98. Nth Moto, Building Twin Turbo Vipers, History and Applications, w/ Aaron Miller

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back to the Minnoxide podcast. I'm your host, Harris, AKA Minnoxide, man of many automotive aspirations, and I'm here with my Ford Loving co-host, Dan.

Why are you bringing that up right now?

Always.

It was an opportunity.

Yeah.

Yeah, Mr. Gunnett Garage. And today we are in a different location, as per usual. We are at Nth Moto HQ. I don't know how do you refer to it as.

Yeah, no, that works fine.

That checks out. I thought this was a long time coming, you know? I mean, you guys are kind of the hometown heroes. I'm only 10 minutes away over here.

So you're insinuating that people know we exist. So that's the other part that I don't think that's always true.

Yeah, that's right. Well, that's the thing is people don't always know the name, but they know the car.

Okay.

I think it's noticeable. But yeah, I think it was a long time coming. People have always been asking, like, when are you gonna get Aaron on? When are you gonna get Aaron on? Especially when they get their one ethanol deliveries.

Oh, yeah.

That's usually when the conversation comes up.

Okay.

Yep. But yeah, you guys are known for the quickest Vipers in the world.

Yes, currently. Yes, that's correct.

We are sitting at the record holder right here, right next to us.

Right there, hanging out, fresh from its home now to get touched on and played with because it racked up a good many, I don't know, like, I think almost 500 street miles or something, he went and put on it and had a good time. And now it's back, and now we get to make more changes, so.

And that's how many street miles in like how, like what time frame?

Since 2K.

Since 2K? Wow.

But March, that's August.

Yeah.

Well, that's one thing that especially, like, so I met Adam, Minneapolis Mopar years ago, like in 2020, just before everything kicked off at that time. And he kind of gave me the down and dirty and just how much driving he's able to do on his car. I mean, that is truly a street car. You know, he's able to put on thousands of miles. I mean, he's driven a 2,000 horsepower street car down to, what is it, Omaha, I think it is?

I don't know, yeah.

Road trips. Right. And does hits in that state, which terrify me, right? You know, like, even doing a, we were racing over here just before here, and I threw an EPC light on my car. It's like, and I'm in my hometown, so let alone driving down. But no, so you guys have done a lot of exciting stuff over the years, and we have so many questions. Just because I would like to see your industry experts when it comes to this category. Is that pretty accurate?

You know, I...

When it comes to Vipers, I mean.

Yeah, we're... We've got a really, really awesome team, and we are very good at what we do, yes. I think I probably shy away from the idea of, like, referring to ourselves or thinking of ourselves as experts, simply because, like, I don't want to put that into our own head, as, like, that that means that there isn't more to be learned or more to gain or more to change. So, but yeah, we're... We do all right, yeah.

So, what are your thoughts on, like, continuous improvement, right? Because every year you come back to... You just want to be better than your previous self. Competition aside, you just want to improve what you do in-house. I mean, if we go back to 2K this year, I believe, at Texas 2K, you guys were the only qualifiers or in the Elite 8 that were rear wheel drive, right?

Yes, that's correct. That might be two years in a row now, but yes.

I think so. Well, like the year prior, I think that was the year you did 225 in qualifying, I believe.

Oh, man, you're, yeah.

Challenging your memory.

Yeah, yeah, no, I, let's see, I gotta go back. All right, so that was, in 23 was the last year at Houston, right? Because we're in 2024, 24 was Dallas. So in Houston, man, you might know better than I do. I think maybe you're right, or it was 222 or 225. It was also longer there than we were at Dallas this year. So we, and we ended up going faster and less distance this year than what we did last year. So yes, improvement.

So how have you been enjoying the progression? How did you enjoy Dallas this year? Or NS, I suppose.

Oh, I loved it. Yeah, I loved it. So we, that has kind of become our home away from home as far as a testing track. The guys that run the facility are very, very talented, very good at putting together a good race surface. And for where we're at with the cars that we're going drag racing with, most of the time, we need a good surface. And it's just the way that it is, like unfortunately in the midwest and we'll just call it the midwest, north, whatever, however, you want to look at that geographically. I'm not saying that you can't get a good race surface, but it's a lot more sporadic. There's a lot less. There's less focus on it up here than it is where radial racing is, you know, all the rage in the south. So it's normal to go to a, you know, you could go to a Bradenton test night or an Innis test night, and you've got a relatively serious racetrack underneath of you that you might have to really poke and prod to get up here. That being said, before we get ambushed by people, Flying H Drag Strip is now open in Kansas, and I went there for a street car takeover. Beautiful facility, amazing. We haven't been there under their own prep work and management yet, but they seem really keen to do some stuff. And then US 131 over in Michigan, they've been really putting some high effort into that stuff now too. So to me, that's like, oh, that's close, you know? It's like 10 hours, whatever, no big deal. But like, yeah, in us, we had been down there quite a bit testing. And so we feel pretty comfortable there, know the surface, know the facility, know the shakes of it. As far as 2K there, for the racers, I think it was probably the best that I've ever been to. Organization was the best that it's been. Management of the lanes was probably the best that it's been. Actually, I mean, what did they do? Like, I can't even remember. We stopped qualifying because I think they did like 7 rounds of qualifying or something. You know, at some point we're like, look, if you haven't figured it out, this isn't going well.

There was a lot of qualifying at that event.

There was a lot. Yeah, and like, so I don't want to complain about that because there's years past where in the drag race classes you've got two, you know? And that's not fun either. So I guess I think from the racer perspective, it was one of the better ones. I don't have a spectator perspective. I know a lot of people are complaining about parking in the grass.

The rain was rough. Well, we were doing the mud nationals.

Yeah, the rain was a big damper for sure.

It would have been one of the best events. I still really enjoyed it from a spectator perspective. But yeah, the mud nationals and the parking lot were really fun to watch too.

Well, we showed up with a truck, but some people came to watch racing in their race car. In their car, yeah, right? So having to park in the grass, even if I had been there in my car, that would have been a little rough, with or without the rain, because it was a little bumpy.

Yeah, totally. I get that.

So do you see Flying H being like a regular test track for you in the near future too then?

That's what we hope for. Yeah, absolutely. I'm telling you, it's magical driving down that racetrack. It's like, just you're floating. It's so smooth, it's so nice. And by happenstance, bumped into the owner down at the starting line when I came to Streetcar Takeover. Literally, he had just had a shirt on for the facility, and I was like, well, maybe this guy will know who to talk to about talking about getting a rental going here. And so that worked out really well. And yeah, he's just so motivated to like make it a really phenomenal facility there. Like whatever it seems like, basically whatever expense is deemed needed for it to be a top quality facility, that's what he looks at is like, okay, well, that's what we need to do. So I can appreciate that because I feel like that's kind of how we like to build cars if we can. And that aligns pretty nicely there. So if you haven't been there yet, I highly suggest it.

We were about to go, and then they all kind of fell apart last minute.

Well, there's that one event. No, Streetcar got pushed back, right? Streetcar took over, did get pushed back. That's right.

And that's the one we ended up going to. It worked in our favor. We had a conflict on the other weekend, and then that opened up. It's like, okay, well, let's go do that. So they do have another one in October, and it's probably going to be epic weather and all of that. We have a conflict though, because that's the Abilene half mile down in Texas, and I think we're going to be at that. Otherwise, I would really like to go there, because my heart lies in drag racing, but at the same time, we got to do what our customers are interested in wanting to be going and doing, so.

Well, that's one of those I want to attend at least. I still haven't attended a half mile event yet, so that's on the bucket list is to check one of those out, because it is different. And I'm curious, right? So when it comes to your customers choosing what they want to do, you've done drag cars, you've done all the roll racing in some, with this car, both, which is difficult in itself. And then I think you've done some 8th mile as well, and then...

Yeah, and road race stuff.

Yeah, everything.

We're all over.

So how different is that when it comes to, when you're trying to make things mix and match, right? Because I don't think a half mile car will be able to do what a quarter mile car does, or is it able to in any regard?

That's a really good question. It's one of the challenges in the place, in the, in this little niche market that we're in right now, right? Because we're kind of our own worst enemy as a company there, because everybody here is motivated by the idea of like, okay, well, here's this challenge, and how can we achieve this challenge? And one of those challenges is, can you make a car really good at all these different things with minor changes to the car? It's hard. It's hard.

I would imagine between those two events is gearing is your biggest problem.

Gearing is a challenge with it, right? Yeah, absolutely. And the goal would be, can you come up with a way to not change the gearing in the car and yet make it very good at both? Now, certainly you can't make it optimal for both. Like that's, you know, can't, you know, jack of all trades type thing, right? If you want it to be an ace at one thing, then that's one thing, and that's great, and that's a lot easier for us. But if you're the guy that's like, you know, I'd like to drive it and I'd like to go to a half mile, and I'd like it to run low sevens and in a quarter, and I'd probably like to take it on a cross-country rally. And you're like, okay, well, you know. So you start figuring out like, okay, what are all these things that it has to be able to do? And how far up the ticker? I was thinking of it as like the old Gran Turismo, you know, when you're like, well, add power, and it got faster, but my handling went here or whatever, you know, like those types of things, like moving the slide bar, like how do you get the most average of better on all of those things? So I think we've done a pretty good job of that, of kind of finding a way to meld that. And that's been come up with our complete own solutions and some driveline pieces and just stuff that didn't exist, that you're like, well, if we had this, then we could probably accomplish something like that. And so then you go to the drawing board and you make it. But that's not a fast road, you know? Like you're talking about some pretty long and enduring engineering and then prototyping and then production phases, and that's going to come in waves of success and failure at the same time because there isn't an easy button for... As we were walking through the shop earlier, we were talking about driveline components, right? Like you can't just say like, oh, press this button and it'll print this gear set that will survive a 4,000-pound, 2,200-pound feet of torque, 3.0 to 3.25 gearing. Like, oh, okay, yeah, I just need that, you know? That isn't like a grab it off the shelf or order it from Summit and put it in the car. So, yeah, you're kind of constantly bobbing and weaving, trying to make those things exist. And to, I guess, to date now, yeah, we've got some cars that have ran pretty fast quarter-mile stuff. I say fast, not necessarily quick at that point. And that probably also depends on who you talk to. But those, we've got cars that can effectively, you can drive it, you can enjoy it. Not that I would ever condone any of our cars for on-street use. They are for off-road vehicle use only, of course. But, yeah, I mean, they can go 7s in the quarter-mile. They can run in the very high 220s and a half-mile in that same kind of configuration. They can putz around, drive around, that kind of thing. I don't know, that's pretty well-rounded, I would say, at that point, yeah.

I'll just get that a hair closer real quick. Sure. And then, so when it comes to development period, right? So if we ever look at, like, for example, Formula One is always a great one to look at, because when they develop something, it's locked in for a certain period, and then they're stuck in it for a little bit, and it's going to be, in their case, months. When you need a specific thing, how much development goes into it? Is it like a three-month deal, six-month, a year? I mean, what's the longest you've waited for something that was just necessary to do what you do?

Another good question. We have definitely been, so like our transmission parts that I was showing you guys earlier, that's been over two years of ongoing development of revision and style and small changes, just refining along the way. Because you keep thinking of other ways to make it better, and you're always looking for that last little benefit that keeps getting better. That's not always possible for all companies. We're super fortunate that the vast majority of our customer base is very motivated and excited to be a part of something that there is. Like, we're making something that wasn't already there. We really, I mean, we're super lucky about it, but it's not transactional with our customers very much. Like, it is very much this relational thing where they understand they're getting into this project, and it's not a, let me sign this check and let me get this device back. It's a, like, hey, we're going to be in this for years together, you know, working through this type of stuff and evolving the car over different iterations. So I guess to answer that question, like, depending on what it is, if it's something simple, maybe it's a couple of weeks because we can just completely make it ourselves here, or maybe it's a couple of months, maybe it's a couple of years, depending on how complex of a solution we're getting to.

And if the customer's in along for the ride, too.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and usually those things aren't, I mean, we do have some of those things that are like, we're making this one thing for this one project, for this one customer. Those exist. Those are usually the things that you don't hear about or see for a long time until they're like done, because that's gonna be a pretty intense development game then. And then we also have a pretty significant amount of our customer bases, not very social media forward kind of thing. So, you know, we oftentimes are doing things that we don't show or don't talk about or don't, that the customer doesn't want advertised. And so, I guess we're kind of in that game sometimes, too, a little bit.

So, I would say not only is it fun and great to be evolving and innovating in this platform, but you almost have to, because you only have a handful of cars to work with, correct?

Yeah, that's absolutely right.

If you're not doing that, then you just sell all the parts one time and there you go.

Right.

Yeah.

Yep. So, and you also need to keep, you know, like in any sales thing, you know, like I'm not, I don't think I'm a very good salesperson. So I probably, I probably should be. But like in any sales thing, you're trying to solve a problem that somebody has that they're looking to purchase their way out of, right? Like maybe that problem is I don't have enough power, don't have enough traction, or, you know, name whatever it is. Or maybe it's you're just hungry, right? Like in any case, it's like there's a problem that needs solved. That is a, it's kind of an addiction for a lot of people, right? And I know it is for myself, and I know it is for everyone here. Like we're hungry to solve the next problem. And so then you create your own monster there of like, you know, you finish something, you're like, well, this is awesome. And then you end up nitpicking it of like, well, but we could have done this or this or this or this. And then there becomes the next iteration. And then from that one, then this one. So I think we, I think we're good at not getting complacent. And that is important because, yeah, there's just not that many. And we want to do them.

