80. Building a 1,000+ WHP Jeep, Euros, Mopar, Minnesota Performance w/ Bryce Bjerke, Jorge Sandoval

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 Mustang loving co-host, Dan, RV loving co-host.

Not yet, let's see here. I fly out in the morning to go pick one up, we'll see how that works.

Yeah, oh dude, so okay, so he's already got means of us staying at Power Cruise, but he's upgrading.

Yeah.

That's a good way of putting it. It's a Ford. It's a Ford.

Obviously.

Yeah. So we're gonna go up to Power Cruise this year, we're gonna do some podcasts up there most likely. Sweet. So we'll see how that goes.

Outlet podcasts in the back of the E450?

Yeah, yep.

Well, you're gonna be up there for Power Cruise 1, right?

Not for 1. We'll be there for 2. Probably not 1, though.

Okay. So yeah, this is the part where I introduce our guests, I guess. So we got Mr. Bryce. So you don't even go by Fat Cat Performance anymore, do you?

No.

That's just gone. So now it's just you are part of, what is it?

Minnesota Performance.

Minnesota Performance. I always want to say Mopars Performance for some reason.

Yeah, I mean, we all do, because it's been that for 5, 6 years.

Oh, is it? When did it officially switch over?

I think February of this year.

Okay.

So it's been a couple of months, but getting the logo changed and getting Google updated and Facebook updated and all that stuff.

So it's Minnesota Performance now then.

So did you guys fire Moe, or what's going on?

No, no. I always kind of make a joke that America is just too racist. So they always spell it M-O-E instead of M-O-H, but I get it. I always think Moe is M-O-E. So just to make it easier for everybody, Minnesota Performance, MNP. Yeah.

I mean, especially with how much absorption you guys had, because Minnesota Performance absorbed you guys, or you, I guess, because you were a one-man band before.

Yep.

Hell can stuff.

Antonio helped me out. Yeah, yeah, my dad, but, you know, me solely pretty much, yeah.

And then the man to your right, Jorge, nailed it. So you were previously a, well, it was Mechanical, right?

Yep. Working for Mechanical, and it was just Jorge 1, and then I'm Jorge 2.

Was it two of you?

Yeah.

So the Jorge 1 is the one that was the owner and started Mechanical and everything, and then I'm Jorge as well, so it was Jorge 1, Jorge 2. But, now at Minnesota, it's Jorge and Jorge. So gotcha.

Because Jorge 1 doesn't like Jorge. He doesn't care. So it's like, well, okay, so it's either Jorge or Jorge. So that makes it easier.

So then you ended up getting absorbed into Minnesota Performance. So it's kind of like, we have two varying specialties here, right? So you're more, you're pretty much everything Mopar, like you're dabbling in the other stuff, but realistically, you're more of the Mopar guy.

Oh yeah, 100%.

And then you are literally anything that comes through the door. Mostly Euro, that's your background. Yeah. So when you, so like, was there any particular Euro that you worked on? Like the most, like any platform, like was it more Mercedes or Beamers or?

I'd say more Audi.

Audi, okay. Gotcha.

Also Audi too, yeah, right?

Well, to be fair, ratified motorsport, which I mean, I feel like most people know that's where we're based out of. I mean, yeah, Audis are a lot of it, but I got those.

There's some Beamers out there right now.

There's some Beamers out there, yeah. Those are the cute little B58s. Spent some time learning about M54s last episode, or was it the... No, Jeff was two episodes ago.

Yeah, I think so.

Yeah, so learning about that. Apparently, they're not as bad as I thought they were, learning that one. But okay, I want to start with your Jeep. How much are you willing to share about it?

Well, the original goal was 900 all wheel boost only. I can successfully say that we blew that out of the water completely.

This is not a right, by the way, when I say Jeep, some people are like, oh, maybe it's a Rubicon. Maybe it's like a normal SRT64. Maybe it's a Trackhawk. It's none of those things.

So like, no, it's a mutt.

It's a total mutt.

Yeah, it's a mutt. So it was actually, you know, as Sean, your old co-host, used to be his. When he had it, it was a 5.7 base 392 stroker. With a real mild built SHR trans, D1SC pro charger, and a fuel system. Then I bought it from him. And then it went to a D1X, had a Holley high ram. And then I went out and pretty much blew the motor up. Pretty much on purpose. I mean, I had a ridiculous amount of timing in it, because the motor just wasn't making power. And when we blew it up, we found out why, because it had a stock Hellcat cam in it, stock push rods, stock valve springs. Like, this motor was not what Sean paid for. And Sean was pretty upset when I sent them pictures after I tore it down.

And you don't have to necessarily name the shop that did it. So anybody in the Midwest Mopar space likely knows who.

But nonetheless, they pay our mortgage for stuff that we fix from them.

But no. So from my understanding, like you said, so Sean paid for X build and they didn't touch anything, or was it just cheaper parts or what was the result?

It was a 392 stroker. It is a stroker. But I mean, you're going to build that expensive engine and then you're going to put stock push rods and valve springs in it. I mean, I just I don't understand the theory. I don't know if it was just, I don't know. I mean, I've seen the invoices and for the amount that it was spent was pretty ridiculous for what the engine was.

Well, that's not like a huge expense on itself, just those last few things, right? I mean, push rods and valve springs, all that stuff, what does that cost the guy?

Well, in the hemi world, kit from MMX is like 2,100, a full kit, cam push rods, valve springs, the VVT lockout, MDS solenoid block offs, and then lifters as well. So it's not cheap by any means, but when you're talking 8, $10,000, what's another 2?

Right.

Fair enough. So in the grand scheme of things of an engine building, it was like, holy s***, that's why this thing didn't make any power. I mean, it made 697 on wheel, but with that setup, it should have made much more. But now it's a fully built 392. It's an actual BGE block 392 with ported heads, ported intake, D1X blower. It's got a dash 10 feed, dash 8 return. It's got triple Hellcat pumps, built transfer case. It's got SRT front and rear diffs. And yeah, it made well past 900 on 14.5 pounds of boost. And all wheel. Not just like some of these guys that pull the front drive shafts because they don't have all wheel drive dinos. We did it all wheel drive, and it was well past 900 wheel. Like I said, 14.5 pounds of boost, and I think we had like 16 or 17 degrees timing in it. So we had a few more degrees of timing to go, and I've got two more smaller pulleys.

Yeah, I heard that. Parshon told me that you have that at your disposal.

Yep, and that's not even including the direct port nitrous that's going to be going on it either.

So actual nitrous, not the stuff that we think Mike is running.

Yeah, the nitrous that Mike Johnson's running.

That's the race I want to see.

Actual direct port. So it's, I mean, it'll do four digits plus boost only now. And then goal is 12, 13 all wheel on spray.

A jeep shouldn't be that fast.

Let's go Mike.

Because like you and Mike are so funny on social media, just kind of jabbing at each other.

So everybody who comes into the shop today, when he came to the shop, we're just giving each other s*** the whole time.

Well, it's like the way he talks to like, he's like clowning. He's like, it's just so funny.

Yeah. Yeah.

You know, like you see people from the outside looking in and be like, God, he's just dog and Bryce. It's like, well, no, that's we're actually pretty good friends. So it's all in good fun.

Anyways, literally everybody with Mike, like he'll clown everybody. That's just what he's known for is just controlling people.

I mean, Charles's own page.

Yeah, which I think is freaking hilarious.

So every single post, I guarantee if you go into his professional dashboard, it says number one fan himself. No, that nothing's going to be ridiculous. A four digit Jeep that was never intended to have power whatsoever. What are the five sevens come stock?

Like 385, depending on the year. So, you know, yeah.

So you over quadruple that power.

So you said mildly built trans. Is that still the same? And then do you have to worry about transfer case, axles, all that?

So that's the trans. We'll just put it this way. Once we hit 6000 RPMs, we were blowing through the trans, the rest of the pole, and it still made well north of 900 all wheel. So that's why we stopped, because next weekend we do have a street car takeover event that we're going down to Missouri to do. In the Jeep? Yeah, in the Jeep. So we're flying our tuner in, so he's going to be down there, truck side support and stuff like that. So we're in the heavyweight class, so it's 4200 pound minimum weight. Jeep weighs 4390 without me in it.

That's surprisingly light.

Yeah, I mean, it's completely, there's nothing in it. No front sway bar, no AC, no passenger seat, no back seat. There's really nothing in it.

Are you going to throw some seats in there for a power cruise? Some ride-alongs?

I'll throw the passenger seat in, but no back seats. I don't even have the back seats anymore. And I'm not going to buy some for you.

No, that's what the Napa buckets are for.

Go get your lawn chair.

Yeah, in a thousand wheel horsepower all-wheel drive, I'm sure you won't go flipping backwards at all in that situation.

That math is actually kind of crazy when you think about it. 43.90, that's crazy. That's only making a thousand all-wheel... Oh my God, dude.

It'll be fast. My initial goal was 9.99 or faster. I mean, if you want to play the bench racing game, every calculator out there, with what it made right now and what it weighs, puts it at like a 951, 952, at like 149.5 miles an hour.

When do you start having to worry about cages?

I want to say... So 14 plus, I want to say it's like 150 miles an hour or like 9.90 or faster, 9.50 or faster, something like that.

Very close. Or you should be, theoretically.

Yeah. I mean, if I was a smart man, I would put a cage in it.

Uh-huh. You don't strike me as that.

I like to live dangerously. And not to mention the quotes I've had for like 850-certed cages are anywhere from 8 to 10 grand. And I need a trans before I do a cage.

And that would also add significant weight, I think.

The nice chromoly tubing, it's 150-200 pounds is what somebody used to make.

That's how I was thinking a couple hundred pounds, yeah.

They don't think it would be much over 150-175. So, I mean, just put a bigger than nitrous pill in it or something.

That math checks out.

Yep, exactly.

Which blower is in there right now currently?

D1X.

What's the one after that?

Is there one after that? F1A, then F1A-94, and so on and so forth.

Yeah, like some of the ridiculous ones we saw at PRI.

Oh my god, you could throw a trash can through there and eat it up and spit it out.

Big F3Rs and F4s and stuff like that.

If you walked by it, it'd suck you right in and spit you out.

Dude, imagine being a person sitting on a 747 ready for takeoff and just have the captain come on, sorry, somebody just got sucked in or whatever. It's happened.

Oh yeah.

Another video I saw a couple weeks ago was like planes, one of these weird no tower areas, middle of nowhere, these planes almost touched each other, just like small little Cessnas. I texted to my pilot buddy Ben, who's also been on this podcast, he's like, oh yeah, that's kind of common actually. I'm like, get the f*** out of here.

You got the whole wide open space of what is the atmosphere, and you got two planes that almost touched, like, how does that work?

Blows my mind. No, but I'm really excited to see how that thing does. I mean, all the online calculators can, you know, you can play your guessing games.

They're calculators.

How well do you think it's going to do at 60 to 130? Or like, roll racing, I guess in general.

So, I don't know. I've never had anything this fast. I've never cared about 60, 130 times.

Right.

Never really cared. You know, it was mostly, I think, the fastest car I've had before this was a 450 wheel horse WS6 Trans Am that ran 11.10.

Right.

At like 125, 130.

You're the guy that makes everybody else faster.

Yeah, exactly. You know, I mean, it took me a year and a half to build this engine. And I've got 12, 13 grand into the motor, and that's with me building it. You know, so it takes a long time, at least for me, because everything's expensive. So, right.

So if you were to quote that same build for somebody else, which I can't imagine it's a very big pool of people that want to do that.

Easy 50 plus. Really? With the powder coating. You know, the amount of labor that we have into the Jeep, stripping it down. You know, I mean, you got to think front diff, rear diff. At one point, it was sitting on the hoist at my dad's house with no front cradle, no rear cradle, no engine, no trans, no fuel tank. I mean, it was literally a shell sitting on the hoist. You know, and it's yeah, it would, I think it would take every bit of 50 K to build something like that. If you were to bring your five, seven grand Cherokee to a shop. I want that.

So Mima's Jeep.

Right.

Do you have a name for yet?

I haven't.

That's my name.

I haven't figured out one. I'm really I really like that. It's kind of nerdish. But the Marvel's Marvel series or whatever. Oh, I might get attacked here. I don't remember if it's Marvel or DC. Oh, no. Carnage and all them. Oh, I forget to forget what they are. Is that DC? We're going to get blown up.

It's always been a long day. Anybody who doesn't understand a man after a laborious day.

But no, I'm a huge fan of Carnage in the Venom series, like the symbiotes and stuff like that. I really like Carnage, but Carnage is red.

So Venom is black.

Yeah. One of my good friends said that in some universe, Carnage was blue at one point, and blue is my favorite color. The Jeep is obviously black and blue. So it's something along those lines.

But when you have to explain it, it's a little bit of a pain in the a**.

Exactly. You know, I mean, as far as like license plates, I think I'm going to get a plate that says not LS, because it has a Holley Hi-Ram on it. Everybody sees Holley Hi-Ram, and they're like, oh, LS. It's like, well, no, Holley makes a Hi-Ram for a few different platforms. You know, so I mean, and it makes sense, because last summer when I had it out at a car show, somebody's like, oh, dude, you swapped an LS into it? No, no, I did not. Why would I do that?

I'm not an idiot, yeah.

And it's like, well, it's got a Hi-Ram in it. It's like, yeah, they make them for the hemi. So I like that idea for a plate is not an LS.

I feel like you might get some fun plate ideas after this airs.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I've had people say, like, hey, you should do BMW LOL or Audi LOL or something like that. And I'm like, I don't want to get my Jeep vandalized or something. But the not in LS is pretty funny.

Absolutely.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, and we have Nez in our shop, too, and Nez is pretty fast. I mean, I shouldn't say he's pretty fast.

