96. Building One Of Kind Cars, Drift Truck, Becoming a Fabrication Specialist w/ Max Odegaard

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minnoxide podcast. I'm your host, Harris, aka Minnoxide. I'm here with my co-host, Dan, Mr. Gunnick Garage.

Yep, I see we're bringing the intro back, I like it.

Yeah, the last one, we tried it, it didn't get raving reviews, unfortunately. It was different, I tried it, it failed. And today, we are back at Patience Metal Fab. You guys may remember from episode 84, we had Brian Hawk and Gary Rood on. Rood, Rood, Rood, Rood, Rood, I don't know, what did I try?

He's not here to defend himself, so.

Yeah, well, you know, I got a text from Stefan last time, so I messed his up on the ratified episode. But today, we have Max, I knew I should have asked something. Is it Odegaard?

Odegaard, yep.

Nailed it. All right, cool. Well, you have a nice history, from drifting to being at MAP, MA Performance, that name, to this day, I still mess it up.

We can just call it MAP, right?

Just MAP.

At this point, MAP's fine, right? Who's going to correct you at this point, right?

That's fair. Yeah, it's okay. But now you are here at Patience Metal Fab.

Yep.

I'm really second-guessing myself today. But nonetheless, I thought it was about time to get you on. We've had a lot of people on this podcast suggest we get you on. So it's like, all right, cool. Turns out we went to the same high school.

Oh, really?

Yeah. So I was like, all right, cool. You're probably not at the same time, but maybe. I don't know.

I'm an 08 graduate, so.

08?

Yeah.

Okay. So we definitely didn't go at the same time.

I know I don't look like I'm 34, but I am.

I was about to say, this guy looks like maybe three years older than me. Maybe I was a sophomore, he was a senior. I don't know. Anyways. But yeah, no, you work on some cool stuff here at Patience Metal Fab. We have some of your babies in the backdrop here, which we touched on a little bit last episode. So we were here, but now we have your truck here. This beetle and the beetle, you have the top over there, the bottom over here, and then the Renault, which is probably one of my favorites here. So let's just kick it off then. We have a lot of people ask how to go into this career, right? I've had a number of people just message me on Instagram and be like, how do I become a fabricator at what is obviously here, a top tier shop in Minnesota? Do you just want to give a little bit of a backdrop as to how you came to this today?

Okay. Yeah, I mean, I guess number one is just start in any capacity that you have. I mean, a welder in your garage, a buddy with a welder, grandpa, uncle, anybody, right? Like, just start. Get yourself doing anything you possibly can, and then reach out, find different people to talk to about it, find different people that have avenues you can get yourself into. That's kind of how I started. Originally, I started welding and fabricating in 7th grade in metals classes and stuff. I had always had mechanical inclination with dirt bikes and cars as a kid, you know, reading Super Street, all that kind of stuff just sucked me in as a kid. I loved that kind of stuff. And I think I fell heavily on that fabrication aspect because I was so interested in suspension and cage work. And I mean, even like Baja trucks and like all that stuff, which is so far out of the realm for anybody that lives in this area. But I was on YouTube as a kid watching a lot of that stuff, watching the suspension work and things like that. And it just gave me this. I was telling you earlier, this hyper obsession with this stuff. So seventh grade, I started welding. Eighth grade, I got into more metals classes, woods classes. Ninth grade, I took, I think it was welding one in high school, then welding two, and then I was a TA for my welding teacher all the way through my senior year. So I just basically lived in the entire welding and wood shop area. After that, I intended to go to Mankato State for mechanical engineering, which was a terrible decision, but I always wanted to build cars. That was kind of why I wanted to do the mechanical engineering. Found out I can't do math. I can measure, but I can't do math. I top out at algebra. That's about it. You know, Pythagorean's theorem is basically what I got. So fell out of school, got into cars again, and then my mom kind of hit me upside the head with the what are you doing with yourself? Why are you working at Jimmy John's, driving your Honda around, enjoying that?

Thought I recognized them.

Right. So, you know, she goes, you need to go to school for this. You need to get this part of your life figured out. You're 20 years old. You're not going to Mankato State. You're barely paying off your school. Like, figure your life out. So she helped me kind of dig around, find some some avenues. And I ended up going out to Wyo Tech and spent the year course there. Eight months of it is just technical training, bumper to bumper, learning the cars. The last four months was motorsports chassis fabrication. And that's where the love really went nuts. You know, I got into it. I had my instructors really kind of take me under their wing, tell me, you know, you're one of the rare kids that shows up, does the work, excels at the work, but doesn't tell us how to do everything. That's something that we kind of see a lot in this industry, is people get into things, and then their ego gets the best of them. So I've always tried to just lean on my friends, my family, learn as much as I can, and throw myself into every situation I possibly can. Hey, can you weld this? Yeah, sure, let's try it. You know, have you done this? No, but I'll see if I can figure it out. So I think to fully answer your question is a willingness to be wrong, a willingness to learn and hang yourself out there, man. Go learn something, go try something, you know. Take class, Normandale, stuff like that. You know what I mean? If you got the opportunity to do that, go for it. That'll help a lot, actually.

I think that's huge, is just figuring out what you are passionate about, right? If I were to trace back everything, all my decisions I've made to middle school, it's like, oh, I could see how that worked out. And you don't do as many of those classes nowadays, I feel like that's kind of going away, where it's like, we actually really need that right now, too.

I took my daughter to her open house, she's going into high school this year, and they had everything, the kids out, things on display, all this stuff, and they didn't have a sign or anything like, hey, back here is the shop stuff. The lonely shop teacher was back there with a few kids, and it was like, why are we not steering some kids this way, too? My daughter was seeking it out because she loves this stuff, too. So she's like, Otto's won. She's signing up for all of it.

Right. So I think I can't remember if it was Chip Foose that said it, but kids are too sucked into the ability to buy things instead of build things nowadays. And I'm so far on the other side of things where I will spend more money learning how to make it than I will ever having bought it. But it will teach me and give me such invaluable skill for future that that's how I justify it. I'll spend a thousand bucks learning how to do something that should only cost me $150, but at the end of the day, I can repeat it and I can keep going and do more and more and more and more when the person that purchased it for $150 just owns the thing. They don't own the skills. They don't own their abilities at that point. So you're right, we're losing that. And that's unfortunate at this point.

So how did you end up over at MAP then? Because is that the natural, actually never mind, how, I guess, where did this start becoming a tangible career?

So after I finished at Wiotech, I moved in with a friend of mine. I ended up doing landscaping over the summer and had that same epiphany three months later. What am I doing? You went to school for this. What are you landscaping for? I got a job at Nurteknic, actually. I worked there for four months before they let me go for very good reason. I was super green. I was definitely not the kind of guy that should have been working in a place like that with the kind of cars we were working on, but it got my foot in the door. After that, I reached out to a friend of mine who was good friends with Ron at RS. And then he's like, Ron doesn't need anybody, but I heard they're hiring over at MAP right now. So, he ended up talking to somebody. I went over to MAP, dropped off a application, and a couple of days later, I got a phone call and came in and did a weld test. And I tell everybody that the best part about it is my weld test, I threw it on a weld and the guy checking me out goes, ah, it's not terrible. And then they hired me. You know, sometimes just getting your foot in the door and trying stuff is enough, you know, because then they're willing to teach you. If they see you have an aptitude for it, like, that's really all you need.

So even nowadays, if you just show up, yeah, they're willing to show people to do about anything. If you just are willing to get off the couch and go and have a work ethic.

That's another big one. A lot of these kids are excited and enthusiastic about this stuff, but they don't really put in the work. They don't, you know, get under the car, get dirty, get, you know, covered in dust and rust and all that stuff. They'd rather be on Snapchat and stuff like that, which I get it. It's fun to show everybody what you're doing. I also understand that that's kind of where the culture is right now. You know, everybody is more interested in attention for their things, where, you know, 10 years ago, it was about doing the thing. I think that's why drifting got so big, so fast, because that select group of guys, they're just about doing it. That's why they don't necessarily care what their cars look like or how beat up their things are, you know? And like, right, yeah, you break into getting sponsorships and getting better, and then your car starts to look better. But that's so true.

You know what? That's one of those, you're 100% right. Like, you see some of these guys that actually start having some money along the way, the car looks completely different. Like, you could tell, like...

There's a lot of times it doesn't have actual body panels anymore. It starts to look like this, right? Those are the ones I noticed, where the back end's completely open. There's like panels they probably could swap out when they do hit something. Yeah, out at Power Cruiser, there's this one really nice S197 Mustang I always see. From the driver's side, it looks beautiful. Then on the passenger side, just the rear quarter's just smashed in. I'm like, man, that was a nice car.

Right, but that's part of it, too, though.

And that's exactly, like, you got to... You know, the number one mod is driver mod, right? Like, you go through all this effort to make your car fast, powerful, stop well, do all these things, but at the end of the day, if you can't drive it, that's going to be your biggest hinge. That's going to slow you down the most. And I think what happens is a progression with this kind of stuff. You build your car, then your skills catch up, then your skills overtake your car. And you go, oh man, you know, I need more steering, I need more power, I need more this, that, whatever. And you build your car back up, it takes over your skills and then your skills. And then you kind of do that way. You grow your skills, grow your car, grow your skills, grow your car until your setup's refined, until you're good at it, until you know what you're doing. And then things just start to look better. Things start to come to, you know. I think a good example would be Kurt's E36. Back before he sold it, if I mean, I'm sure.

Kurt Thomas, correct.

Kurt Thomas E36.

We will be having it on the podcast soon.

When he first started, that car was multicolored panels, didn't have any over fenders, didn't have nice wheels, didn't have lots of power, but it was LS swapped. And he went out and flipped it over, first event. And that's what you need to do. You need to go drive the wheels off of something. And our good friend Josh Hamer, same thing, has had a stock 318 or 325 IS E36, and that dude drives the wheels off that car. He's in A group in a bone stock E36, and that's awesome. And I'd say if you're getting into the world of cars and you want to be a driver, start there, man. Drive the crap out of a car, modify it, then drive it again, then modify it. Don't go full, like that's my problem. I went full-blown build and I didn't learn how to drive, and I crashed right away. But I had friends, I had connections, and I kept going. I didn't quit, I didn't give up. So for what it's worth, you know, putting in that effort to learn how to drive will pay off for you.

Is there any one... So I have a whole bunch of drift questions rattle around up here. Same. If there's a... Because it's one of those things where people watch and you're like, drifters kind of can get a bad name for themselves, right? But you tell me there's not one person watching, it doesn't go, that looks like a lot of fun.

Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, so far, and I'm definitely jaded, I've never had more fun doing anything.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? Like hands down. I mean, jeez, my uncle flies aerobatics, he'd probably be the only person that would be like, yeah, this is all right. You know, apart from him, everybody else, their number one line, it's hilarious. They strap themselves in, that seatbelt clicks, and they kind of go, oh no. And they look over at me, they go, okay, don't kill me. And I'm like, you're not going to die. Like, we'll be all right. But they actually have that fear in the moment because they don't know what to expect.

Yeah.

We go out, we shred, we do the thing. And afterwards, they give that same exact reaction. Like that was the greatest thing I've ever experienced. That was so much fun. I need to do it again. Or, I'm going to go look for a car. I'm going to buy a car now. And like, that's awesome. That's a natural great progression of things.

Well, that's a good segue because that's kind of where I was headed. Is there a good, if I just want to out the box, like I have no experience at all whatsoever, is there something I can buy without having to modify it greatly? Is there, do I go get a 350Z? Do I get a Fox Body Mustang? Is there like a go-to for to just, I just want to go out and try this?

