195. Zach Denney on ECUMaster USA, Tracking Cars and Developing Strategies For Drag Racing

This episode is brought to you by 6XD Gearbox.

More on them later.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minoxide podcast.

I'm your host, Harris, aka Minoxide,

man of many automotive aspirations,

and we are back in Texas.

I'm so happy to be in Texas.

I'm here for Texas 2K, obviously,

so that's the big thing to be here for.

But nonetheless, another reason I'm here

is for our guest today, Zach Denney.

Go ahead, tell us a little bit about yourself,

ECU master at USA, and all the fun stuff we got going on here.

We were just hanging out for about an hour, hour and a half.

There's plenty to talk about here, so just go ahead.

Yeah, I guess kind of go all the way back,

origin story with my automotive habit.

Grew up reading Road and Track.

My dad is big into journalism and poetry,

but also engineering-minded,

and so he kind of blended the two.

So we always had good car magazines.

There were some great writers in the 90s and the 80s.

So I kind of grew up on automotive journalism

and fell in love with cars.

I might have always had a project or two laying around,

and kind of fell in love with the storytelling

and the experiential aspect of cars.

And then I got obsessed with statistics,

and when the Viper first came out,

I could tell you every stat about it.

And as soon as I was able to buy something to work on,

in fact, it's actually in the background on that lift

right there, it was my first cars,

that 1990 Supra that I've had since 2000.

We kind of worked on stuff because we had to,

because we had not as nice older cars

and a bunch of Corollas and stuff that we limped

and stuffed oil into and poured oil out of

and burned oil and did other things with.

But yeah, just lifelong automotive enthusiast

kind of ran in the family a little bit,

but I've taken it, I think, quite a bit further

than anybody else in the family has.

To say further is kind of an understatement.

All the stuff in here is kind of like,

I'm over here just looking at,

what year's the ACR, 16?

Yeah. 16, oh yeah, press card, that's right.

So you got the press card,

and you said, let's start with Civics.

Yeah. What's the story with those?

I'm just an idiot.

I really like.

And again, I think that we all get nostalgic

for certain times in our lives.

And I got to live through some really special,

I think inflection points in the automotive hobby

where I was already in the street racing scene

when Fast and Furious came out.

And so we all kind of made fun of it a little bit

because it's obviously it's Hollywood.

It's not entirely realistic,

but it got more right than I got.

Are you street racing at that point in your life?

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, don't tell my parents.

Yeah, yeah.

But it's just why I'm the fourth kid.

The three older sisters and the fact that they let

a 17-year-old leave the house on a Friday night

with a not fast, fast car,

but not really tell them where I was going.

We didn't really have cell phones.

I was just kind of like a latchkey kid at that point.

I was like, hey, I'll see you tomorrow.

And yeah, but those were the tollways

were pretty new in Dallas.

Dallas was not as populated as it is now.

And that was back when like a stock twin turbo super

with the wastegate line pulled

and some toluene mixed in with pump gas

and a little Marvel mystery oil.

I think that was,

I broke my 200 mile an hour cherry

on, you know, President Bush phrasing George Bush,

whole way.

That's crazy.

Amazing.

You broke that person.

Yeah, but like a stock twin turbo super

could even like touch 200 miles an hour as wild.

It took a long, long time.

But yeah, but I was able to, you know,

I was already in kind of the scene at that point.

And then the movies came out

and really just added fuel to the fire.

And then, you know,

the nineties tuner scene had been around,

but really that was a huge inflection point.

And so, yeah, I just I'd never seen somebody

build all three of the heist civics, right?

I always thought they were kind of like

the least appreciated car in the movie.

And I've seen people build like one,

but the visual impact of seeing all three of them

with the underglow blaring is pretty funny.

So I need to actually,

I need to shoot a commercial for ECU master with those.

And I'll probably sell them off

to somebody to enjoy them.

Because they'd be so cool.

Yeah, it just takes a lot of room to store them.

Like somebody needs a pretty big warehouse or shop

or, you know, play garage to store all those.

So they're all built to like us.

Like how exactly are they built?

The same way the movie cars were,

which is to say not at all.

Okay. Yeah. So like if you,

I think it was Craig Lieberman,

he kind of gave the rundown on the heist civics.

He's like, yeah, they had like back then,

even like a $50 eBay exhaust

and like maybe coil over sleeves.

And they got some wheels that nobody could sell

because they're like a weird gold color.

And they had a whole container full

and they couldn't sell.

I had to like make some inkeys look

like the wheels that were in the movie.

But yeah, there's like nothing done.

Like a $50 eBay muffler,

like some of them were automatic,

some were manual,

some were repainted from whatever to black.

And then some had sunroof, some didn't.

So it's kind of like there is no original car

because none of the originals were all the same.

Right. Brought to you by eBay motors, right?

100% even back then, right?

They like ran out of budget all of the hero cars.

And so the highest cars were like last in line.

They got like $50 eBay mufflers and that's it.

Probably didn't even get an intake.

So you said, how old were you

when you got the, that would be a mark three, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I bought that when I was,

I can't remember if I was 16 or 17.

Okay.

But like, yeah, I think they're year 2000.

So you've kept it all these years, huh?

How many miles are on that at this point?

Not as many as there should be

because it's been a long time broken.

Yeah.

And there were several years where like, you know,

I started engine swapping it from the 7M to a 1J

and life just got in the way with college and work

and whatever else.

And it kind of sat and got dusty for three or four years.

So it's had periods, but it's kind of cool that like,

you know, I've seen a lot of people regret

selling their first car and I've read that story.

And at times it didn't really, it's a mark three.

If it was a mark four,

there would have been plenty of points in my life

where I could have used the money

and it probably would have been sold, right?

Because those cars have been way more valuable.

The mark three, I paid actually $2,700 for that,

found it in the Dallas Morning News

back when print ads were a real thing.

And then suckered my dad into going with me to look at it.

Some dude had clearly just bought it at auction,

still had some other dudes like Name Tag in the back,

named Bubba.

And I get the car, start putting a stereo in it

because I was a big stereo nut

and found like $540 and 20s stuffed into the console.

It's okay, like 20% refund on it

because some guys are, you know,

the world's worst weed dealer, so, yeah.

So what point does ECU master come into?

I mean, we're jumping way ahead here at this point,

but and we can come back at some point,

but at what point does ECU master come into play?

Yeah.

So I went back to engineering school in my late 20s,

jumped on the Formula SAE team,

like the founding year for the University of North Texas

North Texas, started at Texas Tech

and started engineering school there

and then switched to UNT later

then dropped out for a while

and worked in racing shops and other stuff,

but and then, yeah, I had an internship at Peterbilt.

I was working in their electrical engineering department

and, you know, kind of realized

like the starting offers weren't amazing

and I was stuck in a cubicle

and nobody really wanted to be there

and you didn't get to do anything like, you know,

making tail head harnesses for Peterbilt

is only exciting for so long.

But I was doing all the electrical

for the Formula SAE team

and I used like a very do-it-yourself ECU

and it was not great.

The documentation was really like hard to decipher

and you know, I was like, there's gotta be something better

that doesn't require as much fiddling as this.

Like I don't want something that's this,

you know, I shouldn't be getting inside the ECU

to adjust something physically, right?

Should be able to do that with a keyboard

and yeah, just on a whim,

like some guy mentioned something about like a piggyback

that was made by a company called ECU Master.

And so I looked at the company

and I was like, oh, they have a standalone.

So I looked at it and like started digging a little bit,

sent him a nice email.

Yeah, I think one of my friends,

I convinced him to get one

and they started playing with it.

They liked it and then I got one

and then basically with a $40,000 loan

for my brother-in-law,

he bought in, you know, a small percentage

of the company and later let me buy him out

for like not much at all basically,

just kind of a, we wanted to get you going type deal.

Yeah, start running it out of a bedroom

in a house I rented for college in Denton.

And yeah, like, but it all started

was just like, hey, I want to be your guy in North America.

Can I be your guy?

And that was basically it.

So I'm actually curious,

I've never asked this question before,

but of other people, but more so,

how does that kind of international relationship work?

Do you basically just oversee all of the states

or like how exactly does that, I guess, work overall?

Yeah, so from the beginning, you know,

if we're putting up money to invest in this thing

and spend money on marketing and everything else,

we wanted to have some kind of

contractual territorial agreement.

And so that was a big deal for me was to get,

you know, exclusive distribution for North America

because, you know, our Canadian friends

have the same interests we do.

They just get to import cooler stuff earlier than we do.

Was that 10 years?

15, I think for Canada and then 25 for us.

Yeah.

So yeah, I wanted exclusive distribution

with the territory agreement

because if we're going to invest real money,

like you have to be able to make sure that,

you know, nobody's dumping or trying to steal your,

you know, somebody opens up shop in the other side

of the country, there'd be a huge, huge blow.

Yeah, so that was the big deal.

But yeah, we've worked hand in hand,

like, you know, they respond to our needs

and, you know, we're talking to customers every day,

so they appreciate the insight we give them.

And also, as you've seen,

walking through the facility here,

we make a lot of products that are kind of bespoke

for this market to meet the needs here.

So we are a manufacturer,

but you're basically a value add distributor.

Gotcha, okay, so let's touch on that.

So you're obviously doing the distributing side of things.

Kind of go into the details of everything

that you do as a kind of like a value add.

The old untested mics.

Yeah.

But yeah, what are the additional things?

So you're distributing for ECU Master at this point.

What's the rest of,

what are the rest of the things

that you're doing out of this facility here?

Yeah, so we actually distribute for three companies.

We talk about ECU Master the most

because that's the largest in revenue.

And that's the one that we make the most

value add products for.

I'll get back to that in a minute.

We also distribute as of just for just over a year now,

Delta ABS, so it's a Motorsport ABS system.

And that one's really, really neat to me

because there's not many other products like it, right?

Our biggest competitor there is gonna be

like a Bosch Motorsport like M4 system,

which is twice the price

and not as easy to buy.

People don't have them on the shelf.

How does it compare actually?

I'm actually curious.

Yeah, Bosch is all I've ever really heard of before.

Is there, is that,

I understand nothing about that, Mark,

but kind of go into the details

on how those compare, I guess.

Yeah, so fundamental difference

between Motorsport ABS and streetcar ABS,

you know, car makers don't want to get sued.

So they're not trying to stop you as fast as possible.

Despite what you think,

they're actually trying to keep you straight, right?

And keep you stable and the car doesn't do weird things.

But if I'm in a race car

and I'm pitching the car in

and I've got some slip angle,

I want it to keep maintaining that slip angle

if I get on the brakes.

Ideally, right?

I don't want it to yaw me around and do weird stuff, right?

So Motorsport ABS has a different mission,

which is we're just gonna get this thing stopped

as fast as physically possible.

So completely different programming there.

The, you know, and Bosch stuff

by every description explanation experience

I've heard is fantastic stuff.

I think that, you know,

I've seen some data overlays

and our stuff works just as well.

And then the actual physical hardware

of our ABS block,

it actually has larger accumulators.

So it has a little more reserve capacity in terms of volume.

So if you have a very large volume braking system,

you can actually overrun the ABS.

You can actually push enough fluid through it

that it cannot accept any more capacity

and release the brakes.

So you can actually overdrive ABS

in some situations it's not common,

but in terms of physical differences,

that's probably the only one I could think of.

Okay.

So, okay, so Delta ABS as well is called.

Okay, so you distribute for them

and then what's the rest of the?

And then Verkline is another Polish company.

So EC master is Polish, Verkline is Polish,

Delta ABS is in the UK.

Okay.

Verkline, they do tubular subframes,

like I would guarantee that every fast GTR at TX2K right now

has a Verkline subframe in it front and rear.

So on that car, they don't change the kinematics

but they do shave about 50 pounds off the car.

And they allow you to actually remove the transmission

without pulling the whole subframe on the road car.

You get a little more access to stuff.

Different applications have different kinematics.

They have drag subframe for the A90 Supra,

road racing subframe for the A90 Supra arms.

We have a 15-inch kit for the Lamborghini R8 platform

so you can run strange carbon brakes

and 15-inch wheels on that one.

That's like billet uprights and arms.

It's really, really gorgeous.

But anything from like rallying to road racing

to fast straight line stuff,

Verkline does tubular subframes and components for that.

Okay.

Is that all distributors are doing this one?

You said there's a four of them?

But they're also doing your own development on the side

as well, right?

Cause I saw a bunch of 3D printers back there

which even the latest addition,

the HDD is the new one, right?

I think so, yeah.

I think so, yeah, whatever.

But so you're doing a lot with that.

What does the development look like for you?

What are you making out of here?

And what's that all look like?

Yeah, so when we started,

the first plug and play adapters we made

were god-awful to make.

Cause we take, sometimes I would even buy a stock ECU

cause I didn't know how to buy the connectors yet.

I would desolder the whole connector off of the thing

and straighten out every terminal,

hand solder a wire to each terminal that needed one.

And then you use like a hot glue gun

and hot melted adhesive to pot the thing,

then terminate each of them where they needed to go

then check every single one to the multimeter.

It took hours and hours and hours

to make a plug and play.

They didn't look consistent.

The lengths were hard to get consistent.

Wasn't ideal.

And then now we 3D print housings

out of carbon fiber reinforced filament.

We do a little heat inserted brass threaded inserts.

They assemble nicely.

They're all done on a board.

We have a pretty nice way to not quite automate

but really reduce the labor in the soldering process.

And then I showed you our automatic cut strip crimp machine

that could spit out the leads for a plug and play.

It can make like 3,000 of those an hour

without a lot of oversight.

And then they're all like precise

to like a tenth of a millimeter in length.

The crimps are perfect.

So yeah, but you know, and in the beginning

it was just, you know, where did the wires need to go?

That's how you built a plug and play adapter.

And you kind of threw it under the dash somewhere

and zip tied it to something in a way you go.

And then now what we're doing

like our side-by-side products that we've done recently

will 3D scan the firewall, make a 3D printed housing

that drops exactly on the firewall,

uses factory hardware, the ECU bolts straight to that,

the harness is neat and tidy, just like doubles up

and connects.

And my goal for our side-by-side stuff

is you should be able to install a plug and play standalone

in about 30 to 45 minutes.

Which is just crazy to me, yeah.

And then it starts up in idols like normal

but then you can add as much as you want to, right?

You know, second rail of injectors,

flex fuel, boost per gear, boost per speed,

different maps, rolling anti-lag, launch control.

Yeah, touch on that.

Because we talked about that a little bit off-camera.

So basically you spend 30, 40 minutes

throwing a standalone in there.

And then you guys provide this map

or is that against something that was developed in Poland or?

Nope.

And anything branded WHP we make your side-by-side.

Gotcha, okay.

So those, we have a, you know,

3000 horsepower mainline hub dyno.

And so.

Yeah, that's right.

I forgot to ask you about that.

Yeah, so we bring in every vehicle we baseline it.

We measure all the sensors.

If we can get the data sheets for the sensors, great.

We'll use that.

But if, even if we get the data sheet,

we'll verify the sensors and make sure they're within range.

There's a lot of CAN bus reverse engineering

that goes into it now.

Fortunately, once you do a couple of models

from a manufacturer, if they're really nice,

they don't change too much between models.

If they're CAN-AM, good luck.

They seem to like have a different engineer

doing different things on every single model.

It just depends on the application.

Like the polarises are pretty easy

because it's a CVT trans, right?

Right, okay.