He's quick. Yeah, he's a... I don't know if he likes his numbers being thrown around. I've heard various things, though.

Yeah, it's like Mike Johnson. It's got nitrous. We'll just go with that. Yeah, fair enough. Nobody will really find out unless he actually says something. But, you know, it's... I mean, then there's this guy. It kind of makes me a little worried with his car. It's a pretty saucy little thing.

Yeah, 2000 Audi S4 single turbo.

Okay. I'm getting slightly nervous. I got twitched, but what's going on?

Built engine, so pistons, rods, girdle, everything you can put on there, 2.8 heads, SuperTec valve train, upgraded valves, all the s*** that you can put on the 2.7. And then they strapped a single turbo on there, a BorgWarner, S369. Made 725 at the wheels at their Dano day.

Holy crap.

That's all wheel too, right?

All wheel on a hot, humid day.

Oh yeah, when you guys did that Dano day, that was a hot a** day.

It got really warm. There's a lot of cars that we dinoed in the past on cooler days that made anywhere from 10 to 20 horse less that day. So I keep telling them, bring it in, let's put it on the Dano while it's still cool. But E85 is not the greatest. So I think you actually need 75 plus.

Yeah, 75 plus. Yeah, because there's no compensation or anything. It was tuned in July and I was doing street logs at like 90 degree weather. And it was when the E content was the highest. So you need to make sure you have at least E75, E80.

What do you fill up like Minico?

By the Brentsville shop, Mechanical. We had a holiday by there that was actually really high E content.

Really?

Yeah, and then all the high V's that I ever went to was like a Cottage Grove one and one in Lakeville, they always had high E content. So, what went on from those?

Right down the street from our shop has pretty good content.

I've heard that too, yeah.

So that's where we get all of our E4.

Do you test it every single time?

Uh, no. Because it's just consistently good.

Okay.

You know, a lot of the cars that we put E in have analyzers in them anyways, so we're able to see it. You know, so it's during the summer, I don't think I've ever seen that Hy-V below 79. Maybe. Yeah, it's usually really good. There was a month stretch last year where it was, we did a tank and it was like 82, 83. Yeah, it normally sits right about 79, 80. So it's a pretty good station. Hy-V, who'd have thought?

Yeah.

So what does your car weigh then?

Based on all the numbers and the people that have weighed the cars, it should be around 3,600 pounds.

Yeah, so that's cooking too. You know what I love to do is I like to go to those weigh stations. That's literally my profile picture on Facebook, it's me standing on a weigh station. And it's like 20 pound increments, so it's like, it's either going to make or break what you feel. Yeah, I want to say 229 or 230-ish at the time, and it rounded down to 220. I'm like, f*** yeah.

I'm like, score.

So yeah, that was interesting. So how long have you had that car for then?

I bought it in April of 2020.

Okay, oh wow, so it was like four years. Dude, what a weird time, right? Because it's like before and after, like with the whole COVID thing. I think in terms of after or before or during.

So it probably wasn't expensive to buy, but it was expensive to build. If you bought one right in that time, it was like, oh, I got the car for cheap, but oh s***, all the parts went through the roof.

I bought it for three grand. And the kid brought it up from Florida. And then it had a leaking heater core. Obviously with the winters here, he didn't want to fix the heater core, so he just let it sit. And then I came by and I think he wanted like five grand. And I took him down to three. And obviously the big portion of getting it to where it is, it's like 30, 35 into it, all in all. But at the first stage, the first year was just doing all the maintenance. That was neglected and then doing suspension. So it's got all poly bushings, adjustable control arms, coilovers, like anything you can think of. I touched, then I got brake brake kit in the front rear, built the trans. And then the last step was building the motor with a single turbo, which I did that last year in April. I started putting it together. And then now we're here. It just needs a paint job because it has a bunch of sun fade from Florida.

Is that pretty much max for the 27 or has it got more in it?

It's got more in it. Yeah, I talking to my tuner, I basically just need to get a bigger turbo or just try to push more PSI through there.

But it's really capable of it, though. Who's your tuner? Before we get too far into the show, I wanted to take a moment to talk about Razorhood. If your daily driver is having issues, a.k.a. your beater you got off Craigslist, Razorhood's telemechanics and AI tools can help you diagnose and solve the issues you may be dealing with for a fraction of the cost. All you have to do is add your car to the Razorhood garage to get started. You can provide the AI tool, also known as GUS, with the specifics of the issues you're having, and it will help you narrow down what the culprit is. It's a great way to bounce ideas off of to figure out what actually might be the problem. You can then select from a variety of solutions to explore the cost and difficulty of doing the repair yourself versus taking it to a shop. If your car doesn't have detailed solutions yet, that's totally fine. Just go ahead and add your car to the garage for free, and that will let the Razorhood team know what to focus on as they continue to develop and grow. If you want to try out Gus or chat with a telemechanic, go to razorhood.com and add your car to the garage to get started. Use code MINNOXIDEFREE for a one-month free subscription or MINNOXIDE20 to save 20% on a 30-minute call with a telemechanic. Let's get back to the show.

Blake Beetle, he's out in California, so it was all through E-Tune emailing, back and forth logs and getting tune revisions and that, and it was all on the street.

He's been pretty responsive because that's usually the problem when you're doing that kind of thing.

He was actually very responsive. It was like getting revisions, sometimes like three or four in a day. Back to back, and we tried a whole bunch of different boost solenoids because it was over boosting. At one point, I hit like 40 PSI on the spool up, and when he saw the log, he was like, yeah, don't do that again. I was like, it felt fun, 40 PSI. But we finally got it dialed in. I kid you not, I did like maybe 60 logs of wide open throttle third gear before I even got to enjoy it, just doing revisions and working on all the kinks and like weird s*** that comes up that you don't expect. But yeah, put the... I built the engine over the winter, and in April, I brought the car in, took the engine that was in there out, put the other one in, and it took a whole week off just to swap everything over, do the single turbo kit, and do all the wiring and stuff. And within the week, started it, had it all running. And then by August, all the tuning was done. So it was relatively quick. I mean, all those four years of owning it, I wasn't gathering parts. It was just like doing chunks all at once. So it's been fun. I think I enjoy more the building process than the driving process at times.

I get to that point, too. I just build something, I stand back, you're like, all right, cool, now what?

Yeah, exactly.

It sucks.

That's why I bought another one.

Sadly, they're right now. I just look at it in admiration and s***, it needs more money now. Yeah.

Because it's like, all right, am I done? Oh, I'm bored. Oh, no, I have to spend more money.

Right.

OK, that's the real question. OK, let's just flush out. We haven't even done an actual like, you haven't even done a poll with it yet, have you?

No.

So like, I mean, like on the street or whatever, like you haven't taken out for a drive, nothing. Before you even do that, you're already planning the next phase. Oh, is there a next phase?

Yep, 100 percent.

What do you even do at this point?

2,000 horse.

Jesus. Is there anybody that has a 2,000 horsepower Jeep yet?

Oh, God, yeah.

Really?

Yeah, there's quite a few.

Really?

I mean, I shouldn't say quite a few. I mean, you could probably count sub 20.

Half of them are in Australia.

No, just US based. OK. I mean, I've made multiple posts across a lot of the Jeep forums and pages and stuff on Facebook. And as far as I know, it's the nastiest non-trackhawk WK2. I mean, Ripatooned and Demon and stuff like that, they all have very b***** trackhawks out there. But I can't find a non-trackhawk WK2 that makes anywhere close to what this one does. And then, I mean, yeah, like I said, the next step is 2000 crank, which I have the block. Just got to start doing the rotating assembly. But the rotating, I mean, the crank itself is five grand. So it's like, this next step is going to probably take me three, four years.

Yeah, that's probably like a good six figure amount.

Well, the engine with all the parts, you're like doing it correct with like the Thitech heads. I really want to get the Demon Intake Manifold, which that Demon Intake Manifold, correct me if I'm wrong, Nate, is like six grand or something like that. It's similar to like Plasmaman territory, but it's so beautiful. And the Thitech heads are very expensive, the crank rods, pistons. What block are you starting with now? It's going to be an aluminum block. And yeah, that's very expensive too. So I should refrain my statement where I said I had the block. I have a 6.4 BGE block that I was going to do it off of that one and then fill it and then use that, which it would do the number that I want, but it wouldn't hold it for very long. It would still split eventually. So I need to find an aluminum block, which every once in a while you can find them on Facebook that pop up.

Like billet aluminum or just aluminum?

They are billet cores. And they're so beautiful.

Yeah, I know. They look great.

But that's next goal. But I mean, I think this one will suffice for quite a while. You know, the thing is that I'm battling right now is what trans to put in it, whether we put a HP 95, which is essentially the Trackhawk Durango Hellcat trans, or say an F it and go in turbo 400 and two wheel drive swap it.

Oh, interesting.

So pulling front drive shaft, pulling transfer case, front diff, front axles, and just rocking it rear wheel drive with a turbo 400.

But losing out on an all wheel drive, you'd miss it.

Exactly.

But making it work would be difficult. So okay, theoretically, what's the best way to make that work then? So you would have to keep the, was it HP 95, you said?

What to keep it all wheel drive or go two wheel drive?

Keep it all wheel drive.

Keep it all wheel drive is the HP 95 trans and transfer case. And then I have to get a new shifter, a new PCM, excuse me, a new body control module, a new WIM module and a new, I already said PCM. Yeah, there's four new things that I have to get. And the only things that I can get used is PCM and the shifter. All the other modules can only be flashed once, so those all have to be brand new. So it's like three grand my cost in modules just to put the 95 in the Jeep. Because 2014, 2015 Jeeps are some of the worst years to put trackhawk parts in because the PCM and body control modules and all that stuff never had that kind of firmware. So you can't even program it to it, so you have to go 16 plus. So if you had a 16 plus 5.7 or 6.4, putting a 95 from a trackhawk in it is going to be easy. But 14, 15, you're kind of screwed. I should say 15 down, you're screwed.

Is it not better to go like, can you still go like MoTek or something standalone then at that point? Does that make it easier? I know it's expensive, but...

I mean, you could, but to my knowledge, they can't control the ZF trans or the electronic transfer case, so you would have to, you know, the trans isn't a really a hard thing. There's a company called Sound German Automotive, which if you did do a standalone on the trans or on the engine, you could do a Sound German kit for the trans. But at that point, I don't know how to control the T case because that's electronically controlled as well. So I don't think anybody makes something for the T case yet. It probably won't be a thing that they will make. But yeah, I don't know. So we're really torn right now. The turbo 400 or trackhawk stuff.

So would it be able to at least handle that level of power then?

Or the trackhawk trans?

Yeah.

Oh, God. Yeah.

Really? Is that what all the trackhawk guys are? Are they still running their trackhawk trans?

I think sub 1500. Above that, yeah, you want to go turbo 400. You know, the thing with my jeep is because it's got a pro charger, it makes power with RPMs, right? Whereas trackhawks, well, any Hellcat-powered vehicle, you're making 800 plus foot pounds as soon as you hit the gas.

If they're still supercharged, right?

Yeah. If it's still blower car, still that IHI, you know, you're with a pulley and stuff, you're 800 plus as soon as you hit it. And those trans will hold a thousand wheel with a good tune all day long. So with mine, I mean, make like, I mean, I'll just say the torque, it was 776, 786 torque, but it was at like 5,300 RPMs. So on the hit, it's only making like 550, 600. So it's ramping in the power. So a stock Tracock Trans and T-case would live a very long life, even with the nitrous on that set up, because it's not getting slammed initially. So it's a big, big tour on, do I go that road or this route? Either way, it's going to be like 10, 12 grand.

Yeah, fair enough.

So you won't twist any half shafts or anything like that, or are you going to have to do that stuff too?

Or is it because it's all four, will it, OK? I mean, I'll have to start buying some diffs, because we'll break diffs and axles and stuff. There is a nine inch conversion for the Jeeps. But again, five, seven grand. Just it never ends. I would put a ton of $300 diffs in that thing before I'd buy a nine inch conversion.

Oh yeah, fair point, yeah.

Yeah, you know, three, 400 bucks for a diff, 75 bucks for an axle on average used.

You just don't want any Ford parts in that thing, do you?

We can go fast without it.

Yeah, no, that's gonna be rowdy. I'm excited to see what happens with that. So why not the first power cruise? I think you mentioned it before we started.

Because I have a very good feeling in Kansas next weekend. We're gonna totally grenade the trans. Okay, fair enough. I want to rev the truck to 75. On the dyno, we were revvin to 72. We were finding some kind of weird cut in the trans or in the PCM that was chopping the throttle to 43%. We messed with a ton of different parameters and we cannot figure out why it was chopping the throttle. But 7180, like clockwork, every single pull, full throttle, 40-some percent. So we're probably gonna limit the shifts to like 65, because around 6000 is where it started to slip. So if we can, I can deal with 500 RPMs a slip, as long as it makes the shift. And then probably the last day, we'll just say F it and let it eat at 7, 7,200. So, and that's probably why I won't make the first Power Cruise. If it's still alive, if the trans is still alive, I'll probably go, put the party pulley on it and have fun, and then totally take the trans out. But it's funny too, because the trans is one thing that I haven't touched yet. I had no clue what the trans was. I had no clue what the stall converter was in it, until literally last night when I called Sean, and it's like, hey, what is this? And then here, it's just a 3200 RPM stall and a basic SHR trans with upgraded clutches. It's like, well, it's not holding. So.

Well, it wasn't built by the same guy who did the motor, right?

No. No.

Yeah, thank God.

Yeah.

You probably want to survive.

Yeah.

So.

Quick trip gets, right?

Yeah.

Is that the, is there any, is there any merit to when people say, like when they blame the gas station E85?