So, budget would be 350Z, if it's in good running, driving order. We're starting to see them where they're pretty beat up and like, you know, motors are pulled and stuff like that. But a good running, driving 350Z, that was kind of like the selling point originally, is you could slide them things right out of the box. You know, 270 horsepower at the crank and those things are ready to go. Now, if you have the money, newer Mustangs, a lot of guys are getting into the newer Mustang platforms and finding that those things right out of the box, they make way too much power, but I mean, relatively way too much power.

Yeah, no, they're amazing.

DS550, right?

Right, yeah, exactly.

Even with the independent rear suspension, they're still really okay.

I intentionally chose independent rear suspension in my truck. Just personally, I really like that. I'm not a solid axle guy. I've never really been into the solid axle stuff, but I also know that it does work really well. There's a lot of guys running solid axle that slide with no problems whatsoever.

Okay.

So one thing I have noticed is that when you start to move into a little bit more high end, high speed drifting, the solid axle has a hard time putting down mechanical grip because you can't really toss any alignment at it. Obviously people will argue that you can do different things here and there. There's guys from Sweden that would modify Volvos by welding on the top side by the pumpkin, and that would put a little bit of camber into their tire. So there's stuff like that that you can do.

So a solid, I always thought that for drifting, a solid axle would be better. That's not the case.

A solid axle will give you traction loss, and you can also attain lots of wheel speed. But a perfect example is a good buddy of mine, Eric Hill. He's got that Dakota, that Dodge Dakota, and he's got, I think it's all C5 Corvette, everything. But he's having, he was having alignment issues where he was making a ton of wheel speed, a ton of power, but his grip was way down. So he's, I mean, he's roasting his tires, and I'm running away from him. And it just kind of has to do with the way that your car is set up. I mean, you see a lot of drift cars at Static with their rear tires kind of positively cambered, but when everything squats out, it really hooks up. It gives you that little bit of toe in, and then your mechanical grip is through the roof and you're flying. Okay. So ultimately, yeah, that's 350Z budget Mustang, if you got the money, because I mean, even those now with all the RTR guys, the parts are available. Everything's right there. You can kind of mix and match and get everything ready. There's high steer kits for the Mustangs now. I mean, they get a bad reputation because a lot of people that don't like cars, that all of a sudden like cars, buy a Mustang, and then they're taking out crowds and stuff like that. But I think for people that actually like cars, Mustangs are just fine. There's nothing wrong with that platform.

I'm so happy that you're telling him to turn his orange car into a drift car. You should claw that back from your dad, and there you go, it's ready.

No, I don't want to... That car is so far built into what it is now that I would just start over. I almost think I'd get an EcoBoost Mustang, because I don't want to give a s*** if I bump it into something, right? That's my whole biggest thing. When you're learning, I feel like you got to be prepared to hit some stuff, because that's going to be part of the learning process, I would assume. So whatever I start with, I want to not care when that happens to me.

Right. And I mean, even with this thing, that was a very consistent question. You put so much time and money into this thing, aren't you afraid to crash it? The fear element always exists, right? You're never not going to be out there full-locked sideways off RPM and not have that fear element be present. But also, there's definitely this mental switch that happens, at least for me, when I get out on grid and I'm ready to party with the boys and throw it at the wall, like, here we go, I don't care anymore, you know, like, let's do it. But I also have practice, I have experience, so I'm not just blindly throwing it at the wall, things like that. So, yeah, it's, I mean, definitely try it, get into it. It's much harder than you think right away, but very easy to pick up once you start to get the mechanics, you know?

Yeah, I feel like I can do it in my truck in the snow, right? I can kind of control a little bit, but as soon as I get in the orange car, for instance, it just becomes a donut. Yeah, it does it. I'm trying to get that whole, like, control it, keep it at that angle as I go around, instead of coming all the way around.

Oh, I got photos of that, too.

Yeah, no, it's interesting because I got a ride along. I had somebody ride along with me on my second or third event, and he's a local drifter who's really good. He's at almost all these events and stuff, and his immediate reaction was like, go faster, everything, go faster, just go faster. Like, you're doing good, your initiations are solid, you know what you're doing as far as like the mechanics of everything. Keep going faster, faster, faster, faster, faster. And what that ends up doing is you drive on the momentum and then you supplement with power, you supplement with steering, you supplement with handbrake. But you're using your momentum to drive the car. And I mean, that's why you can drift any and every car out of the box. Front-wheel drive cars will drift if you throw it hard enough and correct enough. Obviously, it won't sustain and maintain a drift because you don't have that rear tire push.

Right.

You know, and that works, so.

Handbrake turns, done a few of those. Yeah, I won't put that on my Facebook marketplace listing. But so how long have you been drifting for then?

So I think it's 2019 was my first event when I brought it up to proving rounds with like no body panels on or anything like that.

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Yeah, yeah, something like that, yep. So kind of a shakedown weekend for me. I think we were only making 390 at the tire at that point. It wasn't making a ton of power. I was still kind of working through aftermarket modified, or I'm sorry, OEM modified knuckles instead of an aftermarket high steer kit and things like that. So I was still kind of getting through the growing pains of how to drift, how to set up the car, things like that. It was an eyeball alignment, things like that. My second event was out at North Dakota, and Matt Nelson actually looks at me and he goes, hey, do you have the front end for this thing? I was like, yeah. He goes, why don't you toss it on? I was like, I don't know, I was just going to drive it naked again, why not? He goes, well, just throw the front end on, what if you crash? And sure enough, I put it in the wall straight on and like super messed up the front end. But if I hadn't done that, like I'd be out my motor trans, like probably the frame would be toast. So, you know, kudos to Matt Nelson for just being like, hey, throw the front end on, try it out. And I did, crashed, fixed it, and was back out for PG2 that that year after like mangling my foot really bad in the crash, too. So I don't know, I think 2019 is when I kicked off drifting. And I've been building the car since 2014, I think is when I bought the original truck. And then just one of the guys at work talked to me into doing the full frame and everything. And then my OCD went nuts on making sure everything was perfect, perfect. And we tore open the motor. The motor was full of sludge. The trans was full of sludge. So might as well build it if we're going to tear it apart. And so we built the motor, we built the transmission. So everything in there should handle around 900 to the tire, but she only makes 500. Overbuilt, intentional, you know?

Right.

Keep it alive.

And that's plenty of power for what you're doing.

Right. Yeah, exactly. Especially when, I mean, total, I've got eight events under my belt. I don't have a lot. I haven't done a lot of driving, a lot of drifting, but having the setup be super refined, having all those people that I knew helped me get it set up, made such a huge difference in my learning curve versus somebody that's coming out for their first time and doesn't have anybody in their corner. And I like to actually step in and be like, hey, like, I noticed your car is like this. This is what you need to do to do it right. This is what you need to do to make things work. Sometimes that feedback is well received. Sometimes you get the like, I know what I'm doing. Don't talk to me. You know what I mean? So it is what it is on that side of things.

But just in case people don't make it all the way to the end where we give people like Instagram and all that stuff out. So if somebody wanted to, that's a little bit greener, on drifting and all that such, would you mind if they reached out to you on Instagram or anything?

Yeah. I'm actually on that side of things all the time. I will respond to just about anybody. I think it's kind of goes back to me just being a people pleaser naturally. I like to be nice to everybody. I love to give everybody the benefit of the doubt. It makes my life a lot easier if I don't think everybody's upset all the time. You know what I mean?

So you get disappointed a lot is what you're saying.

I do, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I do. But I've also learned to grow a thick skin. It's the car culture, right? Especially the drift culture, man. These guys are very unforgiving if you make mistakes or if you say something incorrectly. They're very quick to jump down your throat and make sure you know how incorrect or stupid you are. And I'm such the opposite. I would rather somebody be stupid so that I can educate them instead of belittle them. I want the community to grow. I want to bring drifting back to the cities. I hate the fact that we have to go four hours in every direction. I know that there's a lot of pitfalls and caveats to that one, but it would be ultimately extremely cool to bring it back to this area because I know that it exists as far as a market for it. I know that there are people around here that would show up if it wasn't at Brainerd, if it wasn't out in North Dakota or Wisconsin. I know there's people around here that wouldn't necessarily go to Elko for Eve of Destruction. So of course, they'll go somewhere to watch people drift and drive around. Why not?

And then what was that handle again? Just in case anybody wants to?

It's just my name.

Okay, perfect. Look at the title then.

Just Max. Max Odegaard.

So will you be attending the North Star Speed Summit then?

I will, yeah. I'm going to go to that one this year. So that one, I'm going to go to DTP4. I'm going to bring my truck to 10K to help run crew for Mike Pollard and then drive Sunday Funday and maybe Saturday night if there's any fun time to be had on Saturday night. But so far, this thing has basically been just like a party vehicle. I'm out there to have fun. I'm actually going to try to compete in DTP4. Never ran competition before, so I'm going to just look at the judges and be like, kick me out first round. You know, I don't care. I just I just want to drive with somebody. I want to try it, see how it goes. Ultimately, if by the end of the year at the North Star Speed Summit, if I could win a battle, that would be, you know, that would top my year off. I'd be super happy with that.

I think that's not a bad way to learn either. I threw myself into my first ever like competition thing this year too, by doing the Ultimate Street Car Challenge and was like, I had no, I've had some minimal road course time and almost zero autocross. And I was like, screw it. Came in overall place like right in the middle of the pack. So I'm like, what the hell? Yeah, you know, completely average.

Exactly.

So I don't think that's a bad way to do it either. First of all, it gets that first one out of the way.

Yeah.

And then you kind of get over those jitters and now you're like, what the hell? Everybody's just there to have fun anyway.

Exactly. Yeah. And I mean, like, I think that's where the community does that big split, right? There's that subset of guys. We really are just there to have a good time. You know, I'm not going to dog you for your car looking ugly. I'm not going to give you a hard time if you're learning, if you're new, if you're completely in left field and you should be playing a different sport, right? Like, I'm not going to give you a hard time. I want you to be out there. I want you to learn. It's only going to grow things. It's only going to make things better for everybody. And this idea that you need to fall in line with what somebody who drifted 12 years ago says is completely asinine, right? Like, especially because those dudes don't drive anymore, which like, that's fine. I don't care if they drive or don't drive like that to each their own, right? But this concept that they're also going to come across and s*** on these guys that are learning, that are new, that don't have nice cars, that don't have the money for it, right? Like, when I was building this, tires were $60 a piece. Now, a decent tire is $140, $150. I'm sure everyone will say you can still get them for $80, $90 bucks. But like, the reality is if you want to run new tires and you make enough power to run new tires, you're paying that much money. And if you're brand new to the game, like, that's just another added expense. You've already got to find a trailer, a tow rig, enough wheels and tires to get there, some coilovers, a decent handbrake. If you want to go that route, power at the engine. Like, there's so many different levels that it just becomes a giant cascading financial pitfall. You know?

Getting into, I've learned any kind of racing is an expensive sport in general. But I think people overlook the fact that tires are probably your most expensive consumable that you're going to have in any type of racing.

Correct, yep.

To put stupid tires on my car cost me almost two grand in track tires. And that's maybe a season. Well, yeah, road course stuff I could maybe get through two or three. But yeah, I'm not doing it like every weekend, so I can maybe get a season out of them. But doing what you guys do, I'm sure you're eating tires like crazy.

Yeah, so I get family members. They'll talk to me, they'll be like, so, you know, what do you need, like two sets of tires for an event? And I'm like, I've killed 12 before at an event. And they're like, then their immediate follow-up is, how much is a tire? So they immediately want to know how much I'm spending just on tires at the event. And it's, you know, kind of always that big eye roll, like, why would you spend that much money? And then my always response is, come on out, I'll show you. You know, you'll ride one time, and it'll make perfect sense to you why I spend that much money on it. So, yeah, it's a blast. I really, really, really enjoy it. So.

It could always be worse. You could be golfing.

Right. Actually, I do that too.

I was about to say, you look like somebody in my golf.

