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.
Yeah.
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.
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.
Yeah.
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.
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.
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.
Thank you.
About this episode
Zach Denney, ECUMaster USA’s North American lead, walks through how he went from growing up on Road & Track and street-racing stories to building a business around standalone ECUs and race-focused electronics. The conversation covers ECUMaster’s distribution model, how their plug-and-play harnesses are engineered (3D scanning/printing, faster installs, dyno baselining), and why direct injection and DI drivers are fundamentally different from port systems. They also compare Motorsport ABS vs street ABS, discuss Verkline tubular subframes, Delta ABS, and the growing drag/track and side-by-side markets—plus plenty of wild car stories from TX2K and Poland.
Zach Denney of ECU Master USA joins us to share some insights into how he got started with ECU Master, what the current plans are to expand offering into the aftermarket including drag racing strategies, and various conversations about the collection of cars he has.