I've never seen a quick trip higher than 65.

Okay.

68.

So there is some merit to some of those motors blowing up?

Well, first of all, test your E85.

Yeah. Test your stuff.

Yeah. You know. If you put that much into a build, and you're not testing your E85 beforehand, at least you find a reliable station, cool. But you got to test it a few times, I would assume.

Yeah. So like I have a customer, Malcolm, a lot of people know him, white charger, blue hood, blue roof, whatever. Dude literally has a freaking notebook that he's written down gas stations, ethanol percentages, the date. Like he's so anal about it. I love it. Because he could tell you, oh, no, don't go there. Because this time last year and the year before that, it was this. So it's probably that right now. And he's spot on.

And like an actual like physical notebook?

Yeah. It's his freaking notebook.

I'm just curious.

That's a good question. I don't know.

Because like there's iCloud now. I'm just saying. You can pull it up anywhere.

But no, it's like that's the kind of customer that a guy wants.

Yes, absolutely.

Test your stuff. You know, because at the level that his car is at, yeah, the e-content makes a little bit of difference, you know, generally.

Because that's a 5.7 as well, right?

Yep. Yeah, I think those numbers are public.

Didn't you post them? Either way.

I mean, mid 600 wheel stock bottom end 5.7. You know, we made a glory poll, made 725, 730, something like that. And it just ate it up. It didn't care. And that was one thing that we did discuss, too, for the second power cruise, because we actually have a motor that we built for the car, which is a well-known fact. So I'm not releasing anything that's not known. I mean, nobody knows what the motor is, but we have a motor built for the car. But for the second power cruise, it's debating on, we throw the spicy tune up in it and just let it eat and whatever happens, happens. But he doesn't know. And that's one thing I like about Malcolm is if it's going to hurt my name, he doesn't want to do it. And I'm like, well, if we just tell everybody that we don't care if it blows up, we know that we're pushing a stock 5.7 to the edge. I mean, 700 wheel, what it made, you know, 72730 wheel is damn near 900 crank on a stock 5.7 Hemi. I mean...

Those things can take it, can't they?

Oh yeah, 100%. And I have a feeling that it would probably last most of the weekend. It would probably break a ring land Sunday, but I think it would run all weekend, you know. And that's kind of what I like about this. He's like, well, I don't want to tarnish your name. They already think that you built your old Jeep motor. I'm like, well, I didn't, so screw them.

Yeah, the whole name thing is weird too. And that's kind of like the nice thing is people come on here to settle scores sometime. Right. You know, just get the facts out there. But like, honestly, at the end of the day, as long as you pay your bills, who gives a s***?

Exactly.

Right? Because like, you know the quality of work that you're putting out. You still have customers coming to you. It's like at the end of the day, whatever is online doesn't matter nearly as much as the referral game.

Yep.

Because I'm guessing a good bit of your customers are referral, right?

Oh, yeah, 100%.

Yeah, same with you, I'm assuming. Or just where you're based out of. It's like, oh yeah, I trust these guys over there. They've done this, this and this, especially in Minnesota, dude. Like, this is a tight-knit community.

Oh, it's insane how tight and, I mean, we have guys that are like ratified, ratified, ratified, ratified. You got guys, no, Euro charge, Euro charge, Euro charge. Or like, no, Mos, Mos, Mos, Mos. It's awesome. I really like it. You know, and all the shops are good.

Well, nobody's getting run out of town.

No, you guys are all busy, so that's a good thing.

You go to show up to any of our shops, and there's, I mean, f***, we have what, probably 15, 20 cars outside, and the inside's packed. You know, it's like there's just not enough time in the day to do everything. You know, and then same thing with these guys. I mean, s***, that shop was packed down there. You know, and Eurocharged is busy as hell. JWP with both of his are just packed all the time.

That's right. I forgot John's got the budget auto repair still too.

Yep, yeah.

Because his shop in St. Paul's beautiful.

Yeah, that's a gorgeous place. So, you know, it's like everybody is, you know, it's really cool because we're all pretty close. You know, we'll all talk our s***.

Oh, yeah.

We're all so close. So it's like you got some guys will like kind of think that, you know, you're actually talking s*** about somebody. It's like, no, we do this behind closed doors too. Like we all love each other, you know.

You guys all help each other too.

Exactly.

Like yesterday, for example, or a couple days before like my buddy Benny, who's got a shop, he asked for whatever. And I think it was like some, I don't know, some whatever. But either way, I knew exactly who to tag. I tag Dave Rasmussen. He's like, yeah, I got this, this and this. It's like they're across town, like 40, 50 miles. You know, he's ready to help out. It's awesome to see that. Are you going to the black market event or whatever?

Or no, that's the same weekend as whatever. Same weekend as Kansas. Yep. But we will have a couple of cars there. I think we're having six cars there. So I think we're going to have a 950 plus wheel horse Hellcat, Sean's, boy, I'm going to crucify it again, G80. The G80, Sean's G80 with his, man, this intake manifold that he got.

He told me. Oh. Yeah.

It's so beautiful.

Well, are you talking about the replacement one?

Yeah. Yeah, the replacement one. God, that story.

So short story, we don't have to get into the specifics of it, but basically, the company sent it to the wrong shop. They sent it to, like, the Bronx.

So that's gone.

And it's like this custom color, everything that Sean wanted. And yeah, they called. They're like, what? Nobody got it here.

They even sent somebody there.

Yeah.

And they're like, well, somebody signed for it. And they're like, never seen it. Don't know what you're talking about. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's like, it's not cheap.

Like, at all. No. Yeah. Not at all. It's literally a good running, driving, stopping car type price. And not a s*** box price either. Yeah.

About a Mark 6 Golf.

Yeah. You could probably buy your car with it. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

I'm like, you joke now, but it's like, it could have bought two of his old cars before he started working on it.

Literally.

So it's like, yeah, it's.

So that'll be on display. And then, you know, of course, we'll have Mike Johnson's. And I think we're going to have another single turbo G80.

OK.

Or what is what is that single? Is that's that's G80, right? The single turbo BMW that's going.

I don't know who's that one is.

That was Wills.

Wills.

Or is that the platform before that?

Oh, that the F80. F80 M3.

Yeah, BMW things.

Yeah, I don't know this stuff either.

I'm catching up. I'm doing all right. So who's working on Sean's stuff? Is it you or is it one of the other? Because there's a few guys that kind of work on a little bit of everything over there, right?

Right now, it's sitting in my garage. Fair enough.

So productive.

Yeah, no, we're waiting on parts.

Yeah.

It's kind of crazy.

Making sure they show up to the right state. I get it.

Yep, exactly. Noah, I don't know, probably you.

Yeah. So then, what other projects, because I know some of the projects that you have worked on for like other people. You've worked on a handful of things. Is there any fun projects that you have worked on? I'm starting to get a stutter. I think I hit my head too hard before the episode. But yeah, is there any fun projects that you've worked on?

We've done a lot of the four liter Audi stuff. I don't know if you guys have ever seen Matt Dozer's S8, it's a white S8. We did an air-to-air on it, upgraded TS1 turbos, port injection, basically everything you could do on the four liter. And he's coming back to upgrade his exhaust manifolds because on those cars, once you get such high cylinder pressures, you start getting misfires on cylinder five, and it's partly because of the stock exhaust manifold design. So upgraded manifolds fixed that, and before they were doing upgraded valve springs, which is what we did on his, but he still got a little bit of a miss, so he just got those in. So we did that, and then there's a bunch of other four liter cars, S7s, S6, RS7s, just putting turbos on and doing the E85 kit, it's all super simple stuff, and then they run like six, seven hundred wheel, just torque monsters, just crazy stuff like that. And then right now we have actually also Matt Dosser's Audi RS6, a 2003, so it's an older one, 4.2 belt driven one, twin turbo, so he's getting upgraded turbos and just waiting on parts on that too.

It's been a, what do they call it, a hoist ornament.

Good thing you guys got a few more hoists now.

Yeah, we upgraded to six hoists and that thing's been on the hoist for probably two, almost three months. And it's not even because of us, we're literally waiting on a part, one freaking part, and the company created a tracker two weeks ago, two or maybe three, and it still says label created.

Yeah.

It's like, come on guys, you know, we've called them, we've bombarded email, like, it's like, just ship us the damn part, sign up a hoist, like, come on, let's go.

Well, that's money too, right? That's a lot of help on that. Like a lot of people don't realize that, like when something sits for that long, you know, how many productive, like, think about it, if that was like a, like a normal maintenance shop, right?

Yeah.

How many cars could you crank out through there per day? Then you multiply that by 90 days.

You know, and then it's, and it's an Audi thing, or well, I call it a Euro car thing, because do anything, you got to drop the front subframe, you know, so it's not like we can just put the wheels on it and roll the thing outside, because there's no front subframe in it, because the engine is sitting on the on the subframe. So and you're not going to, I'm not going to have him put it all together just to roll it outside, because it's a long ways away from being able to just throw it together. That and it's, it's not a uncommon thing to know that I have kind of a little bit of small, not so much mechanical empathy for vehicles. I do, but I don't, but that car is like one of like 1200 or something. Something like a crazy low number in the United States. So it's like, well, okay, it can sit on the hoist, you know, but it's like if we do have a car that goes outside, you know, to be clear, it gets a car covered, it gets wrapped, right? It gets protected, you know, so I'm like, I'm not just sending a car outside unprotected.

Like if I send my GTI to you, that thing's not gonna go outside, like it?

Oh yeah, 100%. I'm gonna put the Hellcat inside before your GTI goes inside.

1000%.

I should have a teleshop if I've got it. So like Jared, when he has my car, I'm like, I don't give a s*** if it sits outside. Go for it. And you guys got a gated thing with like barbed wire and an automatic gate. It's gated.

It's secure. We literally have seven cameras on the outside of our building.

Rookie numbers.

And that's just us.

Sponsored by Ring.

You know, so it's like it and every night all the cars that run come inside. You know, it's not like we leave cars outside and you know, I don't want to sound like an a****** like I don't give a s*** about your car.

Anybody who knows everything comes inside.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, if it can't come outside, yeah, it's sitting outside and it's getting a car cover and it's it's safe.

The way I see it, if a dealership can keep a GT3 outside at the Porsche dealership, you're fine.

Right.

Yeah.

Or like one of our customers literally drives his 720S year round.

Oh, really? I haven't seen that one in the winters, but that's cool.

Yeah.

Do you know how many freaking new 720s we got this year coming to the Minnesota? So one just got delivered yesterday. It's orange and one just got delivered last week. It's that green one that was at Tray Show.

Okay.

And then there was one a handful weeks before that. It was like the Volcano Red, like the same color as this as this year. Beautiful color. And it's like, yeah, dude, 720s have come down in price. So people are just like, ah, finally, right? If only we had a McLaren dealer over here to service the damn things.

Yeah. I mean, that the 720 that we got in, I had to do turbo gaskets on it because it blew the gasket out between the turbo and the exhaust manifold. I'm like, I have no clue what I'm doing here. We had to buy a manual for it. Take a wild guess how much a McLaren manual cost 1500 bucks. Well, about half that. It was like 750 for a frickin manual.

If I'm doing the math correctly, I think the membership in Chet GBT is like 10 bucks a month. I don't understand.

I don't even know what that is. I'm sorry.

You haven't gone down that rabbit hole yet?

No, I haven't.

Bless your heart. It's surprisingly right and wrong all the time.

Right. So it's like, I didn't want to... I'll tear into a Corvette. I'll tear into a Mustang. No manual, whatever.

Figure it out, yeah.

Don't care. I'm not tearing into a car that's worth what my house is. You know, it's like, I need a van.

Well, they'd appreciate it. Let's not give it too much credit.

Yeah, fair enough. Actually, I think you could buy that 720 less than the house.

They're about 240 now for a decent one.

Oh, really?

Yeah. You, those f****** are like...

I could buy about a 720.

Yeah. Yeah, no, when people figure out...

You can't race a house, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, no.

Can't live in a McLaren. Sure you can, I mean...

Arguably.

It's gonna be rough.

Oh yeah, that would be, it'd be hell.

Well, as long as you don't have Senna seats in there, it's kind of cushy.

Right. You know, and it's, yeah.

It was a cool car.

Loved working on it. It's kind of nerve wracking, working on something like that. I mean, I could see, you do it daily, how it just becomes another car. But, you know, your first one, you're like, make sure the wrench is perfect. You know? But, and it's surprising.

It's like working on $200,000 BMWs.

Yeah.

You know?

That's his side.

Right. The thing is though, is like with the BMW, like the parts are way more accessible too. Even if it's the most expensive upper echelon, it's still not gonna be like, if you damage something on a McLaren, you're waiting. A long time.

I mean, this one little gasket, little circular exhaust manifold gasket, we had to get from the UK. Because out of the McLaren shops that were in the US, nobody had an exhaust gasket.

That's hilarious.

How do you not have an exhaust gasket?

Like, how do you not have these things stateside anywhere?

Yeah, it's literally a piece of, like a copperish looking metal, which is really weird, is a circular piece that kinda, if you were to cut it in half, would have a shape like this. And as you bolted it together, it just kinda crushed like that. That's a McLaren exhaust manifold gasket, or turbo gasket.

You don't wanna just use some RTD copper and...

Right?

Yeah.

You know, and yeah, we had to get that out of the UK. It took two weeks. Yeah. So it was a lot of fun.

You know what blows my mind is sometimes I'm like, the air freight moves even faster than like the ground freight. Like I ordered something off of TikTok shop, right? And it was here within like a week and a half. And I'm just like sitting here thinking like, all right, if I got that same item from Best Buy, it would have cost me $100. I got it for 13 off TikTok and it was here in like a week. And I'm just like, how? Crazy.