Yeah.

That's not a cheap sport either. I realized that one real quick. I'm like, oh wow, how much is it per hour? Oh yeah, okay. And then you get like $5 a ball, and it's like, oh boy.

Yeah, golf gets more expensive if you're bad, too. That's the worst.

Yes.

There's an incentive to being better.

Right, yeah, exactly.

So there's a lot of different ways we can take this, right? We could take this into your projects. We could obviously take it into, well, I guess your projects here at Patience and then, of course, your drift truck. But then before we do that, how did you end up here then?

So after I was let go at MAP, my boss, Kyle Nelson, reached out to Gary and Brian and was like, hey, due to unforeseen circumstances, we had to let him go. But he's an asset, and I learned later on that Kyle tried to sacrifice his own job to keep me, which made me feel pretty good as a person, knowing that I had a friend and somebody like that, that was willing to do that for me and throw themselves in front of the bus for me. But he reached out to Gary and Brian, and then within two days of me being let go from MAP, I had six job offers, and theirs was like a full-blown like email like come talk to us type of deal. So, we joked for years with me in the R&D department that if anything happened, this is where I wanted to land, and it just kind of happened. I guess it kind of manifested, right? Like put it out into the ether and it became a reality. And I think they were happy to have me come on board, because I was able to bring enthusiasm, right? Like I'm obsessed with this stuff. It's not just I like cars. It's, you know, I fall asleep thinking about welding. I wake up, brush my teeth, and I'm like, man, these wheels will look tight on this. You know what I mean? Like I get to work and we got a new car on a lift, and I'm underneath it. And it doesn't matter if it's something I've seen before or something that is new to me. I'm just I'm so curious. I can't get enough of it. And it goes all the way from go karts to hyper cars, you know, like everything.

Sometimes it's both.

Right. Yeah, for real. So I just I'm extremely obsessed with this kind of stuff to the point where I can't do anything else. As soon as I was let go from MAP, I said to my wife, I go, I'm not going to go get a regular job. And she's like, I don't expect you to. And then I think because of that, I think because of my enthusiasm for this work, I didn't have to look. I didn't have to put in applications, resumes. I made a Facebook post that said, hey, I've been let go, I'm available. And it happened. I didn't really have to try very hard, but that's because I've been trying hard for a long time to be good at it. So that made the difference for sure.

Well, you get to a certain level and your work kind of starts to speak for itself, hopefully, or like in your case, your enthusiasm. So that's a huge thing.

Yep.

So then, was there a learning curve once you came on board here, or how long was that process?

So in certain regards, yeah. When it came to some of the chassis stuff, like learning how to use Ben Tech, like I mean, even to Gary's credit, he's very, very adamant about cage work and chassis work, not just being good. It needs to be perfect. It needs to be better than everybody else's. And like you look at the Beetle, you look at the Renault, and it really is, you know, and that's me executing, but him not letting me cut any corners. Not that I really would cut corners. I think that's a reason why I got promoted into my R&D position at MAP. They wanted me to get faster at production. I'd rather make the welds look nice. They wanted me to build more products. I wanted every product to show up on your door, and you open the box and go, whoa, right? This looks better than the picture that I bought it from, that kind of thing. So that really catered to the fact that they were like, all right, we're not going to get this guy to go faster making things. We need him to be developing parts and making things on building fixtures, making sure that the actual fitment of the part on the car is better versus, like I've been saying, production, things like that. So then when I came here, I had all these skills built up. And I was kind of telling you earlier about my wild schedule. I like to get up at 4 o'clock in the morning. I'm here by 4.30, and then I work till 1 o'clock in the afternoon. And that lifestyle caters to me being able to put my attention on the things in the morning when I'm here alone. And for the first two weeks, Gary was a little bit apprehensive, because a lot of the stuff requires a lot of oversight. You know, like you can't just really dive in on most builds on most cars and have your order of operations set up. You have to have a lot of experience doing it. So, you know, he hemmed and hawed for a little bit about, you know, me wanting to come in early and have an early schedule and things like that. And I think after six days, he pulled me aside and he goes, hey, Brian's going to grab you a key. You can start coming in in the morning. And I had shown him in that quick a timeframe that he didn't need to be, you know, hovering and making sure, you know, my follow through was accurate and what we needed it to be.

Where did the 4 a.m. thing come from, by the way? Because it's like the four, like I'm just curious.

So I started doing that well before all the fitness podcasters were like, wake up early, you know?

That'll be when I started, yes.

Doing all that crazy stuff, right? So like, it's been funny to actually watch the dynamic of the world change around that stuff, because I've been doing it since I think, like 2016. I've been getting up, you know, earlier and earlier to the point where I would spend three, four hours that map by myself before the next person would show up at 730 in the morning. And it really is true. They're not wrong when they say that it can change your success. It's just a matter of what you aim your success to be, right? Like I'm not a financially successful person, but when it comes to building cars, I don't know many more people successful in this world as far as follow through, right? Like there's a lot of people building things. There's a lot of people exposed to stuff, but follow through capability, things like that. I feel like I'm up there with the best in the area, that kind of thing, and it just because I don't compromise on that stuff, I work really hard to make sure my lifestyle follows suit, right? So part of that was getting up early and making sure that I could get my jobs done, and then have enough time at the end of the day to work on things like this, and still spend time with my wife, spend time with my family, and not feel like I'm sacrificing that side of myself just to be the best car builder I can be.

Was it like a switch, or was it like one day you went from waking up at noon, and you're like, all right, I'm gonna do four today?

So it was kind of a progression. Another guy I worked with had done it for a little while. He was there sometimes, like two in the morning until like 10 a.m., and then he was out. And I started to kind of follow suit a little bit. He stopped doing it, and I never stopped. I kept coming in early. And it really just stayed that way. I never stopped doing it because it allowed me to do so. I mean, even at the end of the day, I'm out of here at one o'clock, I can go to the DMV, I can go to the Grote, everything's still open. So that, in a nutshell right there, made my life way, way easier, especially having two kids now at this point. They require so much of my time. I have to pick my daughter up from school. I need to be able to be there by 3.45. I can't be here till 4.30 and then shove her into daycare for another two hours, see her for an hour and a half every day. I want to spend time with my kids and my family. That's even part of the reason why I got into doing this stuff. I love it. I know they're going to like it and I want to keep doing it, and I want to get them involved in it, and I want to make it part of their lives too, if they're willing, if they're accepting of it, that kind of stuff. And then on the flip side, I want to say eight years ago, I went through some digestive issues where I had bad stomach problems. For a 26-year-old guy, I had diverticulitis, which is an old person's issue in their gut. I had to work through a lot of that stuff. So along with that was that lifestyle change. Get up early, work out, make sure you're eating right, put your health first. And then everything else started to fall in line. I got promoted into R&D. I started, this thing finished. I got all sorts of attention for it in the right ways. It wasn't like, I think you guys know what I mean. I got the right kind of attention for finishing this thing. But also, I go out and I drive the absolute s*** out of it. I'm not one of those guys that is going to be timid around my hot rod because I've spent so much time. I want to push the limit. I want to find the edge. I mean, I crashed it. I'll crash it again. I'll keep crashing it. I'll keep fixing it. I'm going to keep driving that hard everywhere I go.

Well, at least you can re-weld it from scratch, probably.

Yeah, I would love to see you give yourself an invoice, like, all right, here's how many hours.

Yeah, I think we calculated it at one point, and if we charged myself labor for 20 hours a week or 30 hours a week for eight years, it was like 600 grand or some crazy number like that. It was wild. But yeah, like, that's how much time I have into it. You know, and sometimes you're not really working, you're analyzing, right? You're staring, you're working things out in your head, you're coming up with a plan for X, Y, Z, and that's three, four hours. And, you know, a customer car, you don't build that. You know, yourself, you have to accept that, you know, that's three, four hours away from home. That's three, four hours not eating right, exercising this, that, whatever. And like anybody that knows me knows that for that long time, I was Taco Bell pizza racing, Taco Bell pizza racing. I was not taking care of myself, all that stuff until my body forced me to. And now I found a really good dynamic between the two where I take care of myself, but I also make sure that I can keep doing the stuff that I love to do.

So it's one, you have to have one with the other, right? Because like you said, if you're not taking care of yourself, then you're just going to downhill. And then all the other s*** starts to fall away.

Yeah. And then that's where you see guys, you know, some unfortunate circumstances, my race cars for sale, you know, and they're paying for a back surgery or some wild s*** like that.

No, you see it, especially when I was down at the Texas Motorplex for another event, not Texas2K, and there was a bunch of people selling collector-worthy cars, and it's like circumstances got them.

Right.

Sometimes they're preventable too.

And that was one thing I super prided on building this thing, is I don't owe anybody anything on it. I mean, to be fair, there are friends who have helped me that I have not been able to help out since they've helped me, and that stuff plagues my mind. The guy who painted this thing, I wanted to trade him a roll cage, and it's never worked out. And I still, Tony, if you see me, I still want to do something for you. My buddy Derek, who's done a lot of stuff for me, I was in the middle of helping him finish his twin turbo Mustang, and then I got let go from MAP, and I still want to help Derek finish his car. So stuff like that plagues me. But the reality of it is, nobody can plan for that kind of stuff, so you just have to roll with the punches as they come. I didn't mean to crash, but I got through it. So that's life sometimes.

So then how long have you been here now then?

I've been here about, I think about 14 months now, somewhere in that range.

That's right around the whole when the MAP thing went down.

Exactly. I was the last round of layoffs before they basically announced to everybody, hey, we're going to move out to Wisconsin. So anybody that's still here, stick around, we'll take care of you until we move that kind of thing. But it kind of worked out, because as soon as everybody was on the market, they had just a giant community of people looking for a job. And at my time, it was like me and two other guys looking for a job. So it kind of worked in my favor. And I can't really necessarily be upset at this point, because anybody who knows anything knows this place is where it's at for having your car built.

Last stop, Fab Shop.

Right, yup. So maybe there's a lot of other places as far as tuning and modification and stuff like that. But if you want torn down, caged up, built top to bottom, this is where you come. This is where you get it done.

There's not very many places in the cities, and somebody, feel free to correct me. I'm sure I'll hear it. But when you walk in here, you see cars that are like, for example, this is Beetle. It's like, the shell's over there. There's not many places you'll see that. So it's really cool. I mean, this is kind of like a place of dreams. I don't know what to say.

But yeah. You're right. It's kind of that you look back, and 12-year-old you would be off the wall in a place like this. You know what I mean?

This is a normal 40.

And I'm still off the wall.

Right.

Like this.

Yup, yeah. Getting exposed.

I want one of those.

Yup, exactly. Yeah, that's really it. Getting exposed to this stuff. A lot of people kind of end up with that overexposure effect, right? Where nothing's cool anymore. Nothing is, you know, fun to them. And like I was saying earlier, everything still to me is next level exciting. And I don't know if that's just because I'm at heart still such a kid, or if it's because my desires, my passions, my obsessions really lie in this field. And it could be both.

I think it's an appreciation, right? Like some people like, granted, Huracans are the civic of supercars, right? But like if you go and check them out in person, like you could still appreciate the engineering and everything that went into it. And I think it just, I think it's a mindset thing, right? Like I could appreciate the fact that there's still eight McLarens that are all exactly the same here. I don't know, it definitely is that.

Yeah, I went to a little car meet by my house in Rosemont and, I mean, new C8 Corvette was there. There was a guy with a Hellcat. A bunch of new cars, right? And the one that caught my eye was this 70 Chevelle. And obviously everybody loves the Chevelle. Chevelle is pretty easy for everybody.

Well, almost everybody, but yeah, go ahead.