So you need to know what gear it's in

because we'll dumb down the throttle scaling in reverse.

If you don't have your seatbelt plugged in,

we'll dumb down the throttle scaling

or limit the speed.

Okay.

There's differential control,

the different four wheel drive modes,

all the lights, integration with the dash.

So now it's not just the point-to-point wiring

that's a big part of it,

but now it's all the CAN bus integration,

making the thing run right in all conditions.

If we're not fighting the same constraints as an OEM,

we can usually make it cold start a little bit better

and drive a little nicer when it's cold.

But yeah, it's really nice to have a very, very good baseline.

Like I told you, like you could,

with the Pro-R on our dyno, with our unit,

the stock ECU versus ours,

like you make a couple pulls,

it's gonna be within basically one to 2% power output

on either one, with it calibrated the way it is.

So we really wanna send the base map out

being something safe.

Somebody can optimize it from there for their situation,

but we're not gonna go nuts on 93 octane here

if somebody only has 91 octane available where they are.

When you get to a certain level in a build,

whether it be drag racing or drifting, road course

or just the badass street car,

you'll have to upgrade your transmission.

And when we're talking sequential transmissions,

there's no one on the planet

would have stronger gearbox than 6XD.

And the proof is in the pudding here, folks.

Half the FD field is rocking a 6XD

and even 3,000 horsepower vipers

have not been able to tame the best

that 6XD has to offer.

So if you're ready to take it up a notch,

go to 6XDgearbox.com

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on the planet could fit in your build.

Let's get back to the show.

When did you get into that market?

Uh, probably almost two years ago.

Okay, that market's just exploding right now.

It's super fun.

You know, we touched on an aside conversation

that, you know, the street car stuff is out of hand, right?

Like there's no, and I hate to be the one saying this

because I'm normally the guy

who would try to justify anything,

but a couple of thousand horsepower street car,

where do you use that and when and why?

But a 350 horsepower side-by-side

with 30 inches of suspension travel,

you can pack the whole family in and go jump over stuff.

Like, hell yeah.

It's kind of cool, right?

Exactly, it makes a great vacation.

Like you can use all your safety equipment,

wear helmets, wear gear,

put a good roll cage on it.

Like, you can mitigate safety

and have a lot of adventure and fun

and get a lot of thrills that, you know,

as much as I love street racing,

it's just not what it used to be.

Do you think 10, 15 years from now

we'll be having a conversation

about thousand horsepower side-by-sides?

They're already existing.

Are they?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, pretty regularly?

I know, again, I know pretty little about that argument.

Not at all.

You have to understand, like, you know,

sand rail's been around forever, right?

True, yeah.

They're hanging, you know, big blocks and LSes

off the back of these things

with a couple of turbos hanging off,

wheeling all the day long,

but side-by-sides are kind of just a cheaper sand rail

that's, you know, it's production-based.

So it's just a cheaper platform.

But one of our dealers, they've got a Pro-R motor.

This is a Leroux.

It's a Pro-R motor, XP900 rails.

I think it weighs like 1600-ish pounds

and with a compound turbo setup,

it made, like, nine-something

and they might have turned it up since then.

And, like, a shocking number of stock parts in it, actually.

I mean, stock blocks, stock head casting,

stock differential, you know,

like, really a surprising number of stock parts,

but, yeah, we're already at the 900 mark

and probably a little further out of it.

That's a two-liter engine.

Yeah, insane.

Speaking of light cars and lots of horse,

well, not lots of horsepower.

So what was that thing on the lift

over that purple thing with the crown rail thing?

What would you say that was called again?

It's a Deosio D962.

Okay.

So, again, there's a lot of variety here.

ACR, we got Chasers, we got RX7s.

How do you get into something like that?

So that was a friend who was going out of racing sale.

Okay.

So I had already purchased his FD years ago

because, again, he just didn't like working on cars.

And if you have really obscure road race shit,

like, you kind of need somebody to work on your stuff.

Right.

And so he just kind of lost interest

and he's like, yeah, it was much fun

putting sticky tires on my daily driver came in.

I was like, yeah, it's probably a better option.

It's like an all-in-one car.

So he basically like, you know, it needed some love.

And so I bought his membership to the track and a lift

and part of a spec Miata that we all shared

in the Deosio is like a package deal.

But I had to go through, well,

made one of my employees go through the whole fuel system

because I traded him a shifter car for it for labor.

But yeah, it's a little sports racer.

It's high boost of power.

They originally had a Yamaha motor,

but yeah, it's like a two lateral G out of the box

road race car.

Then I'm probably going to get it running,

make a couple of laps and like sell it

because there's a lot of fussing with a car like that.

The wing on that thing is stupid, by the way.

It's huge.

Yeah.

It's like a dinner table on the back.

I don't know how to drive an Aero car.

Yeah.

On track properly.

Like I don't, I don't really want to learn.

Like I'm at the point where like I'm very OK

with my limits as a driver.

Like I have fun going out and doing drifting,

but like do I want to win SCCA regionals or nationals?

Like I have zero interest in being that guy.

Well, it seems like you tick every box.

You got drifting, you got drag racing, you got road course.

Then you also got JDM in America and all that.

A little bit of German in there too.

Well, the drag racing is new for me

because I've never done any really.

OK.

Yeah, so got a friend.

What was your start?

Was it road course or drifting?

Like where'd you land when you were younger?

It was just fast street cars.

Just fast street cars, OK.

Yeah, just like trying to street race on George Bush

was kind of where I started,

which doesn't require a lot of driving skill, for honest.

And then you know, started doing some like

Lemons racing and road course stuff.

And then but that was kind of it.

And then, you know, got the drifting bug

because I enjoy the car control aspect of drifting.

I think that makes you better at every discipline in racing.

And it's not so serious, right?

Like people take track racing.

It's like trying to win a track day.

You don't win a track day.

But you know, Lemons racing is fun

because wheel to wheel racing is really fun.

Track days are not as fun to me

because it's not really wheel to wheel,

but drifting is wheel to wheel.

But it's not competitive

unless you want to join the competition, right?

So I think it's that wheel to wheel aspect

without it being too serious.

It means a lot of fun for drifting.

Interesting.

I always like to hear people's takes on that sort of stuff

because everybody kind of has like their favorite sports

that they land in and like, you'll die by drag racing,

you'll die by roads or circuit.

Like it's just kind of all of it.

What was your first drift car?

It's actually it's on the trailer right now.

We're going to take it at TX2K tomorrow.

It's what year is it?

2003, 350Z.

OK.

So the DE didn't make any power, but it had nitrous.

So at least 75 shot would wake it up.

And at that point, when I first got it,

it wasn't even like didn't have an angle kit.

They just cut the steering stops on it

to give it a little bit more.

And it's pretty learning on a car with very low angle

is challenging because your margins are razor thin.

If you throw Wisefab on something,

you have 70 degrees lock to lock.

I'm sorry, it doesn't take a lot of talent up front.

It's fun later, but I really think

that starting with some constraints is better.

And that's kind of what I did.

That's everybody.

Everybody that we've had on the show that talks about

drifting says just basically just get a seat, if anything.

Just start with the basics and then ramp up from there.

And I had the conversation probably eight times a year

where somebody comes up, I want to get into drifting.

I want to build something unique.

I'm going to stop you right there.

Those are two conflicting statements.

Do you want to get into drifting

or do you want to build something unique?

Because if you build something unique,

you're not going to learn anything about driving the car.

You're going to be stuck building

a weird thing that may never work.

If you really want to get into drifting,

buy something that anybody has parts for,

anybody knows how to drive and set up.

It's sustainable.

It's a good platform, like go get you an HR 350Z

and put a small angle kit on it and go to town

and hot-lap the piss out of it.

So then, again, bouncing a little bit all over the place,

but how do you develop through like your 20s?

And obviously you went back to school.

Yep.

How does the car set of things develop at that point?

I mean, how do you progress from the Supra

at that point?

I didn't. That's all I had.

Okay.

I think when did I get a daily driver?

Probably way too late.

Oh, were you daily driving the Supra?

For a long time, yeah.

Really? Okay.

I have a history of daily driving really terrible stuff.

Yeah, it's a theme.

And I think I might have had a crappy forerunner

for a long time.

And I say crappy because it's like one of the bad years.

And then had an 886 that I daily drove

for probably two years.

No AC, no power steering, no nothing.

And that thing was fun.

But it was like just cosmetically too bad

to like make it good again.

So I sold that down the road.

And then I had finally got a Tahoe, you know,

with whatever credit score I had at the time,

convinced somebody to give me a lot.

I think I had to print off a fake pay stub

because I was self-employed

and they didn't think I had any employment.

So I got a Tahoe and that was kind of like

the do all vehicle for a long time.

Yeah, but the Supra was just always in the background

and like when I started the business,

I kind of made that our showcase car a little bit

because I had an ECU on it and a single turbo

and you know, it made decent power.

So I kind of campaigned that and paraded it.

And then it's, you know, it's made appearances

here and there.

And what timeframe would that roughly be?

When like Tahoe timeframe?

Well, when did you start the business, I suppose?

2014.

2014, yeah.

So things start ramping up from there.

And was this technically your first business then?

Yeah, I mean, I had a shop in my early, early 20s

that I tried to run and, you know,

apparently starting a business without money

is not the best way to start a business.

And that's kind of where that ended up.

You know, so I was doing like, you know,

some mechanical work and, you know,

didn't have a customer base

and just didn't have any capital.

So it was just kind of a,

ended up being kind of a play shop that just didn't work.

So yeah, it was my first real attempt at a business.

Yeah.

Okay.

And then it's 2014-ish area.

So how did things start to scale then?

Before, I guess, did you start venturing in

and adding these other things to distribute for at that point?

Or is it just heads down just all ECU master

for a long time?

So I've always looked for other things to distribute

and it's only worked well a couple of times.

And so we tried, I went to Taiwan

and visited a company that made gauges

and a company that made like, you know,

like the throttle boosters, they made those,

like kind of like pedal commander

and all those types of products.

But they made it before pedal commander did.

I was worried about some licensing issues there

because somebody had a trademark

or patent on that technology.

And then there's a break company

over there that did big break kits.

But, you know, I kind of quickly realized

like the best thing running was ECU master

for scaling that and then putting all my energy into that.

And then much later on when I had employees

and I could focus some energy elsewhere,

picked up Verkline and then Delta.

Yeah, and those have done really well

because they're complimentary businesses, right?

You know, Delta is an easy add-on

because an electronic anti-lockbrake system

is in the same vein as all the electronics that we do.

Kind of like these things that are just, yeah,

all together like, yeah.

The customer based, you know,

the VIN diagrams a circle

for the people you're selling to, right?

Right.

It's a direct overlay.

I'm curious actually, like when it comes to your customer bases

and mostly like, where do most people land?

Is it drift community, drag racing, streetcar again?

Well, I'm according to the EPA now.

Oh, fair enough.

Yeah.

I mean, honestly, I don't think we're doing much

of anything that ends up in a car anymore anyway.

You know, all the stuff so old

that's gonna be just a dedicated track toy for most people.

So, and that's where the side-by-side stuff

has been kind of a big growth sector.

We're seeing a lot of rest-o-mod stuff, actually.

When you say rest-o-mod, JDM side, American, both?

Mostly American,

because that clientele has a lot of money.

Right.

I think most Japanese car enthusiasts

are not old enough yet to have blank check type bills.

Do like 10, 15 years behind maybe?

Well, we talked about sound performance.

They're doing a lot of like, you know,

subframe off restorations,

but then again, those cars are modern enough.

You don't need to do, you know,

RPM use power distribution, man.

You're like, you don't need

a solid state power distribution in a street car

on one of those,

but something from the 50s or 60s

doing PMUs and keypads and switch gear and all that,

like doing that clean sheet electrical

makes a lot more sense than something from the 90s.

But yeah, we're seeing a lot of really high-end rest-o-mod stuff

for a lot of the power distribution, dash displays,

a lot of the direct injection stuff

is going in pretty interesting,

like higher in builds like that.

So I think it's nice to see that

as the product line matures,

so does kind of the clientele

and a lot of these things.

Obviously, the entry-level stuff,

we've got sub-thousand-dollar standalone ECUs

with the wide man controller,

with the four-bar map sensor,

with him and Iter on board,

like that still has huge value to the guy

building something in his shed, right?

They could make 12 bucks an hour

and still afford an ECU

if he's living with his parents.

But that's what I was as a kid, right?

Right.

Can you explain to me, again,

this is something that I don't understand very fully.

Why is it that some ECUs, like they're known as,

like, oh, you can't do DI,

for example, like Subaru's,

like it's either you're gonna do stock ECU

or basically go full-on Motec, for example.

I never quite fully understood,

like why is it that there's limitations for various ECUs?

Are you able to elaborate on that at all?

Yeah, direct injection is a completely different animal.

So port injection, you can get a lot wrong

and it still works pretty well.

With direct injection,

not only is it completely different hardware

to drive the injectors,

it's a very different voltage

and you're driving, yeah,

it's several multiples of the voltage

of the regular port injector.

And then the actual pressure across the injector

varies so much that if you don't have a very, very detailed,

we'll call it just a roadmap

of how much fuel is injected at every pressure

and every pulse width,

then you're gonna be completely lost.

And then also you're controlling the pump,

which is why you're varying pressure with the pump

and then you need to know what the injector does

at every pressure and every pulse width.

With port, you can be pretty wrong about a lot of that

because your pressure doesn't vary, right?

It's referenced one-to-one with manifold pressure.

So as you add boost,

the pressure across the injector in a good port system

should stay exactly the same.

So your data only has to be kind of right at one point

and it could be wrong everywhere else and that's fine.

As long as you don't have a fuel pressure issue,

you're not gonna see it.

And then DI, you have to be very tight

about the windowing.

There's just a lot more to it.

And so, and you have to characterize everything

in the system, meaning that instead of just reacting

to things that happen, like, oh, we're gonna turn

on O2 feedback and kind of unfuck everything that we did.

With DI, you kind of have to be way ahead of that

and have everything characterized beforehand

and then trim it slightly afterward.

So it's a lot more work.

I imagine it's just a little bit more expensive

to make as well.

Yeah, there's a lot more hardware involved

because with our system, you have the separate DI driver.

With some ECUs, they'll have a DI version

and a port version.

The guys that you see master chose to do

just the same ECU and you just add the DI driver

that has the pump control and the high pressure

injector control.

Okay, so then, okay, so you're able to do both then?

Yeah, so yeah, with the Pro 8 or Pro 16,

you can do a split of port and DI on either one of those.

With the 16, you could do eight port, eight DI.

With the Pro 8, you could do eight DI only

or you could do four port, four DI.

Our DI driver will do eight injectors

and two pumps on the gas side.

Again, showing how little I know about this,

but then you're able to do both as well

because there's cars that use port and DI.

So you drive the port injector straight off the EMU

and then the DI injectors will be driven off the DI driver.

Gotcha, okay, that makes sense.

I've always had that question.

I'm like, why is that a limitation?

Isn't it all, yeah.

Yeah, it's just way different voltage

is a different control strategy, right?

So you can't use one, you can kind of use,

you can drive a DI or a port injector from the DI output

but then you get into weird windowing events

because the way they drive the injectors

is slightly different.

On top of just the voltage differences.

Yeah, and then we're doing diesel direct injection now

which is super cool.