Yeah, I mean, the motor mounts in the Jeep, for instance, came out of Australia. I got them in six days. Crikey. From Australia. Yeah, it was crizy. But I couldn't believe it when they showed up. I'm like, there's no f****** way. And yeah, sure s***, address, Australian address. It's like, holy cow, that's fast.

It's not often when things work out like that either.

Oh yeah, I didn't, I didn't think I would have them. Yeah, I expected like a month and a half.

They must have had the plane already fueled up on the tarmac and the guy ran out with one last bomb. He's like, wait, wait, wait.

Exactly, it must have hit every green light.

Yeah, right, yeah.

So I thought that was nuts. Absolutely nuts. Probably never happen again, but yeah.

Here's a question that I had a number of times. I'm like, I should really ask Bryce about this. So we talked about this the first time you're on this podcast, which is like episode six, I think, or whatever.

Four, I listened to it today.

Four? Yeah, yeah, so guess number two. Yeah, that was right after Eric. Wow, so yeah, you're an OG, OG. But so the question kind of goes like this, right? There's people that are in the camps of, all right, I'm gonna buy a Hellcat and build it, or I'm gonna get a 64 and build it. You are kind of in the camp of, why not just build the 64, if I remember correctly, right? We're talking 1,000 horsepower plus build.

It's, I'm severely torn on that. For the longest time, the 61 was my hands down favorite Hemi. You know, just because the 64 is so fragile in stock form. But, I mean, if I were to do it, I would say start with a Hellcat, just because it's, if you can do the stuff yourself, right? You're less than $2,000 in parts, you're 800 wheel, right? Less than five, 6,000 in parts, you're mid 900 wheel. You can't do that with a Scat Pack, you know?

But what's the alternative in the Scat Pack? Like, what does it take to get a Scat Pack to like 900 wheel?

What are we talking about price difference to like 40 grand between cars?

See, and that's the other thing, right? You talk about the price of a Hellcat versus the price of a Scat Pack. You know, you can buy an older Scat, boy, I don't even know anymore, the high 20s, low 30s, whereas your 50s, 60s for a Hellcat, granted people are gonna say, well, you can finance these, you can't finance car parts. Okay, yeah, I can get that. But to make a Scat pack make more than 950 is gonna be that difference in price. You know what I mean? Reliably, because you're talking built motor, fuel system, your choice of blower, my personal favorite, pro charger, pro charger or Whipple, E85, fuel system, 900 easy.

What about the trans?

Well, and trans, yeah.

Is that, so you could rock stock trans on a Hellcat though, right?

Oh yeah, yep.

See, this is also, we had this conversation with Caleb. I'm assuming the Hellcat resells better too, right?

Oh, 100%.

Yeah, because even though you built that thing, it's still gonna be like, so what, it's a scat?

Exactly, you're still gonna get less than a Hellcat out of it. I mean, and as far as the trans goes, with our tuning, and I'm sure there's a few others out there that can do it as well, we've had stock scats on a stock 70 trans hold 750 to 840-ish wheel for a few years, without failing.

What's the upgrade cost, though, if you want to get that next tier trans for a scat?

It's like 10, 11 grand for the trans and torque converter, but it's a lot of billet parts, so billet parts aren't cheap. And then you're talking 1,400, 1,500 horse capable. Okay.

Can the Hellcat trans go onto a 6.4 into a scat?

Yep, it can. There's some trickery that you got to do with the programming. Not quite as bad as what I have to do with my Jeep to do the HP 95s, but it's definitely doable. We're actually doing that with Malcolm's car. We're going to find a Redeye or a Hellcat trans and put that in there.

Is there a difference between those two? Is there a big difference between the Hellcat and the Redeye trans or no?

So Redeyes and Demons and stuff, they'll have a little bit different features, but overall the trans is pretty similar.

It's probably just tuning at that point. I suppose they're tuned to the shift points and stuff a little bit different. Yeah, I forgot what I was going to say.

Don't worry about it.

What I was going to say was there's probably plenty of smacked up Hellcats out there, too. I'd imagine those are getting wrecked about one every four minutes. Yeah.

It's not hard to find parts for this.

This is why I need to get a sponsor, like a junkyard or like a personal injury law firm. I really need to pursue some of these, because come on, dude.

Right.

Okay, so at what point does it make sense financially? You buy a Hellcat, you buy a Scat Pack, and let's say you want to go for that, you know, 12, 13, 14, 1500 horse to the wheels. Which one does it make sense to go with?

Five-seven.

Oh, you would just go a five-seven?

I'd buy a base model five-seven car.

Okay.

It's either way, you got to build a motor. Either way, you got to build a motor, you got to build trans, got to put a fuel system in it. So why cut up and ruin a $70,000 car when you could go buy a $20,000 five-seven challenger that's big and clapped out?

Is that your reasoning for your Jeep? I never asked you.

Uh, that and it was the right amount of money.

At the right amount of time. At the right time.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, when I tell people what I paid for that, they're like, there's no effing way. I'm like, well, it is, so believe it or not.

I'm going to have a stroke here. So you're telling me a five-seven is just the best option, period, if you were trying to go for that 1,500 horse?

Well, yeah, because, I mean, a stock Hellcat's not going to do it.

OK.

I mean, you could probably do it once. You know, so you're going to have to build the motor. You know, the stock Hellcat blower's not going to do it. So you're going to have to do twins or 3.8 Whipple. So yet, there goes the blower. So why start with a really expensive car?

Fair.

You know, I would say if you're going to do it, even if you like say you wanted to run a standalone and a turbo 400, then I would go get a V6 car. You know, because you're going to pull all that s*** out anyways. You know, so but if you want to keep eight speed and all that other stuff, I would start with a 5.7 because like I said, all of it's got to be replaced. So why spend the big initial hit?

That's fair.

But at least if you buy a Hellcat though, you can have fun with it. Like if you didn't want to build it right away, you'd have something, you'd be smiles per gallon right out the gate for the first year anyway.

So all right, so let's say I had my old V6 charger still if I wanted to go to that 15. So what would be even left? Nothing, right?

Yeah, there really wouldn't be anything. Yeah.

Is anybody building V6 cars? Like do they buy all the drive ones and put pro chargers on them or anything like that? Yeah, I was about to say the Mustang guys do that too sometimes.

Yeah, we didn't. I mean, it's, believe it or not, a lot of our V6s that we'll do. So we're a RIP superchargers dealer. We're making 440 all wheel horse or 440, 445 rear with these little V6s.

Yeah, I miss that car sometimes.

They eat it up. They love it. You know, and so you're talking, you got a little V6 that's keeping up with scat packs. So, that's...

What's the limiting factor on those to go like more power if you want it to? The sleeves.

So, it's a wet sleeve engine. So, the sleeve literally starts moving and it can crack. So, like the big power V6 guys, and I say big power like five, six hundred horse, have custom sleeves and custom pistons and stuff like that.

That's not cheap, I assume?

Probably not. I've never looked into it.

Nobody really wants to do that, I'm guessing.

No.

It's a small market.

It's a lot of money.

Like you'd rather just get, you know, like a 135 and take it to this guy.

Exactly.

Down pipes in a tune.

If you want a six banger, get a Euro. Sorry.

Yeah, there's really no American six bangers that would be competent of something like that.

Well, it's because it's in a line, right? Some of the most stout engines I've ever seen, the Ford 200, that's a straight six. When they go the V configuration, I think it's when it gets hairy.

A lot of you guys know Ratified Motorsport for their RS3, TTRS, 1000 horsepower hairdresser car builds, but they are so much more than that. From basic maintenance on an R35 GTR to cute little Volkswagen GTIs like mine, they're able to do a little bit of everything. Whether it's your basic maintenance or an intake in a tune or even a full-blown build, be sure to go to ratifiedmotorsport.com to get yourself booked today, and I hope to see you guys at the shop. I just got to point out the fact that how quickly he brought up Ford for that example.

Yeah, I got to get it in when I can.

Now there's a million other in-line things, options.

Yeah, you know.

It's the one I know.

Right.

Unbelievable, this guy. Every single time.

Love it.

I'm going through the highlights for the Jeff Storms episode, and it's just like you guys just talking about like old Fords. I'm not even kidding, like 15 minutes of me just saying, you know, watching them talk.

It was hilarious. Wait, does it help that Noble's got a Ford boner in it?

Yeah, we did. We nerded out on that for a little while.

Yeah, I mean, it's great. What was it, like an Escort engine or something?

Uh, it was...

Mondeo.

They're Duratech. It's in like on all kinds of stuff. But yeah, over in Europe, it was in the Mondeo. And it's the Ford Contour SVT version, which I just picked one of those up the other day.

Nice.

He says the other day, like it wasn't like two months ago.

You know, my wife has this argument with me all the time. It wasn't yesterday. It's not tomorrow. It was the other day. That's an unlimited amount of time. It's whatever. It could be a year ago.

No, I'm really excited to see that thing run, dude. That's going to be awesome. I'm glad you answered that question, because like before, you're just like, yeah, bro, 64. All the way. So now we've kind of gone down another tier. All right, 57, bro.

I mean, next thing you know, V6. Just do it.

Exactly. But you said like 14, 1500. There's not a stock motor in a Mopar that's going to do that. For very long, at least.

Well, you're forgetting about the Halo car.

Yeah. Yeah. But, I mean, if you're going to make some just crazy dumb vehicle like that, then I would start cheap.

Let's get the shell.

Well, yeah, I mean, you could do that too. Find a... or find a 6.4 car that's blown up.

That's probably not hard to do. It's like finding a smacked up Hellcat.

Yeah, just 6.4 with a bad engine or 5.7 with a bad motor or something.

Those 5.7s are tanks, man. They've been around for, what, 25 years now?

2003.

I feel like they were making them before that in some other variation or no?

03 was the first one. So 03, 04 was Rams and then 05 plus was cars. Crazy.

How much power can you take a Hellcat up to before you guys start touching the inside?

So pre-18, so like 15, 16, 17, 1000 is pushing the limits. You know, I mean, they'll do it and they'll do it for a while, but it's a tank of bad gas away from a bad time. I've seen that happen too.

I've had that bad time.

18 plus gets ARP rod bolts, stock. So those bottom ends are a little bit stronger. If I remember correctly, they have a little bit different material piston as well. So they can do, you know, 11, 12, but it's still just a matter of time. Is that a wheel? Which is nuts.

But yeah, all that to get destroyed by a 600 horsepower Civic, but hey. Yeah, no, I do. I can't wait to go for a ride in one of the specifics. I've been talking to Kyle Larkin. I'm like, you just let me know.

I had to look up something.

They put concrete in the blocks of some of those. There's like a around the cylinder wall. There's like a gap like a I don't know if it's a water jacket or what. But they'll like put epoxy or concrete in it. Sometimes I had some guys are talking about in some automotive thing. I was looking at so I had to Google it and look it up. I'm like, sure as s***. They put like sand or sugar in there. Then they put concrete in it to keep it stronger.

Yeah, it's pretty common. So that was really big back in the day with like the older blocks and stuff like that. Nowadays, even like with the Gen 3 Hemi, we'll do like a partial fill. You'll just fill the very bottom portion of the water jacket. And I mean, yeah, sure, you could use concrete, but they make actual block filler. It's the same. I mean, it looks the same. It's still mixed water with it. It hardens, you know, but it's just to help the block stay together. You know, so it's the blocks are made much stronger than they were back in the day. So it's not as prevalent.

Don't use as much concrete.

I was about to reach out to Home Depot for a sponsorship, but let me get that quick create. Yeah, I mean, is it a quick create?

I think that's what they were using.

You when you're done with this Google redneck stuff. Yeah, that'd be some Honda boys stuff.

Yeah, dude. What's the most redneck engineering thing you guys have ever seen?

Oh, it's going to be what's the name of that shop again?

Yeah, let's not throw yourselves.

I mean, I've got. We'll just say I have a vehicle that there is speaker wire and the little the house wiring twists things throughout the entire vehicle that was that was built by a local shop. Won't say a name won't even say the vehicle, but let's just there's speaker wire and actually there's lamp cord in there too, wasn't there?

I think so.

Yeah.

Oh, fun.

Yeah, I like it. It's probably the most redneck thing I've seen.

No, it's not a home theater system they were installing though in the vehicle.

No, it's actually part of the fuel system.

Oh, perfect.

It was great.

Yikes.

Yeah.

Yeah. It was not as bad as somebody drilling through their own harness.

Oh my God. This story again.

Well, we got to hear it.

Yeah. Well, I was young and dumb and I like subs and stuff. I was a little gangster, you know, and I was like 17 and bad as a m***********.

Right.

And so I was putting subs in a Fox body that I had and I went to, I've used a drill bit before to get through that rubber surround around the main harness, you know, I'll just like poke a little hole and it gets you into the, into the engine or the cab or whatever. And I went to go and it grabbed my drill bit and I went right through all. It's like it was like 30 some wires. I went right dead center of it. That car, that car sat for another decade before I finally fixed it.

Oh yeah, 100%. I would cry at that point.

I did cry. I was like, I was this close to having a car on the road. I had, I drove it like once, brought it in to do the subs and.

It's like I had a, I had a girlfriend in high school for your older sister. Same thing. Went to go Best Buy in Chockabee, which is no longer there. It's kind of sad. Um, but they, uh, they drilled through the firewall into the back of the brake booster. Yeah. And there, that was, that was funny. I thought it was funny. It wasn't funny for Best Buy or for her sister. But yeah, that was, that was a thing.

I have to ask, um, and you could tread carefully on this one. What are some misconceptions in the Mopar world that just infuriate you? Is there any? I don't know. There's a ranty side of you. I'm trying to see where it's at.

Trying to unlock it.

I don't know how much I want to do over the internet. That's fair.

That's fair.