But me as a car builder started to analyze the car and out of everything that was there, the attention to detail, the paint, the fact that every hole on his firewall was intentional. The interior was flawless. It was a crate NASCAR motor he dropped in there. The rear end had no chip, no rust, no nothing going on. Like this car had been gone through front to back, top to bottom, and was easily the nicest car there. But it takes somebody like me and the guy who built it to recognize that, to come to that mental realization, and be like, yeah, everybody else bought their rigs here, you built something that's actually incredible. And that's rare at this point. It's rare to come across somebody like that.

We were talking about this before, where you can buy a lot of cool, like there's so many supercars, and even just what GM and Ford are doing now, where they're basically building supercars now, you can just go buy and drive around. But they're gonna make several of them, right? If you want something true one-off, which is like what a car guy's real dream is, right? It's always, ever since I've been collecting cars or been hanging out with car collectors, it's always on what's the rarest, right? This is a one-of-one or two-of-two or whatever. To really get something one-of-one, where you get something hand-built, like even if you're not, we've got this whole built, not bought thing, right? I still think, yeah, but if you bring something here and you have these guys build it, that's still a built, not bought. You had an idea, you consulted with a professional, you guys came together and you built this car. That's what is that? Ninety, almost 100% of what's in here right now?

Right, yeah, exactly. And I think one of the key aspects of our clientele is that they trust us, they trust our expertise, they trust our abilities, but we also listen to what they want. And a lot of shops will take your car that lands in their specific niche and say, this is how you build it, this is what you do. And what we like to do is be like, this is what I would do, this is what most people do. But what are you thinking? What are you feeling? How do you want to go about it? What would you like to see out of the end goal? A perfect example is this Renault. The owner is one of the coolest guys you'll meet hands down. He's super into cars, super knowledgeable on cars. But as far as like mechanically, he'll admit he lacks that information. So he trusts us to step his knowledge up and help him make the right decisions to build his car the right way. And it's not us saying this is the only way to do it. We're saying this is the professional way to do it. This is how you would do it if you were looking to achieve X, Y, Z. A lot of guys end up living in this unattainable world with their builds where they want a fast car that makes four digits, that has air conditioning, that is comfortable, that's quiet, that's caged, and they're living in too many worlds to have that be attainable and actually enjoyable to drive. They end up spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to basically never enjoy their vehicle, and I'd rather be s****** me out of. You know what I mean? Because then I'm having fun all the time. And eventually that guy spending all that money will have fun. But then he gets on the other side of it too, where he doesn't want to break anything. He doesn't want to put it into a cone even, because he spent 50 Gs on the paint job. You know what I mean? And beautiful car, makes all the power, does everything, drives 36 miles a year.

Yeah, I had this conversation with someone the other day about a work in progress build, and I'm just sitting here thinking like, oh man, if that body kit breaks, you're waiting a year just for that panel. Because it's a really special body kit.

Right.

It's like, some people will full send it, others not so much. It definitely is nerve wracking, I feel.

Yeah.

Whereas like sometimes when you're looking at like, like one of my friends, right, he has beautiful Ferrari, right? His daily driver was a Prius at the time, right? And he loved that car more than his Ferrari. He's like, I could take it anywhere. I get door dinged, no problem.

Right.

It's like, because you're not having that constant stress. And then once you got a daily, that was more expensive. He's like, ah, damn it. Like it's really nice, but f***.

Yeah, seriously. Yeah. Like I drive a 2010 Insight and like you're completely awesome. It's a pair of shoes, dude. Like I don't have to treat it any better or worse than that. You know, oil changes, maintenance, get in. Like you said, door dings don't care. You know, it gets 38 miles to the gallon so that I can beat the s*** out of this thing and then go, oh, God, I broke it. That kind of thing.

So I feel like we've been kind of dancing around it forever. Tell us about this car. Truck car. What do we even refer to it as?

So, yeah, it's essentially a car, I guess. It's got a truck body. When I bought it, the intention was to build a full frame for it. And that's what we ended up doing. But it was more to kind of like modify the OE frame and like back half it, front half it. A lot like what my coworker Andrew did at MAP with his hard body, where he just modified the stock frame, added 240 suspension and 240SX steering. And then he also put a 1JZ in there too. So back when we were sourcing parts, he was helping me find all this stuff. He's the reason that I have all the 240 suspension, the 1JZ, I have the transmission, I have. He knew everybody that had all this stuff, and he was like, you got the money, let's go get it. So we went and got it. And then he talked me through a lot of the kind of initial startup, like this is how you kind of get started with stuff. But I was also very, very interested. I tried really hard to come to him with educated questions. So I think that's one of the pitfalls of car building in general, is that lots of people come to you with questions and they're not educating themselves ahead of time. And then that's where as a car guy, you don't want to deal with it. You kind of roll your eyes at that guy and you go, oh, you know, I'm not going to work with helping this guy because he doesn't really want to help himself. He'd rather you do it for him. He'd rather you give him the right answer so that he can just go buy the thing. And that's fine on you're paying an hourly rate thing, but if you're hitting me up after hours and you're saying, what should I do about this, that, whatever, but you don't have any education behind it, I'm going to probably give you a fairly generic answer. Or my number one response is, why don't you do some research? Read what it's about. Read what you want to use it for application wise. And then lean into it that way.

That's so true. Even with clients or even people that hit me up for photography help, I'm like, did you try Googling at first? Let's get a baseline answer here, and then I can help you with the more advanced stuff.

Right. Because you're asking me the kind of questions that you should be able to discern in five minutes on your own. But then it's almost like you have to teach them how to think that way. And once they get that initial grasp of it, they usually take off on it. They stop asking you questions, they know what to do at that point because that information is that readily available.

Point them in the right direction sort of deal.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's kind of why I got such a positive response from Andrew in the beginning because I came to him with a lot of background information. Even when he was building his S10, he hit me up every once in a while like, hey, how would you do this cage-wise? Because I had that motorsports chassis, I had background at school and stuff like that. So we bounced a lot of information off of each other. And then like I've said before, that enthusiasm, I just never quit. One of my favorite quotes I like to tell people is, you can't fail if you never quit, right? Like you can get knocked down, you can lose, you can be financially tapped out. But if you never stop moving forward, if you never keep going, like you're not actually failing. You're just learning a lesson, you're getting better at it, you're going through some stuff, you're struggling, but that's the reason you're doing it. Nobody got good at anything if they didn't struggle for a while. You know, nobody's just a prodigy right out the gate, especially when it comes to building cars and driving. The cold trickle aspect from Days of Thunder, you don't just toss a kid in a car and he's fast. It doesn't work that way. There might be somebody who's got inclination that has natural skill, but they're not going to be lights out fast and then tell you they don't know why or how or whatever. You have to have some knowledge of the vehicle to understand how to use it and be fast with it and work through those things. I think that's another reason why I picked up the drifting really fast, is I have that background information going on.

So that's huge, understanding how things work.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Big time. And I think that also is why this thing ended up being so successful in the long run here is that I had that hive mind at MAP. I had 15 guys I could go to at any given time and ask a question. And sometimes I would ask all 15 to get a very well-rounded conglomerate of an answer. And that helped me a lot in making decisions. And sometimes they said, I don't know, you're going to have to try something, you're going to have to do this. And then I would, I would just lean into it and say, you know what, we're going to just try it. We're going to see what happens here.

We're just going to try it is one of the best things ever. You know how many things I've learned over the years? It's just like, you know what, we'll see what happens.

That's engineering in a nutshell, right? You don't have time to stress test, to go through and spend all that time and money that the firm is going to put down for you to analyze everything. They go, all right, build the thing, go try it, because that time frame is going to be much shorter than us analyzing every single piece to say, okay, now it's good, we'll try it. Just try it right away.

Every single thing was done once for the first time. It doesn't matter what it is.

And usually wrong. That's one thing I like to tell people, too. They go, how are you so good at welding? I was bad for a long time.

And we know if you want car advice, don't ask the people who work behind the counter at O'Reilly Auto Parts.

Yeah, I still have to work with my parents on that one. They love to chat those guys.

They know nothing about cars. Stop asking.

Right, yeah, exactly.

Then a car salesman, for some reason. I always go in there way more educated than anyone else. I don't know why they don't know anything about what they're selling.

Right.

Yeah, it's rough. I went on a test drive recently, and it's like, put it in sport mode. I'm like, bro, you just got the previous generation car over here. That's twice the horsepower. Easy. Put it in sport mode. But okay, so obviously we have a Ford guy here. So I think I saw a Toyota on the front badge.

No, it's an Isuzu.

Okay.

So it's an 89 Isuzu pick up. Man, I've done so much to it.

Or it used to be anyway.

Right. Yeah, exactly. I mean, no floor in it anymore. It's all custom chassis at this point. The one Jay-Z is fully built, like I was saying, she makes 500 to the tire. It's kind of like what you were saying before. I built the truck to be different. When I was talking to Andrew about it originally, I didn't want to build a 240. They're everywhere. Even 10 years ago, 15 years ago, they were everywhere. 350Zs everywhere. I wanted to get an E36 for a while. They were still fairly expensive at that time to get a good shell. They were still 8, 10 grand, and I probably could have found something in the 2, 3 grand for a roller. But I still wanted to do something super different. Andrew just looks at me one day, and he goes, why don't you build a truck, too? It's different. There's no trucks anywhere. And then he's like, you got all that experience with chassis fabs, so put it to use. So that really just kind of lit that fire. And I went, yeah, let's do this, because I don't know anybody that's got a truck quite like this. There's lots of drift trucks out there. I mean, even now, like Ryan Turk's truck, that thing's super rad, and people love it, because it's so different. It's so much, you know, it's not the status quo. You know, everybody's so tired of even, like, the overbuilt chassis. The 350Z is a pretty easy example, but like 240SXs are overbuilt at this point.

Man, even the reason, though, right?

Yeah, they function extremely well. I mean, even to a point where like on a lot of the drift pages, guys will say, if you have 240SX knowledge, don't answer this question, because they're talking about a different platform. So that's become kind of a, for me, that was my like, Ick with the situation is I didn't want to do something that everybody else was doing. I wanted to be very, very different. And at the beginning, I wanted to be very like stealthy about it. I kind of wanted it to be just this black truck that was quiet, that, you know, you didn't really think much of until you walked up from behind it. And you were kind of like, whoa, what's going on here? And then I'd go out and drive and then that would do all the talking, which like now it's got the fighter plane livery going on and all that stuff. But that's kind of been like a natural progression because I'm not really driving it on the street. I had more intention to drive it on the street in the beginning. Now I just want to go, you know, anything I do on the street is just boring. It's, you know, it's not fun to drive on the street. It's clunky, it shakes around, you know, until I'm, like, into the gear. She's really taking off and doing all that. And it's not exciting, you know. Ripping through first through third and scorching the tires, that's a lot of fun. And I can't really do that on the streets. I don't want to do that on the streets. I'm not really interested in putting it into a curb or getting pulled over or having problems like that.

I got a spot for you. It's called an intersection, and it happens when there's a takeover. It's called takeovers, by the way. We'll make it happen.

Is there a place where people go out and practice this kind of stuff? Do you like big parking lots, things like that?

So that's what I would tell people to do. Like go find an open parking lot, specifically in a parking lot, that's big enough where if you're going to throw rocks, you're not going to hit people's stuff. Because that's going to be your biggest turn off right away, is someone's going to be nearby and hear a rock hit something. And they're going to go like, this guy over here being reckless, being stupid. And now I don't know who did it two, three years ago, but at one of the car shows at the state fair, they did a bunch of donuts in the dirt and sent rocks flying everywhere. And they were breaking windshields and headlights and chipping paint. And they only did like two or three. They didn't do it for five minutes. They only did like two or three.

They did a lot of damage real quick though.

They did a lot of damage fast. And so like that's-

Anybody can do donuts in the dirt. Prius can do donuts in the dirt. Nobody's impressed.