So that market is just bonkers and I'm very new to it

so I'm not gonna try to explain anything

that I don't know about yet

because we're gonna learn that

after some of our customers educate us a little bit

but those will do eight injectors and three pumps

because those guys, in fact,

one of them I was talking to this week,

he's one of the leaders in that world makes injectors

and on I think just six injectors and one turbo

they did a 3000 horsepower

and this is no nitrous, no propane, no like crazy adders.

Like most of this is like triple compounds in the level

or whatever, single turbo, nothing,

like made 3000 horsepower on the nose

which is just nuts to me.

Okay, do you mind me asking what platform?

Or is that still?

Those Cummins, yeah.

Cummins, okay.

I'm having a Cummins guy on Saturday.

I'm going down to Unrivaled.

Okay.

Yeah, somebody introduced me to him

and I'm like, all right, let's talk about diesel.

I'm kind of just throwing myself head first

into stuff where I just have limitations on it

just want to learn about it, you know?

What is it was crazy me

because you show me the video of the pull

and it read to like 5,000 RPM,

which for diesel, that's getting it.

So yeah, I'm excited to see again, at this point

I kind of like just kind of peeking through the curtains

and seeing what people do with our stuff, right?

So in the beginning, I think what I wanted to do

was kind of push my car harder

than most of our customers would

to prove the platform

and give them confidence in the product.

At this point, so many other people have done

way cooler stuff than I've ever done

that I can kind of sit back

and just like enjoy seeing what people do with our products

and it's really fun to watch some of the crazy stuff out there.

Do you have an example of anything crazy

that people have done with your product?

When our dealers just did like a collaboration with Beul

to build like a 350 or 450 horsepower

like kind of like tag team factory prototype effort

just like monster of a motorcycle ride.

I think it was like 13 or 14,000 RPM, what else?

We've got one of our dealers,

he just showed me a video the other day of doing

is like a one generation old NASCAR motor

and he was doing a bunch of per cylinder injector trims

because everything was just wonky with the air flow

and so he was doing a lot of trims, but the thing was,

I think he left it at like 9,000 plus RPM

for a good long while

because it's being a land speed application

and they just wanted to,

and the thing is just happy all day long at that RPM

because it's built for it,

but it's just fun seeing just weird bespoke stuff

that our products end up in.

What's the weirdest thing that you've seen your products in?

Oh, land speeds one does like that's just crazy to me.

Land speed is cool.

I don't know that I've heard back from a lot of people

that have done a lot of land speed stuff

that's such a niche market, right?

There's just by volume, there's not a ton of people

but the one he's doing is actually a pretty cool one.

It's I think a super bird chassis

with like a modern V8 and some like,

I think some state or government entity is sponsoring it

is some like anniversary deal.

I'm like, cool, like great use of our tag dollars

but I'm happy to see it something cool.

Glad he uses our stuff.

What else?

Back in the day, there was somebody in,

I think Poland or somewhere in Europe that had,

I looked at the change notes for some firmware update

and I said, you know, twin engine sync.

I'm like, why are we synchronizing twin engines?

And I asked Cuba about it, Jacob who owns EC master.

He's like, oh, it's for this Opel Calibra.

And if you know what an Opel Calibra is,

it's kind of a forgettable car.

And they had-

Google it real quick.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I couldn't, because I don't know

what a stock one looks like.

I've only seen this like heavily modified

and it's basically a, a shelled,

raped over a couple of subframes at this point.

Okay.

Am I right?

That it's like a forgettable shit box.

Yeah, exactly.

It's like, I don't know why it reminds me

of like thunderbirds or like a mercury cougar

from the 90s, but some like forgettable,

like front wheel drive, hairdresser car basically,

right?

So then it's a twin engine setup in that.

So I was like, why do we synchronize two engines?

He's like, oh, watch this.

And I think the interior shot started with like,

I'm looking at the shifter and it's like a cable shifter

and I can see the cables bolted to it,

but I'm like, yeah, there's two there,

but why is there also two from this way?

And it was two VR6 engines, one front, one rear,

two sets of shifter cables to the same shifter.

I guess he had a tandem master cylinder

for two clutch masters.

And it was the twin engine made like,

I don't know, 12 or 1400 horsepower

because each engine only has to make six

or 700 horsepower, but he basically created a firmware

that matched RPM in the front and rear engines

to act as like a virtual center differential.

So like if the front axle,

which is going to have less traction

if you're transferring weight,

as soon as that started to light up the tires

with limit RPM, so those didn't just go to the moon.

So you could actually shift them both at the same time

and not having like wildly different RPM.

But I was like, you know, virtual center differential

for twin engine VR6 Opel Calibra

probably goes on the short list of weird applications.

That's definitely the weird, that's insane.

But they don't have any good drag strip.

They have like basically their every drag event

in Europe is like a no prep event

because it's some airstrip that they got licensed to use

for a couple of hours.

And I have like a handful out there

from what it sounds like.

Right.

So this is some dude on like some hand-me-down slicks

that just, you know,

he's going to do everything he can

to get some grip and apparently got down.

Dude, check this out.

So there was a guy in the show I had at a PRI.

He moved here from Austria

and he was telling me is like,

they, like you're not even allowed to like install

or like change the tires on your car.

Like if you, if the car came with 235s

it has to stay 235s.

And it's like, that's like,

like they actually inspect that insanity.

Oh, I would go and I would, I'd have to leave.

Yeah.

That's why it does what he did.

He moved here.

No, and there's just too many things

that I want to do with a vehicle.

And that, yeah, I couldn't,

but there's also stuff like the Stockholm Open.

Have you seen any footage of that?

Is that the thing that Kyle Loftus goes to every year?

Yeah.

Do that crazy, crazy like clown shoe car.

Right.

That thing is insane.

Yes.

And so like it's, it's weird that in this,

this vacuum of very, you know,

government overreach heavy countries

there's also this group of outlaws

that will shut down a whole highway

to get like a whole bracket run.

Not just like a couple of races

but a whole bracket run throughout the night.

And they'll, you know,

it's some of the best street racing

I think there is in the world.

And those guys will all build drag cars for this.

And I think Sweden actually has a lot more

drag racing than most other European countries.

I think they actually do have a couple of drag strips

because I have a buddy who lives there

who kind of grew up doing junior dragsters

and some other stuff.

But, you know, there's still some outlaws out there

at least, but some of those countries have zero.

Yeah, I think, and maybe I have a small amount of people

in the UK to listen to the show percentage wise,

but I think they only have one drag,

like official drag strip in the entire UK.

Yeah, I believe it.

Something like that.

Have you been to Poland then?

Yeah, a bunch of times.

Okay.

Well, yeah, I suppose.

How often do you go there at this point?

I don't think I've been like just over a year,

but usually yearly.

Yeah.

Okay.

And then what was that typically look like?

Do you do mostly motorsport related stuff?

ECU master stuff?

Just ECU master stuff.

Yeah.

So, you know, if I have my whale,

I'll go in like late spring, early summer.

When I mean it's just stunning there.

So ECU master is based in Krakow,

which is, you know,

the city centers is super charming.

Like the old castles up on the hill,

beautiful city square or the weather's stunning at that time.

You know, a lot of their architecture was preserved

through World War II because it didn't get bombed, right?

That, you know, it got overtaken so quickly in the war

that it really didn't suffer a lot of damage.

Except for Warsaw, Warsaw got leveled,

but Krakow is still as it was.

It's just a beautiful charm.

It's much like Prague.

Prague is a really beautiful city.

Yeah, it's just gorgeous.

I love being there.

And then ECU master headquarters are now kind of

on the outskirts of the city and like a development zone,

kind of near the airport.

They're trying to like put a lot of businesses out there

and encourage them to grow.

And their factory is just stunning.

Very modern architecture, brand new PCB assembly line,

all in house.

They just doubled their square footage.

All the equipment's brand new, top notch.

They've got, I think 50 employees now.

So pretty sizable operation at this point.

Yeah, it's been fun to talk to folks

that are kind of in this industry,

like, you know, competitors obviously,

but like just kind of hearing like it all kind of

comes from a similar background.

So I'm sorry, his name was Jacob.

Jacob, yeah.

What was the last name, Kuba?

His nickname is Kuba.

Every Polish person has a nickname and their real name.

Yeah, yeah.

So his real name is Jacob,

but he goes by Kuba to most people.

Okay.

So touch on that a little bit.

I mean, you obviously know a little bit

about the history of the company.

How did the company get started back in a day?

So Jacob's first company was,

you know, he studied business at probably

the best business school in Poland,

but always learned and loved programming on his own.

So programming was his hobby, but he studied business,

which I think is an important differentiation

because a lot of people end up with businesses

and they don't know how to run them.

Right?

They have their passion project

and then then they have to learn how to run a business.

Thankfully he had some training.

Mike.

Don't mind my limp dick, Mike, over here.

Yeah, this is gonna be a tomorrow problem.

Right.

Every time I do upgrades on this setup, man,

it just, it likes to give me,

it's always like the weirdest thing.

Like I was like, oh,

something else would go horribly wrong.

It's always like the ratchet strap

that's been failing for four years,

hangs on for four years.

It's like half gone and I get a brand new one

and it snaps the first trip out.

Yeah.

Yeah, there's something to be said

for something that half works to works halfway.

Yeah, no, this is a, again,

this is gonna be me messing in the hotel.

Just, ah, it's always something.

So his first business was a video game design company

and built it with a few of his friends.

I don't know if they started friends.

I know, I guess they, I think they were friends

in college and started the company together.

And then he just got really tired

of the 100 hour weeks and the deadlines

and pushing these projects across.

And he sold his stake in the company.

And I think he was just kind of on the beach for a bit,

so to speak, that he wanted to modify his car

with his mechanic who now works for him.

And he's like, yeah,

I just need to modify a couple of signals, I think.

And he's like, yeah, I can build something

that would do that.

So he built their first piggyback,

which modified like the mass airflow signal

and the map sensor signal and adjusted timing.

And then later on,

started playing around and built the first standalone.

And I think in his own words,

I think he said, you know,

he really wanted to start a company

who's like five employees with just a couple of friends.

And he's like, in somewhere I fucked up,

now he has like 50 employees.

But he's still very much a racer.

He's got a, what does he have now?

He's got a really cool little race car.

He raced many, he's for many years on track,

but really loved circuit racing,

competitive circuit racing.

But yeah, so he's able to again work

with a lot of people that were in that company with him.

And then a lot of the guys he's got working for him

are like, you know, Polish cart champions

and formula SAE guys

and really brilliant, you know, programmers

and engineers and researchers.

And he's just got really, really neat people

that are very passionate about automotive stuff.

Isn't there, isn't Poland where they make a ton of like

carbon Kevlar sort of like drift kits too?

Or I might be making something mixed up or whatever.

I don't know.

I mean, there's a few different companies

in Europe that make them.

Yeah, there's like this crazy car

that Mick Schumacher had.

It was like the, I don't know

if you ever saw the video of it.

It's like this like E92, like M3.

Was it a Eurofighter?

Yes.

Are they based out of there?

It's HGK, if I remember correctly.

And they're not in Poland.

I've forgotten where they are.

Yeah.

Okay.

Again, things confused there, but.

M Sport is in Poland.

They do a lot of really beautiful rally car builds.

Okay.

And they're actually.

Oh yeah, yep.

What airport are they near?

We basically land in one of the airports

and like you can see they're like parallel

to the airstrip.

I'll be like, oh, that's where rally cars come from.

Yeah.

Isn't that where they made like the Nitro Cross cars?

I'm not sure.

I don't know.

I'm not to look that up.

There's a ton of rallyers that come out of that part of the world.

There are.

Yeah, there's a bunch of rally.

And then obviously they had Kubica, who was really, you know,

they really had high hopes for him in F1.

And he didn't, you know, his career kind of got cut short,

but I think he still does a ton of rally.

I think it was a rallying accident

that put him out of the woods.

That's right.

Yeah.

But yeah, they're very, very passionate people there.

There's a lot of just like grassroots motor sports

enthusiasm.

But yeah, it's a really neat place to be.

I got to go to a kind of a grassroots like hill climb

event there.

Oh, cool.

One year when I went to make a trip over.

And this is like beautiful, like Polish countryside.

I'm like, this looks like it's from a postcard,

like these little cottages and this twisting road

through these like green fields.

And they just asked the farmers nicely

if they could close down the road for the day, I guess.

And so they did like, you know, and I'm like,

you know how we party here, like, you know,

anywhere in the country, there's some formation

or some variant of a redneck who brings their big cooler

and their folding chairs.

And this one, it was like that,

except everybody just brings a bottle of vodka

and they just split it between friends.

They just like, yeah, hand around,

it's a lot easier to carry.

I don't know why we're not doing that.

Yeah, I don't know why we're doing 24 packs over here.

Their vodka is good.

Just pass with a bottle around.

That's what they do.

And so it's kind of cold out.

So you just see like a group of friends,

somebody pulls their hands out of the pockets

and passes the bottle.

But we're watching this hill climb.

They do like, you know, a couple of like nice

kind of road going GT cars will go up in a group

and make a quick little pass up.

And they'd have some drifters do a couple of tandem passes

up the hill.

And I'm like, this is a pretty cool little just like local

grassroots style event.

But I think that there's a lot of enthusiasm and passion there.

And it's certainly rallying.

Like we have terrible roads in Texas for anything fun, right?

If we had twisty fun roads,

we'd probably have more rallying in the US, you know, some places.

Yeah. No, that's true.

I mean, like most of this country's flat.

Yeah. I mean, I go out to like Nashville and like or not

Nashville, Tennessee as a whole or like Kentucky.

Like, you know, that's what they're doing.

A bunch of these like rally events.

Stateside, which is pretty cool.

But yeah, this middle part of the country is just all flat.

Yeah. Like, you know, I'm jealous of friends.

Like, oh, this is my Canyon car.

I'm like, screw you, dude, I don't have any canyons.

I got like dumb Texas roads.

I have like some of the best cornering cars in existence.

And I get to go straight on my commute to work with them.

That's the other thing you mentioned earlier, the track membership.

Whatever. What's your home track when you do circuit racing?

Yeah, Eagles Canyon. Eagles Canyon. OK.

Yeah. So I grew up in Denton, Texas.

So we're in Garland or is on the border of Dallas.

So Denton is the top part of the triangle.

Dallas is the southeast portion of that.

And then Fort Worth is on the west side.

So Denton, Dallas and Fort Worth make a triangle.

And then just north of Denton is Decatur.

Hmm. OK.

Do you ever make it out to Kota then?

I actually have I probably should this year

because it's going to be closed down for private use.

But I've driven like a parade lap in a drift car on Kota

and I behaved very well.

Did you? I shouldn't have.

But but I've driven like at time attack.

We'll do like drifting is kind of a little like in one of the side

lots of drift ride along. So I've done that.

But I got to make one parade lap, but I haven't raced that track.

But unfortunately, that's probably going to go away for us privateers.

Yeah, just because it's kind of getting

just outrageously expensive or private or there.

Yeah, they're going to make it a private club, I guess.

And so it's not going to be open to the public.

So we'll see what happens next year.

Yeah, I'm curious on like how those private clubs work,

because like, isn't it like also like a quarter million dollar year

membership sort of deal or who knows?

I mean, you know, Eagles Canyon, it's not inexpensive,

but it's accessible to people that can justify

using it a lot, right?

But but it's a beautiful facility.

Toyota has put a bunch of money there into sponsorship

because they're corporate headquarters now in the area.