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Right, yeah, and that's why I made that comment first. It's fun to be doing it that way, and I can tell that the passion is there before the sales pitch, right? You're not doing this to sell to the customer. You're doing this because, like, you want to have the best of the best. Yeah.

Well, if it was about sales, you'd be trying to figure out the 400Z platform.

Right, yeah, exactly.

For example, just all that, but... So I kind of want to go on the opposite of that. How do you stop developing, right? Because you could kind of get stuck in a cycle of, oh, well, we got to get this incremental upgrade, or just progressing. How do you stop? How do you freeze for a little bit and focus on something else? Because... And the reason I bring that question up, somebody else asked me to ask you this. This is one person that I just had to get their opinion on this.

Okay, cool.

Because they find themselves stuck in this loop, like, I just got to keep making this better. A customer will never see this, notice it, nothing. But for me, I need to know that it's there, and it's perfect in this specific way. Do you find yourself getting stuck in that sometimes?

Sometimes, yeah, definitely. And it's not always an unhealthy thing. But it is an unhealthy thing, because you have to look at this in two aspects. And this is what I think is pretty unique in the automotive space as far as businesses goes, is I think probably 99% of us all got into it because it was a passion. Not because we were like, hey, you know how I'd like to work a lot of hours and not make a lot of money? I'd like to build cars. But it's a hard industry to create a living off of, especially. It's a hard living to be able to succeed. I hate to say it that way. I'm not trying to make it sound like doomy and gloomy or anything, but it's not an easy place to make a home as a business. And because most people that get into it start from the passion, it's challenging to step back from that a little bit and go like, okay, I have redone this box six times now, and I'm going to get paid for it once. And that's hard for anybody that's a true craftsman to be able to know when is it time to call it a day on that project or not. I don't know that I know the answer of how to do it either. And some of that is checks and balances, maybe, right? If you're a single entity, it's going to be really hard, because it's just you against yourself then, right? If you've got multiple people involved, and your decision impacts all of your coworkers at that point in time, because if you're fiddling around with the same piece and not getting to the finish line on that, well, that could potentially negative impact everybody else then too, right? So maybe I would say there's probably like a version of checks and balances on that. I don't know. I guess I feel like there should be other ways to get out of that too, but I don't know that I know them.

Yeah, and I noticed individual well-ish to this point. I'm just like, yeah, I think that's like the one question I save for myself. Like, I have to ask that one. Yeah, I don't know if I did a good job answering it or not, but I think I think it was a good way of answering. It's a hard one to answer anyway, because there's timetables involved, especially when there's competitions on the line. Like, now you're about to get into FL2K mode. Maybe you are in it already.

Sure, yeah.

Yeah, which is... And are you guys attending that one?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yep.

Gotcha. Yeah, so there's a lot to do. So you can't just be stuck on this one piece. Like, I'll give myself three weeks to fix this or something, and we got to move on.

Yeah, I would say we're probably not very good at that either. And you, the sacrificial lamb becomes your life outside of this, because you go like, well, I just won't sleep, like, I'll just get it done, you know, kind of thing. But that, whoever is asking the question, like, it's a good question, and it's a good thing to reflect on from the business viewpoint in this industry, which is pretty different than the passion viewpoint in the industry. But I think it's important to be able to walk that line if you're gonna make a living out of it, or support for others, you know, as a company and provide livings at that point.

You started this when? What year?

Fall of 12.

Okay, do you know how far the progression has come since then to now? Do you have, like, this was the highest horsepower one at this point to now? Or do you have some kind of a marker, like, we were at this time then, now we're at this time now?

Yeah, yeah, probably. As irony would have it, the very first car that ended up in Nth Moto was Juggernaut, which is the Gen 2 that we race. And that's because I owned that at that time as a chassis, as a rolling chassis, so I moved up here with it. And so it was sitting in the shop, you know, like day one kind of thing. And yet it's still like kind of the pinnacle car now at this point. I mean, it is the quickest and fastest Viper in a quarter mile in the world still. So that's kind of interesting as like that car. Now obviously that car has become quite a crazy thing. But back then in 12, 13, maybe a best way to do that. I think the first half mile that we went to, that was, is it 2013 or 2014?

I may have seen 2014 on your page, but my scrolling memory might not remember.

It was spring in Chicago. Wanna Go Fast did an event down there. I think it was 14. And we took this blue Gen 3 06, which is now owned by Rachel Dugas. So the blue 06 there. That was our first. This is a complete Nth Moto build. That was, so like leading up to that, it was, we jumped in right away doing electronic solutions for the Vipers because it wasn't really there. It didn't exist. So we, that's how we kind of got into the space quickly. And then that Gen 3 was like a total build when at that point in time, if you had any Viper that made I mean, I'd be pretty comfortable saying if it made 14 or 1,500 wheel, that was considered a pretty serious car at that point in time. Because the Viper platform had become really forgotten. And in some cases, I'd say rightfully so, like it just, nobody ever pushed the ball on the tech side with the car to like keep it advancing with the times of what was available. So it kind of got lost in the dust behind 4GT builds were really popular for a while, and Audi R8s, and, well, Gyartos at first, and LPs, and then Huracans, all that stuff. So they just kind of got forgotten about. And so all of a sudden we showed up with this Gen 3 Viper that we designed the Turbo system because it was our first like from scratch, let's do this the way we would want to do this. And that thing, it made, we made like I don't remember, 1,323 wheel horsepower on pump gas back then, no methanol, nothing. And that was like otherworldly. And it kind of, it was a big deal. And we were kind of looking at each other laughing, like it was like 12 pounds of boost or something. We were like, well, that worked really well. What would happen at 25? You know, so like, so meanwhile, everybody probably thought that we were on this like, man, that thing's on kill mode. And we're like, no, we just like built a good air flow system on a Viper. And it's a, it's not a bad engine if you know how to play with it. And so we showed up at that half mile in Chicago, and we ended up tying to the hundredth or thousandth of a mile per hour. I don't know how you figure that out, but with a big boy AMS car back then, and it went 213.68. We went 213.68 or whatever. But like prior to that, a half mile rear wheel drive car, I think the fastest anybody had been was like in the 180s or something. And all of a sudden we were like, well, here's 213, how's that? And so it was, that was kind of a big jump. And so then if you look at that now, that was a crazy car as far as the build level was considered at that time. And now it's very normal that our stuff goes 218 to 220 something on like a normal build that makes it out to the customer's hands. I think that's a fairly indicative gauge of like how far that has come across. That might not sound like a lot of mile per hour to people, but if you think about what that takes for power, I mean, you're talking about probably a pretty solid, like 400 to 500 wheel horsepower difference at that point. And having to make it, it's different when it's like, this is the one that made this pass and like it only has to make a couple of passes and it can go back to the shop and get checked out and worked on whatever, compared to like sending the car away. And now it's gonna live out of your control. And it has to try to perform like that whenever that customer decides to take it to an event. Those are two totally different cars. And I think that's probably a little bit of a misunderstood concept in the automotive world right now. And I don't necessarily know what that is, other than maybe just lack of awareness by people. You know, like you can make an hail Mary pass and make it one hit and it does what it does and then that's it and it never comes out again. Like you can get away with a lot on a car that if that's all it ever has to do. But if you have to hand over the keys and walk away from it and kind of let it do its thing and it needs to perform like that, it's totally different. Totally different how that car needs to be built.

Well, it's like the phrase goes, like every car can run a thousand horsepower once.

Oh yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, right. Yep.

Well, I didn't even know when I first started, I didn't know much about the Viper World, so I started hanging out with this guy right here. And he's telling me, yeah, 2, 3,000 horsepower. I'm like, yeah, so what? That's not even usable. Who cares? True. But then he's like, yeah, he's like, no, no, I don't think you understand. That's right. Yeah. So what? You just sit there and go like this. Who cares?

Yeah.

But that's why when you're talking about prep and tracks, if you're going to have something like that, you need to have, if you really want to test its full potential, you need to have some grip.

If you're trying to take something like this, that weighs what this weighs and you want to run sixes, you need a good track, yes. If you want to go low sevens, mid sevens, that's not that big of a deal. Going low to mid sevens in a normal car, that is a big deal. But it doesn't need to be an on kill flypaper radial track at that point in time kind of thing. But yeah, I think what you're alluding to is, it's accurate, most people, again, when we were walking through the shop, and I can, it's almost annoying how desensitized you come to it, or you become, because, yeah, cool, it's 2,000, 2,100, 2,500, 2,200, you know? It's like, we say those numbers so casually, and if you're out and about and in public, people's eyes kind of glaze over sometimes, because they probably either think you're full of crap, or just like, it doesn't click, it doesn't register.

They don't understand how it feels.

Like, is that, like, yeah, I just don't think people really get that.

Well, it's an absurd number, and you know, it's a streetable number, too, I will tread carefully on that topic.

Oh yeah, right, yeah, yeah.

But it is ridiculous. I mean, I've been in, you know, old gray Minneapolis Mopar's car, and that car, you do get used to it, by the way.

You do.

A little bit.

You do.

I'm sure even more in a driver's seat.

Oh yeah.

But even in the passenger seat, like we'll be doing, like, however many hits. And it's like, oh, I'm comfortable with this now.

Right.

But I remember the first time I was in that car, you know, he told me, he's like, hey, don't scream. I'm like, what's there to scream about? And I'm like, and at the end of it, he's like, I was like, oh, that's why.

You know, it's usually one of two reactions. I will say one of three. You get scream, hysterical laughing.

That will be me.

Or silence and just awkwardness, you know, like, and that's usually like the, like the brain catching back up to like, what did we just do kind of thing?

Yep, it was the silence to the hysterical laughing. And I have that on video too, so you can hear it at the end of the hit. And then it's like just quiet. And then just me just, that's one of my favorite memories of all time. And I was at 39, 38 degrees outside day.

Yeah.

There was no traction to be had.

That's cold for Mexico. That's crazy.

Yeah. Mexico gets really cold. And that's kind of where power management kind of comes to mind as well.

Big deal.

That was my first time hearing the word Motech. And I'm like, okay, what's that? That's probably what you're most familiar with here.

At this point, yes. Yeah, absolutely.

What did you work with back in the day? Like let's say if you go back to 2013, 14.

Sure. Yeah. AM infinity.

Gotcha. Okay.

Yeah. Yep. Which I love. I mean, it was a great ECU. It's still a great ECU. I'm a little sour over that when Holly bought the company. They kind of killed the product line, like no more support, no whatever, no warranty, no anything. Like, and don't get me wrong, it had its nuances and encumbrances along the way. But man, it was a really powerful ECU in the right hands. And you could do some really cool stuff with that. We did lots of cool stuff. But we still have fast cars that are out on that now. Really? Oh yeah, Rachel's Blue 06 is still on an Infinity right now.

Oh wow, okay.

So I mean, that was one of the very first Vipers to ever run on an Infinity, and it's still on it now.

That's such a cool color on her car.

Oh yeah, awesome.

Love that car. And that's the fastest, or quickest, I gotta be careful how I phrase that, quickest gen three currently, right? And that was when, that one event we were down, was that the same event? Or does she run faster than that? I can't remember.

This is gonna sound bad. I don't remember. It's mostly because she has normalized, pulling up to the tree and going mid-sevens. I'm like, oh, I don't know. Was that better than last time? Like she went like, she made a lift pass, went 780s, then went to 767 maybe or something. I think she's been, has it been 40s now or 50s? I don't know.

All I remember is that she reset the record. Cause that car previously held the record.

Yeah, it was. Yeah, it was already at that point. It was 788, and then she like accidentally did better than that. And then like just kind of kept going, she's such a good driver in a car.

Yeah.

So level headed, so good at taking direction, so good at giving feedback. Really, really, really, really a pleasure to work with her on that project.

Is that one running a sequential?

No, it's a turbo 400.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, both her and Will, like, you know, just perfect customers from the outside looking in. So that's cool to see.

Well, they're great people, and we've developed a really close relationship over years, and we love doing projects for them. They apparently still love us doing projects for them, so that's good. We'd like to keep it that way. But yeah, we get some cool stuff, a couple of cool projects in the works for them that you guys will see. That'll be neat.

Is that a relationship you had with them beforehand that they ended up with your shop car, or is that like you posted it up on craigslist and this is how you met them? I mean, how do you get rid of a car like that?

Definitely craigslist, yeah. No. It's the shortest version of that that I can say is Texas Invitational was this big race thing that was kind of like a highlight event to go to back then. And yet again, another place that Viper had kind of faded away from because the Lambos had really kind of taken over in GTRs, became a big deal, rightfully so, you know. And we were these goofballs that showed up with a Viper, and but one done the way we would do it. And it did really well. And did really well our first year there, came back next year and did extra well. I think we got second that year. We got second in overall and first in the two-wheel drive category. Man, that's reaching on the memory bank again. Holy cow.

Just memory lane today.

Yeah, there will probably be a good bit of that. And Will had a mega awesome Supra.

And it was called Booger, I think.