Just because a lot of my experiences are not like what other people have done. True. It's really weird. There's some things that I've done and that I continue to do that people are like, well, that doesn't work. It's like, I've f****** done it. And I do it. And it works just fine. There's things that you see people do and it's like, oh my god, I would never do that in a million years. And then it's like, well, you're just too picky. Well, okay.

There's that too, right? Because some people are like overly picky. I get that too.

Yeah, like it's funny, my tuner, Brent, he gives me s*** all the time because I am super anal when it comes to our fuel trims and street drivability. So generally, a OEM car has a plus or minus 10% on fuel trims. And I like five. I am a plus or minus five kind of guy.

So what does that mean to somebody who doesn't understand, not me?

So essentially, you have fueling tables, and it gets kind of tough with the newer cars because now we have neural networks and stuff like that. They don't run off of a VE table, which VE is volumetric efficiency. They run off of a neural network with basically artificial VE tables and airflow tables and stuff like that. So the computer itself is literally building fuel and airflow tables as it's running. There's no set table that it's going off of. So if you plug into a newer Mopar that has a neural network and you see the VE table, it looks like somebody that doesn't know how to tune made a VE table. I talked to pretty good friends with a Mopar engineer that was on the SRT team. He's like, we had to essentially just throw numbers at a table or the neural network would freak out. So they're essentially just placeholders. So if you were to shut the neural network off, the car would literally not run because those numbers mean nothing. But anyway, so fuel trims basically is when we tell the computer, hey, this is what we want you to do for fuel, and then it's trying to meet a certain Stoich air fuel ratio, which most cars nowadays like 14.5, 14.7. The car can compensate, so it's either polen fuel, which is negative, or it's adding, which is positive, and then you have short-term fuel trims, which is in the moment exactly what it's doing right now. And then you have long-term fuel trims where the computer is averaging what the short terms are doing, and then it applies that to the long-term. And what the long-term is doing is if you have a base file, and say what we put in is X number, and then long-term is, say, negative 5 or negative 10, it's pulling that amount of percentage away from the base file. So OE is sub 10%. I like 5. I don't know why, because it looks pretty on the logger, essentially. And I will argue up and down that you can feel a difference between a 15% and a 5% long-term. If you go to tip-in, if you're cruising at a state where long-term is at 15, you go to tip-in, there's a little bit of something there. If you're cruising at that same state with a 5% to 6%, you go to tip-in, it's nice. So a lot of our cars, if you were to data log them, at idle, a lot of times, we can get them 0% to 2% or 3% long-term. A lot of our cruising, sub 5%. Now, the only thing is that takes increased amount of time. And the fact that we don't have a tuner in-house per se physically, it takes us a lot of time to tune the cars. So our profit margin on tuning is not a profit margin. It's actually we're losing money tuning, essentially.

Because you want to do it to that level of quality.

Yeah, because I need it to be good. Like there's little things like on startup, some shops on startup, when the engine is idling down, every once in a while, it'll idle down, it'll hunt a little bit as it's idling down, drives me insane. I want that thing to idle down nicely. So it's little things like that, or you put it in gear and it kind of hiccups and then comes back. I won't let a car go out the door like that. So we spend a lot of time data logging, a lot of time. And then I kind of help out a little bit, because I can do with our logger, they have timestamps. So when I send an email to Brent, I have, hey, it did this, this and this. Here's timestamps. And then I'll list the timestamps and I'll say what it did, what it's doing. And that helps out a lot. But at the same time, it's like, dude, let's just get this car done. Like, yeah, I know, I know. And I'm getting better at it, but that's a lot of reason why a lot of people come to us because our cars drive better than, arguably better than a lot of the competition because we spend a ton of time on our tunes. But at the same time, from a business standpoint, it is hurting us. And I realize that. But I have to have a nice driving car because I wouldn't have the reputation that I do if our cars drove like somebody else's cars. So I almost said it there.

Is it people I'm thinking of or somebody else? We'll talk about it later.

And that's where it hurts us. But I refuse to let up on it. There's some times where, if it's a neural network car, you're basically messing with injector data to get fueling right. So you don't have as fine tuning abilities as if you were doing a cam car where you can actually play with VE table. You can get super fine with VE tables. But with the neural network cars, basic bolt on stuff, you're messing with injector data. So there's spots in some of these cars that are going to be 10, 15 percent. And you can't fix that because it's at that millisecond, at that fuel flow rate, at that spot in time, might not be right, but at a different RPM range under a different load, that injector is at that same point, and it's spot on there. So you have to pick your battles. And so it's, yeah, there's a lot to it.

Do you, it seems like you know an awful lot about it. Are you at the, is there no way for you to just kind of course tune it, and then reach out to him to fine tune, or what, no? So you know what's going on, and what needs to happen, but you have to get him to do it?

Pretty much. Yeah. I've debated on us doing your basic cold air intake long tube stuff, bigger throttle bodies, different injectors. I can scale injectors, I can do that stuff. But I don't know it's like the back of my hand like Brent does. So like a lot of these big cam cars, for instance, my truck, if you've heard it, it sounds like a big block when it's idling. It's nasty. It took two revisions, and my long terms at idle are 0% right now. And it bounces between negative one and positive two. Two revisions. We hit the dyno on the third revision. I went wide open, revision five. There's no way in hell I could get my truck that close. And this is a completely different setup than what it was before. So the whole tune had to be rewritten. So it's like I've got too much s*** going on in my brain that I don't want to learn it.

Do you foresee yourself, especially as you start... I mean, this is a ways away, but as you get older, you want to step away from the physical work and more towards the tuning side? Do you see that in your future or not really?

I want to do this for another 10 years. And then I'm done. I mean, my body already can't handle it. You know, like fricking... I can't even take a damn tire off of a truck. You know, because my back will be like, hey, guess what? You're going to the ground. You know? So there's a lot of things that I can't do anymore. And it's mostly because I physically can't because my back is just junk. I mean, I've had surgery on my back. I have no nerves in my lower back because of a couple of the surgeries. So like another 10 years is all I want to do. And I think in the next 10 years, the shop will be more than enough to be able to, all I have to do is just straight manage it and do the tuning portion and not have to work on anything at all. I mean, these guys will give me s*** so I don't work on anything anyways, but I do. Just not nearly as much as I used to. And like I said, a lot of it is, if I were to work like these guys are working, there's no way I'd be able to walk on the weekends or come into work Monday, I'd have to have a cane.

Just kind of the course of being a technician, you start off doing all the work and then eventually you get older and then you have to start handing off stuff.

Where are you in this journey?

I'm 26. Do as I told. I just do everything. I mean, I'll do anything and everything. Build engines, take stuff apart and all that.

We'll check back in 10 years, he's going to be in the same position as you.

It's kind of cool too, because the Euro side, we're at a weird spot where we have a bunch of Euro cars. We're waiting on a lot of parts.

Interesting.

And we have a ton of Mopars to do. So it's like, hey, George, you want to learn Mopars? No, not really. But okay, yeah, let's do it. And now, I mean, ask him how he likes Hellcats. You know, he went from a Euro guy hating Hellcats and American cars to, okay, I can see why.

You just see him like the first time, like the door unlocks in the morning. You just hear like the dinging from the door. You just hear him just coming in, whee, every morning.

Yeah, it's like the other week, I had him drive a car while I was data logging it. Yeah, it's like you've ever driven a car that makes 800 foot pounds of torque at 2,000 RPMs? No? Like, okay, it's gonna hit and it's gonna spin. Well, how do you do when a car starts spinning? Like, do you stay in it? Do you freak out? You know, it's like we're just going over this stuff because if you've ever been in an 800 plus foot pound of torque Hellcat, it's gnarly. I mean, we're talking, it breaks the tires loose at 80, 90 miles an hour. And that'll kill somebody, you know, and I'm riding passenger seat, I'm not controlling it. So it's like, I want to know who's driving this car. And sure s***, punched it, hit about 55, 60, and just lit it up. And he, you know, knows how to drive. So, you know, and he's like...

He's doing boost cars, or I mean, not boost, stupid, stupid, stupid.

Turbo cars, where there's a weight to it, you know, not just you punch it and you're spinning.

Yeah, exactly.

So he's like, okay, I get it.

I like this.

Especially a twin screw, like that punches down way low. Yeah, it's crazy.

Well, it's like, you know, when I drove, like, Mark's GT500, like, you know, made a thousand to the wheels, and I have no idea how I hooked it. I really, I literally floored it, you know, in second, well, it was the second year, like, it was flooring it.

Yeah.

But I guess it depends on the car.

The traction management on that one's pretty good. I've tried to get mine squarely in it.

Yeah, whereas, like, the first time I drove a Hellcat, like, I just blipped the throttle. I'm like, oh, I'm sideways. Like, I just drove it around a neighborhood doing 30. I'm like, all right, I'm gonna blip this.

Yeah, they're just, they're so easy.

Yeah, we were going, doing the data log, I was going like 25%, 50%, and I wanted to feel it out first. I don't want to just punch it and then throw myself into a ditch. I was like, all right, 50, all right, let's just do the 100, and it just whips out. But it's a different feeling than turbo cars.

It's so different. It's crazy. Like, it's gnarly, like, I don't know, man. And then, like, you had that weird, like, kind of procharger in the middle.

Yep.

Right?

Yeah, I'm a huge fan of procharger, and I mean, everybody's like, well, you don't have the download torque. I'm like, yeah, it's easier on drivetrain parts. It's like, I would rather rev a motor out than slam it with 900, 800 foot-pounds of torque right at the hit. I'd rather ramp it in. But that's my person, you know? You know, then you have the other things of IATs and take-care temps. And take-care temps are huge, like on a blower car, jeez, not a blower car, like a PD blower car. I mean, you drive around all summer with 100 degree IAT temps. Unless you have an inner-chiller setup, you know, you're driving around higher than ambient. No car likes hot air. Whereas on a pro-charger car, for the most part, you're ambient to 10, 15 degrees over ambient, and you can do pole after pole after pole and not get hot. PD blower cars, depending on the setup, one, two poles, your heat silks, got to let it cool down. So that's a big reason I like the Sentry blowers. It's just, and take care of times, repeatability.

And PD being root blowers?

Yep, any kind of positive displacement blower.

Yeah, that's fun.

That's really fun.

No, yeah, because I went for a ride with Caleb in the ZR1, even though his belt was slipping a little bit, it was still off, because it's been a while since I was in a, you know, just like a root style kind of supercharging car. And yeah, you feel it. It's different, it's a different kind of fun.

Yeah, oh, 100%. You know, nothing, I shouldn't say nothing beats it, but the feeling of a turbo, like the suspense, waiting for something to light up like that, and then it starts pulling, you're like, oh, f***.

Yeah.

But when you're in a PD car, and you punch it, and it's right away, it's a whole nother feeling too.

They have their applications, right? So like a twin screw is great for, or a PD blower is great for like road course, because you can come piling out of the corner pretty damn quick and get right back up to speed. You know, if you're doing drags, stuff like that, we were down at Texas 2K, and some of those cars, like they're going slow as s***, they get halfway down to track, and all of a sudden they just fricking take off. It's nuts.

Like the Amth cars. Yeah.

I was like, I thought these were fast, and then all of a sudden I'm like, whoa.

Get the turbos spooling under them big boys.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But that's also kind of like where anti-lag kind of comes in, kind of makes up for that, you know, difference a little bit.

Yeah.

And how big of a difference, like I guess, because like you're pretty much ready to go right away. It's, I don't know.

Yeah, it'd be awesome. I don't do turbos.

Just building some boosts, it just minimizes the amount of time of that turbo lag.

But do you think, I'm guessing like Supercharger would just still probably be better in that instant torque no matter what, right?

I mean, you don't really, I mean like something like a Century Blower, you could probably do some kind of anti-lag on it. Like the Jeep will get a two-step, mostly just for being in the RPM range off the, and it kind of sounds cool. But I don't think it's going to, it's not going to build any kind of any more boost than what it would be normally.

Did I take you for a ride? I took him for a ride in my car, because you've never really brake boosted a car, because you've always been, you know.

I mean, I have, all of my turbo vehicles are diesel trucks, so the turbo lag on those is, you're not going to anti-lag out of that s***. It's like snail mail. I mean, I just got it. It lights up eventually, but she's f****** slow as s*** right out the gate.

Right.

Yeah, it was still fun to show him. I'm like, yeah, all right, this is what it's like when there's a little bit less lag. Yeah, I don't know.

Especially when I've had turbos the size of your fist or something.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. They sound good, though, those big a** turbos. I had a 6.0 truck sound like a jet engine just sitting there idling. It was great.

It was a really wonderful truck.

We're going to have some diesel guys coming on here in the near future. Dude, you know what the best part about this is? I have people reaching out to me now like, hey, you shoved this guy on. And it's like 80% of the time, it's credible. Because sometimes, you know, it's like, all right, what are we going to talk about? But sometimes it's like, dude, if somebody has like a 1500 horse Cummins, that's going to be a conversation. Right. If that f***** kills a seagull every time you love it, I want to talk to you.

Exactly.

So, okay, I know, because I warned Bryce about this. I'm like, this is going to be a long Mopar conversation. But how did you end up over at Minnesota Performance then? Because you said you started in February?

Yep, February.

Okay, and you were, you said it was a two-man shop before?

Mm-hmm.

So then did both of you get absorbed into, or no?

Yeah, I remember Jorge and George.

Yeah, so at first he got absorbed into it, and I kind of went to a different shop to do just kind of general maintenance and all that. And then eventually he needed more help with your old stuff and a bunch of projects. So I worked stuff out, and then I went into Minnesota Performance.

Okay, so yeah, okay, so that's why there's one and two now. Yeah, it's nice to see you guys expanding. We're gonna need more space soon.