Right. So I think getting out to an event is going to be your best bet as far as learning, because you're going to have a lot of people around you that are going to give you pointers and say, try this, do this. You're letting out a throttle too early, or you don't have a welded diff or something like that. And that person might not know. And if they're just doing donuts in a parking lot, they might feel like they're doing something right. They might feel like they're doing something well, and then try to translate it to the street or whatever. And then before they even know it, a good friend of mine had this happen. Before he even knew it, he hadn't even been to an event, and he completely folded the front subframe underneath his car because he tried to kick it out at 12 miles an hour, had never done it before, grabbed a grip, the car corrected, and then he was over a curb and folded the tire up underneath his car and totaled out his car in six seconds. And I wish I could go back in time and go, dude, go to a giant parking lot. Have you ever lost traction? That's another one too. Have you ever lost traction in a vehicle? Intentionally or unintentionally, have you ever had to recover your vehicle? That's a big one. I tell my wife that even, I want you to learn how to lose traction and regain traction in just your CRV. It'll make you such a better driver. And I don't think many people do that until either they're trying to impress somebody, or they're overbuilt and at the track, and then they don't know what they're doing. And that's okay.

So a guy like you could just go buy an old Caprice or Crown Vic, and you could just go barrel down 94 when it's snowing outside and not even giving a s***, right? Because you could just be like, no big deal.

And it's just practice at this time. It's just seat time. That's what everybody will tell you, is like, seat time, seat time, seat time. You know, as much seat time as you can possibly get under your belt will just continue to make you a better driver. And like, yeah, exactly. Like, I think that's even like where most of us started, right? We got into the snow and started snow drifting, and they're like, wow, this is really fun. You know, I'm obsessed with this all of a sudden. And then it becomes a natural progression that you find a car that you like to do it with. And then you're drifting in the snow in the car. And then you make that transition to dry pavement and you go, you know, whoa, this is fast. And that's the first thing you kind of learn, is snow drifting is really fun and relaxed. You make the move to dry pavement, it's no longer relaxed. It's very aggressive. Like, you need to be on top of your s*** to do it right. Because like I said, my buddy kicks it out 12 seconds and he's over a curb and wrecked his car. And it's just practice, you know? Like, do some donuts, man. Like, don't just do some donuts. Do some donuts where you have to actually correct steer, counter steer, like, let the wheels flop the other way, and then maintain, like, things like that. Even in that moment, it'll teach you how to do stuff so much quicker, so.

So when you were on the hunt, though, you were, you knew you were you were building a drift something.

Yeah, OK. Yeah, that was always the intention was drifting. I mean, like all for sure. Cliché Tokyo Drift, you know, I'm 16. I'm in the movie theaters with my front wheel drive prelude. And I'm like, what mistake have I made purchasing this car? You know, like, and I tried hard for a long time to get my mom to let me sell that car. And, you know, to her credit, she was right to not let me do it because she bought it for me. She's like, I'm not going to buy this car and sell it and let you wreck this thing right away. And she was right. I if I had done that, I'd have been my friend. I'd have put it over a curb and wrecked my 240 right away or 350Z or whatever right away. I had to grow a healthy respect for driving and aggressiveness behind the wheel before I was capable and before I wasn't, you know, making stupid mistakes like that. I did a lot of stupid stuff in my prelude that I never had any business getting away with. Yeah. But fortunately didn't fold the tire underneath it or anything like that. Like plateaus at 70 on the highway. Yep. Like we did stuff like that. Not intentional. I had friends pull the handbrake. I had all that kind of stuff go down. We never crashed, got lucky a lot. But that stuff gave me a super healthy respect for these guys that go out and make it look really, really, really easy. And now I'm kind of on that side of things where people ride with me and they go, how long you been doing this? And I tell them, oh, like six events.

And they're like, whoa, like six weeks ago, I started.

I mean, what, like six hours of drift time under my belt. I'm not counting like simulator driving, which that's invaluable to, you know, getting on the sim just for mechanics. It teaches you where your hands are supposed to be, where your feet are supposed to be, how to use the clutch to initiate, how to drive on momentum. That's a big one is driving on momentum. You know, a lot of these guys come out 350 horsepower. They've never drifted before, and they can't stop spinning their Mustang. They can't stop spinning their, you know, XYZ car. And it's because they don't know how to get out on that momentum and then supplement with that power, like I was saying. So, yeah.

There's so many different rabbit holes that he just gave me to go down. Yeah. And I'm trying my damnedest to stay on track. What are you most proud of on this? I swear, I'm going to ask so many questions later, by the way. We might have to put a different SIM card in this 4K camera. I'm convinced of it. So, if I stand up suddenly, we filled it up. But what are you most proud of on this truck? Or some things you're proud of, I suppose. Because obviously, something like this has a lot of passion and effort that went into it.

I think it's the way it performs. I spent a long time making sure that the follow-through is accurate, right? Something that I could align like a pro car, something that had the high steer like a pro car, that made enough power, that could sustain the power. Even now, one of the things I struggle with is I put too aggressive of a cam setup in it. So it has the full-blown 272s in there. And what I'm learning, what I've been learning for the past couple of years, is that that's more than likely like a drag racing style cam for the Jay-Zs, because anything under 3,500 RPMs, I'm working really hard to get up above boost. But once that boost hits and the cams hit, it's effortless. The power is so well-delivered. So there's little things like that. It's like that setup refinement that I was talking about. But right away, learning how to set the car up, and then just that incremental steps forward, you know, better alignment, more power. My first event was not a welded diff. And even like I was saying, driving on the momentum, you can get it to step out and both tires will spin, but you'll go to rotate the front end and slow the vehicle down, and then you'll start to one tire fire and stuff like that because of it. So learning setup, building the car to actually do what it's supposed to do is probably what I'm the most proud of with it. And then my flair is all over it. The cage work, it's not a very generic cage on this thing. Most people look at the back end of it, and they ask, why didn't you just do like a regular X brace? And I don't know. I wanted something different. I wanted to do something that other people weren't doing. And this is just where my brain landed with it. And whether or not it's better or worse, I don't know. I don't know if it's more triangulated or structurally sound as far as like, I've never stress-tested it, right, besides crashing it. But I've never stress-tested it and stress-tested it, right. Yeah, that's a pretty good one. And even that like bent the frame pretty good in the front. We had to put it on the rack and pull the frame and all that and fix it from there. But I put a lot of effort into that fix too. So making sure that it does the job makes me extremely happy with the follow-through. And it looks cool at the end of the day now.

So what's with you fab guys and mini trucks?

I do not know because I besides my truck, I don't really like trucks. I don't even know why I was so accepting of the idea to begin with, especially now, like even running competition in a vehicle like this, it's really big. It's really heavy. If I hit somebody, I'm damaging their car. And like that's something I'm super conscious of every time I'm trying to chase or lead or whatever, I'm just conscious all the time of getting out of the way and not hitting somebody because everything on this thing is going to punch a hole or, you know, I'm going to hit you way harder than you're going to hit me because my fender will fold. And then there's frame rail like big metal, not just, you know, folded sheet like everybody else's car. So very, very conscious of that kind of stuff.

What are their requirements for like drifting in any kind of event or stuff? Do they make you have a cage or anything like that?

So most competition requires like cage and door bars. That way, there's no anti or there's no intrusion. You know, if somebody hits you in the door, they're not going to fold your legs up or something like that. I know up at like Formula Drift level, you need like OEM firewall and stuff like that. You can't think you can do a little bit of hacking at the firewall to make room for like transmission and maybe like a little bit of engine stuff like that. But they don't want you shoving your engine in transmission. Way back in there. Essentially, what they don't want you doing is building these three quarter million dollar cars and nobody else can even compete because you've got... Some of these guys have title sponsors like Toyota, Nissan, like big stuff like that. But the rules exist so that anybody could essentially build the same car that these guys have.

Which is a good thing.

Right, exactly. It keeps it in that realm where like our local heroes can go out and run with the Chelsea Dinofas, the Von Gittin Juniors, these guys who have Ford in their back pocket, helping them develop, not just build the cars, but develop the cars.

Right.

You know, like they're actually going to Ford and saying, hey, like when I hit the wall here, this member buckled, let's do something about that on the next car. And then Ford is listening.

Which is super cool, by the way. Yeah, that was super cool at SEMA. I actually got to get a ride along with Von Gittin Junior.

Right. And those cars just...

It's insane.

Dude, they're unbelievable the way that those things perform. And it's super fun to watch that stuff happen. And, you know, but like we were saying, it keeps it within that realm of, it's still a car. You know, you're not flying around with a GT3 car that's been modified to drift.

Right, it's actually attainable.

Right, yeah.

Well, one of the cars they run is a Fox Body and that whole Fun Havr deal. So I'm sure it doesn't resemble one underneath by any means.

Yeah, but I mean, even to that, like it's closer to a regular Fox Body than it would be if it were to be taken to that crazy level that these guys go to now. And like, I still like seeing that. I still like seeing these $40,000 dog boxes that go and stuff like that stuff. So because it's me, I'm so entertained by that kind of stuff. And like even like with what they're doing now with some of the DCT stuff, super, super cool. It's hard for it to be financially attainable for a lot of people, but just seeing that stuff make its way down and into grassroots driving, really, really fun. You know, it's becoming attainable. A lot of these even like standalone ECU companies are making plugins for a lot of this stuff that makes it attainable for regular guys. It's not like I got to go hit up MoTek and be like, I'm trying to put a DCT in my race truck. Now I need $30,000 worth of ECU and wiring just to make that happen. I can go to Haltech. I can go to some of these other guys.

Haltech is very attainable.

Yeah.

It's kind of crazy what they offer. Their offering is insane.

Yeah. So we're seeing that kind of, that bridge is starting to be built between the high end stuff and the grassroots stuff that we're all doing.

So it all starts to trickle down eventually anyway. So I always think that all the time with car options, right? When a new thing comes out, you're like, oh, sweet. In 15 years, I'll have a car that has that, right? At one point in time, power windows was like a fancy option. Right. Now you can't find a crank window. I mean, they don't even exist in the wild anymore because most of those cars have rotted.

Hold on. They still make brand new jeeps with crank windows.

I'm sure it was.

It's a very specific option that I've heard very much about.

Even a good example. We had a customer come in with, I think it was a 65 Ferrari. Oh, man, I can't think of the actual model number of it. But that car had full independent suspension, full independent. And I mean, most auto manufacturers were using solid axle until the late 80s, mid 90s. And that was just the way they were producing cars. Even some of their performance cars were running stuff like that. And like, Ferrari's doing like full chassis under cars and stuff like that with independent suspension in like the 50s and 60s. And they're proving that these things can work. And on the flip side, you know, these other manufacturers are still proving that the solid axle, you know, like NASCAR style sports car can still perform and still do its thing.

Yeah, there's some domestic automakers that just think one cam is still enough to...

Right. They finally made the change. They finally did it.

Yeah.

Well, they got twin turbos now.

Shut up.

Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, did you build the 1J yourself, then?

No. My buddy Eric at MAP really kind of took the reins on that. So, two of them, my buddy Zach, he's the one who put together the short block for it. While Eric and I kind of like sourced parts and knew what we were going to do with it. It's got, I'm trying to remember the brand of everything, but I mean, it's pistons, rods, valve springs, Gs, I mean, cams. The head's been ported, like port matched to the intake manifold. I ported the intake manifold. I ported the volute on the turbo to match the outlet on my manifold. I mean, I built everything on the truck, so the whole turbo kit, the whole, all that. But Eric and Zach put the motor together, and then that guy, Andrew, built my transmission for me. I broke something in the transmission a couple of years ago. I shredded up a fork really bad. And then I had to take the transmission apart and put new forks in it and all that. So I got to learn how to basically rebuild a manual transmission. Just kind of like doing it. It wasn't like I was going through like this step by step, you know, all that. I like remove bell housing, take off, you know, input slave cylinder. You know, it was none of that. I just kind of started taking it apart, leaving my parts in that progression order, like, all right, now it goes back on like this.