Yeah, known as Booger. And at that time, Booger was still walking the line of street Supra. So it was on a tire, on a 400, on a, I don't know what version of an 88, on this dry sump, awesome, beautiful engine bay. Like it was a very nicely done car. And he was so enthusiastic about losing to the Viper. And he was great because he was like, man, I gave it everything I had. It was like maybe a little too much, but nothing I was going to do about it. And he told David, who owned the Blue 06 at that time, if you ever want to sell this car, like I need to know, like I want this car. And so it's very, very cool that later he met, who's now his wife, Rachel, and that was like her poster car kind of thing. Like she loved that thing, and he ended up getting it for her for a wedding present as a big surprise, and we brought it down and had it in the garage and all that.

That was cool.

It was really, really cool. But yeah, so as far as Juggernaut came to that, like we had done Will Silver ACR Viper.

Colossus?

Yeah, correct. Yeah, we call that Colossus, and it was a stock engine turbo Gen 5 at that point, which that was when I started to learn who Will was of like, well, I don't really care if we blow it up. Like I just want it to be fast and whatever. And thankfully, we never did break the motor in that thing. I don't know how. But he did really well street racing the car. And basically, if you ask him, he'll say, and it's weird for me to retell the story, but he'll say he couldn't believe that like what I told him it was going to cost at the beginning of the project is what it cost at the end of the project. And he had never experienced that before. And then the car did what it was supposed to do. And that was a big deal to him. So anyways, he got into this conversation with me one day about like, well, man, I kind of want to build a drag viper. And in the background, I had Juggernaut sitting as a rolling chassis with the cage already done and all the stuff. And I was just never going to get around to it. Like I wanted it to be a drag viper. And so I showed him a picture of it. And he was like, yeah, I think I want that. And so then he and Rachel flew up here and we showed it to him and that's how it happened. Yeah, so. And it's really turned out amazing because we he he gave us the opportunity to build that car in a way that I could have never dreamed to do it ourselves. And it's so rewarding because he he appreciated it so much. And he he's just been a dream to work with on that thing. And we we accomplished all our goals like it. We went 668 at 220 in the quarter mile. It was still 39, I think 3960 or 3980 pounds at that point. Pretty silly, still IRS. It's just a really, really cool car.

Well, that's something, there's something that has to be said about, sometimes you have customers that wanna push the limit and push the industry forward, but they can't find the right shop. In this instance, you guys kind of have this, for lack of a better term at the moment, is vibe.

Yeah, sure.

Or kind of like mutual goal. And that is really cool to see. It's like, you just kind of keep one-upping each other. It's like, all right, we did it. Now they have another idea.

Yeah, yeah, basically, yes.

So what's the next hurdle? What's the, or goal? Or I guess what drives you? What drives you? Is it customer cars? Is it competing?

I mean, I think a big part of that really has turned into over time. I probably have learned that customer satisfaction is what is a driving force, right? Like if your customers are, like if they want to go faster, like, well, then we should help them go faster. And I know that sounds probably really simple at the surface level, but I think there's probably some companies that lose sight of that. Like they let their own personal goal get in the way of maybe what the customer is really looking for. And at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what we want it to be. It matters that they're satisfied with what they got out of it. So you need to set that expectation, be clear about what you're trying to accomplish, and then push the ball towards that goal. On a personal level, yeah, I mean, we always want to go faster. Like there's no version of like fast enough. I'm saying that, and then in my head, I'm going like, well, unless we're talking about like half mile stuff. I think everybody's crazy for, you know, UGR just went 260. 260, yeah, that's in the car that we got to race against at, in the Elite Eight. That's the gray STO that was there. And yeah, so you think about that, and you're like, man, we got the opportunity to run against this car that later went 260 miles an hour and a half mile, like that's absurd.

And I think that's DCT still. I think they may...

That car is a sequential.

Oh, that one is a sequential. I know it was the R8. That was DCT. That one went 244.

Still amazing.

They must have figured something out over there.

Those numbers are just, for lack of better terms, b****** crazy, you know? And I think that's so impressive and so cool. I think I'm too big of a sissy to want to do it.

Like drive it.

I don't want to drive it for sure. I'm OK saying that. That doesn't bother me at all. As somebody who has unfortunately wrecked this car at over 200 miles an hour at a racetrack, the wall was a saving grace in that scenario. If that had turned into into the grass, that wasn't going to go well. So like, I guess I don't really feel like one experience should flatten the board for you and be like, okay, well, this is the only way to go forward. Now, I don't think that's necessarily the right call, but I do think people need to be really aware of just how dangerous that stuff is at that point. Because the thing that is kind of a fairly universal truth, and people have to own this, is that there's a lot of people that are going 210, 20, whatever miles an hour, that have not got a lot of drive time under their belt at any elevated speed. And I'm not trying to poke a stick at that and say that shame on all you guys. It's just be aware. If you lose a tire or this, there's not necessarily a lot. If you don't have that muscle memory yet of parachute out because the car is starting to move, whatever, if that's not there, then you are at a pretty risky scenario at that point. That's my old man talking, okay?

But it's reasonable as well. I mean, everything gets exponentially harder on the components when you're doing anything over 200, anything over 100, let's be honest. It just gets a lot crazier. It's not just that you need more horsepower to go faster, but you're weighing down everything. There's just so much air.

At that point, the wind, everything takes a factor. Absolutely. It's crazy.

Massively. The weather itself is an impact because air density is a factor in how does that impact the arrow on the car? Air density, bringing in, if it's a turbo car, what is the turbocharger inducing at that point to then generate the manifold pressure that you're after? Well, if it's a hot, sticky day and you're at the end of what you have for turbo capacity anyways, your back pressure is up. Everything is working harder. So in your head, you're like, oh, I'm not running any more boosts than what I have. Okay, cool, but that's not the way the engine works. And like, it's not happy today. So there's a, yes, yes, there's a lot that goes into that at that point at those speeds. So it's why you see guys that, like, it's pretty classically seen that if you've got guys that race 8th mile stuff all the time, they're used to what they can throw the bucket at that thing in the 8th mile and get away with it. And then they go to Good Air in Maryland at MIR or something and go for a quarter mile and that thing tosses its cookies, as soon as it passes 660 feet. Yeah, you can get away with it for 3 or 4 seconds, not 5 or 6. That was the thermal limit kind of thing. So that's just exponential in the half mile stuff.

So one rabbit hole I went down about 3 episodes ago was cheating dinos and all that fun stuff.

Oh, yeah.

I won't necessarily take that route, but more so the-

It's a great topic though.

It is. But more so stress testing the car, right? Especially- So I don't know much about hub dinos. Is that the same sort of deal as being like it's a resistor?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. So these units here, I don't know if you can see them on here or not. These units here have two Eddy brake retarders per side, and then fed a whole bunch of electrical energy. And so what I can do on here is effectively torture test the motor. So let's say if we're making peak torque at, usually for us around 5,500 RPM, let's say, I can take it and say 5,500 RPM, don't move, and throw the house at the thing, and it's just going to hit 55 and sit there and hold it, basically as long as I'm willing to risk it at that point in time. And that's a great way to figure out if your stuff is going to live or not. And so yeah, it gives you the opportunity to be able to really, really stress test components like that.

Well, when you're testing at the levels, the horsepower levels you guys are at, the hub dyno is really the only way to go when it comes to something like that, right? You're not getting that on a regular roller, are you?

It's a lot harder. We just went through that because we actually went to Street Machine Nationals and went up for the dyno day up there. Kurt had asked us to bring something, and Kyle was fortunate or kind enough to let us take his viper up there that we were doing some service work on. And that was my biggest concern. It was like, how are we going to make this thing stick? Because I guess, what, 1875 was like the record at that event. And anyways, whatever. So the goal was like, well, let's put on a show. Like, we can make it make two grand. I'm not worried about the car doing it. It's just like, can we get it to apply? And the way we did that was effectively, you know, the dyno run was starting at about 60 miles an hour, and at end of peak power, it's about 224 miles an hour wheel speed. So if you listen to the dyno poll, it's actually like super boring. And people were talking to us after, like, it didn't really sound like that much power. I'm like, well, it was, it was, and it's a lot of mile per hour. It's just over one gear. So like, it doesn't, you know, it's not like this, whoa, zip it, and then it's over with. It's just not very dramatic, because I was just tapering the power in really slowly. So like, it only made like 1600 torque or something, which that car's made over 2100 torque, if I like really let it have it. So that's the thing. So in that case, like you can say, yes, we were able to make up their 2240 or something like that. And like, okay, yes, it made 2240. But I have no idea what the engine's power curve actually looks like now. I know what I told it to make for power curve, but I don't know what the engine naturally wants to make. And once you understand what the engine naturally wants to make, that's how you make good decisions about gearing, and if it's an auto car, torque converter effectiveness, all of those things. So you have to understand what information are you trying to gather from the dyno. Obviously, just the society of car people that we are, we're fixated on, like, oh, what's that number right there? 2240, great, and that's awesome. I'm not denying that. But it also doesn't really mean that much in the grand scheme of things. And that's something that we as car people have completely screwed up. Like, we have all trained ourselves and our buddies to make buying decisions based off a dyno number. Like, I don't know. You know, like, if you're into wine at all, like, are all good, are all 90-plus-point-rated wines all delicious to all people? No. Beer, whiskey, I mean, just anything that's like a, that's a taste profile, right? Yep. You might hate a 3,000-horsepower viper, and you might love it, right? It's like the dyno number didn't guarantee the satisfaction nor did the rating of the drink that you got guarantee if you're gonna like that beverage or not. Somehow we've trained ourselves to, like, only care about what the peak number is. But if that peak number is X, but at five grand, it's, like, not good. Well, like, if you know what you're looking at, you can look at that and say, all right, well, that combination is gonna be difficult to apply power, challenging to gear appropriately, maybe not that great to drive around. And if that thing is a straight race car, great, who cares? Like, none of that is important. But if it's not, well, that's all really important stuff now. So I guess that's, I don't know where you're trying to go, but I just waylaid you into the dyno topic of, like.

I think that's a fair topic to touch on, because that's what you see all the time. Just $1,700 for this last little bit of the dyno sheet. But more so, I was kind of touching on the durability aspect, right? Like, how long are you stressing the car for? Because if you just throw it on to a dyno jet, it doesn't have that resistance. And again, this goes back to, like, I'm just constantly trying to learn about this stuff. So, like, I went down this whole, I was studying dyno videos for, like, four hours last week, so that it's fresh in my mind. So, but, like, where cars will go on to one type of roller, make this crazy power, and then they try to apply it on the street, and it grenades. Or, you know, like, the example you brought up is if it goes to Maryland over somewhere else. Because you take this very OEM-like approach.

Try to, yeah, yeah.

Like, when it comes to fit, finish, how the car drives, which, again, if we go back to Minneapolis Mopar's car, put on a ton of miles, what goes into that stress testing? I mean, how crazy are you leaning on it behind the scenes?

We run it harder here than we're ever gonna really expect the customer to run it. I mean, and I've been proven wrong by that sometimes, but, you know, we're, like, we effectively want to break it here before they can get their hands on it. As opposed to, like, and that's where, you know, you learn these lessons of, like, what is the right move for the business versus what are we trying to accomplish? Like, well, it would be easier if you just said, like, hey, it's done. It made one dyno pull. It made the power I said it was gonna make. Can you please pay us? And now you can have this vehicle. That's fine. But that might not mean that that's going to be a good, happy relationship for that customer at that point. So we want to it's pretty often as an example that Sal Patel, if you know the name, we love his car so much.

Perfect color.

Yeah. Beautiful, snakeskin green ACR. And he has, and Millen, his son drives the black Gen 2. That was the first six-second IRS car, period. And a Gen 2 Viper, sorry. Yeah, just making sure you're tracking me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He had the black drag car, and he had us do this green Gen 5 for him. And when we were in this cell doing these dyno pulse, and I was showing him the progression, I remember him messaging me. He's like, boy, you sure are running that thing hard, right? I'm like, yeah, I want it to fail for us rather than you get it and fail. And there's two schools of thought there, right? How many of those runs are you taking another strike off its life of how long is it going to go for? There is that. But you need to do it enough to make sure that you feel confident that what you're doing is working and that when you pull the oil filter and you cut it open and you're like, OK, this thing's happy. It's doing what it's supposed to do. Like, we're comfortable sending this off into the wild. Now, you really, in my opinion, you really should be kind of going above and beyond torturing that car to do your best to make it do something bad before you hand it off. Because this this game's hard enough to play if you don't take those steps. And I think a lot of people get into that where they maybe don't go the same distance on the on the testing side of it. And you're in a constant game of service with the customer then, which I mean, good that you're giving them service, but better if you don't need to do it as much.

That's a tough game too, because for example, if you're shipping a car to Maryland and back or wherever, that's $2,000 each way. It's not only costly, but also you're waiting.

Yeah, it's time.

Constant waiting game. And then you have to start pushing builds back. It's a trickle effect, like we talked before the show started. It's like you just don't want today to trickle into the next day.

Yeah, and days turn into weeks, turns into months. And it's easy for that to happen.

Well, we're talking about these numbers and the stress testing, and I got some things that are ringing in my head here. As you keep bringing up 5,500 RPMs, do you say that's where you're hitting about peak?

Usually peak torque.

Okay, so how far out do you rev out one of these V10s?

Depends on the combination. Most of them are going to be around 7,000 to 7,200. Some of them are 8,000 to 8,200.

Okay.

That's about as high as we go.

Okay, because I'm thinking Coyote screams all the way up to 8,000 plus, no problem.