Yeah, I mean, we need space.

I think we have BMWs on all your lifts sitting there for three months. You're gonna definitely need more.

Yeah, exactly, right.

Again, if it gets sent to the Bronx, we can't do about it.

Yeah, that was crazy. The whole story. Like, how do you steal a $7,000 intake manifold?

Blows my mind.

Yeah, my conscience wouldn't be able to. I'd be like, yeah, it's over here.

Did it go to another shop? Did they at least know what the hell it was?

Yeah, it's a taxi shop.

Huh.

So what if they just threw it away or something?

Yeah.

It's just paperweight.

That sucker got sold. Probably dirt cheap, too.

I guarantee you it'll hit Facebook Marketplace next day.

Oh, yeah.

They'll probably open a box, Google it, they're like, what the?

Ooh. Well, no, I guess the story was that shop ordered an intake like a year ago or some weird s***.

Yeah.

And then somehow, I don't know how you mistake Minnesota for New York, but wrong way.

I mean, I've worked in shipping. I've slept the wrong sticker on something before. Like, it was relatively low stakes, but well, but it happens.

It's not a $7,000 intake manual.

Yeah, that's pretty low volume. Yeah, when I was shipping, I was shipping like a thousand packages a day. Like, I set the record, don't worry about it. What happened with that job?

My FedEx pit boy said so.

I do it. You know what? There's just something to be said about like a job where you just like grind through it, like do something, like something repetitive. You just grind through it. You're just like, yeah, I did a thousand of that. I don't know.

And it's like, and right out of high school, I did that FedEx thing, you know, packing the truck.

Yeah.

It's so damn repetitive.

It is.

There's just no way I could do that day in and day out.

For me, it was a lot of twisting. Like I, you know, take this big a** box, weigh it, put the whatever in the system, and then onto the left side, onto the pallet, and then that for the entire day. And if I was too good at my job, I helped. Dude, you know what's bad? Like when everybody else is like, can you please slow down? You're making us look good. Because that's the thing. Like warehouse jobs, like, you know, it's all about metrics. And then the managers are like, oh, you guys are having a reduction in, like I guarantee you after I left, they got to talking to.

And then they think that it's going to make you work harder by posting up your, the graphs and stuff all over the wall. It's like, yeah. What do you want me to do? Like I don't.

I gave you the clock in and the clock out.

I have no pride here, sir. Do you not understand?

You're paying me $14 an hour. And you want me to make. I wish I made that much. X, Y, Z, you know. It's like, no, sadly.

I only took this job so I could smoke weed, man.

My Honda Civic needs gas.

Yeah, I need concrete for my block.

Quick Crete's $14 a bag now.

Is that pretty high?

I have no clue.

It's usually around $7 or $8 a bag, but yeah, it might be up to $14 by now.

I don't know. I haven't bought Quick Crete in years. I was throwing a number at it.

Ever since your last Honda build?

There's a question. Well, how much did you guys make at your first job? Like for me, I think I'm the youngest here. My first job was office max. I made $9.25 an hour.

I don't know. I don't remember.

You know, it was $5.25. It was minimum wage at the time.

Yeah, you're not much younger than my dad, so yeah, that makes sense.

I think it was in $7s or $8s. Somewhere in that range, because it was minimum wage was in the fives. But I think it was like in the 7s or 8s.

Ooh, Balder. You're not much older than me, so...

I worked with my dad at first because he did roofing and construction.

Oh, so you were reiki then?

Well, I think I'd worked like maybe one or two days, and he'd give me $100 or $200. Yeah, that's on that. Then my first actual job was at a restaurant being a host. I think that was like $10 an hour plus tips.

Okay, so I was the brokest. Okay.

$10 an hour plus tips ain't bad, though.

No, dude, some are like a mutual friend of ours, was reikiing it on tips. I was like, you're doing that part time? I'm like, dude, why did I go to college?

Are you kidding me? Exactly.

So we already talked about what's next on the agenda for you. So what's kind of on the agenda next for you for like, I guess, the Audi side of things?

Hellcat.

No, I like them, but I wouldn't own one.

I would never.

It's just like all the other platforms, like I can see why people like them and everything. I see like the Mustangs right now. The newer ones are doing crazy stuff just like Mike's. But again, I wouldn't own one. I just really love Audis. And every time I talk to someone about my build or anything like that, they're like, oh, that's super cool. I want to do something like that. And I'm like, if you care about money and cost effectiveness, don't do it because it's just not worth it. You have to do a fully built engine just to get to this point. And with a different car, you can just have all that s*** without having to spend that much, like a GA-80M3. That's ideally what I would want next. Do full bolt-ons in E85 II and unlock the ECU, and you're in like the sixes for 60 to 130. Granted, it's like a $80,000 car, but right. I mean...

They're going to keep depreciating though. Like that M8 that was here at Ratified, was it yesterday, the day before? It's like, those are $180 new sticker, and you can get them for like $60 now. $60 or $80 or something ridiculous like that.

Really?

It's like the S7, the older S7.

That's the 2020, by the way.

Like, really?

$15, $16, something like that?

Yeah, like the... The 2013 to 2015 S6, S7s, they're like in the $13,000 range now. When they were like a few years ago, like 30, 40.

Now, don't those have some valvetrain problems and stuff like that? Did you start turning them up and messing with them? Did you get like six, four problems?

Not really. The cylinder number five misfire that kind of got solved with... Audi did... they would open up the cams, the camshaft holders, and they'd put a shim in your valve spring to create more tension. And that would fix it. But that's why Matt with the S8 got the upgraded exhaust manifolds, because that's another fix for it. I mean, ideally, that's another car that... You get to a point where the amount of money you're spending with the amount of horsepower gains, it starts to just slow the weight way down. Just turbos, E85 and doing like low pressure pumps, high pressure pumps. That's your best bang for your buck. After that, don't try to go for anything past like 700 wheel. Your transmissions take a s***. You need upgraded clutches and they have mechatronics issues.

Yeah, that's not cheap either.

And they'll have very rarely timing chain issues, but some people are seeing that in the higher mileage stuff.

Yeah.

Intake manifolds are on the side of the engine. You have to drop the engine to replace those. They have little flaps inside that brake because they're made out of plastic. Injectors, you have to drop the engine. It's just a bunch of Euro.

Change the belt, drop the engine.

It's like all stuff like that. Like there's a, they made an S6 with a V10 back in 06, 08.

Yeah.

To replace the serpentine belt, you have to put it in service mode, remove the whole front carrier because there was no room. But it's just, you just have to like the car to do stuff like that.

Yeah.

Well, that's like that RS4, the red one.

The RS6?

Yeah, the RS6. It was like we're doing bigger turbos and a couple of other things and it's like 40, 50 horse.

Yeah. Bigger turbos.

Expensive.

Yeah.

And it's like 40, 50 horse.

Jeez.

Yeah.

Yeah, you gotta like a car to do some of those things sometimes.

Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely more of a passion for the car or something like that.

Who does that to a jeep?

Exactly. Say, why wouldn't you just buy a trackhawk?

Exactly.

Yeah.

Because I'm broke, b****.

No. You've worked on a number of trackhawks. Do you have any fast ones yet?

So the trackhawk guys are... Watch my words carefully. Not a strange breed, but it's a strange group, right? Because you have... They're gnarly, right? They're super cool. You throw a 285 upper, some FIC 1000s, tune, high 7, low 800, depending on what size upper you put on it, right? And for the most part, for most of them, that's plenty. So it's either a simple bolt-on, or it's like the guys with like rip-a-tune that have billet blocks and fully built twin-turbo type stuff. So probably the highest track-oct was like 820s, I think we've done. At least locally. Yeah, because it's just, they're really hard. They just, I mean, for one, the Jeep itself is already stupid expensive, you know? So you're talking anywhere from 11 to 1,400 a month for the payment, and then you want me to go and spend 10, 20 grand to make a bunch of power on it again?

You're doing what to the bank's car?

Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's a good thing that my bank is really cool because they knew what I was doing to the Jeep. But no, it's, I think it's just because the initial cost of them is just so much that it's hard to find somebody that wants to do that kind of stuff to them. And it's mostly the Jeep guys are like, I don't know if I want to put that kind of money into it. But you get like the Challenger Hellcat guys or the Charger guys are like, okay, yeah, here's my card. You know, so it's, but those have also been around a lot longer. And so they're not as expensive. So I think it's a different, it's a different bracket of people. It's, it's, I don't know how to, it's just, it's weird. You get some cars that like that style of car, the people are like, yeah, that's fricking, let's go, let's party. And then, you know, the Trackhawks and the TRXs, it's really hard to find somebody that wants to modify a $100,000 vehicle.

Right. Or on like the Euro front, right? If you think of like, you know, like the X3Ms, right? Like, I don't think anybody's really going for a thousand horsepower builds on that. Whereas, you know, yeah, the sedan version, it's like, why not? Let's do it. We'll send it.

There are some X3Ms that are in the nines, I think. Which is crazy.

But it's way less than, you know, the alternative. Dude, these new ones are getting so much faster. Yeah, I think what they've gotten like the G80s up to like 13, 1400 horse now.

I think so.

Yeah, that one blew up at like 1350 or something. Yeah, I posted it as like some guys was like, oh, that idiot. No, but it's like, dude, nobody's pushed this platform to that kind of numbers for like this is testing. Right. You need to find out where stuff breaks so you know how far you can go. So that's like that's kind of one of the harder things of the modification world is it's going to blow up eventually. You know, I mean, it's just you keep beating on it. These things aren't going to hold together forever. Like my motor, it'll probably blow someday because I'm just going to keep turning it up until it doesn't. You know, that's just that's that's racing. You know, race cars blow engines. Now, these these cam bolt on cars, probably not. You know, they will live a very long life. But you start putting pro chargers and stuff like that on it. My favorite saying, they're one bad bad tank of gas away from a bad time. You know, and that's just the way it is. You got to find the limit somehow. And that's what that dude with that bad a** G80 did. I mean, if you look at his graph, it was like, what? 1150, 1200, 1200, 1348. And then it went boom. Like, that's that's nuts. That was a stock motor. So, well, sorry, stock engine. So that's that's impressive.

Someone's got to do it.

Yeah, right. I'm going to sit back and wait for a minute and we'll see who blows their s*** up at what number. And then we'll go just below that.

We know somewhere north of 1320 is a failure point for a G80. So all these 900 to 1000 horse guys can rest easy, can rest easy for for now.

For now, yeah.

You know, they haven't been out long enough for us to know that, hey, this thing can sit at that level for a long time and be happy. Like mid 800 horse Hellcat, I'd beat the piss out of it daily and it would live for a long life. So that's still to be determined with the G80s.

Well, development is so much faster nowadays, too. Like imagine 20 years ago, like if you were going through the development of the 2J, for example, right? Like a lot of it, like you have to kind of know a guy or be on the forums or whatever. It's a lot slower than it is today. Whereas, you know, you could just, you know, go on TikTok. Oh, OK, this guy got up to 1300. All right, let's see how much further we can go.

Right.

Just word gets around so much faster. You still got the old school forums. Like I spent about a couple hours on the DLS and the LT forums. Like last week I was fact checking some stuff. Sometimes, like when I do highlights for the show, I have to double check some things, right? Like it's an absurd claim. I'm just like, all right, I'm going to double check this. But in some instances, like where somebody is like, you know, DIYing, building themselves, I'm like, all right, I could see how that could be cheap. I'm talking about Caleb, by the way. I figured. Because like what he did, like he's like, yeah, dude, if you did this yourself, you're good. It's like, all right, cool.

Oh, the whole modification world, the parts aren't the expensive part. For the most part, it's the labor that sucks. You know, so like if you can do your own stuff, kudos, you will save a lot of money. But, you know, at the same time, this stuff's still expensive.

Yeah.

Parts are not cheap.

No, not at all.

I mean, for instance, I was talking to a guy today. You wanted to do cam, long tubes and a 5.7 car. For us to do that, for me personally to do it at our shop, to do it the way I like to do cars, it's 5 to 7, right? Now you're thinking, but it's just cam and long tubes. I'm like, yes, but it's also timing chain, lifters, head gaskets, valve springs, push rods, OEM exhaust gaskets. I'm not using a cheap header. I will not use a cheap header.

Why is that?

Because you have to drill holes out, the welds break, the flanges warp, and then you come back to me and say, hey, why is my s*** leaking? It's like, well, because you use cheap stuff.

Whatever you save in money on headers is going to cost you and labor to put them on.

Exactly.

So don't reach out to eBay Motors for a sponsorship. Got it.

And then like valve springs, for example, PSI's are the only springs I'll put in a Hemi. I've had guys bring me cam kits and they have pack springs in it. Now, I'm not saying packs are bad springs. I'm saying I will never put one in a Hemi because they break. I don't know what it is, if it's the ramp rates on the Hemi cams or what, but they break in Hemis. Comp cam springs, not saying they're bad springs. I won't put one in a Hemi because they break. I've seen, since doing this since 06, I've seen one or two PSI spring break. I've seen hundreds of packs and comps break. Now, LS World, coyote stuff, pack is like king s***, you know? I won't put one in a Hemi. Squirrel, sidetrack, header pricing. When I was talking to them about header pricing, the certain header that we use used to be able to get for like $1,100. Now they're $15. Cooks, you used to be able to get for $15. Now they're $25. So it's like, even as a shop, we're like, this is starting to get crazy on some of these prices.

So bang for buck is just not there. Exactly. As much as it was.

You know, in the amount of money that we can make off of some stuff, we can't make off of the stuff anymore, because if we tried to make that margin, we're going to market ourself out. You know, because there are other competitors in the area that, yes, are cheaper, but their overhead is not what our overhead is. And now as a customer, is that their problem? No. And I understand that. But for me to make the margins that I need to make at our shop, we need to be a little bit more expensive.