So they use it a lot for events and stuff.

Yeah. So yeah, all the all the the track cars,

they have a couple of supers there and a couple of Toyota products

out there to do corporate training and events and stuff.

So they've got a partnership with Toyota.

So I think that that's helped to they can invest more in facilities.

They also have off road courses.

You can actually do short track side by side racing,

which is oh, my God, that is a riot.

I'm guessing you've done it quite a few times.

I got to ride shotgun with one of the Miller Brothers

and they're kind of on the podium

for anything side by side related.

And so you think a normal side by side,

but lowered wider on, you know,

grooved Hoosiers on a prep dirt surface

and a mixture of the physics of like off road racing

and jumps and drifting and circuit racing

like all the above.

So you basically jump something and then pitch it sideways

and you have an incredible amount of grip on the dirt.

And yeah, it's a ton of fun.

Yeah, I might have to look into that a little bit.

I'm kind of at this weird point in the show.

I'm about to cross 200 episodes here soon.

So I'm just kind of like thinking,

like just expanding my horizons.

I'm like, that sounds like something cool.

I'd like to get into it and just look into it.

I said, hey, look, like, you know, don't be shy.

Like I'm, I don't want you to wear out your equipment,

but I'm like, I'm very comfortable in a race car.

So do whatever you want to do.

Like you want to go have a good time.

And so as I'm getting out, I was like,

let me go seven ish tents.

He's like, yeah, about that.

So like, I don't know what 10 tents feels like

cause I felt like that was pretty aggressive.

Oh, I had another question about lead with this.

What's the craziest thing that you've done driving wise

and experience wise,

whether it's drifting, drag racing, circuit.

I'd say probably the,

I mean, just like jumping into wheel to wheel racing

and like a lemon's race with a very, you know,

nobody has a well, there's actually a few guys

that will prepared cars and they're just lapping everybody.

But, you know, without a lot of training or here's what to do,

here's why not to do is jump into wheel to wheel format.

That was pretty wild.

Is that what I'd be,

does that be the 24 hours lemons or not?

So you, okay, so you, okay.

Is that, did you have like a team of guys

and you share a car?

Okay.

Yeah.

And that was in my mid twenties

before I went back to engineering school

and basically a guy who's card worked on it.

He said, hey, I'll, I'll, you know,

buy the parts if you put in the labor.

I said deal easy, easy win.

So put together an actually an 87 Supra.

We put a GE VVT I two J in it and the car was kind of terrible,

but it was fun.

But yeah, it was a great time.

I got to drive Texas world speedway before it closed down

and one of my buddies negotiated.

He's like, hey, like whatever happens,

I want the sunrise stint.

It's like, I just want to see the sun come up

in a race car like bucket list thing.

I was like, damn, I should have called that one.

But I was in the dark and we had good lights

and there was a turn at Texas world speedway where

I didn't, I hadn't memorized the track layout.

But also at three a.m. when you're exhausted,

like nothing makes sense.

And so I kind of like turned too early

and shortcut one of the corners.

I just remember kind of like getting airborne

a little over the dirt and then seeing three more cars

behind me.

So I had the good lights, like nobody's going to try

to pass you than be blinded by you

for X number of laps, right?

So it's way easier to just be behind the guy

who's like mediocre fast and just use his lights

than it is to do anything else.

So.

So the most people don't even have lights.

They just weren't good, right?

Yeah, you know, you're going so fast in the dark

and we're all tired and like that you were outside

of college station, which is where A&M is, right?

So out in the country, like there's no light, right?

And the track lights probably weren't much

and they weren't on the infield.

They might have been some of the on the oval.

But yeah, that was that was an experience.

And then I will say this, like probably the the first time

I like grabbed fourth gear in a drift car

before entering.

I was like, this is like we're committed now.

Like you can't like tactile and break at that point.

Like you're just committed.

Where was that and what car was it?

That might have been depending on the car

that would have been like, you know,

maybe Texas Motor Speedway on the infield.

They basically have like an eighth mile drag

like run up before the entry.

And so that that was a pretty eye opening

for just for how long you can be because, you know,

you can always sneak up on it and just start accelerating

later, like get to the top of third

and kind of hang out and then enter.

But, you know, when you start using all the track

drifting and all the room to accelerate,

like stuff gets wild pretty quickly.

And then to level up from that,

doing that next to another car is nuts.

What car were you in when you did that?

Those are my 350s. Yeah.

Oh, OK. Yeah. That's crazy.

Yeah. You must you may have to have been moving at that point.

Yeah. And even if you're not, it still feels like it.

Yeah. You know, just to go, you know,

but to be able to confidently throw your car sideways

at eighty nine miles an hour

and just know that it's going to work out.

Like that's pretty fun to sneak up to that.

I I just started.

So I have a sim and I've always been doing iracing, right?

But now I just got myself set up on a set of course.

I'm literally I've done it twice.

I'm trying to do get into drifting a little bit.

I haven't respect for it.

I didn't realize like how difficult it was.

But it's it's it's way more difficult in the sim.

In in the sim than in real life.

100 percent. Oh, I'm sure.

Like when I used to like again, who hasn't gone to a party?

Oh, we're from the north, right?

So like we we have snow.

We just go drifting and parking lots every winter, right?

So I definitely, yeah, yeah.

In real life, I had no problems holding an angle and all that.

But it'd be different if I also had like a

like I've never have done it like a 350 or 370 Z, right?

So it's like

bucket list items, eventually.

No, you should. And I think I hope at least a few people

that take nothing away from this podcast.

Go find your local drift school.

Spend two grand or twenty five hundred and do a two day course.

They'll provide you probably a 350 Z or 370 Z

and the tires and the instruction.

Just go do it.

Don't build a car.

Don't do anything.

Just show up and get good instruction and learn how to drift.

Oh, this is a good plug.

I've had somebody in a show before.

It's I think it's drift maps dot com.

I think it goes dot com and they like I don't know if you've heard of them,

but they basically have like they'll post every drift event in the country,

including clinics and stuff, too.

So yeah, maybe I should check out one of those things down the line.

Yeah. And there's difference that, you know, clinics are good,

but, you know, if you don't have a car, a clinic doesn't do you any good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So there's so you mean like an actual school where they provide you everything?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's one here in Texas. Josh, what's his last name?

He's got a bunch of 350 Zs.

I think it's called the drift school, but he's in South Texas somewhere.

Interesting.

And then I'm going to blank on a lot of friends.

My buddy Ian, he's got one in Colorado and then Chris,

he's got one at E town.

So yeah, I mean, there are several at different points in the country,

but really the money compared to any other racing school is not much.

I think that drifting in terms of teaching your car control,

it doesn't teach you any bad habits.

It's just going to put more tools in your toolbox and it's a ton of fun.

So that's the bucket list, too, yeah.

But it's, you know, but some of the most talented drivers I know, period.

Grew up on drift cars and they can transfer it to other disciplines

very easily because they have all the car control pretty nailed.

Well, it's kind of like if you look at like Formula One,

like some of the best drivers came from like those like rally countries.

Absolutely.

Just because I or like Nordic countries

would just use driving on ice.

If you've never seen a dry road, you're going to be a really good driver.

No, but it's no surprise that like some of the most dominant drivers.

And, you know, I think James Dean, most people argue,

is probably the best drifter in the world right now.

He's from Ireland.

They don't have a lot of dry roads for a lot of the year.

And then like a lot of the most dominant drifters

in the world are from Ireland right now.

Tuning, because you got that was the question I wanted to ask you earlier.

So you got the main line here.

Who does the tuning here?

So I used to do some.

I don't really anymore like I can tune a car.

I just don't like it.

Is that what I had to say?

Well, no, it's fair to say why.

Everybody falls into one camp.

Everybody hates something.

You know, my my granddad and when I was in engineering school,

I really loved thermodynamics and combustion.

And, you know, I really love that I have a very good theoretical

understanding of it.

I don't really love sitting on a dyno all day, what I love now.

And the part I get the most gratification out

with the business is hiring really good people

and learning how to be a good manager to them

and let them do what their strengths are

and, you know, try to get them the tools they need.

And it's really fun to give talented people

a fun subject to to run with.

And like, luckily, it's pretty exciting subject material.

So, you know, when I get like a brand new side by side

and say, hey, it's got zero miles on it, go.

Reverse engineer make a plug and play adapter

and put a standalone on it.

It's like such a cool job.

So it is like, I don't want to sit there

and reverse engineer can bus messages all day.

Yeah, you know, and that's, you know,

I've not spent enough time learning can bus

as I probably should.

But, you know, I can tune stuff,

but I'm not as good as somebody who does it every day.

So really Chris, who works for me, Chris Robertson,

he's one of those little dyno working development

and he's, you know, super methodical

and he'll baseline everything

and take as many measurements as he can on a stock car.

But, you know, but if I get him something

that's a built motor and an aftermarket turbo

and a different set of cams, like you don't have any playbook.

You're not copying your reverse engineering

or, you know, validating the stock programming on that.

You're starting and he does great with that too.

But he knows how picky I am with cold start

and tip in and drivability that, you know,

he's going to hear about it.

And, you know, it was, what was it the other day?

Oh, it was one of my employees had like a,

you know, something that doesn't have our ECU in it.

It's like a flash tuned stock ECU and something

and it cold started really poorly.

And Chris walks out of his office like, what is that?

I was like, oh, it's selling.

So I was just like, oh, thank God,

I was going to hear about that.

But, but you can tell when a car drives nice

and when it doesn't.

And the things that some people will tolerate as just,

oh, it's just a tuned car.

Like no, no, it should drive really, really well.

We have so many tools at our disposal now

with drive by wire or the variable cams

with good injector data, with good fuels.

Like, you don't have to suffer in fast cars anymore.

Like flat out.

I was one of the things, in my previous car,

I had a Mark 7 GTI and I used to have an off-the-shelf tune

on that because like, you know, whatever it is,

classic stage two, whatever stuff.

And then I got a custom tune done.

It was just really fun to like, you know,

work with the tuner at Ratified Motorsport,

you know, which is where about 50 episodes

of this podcast were done out of their shop.

So it's kind of cool.

But I got to, you know, learn a lot

from their tuner there and just kind of get under

appreciation for all this stuff

that people can't forget.

But yeah, it's classic.

Every single Facebook forum, it's like, oh yeah, you know,

that's just race car stuff.

That's the big excuse.

And, you know, where were we?

There was many, many years ago.

And someone goes like, yeah, it just starts

on the third trim.

Like, no, no, no, no, no.

It should start on the first attempt.

And hopefully after just a couple of revolutions,

if that, like, I was like, let me take a peek.

And you know, just needed more cranking fuel

or something dumb.

He's like, oh God.

I was like, yeah, this is how cool it is

that we don't have to like take apart a carburetor

or twist a screwdriver.

Like we can look at a data log and, you know,

try an A-B test with changing zero mechanical parts.

Like we're pretty spoiled with what we can do

with a laptop these days.

And now like we've come full circle

and people are trying to actively ruin it

with ghost cam tunes and making it actively misfire

and this and that or let me make it pop and verbal.

It's funny.

I've had only a very small handful of folks

on the show that were like tuning, you know,

from the carburetor days and made that transition.

Like when they were doing as a job then

and then on to, you know, like-

It's the same stuff.

But it's like, like being like, oh yeah.

Why is that I got a laptop in his car?

Like, I mean, I imagine that probably happened

before you probably got into cars, didn't you?

When the transition to having a laptop

in your car to tune.

Yeah, because I grew up on like alphabet soup

with the super days.

Okay.

And a PECSI SAFC on top of an HKS VPC GCC.

I'm not pretending.

I know what that means.

That's why it was called alphabet soup, right?

So we're taking the VPC vein pressure converter,

I think is what HKS called it,

which basically took away your mass air flow meter

and made it speed density.

And so like all the big turbo guys,

you go single turbo, you get rid of the mass air flow

meter, right?

And then the GCC was there like tuning computer

that went with the VPC.

And then, but everybody just put in an AFC

from APEXI because you had the little wheel

and the blue screen that looked like the almost

like the dolphin display on the pioneer head units.

And then yeah, I just basically stacked piggybacks

on piggybacks and somehow got a number one buddy's car.

We went to the Texas mile and he got kicked out

because he did it in like flip flops.

But this is when like ethanol was available at the pump,

but we didn't have like really a lot of ECUs

that could do flex fuel.

And we didn't have ethanol content sensors,

I think really maybe a couple of people had,

but he basically had a wide band and a VPC AFC GCC combo.

So you'd actually have to like retune his car to start it

and then immediately change back to the settings

to make it safe while it was like making boost.

So every time he like restarted the car, refueled it,

we had to like retune it.

And then he got kicked out for having flip flops.

And I think that was a year that like maybe SW

like he blew his car up or Tommy Bond blew his car up

and then he took their sticker

and put it on his car.

So he could go run one more time

and then got kicked out for real for real.

That's crazy.

But I think he, I want to say he went like something stupid

like 180 or 190 something on like the piggyback alphabet soup.

And we just didn't know any better.

Like we didn't know that that was absolutely

probably not the right way to do anything.

And we just kind of got away with murder

on stock ECU stuff back then.

That's another event that's not around anymore, right?

Texas mile or is it?

No, it's still around.

It's just terrifying to me.

Everything's so fast.

Like I don't even want to really do a half mile event

with the speeds these cars can do.

Oh, it's insane.

Okay, like UGR and they're doing,

what did they do last year?

260 something I think in a half mile?

Zero interest in that, zero.

Yeah, that's insanity to me.

Like I don't, are there any tires,

like racing tires that have actually been validated

at that speed?

That's a good question.

But that's like, you know, I know with the Viper,

like the ACR, like think about,

so the aerodynamics it's, you know,

almost exponential the way the load goes up.

Yeah, all that load on the rear tire, yeah.

Like was that wing ever meant to do to 2230?

Like is it just going to like break through

and crush the car and then what happens to the dynamics

of the car if that falls off?

God forbid you get windows.

Well, actually, you know, you're in the Viper forums.

God forbid you get a knockoff wing.

So I've made a lot of probably a few enemies

just because I'm pretty outspoken

against people cutting up perfectly good Vipers.

Uh-oh.

And it's not, and my beef isn't actually

that they're like stealing the thunder of the ACRs.

I think ACRs are special, I own one.

And I think they're neat.

Like I don't really have a big problem

with somebody cloning something,

but you're cutting holes in that front clam shell

to put vents in the car

that weren't supposed to be there on that car.

You're drilling holes in the carbon rear trunk lid

to put a wing on it.

And you can't go back.

You can't patch carbon fiber.

And they've done it.

Is it rear trunk lid carbon?

Yeah.

Is it on the GTSs as well?

Nope, carbon on everything.

Okay.

They're all carbon.

Okay.

And then, yeah, but I just,

I take a little like 70 grand, it's not my car.

So you got blocks by him didn't you?

I don't know if I did,

but like I'm pretty outspoken.

They're not validated parts either.

Like this OEM parts released OEM parts, right?

Yeah.

But I just don't like putting holes

and they did it to a couple of really special colors too.

Colors that there's only like 30 or 40, maybe even less.

I'm like, don't put holes in like the special color.

Go find a black base model

and like put holes in it all day long.

I don't care, right?

But still like, yeah.

It's just like every gen three Viper

seems to have an extruded aluminum wing

on the back of it too.

I really thought they needed holes in them.