Absolutely.

So when you're telling me that it's peak at 5,500, some cars don't even come alive until then.

Totally, yeah.

I guess when you're working with, too, I'm also noticing I make fun of the LS all the time. Oh, great. It's an outdated, like I'm like, you show up to the party with one cam, like, OK, that's cute. You know, but I'm looking at that thing and it is just kind of like a bulletproof, tried and true. I mean, you guys are squeezing out of one cam, just insane numbers.

Big tugboat engine.

Yeah.

Yeah. No, it's a. I mean, there's no denying that a single profile, single cam can do some pretty amazing things. I mean, like you could use the kind of arbitrary example, be like, well, top fuel motor is still, you know, just a good old-fashioned Hemi, right? And that's fine. Nitro makes all things cool. But yeah, it is old school in tech. Absolutely. Like, not denying that at all. We're doing some pretty interesting things if you get underneath the surface level, none of which I'm going to talk about on here. But yeah, you have to think. You know, an engine is an air pump. Like, you got to think about how do we make this thing happier at moving air. And Ford guys are blessed with people that were intelligent enough to, at some point, probably look over their shoulder at Honda behind them and be like, Oh, man, those guys got two cams. We should do that, too. Sorry, I'm just giving you a hard time.

No, that's cool.

I mean, technology goes, I mean, sometimes they don't always develop it, but it changes, things evolve, right?

No doubt, no doubt. But, you know, they were smart enough to get down the pent roof chamber dual cam route, and they were smart for doing that, in my opinion. I love mod motors. I think they're killer. Coyotes are super cool, too. It fascinates me that people are, like, mystified, that they're like, you know, we get it all the time, actually. I think just recently there was a YouTube comment on our channel about this thing. They're like, oh, all this power and whatever to get smacked around by a 300 cubic inch coyote. I'm like, yeah. Yep. Yes, you're right. Like, yes, it has amazing cylinder heads. It revs to the moon. It's still not a small engine in the grand scheme of things compared to most that are equipped with airflow like that. So, yeah, you are correct. And that's all if you were like, oh, well, you know, now I don't know what to argue about on the internet, you know. But like, why are people fascinated that it exists, that it can make power? Like, a Honda B-Series is a killer motor with boost. I mean, they're okay, all motor. But like, it's a great air pump. Like, the mod motor was a great air pump most of the time.

You mean like power to weight. It's insane what those guys are doing.

Yeah, it's great. Yeah, it's amazing. So like, I just find it funny that like people are so fixated on this thing of like, yeah, it's only 300 cubic inches. Like, that's not like a small engine necessarily compared to people that are used to like import stuff, right? Right. And if you wanted to go down that argument, you know, the rotary guys could fly a higher flag than all of us kind of thing, you know?

So we got one of those in our camp. So yeah, yeah. Oh, good.

I secretly love those things.

I do too, but don't tell Jay, please.

Oh my God.

Because we have to give him s***. It leaks oil all over the trailer all the time, but you know what?

Great.

It's pretty impressive.

Is it Marvel mystery oil, the premixed stuff?

He's doing that too. No, I think this is coming right out of whatever it has underneath that holds oil. And if it's a, I'm not even sure. Those things are mystifying to me. Yes.

Yeah, and there's a triangle underneath the triangles that holds more triangles inside. Yeah, no, so that, anyways, yes. They are old lunks of motors in a tech basis, yes. They are much better now than what they started off as generationally. Like finally in 2008, Chrysler loosened the purse strings or whatever they did, and the engineers are like, oh, cool, let's put an actual halfway okay cylinder head on these things. And all of a sudden, the world opened up, you know? So that was really a big change in the evolution of them.

Do you have a generation you turn away or go ehh? I mean, some of them really early ones, the bubble ones with the crappy interiors.

We don't really touch gen ones. That's the very early 92 to 90, it gets confusing in there, but 96 or so, 95 and a half, whatever. We don't really deal with gen ones. It's not our bag. I mean, there's some inherent problems with them that we really know how to fix, but as you've seen, it's not like we have a bunch of space to just roll service cars in and out of here all the time, so that's not really in our wheelhouse. So other than that, no, it's not like we're a hard no to anything that's not a gen five, or that's not the real answer. But at the same time, we are so busy with light model work that it's kind of hard to always make time for the earlier, and they're getting to be old cars. People have to acknowledge that and accept that. It's crazy to think about it, but you see a gen two, like if it's the breakout of that, 1996 is the first time that the coupe came out, and those are super cool cars. It's 1996, like it's 2024. Maybe turning that into a 2,000 horsepower car is like, we're going to have to think about things like the radiator fan, or like how's your water pump? I mean, there's just some things like that that you're having to recognize that it's still an old car, and there may be some things that have to be dealt with, and they're not exactly always the easiest to get parts for. So, there's some of that.

Do you have a waiting list here right now? Yeah.

Yeah, we're usually running, depends on project complexity, but usually we're running at around six months plus or take on wait to get a car in. That was a lot worse before we were running about a year almost, and we've been trying really hard to get that better. But there's no free lunch. Like, there's no way to just get them done faster because even if I would let my business brain take over and wanna push for quicker car completion, all of the guys here are so passionate that they're gonna fight me right back and say, you know, we're gonna do this right. And that's what they need to do, and I'm happy that that's the case.

Well, it should be a red flag if you're like, I'll have it back to you in two weeks.

Yeah, no, that is not us. Yeah, so yes, so we are pretty much always on a wait.

Okay.

It's a hurry up and wait game. Often I bet with parts, well, it's probably better nowadays, hopefully.

Yeah, I mean, you've seen a handful in here. We try to position ourselves okay on that. But even then, if you had every part just sitting here, which we can't do because the cars are so inconsistent that you really need to do a lot of it on the car itself. And then at the same time, we're back to the evolutionary thing, right? Just because we did it this way here, by the time you're done waiting for your turn to come up, plus the time that it takes to build the car, we might be doing it different by then. So building it all like it used to be isn't necessarily what we would really want to be doing. But, yeah, you could have everything on this magical table and know that it's all going to fit on the car, and it is hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours still to get the car to completion phase. And then there's a bunch of calibration time, and then there's a bunch of post-Dino time spent on it. And so, yeah, it's not... There's no fast version about it.

Do you have levels? So, I see a lot of twin-turbo stuff, right? Do you do superchargers, anything like that?

No.

No?

Not really. I can dive into why, if you want to.

Sure, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

I mean, like, centrifugal lowers are super cool. I love them. I love the way they sound. I think that's really neat.

Yep.

Historically, it's not a great option for a Viper. As you mentioned, they're a big, lunky motor, right? Well, they're actually physically big. It's a very long crankshaft. That crankshaft, just for numbers basis, is like 98 pounds. So if you think about that back to like the RPM, like there's whole hundreds of pounds of spinny stuff in front of your legs down there, you know? So like eight grand is like, oh, that's a lot. But when you put a blower drive off the nose of the crank, it is stressful on the crank. In earlier generations, there's some problems with that, of breaking off the nose of the crank sometimes, and where the motor is placed in the car makes a crank, a snout support system really challenging to do in a good way, unless you're going to cut the steering rack out and do all kinds of different stuff. And really, I think those are all technical reasons. The maybe a little bit emotional reason is that most people that go down the road are doing a blower, they're power junkies just like the rest of us, and they're not going to be satisfied after three days of driving it the way that it started, right? So if they put a blower on a Gen 5 and it makes like 700-something wheel, that's cool, like there's nothing wrong with that at all. There's just I just don't at least our customer base. There's not a lot of people that are going to be OK with that besides like day one of like, hey, now I'm driving my car, and then they're going to go, OK, cool. Now what do we do? Well, that road, because these cars don't have a lot of aftermarket support, OEM ECU tuning is, it's there, but it's not very kind to work with. So your options are pretty limited until you get into a Motec. OK, well, cool. Throw a Motec at it. Well, that's not cheap for somebody that was, if you were starting with the blower system, there was probably a budget in mind that you were trying to touch on, and there's nothing wrong with that. But OK, now you've done the blower. Now you go, all right, cool, let's do the Motec. Well, now we did the Motec. Now we can put more boost in it. Well, now we need a fuel system. Well, now you need a better clutch. Well, now you need a trans. Well, now you, well, now you, and all of a sudden you're 60, 80, 100, some odd thousand dollars into a blower build that. Maybe it makes a grand, maybe you spray it and it makes 1200 or something, maybe or maybe it doesn't break the crank snout and you're, I feel like I'm going to get some negative backlash on this. You're probably going to get just bloodied by a halfway decent stock motor turbo car. And then you're going to go like, oh man, I probably could have done that, you know, for what I did here, and then have a runway ahead of you if you want to do more at that point. That said, I know that we as a company are really focused on that runway of like, we have customers that we've re-built the car four or five times in different iterations. It was an all-motor car, then it was a this turbo, then it was this with this trans, then it was this, and like, they're excited. It's like a whole new build every time, because like the build is fun, right? Or it's supposed to be, we try to make it that way. So we're looking at that runway on there of like, how long can we enjoy this with them and keep them happy and excited to keep evolving the project like that. And the blower route, that's not a very long project.

It's like one and done almost. Like once you get to that, it's like a ceiling at some point.

There is, there is a ceiling with it. And there's, again, there's really nothing wrong with that. You just need to be very aware of it.

Know who you are as a person, right? Like what do you want out of a car? Because some people will be happy with that thousand horsepower, that's where they leave it.

I was thinking like a road course guy. I didn't know how many road course cars you build.

Most road course stuff is going to stay NA. And that's not all of them, and you certainly can do... We've had some turbo customers run their cars at the road course. I'm not going to tell you that they're going 10 tenths driving for 45 minutes or something, but that's actually an interesting little side avenue to talk about at some point maybe. But the NA, we can make some pretty significant power with these things. But my favorite, but also frowned upon phrase for people sometimes is just the honest truth of it. Like, naturally aspirated is the most expensive way to make the least amount of power. So, like, because it's real. Like, you're going to spend X to get all the low-hanging fruit, right? Like, and this is for any car, right? Like, the low-hanging fruit is the stuff that OEM decided wasn't worth them chasing or they weren't able to or whatever the case is there. So, in, let's speak in simple domestic single cam terms, you know, ported heads and a big old honking cam. Cool, great. Once you do the cam, move into the next version or the bigger version or the bigger version, it's less and less and less every time you go, right? In power gains and more and more and more in downsides. So, your window for happiness keeps getting narrower because you're chasing power, probably. But there is no there's no free launch. Like you're having to give up something to get there. So, your drivability is going to degrade in some way, shape or form. The durability may or may not degrade, depending on how radical you're getting into said cam profiles and valve train configurations and all that stuff. Your fuel options may or may not start narrowing of what you can get away with or not. And every time you do it, you're spending substantially more money because there's no simple changes anymore. You get into like real serious natural aspirated racing classes, and those guys are spending tens of thousands of dollars to find single digit horsepower numbers because they've been chasing it for 10 years of evolution on the program. And they're looking for just the little gains anymore because they've already gotten all the easy ones. So, for the purist that's like hardcore and loves the idea that these were NA deals and they want them to stay that way, like we can do that. We have great options for that. You make over 800 wheel horsepower on these things NA and still have a reasonably okay driving car.

Which is so cool, by the way.

Yeah, I mean, it's neat. And it's a great experience. It's a really cool experience.

But, I'll say it for you.

Well, so what's next?

Exactly.

What do you do?

Like, your options are basically like, okay, do I just spray it? And like, I mean, you could. That gets old for people, too. Because that's always like, I shouldn't say always. I'm making some assumptions there. I personally am not a huge nitrous guy. It works. It's great. It makes all the wrong combinations the right combination. But if you're going to hose one of these things or anything with a real serious shot, if you're going to run, something real serious is even different nowadays. That's like saying, like, oh, you're going to run a lot of boost. It's going to run 20 pounds. But if you're going to run these things on 300, 400, 500, 600 horsepower worth of nitrous on a good hit, you're talking about depleting one to two 15-pound bottles in just a matter of runs. I'm like, cool, well, I'm done for the night. I'm going to go home now. Or I've got my trailer with the extra bottles, and I'll put that in. Like, it's a process, and that's not for everybody either.

No, I actually went down this rabbit hole when I got my 2015 must, the GT that I had. So I was going to do an NA build, and then I'm looking at four or five grand to do this NA build, and I was like, that goes a long ways towards a Whipple. That's half. So I just...

It's true.

10 grand, Whipple, done with it.

There you go.

But now it probably needs twins.

So is the world. But all of a sudden, if you don't have a twin turbo Coyote, it's like, well, what do you even do? I don't know how that happened.

Well, we were talking about this half-mile stuff, and I think Clinton Davis has the fastest GT500 down there, but with twin turbos. Okay.

Well, it sounds like what you're saying is twin turbos are just the simplest route.

It's a means to an end. Right. I mean, well, you can make it do effectively whatever that somebody might want it to do. And there's only really two downsides, and I know this sounds like a sales pitch, but there's really only two downsides. It's not cheap, and it is addictive. So it's like you have to do a really good job of controlling yourself, of not letting your eyes get a little greedy kind of thing, because it's easy to point and be like, well, let's just do that then and turn it into this kind of car. And that's not always the right answer, depending on what are you really looking to get out of the car. I probably talk people out of bigger power cars more often than I do into it.

