M3 with, you know.

Nothing. Not that much. Yeah. Literally. Yeah. It's so easy. And people lose like perspective. Like the racing scene here, it's broken up into two. Well, there's multiple groups now. And like this whole stuff is kind of a mess. And even our fast group has kind of like dissolved to some extent. It's really small. It's invite only. And when I go out, Which is how it should be. Yeah. 100%. Like 15, 20 cars, like a bad night, there's 50 cars out and there's too many cars because everyone finds out about it. But I'm the youngest usually when we go out by a big margin because everyone that goes out there, to have cars that can compete in that level, you have to be doing something else right in life to be able to afford something like that.

Or something horribly wrong.

Or yeah, horribly wrong, those two, yep. But yeah, the group is like, it's really organized. The guy that runs it keeps himself quiet. There's a lot of, everyone has a lot to lose. Everyone that goes out has a lot to lose. It's not like the solo groups here in Minnesota are like king of the lots or the guys that go do the takeovers, like they have nothing to do. Those guys don't understand what they have to lose or they don't have anything to lose versus the guys that we, like the fast guys here. Everyone has a lot to lose, but that fast group has made connections for me in my life and kind of in a business sense that, I mean, it's been the best networking experience that I've had period, like the connections I've made, the friends I've made through it. I couldn't get that anywhere else, but everyone out there, so the group is really small. It's quiet. It used to be two weekends a night. It'll probably be downsized if it continues.

We don't have to give the logistics. You got the record. You got the record, bud.

But, you know, we don't do anything stupid. It's all very organized. Very organized and we can leave it at that.

All right. We'll sound to wrap it up, boys.

It's past Dan's dead time over here. I can see his eyes glazing over. All right, well, if you guys have made it this far, thank you very much. Caleb, do you have an Instagram or anything like that?

Yeah, you can check out all my Ford content at Spartan Race. I mean, just kidding, just kidding. No, I don't do a whole lot, but my Instagram is just Caleb Isenberger. If you need anything though, Facebook is where to find me. Everyone hits me up through Facebook.

So if people need you to wheel and deal stuff.

Oh yeah, dude, I am your guy. You need to find anything, you need to sell anything, hit me up, I got you.

Any particular things? Cause you're probably gonna get a few people messaging you. I guarantee it.

Well, anything Corvette related. Corvette related, I got you. Trackhawk related, I got you.

Great, let's give Dan a shout out. Where can people find Ford stuff?

You can check us out at Gunner Garage with two N's. I've actually had some people reach out to me. If you're looking for any Ford stuff for sure, I can help you out, or at least I know where to send you.

We had somebody reach out trying to sell a car to him, but it wasn't exactly the greatest, the Continental. Yeah, yeah.

I'm not looking for projects anymore. I've reached an age now where I either wanna buy a car done, or I will do, like you're saying, it goes to a place where it gets done, and I don't want it to be two years.

Turnkey, like.

Right, yeah. That's why the Gt500 has just been perfect for you. Yeah. As for me.

I've been buying some more parts. It's getting turned up this summer.

Yeah, he brings up Ford. He starts going. He's like, what? Bedtime, huh? I don't want to go to bed, mom.

What kind of world do you run? Ford Motorcraft? No.

I mean, I will, but no.

And as for me, you guys found me here. Caleb, thanks for coming on. Dan, thanks for existing. And keep, you'll see the next four hour of podcast soon enough, I'm sure. So, all right. Thank you and have a good night.