Again, I'm not going to yuck anyone's yum,

but like for example, like that one,

I'm sure you're in the form,

you saw the color shifting gen three

and they threw like an APR wing.

It was like the convertible gen three,

but then they threw like,

and it's just, that's the whole playbook for gen three.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I'm just like, it's,

it's like a 1200 horsepower Viper.

I think it's like a mutt.

If I remember correctly,

it had like a UGR kit,

but then it was tuned by Enthmodo or something like that.

Anyways, point being,

I'm just saying you're thinking like,

what's going to happen when that like wing,

that APR wing that you just do on the back of that car

and you're doing like insane speeds?

Like, what's that going to turn into?

So that was never designed to do that.

Imagine the public outrage of Sidney Sweeney got fake boobs.

That's a crazy take.

But I think that the gen five Viper stands on its own merit.

Like if anything, like I like adding the TA 1.0 arrow,

that's just a carbon lip spoiler.

It's classy.

The two carbon, it's tasteful.

It's a little different, adds a little contrast,

but it's very, it's OEM plus, literally OEM plus.

I think that adds something to car

and you don't have to put holes in the car to do it.

Like worst case,

you put some holes in the underside of the bumper,

who cares, right?

You can get another bumper cover,

but you know, but I think that's, that's tasteful,

but the car stands on its own merit.

It's one of the prettier cars made, I think personally.

Oh, yeah.

The GTS, like for example,

my brother was talking to you about this before the show,

but like we have a,

there's a black GTS in my dad's dealership.

And it's like, it really is a really nice car.

If you took off the white,

white stripes and just a black GTS, just look sharp.

No, I'm going to start a new business

and call it Gilded Lilies.

Okay.

And I'm just going to do,

have you ever heard the phrase Gilding the lily?

I don't know if I have.

It must have been Shakespeare

because he came up with, I think.

I don't know why you,

I don't know why made you think I was a Shakespeare reader.

Yeah, right.

So basically like a lily, pretty flower, right?

Gilding would be covering it in gold.

Yeah, okay.

But like, but it's adding something.

It's something that's already inherently beautiful,

but I want to start like an automotive enhancing shop

and sell accessories only for stuff that's already good

and call it Gilded Lilies

and just sell people like Mansory kits for everything.

Oh God, Mansory.

That's a, I'm just going to do tacky shit

for expensive vehicles

and I'm probably going to get rich doing it.

You probably will.

Yeah.

Yeah, no Mansory has like a really cool car

like one in 15, one in 20 cars.

I'll be like, all right, fair enough.

But then there's some like,

I don't know if you ever remember the MC20 kit.

This is the one that broke me.

It was a, it had like a double diffuser.

So you had a diffuser

under it.

And it was just like, this podcast has broken me.

Like I started talking to a lot of people

that do stuff for a function.

Yeah.

Like I really, no offense to anybody

that's just into the show car stuff.

It just like wheels and coilovers.

And then, all right, where's the conversation go?

Right?

Yeah.

Like, so I have an appreciation for functional stuff

and that just broke me.

You know what's funny is that

I've hated show car stuff for so long

and not all of it.

I think the very high level like,

like people trying for America

is most beautiful roadster

or what's the other ones where they do the top eight

and people try to get,

there's a Riddler

for these people to build.

There's been millions of dollars building

a one off custom car.

Every panel is hand beaten there.

They're never going to see public roads, unfortunately,

but they're stunning.

And I love the craftsmanship.

That's the kind of show of stuff

that I've loved historically.

But have you, are you familiar with Ultrace?

It's in Poland.

What's it called?

It's a car event called Ultrace.

Like you combine like the words ultra and race.

You're probably going to need to ship your car soon

or know somebody that will.

And as someone who used to work in freight logistics,

I understand the difficulties of finding reliable transport,

especially when trying to make it to rallies,

race tracks or to warehouse to hide your Corvette

because you're going through a messy divorce

and when she says everything, she means everything.

Anywho, Nick Shearer is the proud owner

of sure thing logistics.

Having traveled much of the country

with every type of vehicle you can imagine,

he's got the experience and reliability

that you want to ensure a safe journey

for your pride and joy.

If you want to find out what it takes

to ship your vehicle, go to surethinglegistics.net,

fill out the intake form

and be sure to let them know I sent you.

Let's get back to the show.

So I have not been in person.

I need to go, but some of the show cars they have there

are very tasteful because it'll be stock body

but really aggressive, beautiful wheel combination.

Not just danced out in a canber

but like just really tastefully done stuff.

Just beautifully restored with tasteful modifications.

Some of it's a little wilder

but it's such a cool event

because I kind of hate

that a lot of the water cool Volkswagen guys

have kind of ruined car shows for me, period.

And I think we've probably seen some of that.

Most people would agree.

But yeah, but it's really cool

because it's this, even the teaser video,

I think they spent like 80,000 euros

just on the production of their like teaser video

to like sell tickets in advance.

And you should watch the video.

Okay. Yeah.

But they got, what was it?

I think a Bugatti EB110.

And that was the hero car in the teaser

but then they used digital editing to clone it

to where it looks like every car in the parking lot,

the employee parking lot, everybody had an EB110.

And it was convincingly done

and they had like all these action shots of the car,

like a car that nobody gets access to.

But anyway, pretty cool stuff.

But yeah, I need to go to that event one of these years

because I've had a couple of friends go there

and they sold like 50 grand in t-shirts over the weekend

and they would have sold more

had they had more people to help run card scanners

to sell more t-shirts.

It's crazy how many t-shirts Peter sells at Texas 2K.

By the way, that's such an insane amount of shirts.

I wonder if he sells more than Kyle does.

1320.

Dude, I, well, every year.

So my go-to stops at this point.

That's a good question who I got.

I think T1 and AMS, I like to swing by it.

AMS has always had historically really good merch.

Yeah, for the last three or four years

always leave us some AMS merch or whatever.

1320 is another one that I stopped at.

But yeah, no, I'd be curious.

I feel like everybody wants a Texas 2K shirt.

Everybody texts me every year.

It's like, hey, can you stop at 10?

I'm like, dude, I don't even know if I'll be able

to stop for real.

Yeah, no, I'm not running errands for you

and waiting in a line of people.

I know, I hate to be that dick,

but it's like, dude, I'm already like,

I'm here for such a limited time.

Right.

Yeah, I don't wanna go away in line.

I'm gonna go there, sneak in, get out, you know.

I'm sure you can just buy it from their website too.

I think there's some stuff you can and you can't.

I don't know, whatever.

I think the 1320 stuff, yeah, you can buy it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, 1320, absolutely, just get it on the website.

But no, it's cool.

Again, I love the vibe of Texas 2K.

I almost didn't come this year,

but I knew I would regret it if I didn't.

So are you gonna,

do you head to the track first thing in the morning then?

Yeah, I'll be there.

I think the spectator gates open at 10.

So we'll be set up and ready to go around then.

No, but I wanna say I've been attending TX2K

since 2003.

Yeah, what was the first year?

2000.

Was it 2000?

Yeah, it was TX2K, right?

Right, because I was doing a little bit of...

Actually, I wasn't gonna say,

I'm not gonna say I was doing reading.

I saw a video about it, like how it started.

It was just Supra's at first.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and it was small enough

that we didn't have a group dinner.

We did a scenic drive,

and they had the little dyno day,

and then the drag strip was open

and everybody ran 12s in 800 horsepower cars.

But there weren't that many 800 horsepower cars

back then, right?

I think I knew one person with the standalone in 2002.

What was it, 8 a.m. back then or something?

Yeah, the one.

Yeah.

I might've known one person that had an electromotive.

Okay.

This is throwing it way back.

But yeah, I remember the earliest years

would be like the best Western

and whatever hotel faced it.

And so there's two facing hotels.

There were the two host hotels

and one had a better breakfast.

So we'd all stay in either one,

but we'd all end up in breakfast

in the one hotel instead of the other.

People would have like, who was it?

One of the guys would wheeled in.

His drag radials and like his big five gallon drums

of toluene he got from Sherwin Williams

into the hotel and the dumb waiter into his room.

But yeah, it was just kind of the Wild West.

And then it became Supras and Vipers,

then later Supras and GTRs.

Then it was at Hennessy for a long time.

And then it was in San Antonio one year.

Like anyway, it's been a whole long saga.

And then it became just kind of the world series

of fast street cars.

Yeah.

It evolved into that over time.

But yeah, but it was very like a small community.

It was just one model community for a long time.

And I still see some of the people there

that I saw this first couple of years.

I wonder, do you think that's why?

So every every Viper owner I've talked to

has a serious appreciation for 2J cars.

Yeah.

You think that might have come from that?

Most of them.

OK.

But I think maybe you've dealt with a lot of Viper owners

who own them for the right reasons.

Yeah, true.

Not that there's a wrong reason to own a car,

but I think if you're like a performance oriented

enthusiast, you're a little more platform agnostic

and you're not going to like die on.

Like all of my cars are pieces of shit.

Every single one of them.

Actually, while I ask you, does your Viper

have the door problem where the door won't latch

or have you not run into that?

Don't tell it that's a thing.

Oh, yeah.

It doesn't know if it exists.

No, currently the the trunk release button is not working.

OK, so there's something.

I have to use the remote.

But yeah, it's but no, but every car has things

that are terrible about it.

Yeah.

And there's no hill I'm going

to die on to defend any car from anyone.

Like, all right, yeah, they're all pieces of shit,

right?

You're so few far in between in that, though.

Most people just pick a camp and they stick with it.

Yeah.

Well, I have an FDR seven.

Like, oh, those roadies are real unrelentely.

Yeah, and.

Oh, so there's a rotary still.

Oh, yeah.

Yes, it's like a ported V-mount single turbo rotary.

Like it's not stock, but.

So making like what, 350 ish?

That's it.

It's exactly at 350 right now.

And I kind of don't want to turn it up

because I just it's so fun at that power level.

But they are so cool.

And they're quirky.

But like I like quirky cars, right?

This is why I own several because not one car.

I'm so far past.

And again, when I was younger, I wanted to make my Supra

the perfect car.

And then once I got over that, cars got a lot more fun.

That now it's like, cool, this car is good at this.

This one has an amazing shifter feel.

This one, the steering weight is just perfect.

What cars got the best shifting feel?

I'm curious.

Probably a tie between an Namiata.

OK.

And the FD is really, really good.

I don't know if the shifter is stock, it might be.

But I think a lot of it has to do with the fact

they have a power plant frame.

OK.

And so the transmission, the back of the transmission

is tied to a big brace that connects the differential.

It's like a big like truss

that connects the engine transmission

and the differential all together.

So the whole drivetrain can't rock a whole bunch.

And I think that makes it feel a little more precise

because you don't get as much left to right play

or four after playing the shifter

as the drivetrain bounces and moves up and down.

But also, Mazda just nailed it with the Namiata.

I'm sorry.

You're not really a true automotive enthusiast

unless you can drive one.

And it might not be your favorite thing in the world,

but you can appreciate how brilliant that car is.

I made a post on Facebook a few weeks ago.

It's like, there's nobody that you just can't hate on a Namiata.

No.

Yeah.

Unless one guy comes and is like, oh, I'm too big to fit.

And I'm like, what?

Yeah.

That's a fair complaint.

It is.

That's a fair complaint.

But it's like for the sake of a track car

or just having a good time, I'm 6'4".

I probably wouldn't be able to fit in it comfortably.

Right.

But if you throw me a seat lowering kit or something,

it becomes a lot more reasonable.

Like Vipers, I can't fit in them comfortably without.

Like I can drive one.

But if I wanted to put a helmet on,

I would have an ESC lowering kit.

I've got a Recaro podium in mind on fixed mounts.

OK.

You'd probably be better off in that one.

Yeah.

But no, the ergonomics of a Viper, like they're really hard

to get in and out of.

You feel like you're driving something.

I don't know what I'm kind of a spaceship.

Your ass is on the diff and you've got a long ass

crankshaft and nose ahead of you.

Like it's kind of weird in every dimension.

Like once you're comfortable with it, you're comfortable with it.

But no, but like, no, I won't defend any of my cars beyond

a, you know, they all have quirks.

But that's what makes them fun.

Like in this conversation with a friend the other day,

I said, I think the reason I'm not really in love

with the Porsches is that they're kind of really good

at a lot of things.

Like there's nothing that's quirky enough for me.

They're too perfect.

I'm endearing.

Yeah, they're too perfect.

You kind of like there's something about like, I don't know what it is.

Like just I don't know how to say this.

I sound like a dickhead.

But like the super pretty girl, but has like that weird like

mole in the one place or whatever.

Like, you know, it's like kind of like that one little like

feature, like defining feature, right?

Like Sydney Sweeney, if she had fake boobs.

I don't know.

That's a defining feature.

You'd have to talk to her plastic surgeon to know that detail.

But no, like just some defining feature.

Like, for example, like, you know, it's like when I look

at like Instagram, like highlights of like certain podcasts or whatever.

It's like some like I'm the guy with the glasses or I'm the tall guy

or like that defining feature.

Like it's anything applies to cars.

What defines a Porsche?

Oh, it's just so perfect.

You know, yeah, I mean, the engine hanging over the back axle,

but I think their best cars are the ones where the engines

like ahead of or on top of the back axle, right?

I think a lot of people generally agree.

Like the GT4 RS is probably like one of the best Porsches made,

if not the best.

And it's, you know, it's insulting to a GT3 RS owner,

but also the GT3 RS is special and it's on right.

But no, but I also I will say this.

I've not driven a front wheel drive car on a road course

that was set up for road course racing.

I think I would enjoy that if I could to pedal it

and make it rotate and do certain things, right?

Oh, a front wheel drive car?

Yeah, I think rotating a car is what the fun factor is.

And hence the drifting.

But I had a GR Corolla and it was good in a lot of ways,

but it was very understeery on track.

I think if it had way more rear bar,

I drove a GR Yaris in Poland.

Ton of fun.

That car was great.

And I jinked it.

It's insane right now, too.

Like what they're doing in Australia with them.

Yeah.

Insanity.

Yeah.

But it's a great car because it would rotate, right?

It had a short enough wheelbase enough for your bar

and spring rate that like you could get it to steer a little bit.

Otherwise, I think all will drives probably not for me.

In terms of we'll see our 32 GTR that's been in pieces

since I bought it, I bought it in pieces

and I've never done anything with it.

We'll see if I like it when it's done.

They're just sent into whistling diesel.

He'll take care of it.

Right. Oh, God.

Yeah, that's a crazy video.

Sort it out.

Yeah.

What made you go to Bainline route, by the way?

Um, so Tony from T1.

Oh, OK, yeah.

He had a phenomenal experience with him.

And, you know, he's somebody I can trust to be a straight shooter.

You know, he's not always the most chatty individual

if you've ever talked to them that he's not yet.

No, yeah, he's not.

He doesn't waste a lot of words.

But, you know, I can take him at face value

if you really like something.

But it was not just him.

I talked to a few people and then

there are other competing dinos, but not anybody

that personality wise, I really want to do business with.

And the product speaks for itself.

It's very repeatable, very configurable.

We've actually got their new, was it the CCS upgrades,

like all new control system we need to put in it

because ours was, you know, a couple of years before that.

But, you know, just a really high quality product.

Their support is, you know, at the drop of a hat

to help you out and get whatever you need done.

I think what really sold me is that, you know, Tony,

I think it was prepping for ATX2K

and he had maybe a prototype version

of a very high powered dyno

that they just come out with and something broke.