I've heard that conversation before.

Okay.

Yeah. Well, I don't know if it was in the vicinity or if it was just more so. again, it's like, well, I like your approach. You want people to gradually progress. At least in the one conversation I've witnessed, it's like, well, let's get you ready for this next level. You want people to actually enjoy it instead of just like, here you go. Like, if you threw me in a Viper right now, I'd be terrified to drive it, right? Most I've driven is a thousand horsepower, and even that's like, all right. But I think there's a gradual progression, and I think that's the approach, again, outside looking at it, you like to take.

Yeah.

Is that a fair assessment?

I want people to, we want people to enjoy it. We don't want them to just be scared of it, and we want it to be an experience that they can look forward to, and also, like, yes, we want them to tell their friends, hey, this was great, you should go do this, too. In my opinion, that's not, give them something that is going to make them so petrified to ever touch the loud pedal in the car again that they don't ever want to do it. That's not really a good way to go about that. I don't know if it's like a natural, it's been kind of a naturally occurring thing. Most of the people that find our way to us, they're pretty in line with that. We don't really have a lot of people that are, maybe you'd say that cowboy. Will is pretty cowboy as one of our customers.

But he has the experience to back it up, too.

He is, yeah, that's true, yeah. And the first time we ever did his car with a dog box combo, that was Texas 2K 17 or 18. And I don't remember. We, it was a late decision of like, hey, let's amp this game up. Like it was a stock motor deal and we're like, let's put a built motor in this thing. Let's move it into a dog box, gearbox and let's this, this, this, this, this. And it was a late enough move that we didn't even dino the car. We just like went down there like, we'll get it working kind of thing, which is not us. That was not the plan. And thankfully, we did a pretty darn good job of like getting it, having a good understanding of what we were doing. And so it worked really well right out the box. But the first time Will drove the car, we got in it, and I was explaining to him like how to drive it on a dog box combination. And he's like, so I just like shift it, and don't lift, don't do anything. I was like, yeah. He's like, all right. And we like turn the corner, and he's like, bam, bam, bam, bam. It looks like he was like, yeah. I was like, okay, we got this. So some people are good at that. That's not everybody.

That sounds like him, by the way.

Yeah, oh yeah.

And a few times I've met him in person.

Oh yeah. Yeah, that went from like... So the true story of the way that played out is that... So yeah, you gotta rewind this. Like in 18, I think it was 18. I don't remember. It was on the cover of the 1320 DVD at the end of it and all that. And TRC was out with us at night because we had, we had Will's Silver ACR, which was a built motor dog box combo. Philip had mud truck out there, and it was a stock motor turbo car at that point. And then Jake, who's a local guy, had the black TA2, which had already been 7s at that point, and he was out driving around with us. And I don't know, like we, I don't feel like this should have been the answer. There should have been some big boy GTRs or Lambos that tore us up, but it didn't happen. And I look back on that, and I go back and I look at that data, and those cars were actually fast way back then. And what I mean by actually fast is like on the way it was geared, the spool combination, it was a small cam, it was big torque, it was just like just a real hard-hitting combo. And I guess I didn't know how hard-hitting until we got home and we dyno-ed it after, and it all started to make sense. But that thing was going low 360, 130s back then, which nowadays is thought of as kind of normal. But back then, even for all the drive stuff, that was fast. And Will is a good street racer, and he would leave hard. I mean, I remember him running that Switzer Goliath GTR, and you would hear that thing unrolling any lag. And the... I mean, it was like there was a light, like a millisecond of hearing that thing come off the retard. Will was on it, on it, had already in boost, like, we're moving here, sorry. Apparently, I got excited. But yeah, he was great at that. But I mean, even back then, that thing, we ended up coming and dino-ing it. That was back when we dino-ed up at DB on their big 248H dino they had. And on the third hit, the thing just like flatlined it at 1800 wheel up there. We're like, oh, okay, well, that was good. And so we all of a sudden learned really quickly that we had moved the bar really quickly with that car at that point. And that thing was the real fast street car for a long time.

Low 3, 61.30s is insane.

It's fast.

For a good old muscle car, American muscle, that's awesome. Yeah. Compared to what you're going up against. Yeah.

I am really impressed with the C6 ZR1 platforms right now. I've been paying attention to those closely because of Caleb. But yeah, it's really cool to see what those things are doing, you know, without twins.

Yeah. Yeah, they have the most magical gearing for drag racing. Like those guys are really, really... For drag racing. So, well, that's a true thing now, you know what? And that's a really an interesting thing, right? Like, I think...

We find a way to take drag racing remote.

And virtual, right? And like, and people are... If we were at a meet, and I'm in a... We're in Mexico, and it's not me, okay, let's start over. If there's a person in a car, and it's a known car that has gone, I don't know, 320s, okay? And like, you're sitting over there and be like, man, I've only ran a 350. I'm not going to run that guy. Like, what? Like, why? Where did this happen? Like, why did he turn into this thing of like, nobody ever wants to... I mean, look, I'm competitive. I don't want to lose. But like, part of the fun was figuring out where are you? And like, what can you do to improve yourself? And what I think people have completely lost sight of is that it's street racing. Like, you see this in the organized role racing. Like, a little bit of a difference on the hit completely eradicates tenths in a 60 to 130. So like, it comes down to like how, so like, okay, cool, maybe that person has it figured out that in the ideal, optimal scenario, that car runs this number. But in 90% of the runs, it runs this over here. Well, maybe this over here is your normal run is quicker, but your ideal is not as quick. Like, it's just kind of like turned this into this strange thing. It'd be like sports teams just doing like singular batting practice or something. Be like, man, they hit a lot of home runs. They're going to win.

I'm going to beat them.

They won. That's it. World Series. It's over. Like, I don't know why.

Somebody has to lose. I mean, that's me. I'm fine with it. I'm just glad to be there.

Oh, you lost a lot of power crews.

I'm fine with being the loser. I'm smiling ear to ear. I don't give a s***. I'm out there. I'm having a good time. I don't understand why people don't want to. I mean, it's already exciting. You're there right now. Just get on her. Let's go.

That's a good point, though, is if let's say you're doing 3-2s, somebody's doing 3-4s, what defines a good race based off of that? How big of a margin? Because you're not going to race against a car that's running fives. I can't imagine that's going to be the case. Not worth the refresh in.

Well, some people do for the internet. Doing it for the gram, right?

Yeah, yeah. Puppy kicking. Or is that what it's called?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, what's the margin, right? Or do you just kind of have a general idea of like, all right, that guy's probably in the same ballpark, let's just go run it? Because you guys don't post 60 to 130s.

We have, yeah.

Occasionally. Yeah, we have, yeah, definitely. But you generally don't do it as much as, for example, if you look at the Draggy Talk page, it's all G80 BMWs. Just everybody.

It's a lot of that.

Yeah, so.

It's good data. Right. There's absolutely not denying it is really good data. It's a phenomenal tool, just like a dyno is a phenomenal tool, to develop your program and figure out what's working or not working on the car. And it's real world data as long as you don't let it lie to you. But also in that context, it's kind of a small portion of data. So it'd be like if you're a competitive drag racer and you're racing a quarter mile event, and you're like, man, that guy, that guy 330s two tenths quicker than me. I'm just not even going to run him. Well, you have another, like, what? That's just there. Like, what about there? Now, I'm not trying to belittle that either. Like, I understand the logic behind some people on it, but especially in this big power stuff, you don't, 130, like, stuff's just starting to get going. Like, you're not, that's not where people stop, right? Yeah. So now I get it. A lot of the race has been pretty well decided depending on, like, the last bit isn't going to take very long in the really fast stuff. But it still shouldn't be a situation of, like, that little singular piece of data has now made the decision of whether or not I am going to try to run this dude or something. I don't know. It's just strange to me, I think, that it's taken hold so heavily. The Draggy group is, yeah, it's toxic as all get out, man.

It's fun to go in there and peruse the comments, though.

It's good reading. It's good reading. Sometimes it's also a little bit challenging, too, because if you want to take the stance of being educational to people about it sometimes, like it, I think that's even frowned upon, you know, if people are like, man, you know, if you would just get that shift to be a little better, it would be a lot quicker. What do you mean? Like, that was amazing. Like, okay.

Yeah.

Sorry.

Sorry for suggesting something helpful. Yeah.

So, I don't know. It's just a weird thing with that stuff that I never, never would have expected that so much faith would be put into $150 10Hz GPS device. It's like, I mean, this thing from a, from a, as far as like GPS devices goes, is like bottom of the barrel as far as like quality and refresh rate and all those different things, right? And yet it is taking the internet by storm. It's amazing. I think that's like good for them.

I remember seeing that comment in one of the threads like months ago. It's like, what?

Oh, it is. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, because I think someone said something about they realized it like, oh man, it wasn't as accurate. I don't know, something about it, was it accuracy?

Something like that. Yeah. It was so long ago.

Yeah, it was a while ago.

But I did say that.

I was like, oh my gosh, I can't believe.

They had so many laugh reacts. I'm like, yep, even the other right on the head. I will say, you're not on social media often, but when you are, I'm like, that was worth it.

Yeah, I'm glad you enjoy that.

Yeah, and I won't touch on the one I recently saw earlier this week, not on air at least, but I was like, yeah, that's funny.

Okay, I don't even know what it was, but you'll have to tell me later.

I do want to know, though, what do you respect the most when it comes to whether it's racing or the industry? You're like, that's the guy. Or shop, name, whatever.

Yeah, I don't know if I would, I don't know that I could define that as singularly.

Or a group, rather.

Yeah, well, a handful of people come to mind. Like, I have an amazing amount of respect for Martin and the team at AMS. I think they're really, really switched-on guys that think deeper than the average bear. And I like that a lot. Very interesting business. Very, look what it appears like. They've got a really good thing going for them. I think that's really cool. T1, I think, is a pretty impressive group of guys. They definitely know how to make some really fast stuff, and they have figured out a really cool business model of what works there also. So I like that a lot. Rad Rides by Troy. I mean, that's a little departure from what we were talking about, but some of those guys, Ring Brothers, you know, that type of stuff. I think that stuff is really cool and fascinating, because you want to talk about passion. Like, I mean, those guys, the thousands of hours they must have into those cars. You know, you got to... I know how attached we get to some of this stuff, and I'm not downplaying what we do. Like, we're heavily emotionally invested into these projects when they leave here. But I can see where some of those things are probably above and beyond on the time spent than what we do, and that's got to be like, your child going off to school or something. I don't know what that feels like yet. That's a good comparison, though.

Well, all right, first day of school, it's like a comparison of going to Texas 2K for the first time.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And then it's kind of a similar feeling, right? Like a little bit of the nervousness, like, OK, well, I hope they do OK.

Will they get bullied?

Yeah, like, did we prepare them enough for what's about to happen? You know, so that's I think that's probably. But yeah, Ring Brothers is something that I think is really fascinating. There's probably a bunch of others, but I guess those are what come to my mind right away.

Well, it's countless people, I'm sure, because like you've been.

Oh, Dutch boys. Sorry.

Is that a coffee or? No, that sounds great. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, there's just so many people you've probably met over the years being as competitive as you are. I'm curious when it's crunch time, right? We're coming up on FL2K, for example. I mean, how many hours are you or your team spending in the shop? Do you have a cot somewhere around here?

Yeah. I live a mile from here.

I keep forgetting that.

Yeah. But no, do we not admit that on air for...

I'll cut it.

No, I'm kidding. It depends on the year and what's going on. You know, like this year, like the cars that are planned to go this year are already done cars. They might get little bits of revisions between here and there for some small tweaks, but there isn't anything new or wild or in the big boy. I say the big boy cars. Juggernaut and Kratos are not going to Florida 2K this year because they have changed the class structure to effectively try to move cars that are this fast into other classes that we're just not competitive in. And I know that almost sounds a little bit hypocritical with what we were just talking about, like, well, we don't want to race with a draggy. You don't want to lose? But man, I'm talking about, like, that thing would have to go race against stuff that on a bad pass goes 6.20s. Like, well, that's... It's hard for me to tell the customer, like, hey, I got a really good idea. Do you want to go spend a lot of money and take the car a long ways away and get a couple of qualifying passes and then pack it up and go home? Because that sounds like a lot of fun, right? It's a little bit of that with that. So, Florida 2K this year, it's a lot of knocking, okay? Like multiple knocks on wood. Hopefully, it won't be too chaotic or stressful this year. Florida 2K when we debuted Kratos was not the same. And so, yeah, our accounts on that can be pretty crazy. Juggernaut trying to debut that at Texas 2K when we did, that was out of control. That was a lot of car to come together in a short amount of time. A lot of people lent some helping hands on that, and that took a lot. So as a number, I don't know.

You just kind of forget, because if you're looking at the clock, you're not working.

Oh, that doesn't go well. Yeah, no, it's not necessarily a good idea at that point.

So then what class will you be running at FL2K, like the class below, I'm assuming?

So typically when we go to Florida 2K, we run the drag race, the street car class, with Joggernaut, or actually Kratos has never ran in that. But that's where we would normally try to run. But that's where they're trying to push out the six-second cars and make it a class that's really good and competitive for mid to low seven cars, which I understand why. It's a little difficult to swallow, but I get it that we're this weird outlier with this stuff. Most people are smart enough to not try to race 4,000-pound cars, so that's just as what it is. But so this year, the couple of Vipers that I do know that are planning to go are all entered in the street car class because they're legal with the rules that are in there for tire size and all that different stuff. And then they'll do the roll race there also. Okay, so that'll be cool. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's a little different at 2K, Florida 2K, sorry, because the start speed is slower and the race distance is shorter. So it's more sprint format. And there's some challenges that come into play there. Back to kind of one of our original topics of how do you make it do both of these things really well. It may not be optimal for either, but we got to try and make it do well for both.