And not even some Sharpie and tape.

Right. So I made some mistakes. I, you know, a few, a few of the detent balls got left out. And at the end, I'm like trying to button it up. I'm like, why do I got extra parts? And then I go to try to like manually shift it, and it won't go into first or something.

So checks out.

Right. I had to put it back together or take it back apart and put it back together a couple of times. But it's been running now again for two years with good forks and all that. So it's kind of goes back to like way back at the original. Just start doing stuff. Even if you take apart something that you bought for 50 bucks and it's totally wrecked after, you're going to have so much more knowledge for the next time you do that. You know, I bought a dirt bike when I was 12. It had a blown jug on it. Like there was like I would run the run the kick on it. And like I could watch oil shoot out the jug on the side of it. So I knew there's no salvaging this thing. I took it fully apart just because I felt like I wanted to see what everything looked like. I wanted to know how it went together. I put it back together and sold it for 100 bucks to another kid that's like, I'm going to rebuild this thing. So I got what I wanted out of it at 12 years old. I got to learn how the dirt bikes work and got to play with something. My mom's like, I've never seen you in and out of the garage more in my life than that. And then sure enough, I get into my 20s and she's like, go build cars, you idiot. Like stop this messing around stuff. You need to do this. So yeah. Yeah.

That's pretty gnarly. Was there anything else that we want to talk about on the track before we start talking about some of your other projects here? I mean, there's just so much. I mean, the piss jug, of course.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah. The piss jug. I kind of in a developmental stage. A lot of the forums, a lot of people I know are talking about tire quenching and how much longer it makes your tire live. So I hopped on Amazon. I bought an aftermarket windshield sprayer kit for, I mean, I think it even just says Universal Windshield Sprayer Kit. And I rigged it up in the rear to spray the tires. Like I was saying earlier, I don't think it has enough volume to actually quench the tires like I want it to. But proof of concept is I'm going to get more life out of the tire. Essentially, what happens is, especially with these Kendas, when I make this much power, they blister much quicker and then they delaminate. So I don't even actually burn down to the lamination. I'm actually chunking the tire off, and then it becomes dangerous because it starts to slap around and have more problems. But that's because the tire is overheating at the lamination, at the plies, and then bubbling underneath. So the idea is that you quench it before it starts to bubble, the tire will live longer, and you'll be riding on the tread instead of chunking the tread to pieces. So, we'll see how it works.

Well, you already said that you're able to get quite a bit more laps out of it, right?

Right, yeah, yeah. The thing I keep seeing with systems that quench properly is guys will go from eight laps to like 30 laps. So it's not just like doubling the life, it's like tripling the life of the tire, which as we explained earlier, saves me lots and lots of money. So yeah, that's the idea, is to keep the tires alive.

So how exactly does it work? Is it just, I mean, it's not like you hit your windshield wiper and it goes, you know, splash, splash.

Yeah, so there is a button on my center console. I just kind of mounted the button right there, ran it to a, I think I have it popped off of one of the relays, so it's not like straight to the battery. But yeah, I mean, little button right next to me, and I can just hear the motor and the little jug back there, you know, shooting the water at the tires.

That's really cool. Okay, I'm curious to see how well... How many events are you planning to do this year? Three or four, I think?

So I've driven one so far, and then me and my family drove to Georgia for a family vacation. Now I am going to DTP4, which is in two weeks, or a week and a half. Then I'm going to go to 10K to run crew, and then drive like Sunday Funday, and then I will be at North Star Speed Summit. I think that's what it's called now.

Yeah, yeah.

I still call it Proving Grounds, because I'm from Matt.

Well, we'll see you there, and I'm definitely going to be trying to get a ride along.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

Oh, you're going to be able to do ride alongs up there?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

We'll talk.

Yeah, I was going to say, usually what I end up telling people is if the seats open, hop in. I don't really keep a list because I get so many people that ask me.

It's never ending.

Yeah. Right. Oh, yeah. And what's really difficult is having to tell people, no, I hate that. I don't want to do that. It's like I was saying earlier with the Drift community, I don't want to be that guy. I want to be as outgoing and helpful as I can with being a very, very introverted person. Like I'm trying to make sure that like nobody feels left out, even if like they're not actually doing it. So one that stands out to me is two years ago, I had a lady come up to me and she's like, do you do ride alongs? And I was kind of going like, yeah, I do. And I, you know, not that I didn't want her to ride with me, but I was just getting kind of like overwhelmed because so many people were asking. And I was still in that learning phase. And she goes, okay, can my son ride with you? And I was like, oh, yeah, sure. How old is he? She's like, he's like 12. He got in with me and I had an absolute screamer of a lap. And like, at the end of it, I could just see on his face like this was, this made his whole weekend. And like that for me kind of pushed me over that edge to where like now I'll say yes to anybody who wants. It's like if the seats open, hop in. I don't care who you are. You know, your greed, your race, whatever, like hop in. Let's go. You know, we'll do it. Like I want you to experience what I'm experiencing here. It's that much fun. That's why I'm trying to get my kids and my family, my wife, my cousins, my parents, like get in. I gave my mom a ride along last year and she's like the furthest away from doing this stuff. And all we did was like figure eights and a donut and all that. And like at the end of it, she just like smiling ear to ear. She's like, don't take me on the big track. All right, I won't.

I have a feeling it's going to be financially bad for me if I get a ride along, but you know.

Like I said, man, get yourself a salvage S550. We'll make it happen. We'll back have it and everything.

I mean, even that, like just something that runs and drives, whatever you can do to start sliding the car around, you will find the obsession so fast. You know, and like a lot of my friends that do road course and that do autocross and stuff like that, you know, like, hey, do you have any interest in doing a road course and stuff like that? And like, I probably would road course if I was racing other people. What I like to tell them is why would I road course and autocross if what you guys are doing is what I do right until I'm about to start drifting? So like, I kind of like, you know, I'm poking fun at them at the fact that, you know, like, that's what it is. But I gave my buddy Mike Bryan to ride along and he's...

The Miata guy, right?

Yeah, yeah.

We'll be doing a shoot with him next week.

Yeah, he's a great guy. And like, oh, my gosh, is he fast? Like, two or three years ago, stomped everybody in our sim racing league. Like, this guy is lights out fast, way faster than I am. But he'd never been in a drift car before. And when he got in the car or the truck with me and we did the pro pad at night drift, he couldn't contain himself, like screaming like a little girl the whole time. And then at the end, he's like, I've never, I've never been in a car doing something like that. I'm like, yeah, dude, see, see what it's like. See what that feeling is. And he's like, yeah, like he even said, he goes, I drive right up to that point where the car starts to drive in the slip angle. And that's how you're fast on the track. You drive in the slip angle, you use your tires coefficient of grip and you're like teetering on losing that coefficient.

Mike here?

You know.

Michael Peterson.

So you're teetering on losing that grip and that's what makes you a fast driver. And whoever can be the smoothest and live in that slip angle is going to be the fastest driver. And so I poke fun at him and I'm like, yeah, that's where I start drifting. That's where the car breaks traction. But the misconception is that you can kind of drift at any speed. And it's like, you can break traction at any speed, but drifting is driving on the slip angle with the modifications to handle it. So your high steer kit, your welded diff, your power, all that stuff. But you are on your line of momentum to drive that racing line, essentially. And then the drifting line is different because you're hitting clipping points and stuff like that. But, you know, there's no forgiveness. You know, you scrub out, you are pushing way off track just like you would if you were on the road course driving in the slip angle. You scrub out, you're pushing way off track. So it's definitely an experience that if you've road course, if you've been in the slip angle, you kind of understand that like, oh, God, here we go. We're about to start breaking traction. And then what we do is we just push that envelope really hard where if you've seen like in car, you know, you can see the snap. You can watch people do the initiation where it's just that heavy turn in and really hard snap, which you wouldn't do in a road race car, a road course car, but you do that to kind of put yourself in that position and then stand on it. Really give yourself that momentum to fly on.

So 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, you know, 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 ratifymotorsport.com to get yourself booked today, and I hope to see you guys at the shop.

Well, I got a real quick one that I haven't been able to circle back to yet. Tires. How are you guys swapping them at the track?

So, at a lot of the bigger events, there's usually a tire guy. I'm trying to remember the actual, like the guy that shows up at BIR.

I've seen a lot of mobile tire guys. So you can't.

Yeah, the mobile, that's right, mobile tire guy, yep.

So you're not, you're still, like, so you have to, not only have you had to purchase the tires that you probably bring piles of tires with you, right?

Yeah, yeah.

But now you got to pay this guy each time you need a set swapped out.

Yep. So, like, usually that guy is, he's pretty reasonable. I want to say he's like 15 bucks a tire. Like, that's not too terrible, especially if you're in a pickle.

Yeah. But you take your tires back with you then too at that price?

Yeah. Or no, I'm sorry. He will take the tire for that much money. OK. Most of us have a buddy or somebody up there that brings a tire machine or something like that. And you kind of like figure that out right away. That's OK. You don't really mean to. But you're up there. And then all of a sudden, the question just lands, like, who brought the tire machine? And then somebody will go, oh, this guy brought his tire machine. I want to say Matt Nelson and Panda, they both have tire machines. I think it's Tim Heldman's tire machine that Panda uses. But like, use that, you know, tons of times. Matt Nelson and Kyle Nelson's tire machine have used that tons of times. Elijah Van Natter's tire machine, you know, he's done tires for me for like 10 bucks, tires, stuff like that. So you end up sometimes paying for it. Even if you have your boys changing tires for you, you're keeping your tires to then pay to expose of them later.

Yeah, or at very least grabbing a case of beer for them or something, right?

Yeah, so ultimately, I want to have my own tow rig, my own race car, my own trailer, my own tire machine, my own racetrack. You know what I mean? Like, that's just kind of what ends up happening.

I love how you just sprinkled in the racetrack.

I love all of it, you know? I mean, as much as that sounds wild, I actually do want that. I want my own racetrack. And it's a very far-fetched goal, especially because I know lots of people have tried it, especially in the metro. But, you know, a lot of people told me I'd never be able to do this. You know, a lot of people told me, you know, you're going to get five years deep building this thing or five years deep drifting, and you're not going to be able to afford it anymore. You're not going to want to afford it anymore. You know, life's going to step in front of you and say, you'd rather have a house, you'd rather have a family and kids. I got all that stuff, and I've worked really, really hard for that stuff. And I would put that to anybody that you can also achieve that stuff, but you have to understand that it is effort, it is work. You're not just going to, you know, buy GameStop stock and pay for everything, which some people did, and good for them. I wish I was on that train, you know, like, because I would have all those things. But I think the end goal would still be the same. It would still be drive cars, have fun with my friends, you know. Ultimately, that's why I want to own a track of some sort. I want to be able to say, like, this is the hub. This is where all the boys and girls come to drive and do things. You know what I mean? Like, and I got to be a part of not only making that happen, but I also get to be a part of their lives and getting into things and being a part of the community. And like, you know, Gary and Brian are both on this train already. They're such good dudes. They have such a good repertoire with their customers and the culture that I've never heard anybody talk bad about them and like a sense of these guys are, you know, bad people or anything like, you know, that that kind of stuff is so far fetched from the group that I'm a part of that it's funny to watch the rest of everybody squabble like they do and argue like they do. And, you know, you don't even drive, you drive, you're a bad driver, you're a good like, all that stuff is so far out there from the kind of life that I want to live, the kind of group of friends that I have, that it's comedic at this point to watch those guys act that way because they're only doing it at this point for the attention they get for it. And it's kind of just unfortunate because it puts a very, very dark cloud over what could be a very fun sport for a lot of people.