Somebody got on a plane from Australia,

flew the part over, fixed his dyno

so he could get all the cars tuned leading up to ATX2K.

I'm like, okay, that, dude, that's customer service.

That speaks volumes about the kind of people

that are involved in this company.

And if I want to have a tool that I rely on

to operate my business on,

that's the kind of people I want to do business with.

That's crazy.

Like I get pissed off having to respond

to an email sometimes,

like you're telling me to fly across the world?

And that's not an easy flight.

That's a terrible flight.

It's miserable.

Like actually I saw in Australia,

it was the biggest plane I've seen in my adult life.

It was like one of those like going to Australia planes.

I'm like, man, what's that?

From here, it's probably, what, 16 hour flight?

18?

I mean, yeah.

Something stupid.

It's terrible.

And to fly with a car apart, man.

That respect, that's crazy.

No, but they're super good dudes over there

and then, yeah, it's a reliable tool

and it's done well.

And I think that's why you see them

at so many of the very highest end shops

because word troubles fast.

Everybody talks at the point into the stick.

Everybody knows each other.

And yeah, that's kind of I think the tool

that a lot of us have agreed on.

So when did you start,

did you import all these yourself then?

Or did you have?

No, I've never imported a car,

but in fact, a lot of them just came

from the same friend.

Okay.

So Aaron Losey who runs Lone Star Drift,

he and I have an unspoken agreement

that's when he needs cash and he has extra cars.

I'm usually the sucker he can rely on.

So, yeah, that's been a couple of years.

When I bought the one that's behind you or to your left,

that one was like a stock automatic 1J,

you know, bad paint, nothing special about the car,

little beat up.

And then now it's a three, four ported head,

264 cam, VVTI, 64-66 turbo with a T526 Magnum

and like pretty ignorant drivetrain.

It's a great combo.

Like big, big motor, small turbo,

very responsive.

And I built it thinking I was going to drift it

and I was like, oh, this is a little too nice.

Because I can't get like door skins or doors

or quarter panels for that car state side.

It's not even a chaser, it's a Mark II.

So they're a little less common,

same platform, but different G-Metal.

So I just kind of like,

that's just a dumb, fun street car at this point

because it's a little too nice for drifting.

Just 3D printing everything nowadays, man.

Right?

That's kind of, I'm excited for that whole,

like the repops that are going to be popping up

in the next five, 10 years.

We're already seeing it.

Yeah.

Design as well.

Yeah.

No, that's super exciting stuff.

And we're using 3D scanning to a pretty large degree.

What do you use for a 3D scanner?

I think we have an Einstein.

That's what we just got.

It was like a, I can't remember which one model it was,

but it was super cool.

We were messing with it yesterday for some filming.

And man, it's just crazy how far that technology's come.

Wild.

Like when we were doing,

like we were doing something on in the car

and it's like, we didn't even put a marker down

and just, it was crazy, like how accurate it was.

It's like the blue lasers or whatever.

No, I don't love the intro.

I was like, you wouldn't download a car.

And then he kind of, yeah.

I think I told you earlier that like,

you know, this is completely off topic,

but there's a guy who designed a,

like an AR component based Gatling gun.

Yeah.

Completely, except for like the metal parts,

3D printable.

And there's even one like feed ramp in there.

He's like, yeah, I just need to 3D print this

out of stainless.

Here's like 12 companies that can print that for you

out of like centered stainless steel.

Oh, okay.

I was gonna say like why not just print it out of like,

yeah.

You can print it out of plastic.

It's just gonna wear out very quickly.

Like, you know, this wear items really needs to be metal.

In order, a bunch of bearings off of like Amazon

and AliExpress and like thousand bucks later

and some printing, you've got yourself a Gatling gun

that uses AR components.

But the fact that like somebody, you know,

they've coupled or inserts and mounts for gauges.

And that car actually has a 3D printed dash mount in it

for our seven inch dash company out of Australia

called Mako Motorsport.

They do really nice, like solid ABS plastic.

And then they body work and finish it and paint it.

So it looks, I mean, it's a solid plastic part,

but you look at the backside.

I was like, guys, are you using like a five millimeter nozzle?

Normally these nozzles on a 3D printer like 0.4 millimeters.

Yeah, yeah.

0.6 is big.

He's like, yeah, mate.

That's like five millimeter nozzle.

I'm like, oh, shit.

Like the amount of filament that thing's chewing through,

but you know, to print those parts solid in that scale,

like they have to have a big, big nozzle

and they just sand it.

They're not doing super hard.

I don't understand.

Okay.

Right.

So they're knocking down the finish after the fact

and you can even do acetone vapor smoothing

with ABS plastic.

They may be doing that for some of the finishing,

but yeah, like if they had to build a mold or a tool

or fiberglass component to do all those parts,

like they couldn't do a custom one off part for you

like they can, you can pick any dash in the world

and put it in that car

and they just drag and drop the file,

do a couple of tweaks and away you go.

So it's really cool to see

how much more democratized modifying cars

is there even like a tweeter mount or a speaker mount

or like all the things that I did in the old days

with fiberglass and tons of filler

and bleeding hands, you can use your phone

in some cases.

Yeah, I noticed you had some audio stuff back here.

Did you have a big audio phase at some point?

Still kind of do.

Okay.

I like to buy vehicles for daily drivers

where it's just good enough.

I don't want to mess with it.

Like I daily drive an IS 500

in the factory sound system that it like

it actually has pretty decent representation down low

and it doesn't make me itch.

Like I'm not like a super huge audio file in cars

because they all sound terrible because car.

No, no, no, but cars inherently

are terrible, terrible for audio, right?

There's so much background noise

that you can spend $100,000 on a car stereo system

and a good $5,000 home stereo

is going to blow it out of the water.

Like it just is the nature of being

in a little metal and glass shell.

But yeah, I like to have a little bass

and have most of the highs and lows represented

and plus you have older cars,

like all my nineties junk, everything needs a stereo.

Right.

I'm sorry, like they have so many rattles and squeaks

like I'm going to go certifiably insane.

I'm going to rate guns based on mouth feel

if I have to listen to the squeaks in this car.

That's crazy.

What's your most rattly, squeaky car?

Oh, God.

Probably my 350Z drift car because it's like a solid mounted

subframe and really aggressive differential.

And those axles are probably not doing great.

But it's the steering called the diff loading and unloading

and all the slack in the CVs.

And, you know, it's fun, though.

That car, like it works because I'm not

I'm not driving that car long distances.

But surprisingly, they actually have decent for and also like the cage in that car just creaks,

which is a little disconcerting. Oh yeah. Just a little bit.

Yeah, that's probably the worst one. Let me look around. Oh God, probably. Well, no,

I haven't driven the DSM enough.

To the one G. That was in the back. Yeah. Yeah, I've really put any miles in that because

yeah, I just haven't. But yeah, I'd probably the 350 drift cars probably is safe. But

bizarrely, my 3,500 ram duly for the business has a more solid interior than my brand new Lexus IS500.

Like the door panels rattle more in the Lexus than they do at a crappy plastic 3,500 ram.

What year's the 3,500? 25. Oh, Lexus is a 24. I say it's brand new. I mean, it's two years old.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, it's just funny that like sometimes the cheapest stuff is most solid.

Yeah. Yeah. No, these new rams are pretty nice, too. Yeah, it pulls great. I mean,

this is the six-speed or yeah, the Ison six-speed. I wanted the Ison trans, not the Dodge trans.

And now they have the eight HP in those trucks, which is rowdy. Yeah. So that'd be super cool.

But I have been very pleased. Oh yeah, they should be. And interesting, I'm not.

I've had every one of the big three for tow vehicles. I had a Super Duty with the 10-speed

single wheel and I had a Denali with the 10-speed single wheel. The duality is so much better

for towing just for stability. And also, I have the overhead rack and put a side-by-side on top,

which is stupid, but I have like an inch and five-eighths for your sway bar. So it's fine.

But it looks really just like 13 feet tall. Yeah, yeah. It looks crazy. It's real stupid

looking. It gets attention, though. That's it. It's great for marketing. But again,

like I love that some of the best creations are because like, fuck the government.

So in California, the speed limit for any trailer whatsoever is 55 mile an hour.

Oh, really? Okay.

And so some off-road guys like, well, fuck you, I'm just going to put it on top.

It's not a trailer if it's on the back of the truck.

That's crazy. I didn't know that they were limited to 55. I remember my first year coming

down to Texas 2K and there was one of the guys we had was trailering a Porsche down.

And it was like 95. Oh, God.

And it just like fished. That's just crazy to see, man.

Yeah. So I pulled my, I have a bumper pull RV, which has to be a bumper pull because there's a

side by side on top. But I took that to King of the Hammers. That was a great setup.

Because I had the pro R4 Cedar turbocharged makes like 350 of the tire.

It's like 30 inches of suspension travel. I have no business with any machinery of that

level. Like it's just way too much confidence given from that setup.

And then yeah, there were only a couple of moments. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no,

like coming into a little like banked corner. But I think the corner is surprising the flat,

even with, you know, 3,000 pounds of stuff on top. Right.

So I'm sure Ram is going to go this year to King of the Hammers as well.

It was so sick. Is it as crazy as people make it out to be? Like is it one of those like

you can't talk it up too much sort of things? Everybody I've talked to says it's amazing.

It's amazing. And it's amazing at scale. Right? That I think a lot of events,

you know, and and this is no disservice to CX2K, because I think it's a great event

and it gets a lot of great people out to do really cool stuff. But the event's so big now.

And there's the ratio of people participating to the people spectating is

very low right now. Okay. There's a lot of spectators and not a lot of

participants at the especially the dollar amounts that commands even get in the show

with King of the Hammers. Everybody's a participant. They all bring out whether

it's a ratty old ATC 73 wheeler they inherited from the Grand Papi and it's only going to start

on the seventh crank of the rope. They can still go and play with everyone else that has, you know,

brand new couple hundred thousand dollar or, you know, half a million or three quarter

million dollar trophy trucks, right? Everybody gets to go participate in some way. So I think

just the level of like enjoyment out there and everybody's out camping having a good time.

Like you're not going to meet anyone out there that's unhappy to be there.

And I think like 80,000 people in the desert doing that with like it's basically like

burning man with motorsports. Yeah. That's kind of what I've heard.

And that's like a great combination. And everything's, you know, aside from

doing really, really dumb stuff, it's legal to go as fast as you can physically go

on your side by side through the desert and push it to its absolute limit where like

streetcars are so fast now you can't push limits on anything

on the streets without putting yourself in many others in danger.

That seems to be a recurring topic. Like everybody, especially

again, I've developed quite the specific streetcar niche on my Facebook over the last

few years. And it's like everybody kind of agrees. Like it's just kind of stupid fast.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, everything's doing like

mid twos, low three, 60 to 130s. We are so desensitized to how fast that is.

Yeah. Well, it's like, I took a break because like one of my friends had an

Enthmodo build car, right? And it's like just clicked off like a super low three or

whatever. And it's like, I got used to it. Like there was one video and

like they took him and he's like, man, it looks like he's sleeping in there.

I'm like, no, no, I'm just enjoying the ride. But it's like, it's stupid fast.

Yeah. Well, I think that as we've, you know, this is part of the control side too,

that is we've done really well with traction control and power management

and keeping these things safe. Like you guys love to take all the credit to ECU guys.

What about the tires and all the others? But they're making the most of the

hard parts and really there's no driver in the world that can manage

power as effectively as a computer can. Same with 100. We have this argument

often where someone's like, Oh, I can drive fast and ABS like absolute bullshit.

I'm so sorry. Like how many brake pedals do you have? Do you have four of them?

Because a computer does. And it can sense, you know, within a portion of rotation, if that

wheel is stalled, if it's decelerating, like you don't have that data. I'm sorry.

Like you don't have four brake pedals and you also can't vary the brake pressure

left to right when you load up the car or load up the front, whatever it is.

So there's not a human in the world that cannot break ABS. And like,

F1 doesn't because they're not allowed to. F1 would love to have ABS. In fact, years ago,

there was I think some murmurings that somebody had figured out how to use the

regen as in a form of ABS. And then before that, do you remember the front differential that got

banned? Does ring a bell. So of course, I have no like, they're not four wheel drive.

But I think it was what team was it, but they put small axles and I think a differential

between the front wheels. I could be totally wrong on this. I think I might have read

this on the internet, but they put a limited slip differential between the front tires

to mitigate lock up. These are going to lock up whatever tires on the inside generally.

But if you can just connect them with the differential where one can't really lock

up without the other, it's like poor man's ABS, but it's not really ABS. So anyway,

but that's the thing where like the computer just has way more control and at a way faster pace.

It can cut the next cylinder that fires, right? If you lift throttle, you've got all

that momentum and everything else. Like you just can't make corrections as fast.

Well, going back to the formula one topic, I think was it when Schumacher was at Benetin

or whatever, like that they're like, where's it? I don't know. It was

late 80s, early 90s. I think my, I've been whatever they were talking about.

Like, oh, I can hear that car next to me has traction control. Like that was not allowed

or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, I don't know. I can't, I think it was Benetin.

I'm blanking out. I'm getting the names mixed up. It's been a long day. Yeah.

But what about EV stuff? Are you guys dabbling in EV stuff at all or not really?

Haven't messed with anything yet. We've had a couple of our products make it into EV builds.

Like our power management units, they're just turning 12-volt circuits on and off.

That's the most oversimplification I can do, but they can manage temperatures. They can manage

any logic you want to program into it. It can manage any 12-volt system really,

our keypads, our dash displays. The CAN bus is so open on our stuff. A lot of our competitors,

it's either a pay to play to get the CAN bus unlocked or they just don't let you do

anything with it. And our stuff being really flexible. We see like one component

may be making it into a build that doesn't use our whole ecosystem, but maybe it just can't

because it doesn't have an engine or it doesn't have a combustion power plant or whatever it is.

So we'll see them using our power management or our dash displays or something. They're not

using our ECUs for that, but not to say they couldn't, but I don't know anything about

that world yet. What's your best selling plug and play? I'd have to go back and look.

It might be like the IS 300 GS 300 right now. Okay. Yeah. And that's the one that we're

actively developing. I really hope to have this out in the last year, but this is the deal

with development. You don't know it's done until it's done. It's never-ending.

And so that one, Toyota uses really obscure network for their dash cluster communication

and AC requests and all this stuff. And so we have to validate it not just on one model,

but multiple models over multiple year splits and then do all the auto-trans control because

we can control auto-trans through the EMU Pro. So it's just taking time to offer something,

again, built to the level that our side-by-side stuff is where it plugs in and you really don't

know if it's a stock computer or aftermarket until you start adding power and compensating for things

that you've changed. But that's the goal. And then it just takes more time. And I'd love to

release stuff faster, but I'd rather be really right and be a good advertisement for the company.

Oh, 100%. I have such an appreciation for basically every company ever because I've

always been on the opposite side. I used to be the guy that was messaging people like,

oh, sponsor me, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now I'm on the other side of things.

I get to see the development and what goes into it, the multiple iterations and delays

with vendors and all that. And I'm like, man, I have such an appreciation for that now. It's

crazy. Yeah, it's hours and hours and hours and poor Petrie. I mean, he worked on that.

Like virtually zero progress for many, many weeks trying to figure out where the disconnect

was, the code worked or it didn't or whatever it was and just reverse engineering stuff.