So in this instance, how much slower is the start speed? Like 20 miles an hour sort of deal?

It's supposed to be 40 miles an hour at Florida 2K.

And Texas was 60?

Supposed to be 60.

Gotcha.

Gotcha. And I'm sure there's a lot of... The amount of conversations I've had in the stands, just we'll just leave it at that. But there's a lot of changes that probably have to take place just for that, for us, slow guys, 20 miles an hour, boo hoo. But I'm sure in a competitive sense, there's some changes that have to be made.

Yeah, so for instance, like this car has won Florida 2K in the roll race before. We got runner up next time or something, I think. The way this is set up now to try to go as quick as what we're doing in the quarter mile, the gearing doesn't really make sense for roll racing. So we'd have to do like a complete gearing change layout on it for it to work in the roll race at that slow of a start speed, for it to run as quick as what I think it would have to run. Don't get me wrong, it would still go fast. I just don't know if it would be quick enough down low to be competitive with some of the other cars. And interestingly enough, at Florida 2K, the rules for the roll race class are much more lenient. So they are very undefined at Texas 2K, and they are like this open table when it comes to Florida 2K. And I'm not saying that, like I'm not complaining. It's just like you can have a car with no headlights, and you can run it at Florida 2K in the roll race. Like, okay, fair. So you kind of have to know that going into it. You could run against some pretty stout stuff. So yeah, that's where you get into kind of the decision tree there of like, okay, are you going to change the car over between days and try to optimize it for both? Or are you going to try to find one setup that works pretty well? Or what are you trying to do there? But because we can't run it in the drag classes there anymore anyways, and the owner's not that fixated on the roll race stuff, then I just don't think we're that interested in it. Maybe that'll change by then, I don't know, but we'll see.

And your favorite is drag racing, right? Is that kind of what you lean towards?

Yep, definitely.

I'm curious, so I know that, again, I really leaned on Cooper's podcast, because this is a really good one, but I listened to both. Oh, okay, cool. And I know you had that Shelby Charger back in the day.

Yes.

Where does the love for Mopar come from? Are you a Mopar guy or?

Yeah, definitely, yeah. I was brainwashed that way as a child.

Same. I grew up Mopar. I hear my dad's in a dealer business.

So, my family lineage was part of Chrysler as far as my grandfather ran a plant and my dad and uncles all did plant jobs when they were growing up or summer job type stuff or whatever. So, just always been there. And then there was a guy in our neighborhood that worked for Chrysler that restored cars at his house. And I was just like fascinated and he had a 70 AAR Cuda that was white. It was a black vinyl top car too, I think. Anyways, I think, I don't know, that's bad that I can't remember. Anyways, that car like side pipes, 346 pack car, like it was just like so cool to me as a kid. And so, I guess that kind of led me down that path. And then my dad had bought a very, very fancy car, a 1985 LeBaron GTS Turbo. But true story, like they had parked it when he was a police officer and he started having a department car. And so he parked it in the garage and they decided to keep it as like a car for my brother and I to learn to drive on. So when he started driving, he's three years older than I am. You know, we had this mint 53,000 mile LeBaron Turbo car, which like nowadays, I don't know, it was cool to me at that time. Like it was the first car everyone 100 miles an hour in. Like I remember that. But anyways, over time, it had skipped a tooth on the cam gear. And that was like a common thing that those things did. And I remember my dad talking about when I was starting to drive, like we'd go drive the thing and he'd stand on it. And I'd be like, I just remember this thing being quicker than this before. And that did something to me. And then I like learned about cam timing and found out that it was a tooth off and changed it and took him for a ride and was like, oh, it's so much better. And then I cut the exhaust off of it one night and he was really mad. And then put a boost controller on it. And like, you know, that's so that's kind of what started it down that path. And then I realized that those engines were in other cars, which was they were in every car Chrysler did more or less. And so I bought an 85 Omni GLH as the first car I bought. And then I street raced that for a while. I mean, drove it around nicely. And then that progressed into a Shelby Charger that I ended up doing some cool stuff with. That kind of that's what kind of really launched it off, I guess. So then we were just talking off air about the random Shelby car stuff. I had a Shelby Lancer when I moved up here from Florida, and number 771, and it just popped up for sale somewhere in Minnesota again, and for like twice what I sold it for. But nevertheless, it's, I don't know, those cars are kind of addictive. Like, probably nostalgia aspect to it.

I loved the Chargers, like the Shelby Chargers, something like that. I still, I look for them every now and again.

They're cool, man. They're a cool car. They're fun to drive. They're a blast. I don't, I mean, I don't know how to describe it any differently than that. Like, they were just a lot of fun.

I just picked up a 1988 Thunderbird Turbo Coupe, which falls into that kind of same category. Definitely. And I love it. I'm having a blast driving it around. I bought it to teach my daughter how to drive stick. So she's 14.

Oh, that's so cool.

We've been working on that a little bit.

That'll be a T5 in that then, right? Yep. Yeah, that trans is, like, you can rebuild them in like 10 minutes too, so that's awesome.

Yeah, no, they're super basic. Yeah.

Yeah, that's really cool. I do, I love the 80s stuff. I don't necessarily know why. And Escort Cosworth was like the super cool forward out there for me in that realm. I had a friend growing up that was big into the Miracors, the XR4TIs and that stuff, and I just, I don't know.

Tim Roman.

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

So, I don't know, it was just like the quirky stuff. My brother was the opposite. He, like, I took the road of, like, I'm, I wash dishes at the restaurant and, like, I have no money, so I'm gonna buy this Omni GLH, you know, like it was all I could afford. I think it was 3,500 bucks, and I bought it. And I probably saved for a while to do that. I don't know. Meanwhile, my brother somehow had figured out, like, he had a 97 front wheel drive Talon, and that got wrecked. Then he had a 93 Stealth twin turbo that we had, and I fell in love with that. Oh, I still want one of those cars someday.

I do too, but people keep talking me out of it.

Oh, no, it's not a good idea, but I love them. Like, I don't, yeah.

Because I've even been shopping for them, and every time I show one to them, they're like, no.

Oh, no, I'll tell you to get it. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely get it. I'm not going to tell you you're going to live a happy life with it. Yeah, yeah.

But I did it.

So no, they're, I don't know, they're just so cool. And then he had a 98 Talon that we ended up kind of turned, not kind of, we turned it into a race car. And that was a cool car. That thing made 832 all-wheel horsepower on a Mustang dyno in 04. And it was ridiculous. And that was, that was a neat car. And then I ended up, he went through some job stuff at a time there when everybody was going through job stuff with construction work and all that stuff. And I ended up getting it up and running on a, does it have this, I built this cool Sidewinder header on it. And this really, at that time, a really cool liquid air intercooler setup, like kind of some off the wall stuff compared to what most of that world was doing at the time. And got it up and running and ended up selling it to a guy on Guam. Like I put the car on eBay and this guy in Guam bought it. I thought it was a complete farce, you know?

Yeah.

And like this money showed up for this car in Guam. And you know, and then I was like, oh no, like how do I do this? Like, so what, I'm going to put it on this truck? And he's like, yeah, put it on the truck, and they're going to put it on the boat and bring it over here. I'm like, what are you going to do with this car, man? It was a was an aluminum long rod to two or two one. I can't remember. It was like a nine, 10,000 RPM, 4G combo, like had a crazy trans in it. Cage, it was it was race car. And he said he was going to run it around on Guam and do all this stuff and blah, blah, blah. I kid you guys not. So I put, I told the guy, I was like, I'm going to put a rev limiter in this thing at like 1500 RPM, just so like nobody can like try to not hurt it if they got to move this thing or however, this is going to go on transport. He's like, okay, cool. I think it was like 2500 RPM, because you basically had to do that to get it moving with the clutch. And years later, I'm pretty sure I was up here already at that point. So it had to be five years, six years later. I don't know. And this old email address that I had linked to this old eBay account gets pinged with this like, hey, I don't know if you recognize this car, but I think I bought a car you used to own. And he put pictures of it in this poor thing. Like it looked like it had been parked outside probably since then. And he was like, is this it? And he sends me these pictures, and there's this five inch inlet turbo poking out the front of it. I'm like, that's it, you know? And he said he was gonna buy the thing, and he told me how much he paid for it. I was like, I will give you that plus some if you'll sell it to me. Like, I'll take it. I don't know how I'll get it, but I was probably stupid at the time. But nevertheless, I asked him if it still ran, and he sends me a video of the thing firing up and running. And then he ends up telling me, he's like, yeah, they got it over here, and they said it had this crazy misfire and could never get it to run right. I'm like, was the misfire at like 2,500 RPM? He's like, yeah, I bring the RPM up and it just hits this misfire. I'm like, oh my god, it's not a misfire. I was like, go to this, this, click this box. And I get a video the next day of it had a big automator attack in Speedo. It was that era, all automator gauges down the center console and stuff. And attacks ripping out for like eight grand, and they're freaking out in the car. I'm like, okay, well, it's officially the longest lasting this horsepower 4G because it never moved apparently ever since I went there. So yeah, that was quite surreal.

You're probably not getting that back now that you're having a good time now.

No, I don't think so. I don't know if it still lives or not, but I'm assuming not.

That's a really cool platform too. We're going to learn a lot more about 4G's here in a couple weeks. That's the next week we're going to be having Andre Simon on.

Oh, okay, cool.

Yeah, so that's going to be an interesting one. My first ever and only remote podcast. I'm not going to New Zealand.

That would be challenging.

That would be very cool. If this thing takes off to the level I'm hoping it does, I would love to start traveling internationally.

This is a business, right? Can't you just... What's that thing? You just send it to the write-off people? Isn't that how that works?

It's a write-off. Yeah, I've tried it. I don't like those letters.

They don't let you write off negative money though.

Oh, oh.

Well, I got a lot of that. You should have seen the write-off for the rally. But there was a question that came up earlier when we were talking about PumpCast. You're big on using one ethanol.

Oh, yeah. For ethanol in general.

All right, yeah, yeah. So how far has that developed in the last decade, for example?

Oh, I think a lot. Yeah, definitely. I mean, there's way more understanding. There's way more tech available. I say there's way more understanding, and then I also say that there's also probably a decent amount more misunderstanding. And a lot of that, I think, comes from just the... It's like when I said that we trained ourselves to function off dino numbers, right? Like the world of ethanol has trained itself to function off of an ethanol content number. And like that just doesn't make any sense to me. Like, if, okay, if I say you have E80 in your tank, like how much ethanol do you have? Like what percentage is it of ethanol at that point? It's 80%, right? Okay, easy. Okay, cool. If that E80 is blended, let's say, if you're on 80% ethanol content, if the other 20%, that's always the argument. There's this old Ford white paper about, you know, knock resistance above like 30 or 40%. I can't remember now on ethanol content. They're like, oh, the gains aren't really there, you know, beyond that. Like, well, that, okay, in that single-cylinder test, like maybe that was applicable in there, but like in this crazy thing that makes hundreds and hundreds of horsepower per cylinder, like maybe it's different. Because I would ask somebody with a performance car, do you run your car on ethanol by chance?

I'm currently tuning my old race car on ethanol right now. So I'm going through the process.

Okay, so if the old race car is 70, let's just say 70% ethanol, right? Because a lot of people, that's like a pretty average.

There's 80% in the tank right now.

Okay, so there's 80% right now?

Yep, yep.

All right. You now know one thing about that fuel, and that is that 80% of that fuel is ethanol.

Yep.

You know that. What is the other 20%?

No clue. Gasoline, I assume.

All right.

Yeah.

What gasoline?

Yeah.

Okay. And I would ask you, would you feel, is it a real crazy combination of some sort of power making?

No, I was told I should be right around 800 wheel, with what I have for setup.

Let's just say it's a... Let's say you've got some good money in the motor, clearly. It wasn't like a third motor.

All right.

So it's a third. So you're sensitive.

I am very sensitive.

We don't want this thing to go away.

This is why we're going E85 now.

Okay. So now, if you were to tell me that... Or if I were to tell you, I'll give you two tanks of fuel. You can choose which one to run it on. This one is E80, and this one is E80. And you're going to go like, well, why? Right? Okay, well, this one is E80, and the other 20% is some stuff I found in my garage for the last three years that I usually use in my lawnmower, but it's 80% ethanol. It's fine. Or this E80 is blended with nice, fresh, clean, brand new 93 octane, or 100, or VP something, some race gas combination, something like that. Are those the same? Like, do you feel like they have the same detonation resistance? Like, without even getting technical about it, are you in the mindset of like, oh yeah, no, those will work the same? I think that's a real misnomer. I think that's a real issue that people have gotten so fixated on this ethanol content number. And I'm not saying it isn't important. It is. But there needs to be a better understanding of what else is in that fuel at that point in time. What are you blending that with? Because that changes. Like, fuel composition is kind of a complex thing. And in modern day ECUs, they are going under the assumption that they know what that fuel molecular makeup is in most cases nowadays. Well, if you've changed that, that now makes that different. And anyways, I think, it's my little hot button thing on that. I just, I get a little, I get concerned for people sometimes when that mentality gets really laid into the aftermarket performance industry. And then, unfortunately, you will have people that say like, oh, well, I dynoed my car on this E, and then I put it on this, and it didn't make any more power. So like, you don't need that either. Well, that one was a 684 cubic inch, five inch bore space, big block Chevy on 12 to one compression or something. And this one over here is a B series that's like on 40 pounds, and it's got 11 to one static, and like, don't tell him that. That's not, that might not be true for him, right? Like, so that's my way.