I think I like your overall vision with that. I think that's pretty much where you want to go. It's like you could stay at this level, but you're thinking more on the big picture side of things. So we'll check back in 10 years and see what spread of land you got.

I genuinely hope that I can do that kind of thing for the community and bring it. I got friends who are still trying to get their cars done. And the hurdle that at the end of them finishing their car, they still got to find a rig, they still got to find a tow option, they still got to plan hotels or rent the condos or all these different things that add complexity to just going out and having fun. The closest thing we have is a Wednesday night drift, where you can just show up, go drive, go home.

That's a brainer, right?

Right. Yeah. And for what it's worth, fantastic system.

It's something, right?

Right. Yeah. Super fantastic system. I want to do a Thursday night drift where I'm not stepping on their toes, but it's local. It's like 20 minutes outside of Minneapolis, and everybody's there because they can get off work at 5 o'clock and show up. They don't have to leave work at noon to be there at 4, to drive for an hour and a half, to drive three hours home, and then call in sick to work the next day because you're tapped out. I want to bring that to our local community. As much as I've been able to go out to these different places, I want to bring that here. So there's a lot of hurdles for that one, but just like this, there was a lot of hurdles and I never gave up. I'm not going to quit.

So I think in the long shot, I don't think it's too far fetched, but granted, I'm also one of those guys that thinks of the absurd. So we should talk. It'll be a never-ending conversation. But I do want to touch on your projects here as well, right? Because obviously we're running out of SD card space. Damn 4K. But which one would you prefer to talk about? The Renault is obviously really cool. We touched on that with Gary and Brian, episode 84, go back. And then of course, the VW, which is back there in here.

Right. Yeah. I mean, we can touch on both of them because I can basically breeze over them pretty good. The Beetle is, I mean, man, it's probably one of the coolest Beetle builds on the planet, if not in the nation, right? Like, there's a lot of wild Beetle builds out there. But to know that this thing has a four inch body drop, aftermarket front and rear suspension, not OEM suspension like most Beetles have with a big body drop. They still utilize that old school front suspension with the funky trailing arm system that bumps steers really awkward. This thing has a full, basically a race steering and suspension set up in the front and in the rear. And then we've dropped the body four inches to give it that hyper aggressive, tucked look that it has. So it's definitely something that you probably won't come across again, something of this nature. I want to say, Gary was at a, I think he was at GSTA with this car. And he had an old time guy come through, check out the car, and the guy said something about how he's been building chassis and roll cages for 40 years. He's done a bunch of different pro touring cars, worked for a bunch of different teams. Gary said he sat inside the shell and looked at the cage work for like 30 minutes, got out, asked Gary who did the cage work. Gary's like, we did it here at Patience. And the guy just straight up he goes, I've been doing this for 40 years, and this is the best cage work I've ever seen in my life. And again, that's me executing and Gary making sure that everything is top notch. So like, I'm a good fabricator, I'm a good welder. He's making sure that we are building things that not only are they well done, they're so superb that like, you can't question whether or not this thing is next level or better than what you've ever seen before. It's just kind of already like that. It shows the Renaults the same way. That cage and that thing is, I mean, rally spec, you know, full blown. That thing is top notch level, so.

What's the purpose of the Beetle build? What's it going to be used for?

So, the customer wanted something that was streetable, but I mean, I guess Restomod would kind of be a good way to explain it. Like, it's definitely getting, you know, the body restored. Everything's paint and body fixed up. But then he also wanted something that he could track if he felt like it's something that he could bring out and beat the crap out of and not feel like it's going to break and roll over and he's going to, you know, be out all this time and money. I think he also kind of leaned into a little bit of research on his own. He found a rendering of a GT3 styled bug that had all this like Porsche GT3 flair in it. And as soon as he found that, he was like, oh my gosh, this is what I want. So he sent Gary the render. And that's where you if you've seen in our YouTube page, we ended up cutting the pan and dropping the pan from where it was originally to have that four inch body drop to achieve that really like hardcore GT3 Porsche look that the guy was referencing in his message to Gary. So and then like I was saying earlier, we kind of took the reins from there to say like, this is how we'll do it the right way. This is how you will have a streetable car, a trackable car, something that you can feel comfortable driving and also perform as well. That's why it's got the tilt and pedal box in it. That's why it's, you know, that's why we picked the suspension that we picked, something that's going to have.

What's in there for suspension?

It's CRC Customs. I think, I can't remember the actual notation for CRC, but Cool Rides Customs. That's what it is. Cool Rides Customs suspension front and rear. So it's an expensive kit, but man, it takes that old school stuff and makes it very, very correct. One thing that like being Motorsports Chassis Fab educated on is you learn about camber gain and roll centers and instant centers and stuff like that. With building suspension proper, it's not just toss some spacers on to flush your body up. You know what I mean? Like a lot of these cars that make that pro touring jump are getting control arms built for them, or their subframe mounting points are changing, or they're getting tubular subframes built for them. There's that next level of car building happening underneath the car that you might not actually see, you know, the front end's getting cut off where they're changing the shock tower points, or they're deleting shock tower points to run like dual control arm front setup, like this thing has, so that they can have proper camber gain, things like that, so that their alignment angles work throughout suspension travel much better than an OEM setup. So, I mean, that's really what we aimed for on this thing was to throw it into that realm of touring car build. And capabilities, so.

Jesus, I have so much I want to go down there. I was like, before we started, like, I've really been like, going down this high performance academy, like rabbit hole, just again, because it leads to a better podcast, I think. And there's just like so much I just want to ask about, just like on the suspension front, because especially when it comes to doing chassis work, like I don't think people understand like, how important it is and how a car actually reacts. Even though this thing may or may not see the insane road course days, the fact that it's capable of that, it's kind of absurd.

It's bad enough I'm going to be out there with Miata's. If I see a beetle out there, I'm going to just hang it up.

Especially if dude's walking around you, making you look bad.

That's going to really piss me off.

And you're kind of like, what the hell's going on with that thing? And then like he shows it to you and you get underneath the skin and you go, oh, duh, like no wonder this thing's rubbing my a**. It's a GT3 car under the skin. You know what I mean?

Well, it makes you appreciate the fact that like, what happens when you combine a really well-sorted car with a good driver?

Right. Yeah.

Well, what was that Bronco getting at or Blazer or whatever at Road America at Ultimate Street Car? He was pulling like crazy times. You know, there has to be 100% no original bolts or nuts underneath that thing for sure.

Yeah, some of those Optima Ultimate Street Car, they're just ridiculous.

Right.

Well, actually, there's, I don't know if I sent the video to you. There's a video on, again, the High Performance Academy. There's one of the Mustangs that is at the Optima Challenge. I'm really struggling on that one today. But it's like a 30-minute conversation, just talking about every single detail and why they designed it the way they designed it. So to tie it all back in, then, are these questions that you're going over with the customer? How do you want it to react? Or is this kind of like, hey, here's kind of my rough vision. They don't fully understand exactly what you're going to do. They just want, they just have a rough idea.

Right. So yeah, a lot of times, kind of like I was saying earlier, we will lean in to them about application. You know, what are you trying to do with it? You know, if he really were looking for just like a slammed cruiser, we never would have gone this far with it. You know, we never would have put this suspension system in it. You know, but he wanted something that was going to perform and act correctly under all circumstances. So then what we do is we step in with our expertise at that point and say, all right, well, we know you want something that handles like a race car. We know you want something that can go out there and do or complete the task. It's supposed to complete. Here's how you should go about it. And then we kind of explain to them, you know, this is the proper suspension system. This is the proper power level you're going to want. A lot of these guys are thinking, you know, I need to make extreme amounts of power to be fast on a road course. Reality is, you don't, you know, most road courses, apart from like straight sections, most road courses, you'll never even use your power. You know, you'll be so far into learning, like I was saying, how to drive on momentum, that by the time you're trying to use your power, it's time for the next turn, you know. And another one that most people overlook, and I know this gets beat to death, is brakes, slowing down, you know, being able to stop. You know, a big deciding factor on whether or not you're fast is how well you can stop and slow your car. Everybody can accelerate, everybody. Everybody can put it through the floor and, you know, let the tires eat and go forward. But stopping faster than everybody else is really hard and really underrated. And that's where guys like Mike, Mike Bryant and all them are phenomenal. They can slow their cars down from such high rates of speed and under control that like the rest of us are scrubbing and flying off track. And he's on to the next turn by the time you're going, Oh, no, what am I doing here? So I would even like for me, that's such a such a big, a big point of contention is build your suspension, build your brake system, learn to drive with that and then supplement with power. Then I mean, it's it's something you've heard, you know, time and time and time again is don't do power until your car is built for the power.

But it's crazy how many people fight that to a mutual friend of ours is fighting me on that right now, actually thinking he needs 325s in the rear. I'm like, no, you don't write. You're not quite there yet, right?

And like, like I was saying about drifting earlier, grow your skills as a driver to where you need the power, where you need more tire because you can absolutely manhandle that vehicle in its in its form now. One of our customers, while we were building, I think his Camaro back there, Nick, Nick Plachanen.

Yeah, we do iRacing quite a bit.

Oh, perfect. Yeah, when we were building his car, he wanted to get some seat time in it, and we told him, go drive a momentum car. So he went up to Brainerd, and I don't know if he was apprehensive, or I don't think I got, you know, the full shtick on it, but he was, you know, not sure about just driving a momentum car. So he went up there and he rented a, I want to say like a 98 Ultima, like, you know, whatever. He comes back and he's like, man, that was so much fun. And he goes, and I learned so much stuff, you know, driving on momentum, not having the crutch of power to get me through things and push me around things. I learned how to, you know, get through corners on the speed I already have. And that'll make you such a better driver. That'll make you such a better driver.

So no, and you know, I that's such a good way of putting it, that power can be a crutch sometimes.

You know, even for me, like having the power that I had right away, I wasn't driving on the momentum in the beginning. So I was having issues where I would get sideways and then the rear end would want to come back and take it. And I'd want to straighten out. And it's because I wasn't going fast enough to begin with. So I had to learn how to drive on that momentum, which the simulator helped with a lot.

If I had to try drifting on the Sim next. I should. I have everything to drift on the Sim. I just haven't played with it yet. That's more of my brother's thing. I'm more of the road course kind of guy. And we'll definitely dive into Sim. I want to talk more about the Renault. It's had a lot more progress since the last time I was here. So why don't you give us a little rundown on that?

Yeah, so we basically got all the body on. I mounted the front end. We have the radiator mounted up front, the oil cooler mounted up front, a 55-gallon electric water pump mounted up front, a swirl pot, a custom-made swirl pot for the front water system. Also have the hot parts kit built for the turbo system. So we ended up building a full anti-lag system for that... I mean, because it's a rally car, right? So and those engines, I want to say they're like 1.6 liter or something like that. So they're teeny tiny little engines. So displacement's an issue. And when you run the anti-lag system, it just basically keeps that boost up, keeps you up in the RPM so that you're not fighting that lag that a small engine is going to fight through really hard. So getting the manifold built, the turbo mounted, the anti-lag system put together was a lot of fun. It was something I haven't ever done before, but I mean, looks great. It's going to function super well. And for a car like that, it really kind of fits what it's supposed to be, right? Like it's a modernized group B car is what we're shooting for. The customer originally wanted to really go for the old school. He had a lot of old school parts for it. He wanted to basically homologate it like they would have in 85 or 86 when they were building that car. And with the way that electronics and fueling and all that stuff worked back then, that was going to be a really big handicap for making the car drivable and fun now. So we kind of came to a conclusion like let's bring this car more modern. Let's put a modern standalone on it. Let's do more modern stuff with the turbo system, like all that kind of stuff. And he was pretty, pretty about it, especially because we sold him on the idea that it was going to be basically what a team would do nowadays with this car. Which is huge. Right, yeah, exactly. So the anti-lag system is going to be really, really cool. Very unique, not something you're going to see very often.