When you don't really have a tool, you're making your tools to reverse engineer this stuff.

In some cases. But it's just, it kind of takes cubic hours sometimes. If it's an easy

plug-and-play, we're just wire to wire. Like my RX7, we made a really nice plug-and-play and we

still haven't released it because we need to find a car with the sequential factory turbos

and validate the control system for that, which we need to be more active about

finding a car to test on. But at this point, I really want to make sure that

every factory feature is supported so it's not an asterisk or somebody gets mad

later because they bought it and didn't read the fine print. So it's just not worth

the reputation ding to offer something that doesn't check all the boxes.

Yeah. I think I saw you guys are offering some sort of like B58 plug-and-play thing.

Those are guys in Poland. So they've made a really, really good base map for it,

and then they're going to build a full engine harness for it. So it'll be a swap-only type

deal or just straight race car because again, that car has so much going on in terms of networks

in it that that's kind of a nightmare. But if you want to do like a full race

application with a B58, and then if you wanted an 8HP, you could just do the turbo-lamic for the

trans side. So you're saying with that whole setup, you could basically take the B58 and put

it on anything at that point? Okay. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. Cause I was curious

about that. I was just saying, oh, that's a cool application. Yeah. And my thing is like,

I think it's a cool motor. Do I think it's going to be a practical swap application

for a lot of people? I don't know. We'll see. Well, it depends. I mean,

if you're looking at like the Gen 3, are they at Gen 4 B58s yet? I think it's just

Gen 1 and 2, right? I think the current generation are, I think it's up to 3. I know 3 for sure.

It's 3, right? Yeah. My assistant in the background. I hate VW because it's like

every day if somebody woke up another morning cup of coffee, they invented a new engine code.

Yeah. The engine, help me out in my car. Is it Gen 4 in my golf?

Yeah. It's on 4, right? Yeah. It's the EVO or whatever. So yeah.

But are they, we're iterating over here. It says GM and we.

But it was like every day they came up with a new engine. Somebody's like,

hey, is this plug and place you can pad up with? God damn it. I don't fucking know.

Somebody just woke up and chose violence and changed the engine code and like,

they might have changed like the spark plug heat range and that was it. I just don't know because

I'm not like in the trenches VW guy. So I can't tell you what the difference is.

So we have to research that for our customers, but we don't tell people to go fuck themselves.

Right. Yeah. We try to help where we can. But man,

there's so much tribal knowledge required in some of these platforms that it's just so

deep. But yeah, they're working on the, I can't remember if they did the Gen 1 or

Gen 2 first for the base map. Whatever generation they did, they're working on the other base map

now. Okay. And then we're actively working on can bus integration for 8 HP control.

That's still more limited than doing something like turbo lambic, which is like a real standalone

for the trans. You kind of do whatever you want. And you're, it's a lot more agnostic

in terms of what generation of the trans you want to do. But I don't know if we're

going to see the 8 HP trend stay. We probably will because it's a really great trans.

But that's just, you know, it's a lot of work. Yeah. I mean,

I feel like anything that's good sticks around for a long time. Right.

Yeah. And most of us have had one in a daily in something at this point where

like I had a 2019 ram that have a, like we've all touched one at some point.

So we know that they work and they shift well. It's not like the early bunch of

speed automatics that were kind of never in the right gear.

And then once we got past that hurdle, like, all right, this doesn't suck as much as we

thought. I'm excited for that whole B 58 market because like I had this conversation

last year, I think, and it's like, think about the amount of cars that came with a B 58,

like it's across the entire BMW lineup. And especially again, if you look at like the

gen one, it's like everything. It's insane. So it's like when those started

started hanging to junkyard, it's going to be pretty sweet.

Yeah. And at heart, I'm still very much a budget conscious person.

Yeah. And it may be some of the cars that have it wouldn't look like that,

but like everything has been purchased with budget in mind. Like,

I think I may have purchased the cheapest ACR extreme ever sold in the USA.

Quite possibly. How many miles on this? 31,000.

Okay. So it's one of the higher mile ones too. So, but I think the trick is that

the guy I bought it from was the first registered owner, but it had like 10,000

miles on it from journalists. So imagine like the thing had a rough life.

So if the motor is going to fail, it was going to fail at their hands, not mine.

Right. So that motor is well proven.

And then he put like another 10, 12, 14 on it.

That's so cool, man.

And I bought it for like a hair over 100.

Oh, really? Oh, is it before COVID?

Uh-huh.

Dude.

Yeah. Because that's back when like a really nice like super low mile one was like 131,

because they were trading close to MSRP back then.

Yeah.

But I think I may have like, I wish I could do this with other things.

I think I've actually may have actually timed the absolute bottom of that market

and got in.

Just before it took off.

And I was somehow still able to sell my 2013 SRT like red on black for more money

than I paid for it after like tripling the mileage on it.

So yeah, I've done well with Vipers, but like this one's going to die with me.

Like this is going to be a forever car.

Like the whatever money it's worth is immaterial, because it's just not going anywhere.

It's just like my Supra.

That's awesome.

But that's a Mark III, so it's not worth anything anyway.

I do like the Mark IIIs though.

I do.

Like looks wise.

And from what I heard the engines aren't actually that all that terrible either.

The 7M's not the 7M needs completely gone through.

And even once it's completely gone through has a lot of paper gaskets

and has three accessories and so it's just it's it's a lot of futzing around to make it easier.

Options for sure.

That's it.

You know, the Jay-Z motor was just a decades later clean sheet design.

And there are advantages to that.

You cannot deny the 7M done well is a great motor.

But you have to do it well.

And that means taking it all the way down.

And that's just the reality of it.

But the Jay-Z stuff is pretty hard to screw up.

Yeah.

We're throwing LS, you know, like.

Are you a purist?

Not that there's a wrong car to put an LS in,

but I think there's definitely more right cars that LS is going to.

Are you a purist at heart or not really?

Not really.

No, I think some things I enjoy more and like

would I turn down an LS RX-7?

Absolutely not.

But again, like I think so much of the quirkiness

and the charm of that car is in the rotary.

That I think that at its best form,

it has a rotary of some form in it.

That doesn't mean I'm like going to look down on somebody

because they put a piston engine in an RX-7.

I don't care.

You do you.

Like they're so cheap and have been,

well, they were really cheap for a long time

because a lot of them were blown up or just ugly colors.

How do you look at the RX-8?

I saw one for like 1500 bucks in Michigan

and I'm like, man, that ain't a horrible.

Because apparently the chassis is insanely good.

It's a great chassis.

Right.

And we have all the CAN bus info for those.

So if somebody does a swap,

all you have to do is connect the two CAN wires

in the factory cluster works.

So you're talking about like a case swap sort of deal?

Whatever motor you want to put in it,

whether you're an LS, Jay-Z, K-Series,

all your gauges work.

You don't have to spend a bunch of money on a cluster.

That's cool.

Yeah, I think that's a market to watch in the next few years.

I don't know.

I got something on it.

Say with FRSBRZ.

Like this is a great chassis.

I don't love boxer motors.

Like I'm not going to cry if somebody yanks one out.

Yeah.

Like I'm just not.

But I think that Toyota may beat us to the punch,

but I think like I didn't love the GR Corolla

because I felt like it was a little too heavy

and a little too understeery.

But that motor in an FRSBRZ.

Oh, it should be insane.

Right.

It's a great because it would get weight probably off the nose.

You think it's that much weight?

Less.

It would probably be equivalent

because it's adding a turbo in bullshit.

Well, it's like also don't like with the three cylinder.

Again, I'm talking out of my ass on this one,

but it's like, don't you have to add a bunch of stuff

to kind of offset the fact that it's like such an unbalanced.

Yeah.

Yeah, maybe.

Yeah.

But I just think that like that car kind of deserved a better motor.

Oh, 100%.

Sorry to also brew people out there,

but like there's a reason that IAG is printing money.

And that's because everybody needs a motor.

Yeah.

Well, well, at least with, yeah, it looks like these,

from everything I've heard, the two fours have been amazing.

Okay.

Outside of like the whatever D early.

The Silicon.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Silicon Gate.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But like just it seems like such a big improvement over the 2.0.

Yeah.

Which is cool because yeah, anybody that's like racing

those FRS, I've seen so many LS swabs in those.

My nephew got one of the, it was like a midnight purple BRZ

as his like go to college car.

Okay.

And he's a brilliant student.

Super, super good.

This limp dick microphone.

But just like, you know, in my early years,

I would have been jealous if somebody my age got a brand new car,

but like he's earned every bit of that car.

Super responsible, great student.

And yeah, it's a cool little car.

I'm like, that'll serve you well for many, many years of life.

And with the 2.4, it's pretty torquey, punchy car.

Like it's kind of like the 2.4 is kind of what it needed

to get over the hump.

The 2.0, I feel is just not quite enough.

There's a guy I had on the show, Schwartz performance.

He was like, basically like you got like Rosa Shopping

at Schwartz performance, like size wise,

like for like Resto Mod stuff, like he's up there.

Size wise, I'm thinking all the Schwartz jokes from Spaceballs.

That's crazy.

Do you haven't watched that movie in so long?

Oh, it's classic.

Yeah, I need to catch up on that.

But like the guy, again, he has like all these track cars.

And he is like, you know, like he tracks bikes or whatever.

But like, he has this FRS, like a 2013, whatever, 14 FRS.

And it's one of his family.

Granted, now it makes like 600 wheel.

But like the guy tracks the shit out of it.

Like he bought that car.

I think brand new.

He's like, dude, this thing is perfectly balanced.

Just an amazing car.

Yeah.

That's why I learned manual and technically.

Nice.

Yeah, I personally, like I see it between that or the Z4

because I had more time driving in a Z4,

but like I technically learned how to shift in an FRS.

So it's like, I don't know.

But as we start to wrap up here, I want to talk about the car that's

on the dyno right now.

What's the story with that car?

Oh, yeah.

So the one by the dyno, a friend of mine, John Dodson built it many years ago.

It's kind of the car has a neat story.

I'll start from the beginning.

Yeah.

It's an 80 Malibu, old lady blue, old lady blue interior,

like blue on blue on blue, purchased new by two nuns,

daily driven by two nuns for like 30 years.

One of John's buddies buys the car, does like a, you know, a clean LS swap.

And it still has like the billet plate for the AC lines through the firewall.

It's just like, you know, bolt on LS swap, makes it a fun little cruiser.

And then John buys it and proceeds to, in his words, ruin it.

It makes it, you know, proper, pretty route of your race car.

So it's a 427 dark block.

I think it's an HPT promo 98 glide with straight cut gears of some kind of nine inch,

you know, billet spindles and cool stuff up front and twin calipers up front and all the

carbon panels in the back, but still has like most of the blue interior in it,

like the stock dash is there and the door panels and carpet.

And then you look in the back seat and it's all like carbon sheet,

but it has, you know, a funny car, halo cage that's all painted,

like 80s blue to match. It's the original paint on most of it.

But anyway, just really, really cool drag and drive car.

He he campaigned it for years with some friends.

He did a bunch of drag and drive stuff.

And, you know, I think he was just transitioning out of that.

And like his kids are building cars now, they're getting older.

I say older, they're in like, you know, early 20s and they're working with them.

And so he's, I think more interested in hobbies and doing stuff with his kids.

Right.

Instead of doing a bunch of drag and drive stuff.

But I wanted a platform.

So with the EMU Pro, we have all the inputs and outputs required for a drag car.

We just haven't really ever prioritized the strategies.

You know, like I said, there's zero drag strips in Poland.

So this is something they can go out and like test all day long.

So I'm going to have to kind of chip in.

And I wanted something that was fast enough to need strategies for traction management and

wheelie management and the timers and time based functions and all this and that.

So this is the test meal, basically.

CO2 boost control.

Yeah, I needed to be fast enough to need those, but cheap enough.

I can hot lap it and not cry that I'm campaigning a pro mod that blows up every third race or

you know, it needs a set of valve springs every three runs or whatever it is.

Like the consumables on this car will be, you know,

knock on wood, fairly inexpensive compared to really rally stuff.

But would you say it runs like seven fives?

Yeah.

Holy shit.

Yeah.

But it's, it's, you know, factory fenders, doors, quarters, roof, glass dashes all there.

I mean, really like there's nothing cut out.

Like I'm going to replace the window guides because the glass windows are a little wobbly

when you roll them halfway down.

But yeah, it's a really fast car, like 750s at 180, something that basically any track

it's ever been to.

Who's driving it?

John.

Okay.

Yeah.

No, he was.

You know, I'll drive it.

Yeah.

For I have not done really any drag racing aside from like a couple of passes in my super

back in the day.

So good news is we can turn it way down and just sneak up on it.

Okay.

So I'll start with, you know, practicing 60 foot.

Oh, but you're going to be the one that's going to be driving.

Okay.

Yeah, I'll drive it.

Okay.

But I just need to get practice with the workflow, like the controls and when to

reach for the shooting.

I just want to make sure that I'm not biting off more than I can chew.

Yeah, yeah.

But.

No, that's an undertaking.

It's one thing to, you know, go after a pass and be like, all right, here's the

changes I need to make.

It's another thing to be like, all right, how can I give myself the tools to

make these changes?

Yeah.

Yeah, that's going to be interesting.

Well, and I just don't have the bandwidth or the need.

We need to develop strategies.

I don't want to buy an untested car or build one.

Could I build this car for what I paid him for it?

No.

Could I build a drag car?

Sure, I could, but I don't have time to put into building it from scratch.

Or I have something very proven.

He basically gave me the cheat sheet of like, here's all the suspension settings.

There's all the shock settings on the street, tire pressures on the street,

tire pressures on the track, shock settings on the street,

shock settings on the track.

You know, here's how I ramp to boost in whatever.

It's like, I basically have the whole guide for that car should do.

And so we can start from those baselines with RECU in it.

And then, you know, I just didn't have time to sort out a car.

I need to sort out control strategies.

So it's a big shortcut.

Well, I guess that probably answers much of my next question,

which is what's next for you guys?

What's the next year, two, three years look like?

We're going to, I want to kick a bunch of people's teeth in.

Yeah.

So, you know, you saw our full harness production line

and super proud we're going to do that here in Texas.

You know, I think my new tagline is going to be that if somebody is not

telling you where they make their harnesses,

that means they're really not proud of it.

And I think that we've seen private equity buy out some companies and,

you know, some of the structural changes of some companies that are already,

you know, publicly traded or whatever.

A lot of our competitors are not run by enthusiasts anymore.

And I think it's going to, I hope it becomes more apparent.

Not that I want their products to get worse, but I think it,

I think I hope that people see that the decisions I'm making

are from the perspective that I'm out there on the weekend using it too.

Yeah.

And that's, that's what I want people to see.

That's a bad-ass perspective too.

That, you know, this isn't not every decision.

We have to make cost-based decisions.

I'd love to put Tefcel wire in everything we make,

but the reality is it's expensive and if you don't need Tefcel,

TXL is a great wire for 99% of applications.

Can you actually touch on that?

We talked a little bit about that earlier,

but kind of go into that a little bit more.

Yeah.

So Tefcel is just a Teflon insulation, like motorsport wire.

You see it in motorsports quite a bit.

You know, it's better at higher temperatures,

but you're generally not going to see those in most,

unless you're trying to do like DR25 sleeving

and you need heat resistance for that

and running components really close to hot things.

But, you know, most harnesses like TXL

is what's going to be in most OEM harnesses anyway.