But you got to match it with quality, which you guys do. Exactly.

So I believe that our quality matches what we charge. It's not like we're charging a ton and then giving you some s*** product, because we're not. You know, we stand behind everything, but we are probably one of the more expensive hemi shops in the area.

Is there anybody else in the area?

So there's two other shops in Minnesota that I would send you to. There's Holmberg, who's in Fridley. They use Tim Barth for tuning, which both Tim Holmberg and Tim Barth are phenomenal in the hemi world. I mean, they're so well known in the hemi world, so you can't go wrong with Holmberg. And then down in Wells, Minnesota, there's Nathan Hander and his brother. I think it's like Hander Motorsports or something like that, are Hander built. I forget, but they're down in Wells. It's Nathan Hander.

Nobody's going down to Wells.

Super good, dude. So like the southern part of the state, like go to Hander. You're in amazing hands. We unlock his PCMs. It's funny, some of his customers have like rivalries with some of our customers, and it's like you guys know that we're good friends, right? So it's like you can talk all the s*** you want, but we're good friends. So that's kind of, you know, those would be, those two and us are the only Hemi shops that I would tell you to bring a car to.

It goes back to that collaboration thing we talked about earlier, like a lot of the shops, they work together.

Exactly.

You help each other out.

I mean, it helps that we're the only company, or only shop in really the Midwest that can unlock Mopar PCMs. So we invested a lot of money into figuring out how to unlock these PCMs. If people knew how much money we had into unlocking PCMs, they'd be like, holy s***. It was a lot. And we're the only ones in the Midwest that can do it. The next closest place would be Satara, down in Illinois. So yeah, we unlock for a few different shops in the area. And we get PCMs mailed in almost every other day. We just started that two months ago or something like that. So I haven't really advertised it across the forums too much yet.

This will find its way.

Yeah, exactly. And we're just charging what everybody else charges, 250 plus shipping to unlock it. And in the grand scheme of things, it's about a hundredth what it costs to be able to start unlocking these.

Well, how do you go about that process? I've always wondered that. Do you have to hire in some kind of software engineer to sit there?

No. So there's a ton of different softwares and hardware on the market that can do it. I want to say there's, I shouldn't say a ton. There's like three or four. Short of like HP tuners or Diablo themselves that can obviously do it. The software that we have is really good, and it does other makes and models as well. I'm not going to say what software it is, but it'll do a couple other makes and models. So we're working on being able to unlock GM stuff. So everybody gives the Dodge guys crap because we have locked PCM. It's like, well, hey, guess what GM does, too.

Yeah, and Forbes now, the 2024s are locked.

Exactly, yeah, you can't get into them, and we're working on that. So, boy, I lost track where I was at.

Oh, what it takes to get them unlocked. You had software, you invested in it.

So essentially, the halves of the PCM are glued together, right? So we have to get a heat gun, and on low, we're not frying your PCMs, on low, we have to warm the glue up to be able to separate the PCM, right? And then there's certain spots on the circuit board that we have to get to, and then we do our thing, and then we seal your PCM up, put a nice MNP sticker on the back of it, and ship it back to you, and then you have an unlocked PCM. A lot of unlocked companies will get a P1400 code, which I think is hilarious that Dodge FCA knocked it out of the park with this code, right? It literally says, aftermarket calibration detected, warranty void. It's like the most subtle, smartass code ever, right?

Nice try, a******.

Exactly. And it's a hard code. You can't shut it off. You can shut the check engine light, but you can't shut it off physically. It's always going to be there. And when it sets that code in the PCM, it also sets it in the BCM and a couple other modules. So even these guys that think, well, I'll just get another PCM up or I'll bring it in, it's like, okay. Well, your BCM also keeps track of how many PCMs are flashed to the vehicle, and it also keeps track of how many times the vehicle's been flashed. So you bring a car to a dealership, and the dealership, Mopar, doesn't have any records of this vehicle being flashed 17 frickin times. They're going to be like, well, no, dude, you're more T-boy. You know, unless you know the dealer. But for some, how our coding unlocks the PCMs, we're not throwing the code on some of these cars. Some cars will immediately throw it as soon as you put it in, turn the key, check into like P1400. Other cars, it doesn't even pop up in the background. It's not traceable. It's really strange. Like my RAM truck, I have no codes, and my PCM is unlocked.

You know, you got codes now, you just gave it to the Internet. Who weren't you worried?

Yeah, you know, and it's certain Hellcats, not a single code to be found. You plug into it with the YTech from the dealer, doesn't say a damn thing.

I think it's just somebody who was working on a Tuesday at lunch. He's like, I'm just going to listen.

Right, it's like the coding in certain PCMs is different or something, because I mean, we're literally changing the coding in the PCM to unlock it.

Damn interns.

Yeah, but it's like some PCMs will show it, but most of them that we've done don't show it at all. So I think that's pretty cool. Whereas if you get them done by HP tuners or Diablo, those will show P1400 codes. So yeah, I don't know. It's neat. It's kind of nerdy.

A lot more nerdy stuff for me than the last time you were on. It's kind of cool. It's fun watching you grow.

The progression.

You're just kind of in your own. So I hit you up a few weeks ago, and we were just kind of chatting. Maybe it was last week, I don't know. Whatever it was. We were talking about you're switching your truck maybe. And you're just like, yeah, things are good. Things are good.

Life is good. I mean, I think you buy a house and it changes, man. You got to learn to be an adult.

Yeah, fair enough.

You can't be an a****** and a s*** talker all the time.

That's half the fun.

Yeah, I mean, I still do. You don't do much street stuff, though, do you? I don't.

How about you?

No.

No, not much street stuff. Yeah. You guys got jobs to keep. I get it.

Yeah. Yeah, I have to drive for a job. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Need a license.

Yeah, I need a license for my job. No, I can't. I can't do that extracurricular.

That's fair.

That's all. We're kind of lucky to have power crews up here and all that, too.

So. Oh, exactly. You know, and that's the thing. Like people are like, so when are you going to bring the jeep out? When are you going to bring the jeep out? Quite frankly, I don't think it'll see the streets. It would take probably 500 minimum guaranteed. You have the cash. Show me the cash. I'd bring the jeep out. But other than that, I don't I don't think it's going to hit the streets. I really don't.

It's not really worth your time.

It's not. It's keep that thing.

Get that thing ready for power crews, too.

So loud. It's so violent. It attracts so much attention. I mean, for one, my neighbors are pretty elderly. And I mean, dude, fricking snow blows my driveway because he's like, well, I know you work a lot. I don't see your vehicle in the driveway a lot. So I figured the last thing you want to do after a 12, 14 hour day is shovel your driveway. So like I didn't I shoveled my driveway once this year. And that was sweetheart. This was up by the garage. And that's all I had to do. And the only reason why is because I needed to get in my garage. But for the most part, every single time it snowed, I get the notification on the ring camera. Dude's fricking plow my driveway. Like, hell yeah. So last thing I want to do is fire that thing up at 10 o'clock at night to go to Mexico. You know, so. And that's the reason why it would take a $500 minimum bet for me to bring it out because I'm going to put it. It's going to sit in my trailer, essentially. And yeah, I'm going to I'm going to be that guy that if we go to Mexico, I'm driving my truck and trailer to the spot and I'll unload it there because I'm not starting it up. I won't start it up at my house. I quite frankly, I respect my neighbor too much for that. And it's too goddamn loud.

It is ridiculously loud.

Is it way louder than what it was before?

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

OK, I have to hear it. Does Sean enjoy seeing it?

Yeah, he loved it. His sister, on the other hand, was like, yeah, it's great.

Yeah, right.

She's like, yeah, it's perfect. Sean's like, oh, this thing is just gorgeous. I can hear it. Yeah, it's beautiful. But it's just it's too loud. You know, so it's going to be straight, strictly track use. I don't even know I'm going to put tags on it, honestly. So that'd be another part of the reason why. Because if I get a ticket, your 500 bucks is going to pay for it. Because I'm going to beat you. I'm sorry. That's I feel like it'll. I think it'll I think it'll wreck a lot.

Yeah, I'm excited for that, too. And it's like we're kind of spoiled here with Power Cruise.

Yeah, because no Lambos. No, I won't run a Lambo. Yeah, that's an auto L.

Yeah, fair enough. But it's like with Power Cruise, we're kind of spoiled here, right? Because like you could not get enough days on the street to get all the hits that you would get at Power Cruise.

Oh, exactly, especially if you pay for VIP. But then again, VIP is starting to get so booked out that you're still waiting two sessions, three sessions to get on the track sometimes.

But you still get a lot of hits, right?

Yeah. It's insane the amount of hits that you get. I mean, when we took Sean's Durango last year, God, that was so much fun. I mean, we beat the piss out of that thing all weekend long. It was cool because my tuner, Brunt, he's like, Yeah, you ever need a revision to hit me up? So every time we went out and did a hit, I was data logging. We data logged all weekend. We turned that thing up all weekend long, and it just ate it. You know, and we got videos of just five, six deep in that thing, just walking people, you know. It was so much fun. And you just, you can't do that anywhere else. So, yeah, it's just, it's safe. It's off the streets. Not gonna go to jail. So it's, for the most part, you won't see the jeep out. It's not anymore.

Fair enough. Yeah, I was telling them that at the shop, I don't think there's any way he could be at a red light, just, and then the cop not pull him over when he sees it.

It's obnoxious. Like I said, if you've heard a big block car with any kind of semi-open header type, where when it's camming, it hits you in the chest, that's what the Jeep sounds like. It hits you in the chest on every lope. It's nasty. Yeah, it's just nasty.

So when is it going to... Well, I guess you're already taking it down. That's going to be its first outing.

You're going to see our buddy Kelly Boy Kev down there with his demon on bags.

Yeah, unless you and I end up down there magically.

Yeah, that's going to be a hard run.

Down at SC2 in Kansas.

We talked about going, but it didn't happen. When is it again?

Next weekend.

Yeah, no.

We'll be leaving Thursday after.

You don't want to take the camper?

I don't know. Do it. I know, I still have other responsibilities.

Kids?

Yeah.

Luckily, it's not my weekend. It worked out great. Like this weekend was my weekend with my daughter, and next weekend wasn't even planned. I paid for this event six months ago, or three months ago, however long it was that it came out. And I was like, well, I'm either going to have to swap weekends, or I'll get lucky. And I got lucky.

No, I think next year I'm going to do some more of that stuff. I want to get geared up for it. So I'm picking up an RV this weekend, so I want to be able to stay on track. Its grand track voyage will be Power Cruise. I'm really excited for that, other than the street car thing, because there's going to be a lot of people there. We know it's going to be a good time.

Yeah, we'll see who we end up doing some podcasts with. There's a few ideas out there, but it's like until it's time to do it. Because that's the thing, like when you're in the middle of partying and stuff, it's hard to make things work. Like, Texas 2K, we went down there with intentions of doing six, and we came back with one. Now, granted, that's partially because I had tech issues, but so many different things.

It's mean you were so busy, you couldn't even stop to talk.

Two. I did two at PRI.

Dick.

What do you mean?

I ran into Mo down there and talked to him for a little while.

Did you?

I ran into you in the hallway, and you're like, I have like 80 miles of gear.

We were on our way to a podcast that we had scheduled. I remember that now.

We were walking like a full mile. I think when I saw you, I think that was before I had Dan carrying stuff. I can't remember if I gave it to you.

I don't know if I had the backpack at that point. My wife was with it, and she was carrying s***.

She had like the tripods or whatever.

I came with Harris. Hey, hi, bye. Just kept going.

My neck was killing me. Well, you served, didn't you?

Yeah.

So you're used to carrying the backpacks. It's not easy. At no point in your career was it easy.

Yeah, no, not at all. I always tell people, at one point, I weighed 456 pounds.

Yeah.

And I know that because I was on a scale, and it said 456 pounds. At that point, my body weight was 171. I just had that much gear on. You know, because you have, you've got the big backpack on the back. You got your big duffel bag in the front. So like you'll have the backpack on, and then you'll just put the backpack on backwards. So it's in the front. And then you've got, each hand has everything. And then you've got your vest. You've got your M4. At least we were lucky to have M4s, not the muskets of an M16. And then, you know, like everything that you're going to take on a deployment, on you. And it was 456 pounds. And you got to walk across the tarmac, to the plane carrying all this. They're not putting on a freaking dolly. You know, they put some of them on, but for the most part, you have to carry all that s*** to the plane. Yeah. You know, that kind of sucked, because with some people that couldn't carry it. There was others that could still carry it, so they had to carry certain people's stuff to the ends, like this, it sucks.

But yeah, I just had 60 pounds, I was going to cross to the Conventry Center, it's fine.

But to be fair, that walk was a long ways. My fat a** was out of breath. I'm like, at the end, I'm like, oh, s***.

Well, and I think where we had to part to was even further, like was I at the wrong corner of where our hallway was.

Oh, that's right, I was sick too. That's right, half the PRI had a goddamn fever.

Really?

Yeah, because of our previous guest.

Shout out to Tim DeCesaro.

Dude, like I, dude, I haven't had a fever like that bad in a minute, like it was like, and then also like in our Airbnb, right? Like the vet was like right in front of me. I had to go from, like I was upstairs in the bedroom and I couldn't fall asleep because the air was going right into my everything. And it was just miserable. So I just-

Sleep apnea, what?

It was, no, it was so dry. Like I felt like a fish out of water. So I literally went downstairs and I'm the guy that always b****** like, I'm paying, I'm getting my own bedroom for Airbnb. I'm not the couch guy. Like if I'm paying, I'm not getting a couch. Let's be clear about that.

Exactly.