Are you allowed to talk about what makes it unique at all?

I mean, just the fact that it plumbs back into. So the way that the anti-lag system works is it's called a fresh air anti-lag. And what happens is your blow-off valve charge that normally is just released, instead of being released to atmosphere, is then re-circulated into the manifold. And what the manifold then does is use, or what the system does is uses the heat from the manifold and then unburnt fuel to create combustion inside the manifold and the turbo and then keep the turbine wheel spinning. And therefore, you don't lose lag on your turbo system.

It's like an afterburner.

Kind of, right. So like you see...

Wow, it's a straight up jet engine.

So you see drag cars have anti-lag, like launching anti-lag, so that their big, huge turbos can get spinning.

17 seconds sometimes.

Right, right. And like the whole idea is that then when they launch, the power is all there. They're not leaning into it and then having it ramp on and like dealing with the wheel spin of that kind of stuff, even with the traction control systems they have now on a lot of these aftermarket standalone systems, they have traction control, but you're still tuning it. You're still setting it up. You're still making your traction control work with your car and your power level, even to a point where some of these cars have like yaw sensors. So when you start to pick the front end up, it sees that angle change and it'll pull timing so that it'll put the car back down for you. And you don't really have to do any input as a driver, like you would have had to if you were going to fold, stand up and do a wheelie and you'd have to come out of it, slam the car back down. The sensors are doing a lot of that stuff for you now too.

That's crazy, I never even thought about it that way. So that's a part of that traction management sort of thing.

Right, yeah, exactly. But it's still like you're tuning it, you're still setting it up.

Oh, exactly, yeah.

So it's not like, oh, plug in my traction control, now I can just shoot straight down the line.

There might be a baseline at best.

Right, right, yeah.

But when you get dialed in, every single pass, and I've been around some of these drag guys. For example, when we did the podcast with Greg Schmidt, we were looking at his data logs and all this, it's like, oh, here's what I got to do, this, this, this, and this. And it's like constant refinement and adjustment.

Oh, yeah, yeah. And that could even be broken down to track conditions, humidity, the way that your fuel content is working that day. There's so many variables that change everything in the moment from track to track to track to day to day to day. There's no one way of doing it that you can just say, this is what's worked, we beat everybody at every track, everywhere we go. And I'm sure there are cars like that, but those guys are still tweaking setup every single time.

Yeah, we will be, I'll tell you off there. This one, I have a really fun episode coming up.

But even that is similar in that regard, that anti-lake system will be operated on the standalone. It's going to have to be tuned to operate correctly and actually create combustion. I mean, you're going to have to overfuel in some degree to make sure that there's fuel in the runners to combust and then spin the turbo. So it might already exist based on just the way that tuning this car works. It might be something that they have to build into it. I know that there's drivers and stuff built into those ECUs now for these anti-lake, these rolling anti-lake systems like this fresh air anti-lake does. So realistically, it's going to make the car a lot more fun to drive, a lot more drivable for the customer so that he's not having to be a full blown factory level group B driver just to pilot the thing. He can drive his daily driver, he can drive that, he can enjoy the car, making the power it makes, doing the stuff it does.

So question number one, I'm going to try to speed run these. What's the standalone in here?

I'm pretty sure we're going to run a Haltech in this one as well.

Haltech?

Okay.

Any idea who's going to be doing the tuning?

Actually, you know what? Let me take that back. I think this car actually is going to get a MoTeC. I think his Volvo is going to get the Haltech.

Gotcha.

So I think because of the anti-lake system in this, we are going to run a MoTeC in this one. And with that, from what I've heard and learned, there's like got to reach out and find people who are savvy with the MoTeC stuff. It is hard to know how to do things. It's also so universal and so high level that you have to be very, very skilled in that arena to be able to even like mess with that kind of stuff.

To do it at a high level.

Right, right, and MoTeC is just that. It's the like top level. I mean, I'm sure there are people who tell you it's generic, it's this, that, but you know, anybody who races cars knows what MoTeC is.

Well, there's a reason that it's as expensive as it is, right? Because some people that have it might not even use all of its capabilities. Whereas, you know, if you do start and to be fair, there's a lot of different tiers to MoTeC, too. Like, I really want to if I can get them on at SEMA or like PRI, that'd be a win on my book, because there's so much to learn about that in general. But no, this thing's, I mean, it's pretty sweet. I'm glad to see it's progressed as much as it has. Yeah. But I definitely think we should pop the usual three here.

Yeah.

Yeah, just in case.

Yeah, all right. All right, so at the end of every episode, we'd like to ask our guests to pick three cars. Okay. You have an unlimited budget, swaps are cool, whatever you can come up with. As a guy who builds cars from scratch, I'm curious to see where this goes. But we need a track car, a daily driver and a show car.

Okay. Track car. The most recent version of a Porsche RSR would be my like top level. I would do lots of terrible things to own and drive a car like that. I think lots of people would. I think that goes back to just me being a kid, being in love with race cars. You know, growing up watching a lot of Cup car stuff, growing up watching, I mean, I grew up watching the golden era of like Michael Schumacher and F1 and stuff like that. And then watching a lot of his old like touring car stuff when he was racing even DTM in like the early days, like super in love with all that kind of stuff. So yeah, I think whatever the most recent version is of the like GTE RSR 911, something like that would probably be my race car, track car. Daily Driver, man, there's too many, but...

Don't try to throw a double answer in there, or Harris doesn't let that fly.

Right, yeah. Man, Daily Driver, I think it's going to be kind of lame, but E46 M3. And the reason being is it'll still give you all your creature comforts, your traction control, your, you know, still a car. You know, you're not fighting no AC, you're not fighting any of that crap. But it's kind of one of the last chassis before even like the E92 M3 became very electronic. You know, it was drive by wire. It was, you know, I had a buddy who had one at one point very recently after they released. And one thing he said to me, which stuck with me after I drove a couple of E90 chassis was because he also had an E46 M3. But he said, the E90 will do everything I want it to do. I can beat it to the walls. You know, it's probably one of the fastest, most fun cars I've ever owned. He goes, but I can't really push it beyond the threshold it wants to drive. And he goes, with my E46? He goes, if I want to put that thing in the dirt, I'll put it in the dirt, but it'll let me do it. It'll let me drive this car raw. It'll let me enjoy this car as a car. And he had a pretty good explanation that the E92 didn't do that. It restricted him pretty good. And I'm sure now with the way things are, you can get those JB4s and stuff like that, that just turn everything off and make 900 wheel on no modifications. Stuff like that all exists now. And it's jaded a lot of people. And I don't really live in that realm with cars. I still live very, like Gary and Brian say, analog. I really enjoy a lack of electronics, a lack of that kind of stuff. Because apart from power steering, I want power steering, but I want a car that's going to give me super raw feedback. So E46 M3, definitely like my daily driver, something that's maintained and not BMW-ing all over the place. So yeah. And then what was the last one?

Show car.

Show car. Man, I don't know if I've ever even thought about that.

A lot of people say that.

Yeah. I think the reason being is because I live in that realm of I like to beat things up. I mean, being a driver versus I would even classify myself as a driver over a builder, because that's why I build. I build them to drive them, not to be like, look at my show car. Let me putt from my driveway to the parking lot.

Well, they can be dual purpose. You could have a track car that is also pretty.

Right. Yeah. Very true. Very true. You just get pretty disappointed when it breaks.

Yeah.

I'm limited budget.

Yeah.

Exactly. So, but show car, man. I want to say probably like an old school continental or something. I'm not really a big car guy, but I have a lot of respect for what goes into building those and making them look nice. I remember from being a kid even, there's a guy that builds cars, his name is Troy, and it's Rad Rides by Troy. And his style of car building is so unique and so different, that it stood out for so long. And now it's so copied by a lot of these big names, with these big shaved engine bays, and tucked turbos, and you can see some of the charge piping, but it's all very intentional with long-runner, polished, all that stuff. He was doing this stuff 15, 20 years before anybody else was really doing it, and basically made a culture for it. And I've always been super in love with the way that he builds cars, and he's done a couple of cars like that. And I would want to do a Lincoln Continental like that. I think it would be really fun to do something that makes 800 of the tires, but it's super laggy, so it's really fun to drive, really comfortable to drive. You do kind of do the putt around thing, you do kind of cruise around that kind of thing. But then you can bring your family, you can go through a drive-through, you can do all that kind of stuff with it. So as funky as I even feel like I am saying it, I think that would be my choice on that one.

So there's almost nobody ever that aligns up with the stuff that I pick. And the last time I was asked this question, that was my show car.

Really? Yeah.

And maybe it's the family thing, because the idea that there's a bench seat up front. If you get the four door, there's a bench seat in the back. I think even the two door has a bench seat in front and back. But anyway, I wanted like a 69 Continental Convertible.

Right.

Put the kids in it. Just go cruise.

Right. Yeah. And I mean, tell me there's a more beautiful car out there from that era, right? Like that thing is just to this day stunning, you know? I'm pretty sure there's a movie, I think it's called Drive or something, I don't know, whatever. Dax Shepard drives one in it, and it's like got a NASCAR engine in it and all this difference. I'm pretty sure it's a Lincoln Continental, but man, like that right there, when I first seen that, that thing really sold me on those cars in general and how beautiful they are. And like, you don't have to put a million dollars underneath that car to make it a great looking car. You can put all your emphasis into the body, the interior, the engine, stuff like that, and really have it be a fun, enjoyable car. So yeah.

There's a group on Facebook called Suicide Slabs.

Oh yeah. Yeah.

I hate it because every time I see a car on there, I'm like, damn it, I want that.

Yep.

Speaking of cars you want, if anybody has a line on a 2014 GT 500 with a glass roof.

13 or 14.

13 or 14. We like to do the newest here, though. That's also to get the track pack option. Hit my line, we're going to spend some of Dan's money.

Talk to a dealership today.

Well, Max, first of all, thank you very much for coming on. Dude, I think we could go for like three hours, four hours easily. This will definitely be a round two at some point.

For sure, yeah.

I'm sure the offer conversation is going to go wild too, but where can people find you?

I have a Facebook. I have an Instagram. I need to get better with the Instagram. Recently, Facebook's just been weird for car posts and stuff. I posted a couple, I tried to make a couple posts of like the Renault and stuff, and they got flagged and pulled down for trademark infringement and stuff like that. And I think it just has to do with like logos being in pictures and stuff like that. That's so strange.

You know how those French are.

Right, right. And it's funny too, because it actually said that, something about like international trademark law of some sort. So, because I don't know, I think, is Turbosmart Australian?

Crikey, I don't know.

Yeah, I can't, I think they are, but whatever. But yeah, it was something like that. So I'm starting to fall back more towards the Instagram. And then with just Art doing a lot of our posts and stuff, he's really made it simple for me. I don't have to put in a lot of effort to make things look nice. He just shoots the video, does the deal.

And we can reach out through there too.

They were complaining that you're moving a little too fast for them to get some reels and stuff. They come in and you come in at 4 a.m. and build a whole car before they get here.

I like that scene from Family Guy, where the Amish just build the barn in 10 seconds.

That's literally him building cars. That just comes from the experience of it. Like I was saying earlier, I have a good order of operations. I know what comes next. I don't really have to have a lot of oversight. Even to a point where Gary has come in, I'm doing something, and he just comes up and goes, Oh, I see you're making decisions today. And I'm like, yeah, buddy, I am.

Well, that's awesome, dude. Well, thank you so much. I'm glad we were actually able to make this work.

Yeah.

Shout out to everybody who gave the suggestion. Dan, thank you very much for existing, and we'll see you all next time.

Yeah, for sure.