Maybe no more power, but how much knock did it see?

Well.

In there, you don't necessarily know that, unless you are running a knock sensor that you can visually see.

Sure, some people could, or some people might not. But at the same time, you can't tell me that the cylinder pressure demands of that chamber are what that one is. Like, they're different. The way they make their power is different. And I guess I'm getting overly technical again, but like, it's that number is what everybody gets so fixated on. It's like when people talk about turbos. What size turbo do you have on the car? Like, everyone always asks us that stuff. Like, oh, well, what turbos are on it? Which one of like the six really important numbers do you want to know? You know, like, cause everybody wants to talk about inducer, impeller on the compressor, right? Oh, I got a 76 on it. Okay, cool. That doesn't mean all that much anymore these days, right? Like, I mean, there's race classes founded around that, that there are really cool turbo combinations built. There's still a 76 mil inducer. Makes way more power than what most people do on a 76 mil. But it's like, it's that kind of thing, right? If you don't, if you don't educate people about that, they might not ever know. They might not ever understand. And so I, I kind of feel like people need to do a better job of educating those people on that stuff.

Yeah.

What would the other five, I mean, I'm sure six isn't the exact number, but what are some other things to consider in that instance besides the inducer size?

So, The turbine wheel itself can be designed several thousands of different ways, right? Oh, yeah.

I mean, well, there's, there's, there's numbers that define the sizes of things, right? But like, it's like saying, I've got a 19 inch wheel. Like, okay, well, what does your 19 inch wheel look like? Meaning like a wheel on the car, right? Like, it doesn't mean that they're all the same, right? You could have a 68 millimeter turban wheel, and it could be designed an aero in geometry entirely different than this 68 millimeter wheel over here. So one does not, and that doesn't mean that one is better than the other. Both have an intended application and use. How that's matched to what that engine actually wants, that's the question, right? So there's wheel dimensions, inducer and extducer of both compressor and exhaust side. There's AR ratio on the housings, both compressor and exhaust housing at that point. There are trim values that are derived from those inducer and extducer numbers. And then there's the aero basis of it, and that gets a little more complex into the engineering side of it, which for what it's worth, not all turbo manufacturers give you that information. They don't give you compressor flow maps all the time. So that's not necessarily the fault of the consumer again. That's back to people had been trained to just be like, oh, so and so's got 76s on their car. I want 76s on my car. Okay, cool. So that's a, oh, sorry, I got...

No, I wasn't here. I wasn't here.

It's stuff that people need to know, because there's way more technical sides to it than, like you said, just the size of the housing.

There is, yeah. And it's not wrong. Like, I'm not trying to... I hope it doesn't come off as belittling to people that don't know those things. That's not, like...

Well, there's levels to this as well.

There is, totally. And not everybody needs to get so deep in the weeds on it, I suppose. Right. In today's car world, this probably goes deeper than just car world, right? Like, in today's world, everybody has access to information and has the ability to put out information in a way that wasn't the same way 10 years ago, you know? So now, like, you can say something online, and I don't know. You mentioned that I'm not on social media all that terribly much, and you're right. Probably more than what I should be even still, I think, from a distraction basis.

But every time I see it, I'm like, he's not working.

Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. But if I say something, I want it to mean something. Maybe that means something is funny sometimes. But if I don't know what I'm talking about, I'm not going to talk about it. I'm not going to say it. And I don't necessarily... I think that happens a lot nowadays, where people want to sound intelligent about a topic. And maybe, unfortunately, that's kind of a little bit of a misleading to somebody who's genuinely wanting to learn, but they're maybe learning not the right stuff.

Well, have you ever seen anybody ask a question on social media? They get just like... Sometimes they're acting like they're complete morons because they don't know this information. They came here for information. You know, and you guys are just tearing them down. How about just give them the information they're looking for?

Sure.

But you're really good about that. Every time I'm... Because I'm in the Viper forums, because I take pictures of pretty vipers. And every once in a while, somebody will ask a question, and you'll go, I can't remember what the topic was, but you went really in-depth on one. Like, it was like the length of this table. Like, you really gave... Like, I think I actually might have been relating to Kratos. Somebody was asking about Kratos, and you just were like, there's a bunch of people putting out wrong information about it, you're like, all right, I have to address this, and it was...

Okay, yeah.

But no, you're really good about that. And I think, back to your point, it's like if you're gonna put something out there, you want it to be of value, whether it's entertainment value or educational value.

Yeah, well, and again, back to the idea that we're all... If you're in the car realm, you're in here because it became a hobby, right? It's a passion thing. You're supposed to be having fun with it. And I don't want to see it turn not fun for people. And following bad information usually ends to not fun. So that being said, you can lead a horse to water, right? So on the ethanol topic, that's plenty of times that comes up, and you try to glean a little bit of insight to people of, like, look, I have made these mistakes. I'm trying to tell you that you should look at this in maybe a different way, because it might help you. If you don't want to, that's okay. I'm not going to be mad at them. There's no reason, no skin off my back, I guess. But you want to try to save people from themselves sometimes.

Well, I think that if you have a passion for cars, what it really is, you just hate money.

You just don't want to have it.

So it's okay to make some mistakes. You just like to burn it. It's fine. Yeah.

Well, and some people have to learn by mistakes. And those are some of the most valuable lessons. They tend to sting more, and you remember them better. But it's never a bad idea if you can glean a little from somebody who's been there and has been down that road and is willing to share what they found. So, that's my thought on it.

What's the most valuable lesson you've had in this little journey? I'm sure you've had one once a week.

That is... wow.

You're going to shy away from it.

No, no. It's just like, where would I start?

We get real deep on this podcast here.

Yeah, yeah. No kidding.

I've been listening to Lex Friedman again, and I'm like, all right, I'm feeling like his interview style today. Dark and mysterious.

Yeah, right, right, right. Man, my brain goes to a couple of different things, and I don't know what's the right avenue if there is a right or wrong.

We'll come back a few more episodes. Each episode will have one highlight mistake.

Yeah, no. I mean, so there's a whole slew of technical ones, sure. There's a whole slew of business ones, and those are a lot of hard lessons to learn there.

The business ones are... There's a lot of shops that have come up and around the last five years, and there's growing paints to that, for sure.

Oh, no doubt. Yeah. You know, I think that's another thing, because it is, like, I can tell you, I didn't dream of owning a business necessarily when I was growing up. Like, I love cars. That's awesome, you know? But it wasn't necessarily like, oh, man, I need to own a shop. Like, not really. It just kind of took that direction, I guess. Hard lessons, there's just so many on the technical side of things. Paying attention, maybe one of the, maybe surmising lots of them into like one core idea is, when you've been doing this long enough, and if you've surrounded yourself with the right people as a group to look at a problem, I think it's easy to talk yourself out of the problem existing sometimes. Like, you know, that's what you want to do, right? Like, oh no, it's probably fine kind of thing. But I think trusting that instinct is really important because you get a sense for when things are right. You know, we've fired things up sometimes, and you can hear it be like, man, I don't know. I don't know. I don't think that's right. And then you go through the proper diagnostic steps, and maybe you find something before it becomes a real problem. Sometimes that's hard to do just from pure and plain and simple excitement about the project. Like, no, I'm ready. Like, I want to get it on the dino. But you got to slowly roll a little bit. And I think for us, it pays off to be more methodical about it than cowboy at that point. And that doesn't mean that's going to be right for everybody. But for us, that works out a lot better.

Gotcha. Don't rush to be a cowboy. That's kind of like the idea there.

I was thinking take your time, do it right.

Yeah, that's similar.

No, that's going to be my T-shirt, sorry. A lot of T-shirt ideas today. Don't rush to be a cowboy.

I still think more bigger is the one. We should trademark that before he gets ahold of it.

I'll sell it to you. That's why he was on his phone earlier. He trademarked it.

Right, right. It's already handled.

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This is what really intrigues me. The only turbos I have are on my now turbo coupe and my diesel truck, right? But I love this idea of dial the boost, right? So even now with this tuning that I'm doing, that car also has a pump gas tune, but I need to pulley way up. So not that I can't do it in a heartbeat. It's pretty easy at this point, but I would love to be able to go, okay, let's put it on kill. Let's put it on pump. Let's put it on this. That's what really intrigues me. And then someday I may have a turbo car, but would that work for what you guys do here, too? You could have a street car that could also run this. You just have to dial it in for that application.

So like in the context of our Gen 5 Vipers, for instance, they're flex fuel cars, and I know that's a very generic term at this point. Okay, cool. It can switch between gasoline or ethanol as its heart contents. Wonderful. We take that, and what we do is we have what we call a power request knob, PRK, in the glove box. So there's 10 available positions on that switch, and it is effectively a peak power and ramp control device at that point in one. So if you're thinking, man, I want to wick this thing up really, really hard, I needed to get to a lot of power and get there fast, then okay, turn this thing up. Or if it's getting into the TC a bunch, or the surface isn't there, or whatever's going on, we'll just dial it back. Whatever you do on that, the ECU is making the final call as to what's an allowable amount of power to be made based on what fuel is in the car. So if you were to have it turned up to 10 tenths and you're on pure 1R, and the ECU knows that, and then you go and you run that thing bone dry, and then you go put pump gas in it, you can leave it on 10 tenths. It's just gonna go as aggressively and as high as what it can for what it knows, whatever. I've told it is okay on pump gas at that point in time. So no mechanical changes in the car whatsoever, just dial the knob kind of thing.

I want that.

Yeah, it's really cool, especially when it's in the glove box, and then the driver's like, hey, can you click that for me? It's like, yeah, you feel really cool as a passenger. Right, right, really fun.

I just tuned it.

You're like flight control over there.

Well, at Power Cruise, I got a ride in a tin can, a Civic, and the guy's like, hey, pull up that laptop. We're literally on track, about to go do a second lap. And then he's trying to have me adjust some safety parameters or whatever, and I'm like, and then they kick us off the track because I wanted to Sylvia's crash, which was sad, but I was like, I was about to be a tuner for a second. I was so excited, Honda and a laptop. I was like, oh man, this is perfect.

I have a laptop over here. If you want to press button so you can like.

Yeah, sure, sure.

I can just sit you in the passenger seat, you can just cram in there.

Just jam away, yeah.

Geez. I know we're going to end up doing a Minnesota goodbye because, you know, given where we're at, but we did just cross that two hour mark. What? Yeah, time flies.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah. Okay. Damn, let's pop.

Nobody is still watching.

Oh yeah.

I'm sure there's plenty watching.

That's making fun of me, not you guys.

I think it was a pretty good conversation.

Yeah.

I think it went pretty well. I didn't get bored at any point. Yeah, I'm wicked up on this rain, so. Oh, there you go. But no, Dan, do you want to pop the usual three?

Yeah, this is going to be exciting, I think. So at the end of every episode, we like to ask our guest to pick three cars. You have to pick a track car, a daily driver, and a show car. You have an unlimited budget, build whatever you want, which in your head I'm sure is endless opportunities going on up there. But if you could pick three cars for us, what are you picking? Wow.

You know, I remember you prepped me on that a little bit, and I put about zero thought into it. So this is good. This is off the hip. Race car, or track car, you said, actually. Track car, daily, show car. Yep.

And they technically could all three be race cars.

Which is what Nth Moto builds are, I suppose.

Yeah, that's all we do. Man. I mean, Viper is for sure my track car, race car. Like, I just... the thrill that those cars deliver is... it's just different, man. I mean, you've experienced some of it.

We're going to have to arrange me a ride in one of these cars here. We're going to have to get that worked out.

Yeah, it's... and not like Minnesota goodbye, right? Not to go too far down that, but like I... I just talked to a guy today. We get a lot of customers that have Huracans or GTRs that are like, oh, I've heard these are cool. I want to try one out. And like, if afforded the opportunity, you know, we try to get them in a car, either with us or with someone, and it's usually the same reaction. They're like, it's so fast. You know, like, well, it's... like, you have a fast car also. It's not that it's faster or cooler or whatever, but, like, the experience of the delivery is so different that it's just a really cool experience.

What, gear's really fun?

Yeah, yeah, no, it's great. So that's kind of a given for me, I think.

What configuration, though?

Yeah, drag car.

Okay.

Here's the deal, like, on that side of it. I have all the respect in the world for the road race stuff. Like, I mean, I think it's amazing. It's brutally punishing on the cars. I think it's so cool that they can endure that. The first road course ride I ever was in was in a Viper Competition Coupe, which is a real race car, with Lee Saunders driving at Sebring, which Lee is a multiple-time Trans Am winner in one of his other Vipers. And, like, I will never forget coming down front straight, coming to Corner 1, and looking at this and thinking, like, what are we doing? And just thinking, like, that this is over. And the car just goes, whoop, like, around the corner, into the brakes, and this, and, like, man, and whatever. We make it three laps in, and it goes through Corner 1, Sebring, if you're familiar with it, is a relatively bumpy track. Very. Middle of Corner 1, the thing steps, and it's just this little wrist flick and grab it. And then, like, he shifts up, he's like, Tires are getting a little greasy. You know, I'm like, Yes, of course they are, you know? So that was a fascinating experience. I think it's really, really cool.