Especially if, yeah, but anyways, I'm the star. But anyways, yeah, I was still sick on that. And it was just, PR, it was a little rough. I'm just glad I was able to do something, but it was rough.

Yeah, and definitely gonna go every single day this upcoming year. I think we got down there late Thursday, late Thursday, and then we just did, excuse me, like partial day Friday and then Saturday, and you can't see everything.

No.

It's insane the amount of things that are at that show.

Especially if you try to get technical with it.

Yeah.

If you're just glancing, you could probably get through everything.

Well, if you're there to the day, that when it starts on like a Thursday, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, so if you're there Thursday morning, it's a weekday, a lot of people's shops and stuff aren't coming down till Friday or the weekend.

Exactly, that's what I want to do.

Yeah, Thursday was great. It was kind of low-key and we were able to go anywhere we wanted. There wasn't people everywhere.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Saturday sucked.

Yeah.

Friday wasn't so bad, but Saturday sucked. And then I suppose we bought our trailer at PRI. That's right.

Yeah.

So that was really cool. Got to drive in the dome to pick up the trailer. So I got pictures.

Oh, they literally like the model they had right there on the floor. They'd sold you the trailer. Yeah.

Yep. So it was funny because as we were going down there, we were actually working with a local company up here, M&G Trailer Sales. We were going to get a 24 foot aluminum enclosed, and we had it kind of optioned out, and it was like 21, 22, whatever. And then we get down there, and we see that the same company that we were going to get our trailer had some display units there. And we're like, well, s**** and giggles, let's go look, right? We walk up and there's this gorgeous white 24 foot aluminum. The walls are done, the floor is done, ceiling's done. It's got eight LED lights on the inside. It's got four LED lights on the outside. It's got like a little spoiler over the back where the LED lights are. It's a spread axle, and then it has nice little like, the outside of the trailer looks bigger because it comes down to like the center of the axle of the trailer tires. And then it's got the big access door on the driver's side. And we're like, f***.

So it has the escape hatch door so you can get the car doors open. See, I got one almost just like it, but I don't have that one thing and it's a pain in the a**.

It's a must because I'm fat. I'm not climbing through a door.

I make my 13-year-old daughter do it. My daughter is a pro at unloading and loading cars out of a trailer. She's 13 years old because I can't do it.

That was one of our musts. It's like, because the cars that we tow, I'm not gonna show up to some dude's house, pick up a Hellcat and then step on his seat, sit on his door, get on the fricking car. Even though Sean and I are extremely good friends, there's no way in hell he'd let me do that with his one of him. Well, he might, but.

It's Sean.

Yeah. But I'm not gonna do it. For one, I don't have the body for it. I'm fat, whatever. Some people make the, oh, you're fat, yeah, performance, because you're fat. It's like, f*** you.

This reminded me of Austin Powers, you wee man, get in my belly.

Right, exactly. You know, sometimes I feel like that. So it had to have that. And it was sitting there, it had a pullout step on the side. Beautiful trailer. They had it listed, a sticker. And they had like, it's kind of cool. We got like this little cardboard plaque that they had on a tripod outside the trailer. It was like 25, $26,000. And then they had a show special. A lot less than that.

Yeah, I don't want to haul this home special.

Exactly. So we were talking to them. We're like, dude, we are buying this exact trailer, but it's up north. The walls aren't finished, doesn't have finished ceiling, doesn't have a nice floor. And then we showed them the approval letter and everything. He's like, man, give me a thousand bucks and you take this thing home. We'll finish the financing later this week. Yeah, we literally, we gave him a thousand dollars and we drove away with the trailer. No purchase contract, nothing. Like, Dew is the most trusting guy in the world. Like we could have not paid this guy.

I'm gonna say you didn't have the title yet.

Yeah, but we didn't have a title, you know? So that's probably where dude's like, well, I mean, he's a picture of my dad and mine or mine and my dad's IDs, so he knew where we lived. But at the same time, it's like, good luck finding a trailer after you'd, their place was in Kentucky. You know, so that was super, super, super cool. So I mean, the one thing that did suck is I took my halftone down there. At the time I just had the halftone. Power, stopping, squatting was not an issue with that truck at all. Cause I had bags in it. I had upgraded springs to tow things, cause I tow all the time. Is the stability at speed with that big of a trailer that became an issue. 60 miles an hour and below, no problem. One hand on the steering wheel, not worried a bit. Start getting at 65, 70 range. The trailer wants to move, the trailer is moving. It doesn't, it doesn't care. It's like, I'm bigger than you. I only weigh 24, 2500 pounds, but I'm bigger. I want to go this way, so the truck's gonna go this way too. So that was kind of an eye opener.

You have a weight distribution hitch now?

No, I have a 2017 three quarter ton. That the truck goes where the truck goes, and the trailer is like, okay, I'm here for a ride.

If you're still towing heavy, it still can be, so I have a three quarter ton super duty, and my 28 foot will get square land if I have it loaded heavy.

Right.

It's still weird, but the weight distribution hitch takes it all away.

See, and I've heard that, but I still have yet to run into that yet. I mean, I've had like trackhawks and stuff in there.

Yep.

70, 75, one hand. Trailer goes where the truck goes. You know, I mean, you get a strong enough gust to win, you might move a little bit, but I haven't had a problem with it yet. You know, probably the heaviest load was, well, I hauled a heavy load, and it kind of moved a little bit, but yeah, I haven't had a need to do that hitch yet. I'm looking forward to the day.

Yeah.

You know, maybe on the way down to Kansas, it might make me do it, because I'm going to have generator jacks, jack stands.

He'll be driving through Kansas, it's a little windy.

30 gallons worth of fuel, toolbox, the Jeep, second set of tires. You know, it'll be a lot, you know, three guys and all their gear and stuff like that. Not that that weighs a lot, but you know, that'll probably be the heaviest load and the longest.

Longest and heaviest load, I like it.

Right, exactly, that's what she said.

I, this whole episode, I've just been counting all like that, oh, Miss Chance.

Right.

To take one eventually.

Yeah, take one, you can get it.

Yeah.

You know, so it's, yeah, I don't know.

Well, if you can avoid it, it's a five or $600 deal, so yeah, you don't want to do that, yeah.

Yeah, it's, I don't know, and that aluminum, it's just, it's so beautiful. It pulls like a dream.

Oh, so many little hobbies and dreams. Every time people come on this podcast, I'm like, I want that too.

You want the debt too?

That's the sucky part of it. I'm trying to decide how I can pull my, my 28 foot is 3,500 pounds dry, like curb weight, and then I put my 4,200 pound GT 500 in it, and then try and hook it behind my RV, which the tow rating is 7,500 pounds and a hitch tongue weight of 750 pounds. I'm like, it puts me like right at the limit of where I should be, and I'm like, I think I need a smaller trailer, but I don't want to.

Just back the GT 500 a little bit.

That's what I was thinking. Or put it in backwards so the engine's like over the rear, like on the a** end of the trailer.

Cause I mean, how big is the RV?

32 foot.

I mean, theoretically, that thing's not gonna give it two s**** where that car is at in the trailer.

Yeah. I'm just trying, my most, my most, my concern is the, is the tongue weight, right? Cause I don't want to bend the RV in half. Cause where the axle is and where the a** end of the camper is, is quite a friggin range, right?

Right, exactly.

Yeah, they say if you can't put the slide out or your door opens all weird, you've made of put a little bit too heavy load back there.

Yeah, I think, I think I would definitely probably back heavy it.

And then just watch the rear axle tires.

Yeah, that was my intent. Or just get an open deck trailer at this point.

I have an open deck trailer. I have like 14 trailers, it's kind of gross. But I use them for work too, so like I have the fortunate to, I can write it off on the business to you.

And once you go in close, you don't go back.

I know, well that's what I, that's like I got a really nice car and I don't want to put it on an open trailer. Plus I want to take some extra, extra wheels, all that kind of s***, you know? Yeah.

Yep. And that's kind of the reason why we got one is because just the caliber of cars that we pull on our open trailer, you get some guys in the wintertime, you're like. Yeah. It's like fine, we'll get a f****** Ingles.

Yeah, makes sense.

Now it's like, oh, you got an Ingles? Yeah, here's 250 bucks. You know, but.

Congratulations, by the way. You smoked the two hour limit. Not limited, but yeah, you smoked two hours. Yeah, dude, time flies in this little space warm.

When you're having fun.

Yeah.

Yeah, you're always like hesitant to come on and then you're just like, I f****** had a blast, dude.

Right, I mean, the biggest thing is I don't know, it's just large amounts of people not really good with.

No, we only have like three listeners.

I know, right?

Yeah, it's not like close to 10,000.

You know, it's just like, you're just talking among friends right now, you know. What do you think of your friend?

Wait till you see the highlight of me. It's okay, I've only deleted one episode ever.

Really?

Oh, yeah, that's the sex. Chevy guy.

Chevy guy. It took a while for the Chevy guys to get back in my good graces after that one.

Really?

I was salty about that one. But damn, we had to pop the usual three.

Yeah?

Yeah, you wanna do it?

All right. I'm gonna ask both you guys together, all right? I need three cars. I need a track car, a daily driver and a show car. You have an unlimited budget. You can put whatever motor in, whatever you want. What are you pickin?

I'm gonna make the world mad.

Yeah?

Yeah, go for it, let's see.

You can go first.

Oh, okay, putting him on the spot, okay.

Show car, 1988 BMW M3.

Which gen is that?

E30. Yeah, okay.

Oh yeah, okay, I agree.

E30 FTW.

I'll have to debate the engine swap I'd put in there, but that's my dream car. Okay, daily 992 Porsche 911 Turbo S, just because it's just me and the wife. Yeah, don't know if we'll have kids, so don't need the extra space. Track car, I'll stick with a B5S4. I just love those cars. Not smart to build, but I just love how they look. I don't know, kind of like that boxier, squirreler look. Just like the E30 M3.

Probably be all Porsches. Yeah, the show car, it'd be a toss up between like an older RWB or something like that. Then track car would be GT3 RS, because they're gorgeous. And I rented one when I lived in Germany for the Nürburgring, because you can do that, it's wild.

Really?

How much did that cost?

Well, when you split it between five people, it's not bad.

The fact they let you do that is astounding.

Yeah. And then the daily driver, I didn't say the cost, hold on, hold on.

It's good a daily driver. Well, how much did it cost to rent between five people?

I think we had like two, 300 bucks each into it.

Did they just let you rip it on the ring?

Yeah. I mean, it's literally, there's places there that you can rent cars that are just set up to go to the ring.

Crazy.

So you got like the GT3s, you got Renauls. There's some, I think I'm gonna totally botch it, but I think it's called a SEAT or SEAT or whatever. They have some of those set up. And then, you know, just like some basic Porsches. And you have enough money, you can rent whenever you want.

So you've driven a GT3 RS around the Nurburgring.

Yeah, not very fast, but yeah.

F*** man, that's like f****** the s*** though.

Cause they send somebody with you.

Yeah.

You know, so it's not like they be like, here you go, go have fun.

Still though, like that's a pretty frigging cool thing.

You gotta drive it though, right?

Right, yeah.

Pretty hard?

Is there a speed limiter?

I didn't drive it very hard cause I can't afford that car.

That's fair enough.

Especially being in the army at that point in time.

You're just gonna leave the country at some point.

Yeah.

Get this dead m***********.

No, I mean, I've got like 43 laps around the track. And then we driven, drove Hockenheim and then almost did Spa, but by the time we got to Spa, it was raining. But yeah, squirrel. Daily driver would be, I'm on a Macan kick. I want a Macan GTS Turbo so bad. Like a 2018, the darker blue that they came out with. I mean, I love the cars enough, but not enough to know what paint colors are. But it'd be a dark blue or a white Macan GTS Turbo for a daily.

Becky's spec, I like it.

Love those things. Absolutely love them. And I will buy one next couple of years.

Awesome.

But should have just not built a Jeep and.

I could afford one.

On that note.

Yeah.

Well, sweet, man. Well, it was awesome to have you back on almost 80 episodes later. How about that? That's crazy.

I mean, that's gotta say something for you too. You know, like how you can continuously get pretty high caliber amount of people to come on and want to go on.

I love how this is like a self compliment for you.

I mean, the caliber.

I mean, as soon as I said that, I'm like, s***, I'm sucking my own D here for a second. Take that one out.

But no, it's like, little dad texted him at midnight yesterday. Cause I was like going around like, all right, who can I have on? Like, dude, like sometimes I plan things out for months in advance. Other times it's like night before because I have like an ongoing list, you know, in my head. So, but nonetheless, thank you so much for coming back on. Thank you. It was nice to meet you as well. So where can people find you?

Mostly Facebook, Instagram, literally my name.

Minnesota Performance.

Yeah, or Minnesota Performance for either one of us. Do you have a special Instagram or anything?

My Instagram is Rayform, R-E-I-F-O-R-M. That's just for my car, mainly stuff, but you can probably find Minnesota Performance. Yeah, anytime from seven to three, I'll be there.

That's insane. There's no way you're getting me up that early, sorry.

Yeah. And then, Dan?

Oh, you can find us at Gunna Garage. Gonna be some, hopefully some racetrack content coming up here sometime soon.

With two N's. And as for me, you guys know where you're at at this point. Yeah, I guess the only thing I could check out, Razorhood, check out Lunatech, get yourself some detailing spray, 15% off coming on Minnoxide.

Best stuff.

It is really good. I'm actually gonna have some further meetings with them here soon, so we'll see how that goes. But I might have a bottle for you guys. I'll check my inventory. Don't get excited.

I gave a lot of that s*** away.

He makes a lot of faulty promises.

We'll get that extra 10th at the track next week on.

Yeah. But yeah, other than that, thank you guys for coming on. Dan, thanks for existing.