It's a very good, you know, fire return materials

rated to high temperatures.

I've forgotten what's like 105C or something.

No, it's a good material.

But, you know, in volume when we're buying,

we've got one drum over that has 40,000 feet of wire in it.

So when you're buying 40,000 of something,

the price starts to matter a little bit.

Holy shit.

40,000 feet is insane.

Yeah.

No, I just want to like tie one end to an end of a car

and see how far we can drive.

Dude, what's that fee?

Like, so what?

There's like 5,000 feet in a mile.

It's like almost eight miles.

That's eight miles a month.

It's like seven miles in change of wire.

And I don't know if it's continuous.

Maybe it's like spliced somewhere in the box.

It's not one continuous trend.

But maybe it is.

I can find out with a multimeter real quick.

Shoot.

It's connected to both ends.

So what are your thoughts then?

Are you like, are you trying to lean

towards like that sort of like manufactured

in America, say, sideways?

Or like, what are your thoughts in a whole?

And this is a touchy subject for some people.

Yeah, but it's kind of, it's kind of no,

because, you know, EC Master is a Polish company.

Oh, true.

Yeah, good point.

So that would be disingenuous.

But what they make is made in their facility in Poland

by very talented, passionate people.

And, you know, most of those guys who work there

are enthusiasts.

If they're not racers themselves, they appreciate it.

And they love that what they make

is going to something really cool.

Like they're bought in, even if they're not racing themselves.

So I think that more what we'll lean into

is that it's made by enthusiasts for enthusiasts, right?

The owner of the company has a race car.

He spends his weekends often at the racetrack.

And just as I do on this side of the world.

So I think that's the key thing.

But, you know, for us, yeah,

I'm proud that we make stuff in-house.

It's cool to learn these techniques

and offer something very high quality

and control the quality very closely.

And that was the big thing that kind of pissed you off

was like the lack of quality, right?

It didn't necessarily piss me off,

but it was just shocking to me

that somebody would make something

and make it that poorly.

Knowing what the end-use case was for transportation

and that's a big safety concern, if nothing else.

Interesting.

You know, it's just, again,

it turns out it's easier to control it in-house

than it is to rely on somebody.

Depends on your partner.

Maybe I'm sure there's some great

manufacturing partners out there.

But yeah, there's that too, right?

Like that's something I'm also starting

to get an appreciation for is like,

even if you're working with a vendor overseas,

it's like, it has to be to ride vendors still.

But it's also too, you know, I've been slow to hire.

And I've got really good people

and we've done a lot of scaling with

what most people would consider a skeleton crew.

And at this point, I think we have really good procedures

and methods and equipment and test procedures and,

you know, if we nail all the procedures

that I think that it'll be much easier

to hire and train people and onboard them

for manufacturing roles.

Okay, so scaling is the next few years, hopefully.

And that's it.

And then we're also, we're going into

so many more markets now with the direct injection.

This year we'll release for sure an LS and LT harness.

I'd like to probably do the 2-3 EcoBoost harness.

Oh, okay.

So I think that's going to be, that's a great little motor.

It's lightweight.

You can get it, I don't like transmission adapters

if I can avoid them.

You can get it bolted to a rural drive,

six-speed transmission.

I think that stuffed in some lighter cars

is really cool and sustainable

because they're new and available.

Yeah, actually, again, it's kind of cool.

I'm starting to connect the dots.

Up when I was in Detroit, I had some guys on

that literally focused on the EcoBoost.

And I think they're go-to solution right now.

I think it's literally just link.

Yeah.

I think so.

So that's going to be cool to have.

Again, I love seeing more offerings

on the market.

So that's a sweet one.

I saw you post something about the LT.

I think it was like a C7 going on here.

Yeah, in fact, there's a six-gen Camaro behind me.

So the guys in Poland are making a plug-and-play adapter

for a either a six-gen Camaro or a C7 Corvette.

And we're going to test all the variants.

And they've already got the trans control,

the integration with auto trans sorted out.

The DI is extremely well sorted.

Basically, you get in the car and it rips.

Like, shifts great, engine works great.

They've got an LT1 Camaro over there.

They've tested it on quite a bit.

So we'll do the LT4 stuff as well.

That'll be like a straight plug-and-play solution

where you can add port injection on top

because so many of these guys have been running

got off of piggybacks or just a shit ton of meth injection

and no power management strategies

and really just sketchy, sketchy stuff

at those power levels.

So we'll be able to offer something really,

really competent and a pretty fair price.

So that's a good one.

How does market selection work?

You remember when I said I was going to end this

like 10 minutes ago?

How does market selection work for you?

Is it like, does the guys in Poland making decisions?

Are you bouncing ideas back and forth?

Some.

Because sometimes we need their help with something, right?

Like doing a clean sheet DI application,

we don't really, we don't have the skill set here

to do that just yet, right?

We haven't done enough of it

to really tackle in clean sheet.

They have a lot more equipment over there than we do.

They have a couple of guys that have deeper backgrounds

with DI stuff on OEM ECU sides.

So, you know, they've handled all the DI stuff so far.

We had a couple of really good dealers

who've done a lot of DI stuff

so we can rely on them for some things.

And we'll obviously, we'll get better

as we play with them more.

We'll learn a lot more,

but I want to learn my stuff, not somebody else's.

Genuinely, that's why there's so many cars here is that...

What? This little handful?

No, but I don't like the customer being like,

usually if I've tested,

like if I hand somebody something,

I've done dumber stuff with it

and they probably will.

And in fact, I got to experience that on the other side

that one of our really good dealers,

he owns FTA, Inc.,

which literally means fuck them all,

which I love.

That's cool.

Yeah. Brilliant tuner, great wiring guy.

And we were a king of the hammers.

It happened to be my birthday.

He's like, hey, we're going to do something cool.

I'm like, what are we doing?

He's like, oh, we're going to go...

It's coming to call it Sasquatch Crawlers.

And so he'd use badass rock crawlers,

a two, three EcoBoost,

4L60 paddle shifted from the EMU Pro,

DI by the EMU Pro.

The Rowdy one makes like 400 horsepower

and 4,000 pound things

because like the front tires

are filled with water all the way to the top.

They have like 40 or 44 inch tires on them.

They have a Seydev multi-clutch disconnect

behind the transfer case.

So you can do front digs,

four-wheel steer, 45 degrees of steering angle,

front and rear, front and rear pull down winches.

And yeah, and I was like, hey guys,

I like to be really respectful

of other people's cars, especially a customer.

Like these guys are end user customers

that have bought my products

and I'm super thankful.

They're like, there's legitimately nothing

you can do to this thing we haven't done.

I was like, all right,

I'm going to take your word for that.

So I'm just like crawling over rocks

that are the size of a minivan

and super impressive.

But yeah, the DI side will grow for us,

I think a lot.

Okay.

We'll get way deeper in the domestic side.

The C7 platform,

I think there's still people playing

with that platform enough

they could use good management on it.

And then also we're putting LTS

and everything now

because LS's are drying up.

Mm-hmm.

Like, yeah, it's not,

I see it all the time in forms.

Like it's not like as cheap as it once was.

No, no.

And DI legitimately makes more power

than port injection.

No matter how many times I want to argue against it,

if you're not displacing fuel in the ports,

you're making more power.

Or excuse me, if you're not displacing air

in the ports with fuel,

you're making more power.

I'm actually, maybe you can answer this.

I've always kind of seen as like,

DI has like a kind of like a window

and then kind of port comes back into place.

Is that true or not really?

In terms of capacity?

Like, let's say like, I've noticed like,

for example, I'm going to use the B58

or sorry, S58 guys.

Like they basically eventually get rid of DI system.

They just go full on port, for example.

Is that always the case?

Is it just limited to a power window?

Or how does that work?

I think there's a couple of factors there.

I think a lot of that's fuel choice too.

Okay.

If it's a methanol car, direct injection's not.

Like the benefits of methanol outweigh

what advantages you'd see with direct injection,

I think, or it's so negligible at that point.

It's not worth maintaining two systems

or dealing with the tuning aspect of that.

You got to think too that a lot of those cars

at that power level,

if you're talking several hundred horsepower per cylinder,

you can't do 80, 100 pulls on the dyno to dial that in.

You're going to go to the track,

you're going to rough it in on the dyno,

go to the track and make a few passes here and there.

You don't need a lot of knobs to tune.

So I think simplicity is one aspect of it.

Okay.

I think the ECU hardware and play,

like if you need lots and lots of big injectors,

you can't eat up a lot more to those channels

with DI as well.

So it becomes just a choice based on that standpoint.

But I think we're seeing that DI systems,

we're finding a lot more capacity there

than we maybe had at first.

A lot of OEMs retain port for keeping the valves clean.

And those are great because then you just add capacity with port,

but leave the DI for the other advantages of it.

That's fantastic.

But a lot of the LT stuff we're seeing guys making,

like on just a Bailey-breathed-on-truck motor,

high 600s with DI.

And then there's no 16 injectors to wire or maintain.

For most people, not straight line racing applications,

but for most road course,

drifting whatever, high 600s is a lot for those use cases.

Or even a fun street car.

The simplicity and fun factor of that.

And you don't have to have terrible drivability

or huge stupid camshaft that's way more than you need.

The sacrifices are dwindling as we get better with DI stuff.

That makes sense.

Is there anything else you wanted to touch on

before I pop my last question?

No.

My actual final question?

No, I just think the big markets

that I'm really looking forward to,

the diesel DI, that's a big one, very niche.

But I think we'll saturate that pretty quickly.

And then yeah, direct injection on gas stuff

and then V8 drag racing harnesses

and just having full harness offerings.

I think we'll open a big window for us too.

Because every car I love has a crappy 30 year old harness in it now.

Dude, that's awesome.

I'm excited for you.

That's going to be a party next.

Yeah, that's cool.

Well, at the end of every episode,

I'd like to ask you guys a guest to pick three cars.

You have an unlimited budget and it goes like this.

You have to pick a daily driver, a show car, and a track car.

OK.

And no consideration for operating costs.

This is no, no, no, no.

Dream car and every foot.

You could put two cars together if you want to.

However you want to go about it.

God, I'm going to need a team for maintenance

and probably all of these,

because I'm probably going to go with like

just the worst things to maintain.

And if it's not my problem.

So what is the daily driver?

Yep.

There's the first one.

Yeah, you don't have snow down here,

so you could choose anything you want.

That's very true.

Lucky duck.

Man, I might just stick with my IS 500.

OK.

No, genuinely partially because I can't modify it

because there's nothing to modify.

I did mid-pipe and exhaust and some like BC forged wheels

and Swift springs, and that's it.

You had to show me a picture of this thing after.

Yeah, it's a great car.

But like that was the stopping point,

and I can't ruin it beyond there

because there's not like a turbo kit

calling my name on the shelf somewhere.

It just doesn't exist for those cars.

So that's a great because I haven't really experienced

any of the German stuff.

I don't know if it's good or not.

I'm sure it's great, but I don't have like less

staff to the German things that I haven't owned.

So no, I'll do an RS6 Avant.

OK, this is basically a big RS6.

Yeah, but I'll go with the stupid wagon,

like the RS6 Avant, like I'll go with that.

It's the ultimate daily.

That's a good one.

Yeah, they're awesome.

Yeah.

I love the how this thing sounds insane.

I'm totally the same 4.0, just my brother says

smaller turbos are really, yeah.

Yeah, we'll go with the dumb wagon.

That's a good one.

Dumb wagon, OK.

OK, and then a track car and show car.

Any kind of track, by the way.

Track car.

Again, we talked briefly about my friend

that gets to tune the Mazda historically.

Yeah, I'm going to steal a 787.

Shit, that's sick.

I mean, like you couldn't go to any track

in the world and not be the coolest guy,

even if you turn the slowest lap time.

Yeah.

Like, and I don't think that thing would get.

I don't think I'd ever get tired

of driving that thing on track.

Also less terrifying than like the Porsche 962s.

Those things, I think we're legitimately frightening machines.

I think the 787 was like not as much a widowmaker.

So yeah, we'll go with that for the track car.

Then show car.

Show car.

I'd say it's probably like.

Man, probably 4 GT, but the good one.

The 0506.

Of course.

OK, I had nothing against the EcoBoost cars.

But I think that like I think part of it's the like the age

I was in that car came out, just like with Vipers.

Like I was eight years old when the first Viper came out.

That was super.

I don't think that plays a thing.

I don't think there's gonna be as many like the amount

of people that had the 0506 GT as like the poster car.

I don't think there's gonna be as many kids

that had that generation as a poster car.

Yeah.

And this plays into like this is a whole other discussion

we could have.

But I think that every hypercar on the market

is so disconnected from reality that they're less appealing.

Maybe.

Yeah.

There's no emotional attachment with hypercars to me anymore

because none of them mean anything to me because they're so like.

Is it crazy that the Veyron seems like more attainable

than anything that's out there?

Yeah.

Right.

Like when you look back at it's like, oh, it's a million dollars.

Like, you know, now you're looking at 3, 4, 5 million dollars.

Like, OK.

And what about any of them would draw me to any of them

over anything else in that category?

They're all so such a grotesque display of statistics at this point.

There's nothing endearing about except for the Gordon

Murray, like the T50.

Yeah.

Which is cool.

Yeah.

That has a personality.

But I think the rest of them are so soulless

because they're basically built on a wish list of stats

that they mean nothing to anyone.

Aside from some.

Here's some stats make it happen.

That's it.

Like there's not anything like there were no constraints

in making them.

I think the best cars are made with very tight constraints.

Yeah.

Let me look at the ZR1.

The new ZR1.

Yeah.

That was a long laundry list of constraints

and they somehow made it happen.

Right.

And I think like I think this is one of the reasons

that NA Miata was so brilliant is that

they had so many constraints to fight with.

Right.

To keep it at that price point and keep it simple.

Like that's kind of what made it good is fitting it all

in that box of such a brilliant packaging thing.

But yeah.

You know, in the Viper, I think the constraint

was that they had like a 12 cent budget

and some leftover McDonald's and four dudes

who were just going to make it happen no matter what.

Yeah.

There are some cool stories from Detroit on that one.

On that note, where can everybody find you?

Yeah.

So ecumasterusa.com.

You can find us at deltaabs.com.

Verklineusa.com.

All of our socials are everywhere on Instagram, Facebook.

Should be on TikTok probably.

Not sure we probably have accounts created.

I just don't check them.

Sure.

My media guys do.

Yeah.

We're on YouTube for EC Master doing a lot more

how-to videos here in the near future.

But yeah.

Find us on socials.

Find us on our website.

And hopefully see you at the racetrack.

Awesome.

Well, thank you very much for coming on the show.

This is awesome.

Thank you everybody for listening.

And I'll see you all next time.

Thank you.

195. Zach Denney on ECUMaster USA, Tracking Cars and Developing Strategies For Drag Racing

Toyota Supra

Toyota Corolla

Nissan Gtr

Audi R8

Mazda Rx7S

Mazda MX-5 / Miata

Jeep Commander

Plymouth Super Bird

Mercury Cougar

BMW M3

BMW E92

Volkswagen Gti

MC20

Chevrolet Corvette

Toyota GR Corolla

Toyota GR Yaris

Ram 3500

Mazda Rx8

Scion Frs

BMW Z4

Chevrolet Camaro

Fiat 600

Audi RS6 Avant

Bugatti Veyron

Gordon T50

About this episode

Original notes