Sebring at that, too.

Yeah.

That's crazy.

Yeah, that was rough. I mean, that was a great, I guess a great break-in. I don't know. But the half mile stuff, really, really high-speed, cool. Two plus Gs, and still pulling over a G at 200 miles an hour. I think that's where it's at. Yeah. That Excel, that is like, it hits you, and it's just like this adrenaline rush through you. Oh, man, it's just, I can't, and it's not even fast compared to what some people have out there, right? So I just can't imagine, but it's just really cool. So, okay, there's that.

So you said quarter mile, then, right? Okay, gotcha.

Yep. Gotcha. daily or show car? I'm not a much of a car show person, and what I mean by that is I like to go and walk them and see pretty stuff. I love, back to the 50s is probably my favorite. I love that era of stuff. We have a 62 Imperial that is our go-get dinner and have ice cream car and...

I've seen that car before.

Oh man, it's like that era of car is so cool that designers had the willingness to do the most bizarro... Things had an oval steering wheel. It's not even like good to drive with, you know? But like you go to like catch it with your knee or something, which I'll do, and I'm like, oh, it's not even there, you know? And so it's just, they were just so cool about what they were building back then. And every single year is different, like especially in those cars, like 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, they are extremely identifiable changes amongst them. And like you look at that in today, and nowadays companies would be like, no way, like that is a huge money loser, we can't do it. But back then, that was the norm. And like people expected it. And it's so like, I just have a lot of passion for like that, that era in Americana and the craftsmanship that went into those cars, and the idea of like, let's make it harder. I don't care. It's just cool, you know? So I really like that. So as the show car thing, I would probably say like, I'm good with our Imperial. I think that's awesome. You know, this stuff is super cool. Well, when you show up to car shows in it, it's 50-50. Most of the time, it's 50-50 on whether you kind of get like a little bit of the side-eye sometimes. I think that's just in the exotic market. Not trying to say this is exotic, but like back when in the Lambo era and stuff like that, like, I don't know, the reaction isn't the same. In old car stuff, everybody's your best friend. Everybody just wants to smile. Everybody just wants to tell you about what great memories it gives them. And like, that brings me so much joy to see people probably see that car and have a flashback of maybe when they were in high school and that was like what their doctor had or something, you know, whatever that might be. I think that's really, really cool.

Yeah, I feel the same way. He actually said that to me the other day. He's like, you just have fun in any kind of old car. It doesn't really matter.

Yes.

Doesn't necessarily have to be a 40.

Yeah.

It doesn't do anything good, you know? It's just like, it's just amazing and cool and fun.

Yeah. Yeah.

That car does ride amazing, though, by the way. So there is that. Okay. And then, daily. Aye, aye, aye.

This is always an interesting one.

Yeah. Yeah.

Sometimes people will be like, Koenigsegg Regera, and then other people are like, any old truck rep.

I have a Cummins Ram. I love that thing. Modern day pickups have become so good. They do anything. You can go to date night, you can haul stuff, you can daily it. They get pretty good mileage in the diesel stuff. The logical side of me is probably like, yeah, I think that's probably the road I would head down.

Can Dodge finally build an automatic transmission yet?

I don't know, man. It's hanging in there for now. So I don't want to...

I know you deal with a lot of TR6060 stuff, but those Dodge Rams, what, that like 90s version with the bubble nose on the front there? It wasn't a matter of if your transmission was going to go out.

People tell me the same thing now. I also watch people that complain about transmission survivability tow 25,000-pound trailers at 85 miles an hour for 17 hours straight. And they're like, man, the trans didn't live. Like, really, crazy, you know?

That would be the category I fall into.

Okay, but I'm not saying you're wrong for that either. I'm just like, yeah, uh-huh. So maybe there's some of that, too, but, you know, I'm a Mopar guy. I actually really like... I gotta be careful with this. Where my head was going, I'm like, people are not gonna like this. I really like the Scat Pack chargers. I like the charger. I think it's a cool car. I like the wide body cars. I think they're really cool. Hellcats are neat. They're a lot of fun to drive. I'm okay telling you I don't need that for a daily.

You're a charger over challenger guy, because that's where I fall in that place too.

Yeah, yeah. I think the challenger is cool. It's not... It's giant and heavy still, and it's impractical also. So, like, it just doesn't really...

It sounds like Dodge.

Well, yeah, it doesn't check any box for me in any regard on that. I'm not saying... I think they look cool. That was my favorite retro body stuff when that came out. It also... How long has that body existed? Like, 40 years? I'm sorry.

In the current generation. When did it come? It came back 2008 in the current style.

I also was very much in love with it when it came out, but I feel like they beat it to death now at this point.

It's lived its life this time, the letter roll. But the Scat Pack cars, I think, are really cool. The 6.4 motor, I think it's a neat engine.

So, wide body Scat Pack, huh?

Yeah, I guess, actually, if I would roll it back, like they did the Swinger Edition car. So they did these couple of special editions right at the last run of those. And the Swinger, they did in the, if you did an F5 green, it got the gold tail stripe on it, like the goldish color wheels and wood grain interior. So it was like 70s Swinger, which was a Dart thing. So that doesn't make sense. But nevertheless, I think that would probably be one. The Hemi car crowd is not one that I really get involved with on the aftermarket side of things, even though we did a bunch of TRX stuff and whatnot, but yeah, that's...

So it's Catback Chargers. He's the one that's running these takeovers down into intersections.

See, that's right. wait, and I'm like, see, but that's the thing. It's like, it's an association. Even though you're joking about it in that regard, that's what people think of when they think of those cars, right? I don't, that kind of bothers me. Like, I don't like that, because I don't agree with any of that stuff. I think it's completely silly. And I think it's such a bummer that that car became so associated with that, that that alone would make me not want one.

There's a lot of people like that.

Ironic, we have a Charger, I have a Charger RT that like we drive as a daily. So I guess that kind of counts, but it's not looked at the same way. It's just a lowly RT, you know, nobody cares.

I used to have a V6 all wheel drive one. I love that car to death. I desperately, desperately want a Hellcat still. Even though there's, we're coming up on episode 100, I've talked to so many different people on different walks of life, unlimited budget, if I could have a 10 car garage, a Hellcat would be one of my first purchases still.

I don't think you're wrong for that.

It's just stupid fun, it sucks at everything.

That's not true, they're really good at doing burnouts.

That's what I'm saying, it's just stupid fun.

Yeah, and the smile factor is pretty high on that thing. You do probably have to deal with everybody and their brother wanting to race you no matter where you are, no matter what you're doing.

When I first built my orange car, the first mission was just beat Hellcats. That was step one, and then we've gone up from there.

I will let you have one last Ford question.

No, I don't really have any.

No? No, not a single GT question. It's one of my favorite cars.

I really wanted to touch on it.

I just associated you with the Viper guy, and I just blinders on, man.

Oh man, GTs are one of my favorite cars.

I also love them. They just seem unobtainable for me at this point.

Well, that's welcome to the rest of the world probably. Not many people can have them anymore. So kudos to those that were smart enough to grab one when they could. But yeah, one of the coolest cars from a driving perspective, it's just killer. It's a killer car at a lot of things, which is what's so crazy, because you look at one, you're like, that car is useless. You know, like it goes fast, and that's all it does. They're really comfortable. They drive down the road great. You can't put anything in it. So that's kind of a bummer. Like your duffel bag in it.

It's a super car problem.

Yeah, it just kind of comes to the territory. But what a killer car. So cool that Ford did that. And I'm one of the guys that like I love the 0506 cars. Like that gen is where it's at. The newer car, I think it's really cool. I don't...

It's just not it.

I don't...

Yeah.

I would love to ride in one someday to experience it. It's just not... I just don't think it's for me. Even though I can appreciate so much of it that it's like, they looked at it at this like tactical spearhead kind of thing. And I don't know. It's just not there for me.

What Ford was doing in the early 2000s was awesome. I mean, we have the Terminator Cobra, the Ford GT. Like, it was...

The Cobra R.

Yeah. Yep. It was like a golden era of awesome, you know? Yes. People always talk about that Hellcat wine. I was like, have you really listened to a Terminator?

Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that was a long... And there was a time when a Steggy-ported Stage 5 on a 150-kick Terminator was like, that was an it car, man. Like, you were one of the top of the food chain boys. I used to love, in Woodward Avenue, actually, Dream Cruise is coming up this weekend.

I know. I want to go to that sometime. It's on my bucket list. Have you ever done it? I love Detroit. No.

Oh, my gosh.

But Michigan in general, just the Motor City stuff, I've spent some time in Michigan and in Detroit area, and I love it.

You should leave now and just go. All right. Because honestly, the week leading up to the weekend is, that's where it's at.

Yeah.

Because you don't have the crazy crowd. The people that are out for the fun are out then. You got to know where to be and all that kind of stuff. But the car watching, man, you can lawn chair it and just sit, and you're going to see so much stuff.

I have an 86 ASE McClearen Capri Coupe.

Okay.

And there's not very many of them made. No. There's a big group of them in Michigan, and they've been trying to get me to come every year to go out to cruise with them.

You're ridiculous for not doing it.

I know. I got it. I got it.

You really... I've knocked you down a peg on my ladder now.

And that's this week, you said?

Yeah, this weekend. This weekend in Michigan.

Where are we going?

Dude, I'm telling you, it's on... I have this hometown pride thing for it for me, so I acknowledge that, and I'm not trying to let that get in the way. But it is just a whole nother level of car event. It's over a million people, I think, a day. And it's like, it's two... It's a divided boulevard, four lanes each way. It will be completely jam-packed with anything and everything you can imagine automotive for many miles, many miles. Like, you will not see everything. It's impossible. And then it gets more and more radical as the night goes on, and then they try to kick everybody out, and then things come back and all of that. I mean, it's an amazing experience. If you're a car person, you're car people, like, it needs to be on your list of something to go do.

Get the RV ready.

All right. This next year, we'll put it on the list. I've been trying to get you guys to go to Michigan on a rally. I was like, you need to do the F-150 plant tour. We got to go to Detroit, see the abandoned buildings, the old plants, the Packard plant, like, all this stuff that's... Oh, my God, it's so cool.

And if you haven't been, the Henry Ford, like, the museum is crazy to go through. Like, it's so neat.

You don't even have to be in the Fords to just... I mean, watching how they build current trucks and things like that, do the factory tour, it's really neat. Yeah.

All right. Last Minnesota goodbye question, just because he just brought it up with rallies. So episode 58 or 59, we had the drag drive repeat guys on.

Okay.

Is there ever going to be an is there somebody that's ever going to do a drag and drive viper? Is that kind of like a customer thing?

I'm sure it'll happen.

Okay. Somebody just has to want it basically.

Yeah.

Gotcha.

I feel like it fits the bill for that, right? It's got a truck motor so you can put a hitch on it and pull your trailer.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Put your Cummins on the back of it and pull it.

No.

Oh, no. Yeah, no.

Well, what did you say? Over 2000 foot pounds of torque?

Yeah. I mean, the big deal with most of those races is the safety requirements. Just plain and simple. That's what we run into as a predicament for most of it, because you can typically only go as fast as what your NHRA is certified to at that point. So technically, anything that we have, the lowest ET is certified to 750 or 850. That's fine, but if you have a car that can go low 7s, but you're stuck going 850s, it's not that exciting. Yeah. So that's, and I know that sounds like a crappy excuse because it is an excuse, but that's kind of the reality of it, because there's not that many people that want to put the time and expense into putting enough chassis work into one of these to make it legal to run what the car can actually run. So that's probably the biggest encumbrance there.

That would be cool to see one day.

Yeah, I agree.

But yeah, when it gets to rules, that's, again, that's what makes things difficult in any regard. Like for example, we were talking FL2K earlier.

Yeah, yep.

So that makes sense.

And just so I'm overly clear, I'm not saying that those events are bad because they have them. That's not it. It's just the reality of what we're facing.

That's all. You have to take a different approach. Yeah, that's all it is. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, it's just a different type of development. So, well, perfect. On that note, where can everybody find you? Or not find you? No home addresses. We've had that before.

No. Yeah, we're on Facebook, we're on Instagram, Nth Moto. We have a YouTube channel. We're trying to do better about our social media presence.

I've been loving your recent stuff.

Thank you.

The suspension one was really cool.

Yeah, that's great. Chris Anderson does the photography work on that stuff. We've worked with him for a long, long time now, and he's great, really, really great guy. And we're trying to do a better job of showing a little bit more of what we do. So, yeah.

Sweet. That's super cool. And then, Dan, as for you?

You can find us at Gunna Garage with two Ns. I like how you're like mouthing that as I say it, because you're like, say it right, say it right.

Did it correct.

No, I forget to put two Ns on that, so he's like, nobody's going to find you.

Yeah. It's very clear. And as for me, you guys have made it this far in today's episode, so you know where you're at. Aaron, thank you very much for making this happen, finally.

Thank you, guys.

It was a blast. And Dan, thanks for existing, and we'll see you all next time.